Kill Plan (Ingrid Skyberg FBI Thrillers -) (6 page)

Mbeke blew out a frustrated sigh. “He’s not in any trouble, we just need to ask him a few questions.”

“He is in the country legally. You have no right to harass him.”

“Like I said, he’s not in trouble. I just need to know what he saw when he was here yesterday. I’m not interested in his immigration status.”

Toure snorted a laugh. “I need to get back to work. I don’t have time for this. I don’t know him and I can’t help you.” She turned away and ducked back into the cleaning closet.

“Mind if I try?” Ingrid asked Mbeke under her breath.

“Be my guest.” Mbeke turned and headed back toward the elevator.

Ingrid stepped into the cramped space of the cleaning closet and lightly touched Toure on the arm. “Patience… may I call you Patience?”

Toure shrugged back at her.

“I really don’t care about Miguel’s immigration status. That has nothing to do with the embassy. The only thing I’m interested in is Matthew Fuller—the young man who died yesterday. Miguel may have some information about what happened.”

“Miguel is a good man. He wouldn’t have anything to do with the man’s death.”

“I’m not saying he does, but he might know something that helps us. I promise you, if you can tell us where we might be able to find him, I’ll make sure the police don’t pursue any immigration issues.”

“You expect me to believe you? He speaks to the police and the next thing he knows he’s at Heathrow airport waiting for the next flight home.”

“I promise you that won’t happen.”

Toure shook her head. “I don’t know where he is. I can’t help you.” She bent down and picked up a large plastic container from a low shelf and heaved it onto the cleaning cart. It landed with a thud. “I have to work now.” She started to push the cart toward the ladies’ restroom.

Ingrid looked at the large container Toure had just dumped onto the cart. According to the label it was a ten liter box of liquid soap. “Do you refill the soap dispensers in the restrooms every day?” she asked.

Toure stopped. “Why?”

“Is fresh soap added every day?”

“In the ladies’ toilets I refresh the dispensers twice a day. Men don’t wash their hands so much. Maybe once every other day.”

“It’s possible new soap would have been added yesterday to the restrooms on the third floor?”

Toure nodded and looked at Ingrid as if she were crazy.

“Thank you for your help.” Ingrid raced toward Mbeke, who was still waiting for her at the elevators. “Call your forensics lab,” she said when she reached him.

“What?”

“Get them to test the soap dispensers as a priority. We may have found the source of the toxin.”

9

Mbeke turned away from Ingrid as he put in the call to the forensics laboratory. She clearly heard him make the request that the soap dispensers should be tested first. She felt as if maybe they were actually starting to make some progress.

“What do you mean?” Mbeke raised his voice. “Are you telling me they’ve been lost?” He turned back toward Ingrid and momentarily made eye contact with her, raising his eyebrows. “Then what are you saying?” He started to shake his head. “Dear God, what a balls-up. Who’s responsible for this?” As he listened to the reply the muscles in his jaw flexed. After a few more seconds he hung up.

“What’s happened?”

“There were no soap dispensers,” he said and shoved his phone into a pocket.

“I don’t understand.”

“The lab can’t test them because they were never recovered from the scene.”

“They had to be.”

“All the evidence from the gents’ toilets was carefully bagged up and labeled by the CSIs. According to the forensics manager, there were no dispensers to bag up.”

Ingrid tried to remember what she’d seen in the restroom when she’d gone in there herself. She would have noticed if the dispensers had been missing, wouldn’t she? If they were there when she was in the restroom, what the hell had happened to them? “They must have been removed by the perpetrator, some time between Wennstein visiting the restroom and your uniformed officers sealing it off.”

“That wouldn’t have been much of a window—ten, maybe fifteen minutes?”

Ingrid pulled a face. She wasn’t one for telling tales, but she couldn’t just let it go.

“What is it?” Mbeke pressed the down button with a knuckle.

“I’d say closer to twenty minutes, maybe a half hour. I had to do a lot of persuading to get the restroom sealed.”

“Do you remember seeing anyone going in or out?”

“I didn’t have my eye on the door all the time. I was a little busy fighting with the police constable.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”

“It’s OK, I can find out without you telling me.”

