Perfect Strangers Read Online Free Page A

beside him. Isaac Grey always seemed to be pissed off about something – Ruth remembered he’d had that same pained expression the day he’d interviewed her at the Tribune ’s office twenty years before. His hair had taken on more silver and the lines around his mouth had got deeper, but time certainly hadn’t mellowed him. ‘Goddamn BlackBerry,’ he muttered. ‘Ten times a day I dream about smashing it with a hammer. And now they tell me I should be tweeting.’
    Isaac was as old-school as they came, a battle-scarred newspaperman who rolled up his sleeves and had ink on his fingers. She knew he loathed the onset of digital media – she’d once heard him yell, ‘You can’t wipe your ass on a JPEG’ across the office – and he hated answering to younger, slicker Harvard grads who knew nothing about the editorial side of the business and were now questioning his methods about generating revenue for the business.
    ‘So,’ said Isaac, finally putting his phone down. ‘Can we expect another one of your world exclusives?’
    Ruth allowed herself a smile. Three months ago, she had scooped all of the other papers when she had broken the story of Kirk Bernard, a New York hedge-funder now based in London, who had been burgled at knifepoint in his Mayfair home. The level of violence and the fact that a rich foreigner had been targeted sent a twitter of anxiety around both sides of the Atlantic. Bernard’s valuable art collection – most notably, a Rubens and a Monet sketch – had been stolen, almost certainly to end up in the private collection of some super-rich Eastern European gangster – or so the tabloids had speculated. But Ruth had discovered that the paintings hadn’t been stolen at all. Bernard had simply hidden them in the attic for a few months, claimed the insurance, then hung them back on the wall, claiming they were clever reproductions. Unfortunately his wife liked to throw dinner parties, and a guest at one, a visiting professor from the Sorbonne, had noticed that the ‘replacement’ paintings were suspiciously accurate. When Ruth had interviewed Bernard in Pentonville pending his deportation, Bernard had simply snorted and said, ‘Who gives a shit if they were real or not? To me, they’re just cheques with faces.’
    On that occasion, Isaac Grey had sent her a magnum of champagne, but Ruth was hoping for something more substantial today.
    ‘You know me, always on the lookout for a scoop.’
    ‘Uh-huh. So how’s things?’
    ‘Great,’ she said breezily.
    He took a sip of the red wine that the sommelier had handed him.
    ‘You know we go back a long way.’
    She tried to keep her face as impassive as possible. They’d had a brief affair soon after she had begun at the Tribune , when Isaac’s recent divorce and Ruth’s eagerness to please the boss had spilled over into an out-of-hours relationship. The fling had lasted weeks, and within six months Ruth had been posted to Kosovo. At first she had thought it had been a rather extreme reaction to their break-up, but the truth was that Isaac had known about her desire to become a foreign correspondent and had done everything in his power to make that happen. For that she would always be grateful.
    ‘So I thought I’d give you a heads-up about some changes that are happening,’ said Isaac. As always, he was impossible to read. But she’d heard rumours that the Tribune ’s London bureau chief, Jim Keane, was ready to move on. As his number two, she’d be in pole position to take over.
    ‘How old are you, Ruth?’
    Her heart gave a little jump. So he was cutting to the chase before they’d even ordered their first course.
    ‘An experienced forty-one, Isaac, as well you know,’ she said smoothly.
    Ruth held her breath. She had dreamt of this moment her entire career, throughout that time in the Balkans, then stationed in Cape Town – her bag permanently packed as she waited for a call from the foreign desk, day or night, dispatching her