44
‘You’re pretty determined not to let me have a day off, aren’t you?’ Fox stood at the door of his Albert Embankment flat wearing a navy polo shirt, jeans and a mischievous smile.
‘Well, are you going to let me in or aren’t you?’ said Ruth, wedging her shoe in the door.
‘Are you always this forward?’ he said, standing back to let her pass.
‘Only when I want something,’ she replied. She was about to say something more, but her mouth fell open. ‘I don’t believe this place, you lucky sonofabitch.’
She walked through the flat’s spotless open-plan living room, her eyes wide. Ahead of her were floor-to-ceiling windows giving an uninterrupted view of the Houses of Parliament silhouetted against the sunset.
‘Fox! Why didn’t you tell me you were loaded?’ she said, looking back at him with amazement.
Fox smiled.
‘Not loaded,’ he said. ‘No kids, no wife, not many vices and an interest-only mortgage. Plus I don’t have any free time to spend my vast income.’
Ruth was too busy looking at the view to listen properly. She walked right up to the window, where dusk was falling over the city. It was magnificent.
‘Do you need a lodger?’ she asked, peeking into the other rooms, each equally neat.
‘We’ll work up to it,’ said Fox. ‘Could we start with a drink?’
‘I think I need a big one after this shock,’ she laughed.
‘How about a glass of wine?’
Fox went over to his chrome fridge – of course he had a chrome fridge – and got out a bottle of white wine, quickly opening it and pouring Ruth a glass.
She leant against the breakfast bar and giggled.
‘You are a dark horse, Fox.’
She couldn’t help smiling. She was a journalist, so she was genetically predisposed to being nosy about the way people lived, but this had blown all her preconceptions about Fox out of the water. If she was honest, she had expected him to live in some scruffy apartment in Stockwell with a full sink and a clothes horse in the bath. But this, this had turned her image of the inspector completely on its head.
She walked over to examine a group of photographs tastefully framed on a nearby wall. Family photos, a couple of Fox in various energetic poses: skiing, sailing with a group of friends. In one he was running with a rugby ball, surrounded by the distinctive dark and light blue shirts of an Oxford–Cambridge Varsity match.
‘Oxford?’ she said, surprised.
‘I was sporty,’ he replied. ‘Of course, I’ve let all that slide now.’
‘But you were a rugby blue.’
‘Very observant for a journalist.’
Ruth slapped her forehead.
‘Fox – you’re a trust-fund babe! Oxford, this apartment? How did I miss it?’
‘My family aren’t filthy rich, if that’s what you mean,’ he said, embarrassed now. ‘The deposit for this place came from an inheritance, and yes, I went to Oxford. You think because I’ve got a northern accent I should be living in a bedsit? Looks can be deceiving.’
‘So you’re rich. You’re clever. In fact I bet you’re one of those fast-tracked inspectors. You know, I might have to start calling you Sherlock Holmes.’ She smiled, giving him a long, lingering look.
Ruth had never been materialistic. She preferred the company of the newsagent to most newspaper editors. But Fox had more layers than she had at first thought and she wouldn’t mind getting to unpeel them.
She lifted an apple from the fruit bowl and bit into it. Fox observed her and laughed.
‘Well, I suppose I should be flattered that you feel so at home already.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Ruth. She realised she hadn’t eaten anything all day.
He went back to the fridge and pulled out a bag of fresh pasta.
‘Now this takes five minutes,’ he said, reading the label. ‘Do you think you can wait that long?’
‘Yes, please,’ she said, suddenly ravenous. She watched closely as Fox set to work, pulling out shiny pans and expensive-looking knives. He was ordered and meticulous, even when he was making pasta sauce: the onions were diced like a pro.
‘So what’s so urgent, Ruth?’ he asked as he added them to the pan. ‘You sounded pretty excited when you rang.’
Ruth hesitated, not sure how to play it. She didn’t want to come on too strong, yelling about how she had cracked the case, but then she desperately needed his help and he wasn’t going to do what she asked without proof.
She pushed her glass to one side and picked up her bag, pulling out a file.
‘Look at this,’ she said, taking out a print and putting it on the counter. ‘This is a still from CCTV footage of the Riverton lobby,’ she said, stabbing her finger against the photo. ‘This woman with the bag is getting into the lift at 7.32.
‘Now look at these pictures of Lana Goddard-Price. Same bag, same blouse, same build, right?’
She slapped down another sheet.
‘This is the same woman leaving the hotel twenty-five minutes later. And look at the shape of her bag. It’s fatter. What’s the betting it’s got the other half of a smashed champagne bottle in it? Maybe even Nick Beddingfield’s laptop.’
Fox was about to respond, but Ruth held up a hand.
‘There’s more,’ she said, putting down another photograph. ‘Here – a picture of Sophie’s dad. Lana Goddard-Price’s housekeeper identified Peter Ellis as Lana’s lover.’
‘What?’ said Fox. ‘How did you . . .?’
But Ruth ploughed on, holding up a picture printed from the Red Heart gym website.
‘This is Mike, he worked with Sophie. He told me he felt Lana was targeting Sophie, lavishing her with attention, asking her to house-sit; he thought she had deliberately sought Sophie out. Now doesn’t that sound suspicious when you know her connection to Sophie’s father?’
Fox was looking at the pictures, deep in thought. At least he’s considering it, thought Ruth.
