Final Offer Read online

  Final Offer

  An Ingrid Skyberg Mystery

  Eva Hudson

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  FREE SKYBERG NOVELLA

  Eva Hudson

  Also by Eva Hudson

  Acknowledgments

  Rights Info

  To Lewes Women Vets, the finest bunch of women in the world

  Prologue

  Smoke poured through the open letter box, but there wasn’t any heat. He couldn’t see any flames.

  “Anybody in there?” he shouted.

  Behind him, other firefighters ushered pajama-clad residents into the stairwell.

  “Anybody there?” he repeated, louder this time as the sirens six floors below fell silent.

  He pulled on his mask and nodded to Pete to pry open the apartment door. Thick, dark folds of smoke engulfed them. Visibility was zero.

  At the end of a short hallway they came to a T-junction. Following protocol, he went left and Pete turned right. He felt his way along the walls, searching for doors, hoping to find people alive but fearing he wouldn’t. There was no roar of flame, just a heavy, pressing silence broken by shallow breaths inside his mask.

  “It’s the oven,” Pete shouted from down the hallway.

  That was good. Contained. Explained the smoke. Always better to die from smoke inhalation than getting burnt alive. People just died in their sleep, no obvious signs of distress. Pete would have it out in minutes.

  A door. His heart clenched.

  “London Fire Brigade, stand back.” His voice was muffled by the mask.

  The doorknob slipped under his Kevlar gloves. He tried again, gripping more tightly, and pushed. Suddenly he could see. A bedroom, sparsely furnished. The smoke had barely made it through the door. Always sleep with the door shut, he thought. Always.

  A woman lay sprawled on the bed, motionless.

  He swallowed hard. The sirens hadn’t woken her. She hadn’t stirred when he’d burst into her room. Not good.

  “Wake up!”

  He took two steps toward the bed and reached out to shake her.

  “Wake up!”

  No response. He shook her harder. It didn’t make sense. There hadn’t been much smoke in the room. There were no soot marks under her nose.

  “Wake—”

  She opened an eye, then the other. He exhaled with relief. She was white, mid-thirties, slim, with toned arms pressed against the plain white bed linens. Terror spread about her face.

  “What—”

  The woman couldn’t form words. She stared at his mask, his uniform, his breathing apparatus.

  “There’s been a fire,” he said. “Is anyone else in the flat?”

  She slowly peered over her shoulder, checking the other side of the bed. Her expression was one of total confusion. “I… I… er, no. Just me.”

  An American accent. Unexpected. She looked at folds of thick gray smoke slumping through the open door.

  “What’s…” She blinked, then coughed.

  “Can you get up?”

  She nodded.

  He grabbed a pillow from the bed. “Hold this in front of your face. Stops you breathing in the smoke. I’m going to lead you out of the flat.”

  “I know the way.”

  “You won’t be able to see through the smoke, and there’s a hose in the corridor. Hold on to my belt. Understand?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was weak. She pushed back the duvet and he turned quickly away: she was naked below the waist. She leant over the side of the bed, then the other side before swiping her pajama bottoms from the floor.

  There were heavy footsteps in the hallway as other firefighters arrived, shouting over each other.

  “One female,” he called to them. “Alive and conscious.” Barely. She must have taken a sleeping pill. Possibly two. He helped her to her feet, took her hand and placed it on his belt. She grabbed the pillow.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  The smoke was thinning in the hallway, offering glimpses of his crew in the kitchen, opening windows. The fire was already out. Job done. No casualties. Exhale.

  He walked slowly, one hand against the wall, his feet shuffling so as not to trip over the hose. He felt her tug on his waistband, then sensed her move with him. They reached the communal hallway, where smoke curled at the ceiling and the thick, taut hose stretched from the dry riser across the worn linoleum into her apartment. In front of him were two elevators, but he steered her into the stairwell. The glazed double doors swung shut behind them, and she let go of his belt.

  He pulled his mask down. “You okay?”

  She nodded.

  “We’ve got a monitoring station two floors down. Can you walk?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He took the pillow from her and she held onto the banister. She walked carefully, staggering every few steps. Was she still drunk? Her feet were bare. It was the middle of the night in December, and the unheated stairwell was cold.

  He pushed open the swing doors to the fourth-floor hallway. Identical to the sixth, but without the smoke. Two guys from the station stood in front of him.

  “Boss,” he said, “fire’s already out.”

  “Nice work, Steve.” His boss turned to the woman. “So what was for dinner?”

  “I, er…”

  “Pizza? Lasagna?”

  Her features—regular, conventionally pretty—displayed confusion.

  “Vaz here says someone left something in the oven.”

