Perfect Strangers (31 page)

‘Why?’ asked Josh, clearly interested.

‘There was no point making more modern vintages. Many of them are still in the cellars of the wine producers, and nowadays the estates use sophisticated anti-fraud devices: proof-tagging, microchipping. But old wines are different. Before 1960, many of the top producers sold barrels to private clients or dealers, who bottled the wine themselves.’

She turned to look at them.

‘How many people have tasted a 1947 Cheval Blanc or even know what one looks like? These people who buy wines, they have no knowledge of wine,’ she said with distaste. ‘They only care that it is rare and valuable.’

She stretched up to pull a handful of grapes from a vine and passed them to Sophie to try. They were sweet and juicy.

‘I made the wine here on the estate from these grapes, plus other varieties of grape I buy wholesale,’ she explained. ‘Nick took the bottles from the chateau to a cellar near Avignon. We have about ten thousand bottles of blended wine we pass off as three-hundred-euro burgundy. Then a few hundred bottles of really good
grand cru
that he sells for fifteen hundred euros or more. Nick handled the entire sales operation.’

Sophie did a quick mental calculation. This was millions of euros’ worth of counterfeit wine. She looked at Josh and saw that he had reached a similar conclusion. Two million euros was certainly enough of a motive for someone to kill Nick.

They turned back towards the chateau, the sun slanting through the vines, striping the red earth.

‘Do you think Nick could have fallen out with a customer?’ asked Josh. ‘Maybe annoyed someone?’

‘It’s possible, but Nick was careful. We mainly sold to wealthy professionals, lawyers, bankers who wanted to impress clients at dinner parties, or small boutique wine merchants like Monsieur Durand who don’t ask too many questions about provenance. There were also a few sales directly to rich Russian and Chinese clients he met on the Euro party circuit. That was why he had gone to London, to collect more business. That is what he told me,’ she said, her voice falling more quiet. ‘The truth is that he was getting ready to leave me.’

‘How do you know?’

‘There was another lover.’

‘The countess?’ said Josh.

‘The old woman with the Paris apartment?’ Sandrine snorted. ‘I know all about her. She was rich and lonely. They weren’t lovers. They were friends. Nick saw her occasionally; he made her life feel exciting. In return she let him use the apartment.’

‘So who are you talking about?’

‘I thought it might be you,’ she said quietly. ‘In the last weeks, before he left for London, he was distant. I kept catching him on the phone to someone, talking in a low voice. And when he called me, I had the sense that someone else was in the room.’

‘It can’t be me,’ said Sophie fiercely. ‘I only met Nick just over a week ago. We bumped into each other at a party. I had never seen or spoken to him before that.’

‘So you are not “A”?’

‘“A”?’ replied Sophie.

‘I am a woman.’ Sandrine smiled. ‘I know how love works. So of course I went through his phone. There were dozens of texts from someone called “A”. The last text I saw said “Meet at Jean’s party on 10th”, which I took to be Jean Polieux’s annual party.’

‘So you have no idea who A is?’

Sandrine shrugged. ‘As much idea as you do,
ma chérie
.’

‘Did you take down the number?’ asked Josh.

The Frenchwoman nodded.

‘Did you call it?’ asked Sophie.

Sandrine smiled.

‘This is a woman’s instinct, is it not? You want to know who your rival is, so you know how to fight them.’

Her face turned sad.

‘No, in the end, I could not. I suppose I didn’t think I would like what I was going to hear.’

They had reached the front entrance of the chateau now.

‘Could you give me the number?’ said Josh. ‘It might be the link we’re looking for.’

They followed Sandrine into a study. She crossed to a writing desk just inside the door and pulled out a hardback address book, writing down the number on a Post-it note in her loopy Gallic writing.

‘Here, I have something else for you too,’ she said, opening a drawer and handing Josh a stiff white card. ‘This is the invitation to Polieux’s party. You should go. Perhaps you will find something there too.’

Thanking her, they walked back out into the sunshine. At the top of the stone steps, Sophie turned back to Sandrine.

‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

Sandrine gave her a half-smile. ‘Do not worry, I will be all right. Making the wine with Nick, it gave me confidence in what I do. I think I will try to sell my own wines – and if Pierre doesn’t like it, well . . . as I say, I will be okay.’

