Death Knocks Twice
Robert Thorogood
The new Death in Paradise mysteryTwo dead bodies. A family of suspects. One grumpy detective.Reluctantly stationed on the sweltering Caribbean island of Saint-Marie, Detective Inspector Richard Poole dreams of cold winds, drizzly rain and a pint in his local pub.Just as he is feeling as fed up as can be, a mysterious vagrant is found dead in the grounds of the historic Beaumont plantation. Immediately assumed to be suicide, DI Poole is not so convinced and determined to prove otherwise. Never mind that the only fingerprints on the murder weapon belong to the victim. Or that the room was locked from the inside.Before long, death knocks twice and a second body turns up. The hunt is on to solve the case – despite the best efforts of the enigmatic Beaumont family…
Praise for Robert Thorogood (#u53e3b10f-848a-54e4-9624-797f5192a0f4)
‘Very funny and dark with great pace. I love Robert Thorogood’s writing’
Peter James
‘Deftly entertaining…satisfyingly pushes all the requisite Agatha Christie-style buttons’
Barry Forshaw, The Independent
‘A treat’
Radio Times
‘Fans of the Agatha Christie-style BBC drama Death In Paradise will enjoy this book from the show’s creator’
Mail on Sunday
‘This brilliantly crafted, hugely enjoyable and suitably goosebump-inducing novel is an utter delight from start to finish’
Heat
‘A brilliant whodunnit’
Woman
Copyright (#ulink_c07a0ee4-e63f-5fee-b40e-35ee2b447d20)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017
Copyright © Robert Thorogood 2017
Robert Thorogood asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9781474050715
Version: 2018-07-23
ROBERT THOROGOOD is the creator of the hit BBC One TV series Death In Paradise.
He was born in Colchester, Essex, in 1972. When he was 10 years old, he read his first proper novel – Agatha Christie’s Peril at End House – and he’s been in love with the genre ever since.
He now lives in Marlow in Buckinghamshire with his wife and children.
For Penny and Jack
Contents
Cover (#u2c8da65d-31bd-5cfb-910e-b95c1413823b)
Praise (#ulink_31029264-b25d-5227-a70f-0de56ff730f7)
Title Page (#uaaf96f5d-5a95-580d-95b5-f316dc32a0bf)
Copyright (#ulink_b990c293-be22-5fcb-aae8-5f66a889b503)
About the Author (#ulink_9c1b13b7-cadd-5bc5-a539-db0bb6134b98)
Dedication (#u606e5bcf-f8e2-5500-a603-69bcbe9a6c98)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_16bc3106-4263-511a-824a-ec766c23683f)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_79fda870-350e-52b4-a8fd-7c55255b273b)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_49b611cb-815d-5404-a4f9-fe877dce3177)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_1f60a8aa-038b-5544-93d8-f362b85f3f1c)
Detective Inspector Richard Poole was in a bad mood.
This wasn’t in fact all that unusual. Not to say that he was always in a bad mood, far from it. Sometimes, he simmered without quite boiling over. And at other times he felt too worn down by the whole shooting match of life to get a proper grump on. But today wasn’t one of those days. Today he was in a fury so complete that he was in grave danger of going ‘the full Rumpelstiltskin’.
As was so often the case, the object of Richard’s ire was Police Officer Dwayne Myers.
‘Then how about you try this one, Chief?’ Dwayne said as he stood by his desk holding up a brightly-coloured Hawaiian shirt.
There was a stifled laugh from the direction of Camille’s desk.
‘What’s that, Camille?’ Richard asked.
‘Nothing, sir,’ Camille said in her most grown-up voice. ‘But I think Dwayne’s right. That shirt would really suit you.’
‘It wouldn’t,’ Richard said.
‘I think it would, sir.’
‘It wouldn’t, Camille. I just said.’
‘But why not? It’s fun.’
‘Fun?’ Richard squeaked in a high falsetto that, frankly, surprised all of them. He coughed to put the gravel back into his voice. ‘You call that aberration of a shirt “fun”?’
‘I reckon so,’ Dwayne said. ‘And Camille’s right. You’d look great in it.’
‘Right, that’s it,’ Richard announced, standing up from behind his desk. Having commanded his team’s full attention, he shot the cuffs of his white shirt, did up the middle button on the jacket of his woollen suit and stepped out into the centre of the Police Station.
A trickle of sweat slipped down from Richard’s hairline, and he glanced at Police Officer Fidel Best’s desk, to check that he had gone back to his work. As the youngest member of the team, Fidel generally stayed out of the skirmishes and outright civil war that could sometimes engulf the office. Richard was pleased to see that Fidel was looking at his monitor in a way that suggested that he was indeed keeping himself to himself.
Richard pulled a hankie from his jacket pocket, wiped the sweat from his face and turned to face Dwayne.
‘I’m your commanding officer, and I’m telling you to put that…garment down. Right. Now.’
‘But seriously, Chief,’ Dwayne said. ‘I’m only trying to help. You have got to get into some lighter clothes. That woollen suit in this climate will be the death of you.’
Richard jutted out his jaw. He found his subordinates’ desire to get him into more casual clothes deeply irritating. Didn’t they appreciate just how very elegantly he was already dressed? And hadn’t they any idea just how hard it was keeping his black brogues polished to a parade ground sheen when most of the island was covered in fine grade aggregate – or, as the tourist brochures were so intent on calling it, ‘sand’?
‘I’ve worn a suit every day of my working life, and I’m not going to stop now just because I’ve had the misfortune of being posted to the bloody Caribbean.’
Dwayne exhaled.
‘Okay, Chief.’
‘Thank you.’
Dwayne’s face brightened as he grabbed up another shirt from the pile of clothes on his desk.
‘Then how about you try this one?’ he asked, before realising that the shirt he was now holding was a billowing confection of gold satin with silver tassels.
Even Dwayne was surprised.
‘Okay, maybe not this one. But how about this?’ he said, putting the disco shirt down and picking up a far more acceptable shirt in a sky blue colour.
‘Dwayne,’ Richard said with the rattle of death in his voice. ‘That shirt doesn’t even have sleeves.’
It was true. It wasn’t so much a shirt as a vest with ideas above its station.
Richard strode over to Dwayne, grabbed the shirt from his hands and dashed it back onto the pile of clothes on the desk.
‘Dwayne. Let me be clear. Hell would have to freeze over before I’d wear any of these clothes.’
‘Although, sir,’ Fidel said, finally joining the conversation. ‘If hell did freeze over, you wouldn’t want to be wearing shorts and Hawaiian shirts anyway.’
Richard turned and looked at Fidel to see if he was winding him up. It was clear from his helpful smile that he wasn’t.
‘Tell you what,’ Dwayne said. ‘The guy on the market said there was no rush getting these back to him. He was having problems selling them anyway. So how about I just put them in the back office? You can look at them another time, when you’ve got a moment. What do you reckon to that?’
As though Richard had just agreed with his plan, Dwayne picked up the pile of shirts and shorts from his desk and went through the bead curtain that led to the cells.
Richard finally let out a breath that he hadn’t even known he’d been holding. At least that was that problem dealt with.
‘Good morning, team,’ a mellifluous voice announced, and the island’s Commissioner of Police, Selwyn Patterson, sauntered into the room, his hands thrust deep into the trouser pockets of his rumpled khaki uniform.
‘Good morning, sir,’ Richard said, knowing that the Commissioner’s arrival was never good news.
Selwyn removed his peaked cap, held it delicately between forefinger and thumb, and gave the office a once over.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Busy?’
‘Of course, sir,’ Richard said, knowing that he and his team were nothing of the sort. In truth, things had been frustratingly quiet for the last few weeks. The only incident that had required any proper policing was a dispute between two neighbours, one of whom owned a cockerel that had taken to crowing every night from midnight to dawn. The dispute had threatened to escalate into violence until Dwayne had taken the offending rooster into custody, killed it, cooked it, eaten it, and then pronounced the case closed. Such was island life sometimes.
‘Then I’m sorry,’ Selwyn said, looking nothing of the sort, ‘but I’ll be adding to your burdens.’
‘What have you got, sir?’
‘A very important case.’
‘Of course,’ Richard said, reaching into his inside jacket pocket and pulling out his notebook and silver propelling pencil. He flicked the notebook open to a fresh page and waited in anticipation.
‘You see,’ Selwyn said, ‘I was at a charity rum tasting yesterday afternoon, and I got into conversation with the man who owns the Fort Royal Hotel.’ Richard knew the hotel well, having once solved the murder of a bride there. ‘And he says his hotel guests are being scammed by a ruthless criminal with no concern for the consequences of his actions.’
‘They are, sir?’ Richard said, his interest piqued. Finally, was this going to be a case worthy of his and his team’s talents?
‘Apparently so.’
‘And what’s this criminal doing?’
‘Well, he’s set up a roadside stall and he’s selling bottles of bootleg rum.’
Richard’s pencil remained hovering above his notebook.
‘He is, sir?’
‘It’s affecting sales in the bar at the Fort Royal.’
‘And… that’s it, is it?’
Selwyn pursed his lips.
‘We rely on tourists on this island, Inspector.’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘And the tax revenue from duty being paid on legal alcoholic beverages.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And above all else, we still make rum on Saint-Marie. I won’t have the island’s reputation as the best rum producer in the world tarnished by this man and his dangerous, third-rate product.’
‘Well, sir, we’ll look into it,’ Richard said, somewhat disappointed. When was he going to get a decent criminal case?
There was a ‘ting’ from the front desk of the office, and Richard and his team turned and saw a woman with her hand hovering over the little brass bell on the counter top.
‘You’ve got to help me!’ she said in desperation.
Knowing that his team would have to attend to the young woman, Selwyn put his peaked cap back onto his head and smiled for Richard’s benefit.
‘I’ll expect a report on the bootleg rum seller,’ he said, before sauntering out of the office.
‘Yes, of course, sir,’ Richard said, already heading over to the woman. She was about thirty years old, had pale skin, straight black hair and was wearing an old black cotton dress that was now faded to grey. But what Richard noticed most was how jittery she was. She looked like a startled deer who could bolt at any second.
‘Can I help you, madam?’
‘You’ve got to,’ the woman said, her voice breaking as she spoke. ‘There’s someone stalking me. Up at my house. And I’ve just seen him and chased him. But he got away. You’ve got to come with me!’
‘Someone’s been stalking you?’ Richard said, unable to keep a note of excitement out of his voice. This was more like it. A proper case.
‘And he could still be there,’ the woman said in desperation. ‘We’ve got to get back at once. See if we can catch him.’
‘Of course. Do you live nearby?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Do you live nearby?’ Richard repeated. ‘Have you come to the station on foot?’
The woman looked at Richard in surprise.
‘Don’t you know who I am?’ she asked.
‘Should I?’
‘You’re Lucy Beaumont, aren’t you?’ Camille said as she joined Richard at the desk.
Richard realised he’d heard of the Beaumont family when he’d first arrived on Saint-Marie, but he’d never really listened to what he’d been told. All he could remember was that they were some kind of ancient British family who’d been on the island for generations, and they ran a coffee plantation half way up the south-western slopes of Mount Esmée, the island’s active volcano. Oh yes, Richard realised, that’s why he’d never been interested in finding out any more about the Beaumonts. They lived on an active volcano.
But if this young woman was being stalked, then it was their duty to investigate, volcano or no volcano. Richard turned to Dwayne.
‘Dwayne. Take Fidel to the Fort Royal hotel. See what you can find out about the Commissioner’s bootleg rum seller, would you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Dwayne said.
‘Which leaves you and me, Camille,’ Richard said. ‘And I suggest we accompany Ms Beaumont back to her house and find out exactly what’s going on.’
After Richard had first arrived on Saint-Marie, it had taken him quite a few months to get his head around the fact that there was a live volcano on the southern half of the island. Admittedly, Mount Esmée was such a huge geological feature that it could be seen from everywhere on the island, but it seemed so improbable to Richard that people would share an island with an active volcano that he’d presumed that, at some level, it wasn’t real. Even when he heard about the Great Eruption of 1979, which had apparently shot lava hundreds of feet into the air and sent a terrifying pyroclastic flow down the side of the mountain at a hundred miles an hour – wiping out dozens of homes and killing 34 people – he remained in denial.
Now, as Camille drove the Police jeep up the tight hairpin bends towards the Beaumont Plantation, Richard found himself suffering an existential crisis. He was sitting in the sweltering heat of a vehicle that he knew hadn’t been serviced for over a decade while a Frenchwoman was driving it ever-higher up a real life volcano. What had gone wrong with his life?