‘But Lana was married to a hugely wealthy man,’ he said. ‘What did she need Peter for?’
Ruth shrugged. ‘Maybe he was just a really good screw. Or maybe she wanted something from him. Apparently Lana and Simon’s marriage is on the rocks; maybe it was her escape plan.’
‘But then Peter had no money, remember?’ said Fox. ‘He lost it all in that American investment thingy.’
Ruth pulled a face, frustrated. She knew that, taken on their own, none of these points held much weight, but she was hoping that putting them all together would sway Fox enough to at least question Lana.
He picked up the still pictures of the CCTV footage.
‘Have you got any more of these?’ he asked.
‘Loads,’ said Ruth, opening the file and handing him the pile of printouts she’d picked up at Chuck’s. He stood there examining them carefully, comparing them with the photographs of Lana.
‘I don’t know, Ruth. It could be her, but what do you expect me to do with this – get Interpol to put out a red notice and haul her in from her St-Tropez sunlounger?’
She threw the file down in frustration.
‘What do you mean, I don’t know, Ruth? What sort of evidence are you after?’
‘Something more tangible than a few fuzzy photos looking a bit like a few fizzy party pictures.’
‘You mean like fingerprints?’ she said slowly, a light bulb coming on in her head. ‘Do you have a sandwich bag around the kitchen?’
‘What?’ asked Fox, looking utterly perplexed.
‘A sandwich bag.’
Shaking his head, he retrieved a small plastic freezer bag from the cupboard.
‘You found fingerprints on the fragments of champagne bottle in Nick Beddingfield’s bathroom, didn’t you?’
Fox nodded. ‘They’ve already been sent to New Scotland Yard’s Scenes of Crime branch. There was no match on the system.’
‘But you search against your database, don’t you? Fingerprints that are already in the system.’
Ruth already knew the answer; she’d spoken to enough SOC officers to know how it worked. Once prints had been retrieved, they were searched against the police national computer, which collated possible matches with the prints of known offenders.
‘Yes,’ said Fox. ‘And against any local suspects. As we’d guessed, we found Sophie Ellis’s fingerprints on the glass fragments, but then she told us she’d been drinking the champagne with Beddingfield the previous evening. It doesn’t point to much.’
‘But what if I asked you to run a match between the champagne bottle fingerprints and another sample?’
Ruth delved into her handbag and pulled out the biro she had taken from Lana’s bedside cabinet. She’d only used it to write down her phone details for Cherry, but somehow she’d absently put it in her handbag with her notebook.
‘Exhibit A. One biro belonging to Lana Goddard-Price,’ she said, putting it in the freezer bag.
‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘There’ll be prints on the pen’s outer casing. Can you check them against the fingerprints you found at the crime scene?’
Fox looked at her aghast.
‘You’re unbelievable, you know that?’
‘Look,’ said Ruth defensively, ‘I know you won’t be able to use them in court, but just trust me. Lana Goddard-Price is the doer, Ian. I can feel it.’
‘Where – in your waters?’ he said sarcastically. ‘I’m not sure that will stand up as evidence in front of the CPS.’
‘So lift the prints off the biro and do a quick match, then you can go get official evidence.’
He barked out a laugh.
‘Quick match? Ruth, these things can take weeks.’
Ruth felt her patience snap.
‘For God’s sake, Fox, pull your damn finger out. Get someone to run it against computer software to get a probable match – something! We haven’t got weeks. Sophie Ellis’s life could be in danger here; I’m not asking for fun, you know.’
Fox looked at her, startled.
‘Bloody hell, Ruth. You can be fierce, you know that?’
He reluctantly picked up the biro with the plastic bag.
‘Not exactly a professional evidence collection, was it?’ he said doubtfully, then caught Ruth’s frown. ‘I have a friend at one of the borough fingerprint labs; I’ll get her to take a look off the books, okay? But it’s not going to be high priority.’
She wasn’t sure which bit she felt more piqued about. Her low-priority evidence or the mention of a female friend in the lab. She could picture the scene now. Fox and his pretty forensics officer, sexy in her glasses and white lab coat, flirting over an exhibit. He’d invite her for a drink and they’d end up back at her cosy cottage for a glass of Chablis in front of a roaring fire.
Stop it, she told herself. You’re a journalist, not a Mills and Boon author. But she could feel herself getting upset and she didn’t know why.
‘Look, Fox. I know you don’t take me seriously,’ she said. ‘I know you think I’m one of Dan Davis’s silly female hacks he keeps on a lead so he never has to buy a round. But I want this story. I need it. They’re closing down the bureau and this is all I have. My boyfriend has left me – shafted me actually, stolen one of my stories and used it to get his own promotion whilst I’ll probably be out of a job by Friday. So you might question my methods, but never question my commitment.’
Fox handed her a bowl of steaming pasta.
‘Nice speech,’ he smiled. ‘Now eat up before it gets cold.’
It smelt delicious, but suddenly she wasn’t hungry.
‘You know, we’ve got dark hair samples taken from the hotel suite,’ he said, as if he was thinking aloud. ‘And we could do a cell-site analysis too . . .’
‘What’s a cell site?’ said Ruth.
‘The geographical area of a phone when calls or texts are made or received. In cities, you can pinpoint it to within a few hundred feet.’
‘Can you do that retrospectively?’
He nodded. ‘Or we could just get her mobile phone records.’