Perfect Strangers (52 page)

‘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 suspect 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.

Fox jumped out of the car and ran to an officer holding a walkie-talkie. Welded to their car seats, neither Ruth nor Sophie dared move. The air was so quiet, Ruth could hear the rustle of wind in the trees.

‘Has he got a weapon?’ hissed Sophie.

‘They suspect so,’ said Ruth, seeing the gentle arch of Lana’s back, as if she had the barrel of a gun pushed into it.

A crackly voice through a loudspeaker pierced the silence.

‘Drop your weapon,’ it ordered through the static.

‘He’s going to kill her,’ gasped Sophie, hearing the loud co-ordinated click of the armed officers cocking their weapons.

The facial expression of the shaven-headed man soured.

‘No he’s not,’ said Ruth, watching him drop his gun on to the stone steps with a clatter.

Lana collapsed on to the ground as the police moved in. Two more of Sergei’s men ran out of the house and put their hands behind their heads. Ruth and Sophie got out of the car and ran towards Fox as another officer and a WPC helped Lana off the floor. She had her hands cuffed behind her and she was weeping, her make-up smeared, any hint of the aloof socialite gone.

‘Sophie!’ she cried desperately when she saw the girl. ‘Tell them this is all a misunderstanding; tell them I was only trying to recover my money.’

‘We know everything, Mrs Goddard-Price,’ said Fox bluntly. ‘And I know you killed Nick Beddingfield.’

Ruth expected the woman to deny it, but her face seemed to crumple and her shoulders sagged.

‘It was an accident,’ she sobbed. ‘You have to believe me. Nick was . . . well, we had a few difficult phone conversations, so I flew back from France and checked into the hotel next to the Riverton. When Sophie left him on Monday morning, he called me to arrange a meeting. I went round, we argued . . .’ Her voice trailed off at the memory.

‘You killed him?’ screamed Sophie.

‘He wanted to pull out of our arrangement. I lashed out, grabbed the bottle on the bath. I didn’t mean to hurt him . . .’ She looked over at her house-sitter. ‘You believe that, don’t you?’

Sophie didn’t say anything; she just stepped forward and slapped Lana across the face.

‘Put Mrs Goddard-Price in the squad car,’ said Fox to the detective.

Ruth could still hear Lana shouting as she and Fox walked into the lodge, leaving Sophie with a WPC.

‘Hey, nice place,’ she said. ‘Almost as nice as your flat.’

‘Don’t start,’ smiled Fox.

‘So who are the goons that had got Lana?’

‘Mercenaries for hire, I suspect,’ said Fox. ‘Sergei Kaskov wouldn’t have had time to dispatch his own men to somewhere so remote. And anyway, he’s too clever, wouldn’t want to take the risk when he will have been aware Lana and Sophie were being watched by the Met and the SEC at the very least.’

Ruth nodded; she had heard Fox talking to Hal Stanton on the way up to Manchester, getting briefed about the Russian crime lord and the US authorities’ suspicions about his link to the Asner money.

Through in the kitchen, they could see Josh sitting talking to a detective, giving a statement.

‘What are you going to do with him? He hasn’t broken any laws, has he?’

‘Leave the police work to me,’ smiled Fox.

‘Yeah,
right
, Sherlock,’ she teased. ‘We’d have wrapped this case up days ago if you’d just shared a bit more information, like I suggested.’

‘At least you got your story,’ he said.

‘Actually, I didn’t just get one story, I got two,’ said Ruth, the truth of the statement only just sinking in. For what seemed like forever, she had been trying to find out who killed Nick Beddingfield. It had consumed her every waking hour, because the future of the bureau, and by extension her career, depended on it. And in pursuing it so doggedly, she had uncovered something else, something even more amazing: Michael Asner’s missing millions. She had solved a high-profile murder and one of America’s biggest financial riddles in one go.
Screw you, David
, she smiled.
See if you can beat that
, she thought, knowing, with satisfaction, that she had saved the London bureau.

‘Listen,’ she said, feeling bold. ‘When I’ve filed the story and you’ve made your arrests, how about you take me for dinner to say thank you for all my help? And somewhere nice, seeing as you’re loaded.’

‘
I’m
the loaded one?’ laughed Fox. ‘You’re going to be so hot after this story, CBS are going to be poaching you for some highly paid Diane Sawyer role.’

Ruth shook her head.

‘Nah, I’m a newspaper girl, not a television journalist. Besides, I like London and I like the bureau too. I think I’m going to be sticking around.’

‘I’m glad about that,’ said Fox, his blue eyes meeting hers. Ruth felt her pulse quicken, surprised by how much she liked this man.

‘Next Tuesday,’ he said suddenly.

‘Next Tuesday what?’

‘That’s when we’re both going to take the day off. I reckon we deserve it after all this overtime.’

Ruth raised one eyebrow.

‘We’re going to take the day off?’

‘Yes, us, together,’ he said. ‘Unless you don’t want to, of course.’

His phone began to ring. Fox didn’t move, his intense gaze focused on Ruth.

‘Shouldn’t you answer that?’ she said, the ghost of a smile on her lips.

‘It’ll wait. So are we on for Tuesday?’

Ruth laughed.

‘I’d like that,’ she said, adding to herself,
I’d like that very much indeed
.

47

Sophie was standing on a slope to the side of the lodge, looking out towards the loch, when she saw Ruth Boden approach.

‘How are you doing?’ asked Ruth, putting an affectionate hand on her shoulder.

‘I’m okay, thanks.’ Sophie smiled. ‘It feels weird seeing you again. All this time I thought I was out there on my own, and all the time you were thinking about me, trying to find me.’

‘I always knew you were innocent,’ said Ruth. ‘Although I have to admit, I didn’t guess that Lana killed Nick until right at the end.’

Sophie looked away. She didn’t want to think about it, not right now, not yet. She had held Nick’s body as the life ran out of him, and whatever he had done, no one deserved to die like that. And all for what? Money? Sophie felt sick to think that she had once seen money as the answer to all her problems too. Was that how her father had thought? Was it ultimately his undoing? Sophie supposed she would never know if Lana had been directly responsible for her father’s death – and part of her didn’t really want to know. Lana Goddard-Price had already caused so much destruction and pain, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to unearth anything else.

‘Listen, Sophie, I have a story to write,’ said Ruth awkwardly. ‘I don’t suppose you’d grant me an interview . . .?’