‘Watch out!’ Richard shouted as an oncoming motorbike took a wide line around a tight bend in the road.
‘Will you please calm down,’ Camille said.
Richard could sort of see Camille’s point. After all, she was an excellent driver and he knew it probably didn’t help that he kept shouting ‘Brake! Brake! Brake!’ as they approached every corner, so he instead decided to grab hold of the dashboard and not let go.
He was still holding onto the dashboard when, ten minutes of stomach-sloshing fear later, Camille brought the Police jeep to a juddering halt by a row of wooden farm buildings half way up the mountain. Richard took a moment to calm himself. It seemed even hotter – if that were possible – this high up the mountain. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze, and all he could hear was the ticking of the jeep’s diesel engine as it started to cool down. Richard looked through the windscreen and saw that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Typical, he thought to himself. He was about to get roasted by the scorching heat again. With a weary sigh, he opened the passenger-side door and stepped out of the jeep.
It started raining. And not just any rain, either. Richard found himself standing in a full-on torrential downpour. He looked up at the sky, but couldn’t see anything close to a cloud either directly above his head or even nearby. He was always prepared though, so he went to the boot of the jeep, grabbed his emergency umbrella and put it up with a satisfying whomp. There, he thought to himself, that was better.
It stopped raining.
Only now did Camille step out of the jeep, and Richard had a brief out of body experience where he could see that his partner, Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey – who was wearing dark green cotton trousers and a short-sleeved checked shirt – was now standing next to a pasty-faced middle-aged Englishman who was wearing a black suit, black brogues and was holding a funeral umbrella in the bright sunshine.
‘It’s not raining, sir,’ Camille said.
‘I know that, Camille,’ Richard said, trying to keep his dignity intact as he lowered his umbrella and returned it to the boot of the jeep. There still wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but Richard knew that he hadn’t imagined the brief tropical downpour. His woollen suit was damp with water, and he could see that the dry mud he was standing on was now covered in little craters where the raindrops had drilled hard into the ground. When would the tropics ever make any sense to him?
‘Okay, sir, so what do you know about the Beaumont family?’ Camille asked her boss as they watched Lucy park her car a little way away.
‘Not much,’ Richard replied, trying to ignore the fact that his suit was now steaming. ‘Other than the fact that they’re very rich.’
‘Very rich and extremely secretive. Sir, could I say something?’
‘Of course. What is it?’
‘You seem to be on fire.’
‘It’s not fire, Camille. It’s steam.’
‘Oh, I see. You’re steaming, sir.’
‘It’s the rain in my suit. The sun’s making it evaporate, okay? It’s just basic physics.’
‘Of course it is, sir.’
Ignoring the smirk on his partner’s face, Richard turned and looked at the plantation buildings as Lucy headed over. There were old barns, workshops, and other structures all made from the same grey stone, and they were all arranged around an ancient cobblestoned yard. In fact, if it wasn’t for the palm trees and jungle pressing in on all sides, Richard could imagine the farm buildings fitting just as well into a village scene back in Dorset. Oh, and the active volcano looming above the plantation, Richard noted to himself – that was the other clue that he wasn’t on a farm in Dorset.
As Lucy reached the Police, Richard took charge.
‘We’d better not waste any time,’ he said. ‘So can you tell us what you saw and when?’
‘I’ll try,’ she said, nervously. ‘But I don’t really know where to start.’
‘That’s okay,’ Camille said, knowing that if her boss was all clanking metal cogs, she had to be the oil. ‘Just tell us what happened in your own words.’
‘Well, I suppose it started a couple of weeks ago,’ Lucy said. ‘And I didn’t know it was happening at first. If you see what I mean. It was just a feeling I got. That someone was watching me. You know, that feeling where your skin prickles?’
‘How do you mean?’ Camille asked.
‘You know, when your skin creeps because you think someone’s looking at you? Well, I had that feeling a couple of weeks ago. When I was down here. But I couldn’t work out if anyone was actually looking at me. It was just this sensation I had that I was being watched. So I told myself I must be imagining it – even though it’s happened quite a few times since then. Mostly when I’m down by these buildings. Or out in the coffee fields.’ Here, Lucy indicated the land as it sloped down the mountain from the courtyard, and Richard could see that the whole hillside was covered in neat rows of densely-packed bushes, each about ten feet high.
‘Oh, are those coffee bushes?’ Richard asked.
‘They are.’
‘Where the coffee berries grow?’
‘We call them cherries, but yes, that’s where they grow.’
‘I see,’ Richard said, none the wiser. ‘Sorry, why do you call them cherries?’
‘Because the fruit of the coffee plant is red like a cherry. Don’t you know how coffee is made?’ Lucy asked, surprised.
‘Well, I know it comes in jars,’ Richard said before realising that this was probably the wrong thing to say.
‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ Camille said, trying to get the interview back on track. ‘But you were telling us that you felt you were being watched when you were down by these farm buildings?’
‘That’s right. And a couple of days ago I thought I’d got proof. I was just getting into my car when I had the feeling again – that someone was spying on me – and when I spun round, I caught this quick flash as whoever it was ducked behind that wall over there.’ Here, Lucy pointed at a stone wall that separated two buildings. ‘I was shocked, I can tell you. But I made myself go over and look behind the wall. If I’m honest, I was really scared. But what I saw was kind of the worst thing possible.’
‘Why?’ Camille asked. ‘What did you see?’
‘Whoever it was had gone. They’d just vanished into thin air. It was really spooky. Because I was sure I’d seen someone, but they were no longer there. And after that moment, I started to doubt my own shadow. It even occurred to me that maybe I’d been seeing things. But then this morning, I finally saw him. The guy who’s been stalking me. Plain as day. Let me show you.’ Lucy led them off to a clump of vegetation that pressed up against the side of one of the old buildings. ‘I was just coming back from the fields when I looked over and saw a man standing to the side of this bush here.’
‘And it was definitely a man?’ Richard asked, eagerly pulling his notebook and pencil from his inside pocket.
‘Oh yes. This old guy with a beard and straggly grey hair down to his shoulders. He looked like a tramp if I’m honest.’
‘What time was this?’
‘I don’t know. Something like 10am. Or just after.’
‘What colour was his skin?’
‘I think white.’
‘Did you recognise him?’
‘No. But I only saw him for a split second. Because the moment he realised that I’d seen him, he ran back into the jungle just beyond the bush here. And then I did a pretty stupid thing. I chased after him. Look.’ Lucy went over and indicated a couple of thin branches on the edge of the jungle. They were snapped back, and Richard could see the white sap seeping from the exposed wood inside.
‘You followed him into the jungle?’
‘I did.’
Richard could see how anxious Lucy was.
‘And did you catch him?’
‘No. He had a head start on me, and the jungle’s pretty thick around here, so about ten steps in, I lost him altogether. That’s when I came back out here, got straight into my car and came down to the Police station to report the incident. Because, whoever he is, it’s got to stop.’
‘So,’ he said, ‘this man could be anywhere by now?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Well, let’s see about that,’ Camille said, and before Richard could stop her, his partner had pushed through the broken branches and started to wade into the thick jungle.
‘Camille, what are you doing?’ Richard asked, unable to keep the panic out of his voice.
‘Police work,’ she called back, at which point Richard saw her stop dead in her tracks. Oh God, he thought to himself, what if a giant spider had just jumped at Camille’s face? Fortunately for Richard, before he had to pretend that he was about to come to his partner’s aid, Camille headed off at a new bearing, and he realised that she’d only paused to check that she was on the right track before continuing on her way.
As the dense vegetation finally swallowed Camille, Lucy turned to Richard.
‘We’d better follow her,’ she said, before pushing into the jungle and soon disappearing herself.
Richard looked about himself in a panic. While he felt just about okay-ish letting one woman go into the jungle on her own – especially seeing as she was a trained Police Officer – he felt he couldn’t very well let two women vanish into the unknown while he stayed back here on the fringes, even though that was precisely where he wanted to stay. So, taking a deep breath to steady his internal shriek of terror, Richard stepped into the jungle.
Within seconds, he was lost. The vines and vegetation pressed into his face, the fetid smell of the jungle was revolting – it seemed to be a pungent mix of rotting fruit and decaying animals – which, when Richard thought about it, was very possibly because the jungle was full of rotting fruit and decaying animals. He felt whole rivers of sweat run down his back. Where had the women got to? Richard heard some branches snapping up ahead of him, and he made himself push through the sticky vegetation another ten or so paces until he saw the figures of Camille and Lucy through a thick screen of vines. Before he lost his nerve entirely, Richard covered the remaining distance like a mad marionette – his legs and arms lifting as high and wide as possible – until he burst through the wall of vines into a little clearing.
As Richard dashed the burrs, berries and sticky godknows-whats from his jacket and trouser legs, he could see Camille looking directly at him and smiling broadly. He gritted his teeth. As far as Richard was concerned, it wasn’t his fault he didn’t function well in a tropical jungle, was it? His last posting had been in Croydon, for heaven’s sake.
‘You okay, sir?’ Camille asked, pretending to be concerned.
‘Yes. I’m fine,’ he said.
‘Then I think you need to see this. I’ve found something.’
Richard went over and saw that Camille and Lucy had found an area of ground that was littered with empty water bottles, paper bags that had once contained fresh food, crushed cigarette packets and an empty bottle of cheap vodka.
‘Someone’s been here,’ Camille said, indicating the food.
Richard saw a column of bright red fire ants – each seemingly the size of his thumb – marching up to and engulfing a bag that had once contained a pastry of some sort, and he took a couple of steps back.
‘Although I don’t see any evidence of anyone sleeping out here,’ Camille said, looking about herself. ‘No tent’s been pitched. Or bivouac. Or rain cover of any sort.’
‘I see,’ Richard said, lifting his feet up one by one to check that an army of fire ants weren’t already marching up his legs. ‘So tell me, Ms Beaumont, is there anything else you noticed about the man you saw earlier today?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ve told you everything I can remember. He was definitely a man. And he was definitely old. I didn’t really notice his clothes, but he had this beard – sort of whitish, sort of grey – and long-flowing grey hair. That’s all I saw. And I had no idea that he had any kind of camp in the jungle here.’
Richard looked about himself. It wasn’t much to go on, was it? An old tramp had been spying on Lucy from the jungle. And when Lucy had tried to confront him, he’d run away.
There was a sudden bang from nearby – followed by a flock of parrots squawking into the air above the jungle.
‘What was that?’ Lucy asked.
‘That sounded like a gunshot,’ Camille said to her boss.
‘What?’ Lucy said, panicking.
‘Quiet!’ Richard ordered, trying to work out where the sound had come from. Like Camille, he’d already guessed that the sharp retort had been from a gun of some kind. But where had it come from?
There was a second bang, and, without thinking, both Camille and Richard started running towards the noise – Richard this time pushing through the vines and vegetation without any thought for his personal safety – or that of his suit – and they soon burst out of the jungle and back into the blinding sunlight of the cobbled yard. There was no-one nearby. So where had the gunshot come from?
Lucy joined them only moments later.
‘What do you mean, that was a gunshot?’ she asked.
‘Stay here,’ Richard said, before turning to Camille. ‘There might still be a shooter on the premises. We need to check the farm buildings.’
Camille marvelled at how a man so personally timid could be so apparently brave when there was clear procedure to follow, but Richard was already heading off to investigate the nearest farm building.
‘Saint-Marie Police!’ he called out before entering the open door.
Over the next few minutes, Richard and Camille announced themselves before entering the nearby farm buildings one by one, but there was no sign of anyone who might have fired the two gunshots, let alone any sign of what the gunshots might have been aimed at.
Richard reconvened with Camille in the centre of the cobbled yard.
‘It was definitely a gunshot, sir.’
‘Two gunshots, Camille. I agree’.
Lucy came over to join the Police, and Richard turned to her.
‘Do you have any idea why we just heard gunshots?’
‘No,’ Lucy said, but even as she said this, Richard and Camille could see the young woman’s gaze slide towards one of the few buildings they hadn’t yet searched. It was a long stone barn – a bit like a stables – with five evenly-spaced openings along the side, although Richard could see that the middle opening had a thick wooden door built into it. And while there was a gabled roof of red tiles running the length of the building, the area of roof directly above the central wooden door rose high into the air in a cone-shape that was shorn off at the top in a way that reminded Richard of the main body of a windmill. Or perhaps – more accurately – a Kentish oast house. But it was as Richard was looking up at the cone structure in the middle of the building that he realised he could see puffs of smoke or steam gently rising out of the top of it.
