Perfect Strangers

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘Well not any more,’ said Josh. ‘He was murdered in London on Monday.’

  Monsieur Durand made a tutting sound.

  ‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘Do you know who killed him?’

  ‘Someone violent, ruthless.’

  Josh let the words hang in the air. Sophie couldn’t help but admire his performance. Forget the knock-off perfume and the vintage watches; Josh McCormack could easily have had a successful career as an actor – he had that chameleon-like ability to inhabit a part, so you completely believed what he was saying.

  ‘That is a shame,’ said Monsieur Durand, regaining his composure. ‘But I don’t understand why you are telling me this.’

  ‘We are looking into every aspect of Mr Beddingfield’s life, monsieur. His personal life, his business affairs, everything. You dealt with him as a supplier of fine wines, I assume?’

  Monsieur Durand shrugged.

  ‘I get my stock from multiple sources. Auction houses, private cellars, other retailers, but yes, I occasionally dealt with Monsieur Beddingfield.’

  Josh leant forward on the counter, meeting Monsieur Durand’s eye.

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point, monsieur. We have evidence that Mr Beddingfield was supplying you with counterfeit wine.’

  ‘Counterfeit wine?’ The Frenchman’s eyes opened as wide as an owl’s. ‘That’s impossible!’

  ‘Impossible?’ repeated Josh, casually turning his gaze towards the wall of lovingly displayed wine. ‘Really? So I take it you can personally vouch for every single bottle on these shelves?’

  ‘I run a respectable business . . .’ spluttered the proprietor. ‘And I resent the implication.’

  Sophie was no expert in non-verbal communication or the ‘tells’ that signified lying, but she was fascinated to see two small triangles of colour appear on Monsieur Durand’s cheeks even as he protested his innocence.

  ‘Let me tell you what I know about the counterfeit wine business,’ said Josh, slowly. ‘I know it’s booming. I know that some collectors who suspect bottles in their cellar to be fake would rather quietly offload the wine to unscrupulous dealers than make a song and dance about it and frighten the market. I think you are such a dealer, Monsieur Durand, and that you also accepted supplies from Mr Beddingfield without asking too much about their provenance.’

  Durand’s face was now bright red with anger.

  ‘What do you want, Inspector?’ he snapped. ‘Are you suggesting that I am in some way involved in his death?’

  Josh smiled and shook his head.

  ‘Here’s the good news, Monsieur Durand. I’m not investigating wine fraud. I’m part of Scotland Yard’s murder squad and all I care about is finding who killed Mr Beddingfield.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘However, I do have a friend at Interpol who might be very interested in examining your stock. I understand they can get a court order allowing them to open every bottle in your warehouse, should the mood take them.’

  Sophie knew that Josh was bluffing, but Durand looked stricken, his face pale.

  ‘We know Nick Beddingfield had a business partner,’ said Josh. ‘Now all I need from you is a name.’

  ‘I really don’t know—’

  Josh slammed his hand down on the counter, causing Durand to jerk backwards as if he had been slapped.

  ‘A name,’ he repeated.

  Durand hesitated for a moment, then his shoulders sagged.

  ‘Sandrine Bouvier.’

  From the way the little man said the name, it was obvious they were supposed to recognise it. He looked from Josh to Sophie and back again.

  ‘She is one of the greatest living winemakers,’ he frowned. ‘Do you not know this?’

  ‘I’m more of a beer man myself,’ said Josh. ‘Although Officer Ellis here enjoys a tipple, don’t you?’

  ‘Have you ever sampled a glass of Pétrus or a Romanée-Conti?’ asked Durand.

  ‘A bit out of my price range,’ said Sophie, imagining herself as a police constable who’d buy her Chardonnay in Sainsbury’s rather than dabble in a £1,500 bottle of Burgundy.

  Durand walked over to a case and picked up a bottle, cradling it like a precious jewel.

  ‘Wines like this are so expensive because they are so difficult to produce. The soil, the weather, the winemaker’s technique, that’s what separates the premier grand cru from an ordinary village wine. Which is why I was not sure that Monsieur Nick’s wines were counterfeit.’

  Josh frowned.

