Perfect Strangers

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘Who was it?’

  He looked down at the telephone, not speaking.

  ‘Josh! Tell me!’

  ‘Maurice,’ he said quietly. ‘Or at least, that’s who he was calling. The number was for Le Cellar, a nightclub in Montmartre. That’s where Maurice hangs out.’

  ‘Who on earth is Maurice?’

  ‘Maurice Balbi,’ said Josh with a look of distaste. ‘He’s a fence, a fixer. A middleman with ideas above his station.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Barely. I’ve only met him a couple of times, but he’s the go-to man in Paris for that sideline I was telling you about.’

  ‘The fake stuff?’ said Sophie, looking down at her shirt. ‘I thought you said it wasn’t your business.’

  ‘It was my business. I’m into watches now.’

  ‘So Maurice makes counterfeit goods?’

  ‘Never did anything like that himself, but he always knew a man who could.’

  ‘So let’s go see him,’ said Sophie, hoping to sound more enthusiastic than she felt.

  ‘No,’ said Josh, shaking his head. ‘I don’t want you going there and meeting these people. They’re dangerous.’

  ‘I’m not fifteen, Josh,’ she smiled. ‘And in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re already involved with dangerous people whether I like it or not.’

  ‘Sophie, you don’t understand . . .’

  ‘I do, Josh. Believe me, I do. People want to kill me, or get information from me or whatever the hell is going on. But sitting around waiting for them to sneak up behind me doesn’t seem like much of an option. So thanks for the warning, but I’d rather face this head on.’

  He looked at her for a long moment.

  ‘I was wrong about you.’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘You can be a feisty little something.’

  ‘You’re a bad influence,’ she said, putting the Cellar number in her pocket.

  ‘But you like it.’ He grinned.

  She felt her cheeks begin to prickle. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, turning away and not looking back at him until they were on the street.

  22

  Ruth didn’t think she would ever sleep again. Her eyes were wide open and her foot was constantly jiggling. That’s what happens when you drink five cups of coffee in quick succession, she thought. But she’d had to do something, she’d needed an alibi. She’d been sitting in the same scratchy armchair in the nondescript lobby – dusty potted palms, broken vending machine – of the Horizon Hotel in Paddington for two hours, trying to look inconspicuous, which wasn’t easy. It wasn’t the sort of hotel where you’d linger in the foyer admiring the architecture.

  Still, despite a few odd looks from the duty manager, no one had asked her why she was sitting there in the one chair that put her in eavesdropping distance of both the front desk and the concierge. And Ruth had finally been rewarded for her patience. A little after three o’clock, an attractive woman carrying a small suitcase announced herself as Barbara Beddingfield, superior room for one.

  Ruth had swivelled slightly to take a good look at Nick’s mother. Although she was at least sixty, she looked good. The ash-blond hair piled up on top of her head, with the stray wisps falling carelessly over her face, gave her a sexy, bohemian air. Her jeans were fitted and her dark blue peasant blouse was something that Ruth would quite happily have had in her own wardrobe. It was the off-duty look of someone two decades younger, but she had that quiet confidence of an attractive woman who had once been truly beautiful.

  You can see where lover boy got it from, thought Ruth as Mrs Beddingfield wheeled her case into the lift.

  Ruth counted to a hundred, her caffeine-wired foot still tapping away impatiently. She desperately wanted to follow the woman, but she had to give her a little time to settle in. Who wanted a journalist knocking on the door the moment you arrived in the country? Barbara could well bolt, and Ruth couldn’t risk losing this interview, which could well make all the difference to a story that was frankly Swiss cheese at the moment. If she was honest with herself, Ruth knew she had nothing she could take to Jim Keane, let alone Isaac Grey just yet. An American businessman had been killed in a posh hotel, the girlfriend had been burgled then shot at . . . and that was about it. The Michael Asner angle was intriguing – she had asked Chuck Dean in the office to research Asner’s connection with Peter Ellis in more depth – but right now this was just a short news item, not the big splash that Isaac was after. Still, there it was in her head, her dad whispering, ‘Instinct, Ruthie, instinct’ – and Ruth’s instinct was telling her that this was a good story, a big story, one worth pursuing, even if the facts so far did little to support her gut feeling.

