woman her name.
“Katarzyna Tysowski,” the old lady said.
“Mrs Tysowski is the landlady of the property. The man she rented the room to looked nothing like Kyle Foster.”
“Is that all you have?”
“There’s more, but first of all, tell me what was thrown out of the window just now.”
“A bottle of whiskey.”
“Whiskey? Maybe it wasn’t Iran—where he came from,” Mrs Tysowski said. Then, at Ingrid’s prompting, repeated to the DCI exactly what she’d just told her.
When she was done, Radcliffe let out a low groan. “You’re certain?” he asked the old woman.
“I’m not senile.”
Ingrid turned to her and smiled. “Please excuse us for a moment, ma’am.” She walked up the street a few paces and Radcliffe joined her a moment later. “You have to go in there. Put an end to this now. The press have already arrived. The longer you leave it, the worse—”
Radcliffe cut her off with a raised palm. “Thank you for pointing out the obvious for me.” He lifted both hands to his face and stood there in the middle of the street, rocking back on his heels. “This bloody case. I swear to God…”
Five minutes later a team of twenty officers dressed in riot gear stormed into the property. Five minutes after that one of them emerged with a boy in his arms. A female cop wrapped a blanket around the boy’s shoulders and carried him to a waiting police car.
“Have you found someone to look after him?” Ingrid asked Radcliffe.
“His mother’s on her way.” He saw Ingrid’s puzzled expression. “Alive and well. Estranged from the boy’s father, waiting for the divorce to come through.”
“So he had abducted his son?”
“We got that much right, at least.” He shook his head. “The whole thing’s been a bloody fiasco from start to finish.”
Jack Gurley couldn’t have put it better himself, Ingrid thought. “I’m guessing you don’t have a problem releasing my colleague now?”
“God no—you’re welcome to him.” He stopped a passing constable and requested Gurley be released immediately.
Jack Gurley emerged from the patrol car, stretching his arms and legs, rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had been. Ingrid quickly brought him up to speed.
“The guy in the house sounds nothing like Foster.”
“I think the witness’ description relied a little too heavily on the Spiderman pajamas,” Ingrid said.
“You’re kidding me.” Gurley glared at Radcliffe who was now standing on the other side of the street, issuing orders to a group of uniformed officers. “All this manpower for nothing?”
“I know—it’s frustrating as hell. But what else could the police do? Ignore it? This was just an unfortunate case of mistaken identity. God knows it’s happened to me before.”
“But we’re no further forward.” Gurley shook his head. “I’ve got to get out of here.” He strode across the street, grabbed his heavy backpack, then headed at speed towards the cordon. Ingrid ran after him.
As they reached the line of police tape at the end of the street, Ingrid could see Angela Tate moving fast in her direction, an angry expression on her face.
“Do you think I like standing around in the cold for no bloody reason at all?” the reporter said.
“Not my problem. I gave you a statement—you chose to ignore it,” Ingrid told her.
Gurley’s cell phone started to ring. He answered the call and turned away, leaving Ingrid to deal with Tate on her own.
“Tell me one thing,” Tate said, “off the record.”
“You think I’m ever going to believe that, coming from you?”
“I swear.”
Ingrid pursed her lips. When she tried to move away, Tate quickly wrapped her fingers around her arm.
“Do you think Tommy Foster is still alive?”
“No comment.” She peeled off the reporter’s hand only to be grabbed again around the wrist. This time by Gurley. He yanked at her arm and dragged her under the police tape and through the crowd of onlookers.
“What is it, for God’s sake?” Ingrid pulled her arm out of his grasp.
Gurley said nothing until they were safely out of Tate’s earshot. “We have a lead. A sighting. And this time I can actually trust the intel.”
“Why?”
“It came from one of my men at the base.”
20
Jack Gurley was forced to duck very low as he ran across the helipad to the waiting Pave Hawk helicopter the US Air Force had sent from RAF Freckenham. Slung across his shoulder was his clanking backpack. Ingrid couldn’t help wondering what he’d purchased the day before at the department store. He hadn’t volunteered the information and she didn’t want to seem so curious that she needed to ask. With