Perfect Strangers

by Tasmina Perry

  Her face turned sad.

  ‘No, in the end, I could not. I suppose I didn’t think I would like what I was going to hear.’

  They had reached the front entrance of the chateau now.

  ‘Could you give me the number?’ said Josh. ‘It might be the link we’re looking for.’

  They followed Sandrine into a study. She crossed to a writing desk just inside the door and pulled out a hardback address book, writing down the number on a Post-it note in her loopy Gallic writing.

  ‘Here, I have something else for you too,’ she said, opening a drawer and handing Josh a stiff white card. ‘This is the invitation to Polieux’s party. You should go. Perhaps you will find something there too.’

  Thanking her, they walked back out into the sunshine. At the top of the stone steps, Sophie turned back to Sandrine.

  ‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

  Sandrine gave her a half-smile. ‘Do not worry, I will be all right. Making the wine with Nick, it gave me confidence in what I do. I think I will try to sell my own wines – and if Pierre doesn’t like it, well . . . as I say, I will be okay.’

  Sophie nodded, about to follow Josh down to the car, but Sandrine touched her arm.

  ‘Today, my heart aches, tomorrow too, I think,’ she said, holding Sophie’s gaze. ‘But a little piece of him will always be there.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sophie, reaching across to hug her goodbye. ‘I know just how you feel.’

  29

  Ruth stood in the darkening street, staring up at the windows of the Tribune’s office, two or three of them glowing orange even though it was past seven. Is this it? she thought. Is this really home? When she had tearfully run out of David’s building and grabbed a cab, there had been no hesitation when the driver asked ‘Where to?’

  She had come straight to the one place she felt safe and valued, the place where she could lose herself in words and facts and stories. The place she could hide.

  She allowed herself a wry smile as she walked inside, because that was the truth. All her life she had used work as a shield, throwing herself into her job when her parents had split up, burying herself in more and more assignments when her dad had died. She had blamed work for relationships that had gone awry, friendships that had petered out, the motherhood that had never happened, because, well, it was easier than looking inside herself for the real reason.

  Waving to the security guard and swiping her card to activate the lift, Ruth thought back to a relationship she had once had with a South African photographer when she had been stationed in Cape Town. Jonathon. He had been so handsome – sharp, too. In fact, now she thought about it, Jon had been pretty damn perfect. So what had gone wrong? Isaac Grey, that was what. He had called wondering whether Ruth was interested in a post in Cairo. She had taken it on the spot, explaining to her heartbroken lover that it was a career opportunity she simply couldn’t miss. Of course that had been a lie, like all the others. Work was simply an excuse not to let anyone get close. Not for the first time, Ruth wondered if decisions were made in life not because of what you really wanted, but because of what you were afraid of.

  As the lift took her up to the office floor, she closed her eyes and immediately she could see them together, as clearly as if it had just happened.

  Her mum and Robert, the publisher of her dad’s paper. Together on the kitchen table, her mother’s long cotton skirt hiked up around her waist, his black leather briefcase propped up next to the radio blasting out the country and western songs she loved to listen to when she made meatloaf. And now it had happened to Ruth. Twenty-odd years later, the second she had let someone get close to her, she had been betrayed.

  ‘I thought you were going home.’

  Ruth jumped as Chuck’s face appeared above the partition. She clutched at her chest and let out a long breath.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she said. ‘My life flashed before me.’

  ‘How was it?’ smiled Chuck.

  ‘Not as exciting as I’d have liked. Anyway, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Finishing up your research about Michael Asner. All is about to be revealed.’

  ‘Well I’m glad someone is working hard today,’ she said, her mind involuntarily jumping back to the image of David standing in the bath.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ frowned Chuck.

  Ruth sighed. ‘Do you fancy a drink?’

  The Frontline Club, just a stone’s throw from Paddington station, was Ruth’s favourite London watering hole. Over the years she had become a permanent fixture at the bar, and she couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t have a good night out there. It was not a trendy media social watering hole like Soho or Shoreditch House, but in Ruth’s eyes, it was infinitely more interesting: a members’ club whose raison d’être was to champion independent journalism. She loved the gung-ho adventurers she might meet there: the war correspondents just back from the Sudan, the photographers who spent more time in jeeps than on the tube. She loved mixing with them, partly because they had shared experiences and friends, but partly because they reminded her why she had gone into journalism in the first place.

