Perfect Strangers

by Tasmina Perry

  She threw the file down in frustration.

  ‘What do you mean, I don’t know, Ruth? What sort of evidence are you after?’

  ‘Something more tangible than a few fuzzy photos looking a bit like a few fizzy party pictures.’

  ‘You mean like fingerprints?’ she said slowly, a light bulb coming on in her head. ‘Do you have a sandwich bag around the kitchen?’

  ‘What?’ asked Fox, looking utterly perplexed.

  ‘A sandwich bag.’

  Shaking his head, he retrieved a small plastic freezer bag from the cupboard.

  ‘You found fingerprints on the fragments of champagne bottle in Nick Beddingfield’s bathroom, didn’t you?’

  Fox nodded. ‘They’ve already been sent to New Scotland Yard’s Scenes of Crime branch. There was no match on the system.’

  ‘But you search against your database, don’t you? Fingerprints that are already in the system.’

  Ruth already knew the answer; she’d spoken to enough SOC officers to know how it worked. Once prints had been retrieved, they were searched against the police national computer, which collated possible matches with the prints of known offenders.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fox. ‘And against any local suspects. As we’d guessed, we found Sophie Ellis’s fingerprints on the glass fragments, but then she told us she’d been drinking the champagne with Beddingfield the previous evening. It doesn’t point to much.’

  ‘But what if I asked you to run a match between the champagne bottle fingerprints and another sample?’

  Ruth delved into her handbag and pulled out the biro she had taken from Lana’s bedside cabinet. She’d only used it to write down her phone details for Cherry, but somehow she’d absently put it in her handbag with her notebook.

  ‘Exhibit A. One biro belonging to Lana Goddard-Price,’ she said, putting it in the freezer bag.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  ‘There’ll be prints on the pen’s outer casing. Can you check them against the fingerprints you found at the crime scene?’

  Fox looked at her aghast.

  ‘You’re unbelievable, you know that?’

  ‘Look,’ said Ruth defensively, ‘I know you won’t be able to use them in court, but just trust me. Lana Goddard-Price is the doer, Ian. I can feel it.’

  ‘Where – in your waters?’ he said sarcastically. ‘I’m not sure that will stand up as evidence in front of the CPS.’

  ‘So lift the prints off the biro and do a quick match, then you can go get official evidence.’

  He barked out a laugh.

  ‘Quick match? Ruth, these things can take weeks.’

  Ruth felt her patience snap.

  ‘For God’s sake, Fox, pull your damn finger out. Get someone to run it against computer software to get a probable match – something! We haven’t got weeks. Sophie Ellis’s life could be in danger here; I’m not asking for fun, you know.’

  Fox looked at her, startled.

  ‘Bloody hell, Ruth. You can be fierce, you know that?’

  He reluctantly picked up the biro with the plastic bag.

  ‘Not exactly a professional evidence collection, was it?’ he said doubtfully, then caught Ruth’s frown. ‘I have a friend at one of the borough fingerprint labs; I’ll get her to take a look off the books, okay? But it’s not going to be high priority.’

  She wasn’t sure which bit she felt more piqued about. Her low-priority evidence or the mention of a female friend in the lab. She could picture the scene now. Fox and his pretty forensics officer, sexy in her glasses and white lab coat, flirting over an exhibit. He’d invite her for a drink and they’d end up back at her cosy cottage for a glass of Chablis in front of a roaring fire.

  Stop it, she told herself. You’re a journalist, not a Mills and Boon author. But she could feel herself getting upset and she didn’t know why.

  ‘Look, Fox. I know you don’t take me seriously,’ she said. ‘I know you think I’m one of Dan Davis’s silly female hacks he keeps on a lead so he never has to buy a round. But I want this story. I need it. They’re closing down the bureau and this is all I have. My boyfriend has left me – shafted me actually, stolen one of my stories and used it to get his own promotion whilst I’ll probably be out of a job by Friday. So you might question my methods, but never question my commitment.’

  Fox handed her a bowl of steaming pasta.

  ‘Nice speech,’ he smiled. ‘Now eat up before it gets cold.’

