Perfect Strangers

Josh turned off the light and pulled down the window blind. For a while they were both silent, listening to the train click over the points, feeling the gentle rock of the carriage, hearing people talking quietly as they passed in the corridor outside.

‘What time are we going to be in the south?’ said Sophie, unable to sleep.

‘Seven-ish. The train only goes to Nice, so we’ll have to double back on ourselves to get to Cannes.’

She wriggled around the sleeping bag, staring up at the base of Josh’s bunk, trying to picture him up there. Stop it, Sophie, she thought. She supposed it was the romance of being in a sleeper train, feeling a little like Eva Marie Saint in that Hitchcock film she was in with Cary Grant. North by Northwest? It had been years since she’d seen it, but she was sure they’d shared a sleeper train cabin. Or was it Audrey Hepburn?

‘It’s not quite Le Bristol,’ she said.

‘You have very expensive tastes, Miss Ellis,’ said Josh and she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘D’you know, this used to be the most glamorous way to travel a hundred years ago? It was called the Blue Train and it ferried all the wealthy people from London and Paris to the Côte d’Azur. It was all first class. Coco Chanel, Churchill, royalty – they’ve all been on it.’

‘You know a lot about a lot of things,’ said Sophie candidly.

‘I know a little bit about a lot,’ he responded. ‘I left school at sixteen, so everything I’ve learnt has been from books, people I’ve met, TV programmes I’ve watched. I suppose I keep my ears and my eyes open.’

‘So how did you get into this?’

‘What, selling watches?’

‘Josh, you know what I mean. The lock-up, Maurice, all that.’

There was something about not seeing someone, not looking them in the face, that made it possible to ask anything. She wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say, of course, except that she wanted to hear something good. Josh might be a thief or a con man, she didn’t really know, but back at Le Cellar he had been – what? My hero, she thought, feeling embarrassed and, if she was honest, turned on at the same time.

‘After school I was jobless, aimless, kicking around the arse end of Edinburgh. There were a lot of drugs and gangs, and I was terrified by all that. So instead I got in with a crowd that used to sell fake stuff around pubs and on street corners. I was that cocky little bleeder you’d see on the high street surrounded by a crowd, selling cheap perfume: “gen-u-ine Armani, ladies, a tenner for two”.’

His impression made her giggle. She’d never have bought anything from a rogue street trader like the one he was describing – but then she’d never seen Josh, had she?

‘How did you meet Nick?’

‘That was when I moved from Scotland to London in my early twenties. I think in the back of my mind I really believed the streets might be paved with gold. Of course they weren’t, but then you could charge twice as much for knock-off Blue Stratos on Oxford Street. Anyway, I bumped into Nick in some nightclub in Soho. I tried to sell him a Rolex and you know what he said? “Don’t waste your time.” I thought he was telling me to sod off because he could see the watch was a fake, but he wasn’t. He told me I had a gift.’

‘A gift?’

‘Charm, patter, I don’t know. I never found it hard to sell the watches, however ropy they were, put it that way. I suppose I should have got on a training scheme and become a salesman, sold washing machines or insurance. Anyway, Nick brought me into a couple of scams he was running. And the rest, as they say, is history.’

‘What kind of scams, Josh?’

He was quiet for a moment.

‘Nothing I’m proud of. But I was grateful to Nick. He taught me a lot and gave me focus, made me see that I didn’t have to spend the rest of my life standing on street corners selling vinegar in fancy bottles. He did me a huge favour.’

‘He led you astray, more like,’ said Sophie softly. She wondered if that was how it worked for all criminals. She didn’t suppose that people started out bad, but somewhere along the line they met the wrong person, fell in with the wrong crowd and were tempted on to another path.

‘Don’t be too down on Nick,’ said Josh. ‘Everyone assumes he was this morally bankrupt monster destroying innocent women’s lives, but let me tell you, most of those women were playing some sort of game with him too. They all wanted something from Nick. Those women’ – he whistled – ‘they can be ruthless.’

Sophie was surprised how readily Josh was defending Nick.

‘I got the impression that the two of you didn’t like each other that much,’ she said. ‘Or was all that stuff at the Chariot party an act too?’

‘No, we did fall out,’ said Josh in the darkness. ‘Nick seemed to think that because he’d helped me out in the past, whenever he called I would come running. There was a job in Monaco last summer.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t want to be involved.’

‘Why not?’

She heard him snort.

‘You are nosy, aren’t you?’

‘Come on, Josh. It might be something to do with his death.’