Perfect Strangers

by Tasmina Perry

  And then it came to her. At Wade House, her father had installed a wall safe in the back of a wardrobe; she could remember him on his knees with the drill. She stepped back over to the closet and pushed the overcoat and the mottled sheets out of the way. There it was, the same colour and shape as the safe they had at home, with a four-digit electronic PIN lock.

  ‘Josh! Lana!’ she shouted.

  She heard Josh’s heavy footsteps coming up the stairs two at a time.

  ‘Good girl,’ he said when he saw the safe. ‘Have you tried to open it?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said. She bent to tap in the combination of the safe they had at home. It beeped twice: wrong number.

  Lana burst through the door.

  ‘Have you found it?’ she gasped.

  Josh nodded to the safe. ‘Yes and no. We don’t have the code.’

  ‘Try the number from the book,’ said Lana.

  Warily, Sophie pulled the paperback from the pocket of the waxed hunting jacket she had borrowed from the lodge that morning. She wanted to get inside, of course, but she didn’t like the feeling of having Lana hovering behind her.

  She tried various combinations of the map co-ordinates, but still the safe door refused to budge.

  ‘This is ridiculous!’ said Lana. ‘Josh, do something.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’ he said. ‘Blow a hole in it? All I know about safe-cracking I got from The Italian Job.’

  Tuning out their bickering, Sophie turned back to the first page of I Capture the Castle. Was there anything else on it except the name and co-ordinates?

  Of course there was.

  To my dearest S, read this and think of our castle. Happy birthday. All my love always, Daddy.

  Her birthday. The fourth of September – it had to be. She bent over the panel and tapped in ‘0409’. There was a second’s pause, then the safe whined open. She could hear Lana gasp behind her. Sophie looked inside: it was empty. No, not quite: there was a plain Manila envelope sitting on the bottom. She opened it and pulled out a sheet of paper.

  ‘A certificate?’ she said, looking up at Josh.

  She had been expecting bricks of bank notes or gold bars; at the very least a black velvet bag full of diamonds. This looked like a fancy version of the guarantee which came with a washing machine.

  ‘It’s a bearer share certificate,’ said Josh, taking it from her.

  ‘What’s that in English?’ said Sophie, standing up to get a better look.

  ‘Have you ever heard of bearer bonds?’

  She nodded. ‘They’re what Hans Gruber was after in Die Hard, right?’

  Josh didn’t smile. ‘Exactly, but you don’t just get them in Hollywood. They used to be used by banks to transport large amounts of money, but they became popular with criminals as a way of concealing funds. If you have a bearer bond, it’s like owning cash, except it’s pretty much untraceable. Whoever physically holds the bond can redeem it for cash.’

  ‘So what’s this?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘This,’ said Josh, waving the paper, ‘means you own a whole company, rather than just cash. You turn up at the issuer’s bank holding this, it means you – and you alone – have full access to the company’s accounts. Your dad was clever, Soph. Putting Asner’s money into this offshore company meant it was almost impossible to track down because it leaves so little paper trail.’

  ‘So where is the bank account?’

  Josh examined the certificate.

  ‘Vanuatu, by the looks of it. It’s an offshore banking centre in the South Pacific.’

  Lana stepped forward.

  ‘Very good, Josh,’ she said coolly. ‘You’re smarter than I thought. Now how about you give it to me and then I suggest we hurry along.’

  Josh handed Lana the certificate.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sophie. I think it’s better if you stay here,’ said Lana slowly. ‘And if you think of squealing to the SEC about where Mr Asner’s hidden money has gone, you’ll have more than some angry Russians on your tail.’

  Sophie looked at Lana and then at Josh. She felt time slow down as she realised what was going on.

  ‘Josh, what’s happening?’ she croaked, a sense of dread filling her chest.

  Lana gave a gentle little snort.

  ‘He’s doing his job, aren’t you, Josh? Now are you coming or do you want to stand around admiring the view?’

  ‘W-where are you going?’ said Sophie, still looking at Josh.

  Lana shrugged, putting the certificate back into its envelope.

  ‘Oh, I believe the first stop will be Vanuatu. It’s an island in the South Pacific, one of the most privacy-conscious offshore banking centres in the world. That’s where Peter told me he’d hidden the money. All I have been trying to do is work out where the bearer share certificate was. It’s useless trying to claim the money without it.’

