Perfect Strangers (28 page)

Ruth laughed. She liked Chuck. He was far too much of a company man to ever question Jim in an editorial meeting, but get him on his own and he could be sarcastic and funny.

‘Maybe he’s gone to help Rebecca with her women’s problems,’ he said with a knowing smile.

‘My money’s on that one,’ said Ruth playfully. Perhaps it wasn’t strictly professional to gossip about your boss behind his back, but it made the working day a little more fun. Jim’s relationship with his PA had been a running joke between the rest of the staff. It was pure speculation, and especially considering they were all hard news journalists, no one had a shred of evidence to back it up, but the two of them did seem particularly pally. Anyway, if it was true, Ruth could certainly have understood it. It was an occupational hazard of being a foreign correspondent that it was difficult to maintain relationships. There was a high turnover of staff and the particular stresses of the job tended to mean you were either absent, overworked or both; not ideal traits in a potential Mr or Miss Right – she knew that from personal experience. She was pulled from her thoughts by the insistent ringing of her desk phone. She grabbed it.

‘Miss Boden?’

The voice was American: Texan, Ruth guessed. Low slung and treacly.

‘Yes, this is Ruth Boden,’ she said.

‘This is Jeanne Parsons. I got a message from my housekeeper to call you urgently.’

Ruth was surprised the woman had called back so promptly. Overnight, the Washington office had assisted in tracking down Nick Beddingfield’s girlfriend, providing her with a number first thing that morning. Ruth had indeed spoken to the housekeeper, who had rather tersely told her that ‘Mizz Jeanne is sleeping.’

‘Thank you for calling me back,’ said Ruth. ‘I’m phoning about your friend Nick Beddingfield.’

There was a pause, and Ruth could hear a door being closed.

‘Yes, Nick,’ said the woman finally. ‘How is he?’

‘I’m afraid I have some bad news. Nick Beddingfield is dead.’

Ruth clicked on to her computer and pulled up the photograph of Jeanne Parsons that the Washington office had sent over. It had clearly been taken at some sort of society function; she was wearing an off-the-shoulder ball gown and holding a flute of champagne. She was a perky, smiling forty-something blonde, with a tiny body and big breasts; the sort Ruth imagined to be the life and soul of any party, except she certainly wasn’t smiling now.

‘Oh no,’ she said, her voice trembling. Ruth heard the click and hiss of a cigarette being lit and imagined the hazy blue smoke being blown at the ceiling.
God, I could do with one right now
, she thought.

‘How did it happen?’ asked Jeanne.

‘He was found dead in a hotel room in London, the Riverton. The police are treating it as suspicious.’

‘And who are you, Miss Boden? Are you not a police officer?’

‘No, I’m a journalist.’

‘Ah, that figures,’ said the woman. ‘So if you’re a reporter, I guess you’ll know Nick was more than my friend.’

‘Yes. And I’m so sorry to have to tell you this.’

There was another pause.

‘So what do you want to know?’

Ruth flipped her notebook open.

‘I want to know who might have wanted to kill him. Did he have any enemies? Had any business deals gone wrong?’

‘That boy ticked off a ton of people over the years, honey. He was always hustling people.’

‘Hustling people? How exactly?’

‘Whichever way he could. Let’s just say he could charm the birds down from the trees – and he often did.’

‘So you’re saying Nick was a con man?’ asked Ruth, her pencil poised over her pad.

‘Well that depends on your point of view, doesn’t it? Nick was a salesman, he could sell anyone anything – does that make him a con man? He was a businessman, I guess, but he sailed pretty close to the wind sometimes.’

‘Like what?’

‘One time we went to Dallas and he talked a Ferrari showroom into letting him “borrow” some bright red quarter-of-a-mil monster for the week while he decided if it was “up to his standards”. I had to send someone to take it back because I knew he was never going to.’

She gave a gentle, affectionate laugh.

‘But he was such fun. He made life fun and you don’t realise how seductive that can be. When I was with him, I felt we were like Bonnie and Clyde. Little old me, boring society wife.’

‘You’re married?’ said Ruth with surprise, then felt foolish.
Of course
she was married.

‘And not to Nicky,’ laughed Jeanne. ‘Although sometimes I wished I was.’

‘How long were you in a relationship for?’

