The Yacht Party

by Perry, Tasmina

  ‘Paris? Where are we going? Chanel? Dior?’

  ‘We won’t be going shopping,’ said Lara. ‘Call Jimmy. Tell him you won’t be in for a couple of days and I’ll fill you in on the way.’

  Chapter 8

  Sandrine lived on the top floor of an apartment block at the very top of Montmartre, the famous hilltop arrondissement north-west of the Gare du Nord. Stella leaned on the bannister breathing heavily as she pulled off the red beret that she had bought from a tourist shop on the Boulevard de Magenta. After catching a late afternoon Eurostar from London, they had made the short journey from Gare du Nord to Pigalle by dented taxi, but Stella had wanted to climb the long stairway to the Sacre Coeur. She had been correct that it had offered an amazing view over the city, but she had underestimated the puff required, especially when they then had to climb five flights of stairs to the top of Sandrine’s apartment building too. The sweat Stella had expended had left a pink line across her forehead.

  ‘Why couldn’t Sandrine have lived by the bloody river?’ she panted, fanning herself with the beret as Lara unlocked the door to her friend’s apartment.

  ‘Step inside and you’ll see why,’ said Lara.

  Sandrine’s apartment occupied one corner of the top floor, with high moulded ceilings and a small balcony just big enough for two chairs. Lara crossed to the shutters and swung them open, filling the flat with lazy evening light.

  ‘Okay, totally worth it,’ sighed Stella.

  The flat was just as Lara had remembered: cluttered and disorganised, but stylish, warm and artistic, a mishmash of thrift store and elegance. The apartment looked, she realised with a lurch, just like Sandrine: Parisian, chic and utterly individual.

  ‘Look at that view,’ said Stella, opening the door on the balcony.

  The elevated vista over Paris was magnificent at any time, but it was never better than right now, just before sunset. The whole of the City of Lights, laid out flat and orderly like a model village, the horizon a blend of blue and pink, yellow streetlights just blinking awake like a holy procession.

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ said Lara.

  Stella turned to look at Lara, a troubled expression on her face.

  ‘What?’ said Lara, sinking down on the sofa.

  ‘I don’t want to be morbid,’ said Stella. ‘But if Sandrine wanted to do what she did, why did she choose some anonymous London apartment?’

  Lara had had the same thought. She could still hear her friend’s words every time she opened the French windows to let in some night air. ‘Careful,’ she’d always say in her sing-song voice. ‘Don’t go too close to the edge. You don’t want to fall.’

  She closed her eyes, shaking her head. She had no answers and it had been a very long day. It was hard to believe that the Le Caché conference had only been that morning, and since then, she had been to Jimmy’s café, over to Stella’s flat to grab her passport and back to St. Pancras to catch the Eurostar. Add in that epic climb up to the Sacre Coeur, and Lara was exhausted.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I need a drink,’ said Stella, as ever attuned to Lara’s thoughts.

  ‘That’s what Sandrine used to say every time we climbed those stairs,’ said Lara. Dozens of happy images flashed in front of her: Sandrine holding carrier bags of vegetables they had picked up at the local supermarché, Sandrine, a foodie and brilliant cook, sipping deep red Cabernet as she made thick stews or gratins, sharing their stories, both personal and professional. And the laughter – oh, how they’d laughed. There were two bottles of wine on the kitchen side that Sandrine had been using as book ends for a wedge of letters.

  ‘Do you think it’s inappropriate to open one?’ said Stella. Lara smiled.

  ‘I’m pretty sure Sandrine would approve. She never liked to see a good bottle of Merlot to go to waste.’

  She waited as Stella rummaged about for a corkscrew, then clinked glasses.

  ‘Right, let’s get to work. I’m going to make a start in Sandrine’s study.’

  Lara had already filled Stella in on what they needed to do. There were practical things, like closing up the flat – making sure that bills were being paid, that the premises were secure and the heating was off. Sandrine’s things needed to be boxed away too, but Lara wasn’t sure she was ready for that task just yet. And there was another reason to be here too. The story. There had to be something here that would give them a clue as to what Sandrine had been working on.

