Perfect Strangers

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘Stop,’ said Josh, putting his hand in front of Sophie.

  He peeped through the front window shutters.

  ‘See there?’ he whispered. ‘Blue saloon car across the street. There’s someone in it.’

  ‘Not Sergei’s men again?’ said Sophie, her heart starting to hammer.

  ‘I’m guessing the SEC or the FBI. Come on. There must be a back exit somewhere around here.’

  They went through the small courtyard behind the motel and scrambled over the back wall. A dustbin clattered over as Sophie fell on top of it, which set off a dog barking.

  Josh phoned Lana, who told them to get to her hotel as soon as they could. They wandered the streets for ten minutes for a taxi, and only when they had reached Lana’s hotel – South Beach’s art deco jewel, the Raleigh – did Sophie even start to feel safe.

  42

  The insistent ring of her mobile phone woke her. Peeling open one eye, Ruth squinted at her alarm clock and groaned; it was three thirty in the afternoon. It had been a long time since she had slept this late. True, she had always been a night owl – working through till the early hours, when her brain seemed to function better. Perhaps it was sensory deprivation like a blinkered horse; having the world cloaked in darkness and quiet allowed her to concentrate. But the truth was this time she had just overslept, exhausted from long hours and too much stress.

  ‘Dammit,’ she hissed, stretching to grab her phone.

  ‘Hello,’ she croaked, swinging one leg out of bed, then the other, feeling for her slippers with her toes.

  ‘Ruth, it’s Isaac. We need to talk.’

  His voice made her stand up, wide awake.

  ‘Isaac. It’s Sunday.’ She sounded foggy, but her mind was already up and running, trying to second-guess why her editor-in-chief might be calling on a Sunday afternoon. Was he about to tell her that the bureau was closing down, effective immediately: don’t bother to come in tomorrow because the doors will be bolted and your pink slips will be in the post?

  ‘So what if it’s Sunday?’ snapped Isaac. ‘I’m working seven days a week trying to keep this paper from sinking to the bottom of the goddamn Potomac, and I expect my employees to do the same.’

  ‘I am working, Isaac,’ said Ruth calmly. ‘You know me, I never switch off. I’m famous for it.’

  She went over to the kitchen sink and poured herself a big tumbler of cold water.

  ‘I’m assuming you’ve seen the Chronicle this morning?’

  ‘Sure, not read it yet,’ she said. ‘Been too busy, had an interview to transcribe. Saw the front page, though, obviously.’

  She tiptoed to the front door and snatched up the bundle of papers which had been delivered many hours earlier.

  ‘What I want to know,’ Isaac was saying, ‘is why we’re not getting scoops like these guys are. Was I not clear last week when I said we needed grade A exclusives? The Chronicle’s lead is exactly the sort of item I’m talking about. You should congratulate your boyfriend; maybe we should think about getting him over to the Trib, whatdaya think?’

  Boyfriend? She felt a cold, creeping sense of horror. Cradling the phone between her ear and her shoulder, she laid the newspaper flat on her dining table – and immediately felt sick.

  Banker stung in honeytrap vice ring, screamed the headline. US political hopeful and German minister also ensnared by escort girl conspiracy.

  She skim-read the text, hoping against hope that it was not her story, but it was. The story she had given David about the three escort girls who had brought down powerful men. He’d stolen it, taken it on and, from her quick scan of the feature, managed to find the link between the girls and a ‘Mr Big’ who was taking money from the men’s rivals to set up the stings. Ruth’s palms were damp as she grasped the newspaper, smearing the ink.

  ‘If only you were bringing in things like this,’ said Isaac, ‘I could definitely justify keeping the London bureau.’

  She dug her fingernails into her palm and tried to control her temper. There was no point explaining to Isaac what had happened, how the story had been her idea. How she had seen the link and come up with the theory that it turned out had been true. There was no point because it wasn’t her story any more. It was David’s.

  ‘I agree,’ she said, struggling to stay composed. ‘It’s exactly the sort of story we need to be generating. In fact, I’ve got something even better brewing for you, Isaac. It’s a good one, a big one. It’s going to make David’s honeytrap story look like a local rag story about a park bench.’