‘What’s that building over there?’ he asked Lucy.
‘It’s the old drying shed,’ she said.
‘Let’s check it out,’ Camille said, and started jogging towards the building.
Richard and Lucy followed, and by the time they arrived at the building, Camille was already trying the handle to the heavy wooden door, but it wasn’t budging.
‘It’s locked,’ she said.
‘Is there a key to this room?’ Richard asked Lucy.
‘I don’t think so. There’s just an iron bolt you slide across on the inside.’
Richard looked at the door and could see that it was ancient – maybe over a hundred years old – and it had wide black iron hinges holding it in place. It was the sort of door you’d expect to find on a safe-room in an old castle. Entirely solid, entirely impregnable, and with a locking mechanism that could only be accessed from the inside.
‘Saint-Marie Police!’ Richard called out. ‘Open up this door!’
There was no answer. As Richard saw Camille go to investigate through one of the open doorways nearby, he turned to face Lucy.
‘Is there another way in?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘No, it’s just an old room we’ve converted into a shower room. This is the only way in.’
Richard stepped back from the door and looked up at the raised area of roof. Steam was now very definitely billowing out of the cone. So he took a deep breath, steadied himself a moment, and then ran for the door and shoulder-barged it.
His left shoulder exploded in pain, and he recoiled in a whimper.
‘Bloody hell, that hurt.’
Then, as he rubbed his shoulder to get some feeling back into it, he saw Camille re-appear from the nearby doorway, but now she was holding a massive sledgehammer. Where the hell had she got that from?
‘Is there any other way in?’ he asked her.
‘Not that I can see, but I found this,’ she said.
‘A sledgehammer?’
‘We need the strongest person here to smash that door in.’
‘And you think that’s me?’
‘As it happens, no, but you’d be offended if I didn’t ask you first. So please be as quick as you can, sir, we need to get in there.’
Camille shifted the weight of the sledgehammer over to a now speechless Richard and went to stand with Lucy.
Richard now realised that he was wearing a beautiful woollen suit while also holding a super-heavy weapon of destruction. The sort of super-heavy weapon he’d always seen manly men use. The tiniest hint of a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
He turned to face the door and took a moment to steady himself. And then, knowing that he was now holding hundreds of pounds of power in his hands, Richard opened his mind to all of the resentments he felt at being posted to the tropics. How he couldn’t get a decent pint of bitter, a slice of bread, or even a proper cup of tea. How he’d found a black scorpion lurking in one of his slippers that morning. Then Richard thought about how bloody hot it was at all times, and how desperately he craved just one morning of crisp winter, with mist hanging in the air, and frosted grass crunching underfoot. And, as he gave in to his normally-suppressed feelings of frustration at the almost infinite vicissitudes of his life, Richard felt a powerful wave of emotion rise up inside him and, before he even knew he was doing it, he was swinging the sledgehammer through the air and thumping it dead-eyed into the door just beneath the handle with a thunderous crack.
Richard exhaled. Oh, that had felt good. But had it worked?
Richard saw the door swing back an inch on its hinges, and he could see that the frame had splintered where the bolt had torn free of its housing.
Richard caught a look of wonder on Camille’s face, but she was quick to hide it when she realised that her boss was looking at her, and she pushed past him to enter the shower room. Richard dropped the sledgehammer to the ground as Lucy entered the room after Camille, and then he followed .
As he stepped into the room, Richard was almost instantly swallowed by a fog of hot steam. Remembering that Lucy had called this building ‘the shower room’, Richard guessed – and could also hear – that a powerful shower was turned on somewhere nearby.
Richard wafted the door open and shut a few times to help clear the steam, and he was soon able to see that the room was empty – although, now he was looking, he could see that there was an object slumped on the floor to the left hand side of the room.
The object looked like a human body.
A human body that wasn’t moving.
As Camille went to inspect the body, Richard was pleased to see that Lucy had kept her distance and was standing on the other side of the room.
‘Please don’t move or touch anything,’ he told Lucy, indicating that she was to stay exactly where she was, and he went over to the shower that was built into the side of the wall, and which was thumping hot water down onto the mosaic-tiled floor to the side of the body. As Richard twisted the dial on the wall to turn the shower off, he saw that the body belonged to a man.
‘He’s dead, sir,’ Camille said.
Richard saw that the dead man looked to be in his sixties. He was wearing old jeans, a cheap grey shirt that was frayed at the collar and seams, and a tatty old pair of trainers that had once been white but were now grey and falling apart. Richard also saw that the man had matted grey hair that went down to his shoulders, and a nicotine-stained beard that was similarly straggly.
But what was perhaps most noticeable was the handgun that Richard could see was loosely held in the dead man’s right hand where it lay on the floor. And seeing as there was no-one else in the room when they’d smashed the door in, Richard realised that it was pretty obvious what had happened here. The man – whoever he was – had come into the shower room, bolted the door from the inside, and then committed suicide by shooting himself with the handgun.
Before Richard rolled the body over to reveal the dead man’s face, he briefly noticed that the man lay on the floor directly between the shower and the drain that was set into the centre of the mosaic-tiled room. And although the water from the shower had run down to the old man on its way to the metal-grilled hole in the floor, his body had formed something of a barrier, and the water had gone around him on either side on its way to the drain. In other words, Richard realised, the shower hadn’t been running long enough to really drench the man’s clothes and start seeping underneath the body as it ran away. The area of floor that lay directly between the body and the drain was still bone dry.
This briefly puzzled Richard. After all, it made sense that the man would have turned on the shower before committing suicide. It was a well-known – if somewhat macabre – fact that most suicides were carried out with some consideration for those who were about to discover the body. This was why so many gun suicides happened in bathrooms. The person about to commit suicide knows that bathrooms are altogether easier to clean of blood than any of the other rooms in a house. And the fact that this man had turned on the shower and positioned himself by the drain before he shot himself suggested that this suicide was no different. The man had wanted to make sure that whatever blood he created with his death would be sluiced away afterwards.
But if the shower had been turned on before the man had taken his own life, the tiles should have been wet all the way between the shower and the drain. After all, while it was plausible that the body became a barrier to the water after it had collapsed to the floor, it didn’t seem possible that no water at all had made it to the drain before the man had killed himself. And yet, the tiles between the dead body and the drain were entirely dry. Maybe there was some kind of timer on the shower that had turned on after the man had killed himself, Richard wondered to himself. Either way, Richard filed away the puzzle of whether the shower had been turned on ante or post mortem for later consideration.
It was time to turn the body over and discover the man’s identity.
Richard took hold of the body’s shoulders, and Camille looked over at Lucy.
‘I think you should leave.’
‘I want to see his face.’
‘But we don’t know how damaged the body is.’
‘I don’t care,’ Lucy said desperately. ‘I have to see.’
Camille looked at Richard. He nodded. It was okay by him.
With a grunt of effort – cadavers were always surprisingly heavy – Richard turned the body over, but he and Camille needn’t have worried about gore. There was only the smallest of blooms of blood seeping onto the man’s grey shirt above the heart area. But, once again, Richard noticed that although the back of the body was wet with water, the clothes to the front of the corpse – where the body had been touching the floor – were still bone dry. It was looking increasingly as though the man was dead and on the tiles before the shower had been turned on.
As for the body itself, Richard could see that the man’s face was hollow-cheeked and craggy-lined from age. And although his skin was greyish-white, his cheeks and nose were a purple starburst of burst veins. He had clearly been a drinker. Adding to the impression of an old man who didn’t look after himself was an unruly pair of grey eyebrows and a long beard that seemed almost yellow rather than white, and which was very distinctly nicotine-stained around the mouth – from the cigarettes, Richard could smell from the man’s clothes, that he smoked.
‘It’s him,’ Lucy said simply.
‘This is the man you saw stalking you this morning?’
‘It is.’
‘And who you then chased into the jungle?’
‘That’s right,’ Lucy said, but Richard could see that something was making her frown.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. It’s definitely him. It’s the man I chased into the jungle.’
Lucy was still troubled by something.
‘What’s wrong?’ Richard asked.
Lucy kept on looking at the man on the ground.
‘Ms Beaumont, what is it?’
‘It’s just, I don’t know who he is.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, I only got the briefest of glimpses of him before now. But I always reckoned I’d maybe recognise him if I ever got up close.’
‘And you don’t?’
‘I don’t,’ Lucy said. ‘In fact, I’ve no idea who that man is at all.’
Richard looked at Camille.
And then he looked from Camille back to Lucy.
‘Then who the hell is he?’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_7294ed68-0ff7-5bfa-b1c4-2fd252169f88)
‘You’re sure you don’t recognise him?’ Richard asked.
Lucy was troubled as she looked at the old man.
‘I don’t. But he’s definitely the man I saw this morning.’
‘Then, is there anyone else at the plantation who might recognise him?’
‘I don’t think there are any workers on the plantation at the moment.’
‘There aren’t?’ Richard asked, surprised.
‘It’s the wrong time in the growing season. But the rest of my family should be up at the house.’
Richard looked at Camille, who got the message.
‘I’ll accompany you back to the house,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to bring whoever we can down here to see if they can identify the body.’
‘Of course,’ Lucy said.
‘And call Dwayne and Fidel, Camille,’ Richard said as Camille led Lucy out of the room. ‘Pull them off the bootleg rum case. We’re going to need them and the Crime Scene Kit up here pronto.’
Once Camille and Lucy had left, Richard started to work the scene. First he took stock of the room. It was about forty feet across, entirely circular, and the walls and floor were constructed of stone. And from the way that the stone on the walls and floor was worn away, Richard could tell that the building was very old. Halfway around the room, there was an old metal-framed window to let light in, and on the far side of the room there was a slatted bench with a neatly-stacked pile of white towels waiting to be used.
The shower area itself consisted of two tall sheets of glass, one either side of a mosaic-tiled area where the shower and control unit were.
Richard went to the centre of the room and looked up at the cone-shaped roof as it rose high above his head. He could see that the wide opening at the very top of the cone had been blocked off and there was now just an old metal vent of some sort. There was no way a human could have come in or out of the building through the ‘chimney’.
Richard had only seen the one bullet wound in the man’s chest and yet he’d definitely heard two shots being fired when he’d been in the jungle, so he decided to see if he could discover what had happened to the other bullet.
Richard ‘walked the grid’ of the floor and soon found two bullet casings where they’d skittered to a stop on the tiles about five feet from the body. So if two bullets had been fired – as the two bullet casings suggested – where was the second bullet? Richard returned to the body, and it was only as he crouched down and really started checking it over that he found the second wound.
When he unclasped the dead man’s right hand from the handle of the pistol, he saw a bullet hole in the base of the man’s right palm. Richard hadn’t noticed it when he’d first seen the body because the man’s hand had been holding the gun. And the hand had been in the wash of water that was flowing around the body, so most of the blood that had come out of the wound had been washed away. But now, as Richard looked more carefully, he could see a red sheen to the tiles that lay in between the man’s hand and the plughole.
Now he thought about it, Richard realised he’d failed to notice this wound the first time around because, although there was an entry wound as the bullet had punched through the man’s palm and into his wrist, there was no exit wound. Richard guessed that the bullet had maybe hit the bones inside the wrist, and then stopped dead in its tracks.
This was puzzling. If two shots were fired by this man, then he must have shot himself in the wrist first before shooting himself in the heart – seeing as the shot to the heart would have been the killing shot. Therefore, it was only logical to presume that the shot to the heart had come second. The shot to the wrist must have come first.
But seeing as the man had died holding the gun in his right hand – suggesting that he was right-handed – how on earth did that first bullet get into his right wrist? The man would have to have been holding the gun in his left hand to fire it. And why would a right-handed man fire a gun with his left hand? And, having smashed the bones in his right wrist with that first bullet, the man would then have had to transfer the gun over to his right hand, somehow grip the gun with his broken hand, and then pull the trigger, firing the fatal shot into his heart.
It didn’t seem in any way possible, did it?
And now that Richard was thinking about it, what sort of suicide attempt was so botched that the first bullet missed the heart and hit the wrist instead?
As Richard looked down at the body, he remembered how the area of tiles between the body and the drain had been dry when he’d broken into the room, suggesting that the shower had perhaps been turned on after the body had hit the ground.
