Kill Plan (Ingrid Skyberg FBI Thrillers -) (11 page)

“Of what?”

“A dark red rose with the word ‘MOM’ written across it.”

Ingrid sketched something similar in her notebook. “Sentimental.”

“Not a word I’d use to describe him.”

“What was his connection to the victim? Why did he want her dead?”

“We just don’t know enough about the guy to work it out. Mind you, Mrs Highsmith musta made plenty of enemies over the years.” He sniffed again. “You really haven’t looked at the details on file at all, have you?”

“I’m sorry. I guess I was a little eager.”

“I’m just joking with you, I’d do exactly the same thing in your position.”

“Thanks for being so accommodating. Why did she have so many enemies?”

“Barbara Highsmith was a congresswoman for Georgia. Not when she died, she didn’t get re-elected a second time, but before she was elected to the House, she was the District Attorney here. Any number of disgruntled convicts or disappointed voters could have been lining up to take potshots at her.”

“Can there be any doubt that Wyatt was responsible for her death?”

“Only three people in the restaurant knew about the allergy: the chef, the restaurant manager and the maitre d’. We interviewed the chef and the manager extensively. We couldn’t interview Wyatt because he skipped town right after she was killed.”

“Maybe he left for some other reason.”

“Highsmith carried around two of those special auto-injectors—just in case she came into contact with peanuts accidentally. She kept both of them in her purse. Her purse never left her side. Except on that day. A number of witnesses confirmed they saw Wyatt remove the purse from under her table. They thought nothing of it at the time. They just assumed he was taking it to the cloakroom. The purse was never found.”

“How soon did he leave? Did he stay to watch her die?”

“The sick bastard sure did. While everyone else was screaming for help, looking for the missing purse, calling 9-1-1, he just stood there and watched while she gasped her last breath.”

“What did you find at his address when you searched it?”

“The address he gave the restaurant was fake. Just like every other piece of information they had about him. We couldn’t track down an address for him hard as we tried. It was as if he didn’t really exist. The whole thing musta taken some careful planning.” The creaking leather noise sounded again, louder than before. “Listen, I’ve got a briefing I got to be at in precisely two minutes.”

“Thanks for your time, detective. Would it be OK if we spoke again later?”

“Sure. And the name’s Carl. I’ll send over the girlfriend’s details.”

Ingrid put down the phone and sank back in her seat, thinking about what she’d just learned. Wyatt was a poisoner who was aware of a weakness in his victim that wasn’t widely known. He used that vulnerability to kill her. Matthew Fuller had kept his OCD and excessive hand washing secret. Very few people knew about his vulnerability.

The similarity between the Highsmith and Fuller cases might be slight, but too significant to ignore. Now more than ever she had to know who had wanted Matthew Fuller dead. And the best place to start was Witness Protection. For any hope of success she’d have to bring in the big guns.

She grabbed her cell from the desk and ran out of the office.

17

Ingrid reached Sol’s office to discover it was empty. There was no sign of his cigarettes on the desk, so she guessed he was out back in the embassy compound getting his nicotine fix. She headed back downstairs.

Sure enough, she found Sol standing on his own, keeping his distance from a nearby group of kitchen and janitorial staff. It wasn’t like Sol to act so aloof, he could talk to anyone about pretty much anything. Then she saw the reason for his enforced isolation. He had a wire trailing from his ear to his cell phone. He obviously didn’t want anyone to overhear his conversation. As Ingrid approached, she noticed he was nodding every few seconds, but not saying anything. She supposed it was another conference call. He seemed to be spending more and more time on trans-Atlantic calls and less and less managing his agents. Ingrid wondered idly why the big cheeses in D.C. were so interested in the Bureau’s International Program and whether it might have any impact on her own work. She sure as hell hoped it wouldn’t.

When he saw her, Sol held up a finger, then hit a button on his cell.

“Bureaucratic bullshit,” he said, and smiled at her. “Hey, I hope you’re getting excited about dinner at chez moi?”

“What?”

“I thought it’d be a chance for Isaac to get to know you a little, outside the office environment. I get the impression he looks up to you.”

