20
Ruth rapped impatiently on the oak door. Where the hell was everyone? she thought, stepping back and gazing up at the bedroom windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sophie Ellis’s mother. With no sign of life inside, she took a moment to admire the architecture; Arts and Crafts, she thought idly, remembering a coffee-table book she had once read on the movement. Red brick, with a sloping burnt-orange slate roof, tall narrow windows and towering chimneys, it was the sort of thing they tried to imitate on estates in Chicago and Philly, but somehow they always managed to turn it horribly twee and Stepford Wives-y. The real thing, however, was impressive, if a little faded round the edges. The Ellis family obviously had money.
She knocked again, harder, harder than was probably necessary, as she was still pumped with emotion from her earlier argument with David. On the journey to Cobham she had been going over and over her decision to move in with him. Had it been the right one? So far, their relationship had worked when they had kept their distance. Proximity created intimacy – maybe too much, too soon.
‘Goddamn it,’ she said, focusing back on work, and pressing the doorbell once more. She supposed she could have spoken to Julia Ellis on the phone – or at least called first – but she had wanted to leave the office and drive out to Surrey to clear her head, to give her time to think.
It had been the right decision. She had been surprised how green and, to her eyes, rural it was out here, where Greater London melted into the rarefied commuter belt of Surrey. Wooden bus shelters, iron signposts, pubs with names like the Bull and Gate or the King’s Head, and a noticeably slower pace of life, had gone some way to improve her mood.
Ruth walked around to the side of the house and tried the garden gate. It clicked open. Well, that wouldn’t happen in London, she thought with a smile.
‘Mrs Ellis?’ she called, walking past a rose trellis and into the garden. ‘Anyone there?’
The raised patio at the back of the house was empty – in fact, as Ruth peered in through the windows, it did rather look as though the house itself was abandoned too. Actually, it was a bit of a mess, with drawers left open and stuff all over the floor. I thought these country types kept their houses neat, she thought, walking back to the front of the house.
Spotting a love seat underneath the large apple tree in the garden, she went to sit in it.
‘So what now, genius?’ she wondered out loud, desperate for a cigarette. The truth was, it had been so easy to find the address of the Ellis family home, Ruth had rather assumed the rest would come easily too. It had taken all of two minutes to find Wade House on the internet: a quick look at Sophie’s Facebook page had revealed she had studied at Tassleton prep school in Surrey, and the messages of condolence on her wall told her that Sophie’s dad Peter had recently passed away; then a quick search for ‘Peter Ellis – funeral – Tassleton church, Cobham’ had given her the address on Meadow Lane. Thank you, modern technology.
She had set off half hoping that Sophie might even have run straight home to Mommy. If not, she felt sure Julia could help her flesh out her picture of Sophie and possibly give her a lead on where her daughter was now. One thing she was sure of: a girl like Sophie wouldn’t be able to go too long without touching base with her mom.
She glanced at her watch. Eleven a.m. She was just debating whether to try the local pub, or perhaps the post office, both usually excellent sources of local gossip, when a taxi turned into the drive. She leapt out of the love seat and ran back towards the front door.
‘You there!’ trilled a plummy voice as the cab pulled up. ‘What are you doing on my property?’
Julia Ellis stepped out of the cab and Ruth made an instant assessment. Mid-fifties, very attractive, but with a pinched and cold expression that made Ruth remember the phrase that at fifty you got the face you deserved.
‘Mrs Ellis?’ she said, collecting her thoughts. ‘Could I possibly have a word? It’s about your daughter.’
‘What do you want?’ Julia Ellis replied. She looked even more defensive at the mention of Sophie.
‘My name is Ruth Boden. I’m a reporter.’
‘Then I will have to ask you to get off my property,’ said Julia tartly. ‘The police are due at any moment.’
Ruth was not surprised, or even insulted. Knocking on doors that didn’t want to open was her job; like a dentist, she didn’t take the moans personally.
‘I just wanted to ask if you had heard from your daughter since yesterday evening.’
‘My last contact with her was yesterday afternoon. But I have spoken to her lawyer and we have every confidence that this matter will soon be dropped.’