When understanding came to Richard, it was almost as a physical shock.
This wasn’t suicide.
This was murder.
But what exactly had happened here? Richard took a step back and imagined a shooter aiming his gun at the old man. It seemed only natural that he would try to plead for his life, or – yes, maybe this was it! – he’d even try to grab the gun out of the killer’s hand. But when the old man raised his hand to grab the gun, the killer fired the shot that drilled through the man’s palm and shattered the bones in his right wrist. Then, before the old man could run away or shout for help, the killer fired the second shot, and this time the bullet went straight into the old man’s heart.
Jesus, Richard thought to himself. This wasn’t a murder. This was an execution. But it was an execution that hadn’t quite gone to plan. The killer had been forced to use two bullets rather than the one. And then what had happened next? Well, Richard considered, seeing as he’d just found the victim in an empty room with the gun in his right hand, it was pretty obvious that the killer’s plan had always been to make this murder look like a suicide. And even though there were now two bullets in the victim, the killer would have known that the gunshots had been very loud. Loud enough for anyone nearby to come and investigate. He or she would also no doubt have been panicking at the fact that the murder had been botched. There wouldn’t have been time to finesse the situation. So the killer had decided to go through with the plan of making the scene look like a suicide – and hope that the Police didn’t work out the truth.
So far, so understandable. But there was still an aspect of the scene that didn’t quite make sense. Having committed murder – when time was surely at a premium – why did the murderer then linger at the scene long enough to turn on the shower? Was it to wash away the blood? It seemed a possibility, but Richard couldn’t see how washing away the blood might be of any benefit to the killer. After all, it didn’t wash away the body or the two bullets, did it?
So what was the killer trying to wash away?
Richard went over to the shower controls and inspected them. There were two dials. One that turned the water on and off, and one that controlled the temperature. There was no timer. So it hadn’t come on automatically, Richard realised. It could only be turned on manually. As Richard peered at the second dial, he saw that it was twisted all the way around to its highest setting. Richard was surprised. Why was the shower set to its hottest temperature?
There was a discreet cough from the doorway. Richard looked over and saw Camille.
‘Sir. I’ve brought the occupants of the house to identify the body.’
Richard could see a clutch of people waiting behind Camille. ‘How many people are there?’
‘Three, sir. But a fourth is on the way. He was out in the coffee fields.’
Richard tried to work out the best way of proceeding.
‘Okay, then would you send them in one by one please.’
The first person to enter was tall, thin, had a glossy mane of blonde hair, and was wearing a faded pair of blue jeans, a long-sleeved shirt in blue denim, and very old Converse trainers. Richard guessed that the man was about fifty years old, and from the way that he was carrying himself – and the patrician way he swept his eyes over the scene and the dead body – Richard guessed that this was maybe the plantation owner.
‘Hugh Beaumont,’ the man said with a smile as he went over to Richard and shook his hand firmly. ‘I’m Lucy’s father. I’m in charge here.’
‘Detective Inspector Richard Poole,’ Richard said, quietly impressed by Hugh’s bearing. After all, it took a certain type of person to make sure that introductions were completed satisfactorily while a dead body lay only a few feet away.
‘So, this is Lucy’s Peeping Tom, is it?’ Hugh said, turning to look at the victim.
‘Apparently so,’ Richard said.
‘Amazing. We all thought she was making it up.’
‘You did?’
‘Well, only in the sense that none of the rest of us saw anyone lurking down here. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll have plenty of questions in due course, but let me see if I recognise him.’
Hugh took out a pair of gold-rimmed glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. He then walked a couple of paces to the side so he could better see the dead man’s face. He bent over to get a closer look, shook his head sadly to himself, and then stood up again.
‘I’m sorry. I’ve no idea who he is.’
‘You don’t?’
‘I’ve never seen that man before in my life.’
‘I see. And you’re sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Might he perhaps be a plantation worker who used to work here?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t recognise him. And I’m pretty sure I would. I’ve got a good memory for faces. Sorry not to be more help. Shall I send the next person in?’
‘Yes please. Thank you, Mr Beaumont.’
‘Please,’ Hugh said with an easy smile. ‘It’s Hugh.’ He then left, saying, ‘I’ll send Sylvie in next. She’s my wife.’
A few moments after Hugh left, a woman – also in her fifties – entered. And whereas Hugh was tall and thin, Sylvie was far shorter, far rounder, and she was wearing a dark blue trouser suit that wouldn’t have been out of place at a cocktail party at Government House. Richard had the suspicion that Sylvie had put it on specially to meet the Police.
‘So this is the man who’s shot himself?’ she said in plummy tones that were ninety-five per cent regal, Richard realised, and five per cent… what? He wasn’t sure. But there was maybe something forced about just how posh Sylvie was being.
‘How macabre,’ she said, pronouncing ‘macabre’ with a suitably French roll to her tongue. ‘I mean, it’s ghastly, isn’t it? Finding a dead man in one’s shower room. Although, I suppose you’re used to this sort of thing.’
Richard recognised a put-down when he heard one, and decided that he didn’t much like Sylvie.
For her part, Sylvie turned from the body and looked at Richard.
‘You’re that British policeman, aren’t you?’
‘If you mean, am I Detective Inspector Richard Poole, then yes I am. Could you tell me if you recognise the body?’
‘I’m so sorry, but I don’t,’ she said without a hint of regret.
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m not the sort of person who consorts with tramps.’
‘So that’s who you think this person is? A tramp?’
‘Or vagabond. I never know the difference. I suppose you do?’
Richard decided that he’d had enough of Sylvie.
‘So you definitely don’t recognise him?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Then thank you very much for your time. If you could send the next person through?’
‘Of course,’ Sylvie said with a superior smile, and left the room.
Richard briefly considered the differences between the welcoming charm of Hugh and the dismissive manner of his wife, but he was interrupted by the arrival of the third witness.
He was a young man – a boy, really, Richard thought to himself – aged about eighteen years old.
‘Oh,’ he said in a light voice as he saw the dead body on the tiles, and Richard took a moment to notice that the man seemed to be a perfect copy of Hugh, but thirty years younger. In fact, as Richard looked at the man’s smart haircut, slender build, and easy manner, he wondered – not for the first time – how a certain class of Brit managed to breed effortlessness into their children. But, more troubling than that, Richard saw that this boy-man was wearing the sort of casual clothes that Richard wished he had the confidence to wear: an old pair of brown suede shoes, khaki chinos smartly held up with an old leather belt the same shade of brown as his shoes, and a somewhat billowing white shirt that was tucked in at the waist, rolled up at the sleeves, and open at the neck. Before he could stop himself, Richard had a little epiphany. He realised that this elegant young person – who had only uttered one syllable so far – embodied pretty much all of the conflicts he felt about the British upper classes. Their inherited wealth and sense of entitlement made him sick to his bones, but he quite liked how they dressed.
Richard snapped out of his reverie as he saw the young man grimace.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said. He then turned to Richard with an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry. My first dead body.’
‘I understand. It can be very distressing. But you only need to look at his face. Just tell me if you recognise him.’
‘Okay,’ the young man said, turning back to look at the victim’s face. After a few seconds, he turned back to Richard.
‘Sorry. No idea.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I think so.’
‘Okay. Then can I ask your name?’
‘Oh, of course,’ the young man said, coming over to shake Richard’s hand in a perfect facsimile of Hugh’s manners. ‘Sorry. Matthew Beaumont. I’m Hugh and Sylvie’s son. Lucy’s brother.’
‘Detective Inspector Richard Poole,’ Richard said before internally wincing. He was supposed to be in charge here, not this callow youth. But before he could stamp his authority back on the interview, the light in the doorway was blocked as someone stood on the threshold.
‘No way, you have got to be kidding me!’ Richard heard the person say in a Caribbean accent, and then in walked what Richard could only call an anomaly.
Whereas Hugh, Sylvie and Matthew were all types of Brits abroad that Richard recognised well – they were patrician, posh, and very much in charge – this young man was barefoot, was wearing a frayed pair of swimming trunks and a filthy T-shirt with a massive logo of a cannabis leaf on the front.
Matthew saw the confusion in Richard’s face and smiled in understanding.
‘This is my older brother, Tom,’ he said, indicating the man in the doorway.
‘So it’s true,’ Tom said. ‘A real live dead body. On our land. I can’t believe it.’
Richard went to say something, but realised he still couldn’t get over how this one member of the family had a Saint-Marie accent.
‘The Inspector just wants you to see if you recognise his face,’ Matthew said.
‘Okay,’ Tom said and went and inspected the body.
After a few moments, he did a complicated flick with his right hand that produced a clicking noise.
‘A bullet to the heart. That’s sick.’
‘I agree,’ Richard said.
‘You do?’ Tom asked, surprised.
‘Of course.’
‘That’s sick.’
‘What is?’
‘It’s sick that you think it’s sick.’
After a moment’s reflection, Richard decided that he and Tom almost certainly had very different working definitions of what the word ‘sick’ meant.
‘Okay,’ Tom said, standing up from the body, ‘I’ve never seen this guy before.’
‘You haven’t?’
‘No way.’
‘Just like the rest of your family.’
‘What’s that?’ Matthew asked.
‘None of you recognise him.’
Matthew frowned as he considered this.
‘So how come someone we’ve never seen before shot himself dead in our shower room?’
Before Richard could answer, Camille stepped into the room.
‘Dwayne and Fidel are here.’
‘Alright,’ Richard said to Tom and Matthew, ‘I’ll need you to clear the room. Would you tell your family that I’d like to speak to them back at your house in a few minutes?’
Once the room was clear and Dwayne and Fidel had entered with the Crime Scene kit, Richard explained his theory that the unknown man’s death wasn’t suicide, it was murder. He then tasked Dwayne with working the primary crime scene in the shower room, and he told Fidel to go into the jungle and collect whatever evidence he could find from the clearing where they believed the victim had been hiding.
As for Richard and Camille, they were soon heading up the hill to the Beaumonts’ main residence. As they approached, Richard could see that the house was made of the same stone as the rest of the plantation, and its formal dimensions, white sash windows, and shiny black door gave it the look of a Georgian rectory.
Hugh opened the door as they approached.
‘Welcome to Beaumont Manor,’ he said, and ushered Richard and Camille into the main hall.
Richard realised that the name of the house wasn’t misplaced. The main hall was almost pitch black, smelt of furniture polish, and there was a wide wooden staircase that led up to the rooms above. As for why it was so dark, Richard could see that the two sash windows either side of the front door had their shutters firmly shut.
‘Sorry about the gloom,’ Hugh said, ‘but we have to keep our ancestors out of direct sunlight.’
Once Richard’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, he could see that the hall was wood-panelled, and every spare inch of wall space was covered in oil paintings of old family members stretching back what looked like hundreds of years. Richard saw glimpses of men in armour, men sitting on horses, and more modern men sitting in front of views of Saint-Marie.
‘What a lot of men,’ Camille said, and Richard caught the note of sarcasm in her voice.
Hugh, however, didn’t, and was clearly proud as punch as he indicated the hall.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This whole place is full of history. The floorboards you’re standing on are made from the deck of the ship that brought the first Beaumont over to the island. Here, let me introduce you.’
With an enthusiastic grin, Hugh went over to a gilt-framed portrait at the foot of the stairs. Looking at it, Richard could see a narrow-faced man with piercing blue eyes and tightly-curled blonde hair looking straight back at him. The portrait’s stare was so intense – so unflinching – that it was somewhat unsettling.
‘Great Great Grandfather, the Honourable Thomas Beaumont, the youngest son of Baron Halstead. His older brother inherited the family estate and title, but Thomas, as the younger son, had no role in life, so he did what a lot of younger sons did at the time and decamped to the colonies to seek his fortune. He came to Saint-Marie in 1777, and built the coffee plantation up from scratch.’
‘Wow,’ Camille said – and Richard again picked up the sarcasm in her voice.
‘I know,’ Hugh said, having once again taken Camille’s comment at face value. ‘If you’re interested in the history of this place you should talk to Matthew, he’s our resident genealogy buff. Anyway, I’m sure you don’t have time for all this, let me take you through.’
As he spoke, Hugh escorted Richard and Camille from the gloom of the main hall into a long, sunny corridor, and from there into a large, airy sitting room that was stuffed full of old furniture, family photos in silver frames, and rather startling abstract paintings on the walls in various clashing colours.