The elevator arrived. Ingrid glanced up and down the corridor, looking for CCTV cameras. “Is there footage some place of the corridor on the trading floor?”

“I’ve got a DC with security right now running through all the footage for yesterday morning. There’s nothing for the exterior or interior of the toilets.” He stepped into the elevator and Ingrid followed him. “But there are cameras in all the lifts.” He pointed toward the shiny black hemisphere attached to the center of the ceiling of the elevator. “And the reception area and all the exits have good coverage.” He punched the button labeled ‘LG’. “Let’s go and see what they’ve uncovered so far, shall we?”

The elevator doors seemed to take an age to close.

“If the toxic agent that killed Fuller and put the hand drier engineer in the hospital was in the soap,” Mbeke said, “that blows your theory about Fuller being targeted specifically. Unless you’ve heard something from Witness Protection?”

“Still waiting for them to get back to me.” Ingrid hated having to admit she didn’t have the necessary intel. As soon as she got back to the embassy she’d insist Sol Franklin contact the US Marshals Service.

“So there’s just as much chance that the hand drier man was the intended target. But still more likely that Fisher Krupps has been targeted in general.”

“The maintenance engineer is still alive. Fuller’s dead.”

“That makes him unlucky, not a target.”

The elevator doors opened and two smart suited young men stepped in. Ingrid made sure to drop her voice. “If it was the soap, then we have to assume the toxin was absorbed through the skin. Maybe that might speed up the process of identifying it.”

“We’ll hopefully find out more after the autopsy.” Mbeke looked at the two men, obviously uncomfortable about discussing the case. He remained silent until the elevator doors opened again and they exited. “If it was in the soap, anyone could have been affected. Surely there would have been more casualties.”

“Maybe not.” Ingrid braced herself to ask an awkward question. “Tell me—and I really need you to answer honestly—do you wash your hands, with soap and all, every time you use the bathroom?”

Mbeke shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Maybe not
every
time.”

“Wennstein complained about tingling in his fingers after he went for a crap. I’m supposing he washed his hands. The maintenance guy would have gotten pretty dirty hands pulling apart a hand drier and reassembling it, so he must have used plenty of soap to clean up afterward.”

“And Fuller? What possible reason would he have for being so meticulous about his hand hygiene?”

“That I haven’t worked out yet.”

“So either the hand drier engineer was the intended victim, or Fisher Krupps was targeted.”

“Why remove the soap if someone wanted to do as much damage as possible?” Ingrid felt as if they were chasing around in circles, getting nowhere. “I guess you should look into the background of the maintenance guy. I feel bad calling him that all the time, what’s his name?”

“Colin Stewart.”

“So—a full profile of Stewart might help.”

“I’ll get one of the DCs onto it.”

The elevator finally reached the lower ground floor. Ingrid followed Mbeke down a maze of corridors to a dimly lit room full of TV monitors, a different image of part of the building on each one. A uniformed guard was showing a plain clothes detective some footage.

“How’s it going, Craig?” Mbeke asked the cop.

“Not sure we’ve got anything worthwhile yet.”

“Can we take a look at the elevator footage between 10.20 and 10.50 a.m.?” Ingrid asked.

Rather than answering her, both the security guard and the detective looked at Mbeke for approval.

“In your own time,” Mbeke said.

Within five minutes the appropriate footage was lined up on the monitor. The image was split in two—the left side showing footage for ‘elevator north’ and the right side displaying what was captured in ‘elevator south’. All four of them crowded around the screen as the guard ran the recordings at eight times normal speed.

“Stop it there!” Ingrid said, after she saw a figure appear dressed in dark pants and the same color long-sleeved green tee shirt Patience Toure had been wearing, a baseball cap pulled low over his face. The still image on the left hand side of the screen clearly showed a bag shoved under the man’s arm.

“Ten thirty-seven,” the young constable read from the screen.

“Dammit—I might have been able to stop him.” Ingrid shook her head. “You think it’s Hernandez?”

Mbeke peered at the screen and shrugged.

“Outside agency staff are issued with temporary security passes,” the guard told them. “So that means we don’t have a photograph of him on the system.”

“You can’t see his face, anyway,” Craig said.