  Sophie felt the floorboards beneath her feet shift. Her brain couldn’t take it all in.

  ‘You spoke to my father?’

  ‘Frequently,’ said Lana with a spiteful smile. ‘Usually in bed, actually.’

  ‘You liar!’ screamed Sophie, lunging at her. Josh stepped forward and grabbed her, pinning her clawing arms to her sides. ‘My father wouldn’t go near someone like you!’ she spat.

  Lana pouted.

  ‘I was your father’s mistress for almost two years,’ she said mildly. ‘Before my husband, of course – well, mostly before.’

  Sophie struggled against Josh again, but he held her tight.

  ‘You bitch!’

  ‘Funny, that’s what your father said when I told him I was marrying Simon. He said it was only because Simon was richer than he was, which was probably true, actually.’

  She gave a small laugh.

  ‘But then poor Peter began to beg; he told me he was going to come into a lot of money too, but I didn’t believe him. Why would I? He was just some accountant from nowhere.’

  ‘Screw you, Lana,’ said Sophie. ‘You never knew him.’

  ‘Actually, you do have a point,’ said Lana. ‘It turned out that Peter had hidden depths after all. When Simon found out I couldn’t give him children, he told me he wanted a divorce. So I went back to Peter and asked him straight – “What money?”’

  She laughed, shaking her head.

  ‘He was only too happy to tell me about Asner’s fraud. According to Peter, we just had to sit tight for a couple of years until the scandal blew over, and we could go to Vanuatu and retrieve the money.’

  ‘So your family never lost money in the Ponzi scheme?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she laughed. Then her face clouded over. ‘But then that idiot Asner got himself killed and Peter fell apart. He couldn’t handle the stress. I visited him in hospital, gave him a little incentive to tell me how to get to the money, but the bloody-minded fool wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘You killed him!’ roared Sophie, jerking towards Lana, almost slipping from Josh’s grasp. He pulled her back and pushed her on to the bed, standing between the two women.

  ‘Don’t, Sophie,’ he said. ‘You’ll only make it worse.’

  ‘Worse?’ she spat, her voice cracking. ‘How could it possibly be worse?’

  Lana looked at her watch and put the envelope into her bag.

  ‘Come on, Josh, we can’t stand here all day.’

  Together they turned towards the door, leaving Sophie crumpled on the bed in misery.

  ‘And you’re working for her, I suppose,’ she hissed at Josh.

  Lana spoke for him. ‘Nick did such a shabby job of getting information from you; he always was too easily impressed by pretty things. But then I met Josh in Cap Ferrat and I knew that he could be more helpful than Nick had ever been. So I persuaded him to work for me.’

  Hot tears were running down Sophie’s cheeks.

  ‘Sophie,’ said Josh, his eyes pleading. ‘If you’ll just let me explain . . .’

  ‘Get the hell out of here!’ screamed Sophie. ‘I don’t
want to even look at you, let alone listen to any more of your lies.’

  ‘Sophie, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Get out!’ she sobbed. ‘Get out!’

  Josh bowed his head, then turned and walked out of her life.

  46

  Ruth felt like she was in the Cannonball Run. She’d been up all night, tearing along motorways, A roads and now narrow, winding country lanes, the endless white lines in the cone of the squad car headlights blurring into one. At first it had been exciting to put on the spinning blue lights and the ‘nee-naw’ siren and watch the traffic ahead part like the Red Sea, but they had now been on the road for five hours and the novelty of the high-speed pursuit had long since worn off. Ruth had always considered Great Britain to be a small country; after all, her home state of North Carolina was bigger than the whole of England alone. But as the past few hours had shown her, the road from London to the Scottish Highlands was a very long one indeed, even when you were exempt from the speed limit. It hadn’t helped that by the time Josh McCormack had called Fox at his flat, it had already been too late to fly north, and trains from London to Scotland reverted to the slower overnight sleeper variety after ten o’clock. Short of requisitioning a police helicopter – ‘You would not believe the paperwork involved,’ said Fox – the only solution had been to get a fast train to Manchester, then continue the rest of the way in a squad car, speeding up the motorway as far as Glasgow, then picking their way cross-country.