Furnishing aside, the immediate impression that Richard got as he entered the room was that the family members had been in the middle of a conversation, and they’d cut it short the moment the Police had walked in. Perhaps it was understandable, Richard thought to himself. After all, a dead body had just been found in one of their outhouses.
Before he addressed the family, Richard noticed that Sylvie was standing with her back to a rather grand marble fireplace – as though she’d been the focus of whatever conversation had been going on – and Matthew and Lucy were sitting next to each other on a sofa. As for Tom, he was sitting in a window seat on his own.
‘Thank you all for waiting for us,’ Richard said as he and Camille crossed the room to join the family, and Sylvie went to join Hugh as he sat down on an old chesterfield sofa.
‘Now, I just have a few questions, it shouldn’t take too long.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Hugh said on behalf of his family. ‘We’ll do whatever we can to help.’
‘Thank you. But just to be sure, are you really sure none of you recognised the body of the man we found in your shower room just now?’
‘It’s all we’ve been talking about,’ Sylvie said. ‘And I’m rather relieved to say, we can’t even begin to place him.’
‘Are you positive?’
‘We are,’ Sylvie said in a tone that made it clear that she now considered the subject closed.
‘I see,’ Richard said. ‘Then I need to ask where you all were at eleven o’clock this morning.’
‘You do?’ Hugh asked.
‘That’s right. Where were you all when the man died?’
‘Why does it matter?’
‘If you could just answer the question.’
‘Okay,’ Hugh said. ‘I was upstairs in my bedroom. With my laptop. Doing emails and checking up on the world.’
‘Was anyone with you?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Do you have an alibi?’
This hit home.
‘I don’t know,’ Hugh said. ‘Maybe not. I was on my own. Until Lucy came in and told me someone had just shot themselves in the old drying shed.’
‘That’s what you call your shower room?’ Richard asked. ‘The old drying shed?’
‘Not any more,’ Sylvie said, reminding her husband where the power lay in their relationship. ‘I converted it into a shower room a few years ago. Mainly because I was so fed up with the family coming back from the fields covered in filth and mud.’
‘Sylvie’s right,’ Hugh said. ‘But since you’re asking, I don’t think I can prove where I was when that man shot himself. Not categorically.’
‘Thank you,’ Richard said. ‘Then what about the rest of you?’
‘Well, that’s easy enough,’ Sylvie said. ‘I was in the kitchen preparing lunch.’
‘And can anyone alibi you?’
‘Normally Nanny Rosie would be with me, but she’s off visiting family on Montserrat for a couple of days.’
‘Who’s Nanny Rosie?’ Camille asked.
‘She was the children’s nanny when they were growing up, but she’s stayed on as our housekeeper since then. Anyway, she’s not here, so I was on my own in the kitchen.’
‘As for me,’ Matthew said, ‘I was upstairs in my room at eleven o’clock.’
‘Was anyone with you?’
‘No. I’m sorry. And like father, I didn’t come downstairs until Lucy arrived saying she’d just found a dead body in the shower room.’
‘Very well,’ Richard said, and turned to Tom.
‘What?’ he said, as though he’d only at that moment realised the Police were asking him a question.
‘Where were you when the gunshots were fired?’
‘I was in the coffee fields.’
‘On your own?’
‘Sure. I check them every morning regular as clockwork. Me and our crops, eleven o’clock every day. Or thereabouts.’
‘Then can you tell me why you didn’t return to the main house?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I assume you heard the gunshots? Seeing as you were in the coffee fields?’
‘I didn’t hear nothing.’
Richard tried not to shudder. What was it with youngsters and their slapdash approach to language? He’d already had to endure Tom using the word ‘sick’ in a way that made no actual sense, but this was going too far. After all, while it was theoretically possible for someone to hear nothing – or to not hear something, of course – it seemed logically impossible for someone to “not hear nothing”.
‘You didn’t hear anything?’ Camille said, guessing why her boss now looked as though he’d just sucked on a lemon, and wanting to make sure that the conversation kept moving.
‘No way,’ Tom said. ‘The first I knew anything was up was when Lucy rang me on my mobile. And she told me what had happened. That’s when I came back from the fields.’
‘I see. Thank you.’
‘But I don’t understand why you’re wasting our time,’ Sylvie said. ‘That man shot himself, didn’t he? So what does it matter where we all were?’
‘But that’s the thing,’ Richard said. ‘He didn’t shoot himself. He was murdered.’
There was a gasp from Lucy, and Richard could see that the rest of the family were just as shocked.
Sylvie recovered first.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said.
‘Which leads me to my next question,’ Richard said, deciding that it was time to steamroller Sylvie. ‘Because, according to Lucy, the murder victim has been hanging around the plantation for the last couple of weeks. And we’ve found some kind of hideout in the jungle that seems to back up her statement. So I need to know, have any of you been aware of a stalker spying on the plantation recently?’
Hugh answered on behalf of the family, but Richard could see how rattled he was.
‘I’m sorry, we haven’t. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s like I said to you in the shower room. Lucy mentioned to us that she’d seen someone lurking about, but none of the rest of us have seen anyone.’
‘So, to be clear,’ Richard said to the family, ‘not only can none of you identify the murder victim, you’re also saying that it was only Lucy who’d even seen him about over the last few weeks?’
Richard looked at the family, and could see that they all agreed with his statement. Very well. Time to move on.
‘Then can I ask, do any of you own a handgun?’
There was a sharp intake of breath from Sylvie.
‘What?’
‘It’s a simple enough question,’ Richard said. ‘Do any of you own a handgun?’
‘No, of course we don’t,’ she snapped. ‘Why would any of us own a gun?’
It seemed a fair enough answer, but before Richard could ask any follow-up questions, the door opened and Fidel entered the room.
‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but there’s something I think you need to see.’
‘There is?’ Richard said.
‘Yes, sir. Although can I ask the family a question first?’
‘Of course,’ Richard said.
Fidel turned to the room and was suddenly awkward.
‘Well, it’s just…you see, I was wondering if any of the family own any kind of three-wheeled van at all? Or it could be a three-wheeled motorbike.’
‘No,’ Hugh said. ‘We’ve got two cars we share between the five of us, but nothing that’s got three wheels.’
‘Then maybe there’s a three-wheeled vehicle on your plantation somewhere?’ Fidel asked.
The witnesses were just as sure that there were no three-wheeled vehicles anywhere on the plantation, so Richard thanked the family for their time, and then he and Camille followed Fidel back to the murder scene. On the way, he asked Fidel why he’d wanted to know about three-wheeled vehicles.
‘It’s probably best if I show you, sir,’ Fidel said.
‘Very well. How did you and Dwayne got on trying to catch the Commissioner’s bootleg rum seller?’
‘Well, sir. We spoke to the manager down at the Fort Royal hotel, and he confirmed what the Commissioner told us. There’d been a guy on the roadside trying to sell knocked-off bottles of rum to the guests as they came and went from the hotel.’
‘Did you see him?’
‘We didn’t. He was gone by the time we arrived.’
‘Then did you get a description of him?’
‘Not in the time we were at the hotel. Camille phoned us and told us you’d found a body, so we dropped everything and came straight here.’
‘Quite right,’ Richard said, already wishing he could kick the bootleg rum seller into the long grass. But experience told him that once the Commissioner had expressed an interest in a case, he tended to stay involved until the bitter end.
As Richard mulled how best to manage the Commissioner’s expectations, Fidel led them to a group of buildings just beyond the old drying shed.
‘Where exactly are we going?’ he asked.
‘Don’t worry, sir. It’s just through this building.’
Fidel went through the open door and Richard was instantly hit by the aroma of coffee beans. It was overpowering, Richard thought, as he looked about himself. The room was full of some kind of fabric conveyor belt that led into and out of various old bits of cast iron machinery that were painted dark green. The paint was flaking in places, and there were signs of dark rust on some parts of the machinery.
‘What is this?’ Richard asked.
‘I think this is where they pack the coffee, sir,’ Fidel said, indicating a palette tray of empty hessian bags at one end of the assembly line. Richard could see the words ‘Premiere Bonifieur blend, Beaumont Plantation, Saint-Marie’ printed onto each bag. But before Richard could make much sense of how the machinery might have worked, Fidel was leading across the floor again and taking them through another open door that led out to the bright sunshine and jungle on the other side of the building.
‘You searched out here?’ Camille asked, impressed.
‘Well, it didn’t take me too long to gather, bag and log the physical evidence in the jungle clearing, so I thought I’d check the buildings near to the scene of the murder. See if I could find anything.’
‘And what exactly is it that you found?’ Richard asked.
‘That’s the thing, sir, I don’t know if it’s much, but I did find this.’
Fidel pointed down at the dusty ground, and Richard and Camille could see a set of tyre tracks in the dirt. And, as Fidel had suggested to the witnesses, they clearly belonged to a three-wheeled vehicle of some sort.
But if the family said they didn’t own any three-wheeled vehicles, then whose vehicle did these tracks belong to?
Richard saw that the tyre tracks continued along the side of the building for about twenty yards, and then they turned and disappeared between two thick bushes. On the further side of the bushes was the main road that serviced the plantation.
Richard realised that if someone had driven a three-wheeled vehicle up to this side of this building, they could have approached from the main road without being seen by anyone who was in the courtyard. It was essentially a private way for a vehicle to access the plantation. And then Richard remembered something else. There’d been a sudden burst of heavy rain when he and Camille had arrived at the plantation at about 11am. So had these tracks been left before or after the downpour?
Getting down on his haunches, he inspected the tyre tracks more closely, and could see that they – and the dirt all around – were pitted with indentations from where the heavy drops of rain had fallen.
‘Whatever vehicle was here, it left before the downpour at 11am,’ he said. ‘I can see that these raindrops fell onto the tyre tracks after they’d been made.’
‘Oh,’ Fidel said, disappointed.
‘However, you’re right, Fidel,’ Richard said. ‘It’s interesting, isn’t it? There’s a three-wheeled vehicle up here recently enough that the tyre tracks are still fresh in the dirt, it didn’t arrive or leave by the main entrance, and none of the family drive a three-wheeled vehicle, or know of one operating on the plantation.’
Richard looked at the middle tyre print more closely, and saw a distinctive ‘cut’ in the mud that repeated every couple of feet or so. Whatever the vehicle was, the rubber of the middle wheel was damaged – which would possibly make identifying the vehicle that little bit easier.
‘As long as this remains an unexplained phenomenon, then I want you to get some plaster of Paris from the Crime Scene Kit, and make casts of these tyre prints. In particular, I’d like you to make sure you get a decent cast of this repeating mark on the front wheel.’ Here, Richard indicated the repeating ‘cut’ mark in the middle tyre’s print.
‘Yes, sir,’ Fidel said, thrilled that his lead was important enough to be taken seriously.
‘And while you’re doing that, Camille and I need to look at the murder scene again, because I think we’ve got a bit of a problem.’
‘We do, sir?’ Camille asked.
‘I think we do.’
Back at the murder scene, Richard and Camille found Dwayne photographing the body.
‘Have you been able to identify the victim yet?’ Richard asked.
‘Not yet, Chief. Although I think he could be a Brit.’
‘You do?’
‘He’s got some loose change in his pockets, and plenty of it is UK currency.’
‘He’s got British coins in his pockets?’
‘He has, sir.’
Dwayne handed over a small see-through evidence bag to his boss that was full of coins.
‘But I also found a receipt in his back pocket you might want to look at.’
Dwayne handed over an evidence bag that contained a cheap till receipt with blue ink so faded that it was hard to read.
‘You need to turn it over,’ Dwayne suggested.
Richard turned the evidence bag over and could see that on the other side of the receipt, someone had scribbled ‘11am’ in biro.
‘It says ‘11am’,’ Richard said. ‘He was killed just after 11am.’
‘Suggesting to me, Chief, that our victim was perhaps here for a pre-arranged meeting.’
‘Now that’s interesting,’ Richard said, and handed the evidence bag to Camille for her to inspect. ‘So this murder was possibly premeditated. Have we really got nothing beyond a few British coins to help us work out who this man was?’
‘I’m sorry, Chief. Although the victim’s got a pretty distinctive scar on the forefinger of his left hand.’
Dwayne crouched down and turned the victim’s left hand over, indicating an old scar that ran along the victim’s forefinger. It was white, ridged, and a good two inches long.
‘I see,’ Richard said. ‘So, apart from a scar on his left hand, a few British coins, and a cryptic till receipt with “11am” written on it, we don’t know who the victim is?’
