Perfect Strangers

‘Darling, you know I have to stop fraternising with the enemy. If my editor knew . . .’

‘All right, all right,’ she said, making a note to increase that expenses claim. ‘You know it’ll be worth your while.’

He sighed.

‘The name doesn’t ring any immediate bells. I’ll have a little nosy around. I prefer single malt, by the way. Scotch, not bourbon. You can give it to me over dinner at Scott’s.’

‘It’s a date,’ she smiled, knowing how much fun she had on her nights out with Robert and his partner Stephen.

Ruth stood and snapped her phone shut, briskly walking back towards the road. Suddenly, she felt a lot better. Suddenly, she was back on the hunt.

11

The policewoman had been very nice. She had given Sophie a blanket for the ride in the car down to the station, and had even brought her a cup of tea.

‘Hot sweet tea,’ she had said cheerily, as if it was a panacea for all the ills in the world.

The drink was nearly cold now, and had done little to make her feel better. Sophie picked up the polystyrene cup and ran her thumbnail across it, scoring lines into the material. When are they going to come? She had been sitting in this little room for an hour at least, just her, a table and an old plastic chair with cigarette burns on it.

A policeman had interviewed her briefly at the hotel and asked her if she wouldn’t mind continuing the questioning at the station. She had agreed, coming down to the ugly concrete police station on Harrow Road with the WPC, where she was told to wait for the detective in charge. But where was he? The longer Sophie sat there, the more distressed she began to feel.

At the hotel she had been bewildered and in shock, but now, sitting in this empty, soulless interview room, the reality of what had happened was beginning to sink in. Nick was dead. Dead. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing the image of his lifeless body, the blood from his wounds colouring the water on the wet bathroom floor. She felt numb, confused and just needed to talk to somebody to try and make sense out of what had happened. Who would want to kill Nick? And what for? Was it an ex-girlfriend, jealous of his relationship with Sophie? A business associate? Somebody he owed money to? She knew that she had had a deep and intimate connection with Nick over the last few days, but there was so much she didn’t know about his life. She’d watched enough cop dramas, though, to know that people were most often killed by someone they knew. Someone like you, you mean? she thought with a chill.

Just then the door was pushed open and a tall man in his early forties walked in. His smart dark suit did nothing to detract from the tired, unhappy look about him. A slightly older woman carrying an armful of folders came in behind him.

‘I’m Detective Inspector Ian Fox,’ said the man as they both sat down opposite her. ‘This is DS Sheila Field. Sorry to keep you waiting so long,’ he added. The tone of his voice – firm and serious – scared her.

‘What’s happening?’ said Sophie, anxiously looking from one to the other. ‘Have you any idea who might have done this?’

The two police officers exchanged a look.

‘That’s what we’re hoping to work out, Sophie,’ said Fox.

The woman passed the inspector a blue file and he opened it, taking a pen out of his inside pocket.

‘Okay, first of all, we’d like to ask you some questions. Is that okay?’

Sophie was immediately on her guard. The way he’d said it sounded carefully phrased. Did they suspect her of anything? At the hotel, when she had first seen Nick on the bathroom floor, her immediate, instinctive response had been to cradle him. Her hands had tried to knit his wound back together, although even in her distraught state she had known that the gesture was useless. But in the police car over to the station she realised the dangerous position she was now in. She was Nick’s lover. She had found him dead. Her fingerprints were all over the suite and now his body. Even she could see that looked suspicious.

‘Should I have a lawyer?’ she asked quietly.

‘That’s your right. Would you like one?’ said the policewoman flatly.

Sophie hesitated, then shook her head. Lawyers were for people who had something to hide; that’s what her mother had always said. She just wanted to tell them the truth, and the truth was that she loved Nick and had been devastated to find him dead.

‘I’m just here to help you find whoever hurt Nick,’ she said in the most controlled voice she could manage.

Fox nodded.

‘So let’s start with everything you know about Nick and what happened to him.’

Sophie took a minute to compose herself before she had to relive those moments again.

‘It started off a perfect day,’ she said, puffing out her cheeks as she tried to contain her emotion. ‘We woke up at about six forty. He wanted us to spend the day together, but I had to leave early for a meeting. I had a shower and left his suite at about seven twenty and got a cab to High Street Ken. But I had forgotten my phone so I asked the cabbie to take me back to retrieve it.’

She wiped at her cheek, feeling a tear trickle down.

‘I was gone, maybe thirty minutes,’ she said, her voice trembling now. ‘That’s all. When I returned to the hotel room, he was like that.’