  Ruth popped another can of Coke and leant against the car, staring across at a distant farmhouse, the only feature in an endless expanse of gorse and heather. They’d taken a pit stop in a lay-by so Fox could make some calls. He was tense, jittery; she could tell he knew his career was on the line if he got this wrong. She turned as he tapped on the windscreen, and slid gratefully back inside the warmth of the car.

  ‘Everyone’s in position,’ said Fox as he gunned the engine back to life. ‘Let’s hope it’s all worth it. I’m going to look such a bloody banana if this was a crank call.’

  ‘This Josh McCormack’s got no reason to lie,’ said Ruth, inspecting the road map one last time. She had been staring at it for so long, she felt she could ace a quiz on any of the towns and villages they had passed through that night.

  ‘Okay, take the next right,’ she instructed. ‘We should be coming to the head of a loch. My guess is that we’ll see it pretty soon.’

  Fox slowed down as they reached a sharp turn at the bottom of the road and Ruth smiled to herself: he was still signalling, despite the fact that they hadn’t seen another vehicle in about an hour. Almost immediately the steep pass opened out in front of them and they could see the small castle high on their right, hanging over the loch beneath the glowering crag of Ben Grear.

  ‘Look, tyre tracks,’ said Fox, nodding towards a muddy strip where the loch road and the drive up to the castle met. ‘Looks like someone has been and gone.’

  Ruth swore under her breath. ‘Don’t say we’ve come all this way and missed them.’

  Fox gunned the engine all the way up the narrow roadway, skidding to a halt in front of the castle’s wide porch and running for the door.

  It creaked open and he immediately raised a hand to stop Ruth. He put a finger to his lips. ‘Shh . . .’ he whispered as they went inside. ‘Did you hear that?’

  Ruth shook her head, listening. It was quiet and still, except for the distant call of a bird through the open door.

  ‘Is anyone here?’ shouted Fox. ‘The sound came from up there,’ he hissed, motioning towards the stairs. ‘Maybe you’d better wait here.’

  ‘Screw that,’ whispered Ruth. ‘I’m sticking with you.’

  They walked up the stairs, wincing at each creaking step.

  ‘Police!’ called Fox. ‘Inspector Ian Fox from the Met.’

  Ruth followed him through a door and found herself in a bedroom. She stared in amazement as a door in the corner creaked open and Sophie Ellis stepped out of the closet.

  ‘Sophie,’ Ruth gasped. ‘What the hell are you doing in there?’

  ‘I thought you were the Russians,’ she said, her voice shaking. Ruth immediately saw that the girl’s eyes were red from crying, and she stepped over and pulled her into a hug.

  ‘Everything’s okay now,’ she said, guiding her over to the bed to sit down.

  ‘But it’s not,’ said Sophie, dissolving into tears. ‘Josh was working with Lana.’

  Ruth looked up at Fox.

  ‘Sophie, we . . .’ she began, but Sophie wasn’t listening.

  ‘They set the whole thing up to get Michael Asner’s money. You’ve heard of Asner, right?’

  Fox nodded.

  ‘It was hidden here,’ said Sophie.

  ‘You found it?’ asked Ruth, her pulse racing. ‘You found the money here?’

  ‘Not the actual money, something called a bearer share?’ said Sophie shaking her head. ‘Apparently it’s like a passport to get the cash. The money is banked in some South Pacific island. Vanuatu? Something like that.’

  ‘Vanuatu,’ said Ruth excitedly. She’d read about the offshore tax haven in some Vanity Fair article.

  ‘So where is it now, Sophie?’ said Fox.

  ‘Josh gave the certificate to Lana and they’ve gone.’ Her shoulders slumped. ‘It doesn’t matter any more. Nothing matters.’

  Fox knelt down in front of her.

  ‘No, Sophie, this could be very important,’ he said urgently. ‘Where did Josh and Lana go? Back to the hunting lodge?’

  ‘Yes. How do you know?’ said Sophie, frowning at him. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Because of Josh,’ said Fox gently. ‘You think he double-crossed you, but actually he was setting up Lana. He called me last night and explained the whole thing. He was the one who gave us the map co-ordinates for this castle.’