‘That’s about it, sir,’ Dwayne agreed.
‘So what’s the problem?’ Camille asked, reminding Richard of what he’d said only a few minutes earlier.
‘It’s this window,’ Richard said as he led Dwayne and Camille over to the little metal-framed window on the far wall of the room. ‘Or to be more precise, this window, the vent in the ceiling, and that door,’ he said, pointing at the ceiling and broken-in door in turn as he spoke.
‘Why’s that?’ Dwayne asked.
‘Tell me what you see,’ Richard said as he indicated the window.
‘Well, Chief,’ Dwayne said, buying himself time, ‘unless this is a trick question, it’s a window.’
‘You’re right, Dwayne. It’s a window. Camille?’
Camille’s instincts were already telling her where Richard was going with this. So she got out a pair of evidence gloves, snapped them on, and started checking out the window frame. She could see that it was fixed solidly to the stone casement, and the glass was held in place with old putty that had crumbled in places but had clearly not been tampered with in any way. But she knew the real test would be the latch that kept the window locked shut, and she gently touched it with her fingers. It didn’t move. In fact, she could see that the window’s latch was jammed tightly into the window frame.
What was more, Camille could see that the metal lever that allowed the window to open and close had an old butterfly screw on it that was tightly screwed down as well. Giving the butterfly screw a hard twist to the left, she unscrewed it enough that she could finally open the window. She then stuck her head outside. There was an undisturbed flower bed directly underneath the window with only a few weeds in, and the rest of the area behind the shower room was concreted over.
She then closed the window again, reset the catch in the window frame and re-locked the butterfly screw on the lever.
‘Okay,’ she pronounced, ‘so the window was locked. And it can only be locked from the inside.’
‘Precisely,’ Richard said, pleased that Camille had also worked it out.
Camille crossed to the centre of the room and looked up at the ceiling high above them.
‘And there’s no way in or out of this room through the roof. Not even with that vent built into the top.’
‘Agreed,’ Richard said. ‘It’s far too small.’
Camille led over to the main door.
‘And this door is seriously old, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You couldn’t even begin to tamper with the hinges, or get around it or under it in any way.’
‘Quite so,’ Richard said.
Camille inspected the thick iron bolt that ran across the back of the door. It was about three feet long, and was fixed very firmly inside a solid housing made of iron. And it was obvious that neither the bolt nor housing had been tampered with any more than the hinges of the door had been.
So Camille turned her attention to the door frame. It was just as solid as the door, and the lock worked by sliding the iron bolt across so it slotted into a deep hole that had been drilled directly into the door frame. She could see that the iron bolt had ripped through the wooden frame when Richard had smashed the door open with his sledgehammer.
‘As for the iron bolt,’ Camille said, ‘it was very clearly slid across when you bashed the door open. You can see where the bolt has torn through the wood of the door frame. And that’s why we’ve got a problem, isn’t it?’
‘Got it in one, Camille,’ Richard said returning to the centre room. ‘Because this room is entirely made of stone, and there are only three ways a human could have got out of it after the murder – those being through the window on the far side, out through the roof, or through this door. The ceiling is impossible, and both the door and the window were locked from the inside.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Dwayne said, understanding finally dawning on him. ‘That’s the problem!’
‘It is, Dwayne,’ Richard agreed.
The three Police officers looked at each other.
‘That’s quite a problem,’ Dwayne said on all of their behalves.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ Richard agreed. ‘Because, seeing as we found no-one else in here when we broke in, just how did our killer commit murder and then escape from a locked room?’
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_e5b19506-5e8f-509d-96c8-d1e5c4938033)
When Richard and his team returned to the Police station, he set them to work. Dwayne was tasked with processing the physical evidence. In particular, Richard wanted him to lift whatever fingerprints he could identify on the gun that had very possibly been used to kill the victim – and the two shell casings they’d found near the victim. As for Fidel, he’d stayed at the plantation to create plaster casts of the tyre prints he’d found behind the farm buildings, so he returned to the Police station after everyone else. Once back, he laid out the three chunky blocks of white plaster of Paris on his desk. Each one was about a foot long – and six inches deep, and six inches wide – and the surface of each of the casts was covered in grit and dirt. Fidel set to cleaning them up with a make-up brush. Once that was done, Richard tasked him with trying to use the tyre casts to identify the make and model of the vehicle from a Caribbean-wide database of tyre prints.
As for Richard, seeing as the victim had been found with British currency in his pocket – and Lucy had said that the man had been lurking up at the plantation for the last few weeks – he decided to pull the border records for all of the Brits who’d arrived at the Saint-Marie airport in the last eight weeks. But when he spoke to the Head of Security at the airport, he discovered that it wasn’t quite as simple as that. The man informed Richard that maybe as many as five thousand British tourists had arrived on the island in the previous eight weeks, and while the airport had CCTV footage of everyone as they made their way through passport control, the only way of doing any kind of visual search for the victim would be to sit down and watch every minute of airport CCTV footage from the previous eight weeks.
This was clearly impractical, so Richard asked him to send through the names of every British traveller above the age of fifty who’d arrived on the island in that time, and who’d been travelling on his own. This was because Richard had already guessed – based on the evidence of the tawdry hideout they’d found in the jungle – that their victim had perhaps been operating on his own. In fact, as Richard explained the parameters for the search he wanted carried out, he realised that there would possibly be a few dozen Brits a day who met the criteria. After all, how many fifty-plus British men travelled to a Caribbean holiday destination on their own? And then, once the Head of Security had sent the details over, Richard knew he could either cross-reference the names with whatever hotels were listed on their immigration forms, or – given that he’d now know what flights they’d arrived on – he could just pull the airport CCTV footage for each person’s arrival, and see if he could identify the victim visually. And here, Richard knew that their victim’s long grey hair and yellow/white beard should make him easy to spot.
In fact, Richard realised, if their victim was indeed from the UK and had arrived at any time in the last eight weeks, it might be possible to work out his identity in the next few hours.
‘You’re right,’ the Head of Security said at the other end of the phone. ‘I’d even go so far as to say that you’re onto something there.’
‘Thank you,’ Richard said.
‘Although, it’ll take longer than a few hours to identify your British traveller.’
‘Why? The list won’t be very long, will it?’
‘Oh it’ll barely be a few hundred names. It’s just going to take a few days to get the list to you, that’s all.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘If not longer than a few days. Tell you what,’ the man paused as though he were about to do Richard a massive favour. ‘I reckon I can get the list of solo Brits to you by the beginning of next week.’
‘What?’
‘Or soon after.’
‘But it’s only Thursday now. Surely you’ve already got this information on your system?’
‘Of course. We take everyone’s details who arrives on the island. We’re a professional outfit.’
‘Then it should take all of about thirty seconds to create a search on your system for solo British travellers from the last eight weeks aged fifty years and over, and then you can email me the results. I could start working on this in the next few minutes!’
There was a pause at the other end of the line.
And then the man coughed to clear his throat.
‘What’s that?’ Richard asked.
‘Nothing. It’s just – well, let me put it like this. I agree, your plan makes perfect sense. It’s just we had a bit of an IT problem at the end of last week.’
‘You did?’
‘So I don’t think it will be that easy. But we’ll definitely be able to get you the results you want at some point next week. Or the week after.’
‘What sort of an IT problem?’
‘What’s that?’
‘You said you had “a bit of an IT problem”. So I just wanted to know. What sort of IT problem did you have?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It does to me,’ Richard said, feeling his blood pressure rising. ‘Seeing as I’m trying to run a murder case here.’
‘Yes. Well, when you put it like that, that makes a lot of sense.’
‘So what was it?’
There was another pause at the other end of the line – and then the man spoke really very quietly indeed.
‘An iguana got into a cable duct.’
‘What’s that?’
‘An iguana got into our cable ducts and ate through our network cables.’
‘You know, it’s funny,’ Richard said. ‘But I could have sworn that you just told me that an iguana had eaten through your network cables.’
‘That’s because I did.’
‘But how can that have even been possible?’ Richard all but shouted into the mouthpiece of his phone. ‘I mean, don’t you have security precautions in place to stop this sort of thing?’
‘Don’t use that tone with me, Inspector.’
‘Then what tone should I be using? Would you rather I sent you a big bunch of flowers with a card wishing you “condolences at this difficult time”?’
The Head of Security didn’t dignify Richard’s comment with a response, and Richard found himself exhaling heavily. He’d long ago come to understand – if not accept – that solving cases on a tiny tropical island was always going to be fraught with difficulties. For example, Saint-Marie was too small to have a local Coroner’s office where autopsies could be carried out. And there were no Ballistics or Forensics labs either. If Richard ever needed evidence processed by any kind of forensics lab, he generally had to send it to the far larger nearby island of Guadeloupe, and they rarely prioritised Saint-Marie’s needs. It’s why Richard insisted on as much of the crime scene evidence being dealt with in the office by hand. At least that way, he could have some control over how quickly it was all processed.
But for every ‘typical’ problem that Richard had to endure in his Police work, he was always staggered by just how many ‘atypical’ problems he also had to face. Like discovering that he was being thwarted in delivering justice for a murder victim because of an omnivorous iguana.
‘Look,’ Richard said, ‘far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, but if you’ve got an iguana in your cable ducts, then surely the first step is to remove it? By fair means or foul,’ he added darkly.
‘Oh don’t worry,’ the man said brightly, ‘we got the iguana out after only a couple of days. It’s just that while it was in there, it went pretty much where it liked, and that’s when it ate through the network cables. We’re still trying to work out exactly which ones. And once we do, we’ll have our computers back up and running in no time.’
‘So are you even recording who arrives and leaves the island at the moment?’
‘Of course. But we’ve been forced back into utilising the old system of writing every arrival’s name down in a ledger by hand, and I don’t need to tell you that this has stretched our border control resources almost to breaking point.’ Richard knew that when the man said ‘border control resources’ he was referring to a woman called Janice. ‘But I might be able to get some time this weekend to work through the books and pull the names of solo British travellers for you.’
Richard saw his opening at last. ‘Then how about I come up to the airport right now and go through the lists myself?’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’
‘Why not?’
‘Janice is using the book.’
Richard took a deep breath to steady himself. Then, as time passed, he realised it hadn’t made him feel any better. In fact, it was making him feel very much worse – and significantly hot around the collar – and then he realised that he hadn’t breathed out yet, so he quickly expelled the air from his lungs to stop himself from fainting.
‘Are you alright?’ the Head of Security asked.
‘Of course I’m fine,’ Richard said, still feeling a touch light-headed. ‘But you’re saying there’s no way I can get the names I need any quicker?’
‘Got it in one,’ the Head of Security said, glad that Richard was finally ‘on side’. ‘And I promise you, I’ll get you the names at the beginning of next week. Or maybe a few days later – depending on what I’m up to this weekend.’
‘Well, let’s hope you’re not too busy’, Richard said before thanking the man for his time and slamming the phone onto its cradle.
Only then did Richard look up and see that his entire team looking at him.
‘What’s wrong with you lot?’ he said tetchily.
‘Your face went very red, sir,’ Fidel said.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to take your suit jacket off?’ Dwayne asked.
‘Camille!’ Richard barked, not wanting to get sidetracked again by his team’s desire to get him into cooler clothes. ‘How are you getting on with identifying our victim?’
‘Well, sir,’ Camille said, ‘no-one’s contacted us or any of the other government agencies since this morning to report anyone missing.’
‘What about hospitals?’
‘None of them has lost any of their patients.’
‘Then what about hotels? He must have been staying somewhere at nights.’
‘Agreed, sir. But there are no reports of missing guests from hotels, either.’
‘So who the hell is he?’ Richard asked, his anger driving him up out of his seat. ‘I mean, come on, everyone! Theories?’
‘Well, sir,’ Fidel said, ‘he didn’t look too wealthy, did he?’
‘I’d agree with that.’
‘And the empty bottle of vodka we found in the clearing was pretty cheap.’
‘Yes. That’s true.’
‘And, without wishing to be indelicate, sir, he didn’t seem in the best condition, did he? Although, I suppose he’d been spending most of his time in a jungle for the last few weeks.’
‘Assuming Lucy Beaumont was telling us the truth,’ Camille said. ‘After all, she’s the only member of the family who ever saw the man.’
‘Yes,’ Richard agreed. ‘Assuming she was telling the truth. All of which rather begs the question: what exactly was our victim attempting to achieve up at the Plantation? Was it Lucy he was spying on, or was he up to something else, and it’s just one of those things that only Lucy saw him? Actually,’ Richard said, a new thought occurring to him. ‘While we’re on the subject of Lucy, can you fill me in a bit on the family? What do we know about them?’