Ingrid had been forced to endure Mrs Franklin’s cooking shortly after she’d started working at the embassy. She wasn’t keen to repeat the experience. “I think I’m busy that night.”

“I haven’t even finalized a date yet. Tell me when you’re free and we’ll work around your… commitments.” Sol knew very well that her social engagements were few and far between. She was more likely to be at her desk than anywhere else most nights. He had her. There was no way she could politely back out now.

“This week is completely full. What about next month?”

“It’s a welcome to the embassy dinner for Isaac, don’t you think next month may be a little late?” Before she could answer, Sol held up his finger again. He un-muted the phone, said, “I couldn’t agree more, Jason.” Then hit the mute button again.

“You’re listening to them and me at the same time?”

“Incredible, isn’t it? Multitasking, huh? Meanwhile you still haven’t come up with an excuse to wriggle out of your dinner date.”

“Monday!” she said without thinking.

“Good. I’ll tell Maddy. She’ll make us a feast.”

That was exactly what Ingrid was afraid of.

“What can I do for you?” Sol asked.

“You listened to the message I left you about my new case?”

“The dead trader?”

“I need you to try again with Witness Protection.”

Sol pulled a pained face then shook his head. “I’m sorry—I just can’t. They’re acting completely within their remit. If they responded to every request for information, they wouldn’t be doing a real good job of protecting their witnesses, now would they? The system works—let’s not screw with it.”

“Did you even speak to them yet?”

“I didn’t think it was appropriate.”

“You might have let me know.”

“I’m telling you now.”

“But Fuller is already dead. His dad’s dead. He didn’t have any siblings. There’s no one to protect except his mother.”

“Doesn’t she deserve protecting?”

“Oh come on, Sol. You know what I mean.”

“I’d look for a motive for his murder a little closer to home if I were you. Dig a little into Matthew Fuller’s life here. Something that happened to his family when he was a small child isn’t likely to have come back to haunt him so many years later.”

“But he’s been here less than a year. How likely do you think it is he’s crossed someone so badly they’d want him dead?”

“Hey—he’s a City trader. They can’t go anywhere without crossing somebody. And according to your message, the local cops still haven’t ruled out the possibility that the attack was on the bank rather than specific employees.”

“Only officially—that’s just a political exercise to make Fisher Krupps feel as if they’re taking a potential threat seriously. There’s been absolutely no intel on possible extremists targeting the bank. It seems the toxic substance was removed shortly after Fuller’s death. How does that square with doing as much damage as possible to Fisher Krupps?”

“But isn’t that scenario still much more likely than someone from Matthew Fuller’s dim and distant past coming all the way to London to kill him?”

For a moment Ingrid considered mentioning a possible link between Fuller’s death and the murder of the ex-congresswoman in Georgia. But she knew the similarities between the two cases weren’t strong enough to convince Sol of any connection. He’d just tell her to dig up more intel.

A first few drops of rain started to fall, fat and heavy. Sol pulled up his collar and sucked on his cigarette.

“You’ll catch pneumonia,” Ingrid told him, and realized she must have sounded just like his wife.

“Don’t worry about me—I’ve located myself a quiet little closet inside the building that’s warm and dry. No smoke detectors, no nicotine police. This turns into a downpour, I can still carry on smoking.”

“Maybe the rain is a sign you should stop.”

“Oh sure. If I didn’t smoke, I’d never be able to get through these interminable conference calls.”

“Fine, you carry on.” Ingrid held up both hands in surrender, said goodbye and returned to the office.

Back at her desk, she punched the number for the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department into her phone. She got through to Carl Trooe a lot faster this time.

“Detective Trooe, S-C-M-P-D.” There was that rich tone again. Ingrid hadn’t realized before just how much he sounded like her father. The accent was all wrong, but the honeyed tones were just the same.

“Good morning, Detective Trooe, I’m Special Agent Ingrid Skyberg, we spoke earlier.”

“Now I’m not likely to forget your lovely voice, am I?” He chuckled a little. “Did that photograph come through OK? And the contact details for Wyatt’s girlfriend?”

Ingrid quickly scanned her inbox. “They did—thank you so much for that. Now you’re out of your briefing, can you spare me a little more of your precious time?”

