Perfect Strangers

by Tasmina Perry

  She smoothly produced another crisp twenty, which immediately disappeared into Cherry’s pocket. Sucking her teeth, the housekeeper walked over to a closet in the hallway. It was full of brushes and cleaning products, and was where Cherry apparently stored her coat and her handbag.

  She took a blue plastic pen out of a pen pot, scribbled down the number and handed it to Ruth.

  ‘You go now.’

  Ruth was bundled out on to the steps and heard the front door being locked behind her. She looked down at the number in her hand.

  ‘What have you been up to, Mrs G?’ she wondered to herself.

  Ruth sighed. There were so many missing parts of the puzzle, she didn’t know where to start. If only she had access to the information Detective Inspector Fox and his team had. They would be investigating Nick’s movements and business transactions, maybe getting access to his bank accounts. And if Nick had ‘form’, as they said in the force, then there was a good chance Fox knew about his potential enemies. If Sophie Ellis was still a suspect, they’d have built up a profile of her too by now.

  ‘All right, Ian Fox,’ said Ruth, pulling her mobile out of her pocket. ‘Let’s see what you know.’

  She quickly tapped in a text message:

  Fox, it’s Ruth. Can you call me? We need to meet. Important.

  She looked down at it for a moment, then added an ‘x’ at the end. Not very professional, perhaps, but hey, she was a woman in a man’s world – she had to use whatever weapons were to hand.

  Feeling a spot of rain, she pulled up the collar of her jacket and hurried to her next meeting.

  34

  It was hard to see anything out of the windows of Lana’s Gulfstream; they were tiny. Presumably the passengers on the sleek private jets weren’t that interested in sightseeing. All Sophie could see was a long expanse of tarmac and a stationary baggage cart with no driver. Welcome to America, she thought. Lana’s private jet had landed at Teterboro airport, an aviation facility in New Jersey popular with private and corporate aircraft. It was small, yes, but it was a ‘landing rights’ airport and, as such, an approved point of entry into the United States for people who weren’t American citizens. Sophie felt anxious as they waited for the plane to be inspected by the Customs and Border Protection agency.

  At least Josh had his proper passport and had been able to hastily arrange his ESTA – the document required for US travel – at Nice airport. Sophie already had one from a previous trip to the States, but for all she knew, Inspector Fox could have American airports on red alert for a Sophie Ellis entering the country. If an alarm was going to go off, it would happen any minute.

  ‘Can you see anyone?’ whispered Josh. He sounded uncharacteristically nervous. Despite Lana’s reassurances, they had spent the entire seven-hour journey from Nice paranoid that they would be met by a SWAT team and two truckloads of FBI agents in black suits and wraparound shades.

  ‘Please relax,’ said Lana. ‘I assure you, the United States authorities have no interest in either of you. We simply have to wait for the landing officials to scan our fingerprints, then we can leave.’

  Sophie looked back at the woman, sitting calmly in her armchair. How could she seriously expect them to relax? From the moment of meeting Lana by the pool at Villa Polieux, Sophie had been off-balance, feeling as if she was teetering on the edge of a cliff. The jaw-dropping revelation that she had been set up by Lana and Nick would have been enough, but now Sophie was being asked to accept that her father, the one man she had trusted and idolised in this world, was in fact a crook and had deliberately lost her family’s life savings. It was enough to mess with anyone’s head.

  ‘Let me see your book again,’ said Josh. ‘If we’re going to have to sit here, I might as well try and crack the code.’

  Sophie opened her copy of I Capture the Castle, which had been safely retrieved from La Luna hotel.

  In the centre of the page was Peter Ellis’s handwriting: To my dearest S, read this and think of our castle. Happy birthday. All my love always, Daddy. But in the top right-hand corner, above the title, the words ‘Benedict Grear’ had been written, in the small cursive writing of a teenager perhaps, alongside the date ‘22 12 56’. Sophie had seen it there before, of course, but the paperback had been old and a little worn and she had simply assumed it was the name of its previous owner. How many times had she inscribed her own name in her treasured novels as a way of claiming ownership of a story she had loved? It wasn’t uncommon to see something similar in any second-hand book.

