Perfect Strangers (11 page)

The maid hesitated for a moment, then, with a shrug of resignation, slotted her key-card into the door.

‘Thank you,’ mouthed Sophie and pushed inside. There was a lamp on inside the suite and she could hear the sound of dripping water.

‘Nick?’ she called, but there was no reply. She walked through the bedroom towards the bathroom. He wasn’t in bed, although the duvet had been thrown back and the sheets looked crumpled. The drip-drip sound was louder now.

‘Nick, are you still here?’

She stopped and stepped back as she felt a squishiness under her feet. The carpet between the bedroom and the en suite was sodden.

‘What the hell?’ she whispered. The en suite door was slightly ajar and she gave it a gentle push.

For a moment she couldn’t understand what she was seeing – or perhaps her brain didn’t want to process it. It was as if she was frozen in the moment, caught in a bad dream. Nick was lying on the floor of the bathroom, naked except for a white towel that had become unfastened at the waist. His eyes were closed, his head lolled lifelessly to one side. The bath had overflowed, surrounding his body with a puddle of water stained red with blood.

‘Nick!’ she gasped sinking to her knees to cradle him.

Blood was oozing from a wound on his head. The floor was studded with shards of green glass like angry teeth glaring at her.

‘No, Nick, please, no . . .’ she sobbed, putting her hand over the wound, as if to join the two sides together again, but it was too big, too wide. Too bad.

‘Help! Somebody help me!’ she screamed, as loud as she could. ‘I need an ambulance! Please, someone!’ Helpless tears were streaming down her cheeks as she looked at his lifeless face. ‘Someone. Please! He’s dying,’ she choked.

But she could tell that he was already dead. His skin was still warm, but Nick had gone, she could feel it in her heart.

Suddenly there was a blur of activity; hands were lifting her, pulling her away from him.

‘No!’ she cried. ‘I can’t leave him! He needs me!’

There were people in the room, noise, raised voices. The maid was crying, a man in a suit barking orders.

‘Help him!’ screamed Sophie, her voice barely audible through the sobs.

Vaguely, she could hear words being spoken in her car. Kindly, reassuring words: ‘It will be okay’, ‘There’s nothing more you can do’, ‘The police are on their way’; the sort of things that people said in movies when someone died. Sophie sat on the bed, staring down at her trembling, red-stained hands, her whole world frozen in time, her body weighted by a dim, fearful awareness that the worst was yet to come.

10

Ruth was in Starbucks buying her first macchiato of the day when she got the call. Flinging five pounds at the barista, she ran out on to the street to hail a cab. She couldn’t have moved any faster – a trail of coffee had spilt on her white shirt – but still, by the time she she made it to the hotel, it was already a no-go area. Two white police vans were parked on the street and a uniformed officer was checking ID as guests went into the Riverton. Worse, there was a Channel Five film crew setting up on the steps. Not exactly the exclusive she had been led to believe.

Cursing, Ruth pulled out her mobile, but before she could dial the number, she heard a low whistle. Turning, she saw a familiar face: DC Dan Davis, lurking by the side door. He beckoned her over.

‘What’s that film crew doing here?’ she hissed.

‘It’s a free country, Ruth. Or hadn’t you heard?’ said Davis, a smile on his face. ‘I can’t help it if that nice bird off the telly turns up, can I?’ He craned his neck around to look at the pretty newsreader standing on the steps.

‘I thought we had a deal,’ said Ruth.

‘Of course we do, darlin’,’ said Davis, holding the door open for her. ‘You’ll always be my number one, you know that.’

Ruth took a deep breath. She knew she shouldn’t let her frustrations show; besides she should be grateful. Dan Davis was one of a handful of officers she had courted over the years, spending hours in coppers’ pubs listening to their war stories, putting up with their ham-fisted attempts at seducing her. It was the price she paid for getting phone calls like the one in the coffee shop. Well, that and all the fat envelopes filled with cash.

The payola to the police wasn’t the part of her job she felt most proud of, but it was the way things got done, exchanging tips,
incentives
. And it was the way Ruth Boden had carved herself out an enviable position as one of the Met’s pet reporters; at least amongst the troops, where it counted. People like Dan Davis knew what she was after – anything juicy, particularly anything involving Americans, and on the phone this morning he had convinced her that he had something good.