  Ruth got a bottle of wine from the bar and found a table, while Chuck slid in opposite her and took a file out of his man bag. Gay? wondered Ruth idly. Choice of bag did not define your sexuality, of course, but then she couldn’t remember Chuck ever talking about any girlfriends, and he could be pretty bitchy. It would be a shame if he did swing the other way: he was good-looking in a clean-cut pretty-boy sort of way. Stop thinking like that, Ruth, she scolded herself. It’s only been about an hour since you became single. She closed her eyes to push the thought from her head – to push all thoughts from her head – and concentrated on the wine. She poured two generous glasses, then pushed one to Chuck.

  ‘Okay, tell me what you got.’

  ‘So you wanted to know about Michael Asner,’ said Chuck, opening his file.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, knocking back her wine. ‘Come on, blow my socks off.’

  Chuck fumbled with his papers, and Ruth had to remind herself that it was probably quite intimidating for this green new boy to be interrogated by his de facto boss. She remembered what it was like those first few months in the Washington office, how terrified she had been of Isaac Grey and all the other grizzled old-school print guys. Chuck obviously had a sharp mind – he had graduated summa cum laude from Yale – but that didn’t mean he was good under pressure. Still, she liked him, and you didn’t see many academic high-flyers scrambling to get into the inkies these days. With so many tempting openings on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley, who in their right mind would jump on to the sinking ship of print journalism?

  ‘Take your time,’ she said kindly. ‘It’s not an exam.’

  Chuck looked up from his notes and gave her a weak smile. ‘Sorry, just a little disorganised.’

  ‘Well, let’s skip the back story,’ she said. ‘We all know that Asner basically promised the punters a huge return on their money, but he didn’t bother to invest any of it.’

  Chuck nodded. ‘Yes, it was a pyramid scheme: he’d use the money from new investors to pay supposed “profits” to people further up the scheme, and seeing the big returns, the original people invested again. And so it went, round and round.’

  ‘Well the thing I’m interested in is the who, not the how,’ said Ruth, pouring more wine into her glass. ‘I spoke to a woman in Surrey, the wife of an ordinary accountant, who lost everything in the Asner scam. Is that common?’

  ‘Yes, almost a quarter of the victims were what you’d call ordinary investors,’ said Chuck, flipping through his notes. ‘Asner made his investment seem incredibly exclusive, but he allowed a lot of feeder funds from London, Paris, Madrid to join in, and that’s how mom and pop investors got caught. They were caught up in the hype, flattered to be allowed in – the headlines make you think it’s all billionaires who can afford it, but I think a lot of people will lose everything because of Asner.’
r />   Ruth nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Which brings me to the big question: how was Asner killed?’

  ‘It was a prison fight about three months ago,’ said Chuck, pulling out another sheet of notes. ‘The official account is that two Russian thugs were having a brawl and Asner was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time – got stabbed in the neck with a shiv: a makeshift prison knife.’

  Ruth leant forward on her elbows.

  ‘And what do you think, Chuck? Do you think that’s what happened?’

  Chuck shrugged and sipped his wine. ‘If you’re asking for my gut reaction, I’d say that sounds very convenient. A lot of very rich, very powerful people lost money with him. Moguls, oligarchs, some even say organised crime syndicates used the scheme as a way of laundering cash. None of these people are the kind who like to lose money.’

  ‘So you think someone had him killed? For revenge or punishment, maybe?’

  Ruth didn’t expect an answer, of course, she was simply talking it through, weighing up the facts, but she also respected Chuck’s opinion. She knew the pages and pages of notes spread out in front of him were the result of hours of diligent research: telephone calls, first-hand interviews, digging out documents and court reports – the proper way, not just half an hour surfing the net.

  ‘I think it’s highly likely someone wanted Asner dead,’ said Chuck. ‘And it’s the easiest thing in the world to have somebody killed in an American prison.’