Sophie nodded, about to follow Josh down to the car, but Sandrine touched her arm.

‘Today, my heart aches, tomorrow too, I think,’ she said, holding Sophie’s gaze. ‘But a little piece of him will always be there.’

‘I know,’ said Sophie, reaching across to hug her goodbye. ‘I know just how you feel.’

29

Ruth stood in the darkening street, staring up at the windows of the
Tribune
’s office, two or three of them glowing orange even though it was past seven.
Is this it?
she thought.
Is this really home?
When she had tearfully run out of David’s building and grabbed a cab, there had been no hesitation when the driver asked ‘Where to?’

She had come straight to the one place she felt safe and valued, the place where she could lose herself in words and facts and stories. The place she could hide.

She allowed herself a wry smile as she walked inside, because that was the truth. All her life she had used work as a shield, throwing herself into her job when her parents had split up, burying herself in more and more assignments when her dad had died. She had blamed work for relationships that had gone awry, friendships that had petered out, the motherhood that had never happened, because, well, it was easier than looking inside herself for the real reason.

Waving to the security guard and swiping her card to activate the lift, Ruth thought back to a relationship she had once had with a South African photographer when she had been stationed in Cape Town. Jonathon. He had been so handsome – sharp, too. In fact, now she thought about it, Jon had been pretty damn perfect. So what had gone wrong? Isaac Grey, that was what. He had called wondering whether Ruth was interested in a post in Cairo. She had taken it on the spot, explaining to her heartbroken lover that it was a career opportunity she simply couldn’t miss. Of course that had been a lie, like all the others. Work was simply an excuse not to let anyone get close. Not for the first time, Ruth wondered if decisions were made in life not because of what you really wanted, but because of what you were afraid of.

As the lift took her up to the office floor, she closed her eyes and immediately she could see them together, as clearly as if it had just happened.

Her mum and Robert, the publisher of her dad’s paper. Together on the kitchen table, her mother’s long cotton skirt hiked up around her waist, his black leather briefcase propped up next to the radio blasting out the country and western songs she loved to listen to when she made meatloaf. And now it had happened to Ruth. Twenty-odd years later, the second she had let someone get close to her, she had been betrayed.

‘I thought you were going home.’

Ruth jumped as Chuck’s face appeared above the partition. She clutched at her chest and let out a long breath.

‘Don’t do that,’ she said. ‘My life flashed before me.’

‘How was it?’ smiled Chuck.

‘Not as exciting as I’d have liked. Anyway, what are you doing here?’

‘Finishing up your research about Michael Asner. All is about to be revealed.’

‘Well I’m glad someone is working hard today,’ she said, her mind involuntarily jumping back to the image of David standing in the bath.

‘Is there a problem?’ frowned Chuck.

Ruth sighed. ‘Do you fancy a drink?’

The Frontline Club, just a stone’s throw from Paddington station, was Ruth’s favourite London watering hole. Over the years she had become a permanent fixture at the bar, and she couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t have a good night out there. It was not a trendy media social watering hole like Soho or Shoreditch House, but in Ruth’s eyes, it was infinitely more interesting: a members’ club whose
raison d’être
was to champion independent journalism. She loved the gung-ho adventurers she might meet there: the war correspondents just back from the Sudan, the photographers who spent more time in jeeps than on the tube. She loved mixing with them, partly because they had shared experiences and friends, but partly because they reminded her why she had gone into journalism in the first place.

Ruth got a bottle of wine from the bar and found a table, while Chuck slid in opposite her and took a file out of his man bag.
Gay?
wondered Ruth idly. Choice of bag did not define your sexuality, of course, but then she couldn’t remember Chuck ever talking about any girlfriends, and he
could
be pretty bitchy. It would be a shame if he did swing the other way: he was good-looking in a clean-cut pretty-boy sort of way.
Stop thinking like that, Ruth
, she scolded herself.
It’s only been about an hour since you became single
. She closed her eyes to push the thought from her head – to push all thoughts from her head – and concentrated on the wine. She poured two generous glasses, then pushed one to Chuck.

‘Okay, tell me what you got.’

‘So you wanted to know about Michael Asner,’ said Chuck, opening his file.

‘Yes,’ she said, knocking back her wine. ‘Come on, blow my socks off.’