‘About two years on and off. I gave Nicky the keys to my bachelorette flat in Houston and he stayed there when he wasn’t flying off around the world.’

‘When was the last time you saw him?’

‘About a month ago, I guess. I live in Dallas with my husband and only saw Nicky about every month or so for a night at a time – I think you can guess how it all worked. But lately he’d been spending a lot of time in Europe. I did hear things, though.’

‘You heard things? About Nick?’

Jeanne sighed.

‘What we had was barely an affair, we were both too busy for that. But in my world, people like to talk. This life, this society as they call it, it’s a tiny place. Each one of us, we live our lives in a fishbowl, everyone knows everything about everyone. So yes, people knew about me and Nick and they would go out of their way to tell me how they’d seen him in Megève with an American heiress or in Monte Carlo with some old countess. People are vicious, Miss Boden. Quite vicious.’

‘And do you know why he was in London?’

‘Not exactly, but I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago and he told me he was going to be in England for a big business thing. He said if I heard on the grapevine that he’d been seen in London with a young, beautiful woman, I was not to worry because it was just work.’ She laughed again, but this time it sounded sad. ‘That was Nick; so sweet. He thought I didn’t know about the other women, wanted to spare my feelings.’

‘I’m so sorry, Jeanne.’

‘So am I,’ she whispered, her voice finally breaking. ‘So am I.’

26

Cannes was having one of its hottest days of the summer. In the harbour, the gleaming white yachts gently bumped together while the Mediterranean twinkled in approval, as if a thousand diamonds from one of the smarter jewellers on the quayside had been sprinkled over the tide. Sophie wound down the window of their taxi and closed her eyes, feeling the breeze in her hair, the taste of the sea on her tongue – she felt as if she was coming awake after a very long sleep. It was a day that made you feel glad to be alive, but for Sophie that feeling took on a quite literal meaning. She was still shell-shocked from their brush with the Russians and absolutely furious with herself for putting them both in danger.

Josh was obviously unhappy too. He had been silent for most of the forty-minute journey from the outskirts of Nice – still fuming from her revelation in the back of the van – and not even the sight of the bright Riviera streets, hemmed in by happy holidaymakers and chic residents on both sides, was enough to make him smile.

The taxi stopped at a crossing to allow a tall, beautiful woman in a leopard-print bikini to pass. She was wearing five-inch heels and was carrying a tiny dog in a Louis Vuitton holdall.

‘I’m not sure Cannes has heard about the global recession,’ said Sophie, trying to lighten the mood.

‘Russians,’ said Josh flatly as an image of the stony-faced hit men jumped into her mind. ‘The West might be in a recession, but for lots of countries these are boom times. Ten years ago this place was full of the wealthy French and a sprinkling of the Euro elite; now they call the Riviera “Moscow on Sea”.’

His expression softened as he pointed to the swish shops and hotels all along the Croisette. ‘I bet you every one of those places has someone who speaks Russian these days. They can’t afford not to.’

At the harbour, the taxi turned away from the sea and into the old town, stopping on a narrow lane faced on both sides by little boutiques and cafés, a high-rent area for wealthy patrons with sports cars and Range Rovers parked at the meters.

‘Are you sure this is the place?’ Sophie asked Josh as they paused across the road from a wine shop with an arty display of fine champagne in the window. It had an ornate wooden frontage with carved stone pillars either side of the door; there was even scrolled gold lettering on the glass:
M. Durand, Wine Merchant
. It looked formal, establishment – the last place, in fact, you would expect to be a front for criminal activity.

‘A lot of things are not all they appear on the surface,’ said Josh, ‘I thought you would have worked that out by now.’

Sophie began to object, but then bit her lip. She really had no wish to provoke an argument, especially as she was still feeling so guilty about what had happened in Nice. But still, she felt nervous – intimidated, even – about going inside such a grand-looking shop.

‘What are we going to say in there?’ she asked.

‘
You
aren’t going to say anything,’ said Josh.

‘Of course,
I’m
not allowed to do anything,’ she said tartly. ‘But what are you going to say to him?’

‘Give me your purse.’

Sophie frowned. ‘Josh, I asked you a question.’