Ruth saw her opening. If Sophie hadn’t spoken to her mother, it was likely that she hadn’t contacted anybody. With the police wanting to question her, and men with guns on her tail, it was no surprise she had gone to ground.
‘So you haven’t spoken to her today?’
‘I left a message for her this morning to say I was on my way home. I’ve been in Copenhagen visiting my dearest friend. My husband passed away recently and I needed a change of scenery.’
‘You haven’t spoken to your daughter, Mrs Ellis, because she is missing,’ Ruth said, letting the statement hang in the air.
‘Missing? What do you mean?’ she said, looking startled.
‘Sophie has disappeared, Mrs Ellis. I think she’s in trouble and I would very much like to help. I was the last person she spoke to before she went underground.’
‘Underground?’
Ruth felt a knot of guilt. She didn’t want to worry the mother unduly, but she had to make sure she got an invitation inside the house.
‘A police contact of mine was supposed to meet her last night, but she didn’t show up. We think she’s with a boyfriend who lives in Chelsea.’
‘Boyfriend in Chelsea? Do you mean Will Lewis?’
Ruth had already run a name check on the registered owner of the houseboat. It was one Joshua McCormack, not Will Lewis.
‘We think she’s on the run from the police,’ she said. She declined to mention the armed Russians. Julia Ellis looked pale enough as it was.
‘You’d better come in,’ said Julia quickly, looking around as if a neighbour might have heard about the scandal.
She pulled out her keys and rattled them into the lock.
‘You’ll have to excuse the mess, I have been away since Thursday . . .’ Julia let out a little shriek. Stepping in behind her, Ruth immediately recognised that the mess she had seen through the back windows was not everyday domestic disarray – the place had been burgled. There were papers and broken ornaments all over the hall floor and, looking through to the living room, Ruth could see a sofa on its side, with the cushions slashed open.
‘No, no,’ gasped Julia, her breathing becoming heavy and uneven. ‘My home.’
‘I’m calling the police right now,’ said Ruth, pulling out her mobile.
The older woman put out a hand.
‘They are already on their way,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘The inspector in charge of Sophie’s case is due at twelve. He wanted to talk to me.’
‘Inspector Fox?’ said Ruth with a start.
‘That’s right.’
Ruth glanced at her watch – quarter to twelve. Damn, that didn’t give her much time.
Julia had walked through to the living room and was beginning to pick up some books strewn on the floor.
‘I don’t think you should touch anything, Mrs Ellis,’ said Ruth gently. ‘Why don’t you come through to the kitchen and I’ll make you a cup of tea while we wait for the inspector?’
Julia’s eyes were wide, shocked, as she sat down at the kitchen table and Ruth filled the kettle. She looked tiny and brittle against the big oak chair.
‘It’ll have to be Earl Grey, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘No milk you see. I told the milkman I was going to be away . . .’ She stopped and turned to Ruth, her mouth open. ‘You don’t think it was the milkman, do you? He was the only one who knew I’d be out of the country.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Ruth quietly.
Julia gave a mirthless laugh.
‘If whoever it was only knew we had nothing left to take. They should have tried the Hendersons up the road. She’s always boasting about her silverware.’
She shook her head.
‘You know, a few weeks ago, I was standing here with Sophie,’ she said. ‘It was just after my husband’s funeral, and my daughter said that things were going to turn a corner for us. She said it with such sunniness, such confidence, that I almost believed her. But she was wrong, wasn’t she? So wrong.’
Ruth rummaged around the cupboards, finally finding a set of elegant bone-china cups with a pattern picked out in gold. It was all very tasteful; in fact, from what she could see under the mess, the Ellis house was the epitome of upper-middle-class commuter-belt living.
She put the tea in front of Julia and took a seat opposite her. Julia appeared not to notice, too busy stabbing her fingers at the digits of her mobile phone. She tutted loudly when there was no reply from the person she was calling.
‘Sophie, where are you?’ she said, gripping her fingers around the tea cup.
‘I’ve been trying her all morning,’ said Ruth softly. ‘I think her phone is off.’