Chuck fumbled with his papers, and Ruth had to remind herself that it was probably quite intimidating for this green new boy to be interrogated by his de facto boss. She remembered what it was like those first few months in the Washington office, how terrified she had been of Isaac Grey and all the other grizzled old-school print guys. Chuck obviously had a sharp mind – he had graduated summa cum laude from Yale – but that didn’t mean he was good under pressure. Still, she liked him, and you didn’t see many academic high-flyers scrambling to get into the inkies these days. With so many tempting openings on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley, who in their right mind would jump on to the sinking ship of print journalism?

‘Take your time,’ she said kindly. ‘It’s not an exam.’

Chuck looked up from his notes and gave her a weak smile. ‘Sorry, just a little disorganised.’

‘Well, let’s skip the back story,’ she said. ‘We all know that Asner basically promised the punters a huge return on their money, but he didn’t bother to invest any of it.’

Chuck nodded. ‘Yes, it was a pyramid scheme: he’d use the money from new investors to pay supposed “profits” to people further up the scheme, and seeing the big returns, the original people invested again. And so it went, round and round.’

‘Well the thing I’m interested in is the
who
, not the
how
,’ said Ruth, pouring more wine into her glass. ‘I spoke to a woman in Surrey, the wife of an ordinary accountant, who lost everything in the Asner scam. Is that common?’

‘Yes, almost a quarter of the victims were what you’d call ordinary investors,’ said Chuck, flipping through his notes. ‘Asner made his investment seem incredibly exclusive, but he allowed a lot of feeder funds from London, Paris, Madrid to join in, and that’s how mom and pop investors got caught. They were caught up in the hype, flattered to be allowed in – the headlines make you think it’s all billionaires who can afford it, but I think a lot of people will lose everything because of Asner.’

Ruth nodded thoughtfully.

‘Which brings me to the big question: how was Asner killed?’

‘It was a prison fight about three months ago,’ said Chuck, pulling out another sheet of notes. ‘The official account is that two Russian thugs were having a brawl and Asner was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time – got stabbed in the neck with a shiv: a makeshift prison knife.’

Ruth leant forward on her elbows.

‘And what do you think, Chuck? Do you think that’s what happened?’

Chuck shrugged and sipped his wine. ‘If you’re asking for my gut reaction, I’d say that sounds very convenient. A lot of very rich, very powerful people lost money with him. Moguls, oligarchs, some even say organised crime syndicates used the scheme as a way of laundering cash. None of these people are the kind who like to lose money.’

‘So you think someone had him killed? For revenge or punishment, maybe?’

Ruth didn’t expect an answer, of course, she was simply talking it through, weighing up the facts, but she also respected Chuck’s opinion. She knew the pages and pages of notes spread out in front of him were the result of hours of diligent research: telephone calls, first-hand interviews, digging out documents and court reports – the proper way, not just half an hour surfing the net.

‘I think it’s highly likely someone
wanted
Asner dead,’ said Chuck. ‘And it’s the easiest thing in the world to have somebody killed in an American prison.’

‘Who’s been watching too many episodes of
The Sopranos
?’ said Ruth.

‘A bit before my time,’ said Chuck.

God, he must have been in junior high when that started
, thought Ruth, feeling horribly old.

‘No, a life sentence means life in the States,’ continued Chuck, ‘so what’s to stop some guy who is already serving a hundred years from stabbing some fat old banker? It’s no skin off his nose and he could probably get a few cartons of cigarettes out of it.’

‘So the money,’ said Ruth. ‘Where did it all go?’

Chuck tapped the table with one finger.

‘That’s the billion-dollar question – literally, as it happens. Of course, a huge chunk of it funded Asner’s lifestyle. He had homes around the globe, a fleet of vintage cars, a private jet, a multimillion-dollar art collection, all the usual stuff.’

‘Nice for some,’ said Ruth.

‘Yes,’ agreed Chuck, his confidence growing as he warmed to the subject. ‘But here’s where it gets interesting. No one knows how much went into the Asner fund exactly, but it almost certainly ran into the billions. When Asner was finally caught by the SEC, he was extremely helpful with the authorities, telling them all about his bank accounts and properties around the world, but the Securities and Exchange Commission says they only recovered something like four hundred million.’