  On the face of it, Sandrine’s study looked exactly as Lara remembered it: the messy, creative place of a messy, creative person. Lara had always thought of Sandrine’s brain as a buzzing fly – Restless, inquisitive – and it seemed to work at twice the speed of everyone else’s. But still…something was off.

  ‘You should take a look at this letter,’ said Stella, walking through.

  Lara held up a hand, stopping Stella in the doorway.

  ‘Someone has been here.’

  Back when Lara was a junior reporter, working the London crime beat for the Chronicle news desk, Lara had become friends with a Chief Inspector named Ray Banner, one of the friendly coppers at Paddington Green. Ray had been pushing sixty and heading for retirement, but she’d loved listening to his stories of being a detective during the gritty Seventies and Eighties, when old school hunches and dogged trawling was the staple of police work before the luxury of databases. Ray had drilled into Lara the importance of stepping back to look at the scene as a whole.

  ‘What’s on the pinboard?’ asked Lara.

  Stella looked at it. ‘Well, pictures of you and Sandrine,’ she said, pointing to a photobooth strip that had been taken in their student days. There were a few other notes – the number of her dentist and the local pharmacist, some old theatre ticket stubs and a list of birthdays. ‘But apart from that, not much.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Lara, leaning closer, running her fingertips over the cork. There were dozens of tiny holes in it where pins had been stuck in – and removed.

  ‘Sandrine used to write everything down – I mean everything,’ said Lara, thinking out loud. ‘This pinboard was always covered with stuff and she’d stick Post-it notes all over the wall too. When we lived together, I used to joke that she should buy shares in the company, because she used so many of them.’

  ‘That was a long time ago, Lara. Maybe she’s changed her ways. You know, put things on her computer?’

  Lara shook her head. She’d been here before Christmas and there had been so many yellow Post-it notes that Lara had said her study looked like a canary’s wing.

  ‘Okay, so where are her notes? And where is her computer?’

  She’d already spoken to Ian Fox and Jean Legard and neither of them seemed to know anything about Sandrine’s laptop.

  ‘Lara, this letter,’ repeated Stella, handing it to her. ‘It’s from HR at Le Figaro inviting Sandrine to an entretien préalable au licenciement, which according to Google is a preliminary meeting to discuss a potential severance. If you’re here to find a reason for Sandrine’s death, then this could be it. You said Sandrine was devoted to her job. If she was depressed and lost the thing she most cared about…?’

  But Lara knew – just knew – that something else was at work here.

  ‘Someone has searched the apartment,’ she said decisively. ‘Can’t you see?’

  Stella walked around the room silently, considering it. Five minutes earlier, Lara might have agreed that Sandrine’s job being in jeopardy might have explained a lot of things. But now it seemed obvious to her: the desk wasn’t just messy and the books, the magazines, the papers, they had all been shuffled, upended, examined.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  Lara smiled gratefully. She loved how Stella trusted her judgement. Plenty would have dismissed it as clutching at straws.

  ‘Okay, you take the living room and kitchen. I’ll look in the bedroom, study and bathroom. We’re looking for anything that will help us build a picture of Sandrine’s final few weeks
.’

  She searched her bedroom first, looking through the drawers and cupboards. She found handbags full of mints and make-up, a file of expense receipts, a box of old letters and photos from her time in London. Lara paused to smile at a picture of herself and Alex at Glastonbury, their faces painted with glitter, another of Sandrine on her graduation day – happy and proud in her black gown.

  Looking in Sandrine’s wardrobe, Lara fished metro and bus tickets from her coat pockets, but nothing felt significant and she moved to the bathroom. There was a toothbrush in a bamboo cup on the sink, just waiting for its owner to return. There were headache pills in the cabinet and lotions and potions in the shower. Nothing out of the ordinary. Lara picked up the laundry basket and tipped the contents on the floor, picking out a pair of grey jeans. She pushed her hands into the pockets. A train ticket dated four weeks previously and a crumpled piece of yellow paper. Lara felt her heart leap at the sight of one of Sandrine’s beloved Post-it notes.