Julia Ellis shook her head and then focused her full attention on Ruth. ‘You said she spoke to you. Did she give you any idea about where she was going?’
‘I saw her outside her apartment in Battersea, then I followed her to Chelsea. She met a man on a houseboat by Stamford Wharf. Do you have any idea who that might be?’
Julia shook her head.
‘A houseboat?’ There was a subtle look of distaste on her face. ‘Will – that was her last boyfriend, a very nice young man – lived just off the King’s Road. Not in a boat. I hope she hasn’t got in with a bad sort. Ever since the troubles, she hasn’t been herself.’
‘The troubles?’ asked Ruth.
‘My husband lost a lot of money in a bad investment scheme,’ said Julia, looking away; it was clearly not something she wanted to talk about.
‘Please, Mrs Ellis,’ said Ruth. ‘We are all worried about Sophie. Anything you tell me could be relevant.’
Julia hesitated. ‘Well, you’re American, so I suppose you’ll know all about it,’ she said thinly. ‘We lost everything through the Michael Asner Ponzi scheme. The stress of it all killed my husband from a heart attack a few weeks ago.’
Ruth tried to keep her face straight, but her journalistic instincts were tingling. Peter Ellis had invested in the Asner Ponzi scheme? Immediately her mind began to see the story laid out in print: British family wiped out by financial sting, brokenhearted father suffers heart attack, distraught daughter subsequently becomes a murder suspect. She could feel her pulse begin to race. Even for the Washington Tribune, with its emphasis on politics and world news, this was a better story than she had imagined. But still something didn’t quite fit. The Asner scheme had been such big news when it was exposed twelve months earlier because Michael Asner, a supposedly genius investor, had preyed on the East and West Coast super-rich. It was an insiders’ club for the wildly wealthy, and Asner had used their greed against them, providing high returns on investments that nobody thought or wanted to question. The news piece on Peter Ellis’s funeral had mentioned that he was an accountant with a practice in the City. He was clearly a well-off white-collar professional, but he hardly fitted the Asner victim profile.
‘Yes, I read about that,’ she said carefully. ‘Your husband was in financial services, wasn’t he? Is that how he came to invest with Asner?’
‘You mean why was Peter playing with billionaires?’ said Julia tightly. ‘It’s a question I asked him many times, believe me.’
She took a tiny sip of tea which seemed to barely touch her lips. ‘Peter and Michael were good friends at Oxford. Michael Asner was a Fulbright scholar, would you believe? Furiously bright, but a horrid little man, if you ask me.’
‘So you knew him?’
‘I met him a handful of times in the early days of our marriage. I never really liked him; always so full of his own cleverness, as if he was doing us a favour letting us talk to him, even before he became super-successful.’
‘Had you seen him recently?’
She shook her head. ‘Peter and Michael drifted apart once Michael began to move in those powerful Wall Street circles. The last contact I was aware of was about fifteen years ago, when he left the firm of investment brokers he had been working for and set up his own wealth management business. He couldn’t be bothered with us in the years running up to that, but when he was fishing around for investments, suddenly we were good enough. Or at least our life savings were.’
Julia looked up. ‘You heard he died in prison, of course?’ she said. ‘I can’t say I was sorry. How could anyone do that to a friend? Peter was a quiet man. He kept everything bottled up inside him,’ she said, clutching her hand to her chest. ‘When the scheme collapsed and we lost the money, he seemed to be coping well, but then he had a heart attack on that little boat of his. We thought he was going to pull through, but he had another sudden cardiac arrest in hospital a few days later.’
Ruth glanced at her watch again. Fox would be here any minute, and she couldn’t imagine he would be pleased to see her again.
‘You said Sophie hadn’t been herself recently. How did her father’s death affect her?’
‘They were very close,’ Julia said quietly. ‘If I’m honest, I was rather envious of their relationship. It’s been tough for all of us, of course, but Sophie . . . We had to sell her flat in Chelsea, her boyfriend finished with her, and her other friends? Well, she was dropped like a stone. Do you know, only three of her friends came to the funeral? Three!’