  ‘They were real?’

  Durand carefully placed the bottle on the counter.

  ‘One day Nick brought me the most exquisite Cheval Blanc. If he had brought me only one bottle, I would have been convinced. But he had a dozen bottles of a very rare vintage, Inspector – so I asked him where he got them.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He refused to tell me,’ said Durand bitterly, as if reliving the moment. ‘But I could not rest. I needed to know where they had come from; it became an obsession. Oui, bien sûr, this winemaker was a criminal, but they were also a genius. So I started to follow him.’

  He looked up, his eyes glistening. ‘And I found my answer: Sandrine Bouvier was his lover.’

  Sophie struggled to keep her face expressionless. She was beyond feeling betrayed, but even so, no woman wanted to hear that she was just another conquest, just one of an endless procession of lovers dotted around Europe like pins in a map.

  ‘And Sandrine Bouvier is a renowned winemaker?’

  A look of dismay and contempt passed across Durand’s face.

  ‘The best. She and her husband own a respected vineyard in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape area.’

  ‘Okay, so this Sandrine was having an affair with Nick Beddingfield,’ said Josh, ‘but that doesn’t mean she was involved in the counterfeit business.’

  Durand wagged his finger impatiently.

  ‘No, no, Inspector,’ he said. ‘It is the only explanation. Nick’s wine could only have been made by someone great, an expert blender. Sandrine is such a person, trained in Saint-Émilion, in one of the great estates. She is a wonderful winemaker, a genius, one of the few who could blend such a delicious nectar.’

  He took a business card from a holder on the counter and wrote an address on the back with a flourish. ‘That is the name of her estate. It’s in Provence, perhaps an hour’s drive.’

  He paused as he handed over the card.

  ‘Please do not mention my name, Inspector. The estate is a good client of mine. A legitimate client.’

  Josh grunted non-committally, as if he was thinking of something else.

  ‘So tell me, if these wines are so convincing, how can you tell the difference?’

  Durand smiled smugly.

  ‘Only a man with a sophisticated palate like mine, with years of experience in the trade, would know.’

  He touched the bottle on the counter.

  ‘Believe me, Inspector, this is an exquisite wine, counterfeit or not.’

  ‘This one?’ said Josh, picking it up and examining the label. ‘How much?’

  ‘Five thousand euros,’ smiled Durand. ‘That is beyond the salary of a policeman, no?’

  ‘Perhaps, Monsieur Durand,’ said Josh flatly. ‘But it is also illegal.’

  Nodding to Sophie, he turned towards the door, still carrying the bottle.

  ‘But . . . you can’t take that, monsieur!’ protested Durand. ‘It is my livelihood.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Josh, flipping the sign back to ‘Ouvert’. ‘Evidence. You have a nice day.’

  And they walked out into the sunshine.

  27

  It wasn’t until Ruth was halfway to the tube that she realised she didn’t know where she was going. After the telephone call with Jeanne, she had packed up her stuff, waved to Chuck and told him she was heading home – but which home exactly? Her cosy one-bedroom flat in Islington with its uneven floors, messy bookcases and heating turned up full blast? Or David’s sterile, pin-neat bachelor pad? She
hadn’t spoken to David since she had stormed out the previous morning; she couldn’t even really remember what that argument had been about. Maybe they had moved in together too quickly, she thought. But then they had been dating for two years; wasn’t that long enough to know if you wanted to be with someone?

  Oh, this is ridiculous, she scolded herself as she ran down the station steps and clunked through the barrier. You’re forty-one years old. Extend the olive branch, be the bigger person.

