She sat down in an armchair, tucking her feet under her. ‘That’s the thing with all of them – I’m not sure anyone on that chart is exactly what they seem on the surface.’
Fox pushed his hand through his short brown hair.
‘That’s the way I’ve been thinking too. Everyone’s got something to hide.’
He turned and smiled. Ruth looked at him. He really was quite good-looking, she thought. Shame he spent most of his life scowling. Not that she was one to criticise; she’d been pretty gloomy these past few days, but then who could blame her? She glanced around the half-empty apartment and made a vague note to contact David that weekend. She had no desire to speak to him, but every intention of getting her belongings back as quickly as possible; if he thought he could use her good linens, her nice candles to feather his pleasure den for PR Susie, then he was very much mistaken.
‘So let’s fill in the blanks,’ said Fox. He picked up the marker and scrawled the words ‘wine fraud’ next to Nick’s name. He looked at Ruth. ‘To answer your question, it was certainly motive enough for murder,’ he said. ‘A single bottle of vintage wine can go for twenty grand.’
Ruth looked down at her glass. ‘Really? I’d better start paying more attention when I’m in Waitrose.’
Fox shook his head.
‘It’s not always the wine itself – at least that’s what the fraud squad guys were telling me. Wine fraud can have links to wider organised crime. It’s as if these bottles are made of solid gold, like little recession-proof trading units. And obviously that makes them very attractive for people who might want to hide where their money’s come from.’
‘Money laundering?’
‘Yes, drugs, prostitution, anything really. And a bottle of fake wine’s much easier to get through customs than a suitcase of money or a few kilos of heroin. The crooks sell it on legitimately and turn that cash back into smack, whores or whatever on the other side of the border.’
Fox drew a line from ‘wine scam’ to the word ‘money’, then back to Nick.
‘So if Nick had been pushing his phoney claret on the Russian Mafia or the Triads or whoever, and they discovered it wasn’t the real deal, they could well have got pretty upset.’
Fox pulled a face. ‘It’s a nice theory, of course,’ he said, putting the lid back on the pen. ‘But we have zero evidence to prove that’s what’s going on.’
‘What about those guys shooting at Sophie down by the river?’
‘One, we don’t know they were gangsters,’ he said, ticking the points off on his fingers. ‘Two, we don’t know for sure who the other guy was – yes, we checked the owner of the boat, Joshua McCormack. But that’s not necessarily the man that Sophie ran off into the night with.’
‘I checked out McCormack. Does he have a criminal record?’
Fox shook his head. ‘No. Apparently he’s a watch salesman. He’s no relation to Sophie. Her friends have never heard of him.’
‘Maybe he’s part of the wine fraud.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Fox. ‘Although there’s no hard evidence that Nick was involved in a wine fraud.’
He held up the almost empty bowl of nachos.
‘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.’
‘What about other forensic evidence from the hotel suite?’
‘We found prints on some shards of glass on the bathroom floor. They must have come from the smashed champagne bottle used to whack him over the head. There were also hair samples. Six different types, but they could be from the maid, other guests, Nick and Sophie. Unless we have something specific to match it with, then I’m not sure how useful that is. We could go down the DNA testing route only to find it’s the housekeeper’s.’
Ruth began to pace the room.
‘How did Nick think he was going to make money from Sophie? A couple of phone calls and he’d find out her family had lost everything.’
They lapsed into silence as they ate, Ruth running the options over in her mind.
‘Did you get any leads from Nick’s phone or laptop?’
‘That’s part of the problem. There was nothing like that in his suite. I doubt a man like Nick wouldn’t have those things. So they must have been taken by his killer.’
‘Again, it gets Sophie off the hook. A crime of passion is one thing. A meticulous clean-up operation is another.’
It didn’t bring her any closer to answers, but her brainstorm with Fox had certainly had the desired effect: she had more questions.
‘Thanks, Ian,’ she said as she collected up the now empty plates and cartons.
‘What for?’ he said. ‘I should be thanking you for all this.’
‘For coming here and letting me talk it through. I know you didn’t have to – in fact, probably shouldn’t have.’
She met his gaze and felt . . . what? A connection, something she really hadn’t felt with a man for a long time. It was there for one shimmering moment, then he looked away and it was gone.
‘Well, I’d better go,’ he said, getting up.
He lingered, and for second Ruth thought about asking him to stay, but that was madness, wasn’t it? Besides, they’d both got what they wanted – just another of those little transactions between the press and the police.
She saw him to the door.
‘Thanks again,’ she said. ‘And sorry for dragging you so far north.’
‘My pleasure,’ he said. ‘Really.’
And then he was gone and Ruth was left standing in her hallway, wondering if she was ever going to be able to get to sleep.