  She looked back towards the lift doors, weighing up her options, but then her mind was abruptly made up for her. Detective Inspector Ian Fox and DC Dan Davis walked into the lobby. Ruth froze, but they didn’t see her. Instead, they walked up to the front desk, showed their warrant cards and asked for Mrs Beddingfield’s room. Ruth held her breath until they were both in the lift, then let it out in one long stream. Damn. If Fox had turned to the left instead of the right for the lifts, he would literally have stumbled over her.

  Of course they would come here to see Barbara Beddingfield instead of the other way around, she thought, mentally kicking herself. As a source of potential information, Nick’s mother would have been jumpy enough having to come to officially identify the body, so dragging her into the police station would certainly not have helped them in their enquiries. Besides, Paddington Green was only a short walk away for Fox and Davis.

  Ruth quickly paid for her coffee and walked out into the sunshine; she couldn’t risk them seeing her on the way out. Crossing the road, she went into a burger joint and grabbed the cheapest thing on the illuminated menu, then took a plastic booth by the window, giving her a commanding view of the hotel’s entrance. Fox and Davis emerged thirty minutes later, heading back towards Paddington Green without so much as a glance in her direction. Ruth was just gathering her things when she saw Barbara Beddingfield walk out, turning in the opposite direction.

  ‘Shit,’ muttered Ruth, leaving her tray on the table and pushing out through the door as fast as she could. Her heart jumped as she searched the crowd. She couldn’t lose her now. Then she spotted her: already a few hundred yards ahead of her down Bayswater Road. Ruth had to trot to catch up, her heels click-clacking on the pavement. Panting and hot, she finally caught sight of Nick’s mother as she entered Patisserie Valerie behind Selfridges. Ruth didn’t pause this time: she followed her straight in. The café was packed, full of chattering tourists and mothers with pushchairs. Barbara sat at a table for two by the window, and Ruth walked over.

  ‘You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?’

  Barbara looked as if she minded a great deal but was too polite to say so.

  ‘Sorry, but it’s the only seat left,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Hey, be my guest,’ said Barbara, her tanned face crinkling like leather as she smiled. Up close, her skin gave away her true age, dry and lined from years in the sun, with deep scoring around the mouth that told of a lifetime of heavy smoking.

  ‘You’re American?’ said Ruth as she ordered a mint tea from the waitress: no more caffeine today. ‘Are you on holiday?’

  Barbara shook her head sadly as the waitress brought their drinks.

  ‘I only wish they served something stronger here,’ she said, stirring three packets of sugar into her drink.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Ruth asked.

  Barbara Beddingfield puffed out her cheeks as her eyes welled with tears.

  ‘It’s my son. He was in London on business for a few days and he got killed yesterday. I’ve just had to fly out from LA to deal with things. Why, I wouldn’t mind some liquor,’ she said with a shrug.

  Ruth looked at this woman, this grieving mother, and realised she couldn’t keep up her deception. She knew she was supposed to be a hard-nosed news-hound whose job it was to get informatio
n by any means necessary – God knew she’d intruded on people’s grief plenty of times in the past. But this time, she just couldn’t do it.

  ‘I know,’ she said, feeling her cheeks colour.

  ‘You . . . you know?’ said Barbara, looking up, confusion on her face. Ruth knew she had to tell her the unvarnished truth.

  ‘I’m a journalist,’ she said quickly. ‘My name is Ruth Boden. I work for the Washington Tribune.’

  Ruth saw Barbara Beddingfield’s expression change from bewilderment to anger and finally contempt.

  ‘You followed me here?’

  ‘Yes, and I can imagine what you think of me, but I have been covering Nick’s story and I thought I might be able to help.’

  ‘Don’t insult my intelligence, Miss Boden,’ said Barbara. ‘Helping me is the last thing on your mind.’

  ‘I can see you have no reason to believe me, I understand that. But I do want to get this story out there and I do want to help catch whoever did this to Nick. Whatever you think about the press, we can sometimes be useful in cases like this.’