  But suddenly these few words had taken on huge significance. They had spent at least an hour in Sophie’s cramped Cannes hotel room thinking up ever more outlandish – and desperate – explanations for the words. When Google had thrown up nothing, Josh had tried breaking them down into anagrams, tried assigning letters to the numbers in the hope of forming words; Lana had even translated them into Spanish and back. Nothing made any sense. Finally Lana had suggested the Gulfstream.

  ‘If you don’t know what it means, then there’s really only one person who might: Michael Asner’s widow Miriam. And even if she doesn’t, perhaps she’ll tell you something she wouldn’t tell the investigators.’

  It made sense, and as Lana had the means of flying them to the US, it seemed ridiculously simple. Simple, that was, until they were actually there, sitting on the tarmac, waiting for a siren to sound. Sophie felt her nerves might snap at any moment.

  ‘You do realise we don’t even know if it is a code?’ she said. ‘It could genuinely be just something the previous owner wrote in there.’

  ‘I have no idea of its relevance,’ said Lana, fixing her with her cool stare. ‘But I do know it is the only thing your father gave to you, and until we exhaust every possibility, we have to assume it does have some hidden message.’

  ‘We have exhausted every possibility!’ said Sophie. ‘I don’t know what you expect—’

  There was a cough, and they looked up to see the pilot at the door.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, but the immigration team are here.’

  Their immigration ordeal took just a few minutes; a few questions and some fingerprinting and they were through.

  ‘Is that it?’ breathed Sophie.

  ‘I told you,’ said Lana. ‘You have no convictions, you’ve committed no crime on American soil and the British police are hardly going to bother their American cousins about a missing witness who for all they know is probably still somewhere in Chelsea.’

  Sophie let out a long breath.

  ‘So where next? A diner for burgers and shakes?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Lana officiously. ‘I have a car waiting which will take you to Pleasantville. The driver knows Miriam’s address.’

  ‘You’re not coming with us?’ said Josh, surprised.

  ‘No, I’m going to the city,’ said Lana, handing Sophie a card. ‘This is my address in New York. Find out what you can and I’ll meet you there. We’ll have dinner this evening.’

  ‘So what’s to stop us finding the money and running off with it?’ said Sophie, only half joking.

  Lana didn’t smile. When she spoke, her tone was light but her dark eyes were deadly serious.

  ‘I found you once, Sophie,’ she said. ‘I can find you again.’

  Sophie sat in the back seat of the town car and craned her neck to watch the buildings of the airport terminal disappear behind them. She could barely believe it. They were in America.

  ‘Do you trust her?’ she said, turning to Josh.

  ‘Sophie, she tricked you into her house, set you up with Nick, lied about who she was. No – I don’t trust her an inch.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Sophie, still feeling duped and angry and humiliated.

  He paused, looking towards the driver. The sliding glass panel between him and the passenger area was closed, but Sophie could tell Josh didn’t trust that either.

  ‘But what choice do we have?’ he said finally. ‘She’s given us use of a private jet
, a car, all the resources we need to find out who killed Nick and to set the record straight. The brutal truth is we can’t fix this on our own, Soph. Much as I’d like us to.’

  ‘I always got the feeling you could do anything,’ she said softly. She looked down at his hand on the seat beside her, and was suddenly desperate to reach out and touch it, desperate to tell him how she felt when she was with him: safe, stronger, complete. But instead she turned away, watching the New Jersey streets as they turned on to the freeway, feeling deathly tired.

  She’d had a short nap on the plane, but when was the last time she had slept properly? she asked herself, wondering if she would ever sleep like that again. Careless, innocent, untroubled. Was her innocence really gone for ever? Her eyelids were heavy, but when they closed, all she could see was Josh. She had wondered whether the swell of feeling she’d had for him at the Villa Polieux had just been the balmy summer air and the fact that he’d looked so handsome in a suit. But she was self-aware enough to know that her feelings for him were getting stronger rather than fading. On the one hand, it made her feel fickle and ridiculous. Only a week ago she had been strolling along the Thames with Nick Beddingfield, although she knew now that all those emotions had been based on a lie. Her relationship with Josh was something else. They had shared so much together, been through so much. During those long nights in the garage, in the tiny sleeper carriage of the train, even at the motel, he had made no move on her, hadn’t tried to touch her. But still, she was sure he had felt that electricity between them at the villa. She was sure of it. Finally Sophie dozed, vaguely aware of the sway of the car, the feel of Josh’s leg against hers, nothing else.