  She unfolded it and immediately recognised Sandrine’s swirly Gallic handwriting. Three words in black ink, stacked on top of one another.

  Helen

  Michael

  And one other word: Jonathon.

  Stella was standing at the bathroom door.

  ‘Found anything?’ she asked.

  Lara held out the note.

  What does it mean?’ asked Stella.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lara. ‘But we’re sure as hell going to find out.’

  Chapter 9

  The trouble with newspaper people was that they never switched off. Alex stood in the garden of Nicholas Avery’s Holland Park home clutching a glass of warm champagne and listened as Darius held forth about global media, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were supposed to be at a party. Nicholas certainly seemed to have glazed over, while his son Charlie was knocking back the Krug to dull the pain.

  ‘Of course the Gulf War was the best thing to happen to American media,’ said Darius. ‘It really put them back on the map.’

  ‘Back on the map?’ asked Nicholas, tilting his head in a way that Alex recognised. It was Nicholas’s way of saying ‘I disagree, but do keep digging yourself into a hole.’ Darius missed the cue and ploughed on regardless. ‘The way I see it is, America was this grey superpower then BAM! There’s CNN with the rockets and the hi-tech drone strikes. Suddenly America looks sexy again.’

  ‘The glamorization of war, you mean?’ said Charlie.

  Alex knew Charlie was just baiting Darius, but all the same he had to step in.

  ‘I think what Darius means, is that the US media coverage set the tone for the way war looks on screen. They used Hollywood techniques to engage the folks at home so they could understand foreign policy and see the brutality of conflict.’

  Darius nodded enthusiastically, as if that had been his point all along. Darius could be pompous, but Alex knew that his editor would be in a foul mood tomorrow if Charlie humiliated him in front of the big boss.

  ‘Yes, things have changed, haven’t they?’ said Nicholas, diplomatically steering the subject around to the recent revamp of the Chronicle’s news app. The irony of course was that this party was to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Avery Trust and yet, here in the London media bubble, nothing much had changed. A century of headlines had kept the Avery family at the heart of politics and power. Back through the open French windows, Alex could see that Nicholas’s beautiful house, well-known as one of the finest private homes in Central London, was packed with the wealthy, the connected and the influential. Ministers rubbed shoulders with models, columnists chatted with bankers, just as they had back when the Averys had launched the Chronicle. In spite of the seemingly revolutionary changes in digital media, the Averys were still here, still at the controls.

  Excusing himself, Alex walked down a curving stone staircase from the terrace and into the depths of the garden. The house had almost an acre of grounds, and right now it looked like a luxury circus had come to town. In the centre of the lawn was a huge illuminated, circular bar, model-grade waiters flitting about with champagne and canapes. There were fire-dancers and even a sleight-of-hand magician. Alex gave a quiet chuckle. It was all a long way from his Cumbrian upbringing, where a party meant a lock-in in the local pub and maybe a plate of grated cheese sandwiches. But that was the point, wasn’t it? It was a long way. And tonight Alex felt part of it.

  ‘Marks out of ten?’ said a husky voice behind him.

  He turned around to see Nicholas’s wife Olivia smiling at him.

  ‘Ten and a half. I think it’s absolutely sensational. The party, the house, all of it.’

  Olivia Avery was wearing a beautiful blue silk gown and a smile of genuine pleasure. Perhaps Olivia wasn’t used to people complimenting her Holland Park bolthole. In which case, she was inviting the wrong people to her parties.

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ she said modestly. ‘I’ve spent six months organising the damn thing and it’s not easy when you’re dealing with such a limited space. Nicholas wanted to have the party at the Foxhills estate, but I managed to convince him there was no way we’d get this lot further than five miles from the Garrick Club.’

  Not for the first time, he tried to suppress a smile. He had known Olivia Avery for years and she was everything you’d imagine the grande dame of a media dynasty to be. Her icy beauty could be intimidating, but if Olivia thought you might be useful or fun, she would draw you in with a joke or an indiscreet nugget of gossip. ‘The rich are different from you and me,’ that was what Scott Fitzgerald had once said to Hemingway, but on nights like this he knew it wasn’t just the money. It was about confidence.

