Perfect Strangers

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got anything else to eat, have you? I came straight from my shift and I’m starving.’

Ruth didn’t need to look to know that the fridge was empty except for a green-haired garlic bulb and a withered lemon.

‘Give me two minutes and I’ll order Chinese,’ she said, heading for the phone in the hall. Coming back through, she saw that Fox had been busy at the whiteboard, adding a spider’s web of links to Nick’s central hub: ‘Chariot party’, ‘Wine fraud?’, ‘Womaniser – con man?’, ‘Russian connection?’ and so on.

‘What’s this one?’ he asked, tapping a word Ruth had written that morning: ‘Asner’.

For a moment she hesitated. Did she really want to reveal everything to him? But then what exactly was she hiding? She felt certain Fox knew that the Ellis family had lost money recently. Besides, she wasn’t getting anywhere on her own: that was the uncomfortable truth. She needed Fox’s input, even if it was just as a sympathetic sounding board.

‘Michael Asner,’ she said, picking up her glass.

‘The Ponzi scheme guy?’ asked Fox.

Ruth nodded. ‘Peter Ellis was an investor and basically lost everything the family had.’

‘That gives Sophie a motive,’ said Fox slowly. ‘If she thought Nick was going to be the answer to her financial troubles and found out he had nothing, she’d be pissed off.’

‘But you don’t believe that, do you?’

‘If she was some hardcore gold-digger who’d invested years in their relationship, maybe. But they’d been dating what? A week? And Sophie Ellis is a ditzy posh girl, not a social player.’

‘So you think she’s innocent?’

‘I don’t think she killed him, but I still think she’s the key to it all. Look at your whiteboard – everything leads back to her.’

They talked a while longer until the doorbell rang and Ruth ran down to collect the food, laying it out on her coffee table: ribs, dumplings, noodles and beef in satay sauce. She and Fox picked them from their cartons as they talked.

‘Have you spoken to Jeanne Parsons?’

Fox nodded. ‘Nick’s girlfriend in Texas.’

‘What did she tell you?’

‘Not much.’

‘When I spoke to her, she said that Nick had said that if he was seen in London with a beautiful woman it was just work.’

‘Really?’

Ruth felt a flush of pride at having tracked down information the police had missed.

‘Nick and Sophie were apparently inseparable from the minute they met. If we assume that Sophie was that beautiful woman, then she was the work,’ said Fox thoughtfully.

‘And if Nick was a con man then it makes Sophie a victim. She was a mark. All day I’ve been asking myself what Sophie Ellis had that Nick – and possibly other men with guns – wanted.’

‘Money and sex,’ said Fox, picking up a dumpling and dunking it in chilli sauce. ‘Money and sex are always the motive.’

‘Have you checked the CCTV cameras around Nick’s suite?’

Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘Hotels aren’t like banks with cameras everywhere. The biggest crime they can expect is someone walking off with a monogrammed robe.’

‘So

you couldn’t tell who’d been to his room?’

Fox suppressed a burp and shook his head.

‘No, we had a look at some security footage of the lobby which confirmed Sophie’s story of running for the taxi and returning at the time she did. That was about it.’