  Not long after – or had it been hours? She really couldn’t tell – Josh nudged her awake.

  ‘Almost there, sleepy,’ he said gently. She rubbed her eyes and looked out at the changed landscape of Westchester County: the single-storey clapboard houses with well-tended and shady lawns surrounded by that great American staple, the picket fence, the golden sunshine slanting through oaks and pines. Miriam Asner’s house was on the outskirts of town, its mower-striped grass edged by a silver pond.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Sophie sarcastically, as they stepped out of the town car and stretched. It wasn’t quite the Fifth Avenue luxury of Miriam’s old life, but it was close. Looking at the widow’s lovely property, you’d say that crime definitely did pay.

  ‘I googled her,’ said Josh, holding up his mobile. ‘As part of an agreement with the US prosecutors, Miriam Asner was allowed to keep a million dollars.’

  ‘She must be devastated.’

  Josh smiled. ‘It’s all relative, I suppose. If you’re used to the Royal Suite at the Waldorf, this is probably torture.’

  Sophie looked towards the shuttered windows with their neat curtains.

  ‘Well I hope she’s in. It’s a long way to come if she’s spending the summer in the Bahamas.’

  ‘Lana says she is a recluse, gone slightly loopy since Asner popped off. I don’t think hermits go out much.’ He shrugged and picked up Sophie’s bag. ‘Let’s go and see, eh?’

  As they walked along the gravel drive, the town car reversed back on to the road and Sophie turned to wave goodbye.

  ‘What time’s he coming back?’ she asked.

  ‘What time’s who . . .? Oh sh—!’ Josh dropped the bag and sprinted after the car, waving his arms. ‘WAIT!’ he shouted, but it had already turned on to the road.

  Josh came back panting, his face flushed.

  ‘Why didn’t you bloody stop him?’

  ‘I’ve been asleep, Josh. I assumed you’d arranged for him to wait or come back later.’

  ‘Well now we’re stranded here. If only you’d thought instead of waving at him—’

  ‘Me? Now this is my fault . . .?’

  There was a cough behind them.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  A tall, slender woman with a dark auburn bob was standing in the doorway of the house. Sophie recognised Miriam Asner at once from the newspaper photographs of her sitting dignified and impassive throughout her husband’s court case. Long grey palazzo pants and a crisp white shirt showed off her willowy figure, and she was holding a Paulo Coelho novel, as if their shouting had disturbed her from a snooze in the garden. Perhaps it had.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Josh, immediately switching on his lady-killer smile. ‘We didn’t mean to startle you. My name is Joshua McCormack and this,’ he said, with a slight pause, ‘is Sophie Ellis. Her father Peter was an old friend of Michael’s.’

  ‘What’s this about?’ asked Miriam, frowning.

  ‘It might take a while to tell you that. Can we come in?’ Sophie smiled awkwardly.

  Miriam hesitated and then nodded, turning along a path that skirted the house.

  ‘There’s no air-conditioning, unfortunately,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘We should sit by the pond.’ She gestured towards a group of four Adirondack chairs at the foot of the lawn and went back into the house.

  When the Asner scandal hit her family, Sophie had read a great deal about Michael and Miriam, seeking out newspapers and magazine articles on the internet as if it would help make sense of what had happened. Miriam was from good New England stock, the sort of woman who was raised to support her wealthy husband and entertain on his behalf, with an occasional charitable project to fill the emptiness of her days. Her aloof manner and perceived ‘airs’ hadn’t gone down well with the press, who had demonised her for the way she had steadfastly refused to condemn her husband. But today Sophie thought she looked like the elegant, sixtyish widow she was. She didn’t come across as wicked or arrogant, just sad and rather tired. Miriam Asner had always claimed that she knew nothing about her husband’s Ponzi scheme. If that were true, it struck Sophie that she was also a victim, along with the rest of Michael’s investors.