‘People can be very judgemental,’ said Ruth.
‘People can be bastards, Miss Boden,’ said Julia, bitterly. ‘And you can quote me on that. We paid through the nose for Sophie’s education; she is a beautiful, refined young woman, and yet when it comes down to it, you realise what ultimately matters to people: money. They only care about money.’
She produced a tissue and dabbed at her eyes.
‘Sorry. This is all very difficult. I’ll have to sell the house, of course. We remortgaged to liquidate some cash, and now . . .’ She looked around at the devastation of the burglary. ‘I knew we should have kept paying for the alarm system,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘But Peter said it was an unnecessary expense. At least I took the Chanel on holiday with me,’ she added, clasping her handbag to her side protectively.
Ruth paused, wondering how to phrase her next question.
‘Sophie must have been very upset about losing the family home, too.’
Julia’s shrewd grey eyes locked on to Ruth’s.
‘Don’t start imagining motives where there are none, Miss Boden,’ she said, steel in her voice. ‘I read the papers, I know how the press can spin things: a young girl fallen on hard times tries to trap a rich man and it goes tragically wrong. That did not happen with my daughter, do you understand me?’
‘Honestly, Mrs Ellis,’ said Ruth quickly, ‘I’m really on your side. I just want to see justice done.’
‘Justice?’ she spat. ‘I don’t believe in justice any more. Not when Michael Asner’s wife is still sitting in some big house in upstate New York. Where’s the justice in that?’
Ruth looked up at the kitchen clock. Twelve on the dot – time was up.
‘I’d better be going,’ she said, stuffing her notebook into her handbag. ‘I’m sure Sophie will be in touch very soon. Perhaps the police will have more news.’
Julia went with her to the front door.
‘Do you have a photograph of Sophie I could take?’ she asked quickly.
Julia nodded. She went into the study and returned with a family snapshot.
‘You will help her, won’t you?’ she said. ‘Sophie’s a good girl and she’s already been through so much. I don’t know what’s happened with this man in the hotel, but she wouldn’t hurt a fly, you do believe that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Ruth truthfully. Just then, there was the sound of a car turning into the drive and her heart sank. Shit.
She walked down the drive as Fox was getting out of his saloon.
‘We must stop meeting like this,’ she said, lifting one eyebrow.
Fox didn’t smile. ‘Why are you here, Ruth?’
‘Just doing my job, unlike you.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he frowned, slamming his door.
‘Mrs Ellis has been burgled, Inspector.’
Fox looked up at the house, concern on his face.
‘Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it, both mother and daughter burgled within a day of each other?’
‘I’ll let you know when I’ve examined the evidence,’ he said, clearly annoyed to be arriving at the scene after a reporter.
‘So any more details on Nick Beddingfield?’
He moved to walk past her. ‘As you say, I’ve got a job to do.’
‘Come on, Fox,’ said Ruth, invading his personal space. Fox sighed and took a step back from her.
‘We’ve tracked down his mother in LA. She’s distraught, understandably. She’s on a flight out to London, not that she can collect the body just yet.’
‘Where’s she staying?’
‘Oh, give me a break, Boden.’
‘You know I’ll find out, so there’s no point in not telling me.’ She batted her eyelashes at him. ‘For me, Ian?’
Fox gave a hint of a smile.
‘That’s the first time you’ve called me by my Christian name.’
‘I’ll do it again if you tell me where Mrs Beddingfield is staying.’
‘The Horizon Hotel, Paddington. Now get out of here before I accuse you of tampering with evidence. Again.’
She watched him walk up to the house, feeling a moment’s sympathy – for Fox, who had to deliver so much bad news; for Mrs Beddingfield having to fly twelve hours to see her son’s dead body; for Julia Ellis, who was all alone in a house full of ghosts. But as she turned and walked back towards her car, her thoughts were for Sophie Ellis, who had been dragged into this mess through, she suspected, no fault of her own.
‘You will help her, won’t you?’ her mother had said. And she would. Not only was this going to help Sophie, Ruth knew it was the story to help herself.