  It smelt delicious, but suddenly she wasn’t hungry.

  ‘You know, we’ve got dark hair samples taken from the hotel suite,’ he said, as if he was thinking aloud. ‘And we could do a cell-site analysis too . . .’

  ‘What’s a cell site?’ said Ruth.

  ‘The geographical area of a phone when calls or texts are made or received. In cities, you can pinpoint it to within a few hundred feet.’

  ‘Can you do that retrospectively?’

  He nodded. ‘Or we could just get her mobile phone records.’

  Ruth felt a sliver of hope.

  ‘So you’re going to question her?’

  Fox turned to look out at the river, glinting like black ice from the lights on the bank.

  ‘We’ve got to tread carefully,’ he said. ‘If she thinks she’s under suspicion, she might never come back from the South of France.’

  ‘And what if the prints match?’ she pressed. ‘Can’t you get Interpol to bring her in?’

  ‘Ruth, it’s illegally obtained evidence. I couldn’t think of getting an arrest warrant using it. You might have your standards, but I’ve got mine.’

  Ruth jerked back as if she’d been slapped.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? That the police are all suddenly whiter than white? Bullshit!’

  ‘It means I’ve got to toe the line,’ said Fox, glaring at her. ‘You know the Met are under the microscope for corruption and collusion with the press.’

  ‘Well maybe if you paid a little more attention to—’

  Brrring-riiing.

  Fox’s mobile was vibrating angrily on the breakfast bar.

  ‘Are you going to answer that?’ said Ruth. ‘Or do you need me to show you how to do that too?’

  ‘Ruth, I—’

  ‘Oh, answer the damn phone!’

  He snatched it up and walked away from her, over to the window.

  ‘Fox,’ he said, putting the phone to his ear. He listened for a long moment, then glanced back at Ruth. His whole demeanour had changed; Ruth was instantly on alert. Who was he talking to?

  ‘Where are you?’ said Fox, striding back over to the breakfast bar, urgently mouthing the word ‘pen’ to her. She pulled one out of her handbag and Fox began scribbling on the back of one of her printouts. ‘What time?’ he said; he paused, then, ‘We’ll be there.’ Ruth could see him thinking, his face serious, as he put his phone down.

  ‘Who was that?’

  Fox looked at her.

  ‘I’ll tell you on the way,’ he said, grabbing his jacket from the back of a chair. ‘The pasta will have to wait.’

  ‘On the way to where?’ she said, quickly stuffing her papers into her bag.

  ‘Scotland. We’ve got until sunrise to get there, and if you want your story, I suggest you come with me.’

  45

  Sophie woke with a start, her hands clutching at the covers. She looked around the room, disorientated and lost. The hunting lodge, of course, she thought, focusing in the grey light. I’m in Scotland. I’m safe.

  She had been dreaming, a vivid, disturbing dream where she’d been back in Miami, at Sergei’s house. But instead of watching Josh plunge into the pool, in her dream they had switched places and Sophie herself had been the victim, feeling the terror and impotence as her head was pushed into the frothing water again and again.

  ‘Only a dream, Sophie,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Only a dream.’

  It was then that she noticed she was alone. When she had slipped in beside him, Josh had be
en sleeping against the wall, but now he was gone. She looked at the armchair in the corner of the room; his clothes were gone too. Panicking, Sophie grabbed her watch: 4.55 a.m.

  She got out of bed and, pulling on a towelling robe she found hanging behind the door, tiptoed to the landing. The house was in silence and the purple light of the fading night seeped in through the windows.

  Where the hell was he? As quietly as she could, she padded up the stairs to Lana’s room and peeped inside, where she could just make out the shape of Lana’s slumbering body in the bed. That was something at least.

  Sophie crept back down to the ground floor – as empty and still as the rest of the house – her mind searching for explanations of where Josh could be.

  He had given a copy of I Capture the Castle, complete with its front-page annotations, to the Russians. She had no idea if Sergei would ever work out that the scribbled numbers were map co-ordinates, but perhaps Josh had been worried they might get there first. Sophie pushed a curtain back and peered outside. The rain had stopped and there was a vague glow around the surrounding mountains: dawn was almost upon them. Perhaps Josh had decided to get a head start; or – and she could barely bring herself to admit this notion to herself – or he had decided to get the money for himself. She shook her head, ashamed to even entertain the idea. No, she thought fiercely, no, he wouldn’t do that. Not Josh.

