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‘I thought that sort of thing was right up Alicia’s street. Networking is her idea of fun, isn’t it?’
Alex knew Lara was pushing his buttons, but there was something reassuring about the banter, the way they knew each other so well. Olivia had been right, there had been a time when they had been inseparable. So why was there so much silence between them?
‘Apparently there’s a Henry Moore sculpture around here somewhere,’ said Alex after a while.
‘It’s over there,’ said Lara pointing. ‘Want to see?’
It was in a hidden pocket of the garden away from the house, the chatter and laughter from the party fading as they went to find it. The bronze was a fluid contortion vaguely in the shape of a reclining woman.
‘That’s how I feel most days,’ said Lara.
There was a bench opposite the sculpture and they sat side-by-side.
‘What were you really doing in Paris, Lar?’ asked Alex, still looking at the sculpture.
‘I went to Sandrine’s flat.’
‘What for?
‘Just sorting stuff.’
Alex glanced sideways.
‘Just sorting stuff?’
She didn’t look at him. He knew her well enough to detect her tells.
‘Do you remember Vinnie Hero?’ asked Lara.
Alex nodded. It was a story they’d worked on just after he’d arrived at the Chronicle. Vinnie had been in a minor boy band in the noughties, who’d turned to selling tricks and blow when the spotlight waned. One dark weekend, Vinnie had been found with his wrists cut in a trashed hotel room. The world shrugged its shoulders: just another tragic case of the music biz eating its young. But by chance, Lara had met Vinnie a few weeks before his death, working in a motorcycle repair shop.
‘It didn’t add up with Vinnie, remember? He had a job, a flat, he’d been getting his life back together, he was settled.’
And it had turned out that Lara’s hunch had been correct. Part of Vinnie’s turnaround had been due to a new relationship with a married politician who, in a fit of drunken self-loathing, had killed Vinnie, then staged the suicide to cover up the crime. It was the story that had really made her reputation at the Chronicle.
‘When I saw Sandrine on Friday night she told me she was working on a story,’ Lara continued. ‘A story about Jonathon Meyer and trafficking.’
Alex glanced at her, his curiosity piqued. They’d run a story on Meyer’s death a few weeks before. At the time there had been plenty of speculation about his involvement with billionaire yacht parties and Russian mafia king-pins, but nothing had held up, so the story had fizzled out.
‘What was her angle?’
‘She didn’t give me any details. Apparently she was going to unveil something this week at the Le Caché conference. She was excited about the story. Perhaps a little scared too.’
Lara turned and looked at him, her eyes shining in the low light.
‘Someone has been into her apartment, Alex. Searched it, taken things from it. There were no notebooks, no computers, not a trace of anything to do with any of her work.’
‘And who do you think searched the flat?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘It sure wasn’t Jonathon Meyer,’ said Alex.
‘No,’ said Lara, looking back at him. ‘Coincidence, though, isn’t it? Another violent death.’
Alex knew what she was thinking. That there was some connection between Sandrine and Meyer. Alex had lost friends in the line of duty – a photojournalist who’d been shot in Homs, a Mexican writer named Alejandro who’d been killed by a drug cartel. He knew the dangers of their job, but still, he wasn’t convinced.
‘The number of journalists killed chasing a story is tiny, Lar.’
