37
Robert ‘Squirrel’ Sykes, society editor of Class magazine, looked at Ruth with a sly smile.
‘So tell me again,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘You’re there in the hallway, your hair perfectly back-lit by the bathroom cabinet, and the sexy policeman says in a deep voice, “My pleasure”? Why didn’t you just grab him and take him right there?’
Ruth slapped his arm.
‘I only split up with David three days ago. What sort of girl do you take me for?’
‘The sort who should be gagging for a bit of saucy rebound sex, that’s who.’
She flipped her napkin at him and tried not to smile. Ostensibly, her Saturday afternoon lunch with Robbie at Scott’s was to pick his brains about Lana Goddard-Price, but they’d spent the first twenty minutes huddled at their corner table talking about Fox, or ‘your dirty detective’ as Squirrel insisted on referring to him. The truth was, since their intimate night brainstorming over Chinese, Ruth hadn’t been able to get him out of her head, and in a way that wasn’t a million miles from what Robert was suggesting.
Fox was infuriatingly bullish and patronising and he clearly didn’t trust her enough to give her the information she needed, although she had to admit she reciprocated on that score. But there was something aloof and elusive about him that was as sexy as hell. However, the last thing she needed right now was any more inappropriate liaisons; the prospect of having to face poor Chuck Dean was embarrassing enough, and she and Fox had a potentially useful working relationship.
‘Anyway, I didn’t come here to talk about my non-existent love life,’ said Ruth. ‘I’ve got a story to write, remember?’
‘Oh, I know and it sounds so exciting. Honestly, you’re wasted on the Trib. You should so come over to Class. You know Cate Balcon loves you.’
The idea of approaching Class’s glamorous editor had of course crossed Ruth’s mind more than once. Class was a respected stylish glossy and one of the few magazines left which actually ran in-depth features on crime, political intrigue and the back-stabbing antics of the upper classes. Plus it would be a joy to spend the day in the energetic slipstream of Robbie Sykes. But Ruth wasn’t quite ready to leave the cut-and-thrust deadline hell of newspapers, especially when the prospect of bureau chief was still on the table.
‘It’s flattering to be considered,’ she said, ‘but I’m gunning for a Pulitzer, which isn’t going to happen unless I finish this story.’
She smiled at the thought of American journalism’s highest accolade; the prize she had always dreamed of winning. Two friends from college now had them and she had been a more promising journalist than both of them. But so far she had never really got the killer break. Never had that right-place-at-the-right-time story. She knew she had not yet fulfilled her potential.
‘Well it’s your loss,’ said Robbie with mock affront. ‘You’re missing out on some fabulous parties.’
He poured her some more wine and looked around the restaurant with its chic twenties decor and crisp white tablecloths, the diners a mix of edgy media types and old money.
‘Although I could do with coming here more often,’ said Robbie. ‘Darling, this is a treat. I only hope I can earn it.’
‘So come on then, tell me what you know about Lana Goddard-Price.’
Since her visits to the gym and Lana’s house, Ruth had become convinced there was more to Mrs Goddard-Price than met the eye. She was particularly intrigued by Mike’s suggestion that Lana had somehow targeted Sophie. She wasn’t entirely sure how it would help her solve Nick Beddingfield’s murder, but she had been a journalist long enough to know that random leads often led you in interesting directions.
And who better to find out a little bit more about Lana Goddard-Price than Mr Social Intrigue himself, the Squirrel? Even if a quick glance at the wine list had told her that she’d be paying for it for months to come.
‘Okay, our friend Lana is late thirties, though she claims thirty-four,’ said Robbie, buttering a roll. ‘Spanish, former model – although not a very successful one from what I can gather. She’d been knocking around London for years, hanging around with the club crowd rather than the country set: traders rather than investment bankers, footballers and the like.’
He crinkled his nose in distaste.
‘Anyway, there were whispers she was a bit of a gold-digger, but she was never a player until she met Simon Goddard-Price and married him about a year ago.’
‘And who’s this lucky man?’
‘Hedge fund manager, chairman of GP Capital. Absolutely loaded; we’re talking net worth of about four hundred million. Rich list, private jet and so on, works out of Geneva now, I think.’
‘You think?’ teased Ruth.
‘Darling, it’s not my fault if these people choose to hide themselves away. Simon doesn’t dabble in the society circuit very much. You’re lucky I got this much.’
‘So the bottom line is that Lana struck gold after all?’
Robbie pursed his lips. ‘I don’t know about that. Rumour has it that Simon wants a divorce. That grand house in Knightsbridge is in hubby’s name, and word is Lana signed a pre-nup; five years ago they weren’t worth the paper they were written on, but the law is changing. My guess is the house won’t be part of the pay-off. She’ll probably be left with six months’ housekeeper wages as severance.’
Ruth scribbled it all down. Lana was on the skids and presumably knew it, so it was reasonable to assume that she would be looking for an exit strategy. But what had that got to do with Sophie Ellis?
Robbie suddenly looked more animated.
‘Darling, Simon Cowell is over there. I just want to pop over and say hi. Order two coffees. Irish.’ He winked.
Ruth craned her neck to see Cowell, but she had the wrong seat to be in eyeshot. Sighing, she ordered the warm pistachio cake and two Irish coffees and began doodling on the notebook in front of her.
She wrote three words in the middle of the page. Lana. Sophie. Nick. She circled the word Lana. She was definitely linked to Sophie. She was ‘after her’, according to Mike from the gym; targeting her, befriending her, drawing her into her world. If she wasn’t after Sophie in a sexual sense, then it meant she wanted something else from her. Money? Contacts? Information?
A penny suddenly dropped. Another person had been after Sophie too – Nick. He had romanced her, become attached to her world, and Jeanne Parsons had made Ruth question his motives. If Nick and Lana were both targeting Sophie, then it made them connected. And Ruth was sure that Nick’s murderer was linked to him somehow.
She felt giddy with excitement. She grabbed her bag and went out of the restaurant. Stabbing numbers into her phone, she called Chuck Dean.
She took a depth breath; mumbling some contrite apology about her behaviour at the Frontline Club would only make things worse.
‘Chuck, I need you to do something for me. Don’t worry, it’s not of a sexual nature,’ she said brazenly.
For one moment, she thought he had taken it the wrong way, but his low baritone laugh reassured her that their friendship was back on track.
‘CCTV footage from the Riverton lobby. I need you to get hold of it. Not just on the morning of Nick’s murder, but during his entire stay.’
‘Okay,’ he replied, not even flinching about the big ask. Every journalist in town would be after the footage. She supposed some night-shift security guard would be making a nice little earner selling copies.
‘Do you want me to sift through it frame by frame?’
There was a reason Ruth hadn’t tried to get hold of the footage before. Fox had already intimated that it hadn’t been that useful. It had shown Sophie leaving and entering the Riverton at exactly the times she had told the police inspector. Ruth also did not have the resources to identify every person caught on film; there would be so many guests milling around the lobby in the hour before and after Nick’s death that it would be a lengthy and ultimately pointless exercise going through the CCTV frame by frame, unless you were looking out for a specific someone.
She lowered her voice and glanced around Mount Street.
‘I want you to check the footage and see if you can identify Lana Goddard-Price. I’ll send you some links to photographs of her. I want to know if at any time she visited Nick Beddingfield in his hotel, all right? Can you get that done as quickly as possible?’
‘On it already,’ said Chuck as she ended the call.
She heard the sound of a throat being cleared loudly and pointedly behind her.
‘There you are,’ said Robert dramatically. ‘I was just thinking you’d invited me for lunch and then run off without paying the bill.’