Page 36 of Perfect Strangers

‘And where did you leave Nick this morning? In bed or in the shower?’

‘In bed.’

‘Did you argue?’

‘No.’

Fox looked straight at her.

‘Did you hit him in the bathroom with a wine bottle?’

‘You think I did that?’ she croaked. ‘I told you I loved him.’

‘Please, Sophie, answer the question. Did you hit him?’ pressed Fox.

She felt nauseous, faint. She gripped the sides of the chair, feeling the burns under her fingers.

‘I think I need a lawyer.’

12

Sophie was still shaking as she pushed out through the glass doors of Paddington Green station. She felt dirty and violated, but above all tired. She walked down the steps, filling her lungs. It wasn’t exactly fresh air – she could see cars rushing along the Marylebone flyover in front of her – but it felt good after the stale rooms and corridors of the police station. Police station, her mind repeated. How had she come to be here? She was a good girl, she’d never even been in trouble at school, despite Francesca’s best efforts.

All she had done was walk into that hotel room and find Nick, her lover, lying on the floor. That was her only crime. And yet they were treating her as if she were some deranged killer. They had taken swabs from her mouth for DNA and they’d taken fingerprints and made rumbles about doing a police appeal in the Scotland Yard media suite within the next twenty-four hours.

‘Don’t worry. Hopefully you won’t see the inside of that place again for a little while.’

Edward Gould put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. He was one of her father’s old college friends and one of the top criminal defence solicitors in the country, or at least that was what her mother had told her on the phone, when Sophie had managed to contact her in Copenhagen.

‘Bear in mind they haven’t charged you and we have no date for another interview yet.’

She found little comfort in his words.

‘Yet? You mean I’m going to have to go back?’

‘Possibly,’ he said guardedly.

‘You mean probably.’

Gould raised his eyebrows.

‘The truth is that you are going to be on their suspect list until they get more information about Nick’s life. You’ll only be eliminated when they find another lead.’

Panic swelled inside her. She couldn’t go back in there, she couldn’t.

‘But that’s not fair, I haven’t done anything!’

Gould shrugged.

‘No, it’s not fair,’ he said brusquely. ‘Not if you’re innocent. But at the top of any suspect list at the beginning of an inquiry are partners, the person who finds the dead body and the person who last sees the victim alive. You’re unfortunate enough to be all three, Sophie. For now, you’re going to be the one under the microscope.’

She was grateful to Edward Gould for arriving so quickly and for effectively forcing the police to release her, but he did not have a sympathetic bedside manner. She knew his type; most of her father’s friends had been like this, Oxbridge-educated and of a generation that kept a stiff upper lip no matter what.

‘But they think I’m innocent,’ protested Sophie. ‘They want me to do an appeal to ask for witnesses.’

Gould’s head gave a short shake.

‘Doesn’t necessarily mean they think you’re innocent. Sometimes they use a press conference to put suspects under the spotlight. They’ll have a criminal profiler watch it, analyse your responses, your behaviour under pressure. It’s a useful psychological tool for creating a suspect profile.’