  ‘Now you’re talking, kiddo,’ said Isaac, a little of the warmth and humour returning to his voice. ‘So when can I expect you to file it?’

  ‘I’m still working on it,’ she said. ‘But soon, very soon.’

  She hung up her phone, double-checked it wasn’t still connected, then took a deep breath and screamed, crumpling up the paper and throwing it across the room.

  ‘Bastard!’ she yelled. ‘I’ll cut his balls off!’

  In her fury, she swept the rest of the papers off the table, sending a coffee mug smashing to the ground. She couldn’t remember when she had felt more angry. She was furious with David, furious with Isaac for being taken in by him, furious with that slut Susie for giving David the excuse to back-stab her. But most of all, she was furious with herself. It was her idea, hers – no one else had seen the link between those escort girls, no one else could have seen it – but instead of pursuing it and taking the glory for herself, she had got bogged down with this stupid Riverton murder story. And right now, that was looking like a bad decision. A very, very bad decision.

  She stalked into the bathroom and turned the cold water tap on full, splashing it over her face.

  ‘Think,’ she said to herself. What was her next move? She couldn’t let David win, not now, not when he’d already humiliated her with another woman – a younger, prettier woman, her mind mocked.

  Consumed by rage, she went back into the living room and snatched up the phone, determined to ring David, confront him. She forced herself to calm down. What would it achieve? She’d been right first time: it was David’s scoop now. No amount of yelling about feeding him his entrails would change that fact. In fact, Ruth was pretty sure hearing his voice would only make her feel lousier than she did already. And what if Susie answered? That would really cap her week. She was just about to chuck the phone down when she noticed there was a text message from Chuck. She clicked it open. ‘Urgent,’ it read. ‘Call me.’

  She dialled Chuck’s home number.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

  ‘I got hold of the CCTV footage.’

  ‘Fantastic!’ she said, her mood lifting, marginally.

  ‘Not exactly high-definition, is it?’

  ‘It’s security film, Chuck, not a Spielberg movie.’

  ‘Look, I know it’s Sunday and everything, but do you want to come round? I’ve got something I think you should see . . .’

  Ruth was dressed and out of the door in five minutes, munching a piece of toast as she ran to the tube station. Chuck lived in a shared house a few minutes’ walk from Clapham Common. It should have been a short hop down the Northern Line, but engineering works and cancelled tubes meant a twenty-minute journey took over an hour. By the time she reached Chuck’s place, Ruth’s patience levels had sunk to zero.

  ‘I’ll get the coffee then,’ said Chuck as he opened the door, catching Ruth’s mood. ‘I saw the paper. I’m sorry, must be galling.’

  Ruth gave a wry smile.

  ‘Just a little bit. All water under the bridge, hey?’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ laughed Chuck, leading her up the stairs. ‘After you’ve slashed his tyres and sent his suits to Oxfam. Anyway, I’ve got something that might just cheer you up.’

  He showed her into his room, a large sunny space, immaculately tidy – just like Chuck himself, in fact. A Yale pendant was tacked up on one wall, and photographs of Chuck’s family were dotted around the room. There was a d
esk in one corner, set up with a computer. Chuck pulled up another chair for her and they both sat down.

  ‘So what is it? What did you find?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘I’ve been through seventy-two hours of footage since eight o’clock this morning.’

  He was angling for a pat on the back, but Ruth was going to save it until she’d seen what he’d found.

  He clicked on a file and a window opened on the screen.

  Ruth leant forward, fascinated: it was grainy and washed-out, but it was film of the hotel’s lobby, shot from above the main door. And according to the time code in one corner, it was from the morning of the murder.

  ‘How the hell did you get this?’

  ‘Money,’ said Chuck matter-of-factly.

  ‘But isn’t this in police evidence?’

  Chuck shook his head.

  ‘No, that’s the beauty of modern technology – no tapes. The hotel just made a copy for the police.’

  ‘This is brilliant,’ said Ruth, feeling a rush of excitement as she watched the scene.

  ‘Here,’ said Chuck finally, touching the screen. ‘This is Sophie Ellis leaving the hotel.’