‘Well I hope this isn’t going to be like that Canadian and his failed suicide attempt,’ muttered Ruth as Davis led her down a dark corridor and into a service elevator.

‘All a bit of a misunderstanding, that one,’ he said, standing a little too close to her. ‘Besides, I wanted to see you, didn’t I?’

Ruth forced a smile. It wasn’t that Dan Davis was bad looking; in fact he had lovely green eyes and floppy dark hair: the sort of colouring they called Black Irish back home. But he was young; he couldn’t be more than about twenty-six, although it was always hard to tell their age with coppers. The ancient, grizzled ones with the bags under their eyes and the broken veins on their noses always turned out to be about forty. She supposed the job did that to you; it wasn’t as if journalists came out the other end looking particularly youthful either.

‘I’m always glad to see you too, Dan,’ said Ruth, truthfully. She had no intention of sleeping with him, but he was always good for an ego boost. ‘I just don’t like to have my time wasted.’

‘Well, you’ll like this one,’ he said. ‘There’s claret everywhere.’

‘Claret?’

Davies rolled his eyes. ‘Blood. Fella had his head stoved in, didn’t he?’

‘So who is he?’ she asked, turning to him.

Davis smiled, and Ruth could feel her heart rate increase. Just from the width of his grin, she could tell it was a big story.

‘American businessman,’ said Davis. ‘He must be worth a bit if he can afford one of the suites.’

‘Is that where he was found?’

The detective nodded.

‘Told you it was worth your taxi fare. I hope you’re going to be grateful.’

‘You know I’m always grateful,’ said Ruth, making a mental note to put in an expenses claim. She was going to have to take Davis and his pals to one of those grubby table-dancing clubs they so enjoyed. At the very least.

‘Any idea about the doer?’

‘The girlfriend found him. Claims she left the hotel to go to work. Came back after she’d forgotten something and found him dead on the bathroom floor.’

‘Do you believe her?’

‘She’s just some pretty posh girl. Not your average murderer, but a crime of passion? Maybe.’

‘What’s she called?’

‘Ruth, come on.’

‘Please, Dan. I’ll find out another way, you’re just saving me time.’

The detective sighed.

‘Sophie Ellis.’

‘Is she around?’

‘No, she’s just been taken to Paddington Green,’ he said, opening the lift and leading her into a small room filled with shelves stacked with bed linen. Ruth looked around; this clearly was not the crime scene. She turned to look at Davis. She hoped he wasn’t expecting her to become grateful right now.

‘Here,’ he said, handing her a white forensics overall. ‘You’d better put that on. Don’t want you contaminating the scene, and besides, I’m taking a bloody great risk bringing you up here. At least if you’re dressed as a SOCO, my boss probably won’t notice you.’

Awkwardly, Ruth climbed into the suit, knowing Davis was enjoying watching her.
It’s the price you pay
, she reminded herself, the excitement of being so close to such a juicy story overriding any annoyance.

‘Sexy,’ said Davis as she tucked her hair inside the suit’s hood.

‘I try,’ she said, pulling up the mouth mask.

His expression turned serious.

‘All right, here’s the rules. I’ll walk in, you wait a few seconds and follow me inside. Try and look busy, like you’re looking for fingerprints or something, have a butcher’s at the scene, then back out the same way. Don’t hang around, but don’t make it look obvious. We clear?’

Ruth nodded. ‘Crystal.’

She shuffled along behind him, the swish-swish of her suit making her feel extremely conspicuous, but at the same time, her heart was beating with excitement. Police had allowed her on to crime scenes before, but never a murder like this. Clearly, Davis sensed that linking his name to this in the press could be very good for his career, or else he expected a fat wodge of cash; otherwise he would never take such a risk. They ducked under some police tape – the whole corridor had been sealed off – and walked towards the only room which was open. Ruth hung back at the door as instructed, then stepped inside. There was one uniformed policeman by the door, three scene of crime officers and two plainclothes detectives talking to Davis, but they all completely ignored her.

