by Eva Hudson
“F––” Somehow she stopped herself from swearing. She grabbed her left knee and squeezed her eyes shut. This hurt. This really hurt.
“What are you doing?”
Ingrid opened one eye and saw a man standing over her. She recognized him. Samir.
“What are you doing? Can’t you see we have guests arriving?” His accent was upper class English. He was wearing a long white kandura robe and headdress. He did not offer her a hand to get up.
Ingrid couldn’t speak. She panted hard.
“And what the hell is that?” Samir pointed to the blood on her shirt.
“I’m sorry––” she managed
“Ah! There you are.” A woman’s voice. One Ingrid had heard before. It was Julie. “What on earth happened to you?”
Ingrid thought about Katja, about how the girls would be assembling in the walled garden, and how she only had minutes to reach them before the plan was ripped apart. She needed to get out of there.
“I’m so sorry, Mr Al-Kareem,” Julie said. Ingrid summoned the strength to get onto all fours. She immediately lifted her left knee off the ground. The pain was worse than an electric shock. “I can only apologize.”
“Get her out of here.”
Ingrid stood up slowly and tested her knee. It could take her weight. She looked down at the box she had kicked as if to scold it. “I need to clean my shirt,” she said and turned toward the cloakroom.
“And fix your hair,” Samir shouted.
Julie followed. “What on earth were you playing at?”
Ingrid didn’t answer. She couldn’t go to the cloakroom now. She had to get rid of Julie. Ingrid limped toward the office. “After you left, someone else asked for help,” Ingrid said, her breathing still labored. “So, I left the menus printing.”
“Who? Who asked for help?”
Ingrid pushed open the office door and hobbled to the printer. She scooped up the menus and handed them to Julie. “I was running to get you these. I hadn’t forgotten.”
Julie looked at the stain on her shirt. “Christ! What happened to you?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It clearly isn’t. What the hell happened?”
Ingrid gestured to the stain. “It’s animal blood. Somehow the meat got delivered to the front door.” Not a bad lie, she thought. “I helped carry it to the kitchen.
“Meat? At this hour? That should have been here hours ago. Another bloody cock-up.”
Ingrid picked up the USB drive. “Don’t forget this.”
“Oh, gosh. Yes.” Julie turned for the door. “Do you have another shirt?”
“Yes,” Ingrid lied. “I always bring a spare on jobs like this.”
“Oh, that’s good. Don’t suppose you’ve got another pair of shoes as well?”
Ingrid peered down at the DMs. “You have a problem with these?”
“Hmm.” Julie jutted out a hip. “They’re not very on brand, if you know what I mean?”
Ingrid needed to end this conversation. She had to get to Katja. “Not sure I could have carried a leg of lamb in stilettos.”
Julie tilted her head. “Good point.”
Ingrid waited for Julie to leave. Please, just go.
“But perhaps you should stay in the kitchen tonight?”
Yes, let’s send the young girls in the unsafe footwear into the lion’s den and keep a woman in her thirties with combat skills and sensible shoes out of sight. Excellent idea. “Of course.”
When Julie had left, Ingrid went straight to the cloakroom. The knee was sore, but it worked. A young woman was hanging up a coat.
“Hi,” Ingrid said.
The girl’s eyes popped at the blood on Ingrid’s shirt. She raised her hands to smooth down her hair. “Julie is asking for you. Apparently, you are needed in the kitchen.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want to give me that?” Ingrid motioned for her to hand over the coat.
“Oh, um, sure.”
The young woman left, and Ingrid plunged a hand into the coat’s pocket and felt for a set of car keys. Empty. She checked the next coat on the rail and felt a jolt of elation when her fingers hit metal. She stepped over to the window where she had a clear view of the cars on the forecourt.
“Good evening.”
Ingrid spun around. Two men, clearly father and son by their receding chins, were removing their overcoats.
Ingrid smiled at them. “Good evening, gentlemen. May I?”