“But it’s enough to keep his place under surveillance?” Ingrid turned to Mbeke. He had already pulled out his cell phone.

“Just about to get that organized,” he told her.

It seemed Miguel Hernandez had just switched from being a potential witness to a possible suspect.

10

Ingrid ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding a group of three tottering women who had burst through the door of the tequila bar. She checked her watch. It was already a quarter after nine. Her friend was late, as usual. If Detective Inspector Natasha McKittrick didn’t turn up in the next ten minutes, Ingrid would head for the Tube at Old Street. She’d already worked out her route: Northern Line to King’s Cross then Circle or Metropolitan to Baker Street. Her hotel was five minutes away from Baker Street Tube. She moved a little further away from the door and, to keep her mind occupied, replayed the events of her day.

Before she’d left Fisher Krupps, she had discovered a few things that she wasn’t sure helped the investigation into Matthew Fuller’s death or hindered it. On the surface, DI Patrick Mbeke’s request that she liaise more closely with his team should have been a good thing. Unfortunately, the reason for his sudden desire for cooperation didn’t leave her feeling too confident that the case was in entirely safe hands. After he’d sent a surveillance team to Miguel Hernandez’s apartment, Mbeke had taken her to one side for a private chat.

“I’d like you to be more hands on with the investigation,” he’d said.

“Great—the Bureau will do everything we can to assist.”

“Do you know how many murders there were in London last year?”

Ingrid saw the ernest look on his face and waited for him to tell her.

“Ninety-nine.”

That seemed pretty low. She hoped he wasn’t going to move on to a discussion about gun control. She preferred to avoid politics in the workplace at all costs. It only ever ended badly.

“Do you know how many of those were within the City of London?”

Again, Ingrid waited to be enlightened.

“Just one. And I didn’t investigate it.”

She wondered where the conversation was going.

“How many homicide investigations have you worked on?” he asked her.

“Really not that many. The cops only call in the Bureau under special circumstances.”

“How many, ball park figure?”

“Twenty-five, thirty, maybe. I’ve been working in the Violent Crimes Against Children program the past three years. I haven’t worked any murder cases there.”

“This is my first. Same for DCI Simmons too.”

At the time, Ingrid hadn’t been able to understand Mbeke’s sudden confessional mood. But now she’d had time to think about it, she supposed the reality of a potential suspect had brought his insecurities to the surface. She felt a little sorry for the guy. Their little tête-à-tête had been abruptly curtailed when the detective inspector took a call from the pathologist. As the EMTs had suspected, Matthew Fuller had died of a massive coronary. However, the pathologist’s initial investigation had found no evidence of poisoning in Fuller’s major organs. But they would know more tomorrow.

Ingrid checked her watch again. McKittrick had precisely three more minutes to make an appearance. She crossed the narrow cobbled street and took a good look at the exterior of the bar. Apparently, it had only opened the weekend before and had created quite a buzz. Ingrid had been reliably informed that it was situated in the ‘Williamsburg of east London’. That was Williamsburg, New York, rather than Williamsburg, Virginia, she presumed. Even if it were true, she wasn’t sure it was recommendation enough. She just hoped it sold a good range of tequilas. After her nights out with McKittrick, she was becoming quite a connoisseur.

“Hello!”

Ingrid turned to see her friend ambling toward her.

“You look vaguely suspicious loitering on the pavement like that,” McKittrick said. “Different shoes and a short skirt and you might get arrested.”

“That’s hilarious.” Ingrid grabbed McKittrick’s arm and dragged her across the street. “Let’s get inside, I’m really ready for a drink.”

“I can’t stay long.”

“What?”

“Sorry—I’ve got more crap to deal with from Internal Investigations. They sprang a seven a.m. meeting on me just as I was leaving tonight. I’ve got to get to bed at a reasonable time. And I can’t get too bladdered either.”

Ingrid let her silence tell McKittrick how disappointed she was.

“I’m sorry OK? If it had been anything else I’d say sod it, let’s party. But we are actually talking about my future career here.”

“Are we?” Ingrid pushed open the door into the bar. Immediately the noise of dozens of excitable twenty-somethings swallowed up McKittrick’s reply.