  Sophie stared at him, her mouth opening and closing. She turned to look at Ruth, her face a mixture of hope and disbelief.

  ‘It’s true, Sophie,’ said Ruth. ‘Josh is the one who sent us.’

  ‘So you know what happened?’ said Sophie, her eyes wide. ‘You believe me?’

  Fox nodded.

  ‘Josh told me everything. About Sergei Kaskov and Lana’s search for Michael Asner’s money. He begged me to get an Armed Response Unit to the shooting lodge in case the Russians appeared.’

  ‘An Armed Response Unit? You mean, like a SWAT team?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Fox, straightening up and holding out his hand to Sophie. ‘Which is why we need to get moving. If Josh went back there, then he’s in danger.’

  Ruth noticed the distraught look on the younger woman’s face. Whoever this Josh was, Sophie was in love with him, she could tell that immediately. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and get him.’

  Fox drove as fast as the twisting road along the loch would allow; mercifully it was free of traffic, with only one heart-stopping moment when they topped a rise to find a stag blocking their way. Luckily for both parties, Fox went left and the stag went right, disappearing into the bracken.

  As they drove, Sophie told them the whole story: her escape from the Russians by the Thames, their journey to Paris and Cannes to track down Nick’s secret business colleague, and her shock when she discovered it was Lana Goddard-Price. And her discovery that her father had been involved in Asner’s fraudulent scheme. Ruth cursed herself for not putting that final piece in the jigsaw. She thought of the whiteboard in her living room and the spidery web of connections. She knew Nick and Lana had both been after something from Sophie: money, most likely. She knew of Peter Ellis’s connection to Lana and Lana’s to Nick – she had even been able to prove that particular one with the CCTV footage. She had even known about Peter’s connection to Michael Asner and their friendship at college. And yet who would make the leap between that seemingly casual association decades ago and being intimately involved in a huge financial fraud? Ruth supposed that was why Asner had asked Peter in the first place. Who would su
spect someone as ordinary as Peter Ellis?

  As they closed in on the hunting lodge, Fox’s phone rang. Thinking it could be the Armed Response Unit, he switched it to loudspeaker.

  ‘Ian, it’s Gilly, how are you?’ said a female voice. Flirty, smiling. Ruth was immediately on edge.

  ‘Hi, Gill. Listen, I’m a bit busy at the mo, can I—’

  ‘Won’t be a tick,’ said the woman. ‘Just wanted to let you know we ran those prints from the biro.’

  ‘Wow, Gilly, that was quick,’ said Fox.

  ‘I was on the night shift. Besides, anything for a friend,’ said Gilly warmly.

  Anything for a friend, thought Ruth, wanting to strangle the woman.

  ‘Anyway, I ran it through the biometric software analysis. The sample was very poor, and completely inappropriate for court use, but from the shapes of the ridges and grooves of the print, I’d say it was a match with the print on the champagne bottle from the Riverton.’

  Ruth felt triumphant. Lana Goddard-Price had killed Nick. It wasn’t exactly a smoking gun, but it proved she had picked up the bottle – an empty bottle, Sophie had testified to that. Even a mediocre barrister could make a jury see that there really was no reason to pick up the bottle other than to use it as a weapon.

  Fox cut the forensics woman off abruptly for another call coming through. It was the team leader from the Armed Response Unit saying that three men had arrived at the lodge.

  ‘Is Lana Goddard-Price there?’ asked Fox urgently.

  ‘Affirmative. White male, thirties, with her.’

  ‘Can you identify the three men?’ said Fox.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said the voice. ‘They’re on the move. Spotter’s seen a gun, we’re going in.’

  ‘They must be Sergei’s men,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Shit,’ cried Fox, banging his hand on the steering wheel. ‘How far do you think we are, Sophie?’

  ‘Not far,’ she replied. ‘I recognise the farm over there; we can only be a mile away at most.’

  ‘Let’s see how fast this thing can go,’ he mumbled, adding a burst of speed that jerked them all back in their seats.

  They reached the lodge within a minute. It was surrounded by Armed Response Unit vehicles, and at least ten officers in bulletproof jackets and helmets. As the car screeched to a halt, Ruth’s eyes widened as she saw Lana Goddard-Price on the porch steps, being held in a stranglehold by a shaven-headed man.