  She glanced at her watch; it was only four thirty, plenty of time to stop off at the supermarket. She’d buy some steak, good wine and something sweet and sinful, have it all ready for when David got back at eight. That’d give her a couple of hours to work on the Riverton story, then they could kiss and make out. She found herself smiling as she rode the Jubilee Line to Docklands. She was in that weird pause when the tubes were eerily quiet before the post-work exodus, so she easily got a seat. She stared out at the blackness of the tunnel, the gentle sway of the train almost hypnotic. However much she tried to think of other things, her mind kept jumping back to Nick Beddingfield; her hazy picture of him was finally starting to feel more distinct, more solid. Far from being a wealthy businessman, he was possibly – no, probably – a fraudster and, as a criminal, even a white-collar criminal operating in the upper echelons of society, he was likely to have countless unsavoury people with a beef against him. That was good news for Sophie Ellis, of course, as it was looking less and less likely that she was his killer. But if not Sophie, who? Ruth thought back to her conversation with Jeanne Parsons and the comment Nick had made to her; something along the lines of, ‘If anyone sees me in London with a beautiful woman, don’t worry, it’s only business.’

  Was the woman he was referring to Sophie Ellis? She certainly fitted the description. But would he think of her as ‘business’? Had Nick been trying to con Sophie? Maybe get her to invest in a bogus Texan oil well? Ruth wondered if Inspector Fox had any of this information; probably. Barbara Beddingfield had told her that Nick had been charged four years ago; that would have been on his record. It was irritating how closely Fox played his cards to his chest. For a moment Ruth considered calling Dan Davis – he was always more than happy to leak information on the vague promise of a reward – but then she rejected the idea. She had enough complications with men at the moment.

  She got off the tube and headed for the Marks and Spencer at Canary Wharf plaza for her made-up feast, then popped into Hotel Chocolat for a cute little box of expensive truffles, although she couldn’t resist breaking into them on the short walk to David’s apartment. He wouldn’t notice a couple were missing, she thought.

  She frowned as she opened the door of the flat. She could immediately smell the distinctive aroma of her Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir candle – she’d bought it for herself as a moving-in gift only last week. Strange: it wasn’t like David to even notice a scented candle, let alone light one. Then she heard the sound. A splash, dripping water, coming from the bathroom. Involuntarily, Ruth’s mind leapt back to that Riverton Hotel room, to Nick Beddingfield’s lifeless toes pointing at the ceiling. But that was stupid: what was she thinking? That there was some crazed bathroom killer on the loose who had now murdered her lover? Much more likely David had come home early and was washing off the grime of the city. She smiled to herself: she could surprise him, maybe wash his back, that’d be a good way to make up. She tiptoed towards the bathroom and, with one finger, pushed open the door.

  The floor was covered with clothes: David’s boxer shorts, David’s blue shirt, but also a tiny lace bra and a barely-worth-it thong, all tangled on top of each other. Bile rose in her throat, but she couldn’t help looking. In the low candlelight there was David, swathed in bubbles, and in front of him – of course, of course – was the blonde PR Ruth had seen him with in the bar the other night. The girl’s head was resting tenderly on David’s chest, her breasts peeking out just above the water as David played lazily with her nipples. For a moment the scene was frozen, suspended in time. Then Ruth dropped the bag of shopping with a clatter.

  ‘Fuck, Ruth!’

  David sat bolt upright, spilling sudsy water all over the floor. The blonde, whose name Ruth couldn’t even remember, leapt out of the water, grabbed a towel and pushed past her without making eye contact.

  Ruth bent down, grabbed the pile of clothes from the floor and threw them after her.

  ‘Here. You’ll be needing these,’ she said.

  David was standing now, his flaccid cock covered with bubbles. Pathetic, ridiculous.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ruth,’ he stuttered. ‘I never meant for you to see this.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ she spat. ‘That’s why you brought that slut back here at five o’clock when you thought I would be at work.’

  David’s expression changed.

  ‘Susie’s not a slut,’ he said.

  Ruth almost laughed. Her boyfriend was standing there, bubbles sliding down his legs, trying to defend another woman. How gallant.

  ‘Oh no? So what is she then?’ said Ruth, whipping a towel at David, suddenly disgusted by his nakedness.

  ‘She’s . . . I like her,’ he said simply.

  His words felt like being slapped. She would have preferred it if David had gone for the standard ‘it’s all been a terrible mistake, she meant nothing’ defence. But it hadn’t been a mistake, had it? The only mistake had been letting Ruth find out about it.

  ‘Well if you liked her so much, perhaps you should have thought about that before you asked me to move in with you,’ she said.

  A look of shame and discomfort crossed David’s face.