There was an awkward pause while Camille, Fidel and Dwayne all looked at each other, not sure what to say.
‘Oh? Is there a problem?’
‘Well, Chief, they’re not a very well-liked family on the island,’ Dwayne said.
‘And why’s that?’
‘None of the old families who used slaves are much liked, sir.’
This comment caught Richard by surprise. He wasn’t so naive as to be unaware of both Britain and France’s appalling history of using African slaves to work on their plantations in the Caribbean. However, since Britain had abolished the slave trade in 1807, and slavery itself in 1833 – over 180 years ago – he’d not noticed much in the way of current tensions around the subject.
In fact, as a white Brit who was a guest on Saint-Marie, one of the first things Richard had done when he’d arrived was go to the library in Honoré and ask to borrow a book that would teach him the history of the island, with particular reference to how Saint-Marie had been treated by the British government. It seemed the least he could do as a Brit visiting a former colony. Richard was unsurprised – but nonetheless still chastened – to read about how deprivations, abuse and what could only be called outright kidnap and murder had been the basis of so many families’ wealth back in the UK during this period of over one hundred years.
As he looked at his team now and saw how grave and focused they were, he realised how wrong he’d been. The tensions were still there. It’s just that they were beneath the surface.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Well, Chief,’ Dwayne said, ‘there are so few families left who go back to the bad old days. But those few who are still here, and are still running the same businesses now as they were then, well, they’ve got blood on their hands.’
‘Yes, I can see that,’ Richard said.
Dwayne briefly smiled at his boss’s words. For all of Richard’s many faults – and there was no doubting that he had many faults – his team knew that he treated everyone equally, irrespective of the colour of their skin. Admittedly, this was mainly because Richard presumed that everyone was going to be a bitter disappointment to him before he’d even met them, but his team had always acknowledged that he was at least colour-blind in his misanthropy.
‘So you’re saying that the Beaumonts still have enemies on the island?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Dwayne said. ‘But although there’s plenty of islanders who work on their plantation when it comes to harvest time, there’s very few who are happy working there full time.’
‘Yes. We saw that today, didn’t we? There was no-one else up at the plantation apart from the family.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So what do we know about the members of the family?’
Here, Camille got up some handwritten notes from the mess of her desk.
‘Okay, so Hugh Beaumont is fifty years old, is solely in charge of the plantation, and from the few enquiries I’ve made, he’s considered a pretty fair boss. Unlike his father William, who he took over from when he died back in 2001.’
‘You can say that again,’ Dwayne said. ‘William was a tyrant.’
‘He was?’
‘Sure was, Chief. The man was bad news. After Mount Esmée erupted back in 1979 and the coffee fields were wiped out, he drove his workforce to breaking point getting them to clear away the ash, rework the soil and replant the coffee plants. And all along he promised them a serious bonus if they got the fields ready again by the next growing season. When they’d completed the task – and in time – he gave them their bonus, which turned out to be a 10-kilogram bag of coffee each. It was a scandal at the time.’
‘Dwayne’s right,’ Fidel said. ‘My mum talks about that winter after the eruption. It was really tough on the whole island. Everyone had to pull together.’
‘And William Beaumont took advantage of all of the island’s goodwill,’ Dwayne said. ‘I remember there was an accident one day. One of the pile-drivers that was being used to put in wooden posts for the coffee plants crushed one of the workers, killing him. William didn’t even allow anyone from the plantation time off to attend the funeral. It was all about getting the place back up and running again.’
‘So William was a nasty piece of work,’ Richard said. ‘But you’re saying he died in 2001, and his son Hugh is less of a tyrant?’
‘Got it in one,’ Dwayne agreed. ‘As far as I know, Hugh runs the place pretty fairly. I’ve got a few mates who do seasonal work for him. He pays on time. And as long as you work hard, he doesn’t mind too much if you arrive a little bit late or leave a bit early.’
‘So he’s one of the more acceptable Beaumonts? Could we say that about him?’
‘More acceptable,’ Dwayne agreed, making it clear from the way he leaned on the word ‘more’ that it was all relative.
‘Then what about Sylvie Beaumont, his wife?’
‘Well, she’s interesting,’ Camille said, getting up a Saint-Marie newspaper article from 1991 on her computer monitor. ‘She’s the same age as Hugh – fifty years old – and her engagement to him made the Saint-Marie Times twenty-five years ago. In this article here it says she was originally from Maldon in Essex, and that she met Hugh in a bar on Saint-Marie when she was over here working as a holiday rep for Club Caribbean.’
The Police knew Club Caribbean well. It was full of twenty- to thirty-year olds who came to the island to have ‘fun’ which, Richard had too often had cause to notice, seemed to involve ingesting vast amounts of liquid before ejecting an equivalent amount again only a few hours later – which hardly seemed ‘fun’ to him.
‘Ha!’ Richard said out loud. ‘I knew there was something about her accent that didn’t ring true.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, let me put it this way, I don’t think the matriarch of Beaumont Manor who we met this morning spoke in quite the same plummy accent when she was a holiday rep from Maldon in Essex.’
‘And you should know,’ Camille added, ‘that she seems to be in the newspapers every month. She’s chair of this charity, sits on the board of that marine preserve, you know? She’s a do-gooder.’
‘A do-gooder who’s vain enough to want everyone to see just how much do-gooding she’s up to. Very interesting. Good work, Camille. Then what of their children? In particular, can you explain why everyone speaks with a British accent except for Tom?’
‘Well, that’s easy to explain, sir. Tom speaks with a Saint-Marie accent because he went to Notre Dame School here on Saint-Marie.’
‘And Lucy and Matthew didn’t?’
‘Lucy also went to Notre Dame, but obviously decided not to pick up an island accent. As for Matthew, he was sent to boarding school in the UK. But going back to Tom, he left school with excellent grades, and has just finished an undergraduate course studying Agriculture at the University of Miami.’
‘Which is hardly the impression he gave to me this morning.’
‘You mean with his cannabis T-shirt and island attitude?’
‘Exactly. So why is a bright young man with academic qualifications pretending to be a counter-culture stoner, do you think?’
A silence descended on the room as Richard’s team all stopped what they were doing and looked at him.
Eventually, Dwayne spoke.
‘Did you just say “counter-culture stoner”, Chief?’
‘Yes,’ Richard said, somewhat irked. ‘I’m not entirely out of touch with street argot, you know.’
‘No, sir,’ Camille said, trying to stifle a laugh.
‘What’s that, Camille?’
‘Oh, nothing sir. Just caught something in my throat.’
Fidel stepped into the breach.
‘And sir,’ he said. ‘You should know. I rang a cousin of mine when we got back to the station. I reckoned Tom would have been at Notre Dame at the same time as him. Anyway, my cousin said that Tom was one of the most popular kids in his year. He was clever, but he didn’t make a big deal about it. He played football, but he didn’t join any of the teams. He did his own thing. Oh, and he liked to party, and party hard. That was the other thing my cousin said.’
‘So he wasn’t tainted by the family name?’
‘He was a “good guy”. That’s what my cousin called him.’
‘Okay. Thanks for that. Then what about the other two siblings?’ Richard said, turning back to face Camille.
‘Well, sir,’ Camille said, returning to her notes. ‘Matthew’s the youngest. By some distance. He’s eighteen – Tom is twenty-two, and Lucy is twenty-eight – and he came back to the island this summer having left boarding school in the UK.’
‘Do you know which boarding school it was?’
‘Eton College.’
‘He went to Eton, did he?’ Richard said, Matthew’s easeful manner clicking into place for him. This was because Richard had come across quite a number of Old Etonians while he’d been at Cambridge, and, to his abiding irritation, every single one of them had been entirely and effortlessly charming. Not that that excused or justified their background of privilege, Richard felt. And nor did it mean that Richard could ever bring himself to trust or like someone who came from such a wealthy background. To his mind, it was simply wrong that so much should be given to so few, and he couldn’t help but resent the opportunities that were afforded to this wealthy minority – no matter how charming they always were when you met them in the flesh. As far as Richard was concerned, if private boarding schools like the one Richard had been sent to were ‘wrong’ – and Richard knew that they were very wrong – then schools like Eton were wrong to the power of ten.
‘Hang on, though,’ Richard said, suddenly realising something. ‘You’re saying that Matthew – the youngest sibling – was sent to Eton, but Tom – his older brother – went to the local comprehensive school on Saint-Marie?’
‘That’s right,’ Camille said, already knowing where Richard was going with this. ‘As was Lucy.’
‘There’s a story there,’ Richard said.
‘You could be right, sir,’ Camille agreed.
‘Then what have we got on Lucy?’ Richard asked. ‘What do we know about her?’
‘Well, sir, she’s pretty interesting,’ Camille said, picking up another set of notes. ‘Because she left Notre Dame school when she was seventeen years old without finishing formal education, and since then she doesn’t seem to have done much of anything. She doesn’t have a job at the plantation as far as I can tell, she doesn’t file tax returns – even though she’s twenty-eight years old. But better than that, I found two hits for her on the Police computer.’
‘You did?’
‘First, she was pulled in for shoplifting when she was twenty years old. She’d been caught stealing a dress from the market in Honoré, but was let off with a caution.’
‘And the second time?’
‘It was shoplifting again. When she was twenty-three. This time, it was a silver necklace that she was caught stealing from the Caribbean Sands hotel.’
‘And was she charged?’
‘That’s the thing, sir. She wasn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve no idea. Seeing as it was her second offence. But you should know, sir, Charlie Hulme was the arresting officer.’
Charlie Hulme had been the corrupt Detective Inspector who’d preceded Richard’s arrival on the island, and Richard could well imagine how the Beaumont family might have leant on him to make sure he didn’t press charges.
‘Ah, I see,’ Richard said. ‘But there’s a streak of criminality in her, is that what we’re saying?’
‘That’s what it seems like to me.’
‘Now that is interesting,’ Richard agreed, going to look at the names that he’d written up on the whiteboard that acted as the focus for all of his investigations.
‘So, in summary,’ he said, ‘we’ve got Hugh Beaumont running the family plantation with a gentle hand on the tiller. He’s married to the one-time holiday rep Sylvie, who now thinks herself something of a grand dame of the island. And as for their three children, we’ve got something of an enigma in Lucy, although we know she’s been light-fingered in the past; a popular party animal in Tom who just happens to have a heap of qualifications including an Agricultural degree; and the eighteen-year old Matthew, who’s only just returned to the island having been educated at one of the most privileged schools in the world. Something of a mixed bag, then.’
‘And none of them has a clear alibi for the time of the murder,’ Camille added.
‘Not so,’ Richard corrected. ‘None of them has a clear alibi for the time of the murder apart from Lucy. Because, no matter how criminal her past might have been, you and I were with her when the two gunshots were fired, so she’s the only member of the family who can’t be our killer.’
‘And we still don’t even know the identity of our victim,’ Camille added.
‘Or how the killer then escaped from a locked room afterwards,’ Richard agreed. ‘Or whether the three-wheeled vehicle that was up at the plantation before it rained was part of the murder or not. So we’re going to have to redouble our efforts. And I suggest we focus on our victim’s identity, because I don’t see how we’re going to get anywhere with this case until we work out who he was. So, let’s snap to it.’
As the afternoon wore on, Richard and his team made steady progress, but none of it seemed to take them any closer to uncovering the identity of the victim.
Richard even realised that he couldn’t presume that the victim – if indeed he were a Brit travelling on his own – had even arrived on the island by plane. What if he’d arrived by boat? So he put in a call to the Harbour Master in Honoré and learned that while it would theoretically be possible to get a list of every solo Brit who’d arrived by boat and cleared customs in the last month or so, there were so many bays on Saint-Marie that there was nothing stopping any potential solo sailor from dropping anchor in a quiet cove and illegally accessing the island from there. When Richard asked if the Harbour Master knew of any boats who’d recently arrived unannounced like this, the man had just laughed at how naive the question was.
Richard was left deeply frustrated. If their victim had arrived by plane, it was going to take until the following week to get a list of British arrivals. And if he’d arrived by boat, it would have been possible to sneak onto the island past customs and immigration anyway. How were they going to work out who the victim was?
It was Dwayne who made the first breakthrough.