She took their coats, still flecked with mist, and wished them a pleasant evening. When they had left, she checked their pockets. She searched all the coats and returned to the window with two keys to try.
The lever to open the window moved so easily she almost over balanced. She aimed the key fobs at the parked cars. The lights illuminated on Range Rover, sending a jolt of lightning through her system. Ingrid was about to jump out the window when something in the corner of the room caught her eye. The white flash of Marshall’s bike gear. She grabbed the jacket and trousers and bundled them into his backpack, then slung it over her shoulder. She had to help her left leg get onto the window sill and lifted it through the open window. She jumped down into the flower bed, driving a spike of pain up through her knee. When the agony subsided, she reached up and closed the window.
The bright arc lights on the F1 cars made the surrounding lawn appear pitch black. It was impossible to see anything beyond them. She skirted wide, and when she was sure another car wasn’t coming down the drive, Ingrid scurried through the blackness to the Range Rover. She climbed inside.
32
Ingrid put Marshall’s phone in the holder on the dashboard, and it immediately lit up. It was five fifteen. She fumbled the key into the ignition, but didn’t turn the engine on. She needed to think.
If Katja was right about Ayana not being the only body buried in the grounds of Uppenham Hall, making a carload of trafficked girls disappear was well within the Al-Kareems’ capabilities. They might think twice about killing an FBI agent, but the moment they discovered everyone thought she was already dead, they’d murder her too. Ingrid scrolled Marshall’s contacts and found her number at the embassy. If Uppenham Hall’s security team intercepted the escape, she would press dial. Her desk phone would not be answered, and that meant there would be a recording of the crime that the Sheikh’s private army could not easily erase.
Ingrid watched a car make its way down through the valley and park in front of the residence. A Lotus Elise. When the driver was inside the Hall, she turned on the engine, but not the headlights. She pulled slowly away from the forecourt and when she was a hundred yards from the house, veered off the driveway and onto the lawn. Keeping her distance from the building, she drove over the grass to the back of the Hall. With all the activity within the house, and the security operation focused on the perimeter, she was counting on no one noticing a blacked-out car moving slowly through the grounds.
She made out the rectangle of the walled garden in the deepening gloom and steered toward it. She crossed over the tradesmen’s track and circled over to the rear of the high brick walls. Ingrid positioned the Range Rover behind the walls so it would not be visible from the house and killed the engine. She looked around the car. Four or five of them could squeeze onto the back seat. Another in the front, and two in the trunk. It was doable. She took a deep breath and opened the door.
The grass was wet under foot and it was starting to snow. Thick blue mist curled in the folds of the valley. Ingrid reached a gap in the high walls and stepped inside the kitchen garden. Pale stone paths extended between geometric vegetable beds protected by willow barriers. Bare fruit trees stretched their branches flat against the walls, and long clear plastic tunnels, like giant sea creatures, shimmered in the sharp breeze. Ingrid’s deep breaths clouded in front of her face. An owl hoot stirred the air. The girls were nowhere to be seen.
The hairs rose on the back of her neck and fear prickled her skin. Marshall’s shirt was no barrier against the co
ld. Where were they? Had Bashir found Katja? Ingrid took a few steps forward, her feet slipping on the worn stone. Something shifted at the edge of her vision and she twisted sharply. A figure stood at the end of a path. It was too murky to tell who it was, but the timid posture suggested it was one of the girls. Ingrid waved. The figure did not wave back.
Ingrid walked toward her. After a few paces, she saw the girl had dark skin and long hair. She wore a toweling robe instead of a coat. Ingrid waved again. The girl didn’t move. Ingrid stopped and looked around, suspicious she was being lured into a trap. In the darkness, Ingrid made out other figures. She couldn’t see their faces, but she recognized their postures as nervous and insecure. Ingrid picked up speed.
“Hi.” She kept her voice low. “Are you all here?”
The dark-skinned girl shook her head.
“Where’s Katja?”