  ‘I don’t know why I did that,’ he said.

  ‘No, neither do I, David,’ said Ruth.

  She heard a bang – the front door closing. At least the girl was gone. For now, anyway. With sudden clarity, Ruth knew she would be back. David would be forced to make a choice, and Ruth knew deep down he would go for the younger, perkier blonde who flattered him and made him feel important. Well, she wasn’t going to hang around for him to inflict that final wound. She walked through into the bedroom and grabbed a bag, shoving clothes inside.

  ‘Please, Ruth,’ said David, following her in. ‘Don’t go off like this, we need to talk.’

  ‘What is there to talk about?’ she shouted. ‘You’ve fucked some airhead bimbo and now I’m leaving. That all seems pretty straightforward to me.’

  She yanked open a drawer and grabbed a handful of her underwear – comfortable, everyday underwear, she thought, not like Susie’s lacy wisps.

  ‘No, actually,’ she said, turning to face him. ‘Actually I would like to ask something. How long has this been going on?’ Ever the journalist, suddenly Ruth wanted to know every fact, every detail.

  David shrugged, the towel clasped in one hand at his waist.

  ‘Just a handful of times,’ he said.

  Then it hit her. That night, the night they’d come back here and had amazing sex, the night he’d asked her to move in – he’d been seeing Susie then. In fact, was that why they had had sex in the first place? Because he had been canoodling with his new girlfriend in the bar, got all horny and didn’t know what to do with it? Ruth felt filthy and violated.

  He reached out for her but she flinched backwards.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she hissed.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, suddenly truculent. ‘Do it your way. You always do.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Ruth could hear her voice rising. ‘That this is all my fault?’

  ‘No, Ruth, nothing is ever your fault, is it?’ he said bitterly. ‘It’s fine for you to be late, it’s fine for you to be worried about your career, but when have you ever paid any attention to me or what I need?’

  Ruth just gaped at him. ‘Unbelievable,’ she said. ‘You really are trying to make this my fault, aren’t you?’

  ‘Ruth, I’m not saying—’

  ‘Yes, you bloody are! If you’d wanted to tell
me about your work or your bruised fucking feelings, why didn’t you try talking to me? How many times have I asked you, “Honey, what’s wrong? How can I help?” But no, it was always, “Nothing, I’m fine.”’

  ‘Well, maybe if you’d tried a little harder—’

  ‘Fuck off, David,’ snapped Ruth. ‘This is nothing to do with me. Maybe we were having problems, maybe we could have worked it out, maybe not. But instead of fixing things, you chose to screw someone else. Someone who will laugh at your jokes, feed you stories, feed your ego.’

  ‘Susie isn’t—’

  ‘Spare me, David,’ said Ruth. ‘I’m sure she’s wonderful. And I’m sure you’ll be very happy together. Oh, until she gets bored waiting for you to finish your phone call to Tokyo and screws someone else she thinks can help her career.’

  He began to object, but Ruth wasn’t listening. She grabbed her bag and walked to the door.

  ‘Oh, and by the way,’ she said, holding up the key to the front door David had only given her a week ago. ‘If I see one word of that escort story in your shitty little paper, I will come back here and cut your balls off.’

  She opened the door, closed it carefully behind her, then burst into tears.

  28

  If Sophie closed her eyes, she could imagine she was on holiday. With the car’s window open, she could feel the warm continental breeze on her face and for a moment she could convince herself that it was two, three summers earlier, she was just jumping in a cute little Jeep and pootling down to the beach in some gorgeous corner of Italy or Spain. It was only when she opened her eyes that she saw the inside of the cramped hire car and realised where she really was. Bumping along the back roads of Provence with someone she barely knew, trying to unearth the past of a dead man. Not how she’d planned to spend the summer, that was for sure. At least the countryside was gorgeous and distracting: endless rolling hills of green or sun-scorched orange and narrow winding roads lined by cloud-scraping poplar trees. And then there was Josh. Moody and maddening, sarcastic and confrontational, but there were worse people to get lost with, she thought, watching him with the crumpled map on his knees, his brow furrowed, his eyes focused on the pothole-strewn roads.