  They watched as the girl, evidently flustered, rushed through the lobby and out of sight. Chuck pointed to the time counter: 7:19. He let the film run on; there were a few people in hotel uniforms crossing back and forth and around a dozen people getting into and out of the lifts.

  ‘So do we see anyone going up to Nick’s room?’

  Chuck pulled a face.

  ‘Nope, only people getting into the lift, and there’s no way to prove which floor they go to after that, let alone which room. Which is presumably why the police weren’t that interested in this.’ He froze the film at 7:32 and tapped the screen.

  Ruth leant forward: it was too grainy to make much out, but it was a tall woman with long hair.

  ‘That isn’t . . .?’

  ‘Lana Goddard-Price?’ said Chuck. ‘It did cross my mind.’

  He handed Ruth a folder. Inside were pictures cut from the party pages of glossy magazines: Lana Goddard-Price and her husband Simon at the David Cornish fund-raiser, Lana Goddard-Price attending the Cartier polo, Lana Goddard-Price laughs with designer Roman LeFey. It was impressive work considering she’d only given Chuck the brief twenty-four hours ago.

  She held one of the pictures up to compare it with the image on the screen. It could be her. They both had dark wavy hair and a slim build, but she was facing the lift, away from the camera.

  ‘Dammit,’ said Ruth. ‘I wish we had a better view of her.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Chuck, fast-forwarding the footage until the time code read 7:59. ‘Watch the lifts.’

  And there was the woman again, exiting the lift and hurrying through the lobby. She was wearing dark glasses and carrying a bag, but just as she was about to pass directly in front of the camera, a man in hotel uniform entered the building, blocking the shot. Ruth swore.

  ‘There’s no way Fox is going to arrest her on that evidence,’ she sighed. ‘We just can’t see her face well enough.’

  ‘Well don’t look at her face then,’ said Chuck.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He pulled out another file and spread some printouts on the desk.

  ‘These are stills from the footage you’ve just seen,’ he said. ‘I used some software to enlarge the images.’

  Ruth looked: they were a little clearer, but they still had the same problem – the woman was facing away from the camera.

  ‘All right, forget her face and look at her handbag.’

  In the enlarged version, Ruth could see the bag was dark, textured, possibly woven.

  ‘Sorry, I can’t really enhance the image,’ said Chuck. ‘But it’s obvious enough that it’s a Nicholas Diaz bag, right?’

  ‘How do you know that?’ frowned Ruth, secretly impressed. Ruth knew nothing about designer labels and carried all her stuff around in a large Muji tote bag.

  ‘My mum and my sister have them,’ shrugged Chuck. ‘They are colourful woven things, based on Peruvian peasant coats, I think – look, you can see it here.’

  ‘Very interesting, but how does that help us?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘Well, I got in touch with a society photographer. We occasionally bump into each other when I have to cover gallery openings and things.’ Chuck pulled a face. ‘Anyway, he had loads more photographs of Lana. Look at this one,’ he said, holding up a glossy print. ‘It’s Lana at some shop launch earlier this year. See her bag? It’s definitely a Diaz, and it looks like the same colour and design as the one this woman’s carrying at the hotel.’

  ‘Trouble is, there’s got to be thousands of women with the same bag.’

  Chuck shook his head. ‘Uh-uh. Not this one. Nicholas Diaz is a pretty big name now from dressing women on the red carpet, but his studio is still very small and exclusive. I’d bet there’re only fifty of these bags in London right now.’

  Ruth must have shown her scepticism, because Chuck turned back to the hotel lobby footage.

  ‘Okay, now look at the woman’s blouse. It’s Gucci, last season. See the gold pattern around the neck?’

  Ruth looked at him incredulously.

  ‘Are you sure you haven’t got anything to tell me, Chuck?’ she laughed.

  He held up his hands. ‘My sister’s an intern at Vogue. I emailed it over to her and she identified it immediately. And look . . .’ He held up another society photograph. ‘See? This is Lana at some charity garden party. The same pattern, the same Gucci blouse.’

  Ruth looked from one picture to the other, narrowing her eyes.