  ‘Who’s been watching too many episodes of The Sopranos?’ said Ruth.

  ‘A bit before my time,’ said Chuck.

  God, he must have been in junior high when that started, thought Ruth, feeling horribly old.

  ‘No, a life sentence means life in the States,’ continued Chuck, ‘so what’s to stop some guy who is already serving a hundred years from stabbing some fat old banker? It’s no skin off his nose and he could probably get a few cartons of cigarettes out of it.’

  ‘So the money,’ said Ruth. ‘Where did it all go?’

  Chuck tapped the table with one finger.

  ‘That’s the billion-dollar question – literally, as it happens. Of course, a huge chunk of it funded Asner’s lifestyle. He had homes around the globe, a fleet of vintage cars, a private jet, a multimillion-dollar art collection, all the usual stuff.’

  ‘Nice for some,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Chuck, his confidence growing as he warmed to the subject. ‘But here’s where it gets interesting. No one knows how much went into the Asner fund exactly, but it almost certainly ran into the billions. When Asner was finally caught by the SEC, he was extremely helpful with the authorities, telling them all about his bank accounts and properties around the world, but the Securities and Exchange Commission says they only recovered something like four hundred million.’

  ‘So where did the rest go?’

  ‘Exactly. There are endless conspiracy theories about it; it’s like Blackbeard’s treasure. But it’s logical that a cunning, manipulative crook like Asner would have planned for the possibility of getting caught. He would definitely have buried some gold somewhere.’

  Ruth was drawn in by Chuck’s enthusiasm. She usually found financial news quite dull – God knows she’d had to listen to enough of it with David – but the Asner scandal was like a blockbuster thriller: wealthy victims, pantomime villains, jets and limos, even the tantalising hint of pirate treasure. But juicy though it was, Ruth had a story to put together. This was a murder case, not a profile of a financial meltdown. Peter Ellis’s involvement with Asner was little more than a footnote, just another layer of the tragedy and bad luck that the Ellis family – specifically Sophie Ellis – had been forced to endure. Unless she could find something more, of course.

  ‘Okay, so let’s get back on track with the Riverton case,’ she said, turning to signal to Hayden, the Welsh barman, for another bottle. ‘How deep is the connection between Asner and Peter Ellis?’

  Chuck pouted and pulled out a black and white picture of some young men in mortar boards and gowns.

  ‘They both went to St John’s College, Oxford,’ he said. ‘Asner had graduated from Columbia University and had gone there on a Fulbright scholarship. Peter and Michael met through the university yacht club and became best friends, according to most of the people I spoke to there. What’s also interesting is that Edward Gould, Sophie Ellis’s solicitor, was at Oxford then too.’

  ‘Gould knew Asner?’ she said. That seemed more than a little convenient. ‘Did you speak to him about it?’ she asked.

  Chuck nodded.

  ‘Typical lawyer, very slippery. He just said Asner and Peter were thick as thieves. He remembers they started a company together selling sailing gear. As you might imagine, Asner was a brilliant salesman: loud, outgoing, pushy. Gould remembers buying a waterproof jacket from him which leaked. I don’t think he’s ever really forgiven him.’ Chuck smiled.

  ‘But did Asner get in touch with Ellis after the scandal? That would be some nice colour for the story.’

  Chuck pulled a face.

  ‘I tried Julia Ellis, but she was less help than the lawyer. If I had to guess, I’d say that if Peter did speak to Asner, he wouldn’t have shared it with his wife. There’s no question that Julia hates Asner with a passion. Again, this is a hunch, but I got the sense her hostility wasn’t just because they lost all their money through the investment. I think she was resentful that Asner had gone on to be so successful while they were stuck in Surrey. Apparently Peter had asked Asner to be Sophie’s godfather, but he was “too grand” – Julia’s words – to bother replying to them.’

  Ruth smiled; this was good. No answers as such, but then she hadn’t really expected that, but there was plenty of solid information that she could build on.

  ‘Excellent work, Chuck,’ she said, squeezing his arm. ‘Seriously, it’s very useful.’