  ‘Well it definitely makes it more special having the party here rather than at some hotel in London.’

  ‘That’s what Nicky thought, although we did have to put all the art work into storage.’

  ‘We wouldn’t want a hand going through that Bridget Riley in the kitchen.’

  Olivia nodded in agreement, missing Alex’s ironic tone.

  ‘So where is the lovely Alicia?’ asked Olivia.

  Alex had arrived with his girlfriend a couple of hours earlier and he had barely seen her since. She had been thrilled to find herself surrounded with so many influential people and had immediately disappeared to take full advantage of it.

  ‘She’s almost certainly inside, talking to the Home Secretary, of course.’

  Olivia raised a surprised eyebrow. ‘Of course?’

  ‘Alicia has an amazing ability to seek out the most important person in any room.’

  ‘A valuable skill,’ said Olivia, touching his arm meaningfully. ‘You should hold onto that one.’

  Hold onto her, don’t let her go. That’s what everyone had started saying lately, and of course it made sense. Alicia was sexy, elegant and ambitious, a political lobbyist going places, and with Alex well on his way to media glory, they’d make a fine power couple. Alex took a gulp of his wine; so what was stopping him? He wasn’t sure that power was up there on his wish-list when it came to finding a soul-mate.

  ‘Have you seen Lara?’ he asked after a moment. ‘She is coming?’

  Olivia gave him a sideways look.

  ‘You never know with Lara. I called her this afternoon as she hadn’t RSVP’d. Apparently she was in Paris.’

  ‘Paris?’

  Olivia’s lips tightened.

  ‘You’ve heard about Sandrine? I begged her to come and stay with us at Foxhills, but she wanted to help the parents by sorting out Sandrine’s apartment. Such a tragedy. Sandrine was a very positive influence for Lara, the sister she never had. And now, I fear, she is going to feel so alone.’

  ‘She’s not alone. She has you, Olivia. She has me. And Lara’s tough.’

  ‘Not as tough as she’d like you to think,’ said Olivia, fixing Alex with one of her searching looks.

  ‘Is everything alright between you two?’

  Alex frowned.

  ‘Sure. Why shouldn’t it be
?’

  ‘I just hear you two don’t see each other as much these days.’

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘Not in so many words, she didn’t have to darling. For so long you were as thick as thieves. It was Alex, this, Alex that. I have to admit, I was cynical. I’ve seen When Harry Met Sally. Can men and women ever be friends? But I thought you two were the real deal. Then again, I suppose it’s difficult when someone else comes onto the scene. When you fall in love.’ She said it with a mischievous smile. ‘I’ll leave you to it, hmm?’

  She walked off towards the bar and Alex was still mulling over what she meant when he felt a slim arm snake around his waist.

  ‘Alicia,’ he said turning round.

  ‘Who did you think it was? Darius?’

  She laughed at her own joke as she snaked her arm through his.

  ‘So what were you and Olivia talking about?’

  ‘Nothing much. She likes you. I didn’t know you’d met.’

  Alicia couldn’t hide her pleasure that the great, influential Olivia Avery had given her approval.

  ‘You know me,’ said Alicia, gesturing towards the house with her Champagne. ‘I do like to mingle. And talking of which, how have you been getting on with Nicholas?’

  ‘Fine. I told him my best knock-knock jokes.’

  ‘Jesus, Alex,’ she said, stepping away from him.

  ‘I’m joking,’ he smiled.

  ‘You do know this isn’t just a party, Alex,’ she said, stroking a twist of honey-coloured hair over her shoulder.

  ‘It’s the ideal time to get closer to Nicholas, dazzle him with your brilliance now Darius…’ she glanced around and lowered her voice. ‘Well, now he’s on the way out.’

  Alicia was convinced that after the Tait disaster, Darius’s tenure as editor was coming to an end – very plausible, Alex had to concede – and was constantly urging him to ‘make an impression’ on Avery senior.

  ‘You do realise I was part of the team that ran the Tait story?’ said Alex. ‘Darius didn’t do it on his own.’