  Well, there was one way to find out. She moved towards the front door, her bare feet chilly against the stone floor. If he’d gone to find the loot, he’d have taken the car. The key was in the door and she turned it, stepping out into the cold.

  And then she saw him. Sitting on the top of the porch steps, oblivious to the bitter wind blowing in from the mountains. Her shoulders sagged with relief.

  ‘Here you are,’ she hissed. ‘You scared the hell out of me.’

  ‘Did you think I’d gone to get the money?’ he asked without bothering to turn round.

  ‘No, of course not,’ she said, sitting down next to him, wrapping the robe around her knees.

  ‘You don’t trust me, do you?’ he said, glancing across at her. ‘Not really.’ He looked tired and disappointed.

  ‘I was just panicking,’ she said truthfully. ‘I thought maybe you’d decided Sergei could have worked out the co-ordinates and wanted to get ahead of him.’

  Josh didn’t reply, just carried on staring out at the dark shapes of the mountains and the deep curve of the loch.

  ‘I’m cold,’ said Sophie, beginning to get up, but he put his hand on her knee.

  ‘Stay with me and watch the gloaming.’

  ‘What’s the gloaming?’ she said. It seemed like a suitable word for how she was feeling: uncertain and restless.

  ‘It’s an old Scottish word,’ said Josh. ‘It’s that little window of time before sunrise or after dusk when everything’s still. There’s no place more beautiful than the Highlands in the gloaming.’

  She shuffled closer, pressed up against him, and watched as ribbons of silver light twisted up from the horizon. It was eerie and yet quite magical, like viewing the landscape through a dark blue filter, when everything felt suspended and full of possibility. And then the sky lightened just a touch and the moment was gone.

  Sophie squeezed Josh’s hand, about to speak, when she heard a creak behind them.

  ‘Go and get ready,’ said Lana, standing in the doorway, fully dressed. ‘I want to leave in ten minutes.’

  By the time Josh and Sophie came back downstairs, Lana was standing on the driveway, the Range Rover’s engine idling, the heaters on full blast. She threw the keys to Josh.

  ‘You drive,’ she said, handing the map to Sophie. ‘You can navigate.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Josh, tugging at an imaginary cap and rolling his eyes at Sophie. They may have been hundreds of miles north of Knightsbridge, but Lana still clearly believed she was entitled to the luxury of staff.

  They drove towards Ben Grear in silence. Perhaps the others were thinking of what they might expect at the other end of the single-track tarmac road, but Sophie was entranced by the landscape around them. She had never been to the Highlands before, and the storm had obscured everything the previous night, save for what was in their headlight beams. But the clouds had lifted this morning and the colours cast by the rising sun were quite astonishing: the mauve, deep orange and emerald of the heathered moorlands swept up to the distant crags, which seemed to tower over them, their naked rock slopes a hundred shades of purple.

  ‘Are you following the map, or are you looking at the flowers?’ said Lana irritably from the back seat.

  ‘It’s all under control,’ said Sophie, praying she was reading it correctly. ‘Around this next bend, then two or three miles and we should see Ben Grear.’

  ‘We don’t want to see the mountain,’ said Lana. ‘We want the building. We don’t even know what it is.’

  ‘It’s a castle,’ said Sophie.

  ‘How can you possibly say that?’ scoffed Lana. ‘I’ve studied the map, it isn’t even marked.’

  ‘No, it’s a castle,’ said Sophie, pointing straight ahead. Even from this distance, she could see it: a tiny castle built on an outcrop of land that jutted into a small loch, the glassy surface of the water reflecting it back like a mirror, the dawn sky casting a pink glow over it.

  Josh tapped the GPS on the dashboard. ‘Yep, that’s it,’ he said. ‘Matches the co-ordinates exactly.’