  Chuck shut his file and shrugged. ‘If I had longer . . .’

  ‘Listen, the FBI and the SEC couldn’t get to the bottom of it, I didn’t think you’d crack the case, but it’s brought the picture into focus.’

  She felt a pang of guilt as the boy put his file back in his bag. He probably had no idea that the writing was on the wall for the bureau, and if Isaac did close it down, then where would he go? Degree from Yale, contacts in the media world; he’d probably be fine, maybe even fare better than Ruth herself. At least he was young and relatively cheap – on a résumé, that could count for a lot these days.

  ‘Let’s get drunk,’ she said, lifting her glass defiantly.

  By eleven thirty, Ruth was absolutely hammered. She was faintly aware that she had been loud and opinionated, rather than witty and entertaining. She felt a wave of tiredness but had no intention of going back to her flat, with its empty wardrobes and fridge with its single jar of half-eaten olives.

  ‘Let’s hit a club, Chuck,’ she slurred. ‘I haven’t been out dancing in years.’

  ‘How about I get you a taxi home?’ said Chuck.

  ‘Ooh, a young man offering to take me home,’ she giggled, tipping her wine glass back to get at the last dribble of Chablis. ‘My lucky night.’

  His face was indistinct, but Ruth didn’t think Chuck was buying her seduction technique.

  ‘All right,’ she sighed, clambering to her feet. ‘I can take a hint.’

  Chuck held up Ruth’s coat, but she missed the sleeve and staggered against him.

  ‘Sorry. Too much to drink,’ she said in a theatrical stage whisper. ‘It’s just that I found my boyfriend in the bath with a woman fifteen years younger than me this afternoon. Is that bad?’

  Chuck gave a sympathetic smile. ‘I always thought you deserved better than him,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Now you tell me!’ she said, slapping him on the arm. ‘I could have saved myself all that bother!’

  Chuck steered her through the bar and out on to the street. For a moment, the pavement felt unsteady beneath her and she grabbed Chuck’s shoulder.


  ‘See? You’re always there for me, aren’t you?’ she mumbled, pushing her face close, but missing her aim and cracking her head against his.

  ‘Oww!’ she cried, sinking down on to the steps of the club, clutching at her brow, although she was too anaesthetised to feel much pain. ‘Sorry, Chuck, sorry, sorry, sorry,’ she said, as he sat down next to her. ‘You should stay away from me, I’m a walking disaster area.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Chuck.

  ‘Look at me! I’m just some broken-down old hack.’

  ‘Ruth, you are the reason I got a transfer to London,’ said Chuck seriously. ‘I’d read your pieces in the Tribune and hoped I’d get to work with you.’

  Ruth squinted at him, trying to absorb this information.

  ‘Really?’ was all she could manage.

  ‘Yes, Ruth. You’re brilliant, you must know that.’

  ‘But I’m drunk,’ she whispered. ‘And I’m a fraud.’

  ‘You’re drunk all right,’ said Chuck with a smirk. ‘But you’re not a fraud. You’re one of the best journalists in the business.’

  ‘Was,’ said Ruth, holding up one finger. ‘Was one of the best. When I was young like you, I had ideals, principles. Freedom of the press!’ she shouted towards the street. ‘Democracy! Liberty! I’d go out of my way to seek out the truth, no stone unturned. True, very true.’

  ‘So what’s changed?’ said Chuck.

  ‘Now, I slip a police officer five hundred bucks in a brown envelope under the table in some horrid coppers’ pub. I follow people, I doorstep them when a daughter is missing or a son is murdered. I intrude on their grief and their misery. I’m a disgrace, Chuck. I’m the worst sort of traitor; a traitor to myself.’

  She was feeling totally wretched; tears began to spill down her cheeks.

  ‘Come on, Ruth, that’s just the job,’ said Chuck.

  ‘No! No, it’s not,’ she said. ‘It didn’t used to be like this. I didn’t used to be like this.’ She twisted around to face him. ‘Do you know, I’ve failed to hold down one successful relationship in twenty years? Not one! And who’d want me? Look at me, crying, drunk in the street.’