  Miriam returned with three tumblers of iced tea served on a silver tray. She passed them to her guests, each with a neatly folded white napkin wrapped around the base. Sophie wondered if the older woman still imagined herself as the social grande dame, or whether it was simply good manners that refused to be blunted by circumstance.

  ‘Do you want to tell me why you are here?’ said Miriam, her voice as crisp as her shirt. Sophie looked at Josh and he gave her a reassuring smile.

  ‘I suppose you know my father and your husband Michael were friends,’ began Sophie uncertainly.

  ‘Were, past tense,’ said Miriam, her mouth pursed.

  ‘Yes, well, either way, my family lost a great deal of money with your husband’s scheme; everything they had, in fact.’

  ‘And you want the money back?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course, but—’

  ‘My dear woman, look around you,’ said Miriam. ‘All I have is here, believe me. If you are seeking these spurious missing millions, well all I can say is good luck.’

  ‘Don’t you believe your husband had hidden anything else, perhaps for you?’

  Miriam shook her head vigorously.

  ‘The authorities have been over this,’ she sighed. ‘They have found nothing. That is because there is nothing to find.’

  ‘Well, if you’ll forgive me, Mrs Asner, we believe there is.’

  Miriam waved a hand in front of her face, her eyes welling up with tears. ‘My husband is barely cold in the ground,’ she said quietly. ‘Can’t you people just leave me alone?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Asner, but—’

  ‘Do you think I like living this life?’ she cried suddenly. ‘Do you think I enjoy being too scared to go to town? If there was money, I’d take it and find a new life on some far-flung desert island, believe me. My life has been ruined. My friends have gone. Everything’s gone: the beach house, the boats, the jet, even my golf clubs. The US marshals changed the locks on the house I’d been living in for thirty years.’

  She took a drink of her tea and Sophie saw her hands were shaking.

  ‘They’re still watching me, you know that? Waiting in ca
rs on every corner, following me, listening on the phone.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Sophie, glancing at Josh. ‘Who’s following you?’

  ‘FBI, SEC, Donald Trump, who knows? But I’m sure of one thing: they all think I know where the money is.’

  ‘And you don’t?’ asked Sophie, her heart sinking.

  ‘No. No, I don’t.’

  She took a ragged breath and blew her nose.

  ‘The irony is no one comes here, no one calls.’ She looked at them fiercely. ‘Not unless they want this buried treasure you all seem to think exists. Crackpots, con artists, they all send letters. And the lawyers, of course. Always the lawyers. No doubt you’ve seen this creature Andrea Sayer on Fox News?’

  ‘The lawyer trying to bring the class action?’ said Josh. ‘I read about that on the internet.’

  Miriam nodded. ‘Yes. Her,’ she said, her voice dripping with disgust. ‘She plagues me almost daily, threatening to take even this,’ she said, gesturing towards the house, ‘unless I turn over the secret to this money. But I’m sorry to have to tell you this: it does not exist.’

  Josh sat forward.

  ‘I think you misunderstand us, Mrs Asner. We’re not here to ask you about the missing money; we’re here to tell you about it.’

  Sophie looked at him and he nodded.

  ‘Someone has tried to kill me, Mrs Asner,’ she said. ‘They think I have some of Michael’s money, a secret stash that he – or rather my father – siphoned off before the scheme collapsed.’

  Miriam’s clear green eyes widened and she looked from Sophie to Josh and back.

  ‘Is this a joke?’ she whispered.

  ‘I wish it was,’ said Sophie, and taking a deep breath, she gave the woman a brief outline of the events since Nick’s death. The burglaries at her flat and at Wade House, the chase along the river, the near-miss in Nice and Lana’s revelation about her father’s involvement.

  ‘You’ve had quite an adventure, haven’t you?’ said Miriam when she had finished. ‘And I was sorry to hear about your father,’ she added quietly. ‘I know they hadn’t always seen eye to eye, but Michael spoke highly of Peter. I think he believed Peter was the only man who really understood him.’