Three girls stepped out from behind a bay tree. Katja was not among them. Ingrid waved at them and beckoned them to come forward. She reached out a hand to the girl in the robe. A steaming puddle spread beneath her feet. The girl was too petrified to speak.
“It’s okay,” Ingrid said. “It’s going to be okay.”
The others shuffled toward her. Two more emerged from behind a bench. “Where’s Katja?” she asked again.
“She go for Chantana,” one of them said. “She will not leave her.”
“Katja’s in the house?” Ingrid asked.
The girl nodded.
It was too risky to wait. She should take these six girls and get them to safety before Bashir raised the alarm, before anyone in the household questioned where the girls had gone. But she couldn’t abandon Katja. Ingrid would not leave her to a fate like Ayana’s.
“Do any of you drive?” she asked.
They all shook their heads.
“Okay then. The car is just over that wall. Wait in it and lock the doors. If I’m not back in five minutes, there is a phone in that car. You press the button on the top five times really quickly it will call the police. Understood?”
One girl nodded.
“Now, go.”
Ingrid inhaled the cold night air and hurried down the path toward the Hall. She stood in another gap in the walls and observed the house. The lights were all on at ground level and a drumbeat of kitchen pans was audible through the open windows. The rear door was open and unguarded.
She sprinted over the lawn, knowing the white shirt made her visible against the dark grass. The wet grass clung to Marshall’s slacks. Near the horizon, where silhouetted trees met a blue-black sky, a dot of light bounced around. A patrolman. Ingrid accelerated.
She neared the open door just as a figure appeared in the doorway. She pulled up sharply. Her heart pounded painfully. A second figure joined the first. Ingrid checked left and right, but there was nowhere to hide. She was target practice. Her chest heaved as they stepped out of the cowl of the door. They staggered down the wide stone steps and onto the gravel, their arms around each other. It was Katja and Chantana, the Thai woman from the supermarket. Ingrid ran to them.
Chantana’s eyes were swollen shut. Her lip was split and blood drooled over her chin. She was close to collapse. Ingrid put an arm around her shoulders and another under her buttocks and scooped her up.
“It’s this way.” They dashed quickly between the walls and into the secrecy of the kitchen garden. “What happened?”
“Bashir,” Katja said, her voice breaking. “He find us.”
“He could have killed her.”
“I know.”
Chantana was so tiny, and so light, Ingrid was able to carry her easily. Her eyes lolled in their sockets. She was barely conscious. Katja opened the trunk and Ingrid lay Chantana down on the gray carpet, the trunk’s interior light revealing the horrific extent of her injuries. The girls on the back seat gasped.
Ingrid swallowed. “How did you stop him?”
Katja’s face hardened. “I had knife from kitchen.”
Ingrid’s eyes widened and Katja held her gaze. Ingrid placed a hand on Katja’s shoulder and. “Get in. I’m taking you both to the hospital.”
Katja scrambled into the trunk, positioning herself awkwardly beside her semi-conscious friend. Ingrid closed the trunk and walked slowly around the car, taking a moment to compose herself before climbing in behind the wheel. She checked over her shoulder. Five terrified women stared back at her.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
None of them could answer her. Ingrid drove over the lawn and maneuvered the Range Rover on to the track, then headed toward the tradesmen’s gate.
“Go faster,” the girl in the passenger seat said, but Ingrid kept the car in third gear and avoided revving the engine. When she was over the brow of the hill, she flicked on the headlights, illuminating flakes of falling snow.
“Faster.”
How was she going to get the girls through the gate? Whatever happened, she couldn’t let the guard look inside the car.
“Please hurry,” Katja said from the back. She sounded desperate.
Ingrid glanced over her shoulder. “Get down, as much as you can. You too,” she said to the girl in the front seat. “Down.”
Ingrid switched on the hazard lights and changed down to second gear to increase the noise of the engine. She flicked the switch that operated the lights, making them dip and rise. The gate came into view. The guard, draped in a waterproof cape that clung to him like wet paint, turned toward them. Ingrid pressed her palm into the horn, blasting it and blasting it to make him know this was an emergency. It was the closest she could get to a siren and blue flashing lights. He raised both hands, telling her to stop.