  She shook her head slightly. She was shivering. Panic flashed across her face as she remembered something.

  “Shit,” she said, the sound oozing slowly out of her mouth. “Shit.” She ran her hands through her short blond hair. “I, oh God. I’m so… so stupid. I… I bought takeout.”

  “Kebab? Chinese?” The boss wouldn’t be talking like this if someone had died.

  She clamped a hand over her open mouth. “Some kind of burger. I…” Her words drifted as she retrieved shards of her drunken evening.

  “Think you took the reheating a little too far. You coulda killed someone.”

  She looked horrified. Mort
ified. She clasped her head in her hands. “Is everyone okay? Anyone hurt?”

  “You’re lucky,” the boss said. “Just better hope you’ve got good insurance.”

  Steve took a step toward her. He wanted to comfort her. He pulled off a glove and offered her his hand. “Steve.”

  She raised her gaze to meet his. Pale blue eyes. “Ingrid,” she said. “Ingrid Skyberg.”

  “You’re American?”

  “Yes.”

  “On holiday?” They’d had several call-outs to Airbnb rentals in recent months. Illegal subletters trying to make a shady profit.

  “No, no, I live here.” She was still shaking her head, trying to take in what had happened. Panicked voices from the lower floors flooded in as another firefighter, mask around his neck, burst through the glass doors. “We’ve found someone.”

  Behind him, two firefighters struggled to carry a body down the stairs. They placed the victim on the hallway floor.

  Male, six feet or more, heavy built. Soot patches under each nostril. Unconscious. His colleagues started CPR. His boss radioed the paramedics.

  Steve turned to Ingrid. “You said there wasn’t anyone else.”

  She looked at the man as firefighters began chest compressions. “I don’t know him.” She bent over them, staring at the man’s face. “He was in my apartment?” Her voice pitched upwards. She turned from Steve to his boss. “He can’t have been in my apartment.”

  One of the firefighters on the floor turned his head. “Found him in the living room. Beneath the window.”

  “No. No.” She stared Steve in the eye. “There’s been a mistake. I’ve never seen him in my life before.”

  Steve placed a hand on her shoulder. His boss radioed for the police to attend. Potential crime scene. She was trembling. He needed to find her a coat or a blanket.

  “You sure you don’t know him?” She must have been drinking, he thought. Picked up a random guy.

  “Yes.” She sounded certain. “I have absolutely no idea who he is or why he was in my apartment.”

  1

  ONE MONTH EARLIER

  Special Agent Ingrid Skyberg parked her motorcycle in a side street, locked her helmet in the top box and hurried toward the crime scene. After a couple of blocks, she spotted her friend, Detective Sergeant Cath Murray, standing with several other Metropolitan police officers.

  Cath waved. “Thanks for coming at such short notice.”

  It didn’t look like much of a crime scene. There was no tent to protect evidence. No one was wearing protective coveralls. And they were standing on one of London’s most glamorous shopping streets as well-heeled women flitted past them while their drivers sat in illegally parked limousines.

  “Looking good,” Ingrid said.

  “Thank you very much.” Cath was embarrassed Ingrid had noticed her appearance. “This way. I’ll introduce you to the inspector.”

  Cath left her colleagues and Ingrid followed along the busy sidewalk. It was a bright but cold day in October that suggested winter wasn’t far away. Cath caught her reflection in a shop window and adjusted her hair.

  “Every time I see you, you’re looking a little more glamorous,” Ingrid said. “Nice hair.”

  Cath smoothed her ice-blond quiff and straightened her tweed vest, part of a neatly tailored suit. “It’s all Suzy’s doing.”

  “You don’t say.”

  Before she’d met Suzy, Cath’s fashion sense could best be described as disinterested, possibly even disheveled. These days she dressed like the kind of lesbian who used to be in a boy band. Natty was what the Brits would call it. Ingrid ran her fingers through her own hair, trying to reverse the damage done by her helmet. “You did tell your DI I wouldn’t be suited and booted?”

  “She totally knows about the undercover thing.” They looked at each other’s reflection. “Have you got photos of your undercover alter ego?”

  Ingrid raised an admonishing eyebrow.

  “Of course you don’t. Stupid question.”

  “And Novotny?” Ingrid asked.

  “Not here.”

  Ingrid exhaled with relief. Leopold Novotny, the Met’s Russian expert, was one of the few people who could blow her cover.

  “The DI’s at Starbucks. I guessed you’d be a double espresso kind of girl.”

  Good guess. Ingrid suppressed the thought it wasn’t a guess. Cath’s old boss and Ingrid’s best friend in London, Natasha McKittrick, had once hinted Cath had a crush on her. Surely the arrival of Saint Suzy in Cath’s life meant the crush, if it ever existed, was now well and truly extinguished?