“As you ask so nicely…”

“I appreciate that—thank you… Carl.”

“The pleasure is all mine. What do you need to know?”

“I have a case I’m investigating here at the moment, also a poisoning, very different circumstances to the Barbara Highsmith murder, but—”

“Similar enough to make you want to dig a little deeper, huh?”

“That’s right, I figure, if Wyatt was responsible for both murders, and it’s a really big stretch, no more than a dumb hunch at this stage—”

“Hey, no hunch is so dumb it doesn’t deserve a little attention.”

“If he did murder this guy in London, I need to know as much as I can about him. I need to know why he targeted an ex-congresswoman and a City trader. What did he have against them both to want them dead? Do you know if Wyatt had any connection to high finance or big business?”

“Like I told you before, we know very little about the guy. He covered his tracks too damn well. We did recover some DNA samples from the girlfriend’s apartment. But the DNA didn’t match anything on record, so that didn’t help us any. You got DNA from your crime scene over there?”

Ingrid remembered the Latvian’s apartment in Dulwich that had been industrially deep-cleaned. She supposed it was just possible Miguel Hernandez had left some trace of his DNA behind at the bank. She’d have to speak to Mbeke about it. Was it really possible the same man was responsible for killing an ex-congresswoman, a City Trader and an internet-scamming Latvian? “I’d need to talk to the local cops about any DNA evidence. Wyatt’s girlfriend… earlier you said you interviewed her intensively.”

“We did. She was real pissed at Wyatt for duping her the way he did. She was happy to cooperate.”

“But still she couldn’t tell you anything about his history?”

“Nothing he’d told her about himself turned out to be true.”

“Can you tell me anything about her?”

“She was seriously freaked out by what happened. I think she was a little scared of what Darryl Wyatt might do to her. I tried to reassure her he was long gone. But then she told us about his temper. He’d hit her a few times. Never where it’d show, he was real clever about it.”

“Why did she stay with him?”

“Too scared to end it. I think she was mighty relieved when he skipped town.”

“How long had they been together?”

“Not long—she got him the job at the restaurant.”

“She did?”

“She blames herself for the whole thing. Like I say, you’re better off speaking to her directly. She might remember something relevant she didn’t even tell us.”

“I’ll do just that, thank you, Carl.”

“Anytime.”

Ingrid exchanged direct dial numbers with Trooe then and immediately called Darryl Wyatt’s ex-girlfriend. Her call transferred straight to voicemail. At least the woman was using the same cell phone number. Ingrid left a short message and spelled out her email address—she didn’t want the cost of a trans-Atlantic call to deter the woman from getting back to her. As soon as she put the phone down, her cell started to buzz.

It was Patrick Mbeke.

“Can you spare an hour or so?” he asked.

“You’ve got a lead?”

“Not exactly. Just an appointment with the pathologist. He wants to show me something. Thought you might like to take a look too.”

18

Before she left the embassy, Ingrid emailed a copy of Darryl Wyatt’s photograph to DC Fraser, together with strict instructions for him to ask the Latvian’s neighbors if they’d seen Wyatt at the property. It was a long shot—Wyatt had probably altered his appearance since his time in Savannah, but it was just possible the picture might jog somebody’s memory. She also told Fraser about the rose tattoo on Wyatt’s left arm.

Detective Inspector Mbeke met her at the main entrance of St Pancras Public Mortuary and escorted her to the autopsy room. “I haven’t been in one of these places since I was in uniform,” he said.

At that moment Ingrid realized it was her second morgue of the day. God it had been a long one. “Will you be OK?”

“Don’t really have much choice.” He managed a smile. It was possibly the first time Ingrid had seen him properly smile. Even though it flashed across his face for a matter of moments, it brightened his whole expression so much she felt she was looking at a completely different man.

“Thanks for bringing me in on this,” she said.

“You make it sound like a visit to the mortuary is a pleasant afternoon excursion.”

“Some of the local cops I’ve worked with here in London find it a little hard to be… inclusive.”

“You’re referring to my SIO?”

“Not specifically.” She was actually thinking more of Detective Constable Fraser.