‘Okay, sir, the weapon we found in the victim’s hand is a Glock 19,’ he reported back to Richard. ‘It’s not listed on the gun register of the island – meaning it must have been acquired illegally. And although I’ve been able to lift three partial fingerprints from the handle, they all belong to the victim. As for the rest of the gun, it’s been wiped clean. So, whoever carried out this murder must have worn gloves. Or wiped the gun of fingerprints before putting the victim’s hand around the handle after he was dead to make it look like suicide. But the fact that the gun has been obtained illegally – and has been wiped of prints, sir – suggests we’re dealing with a killer who knew what he or she was doing.’
‘I’d agree with you there,’ Richard said.
‘But the big news is, I’ve been able to lift a fingerprint from one of the bullet casings we found at the scene. And the fingerprint doesn’t belong to the victim.’
‘It doesn’t?’ Richard asked eagerly, heading over to Dwayne’s desk.
‘It doesn’t,’ Dwayne said. ‘Meaning, the killer may have wiped the gun clean of his fingerprints, but he forgot to wipe the bullets he used. Or didn’t know that one of his fingerprints was already on one of the bullet casings.’
‘And you’re sure the fingerprint on the bullet casing doesn’t belong to the victim?’ Richard asked.
‘One hundred per cent. It belongs to someone else.’
‘Then see if you can match it with the exclusion prints we took from the Beaumont family this morning. As a matter of urgency. The fingerprint could belong to our killer.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Dwayne said.
As Dwayne went to gather the family’s exclusion prints to start his comparison, Fidel called over from his desk.
‘Sir, I think I’ve identified the make and model of our three-wheeled vehicle.’
‘You have?’ Richard asked, thrilled that the case was finally picking up momentum.
‘I think so. The dimensions of the axle, wheel width and tyre patterns mark the vehicle out as almost certainly being a “Piaggio Ape 50”.
‘And what’s one of those when it’s at home?’ Richard asked.
Fidel pulled up a picture of the vehicle in question, and Richard realised that he knew the type of vehicle well. There were hundreds of the bloody things all over the island: vans that were no more than souped-up three-wheeled mopeds like the tuk-tuks of Thailand, but with a flat wooden loading area at the back for carrying goods instead of space for two passengers. As far as Richard was concerned, he’d spent far too many hours stuck in the Police jeep behind these over-loaded menaces, and his eyes narrowed at the prospect of identifying what this particular vehicle had been doing at a murder scene.
‘Right, Fidel,’ he said, ‘I want you to make this your top priority.’
Fidel was surprised. ‘You do, sir?’
‘I just said, didn’t I? We know this particular Piaggio has a distinctive cut in its front wheel. So I want you to get a list of all the registered Piaggio 50s on the island, and then take that plaster of Paris cast to visit every single one of them until you’ve identified whose vehicle was up at the murder scene just before our victim was killed.’
‘But sir, these sorts of vehicles are bought and sold for cash all the time. I’m not sure all that many are correctly registered up at Government House.’
‘I know, Fidel. So maybe this is our chance – finally! – to bring one of these illegal vehicles to justice!’
Richard realised a bit too late that he was possibly coming across a bit too much like a tinpot tyrant, but he didn’t much care. As far as he was concerned, these vans were a scourge of the island, and he, through the agency of Fidel, was going to be the sword of truth that finally managed to skewer one of them. Assuming that Fidel could identify the van, of course. And prove that it had indeed been up to no good when it had been up at the plantation. But these were mere details to be worked out once the van was identified.
Richard looked at his team, hoping to see the same sense of missionary zeal in their eyes, but didn’t. He could tell from the way that Camille was now cocking her head slightly to one side, that she was maybe considering whether he needed psychiatric help or not.
Luckily for Richard, the awkward silence was broken by the sound of footsteps on the veranda outside. They all turned and saw a little old lady standing on the threshold. She was wearing a purple dress and had tightly-curled grey hair.
‘Hello,’ she said in a friendly voice.
‘Hello,’ Dwayne said. ‘Can we help you?’
‘I don’t know, but I hope I can help you,’ she said. ‘My name is Rosie Lefèvre. I’m the Beaumonts’ housekeeper.’
‘You are?’ Richard was surprised. The tiny old woman in the doorway looked as though a strong breeze could knock her over.
‘Then come in, come in,’ Camille said.
Camille fussed around Rosie and set her up on a chair in front of Richard’s desk. She then got a bottle from the office fridge and poured the old woman a glass of cold water.
‘Thank you so much,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s really quite a steep climb up to the Police station from the harbour.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ Camille agreed.
‘Anyway,’ Richard said. ‘You said you could help us?’
‘Well, I don’t know about that, but Hugh rang me and told me the terrible news.’
‘And when was this exactly?’ Richard asked, pulling out his notebook and pencil from his inside jacket pocket.
‘Just after I’d arrived on Montserrat.’
‘That’s right. Sylvie said you’d gone to visit family.’
‘I had. Although it’s not immediate family. I never had the good fortune to marry. And although I had a brother once, he died many years ago now.’ Rosie smiled sadly at the memory. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a cousin on Montserrat I go and stay with for a few days every year.’
‘I see. Then can I ask, when did you go to Montserrat?’
‘This morning.’
‘And what time ferry did you catch from Saint-Marie?’
‘I was on the 11am sailing.’
Richard made a note.
‘And what time did the ferry dock on Montserrat?’
‘At about 12.30. And then Hugh rang me just after I’d cleared Customs. He told me about that man being found in the old drying shed, and I just knew I had to return to Saint-Marie at once. The family needed me. But Hugh also said the man might have been murdered, and no-one had been able to identify the body. So that’s why I’m here. To do my civic duty.’
‘You’d like to try and identify the victim?’
‘Oh yes,’ Rosie said, straightening in her chair as she spoke. ‘I know I’m old, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be useful.’
Richard could see a sparkling intelligence behind Rosie’s eyes, and he realised that she might have looked frail, but her mind was still perfectly sharp.
‘Of course,’ Camille said, and then instructed Fidel to choose the least distressing crime scene photos that would nonetheless allow their witness to identify the victim.
‘Can I ask,’ Richard said, while Fidel gathered the photos together, ‘how you came to be working for the Beaumonts? They referred to you as Nanny Rosie.’
‘That’s right. I first started as a nanny for the family just after Matthew was born. And he was such a kissable little thing. All fat arms, chubby legs and a round belly, you just wanted to scoop him up and squeeze him. Not that I didn’t adore the other two of course. But there was such an age gap. Tom was already four when I joined the family, and even then, he was a young man who always knew his mind. When he wanted his tea. What clothes he wanted to wear. You couldn’t fight him, he had to get his own way. As for Lucy, well she was at that tricky age, you know? Twelve I suppose she was. Not quite a child, but not quite a teenager either. As tall as a beanpole, and clumsy as you like. Always forgetting things. That’s Lucy.’ Rosie sighed in pleasure as she considered her life with the Beaumonts. ‘I love those children as if they were my own.’
‘How lucky for you,’ Camille said.
‘I know. I’ve had a good life.’
Fidel came over with three photos of the victim’s face that they’d taken at the scene of crime.
‘Just so you know,’ Fidel said to Rosie. ‘You may find these photos distressing. They were taken after the man had been shot.’
Rosie nodded her head.
‘I understand.’
Fidel handed over the three black and white photos and Rosie looked at the top photo in silence. However, Richard could see that she didn’t recognise the victim’s face. Rosie then very carefully moved on to the second photo – again without any apparent recognition – and then she studied the third. After this, she made sure the stack of photos was squared off neatly before returning them to Fidel and turning to speak to Richard.
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t recognise his face.’
‘You don’t?’
‘No. How frustrating.’
Richard was bitterly disappointed. After all, if the family didn’t recognise the victim – and now Rosie didn’t, either – then who would?
‘But while we have you,’ Camille said perching on the edge of Richard’s desk – somewhat proprietorially he found himself thinking – ‘it’s clear you know the Beaumont family well.’
Rosie smiled. ‘Oh yes.’
‘You like them?’
‘Of course.’
‘You’ve told us something of what the family were like in the past, but can you tell us something about what they’re like now?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘How do they get on? Are they a happy family?’
‘Well, yes. I mean, they have their ups and downs. We all do.’
‘For example?’
Rosie’s brow furrowed as she tried to work out what she should say.
‘Anything you tell us will be treated in the strictest of confidence.’
‘I understand. Of course. Well, since you’re asking, they are a happy family. It’s just…well, I’m not sure that Sylvie has ever been – what’s the word? – well, maternal, really.’
‘She’s not?’
‘Not that it matters. The children have always had me. But she thinks too much about herself if you ask me.’
‘Even though she does so much charity work?’ Richard asked.
‘Her charity work always seems to be about her more than it is about the people she’s trying to help,’ Rosie said.
‘Do you think she’s capable of murder?’ Richard asked, and Rosie was shocked.
‘No, of course not!’
‘Only, it’s possible that one of the Beaumont family is the person who did this.’
Rosie was shocked.
‘Is that a joke?’
‘I’m sorry, it isn’t. Which is why we’d like to know if you think any of the family might be capable of murder.’
‘Of course not. None of them could do anything so horrible. It’s simply impossible to imagine.’
Richard saw Rosie frown as a thought occurred to her.
‘What’s that?’ Richard asked.
‘What’s what?’ Rosie said, but Richard and Camille could see that Rosie was now flustered.
‘What were you thinking?’
‘Oh, it was nothing.’
‘It really would help us a lot,’ Camille said, ‘if you told us whatever is on your mind. Even if you think it’s got nothing to do with the case.’
Rosie took a moment to compose herself. Richard once again noticed the intelligence in the old woman’s eyes, and he got a sudden insight that Rosie was one of those older people who could remember everything from her life.
‘Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised it occurred to me. Considering what we’re talking about. Not that it has anything to do with the case. Just like you said.’
‘We’d still like to hear it,’ Richard said.
‘Well, it was just a memory that popped into my head. You know how that can happen? You just remember something suddenly?’
‘Of course,’ Camille said.
‘And it was from when the children were much younger. Matthew had just had his fifth birthday, so Tom must have been nine and Lucy was seventeen I think. Anyway. I came across Tom in the garden. As I say, he must have been about nine years old. He was crouching on the ground and looking at something on the grass. As I got nearer, he tried to hide what he was looking at.’
‘And what was it?’
‘Well, I’m sorry to say that it was a dead bird. I don’t know how it got there. Maybe it had died from natural causes. But Tom was holding a knife in his hand. A pocket knife, I think. But he’d used it to cut the bird open. And I know young boys can be a little wild, but he hadn’t just cut into the poor creature, he’d spread all its… organs… out to the bird’s side. It was like some kind of ritual thing.’ Rosie took a sip of water, and Richard could see that the memory still upset her. ‘Of course, he denied that he’d had anything to do with the dead bird. He said he’d found it on the grass like that. But I sent him to his room at once. I was so angry with what he’d done. It took me a long time to get over that. But then, perhaps the children were more damaged by their past than we gave them credit—’
Rosie stopped talking mid-sentence as she was struck by a sudden realisation.
‘What do you mean, “their past”?’ Richard asked.
‘My word, is it possible?’ Rosie said, more to herself than to anyone else, and Richard and Camille could see that her mind was awhirl as she tried to marshal her thoughts. After a moment longer of indecision, she looked at Richard.
‘You’re saying the man who was murdered this morning couldn’t be identified?’
‘That’s right,’ Richard said.
‘Then can you tell me, did he have any identifying features?’
Richard and Camille’s interest sharpened.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Was there perhaps a scar on his left hand? On his first finger?’
‘There was.’
‘Then can I see those photos again? And a photo of the scar if you’ve got it?’
‘Fidel, bring over all the crime scene photos.’
Fidel had already scooped them up and was heading over.
‘Ms Lefèvre, you might not like what you see,’ he said, but Rosie had already grabbed the photos and started shuffling through them until she found the photo that Dwayne had taken of the long scar on the forefinger of the victim’s left hand.
‘Good heavens,’ she murmured to herself, ‘is it you?’
She then shuffled through the photos again until she was looking at the first photo she’d been shown of the victim’s face.
‘You know what, it could be,’ she said to herself.
‘It could be who?’ Richard asked, unable to hide the impatience in his voice.
‘Someone I’ve not seen in twenty years. That’s why I didn’t recognise him. I just haven’t thought about him for decades…’ Rosie trailed off as she seemed to look inside herself, and Richard saw that she was coming to a decision.
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