  “Not many bosses get the coffee.”

  “I know. She’s lovely. You’ll like her.”

  “You want to give me a heads-up before she gets here, because I don’t see any crime scene?”

  “Sure.” Cath’s phone bleeped and she glanced at the screen. “It’s Jenny, just checking we’re still on for tonight.”

  Two seconds later, Ingrid’s phone dinged with the same message. She had been playing with Cath’s soccer team, the Old Fallopians, since the summer. Jenny, the team captain, always sent out reminders before their training sessions.

  “You are playing tonight, right?”

  Ingrid nodded.

  “Cool. We need all the practice we can get.”

  “We’re not so bad.”

  “Speak for yourself. If we’re going to play a competitive match, I deffo need to up my game.”

  A woman in her fifties carrying a cardboard tray of disposable coffee cups approached, followed by a suited, younger woman in outsize Harry Potter specs. Ingrid wasn’t sure if this was hipster chic or genuine geekiness.

  “You must be DI Faulkner?”

  “And your accent confirms my suspicion that you’re Cath’s friend from the embassy.” She handed Ingrid a coffee.

  “Ingrid Skyberg,” Cath said. “Special Agent Ingrid Skyberg. From the actual FBI.”

  Ingrid extended her hand to Harriet Potter. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Laura Pearson,” she said.

  “Doctor Laura Pearson,” Cath clarified. “Dr Pearson carried out the postmortem. Ingrid is the FBI’s Russian specialist in London. Knows all about the oligarchs and their Kremlin connections.”

  Ingrid smiled stiffly. “Something like that.”

  “Sounds like you might be just whom we need. I’m very grateful for your input.”

  “The Met’s helped me out a number of times, so it’s nice to return the favor. And thanks for the coffee. Unfortunately I don’t have long.”

  Cath blew on her coffee to cool it. “I didn’t get a chance to fill Ingrid in. You want me to run through things quickly rather than do a formal presentation?”

  “Sure,” Faulkner said. Ingrid had lived in the UK for almost five years, and she still couldn’t tell if Faulkner’s accent was Mancunian or Liverpudlian.

  The four of them stood in a huddle on a large paved area in front of the Saatchi Gallery. “Okay.” Cath took a deep breath. “So this time last week, Yelena Rybkina, a perfectly healthy thirty-eight-year-old woman, dropped dead about twenty yards that way.” She pointed to uniformed officers speaking to members of the public. “Witnesses said it looked like she might have had some kind of epileptic fit, but she had no history of the illness, or indeed any other, although she had recently recovered from a severe bout of viral pneumonia.” Cath took a breath. “We’re here today in the hope of finding a witness we missed last week. Maybe now’s a good point for Dr Pearson to take over?”

  Faulkner nodded, and Ingrid turned her attention to the woman standing opposite her. She was uncommonly thin and remarkably pale with short-cropped ginger hair and a dappling of blotchy freckles across her face.

  “Okay, so.” Dr Pearson looked down at a sheaf of notes that ruffled in the breeze. “Mrs Rybkina was attended by paramedics at 14:32. Witnesses say she clutched her throat and fell to the ground. The response time was less than six minutes…” Dr Pearson read from her notes. �
�So… she was gasping for breath. They administered oxygen and took her to the Chelsea and Westminster, but she died en route.” She paused, then looked up at Ingrid. “So, when I performed the postmortem, there was no obvious cause of death. She’d hit her head when she fell, but not very hard , definitely not the cause of death, and she had a bad graze on her elbow from the fall. All her organs looked healthy, including the heart, no evidence of disease, though her lungs showed some damage from the pneumonia. Nothing that could have contributed to her death.”

  “What about her tox screen?” Ingrid asked.

  Dr Pearson nodded. “So, yes, nothing untoward, just traces of the prescription medicine she’d taken for the pneumonia.”

  “If I can butt in here,” the inspector said as a double-decker bus roared past, “in the light of Litvinenko and Perepilichnyy, we asked for additional tests—”

  “So, yes.” Dr Pearson’s vocal tic of starting every sentence with ‘so’ was getting annoying. “We sent samples for radiation testing, and we also tested for the compound in Gelsemium elegans, the plant extract found in Alexander Perepilichnyy’s system. Nothing.”

  “So,” Ingrid said, unintentionally mimicking Dr Pearson, “what was the cause of death?”

  “I registered it as unexplained. Sudden arrhythmic death syndrome can never be ruled out, but my best guess is an aneurism that led to such a small bleed it was undetectable. Her life insurance company is conducting their own postmortem this week.”