  He glanced over at Sophie, then pressed down on the accelerator.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Sophie as they wound up the little access road cut into the side of the mountain. It wasn’t a castle, the kind you would visit on a school trip, with a moat and arrow slits and a drawbridge; it was more like someone’s idea of what a fairy-tale castle should look like. It was made out of pale weathered stone, with a darker slate roof, tiny windows and two Rapunzel turrets bookending the building. A folly, perhaps, or some long-dead landowner’s Highland fantasy; it didn’t matter: to Sophie it had all the romance and magic she had dared to hope for. She had known instantly that this was her castle, the ‘X’ on the pirate map, the place her father had so carefully led her to, because it was exactly as they had talked about. Even now, she could hear her father’s voice, daydreaming with his daughter about where they would one day live.

  Our own little magical castle, he had promised. And he had kept his word. But at what cost? She closed her eyes and thought of her father: the kind, generous man who had been her hero and protector, the clever, smiling youth so full of promise that she had seen on Miriam Asner’s Super 8 footage. How could such a decent man, with so many wonderful qualities, have got mixed up in Asner’s plan? How could he have been involved in a theft of that magnitude? A theft that had stripped so many innocent people of their money. Was money such a destructive, corrupting force? Of course, she knew that it was. What she would never know were her father’s reasons, his justifications for getting involved.

  ‘Look for a key,’ said Lana, getting out and slamming the Range Rover’s door. ‘Whatever’s here, it’s going to be inside.’

  Sophie tried the obvious first: she looked under the mat in front of the wide oak door, then along the top of the door frame and under flowerpots. Nothing.

  Lana emerged from the back of the property, her hands empty.

  ‘Do you have the key?’ she said.

  ‘Of course I don’t have the bloody key,’ snapped Sophie. ‘Do you think I’d come all this way, then somehow forget—’

  She stopped as they heard a grunt, then a crash. Running to the side of the house, they saw Josh’s legs disappearing through a window. Sophie swore under her breath. What if he was about to wake up a couple of honeymooners, or worse – an angry Scottish laird with a shotgun? It would be just typical to chase thousands of miles only to be arrested at the last moment for breaking a window.

  ‘No one’s home,’ said Josh two minutes later as he opened the creaky door from inside.

  Sophie pu
rsed her lips, but thought better of telling him off; things were tense enough without adding petty squabbles to their problems. She followed Lana inside. It was basic, almost spartan, with a thin layer of dust on most surfaces and a cold, damp smell coming from the bones of the house. There were a few personal effects – books, old maps and dark oil paintings on the walls – but it didn’t look as if anyone had been there for a while.

  ‘Now where?’ said Lana. She looked wound up, on edge. Had her jibe about Nick betraying Lana to the Russians got to the woman? wondered Sophie.

  ‘There’s not much here, so check everything,’ said Josh, coming back from a quick look around. ‘Lana, you take the kitchen and living room. Sophie, you take the bedrooms upstairs. I’ll do everywhere else.’

  There were three bedrooms on the first floor. Sophie took the largest one first, which at least looked as if someone had been in it within the last thirty years. There was a fishing rod in one corner, some leather-bound Dickens novels on the shelves, but not much else. So what exactly am I looking for? she wondered. If there was money hidden here, it would take up a lot of room, and even if Asner’s loot had been converted into diamonds or something else valuable, she was pretty certain it would be something of size. A suitcase, perhaps? she thought, looking under the bed. No. Not even a shoebox. In the corner of the room was a small built-in wardrobe, but there was nothing inside apart from a rather mildewed overcoat and a pile of equally mouldy linen. In the movies, the safe is always hidden behind a painting, she thought to herself, walking over to a picture above the washstand – and found herself looking at a photograph of a boat.

  ‘Iona,’ she gasped, recognising her father’s beloved boat. ‘So you were here.’

  She stood there in shock for a moment. She had guessed that this had been her father’s place, had expected to find something of his here, in fact. But even so, she found her heart beating hard in her chest, knowing he had stood where she was, that he had slept in this bed and, after all the running and dead ends, that this was exactly where he had wanted her to come.

  ‘Where would you hide something, Daddy?’ she asked.