‘Give me your purse,’ he repeated. Reluctantly she handed it over and watched as he took something out and put it in his pocket.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked, but he was already crossing the road and Sophie could only follow.

If the exterior of M. Durand’s establishment had looked exclusive, the inside was forbidding. There was a pyramid of Cristal champagne at one end of the shop, signs – as Josh had predicted – written in Russian, and a whole wall devoted to the finest red wines, their labels proudly pointing outwards for inspection. Not that you were actually supposed to touch anything, that much was clear. These wines were presented as if they were artworks, their green bottles sculptures in a museum.

‘May I help you?’ said a pinched forty-something man in heavily accented English. His black eyebrows rose as if to signify that he found the idea extremely unlikely.

Josh took the business card that had been in Sophie’s purse moments earlier and deliberately put it on the counter, facing the man.

‘Detective Inspector Ian Fox,’ he said. ‘From Scotland Yard in London. I imagine you’ve heard of it?’

Sophie saw the man’s manner immediately change. His initial self-possession melted away and he became instantly more compliant and eager to please. She imagined that a Russian wielding a chequebook would have had a similar effect.

‘Please, give me one moment,’ he said, walking behind them to lock the door and turn the ‘
Ouvert
’ sign to ‘
Fermé
’ before pulling down the blinds.

‘We can talk more privately now,’ he said slowly. ‘I am Monsieur Durand, the proprietor of this establishment. How can I help you?’

Josh cut straight to the chase.

‘I’m investigating the death of Nick Beddingfield,’ he said. ‘You
do
know Mr Beddingfield?’

There was a brief, telling pause as if Monsieur Durand did not know which way to jump.

‘Yes, I know him. Not well, but our paths have crossed through my business.’

‘Well not any more,’ said Josh. ‘He was murdered in London on Monday.’

Monsieur Durand made a tutting sound.

‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘Do you know who killed him?’

‘Someone violent, ruthless.’

Josh let the words hang in the air. Sophie couldn’t help but admire his performance. Forget the knock-off perfume and the vintage watches; Josh McCormack could easily have had a successful career as an actor – he had that chameleon-like ability to inhabit a part, so you completely believed what he was saying.

‘That is a shame,’ said Monsieur Durand, regaining his composure. ‘But I don’t understand why you are telling me this.’

‘We are looking into every aspect of Mr Beddingfield’s life, monsieur. His personal life, his business affairs, everything. You dealt with him as a supplier of fine wines, I assume?’

Monsieur Durand shrugged.

‘I get my stock from multiple sources. Auction houses, private cellars, other retailers, but yes, I occasionally dealt with Monsieur Beddingfield.’

Josh leant forward on the counter, meeting Monsieur Durand’s eye.

‘I’ll come straight to the point, monsieur. We have evidence that Mr Beddingfield was supplying you with counterfeit wine.’

‘Counterfeit wine?’ The Frenchman’s eyes opened as wide as an owl’s. ‘That’s impossible!’

‘Impossible?’ repeated Josh, casually turning his gaze towards the wall of lovingly displayed wine. ‘Really? So I take it you can personally vouch for every single bottle on these shelves?’

‘I run a respectable business . . .’ spluttered the proprietor. ‘And I resent the implication.’

Sophie was no expert in non-verbal communication or the ‘tells’ that signified lying, but she was fascinated to see two small triangles of colour appear on Monsieur Durand’s cheeks even as he protested his innocence.

‘Let me tell you what I know about the counterfeit wine business,’ said Josh, slowly. ‘I know it’s booming. I know that some collectors who suspect bottles in their cellar to be fake would rather quietly offload the wine to unscrupulous dealers than make a song and dance about it and frighten the market. I think you are such a dealer, Monsieur Durand, and that you also accepted supplies from Mr Beddingfield without asking too much about their provenance.’

Durand’s face was now bright red with anger.

‘What do you want, Inspector?’ he snapped. ‘Are you suggesting that I am in some way involved in his death?’

Josh smiled and shook his head.

‘Here’s the good news, Monsieur Durand. I’m not investigating wine fraud. I’m part of Scotland Yard’s murder squad and all I care about is finding who killed Mr Beddingfield.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘However, I do have a friend at Interpol who might be very interested in examining your stock. I understand they can get a court order allowing them to open every bottle in your warehouse, should the mood take them.’