  ‘This is not “a case”,’ said Barbara, her eyes flashing. ‘This is my son.’

  ‘I know, Mrs Beddingfield, and believe me, you have my deepest sympathies, but if I’m right, this is bigger than Nick’s death. I think other people could get hurt too.’

  Ruth expected Barbara Beddingfield to laugh at her, or at the very least stand up and walk away. But instead, she stared down at her coffee cup, her hands trembling.

  ‘Tell me what you know,’ she said quietly.

  ‘The girl who found Nick? Her name is Sophie Ellis,’ said Ruth. ‘She has been questioned in connection with the murder, but I don’t believe she did it. In fact, I think this girl is now in serious danger.’

  Barbara looked up at her, her eyes red.

  ‘I met with Inspector Fox, and he mentioned her.’

  ‘What did he tell you?’ asked Ruth, fishing around.

  ‘Not much. I don’t think they know much. He seemed impressive enough, but we both know that people literally get away with murder.’

  Ruth nodded.

  ‘Fox is a good detective,’ she said. ‘But he’s a busy man and it’s my job to know everything. And I always get my story.’

  She could tell from her expression that Barbara understood exactly what she was saying. Perhaps Ian Fox and his team would have this wrapped up by tomorrow, but what if they didn’t? It was just another case to them, another question mark in the unsolved file. And tomorrow, they would certainly be swamped by new crimes to solve and the difficult and dead-end mysteries would be pushed to the side. Ruth, on the other hand, could keep investigating the story for as long as necessary – some scandals took months, even years of dogged and painstaking research and determination before they were revealed. If Barbara wanted to know what had happened to her son, she needed Ruth on her side. Their eyes met and Nick’s mother gave her a nod.

  ‘So tell me about Nick,’ said Ruth gently.

  Barbara gave a laugh. ‘Where do I start? He was a good boy, always ate his greens? Star of the high school baseball team?’

  ‘Start with the last time you spoke.’

  ‘We didn’t speak every day like some families; in fact I might not hear from him for weeks at a time. So if you’re asking why he was killed, I don’t know.’ She looked down at her coffee again. ‘But I can guess it was to do with money.’

  Ruth sensed a story here, but she was experienced enough to know when to ask questions and when to let a subject speak, and Barbara Beddingfield seemed like a woman who wanted, needed to talk.

  ‘I’m just a normal mom, I guess,’ she continued. ‘All I wanted was for Nick to get a regular job, meet a nice girl, settle down and bring the grandkids over on a Sunday. But I guess we weren’t the sort of family you see in TV ads. We weren’t really a family at all, when it came down to it.’

  ‘But Mrs Beddingfield—’

  ‘Ah, that’s just it,’ she smiled sadly. ‘I’m not a “Mrs”. I never married Nick’s father – I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He was already married, Ruth,’ she said. ‘I guess you’d call me a mistress. Nick’s dad was a wealthy guy, powerful, but he was never going to leave his wife. For a while that didn’t matter to me, because I was happy to take whatever he could give. And he was good to us – for a few years, anyway. But then I guess he found a younger model and he stopped coming around so much. And then the money stopped coming too. I think that was why Nick wanted to make money so much, and why he didn’t care how he did it, what rules he had to bend.’

  Ruth’s inner instinct was tingling again.

  ‘Are you saying Nick was involved in criminal activity?’ she said, trying to hide her excitement. This could be an interesting twist. She had assumed the line about Nick being a wealthy businessman was straight up – had Fox been holding something back?

  ‘I’m saying I’m his mother and I didn’t like to ask too many questions, but I’m not stupid. I see things, hear things, even out in LA.’

  ‘You didn’t see him much?’

  ‘Whoever knew where Nick would be? He had his apartment in Houston, but you’d get a postcard from Maui or an email saying he was in France, then suddenly he’d pop up needing to stay for a week. I never expected him for Thanksgiving, put it that way.’

  ‘So what do you think he was involved in?’ Ruth asked gently. ‘Drugs?’

  Barbara shook her head, her tanned face creased with disappointment.