She quickly took in the hotel suite: it was clearly an expensive room. The bed was unmade, and there were some scattered papers and clothes, perhaps enough to suggest a disturbance but not enough to think that there had been a fight.

‘Are you looking for Pete?’

Ruth turned towards the voice, but hampered by her suit, she almost stumbled over a table, and a hand shot out to steady her.

‘Careful, we don’t want any more casualties today,’ the voice said gruffly.

Ruth pulled down her mask and saw a forty-something detective; he was better dressed than most coppers – a well-cut grey two-button suit with a plain navy tie – but she could still tell he was ‘on the job’.

‘No, yes,’ she stuttered. ‘I mean yes, I’m looking for Pete. Have you seen him?’

The detective inclined his head toward the bathroom. ‘In there, but watch your step, okay? The floor’s wet.’

Ruth nodded and put up her mask, hoping she had just come across as some green graduate on her first crime scene.
A little old for that, aren’t you?
mocked a voice in her head.
Come on, concentrate
. Taking a deep breath, she walked over to the bathroom and peered around the door. It was a good job Davis had prepared her. Most of the white tile floor was covered in blood, smeared with footprints. Two more scene of crime officers were kneeling down, bent over the body. Ruth couldn’t see the body’s face, but the bare upturned foot, its heel surrounded by congealed blood, was enough for her. She turned and walked straight out of the room, holding her breath all the way. She ducked back under the tape and strode down the corridor, almost stumbling into the linen room, where she tore off the suit and shoved it in her tote bag.

Calm, calm
, she told herself, inhaling deeply. Ruth had been a reporter for twenty years and she considered herself to be quite hardened – she’d covered road accidents, natural disasters, she’d even been to a refugee camp in Somalia, all in the line of duty. It was not the first time she had seen a dead body either. In Kosovo and Congo she had seen some terrible things, but still, nothing could prepare you for the sight of a murder victim. She trembled, feeling disturbed and upset, and almost ran to the service elevator, focused only on getting outside. Pushing out through the door, she gulped in the fresh air, glad to see the trees, the walls, the rushing traffic. She turned into a side street and sank on to the steps of a red-brick town house to collect her thoughts. There was one image fixed in her mind: the man lying there on the cold tiles, his toes pointing up towards the ceiling. Who was he? How had he been killed, and had posh, pretty Sophie Ellis done it?

But now Ruth could feel her journalistic instincts taking over. A dead American in a top London hotel wasn’t exactly Watergate. It wasn’t even as potentially explosive as her escort story, not for the
Washington Tribune
, which liked its stories to have a political spin. But she was here, now, in the thick of it. She had seen the body and had the name of the suspect.

She reached into her bag and pulled out her mobile, quickly scrolling to the entry marked ‘Squirrel’.

‘Robbie, it’s Ruth,’ she said quickly. ‘I need a favour.’

‘Really?’ said a weary voice. ‘And here was I thinking you’d called to wish me a happy birthday.’

Robert Sykes was the society editor of
Class
magazine, the ritziest glossy on the newsstand. He had been to school with one of the royals, and thanks to a brother who had done time for drugs, knew everyone from criminals to the highest-ranking aristos in the country. Ruth had met him years ago on a press junket to Budapest, and ever since, he had been the man she called whenever she needed the skinny on anyone wealthy and British. Robbie always knew where the nuts were – hence Ruth’s affectionate nickname.

‘Jeez, is it really today?’ she said, her heart sinking. ‘I’m sorry . . .’

‘See?’ he said. ‘A real friend would have known my birthday is in November.’

She gave a low laugh. ‘Robbie, this is important.’

‘It always is,’ he said, then paused, obviously catching something in her voice. ‘Ruth, are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m fine. I just need some info on one Sophie Ellis. Ring any bells? Rich girl with a wealthy boyfriend?’

‘I think you’ll find there are roughly a zillion rich girls called Sophie in London, darling.’

‘Can you get me details?’

‘And what has this Sophie Ellis done?’

‘And have you steal my exclusive?’ she smiled.

‘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.