  ‘It is her,’ she whispered. ‘It bloody is!’ She threw her arms around Chuck and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘Hey!’ he laughed. ‘I thought we weren’t doing that any more?’

  ‘Chuck, you’re a genius,’ she said, stuffing the pictures into her bag.

  ‘Yeah, well just remember that when you’re writing my references,’ he smiled.

  He turned his chair as Ruth grabbed her things and headed for the door.

  ‘Hey, where are you rushing off to?’

  ‘To see Inspector Fox,’ she said, then pointed at him. ‘Oh, and cancel all your plans for tonight – and tomorrow, too. We’ve got a story to write.’

  43

  It didn’t look like home. Sophie peered out the window as Lana’s jet banked, dipping its wings towards the dark North Sea. There were droplets of rain on the glass and the clouds they had just descended through were grey-black. Beneath her the lights of Inverness airport glittered in the dusk, like stars reflected from the sky. To her right was the vast rippling plain of the sea, cut off by the lights of Inverness, and beyond, the brooding sketched outline of the Highlands.

  She tensed as there was a thump underneath her feet and Josh squeezed her hand.

  ‘Just the undercarriage going down,’ said Lana in the seat opposite. ‘Don’t be so jumpy.’

  That’s the pot calling the kettle black, thought Sophie. Lana had been edgy and tense ever since they had met her at Miami airport, snapping at the slightest thing and chewing on her once immaculate nails. They had considered going to Scotland without her, but they had a deal with her to find the money together, and besides, she had the private jet to get them there.

  Sophie had expected Lana to be excited and grateful when they had met at the Gulfstream and Josh had told her he had cracked the code, but she had been quite the opposite, making sniping remarks about ‘Daddy’s lucky girl’ and her ‘childish treasure map’. Sophie would have confronted her about it, but she was terrified that Lana might simply leave her and Josh on the tarmac. After all, she knew the map co-ordinates, all she had to do was go and pick up the loot, but Josh pre-empted any plan to maroon them by pointing out that as the clue had been given to Sophie, there was always a chance that the money – or whatever was waiting in Scotland – would have to be collected by her too.

  So they had made the eight-hour journey from M
iami to Inverness in near silence, each of them brooding on what they might find at the end of their long quest. Sophie guessed that Lana had probably been unsettled by the idea that the Russians were also on the trail: if Josh could work out that Ben Grear was a mountain, so potentially could Sergei. Perhaps she was picturing Asner’s millions slipping from her grasp; that could make anyone snappy.

  Sophie sat back in her seat as the jet bumped on to the runway, turning to watch the grey rain-lashed airport buildings as they taxied towards them.

  ‘Not quite Florida, eh?’ said Josh, looking past her out of the window. ‘This is what we call summer in Scotland, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Let’s just find this damn mountain and get this over with,’ said Lana, picking up her overnight bag. One of the many things they had neglected to discuss on the flight over was what happened if they did find the money at the foot of Ben Grear. Was Lana planning on just taking her investment and disappearing back to her house in London? Sophie doubted that very much; in fact she was sure that Josh’s assessment of the situation was correct: Lana intended to take the lot. How she would do that, Sophie hadn’t the foggiest, but as Josh had pointed out, they would have to deal with that when it happened. Right now, Sophie was only concerned with getting through customs.

  Numbly, she followed Lana and Josh as they walked across the wet tarmac into the terminal building. Aside from being allowed to go down the mostly empty ‘fast track’ lane, this time they had to follow the same security procedures as everyone else. Sophie glanced at a clock on the wall as she handed her passport to the border guard: almost eight o’clock in the evening UK time. Would she be in a jail cell talking to Inspector Ian Fox by nine? she wondered, then realised she actually wouldn’t mind. She was tired: tired of running, tired of lying, tired of trying to work out what everyone was thinking. All she wanted to do was curl up and sleep for a month, and at this moment, a hard bench and a thin blanket would be just fine.

  ‘Miss?’ said the guard. Sophie looked up, fully expecting someone to put their hand on her shoulder and lead her away. ‘Your passport?’ he said, holding it out for her.