  ‘Maybe that would have been better in a way; at least then I could con myself that he was hooked. No, Nick was arrested four years ago for fraud. Something to do with trying to get money from a woman by deception. He had a good attorney and got off, but I’m not sure he learnt his lesson.’

  She looked at Ruth again.

  ‘I’m sorry, I really don’t know any more than that. I’d be the last person Nick confided in if he was doing anything illegal. Maybe you should try asking his girlfriend.’

  ‘Sophie Ellis? The girl from the Riverton?’

  ‘No, her name’s Jeanne Parsons,’ said Barbara wearily. ‘Nick was always very vague about her, but I went to visit him in Houston once and I saw post addressed to her.’

  Ruth quickly wrote down the name.

  ‘Maybe this will help too,’ said Barbara, opening her handbag. She handed Ruth a photograph of Nick as a younger man. ‘You can keep it, I had some copies done for the police.’

  He was in his early twenties, Ruth guessed, and was leaning proudly against a motorbike, a semi-ironic gesture of rebellion. The Wild One indeed, thought Ruth. Nicholas Beddingfield had certainly been handsome, and even in this static picture he exuded a certain something: charisma probably. Maybe even sexiness, although Ruth felt uncomfortable thinking of him in that way. After all, the only time she had seen him in the flesh was when he was lying dead on the floor of the bathroom in the Riverton.

  Barbara snapped the bag closed and stood up. As she did so, she clutched Ruth’s hand. ‘You will try to find out, won’t you?’ she said, a look of pain on her face. ‘I know he wasn’t perfect, but he was my little boy. That’s how I’ll always think of him. I know you can’t bring him back, but no one should be allowed to get away with what they did.’

  ‘I’ll do all I can, Mrs Beddingfield,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Promise me,’ she said urgently. ‘Please.’

  ‘I will. I promise.’

  Ruth watched the woman walk out, her shoulders hunched with grief, wondering if she herself would ever feel such joy and pain. Then she pulled out her mobile and scrolled to the Tribune’s office number.

  ‘Chuck, it’s Ruth. Get on to the Washington office. I’ve got a name and I need them to track someone down.’

  23

  Montmartre was every bit as beautiful as Sophie had imagined it would be. The sinking sun cast long shadows down the narrow cobbled streets, bathing everything in a warm orange glow. She gazed at the windows of
the boulangeries and patisseries with the painted signs hanging over their doors, like a fragment of old Paris, the Paris of Renoir, Lautrec and Manet, when gentlemen would doff their top hats to ladies with muffs and bustles.

  ‘It makes you just want to drink pastis,’ said Josh as they walked across a small square with a cute little stationery shop on one side, an ironmonger’s on the other, its old fashioned brushes and shovels all piled out on the pavement.

  ‘I could do with a stiff drink,’ she said, wanting to get their visit to Le Cellar over and done with. She thought of their hotel suite at the Bristol and wished they were back there.

  ‘Well, Le Cellar is famous for it. You could even go the whole French hog and try absinthe.’

  Josh had given her the impression that the club was packed with cut-throats and pimps, and despite her brave speech about taking things head on, she had no desire to spend any more time in a dark thieves’ den than was strictly essential.

  ‘We’re not there to try out the cocktail menu. I want to be in and out before it gets dangerous.’

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ smiled Josh. ‘It might not be one of those tourist traps that plays dinner jazz and charges for the nuts, but this early in the evening it will be quiet. Stay close and we’ll be fine, okay?’

  Josh led her away from the main drag and into a maze of tiny side streets, finally stopping at a small doorway with an art deco-style sign reading ‘Le Cellar’.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said as he pulled open the heavy black door. ‘I’ll be two minutes, tops.’

  Sophie looked around at this dank alleyway. That glorious sinking sun she had seen falling on the hill had left this part of Montmartre hours ago, if indeed it ever made it this far. She eyed the large industrial dumpster at the far end of the lane, imagining dog-sized rats and casually dumped bodies inside. She didn’t realise she had been holding her breath the whole time until Josh reappeared moments later.

  ‘Maurice will be back in “cinq minutes”,’ he said. ‘That’s Parisian for “at least an hour”. Let’s go and get fleeced with the rest of the tourists while we’re waiting, eh?’