She depressed the accelerator, making the engine roar. He needed to know she wasn’t going to do as he asked. He dropped his hands and stepped to one side. He pressed a button on the gate post and the gates swung open. They opened inwards but were moving too slowly. Ingrid was going to smash into them. She was going to impale the car. She gripped the wheel and eased off the accelerator. They were still going to hit the gate. Ingrid squeezed the brake and the wheels slid on the wet road surface. The girls screamed.
“Come on!” Ingrid willed the heavy steel gates to move faster. She risked totaling the car and hurting everyone inside. She had to slow down. It didn’t matter if the guard saw the girls.
“Come on!”
The guard looked at her, his mouth agape. She kept flashing the lights, but there was nothing he could do to speed up the mechanism. Ingrid slowed further. Her mouth was parched. Her heart had stopped.
Ingrid accelerated the moment the gap was wide enough. A crunch of metal reverberated through the car as the side-view mirror crushed into the gate and sheared off. Ingrid steered sharply left and onto the track. She checked the rearview mirror and when the guard wasn’t in vision, she inhaled. The 4WD handled the mud and the ruts with ease, and she powered down towards Greenacre Lane.
Ingrid leaned over and typed ‘hospital’ into the satnav.
33
Ingrid rubbed her knee and shifted uncomfortably on the plastic seat in the hospital waiting room. Chantana had been taken in for surgery, and two of the other girls were being assessed for symptoms of advanced malnutrition. The others sat blank eyed, staring at uncertain futures. Ingrid had to leave before the police arrived. There was still a warrant out for her arrest, and she couldn’t spend the coming hours in custody when she needed to track down Marcus Williams.
Ingrid put on Marshall’s leather jacket for warmth and stepped out of the Accident and Emergency unit’s main doors. She limped a little bit, still wary of putting too much weight on her left leg. A group of smokers were pacing up and down as they fed their habits, some of them attached to drips on wheeled stands. Jen’s number was in Marshall’s contacts.
“Hello, this is Jennifer Rocharde, I am unable to take your call, but you can try my cell…”
Ingrid called Jen’s cell. It went to voicemail. It was six in the evening. Maybe Jen was
on her way home from work? She called again, and this time left a message.
“Jen, it’s me. I really need your help and I need it right now. Can you call me? I’m on Marshall’s number.”
The Al-Kareems, she realized, had used the same technique on Williams that they had on Katja. They had probably filmed him having sex with Ayana, who was underage, and then threatened to show his family if he didn’t comply with their wishes. To be absolutely sure he did their bidding, they had gone a stage further and killed Ayana and let him think he was responsible. It was a classic recruitment pincer move used by intelligence agencies. If you can’t dig up the kompromat, you create it. The question Ingrid needed to answer was why Marcus Williams was so damn important to the Emirate of Jihar. Ingrid exhaled hard. The son of one of America’s most senior diplomats had, most likely, been recruited as an asset for the Emirate’s regime. She needed to find him. Fast.
Ingrid returned to the waiting room where a nurse crouched down in front of the girls, asking questions. She noticed Ingrid and smiled. “You’re the one who brought them in?” An Irish accent, a face as broad as a warrior’s shield.
“I guess.”
“We’ve made contact with the council—”
Ingrid must have looked blank.
“—They arrange emergency housing. And Thames Valley Police will be here later. They just had a change of shift and they want to send the right team. You know, officers who have been specially trained.” The nurse got to her feet. She was even taller than Ingrid. “I’m sure they’ll want to talk to you too.” She gestured to Ingrid’s knees. “Do we need to take a look at that? I saw you’re limping.”
“I’m fine, thank you.” Ingrid peered around the nurse. “I just need to speak to—”
“Yes, of course.” She smiled again. “No problem.”
