Murder in the Caribbean
Robert Thorogood
‘Deftly entertaining … satisfyingly pushes all the requisite Agatha Christie-style buttons’Barry Forshaw, The IndependentDEATH IN PARADISE is one of BBC One’s most popular series which averages 9 million viewers.DI Richard Poole is hot, bothered and fed up. He’s stuck on the tropical island of Saint-Marie, forced to live in a rickety old shack on a beach, and there isn’t a decent cup of tea to be found anywhere.When a boat explodes in the harbour, Richard and his team soon realise there’s a new murderer on the loose. But who is it? And why did the killer leave behind a ruby at the scene of the crime?As the police dig deeper, they uncover secrets that go back decades, and a crime from the past that can never be forgiven.Worse still, they soon realise this is only the beginning. They’ve got to catch the killer before there's another death in paradise…An original story from the creator and writer of the hit BBC One TV series, Death in Paradise, featuring on-screen favourite detective, DI Richard Poole.
ROBERT THOROGOOD is the creator of the hit BBC 1 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.
Also by Robert Thorogood
A Meditation on Murder
The Killing of Polly Carter
Death Knocks Twice
Copyright (#ulink_2ad865e2-5f1b-5485-9d7e-6faa9751f3d0)
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Robert Thorogood 2018
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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © December 2018 ISBN: 9780008238223
Praise for Robert Thorogood
‘Very funny and dark with great pace.
I love Robert Thorogood’s writing.’
Peter James
‘This second Death In Paradise novel is a gem.’
Daily Express
‘Deftly entertaining … satisfyingly pushes all the requisite Agatha Christie-style buttons.’
Barry Forshaw, The Independent
‘For fans of Agatha Christie.’
Mail on Sunday
‘A treat.’
Radio Times
‘This brilliantly crafted, hugely enjoyable and suitably goosebump-inducing novel is an utter delight from start to finish.’
Heat
‘A brilliant whodunnit.’
Woman
For Rosie Evans
Contents
Cover (#u00020526-eac8-5609-bedc-c7acadf26e11)
About the Author (#uad7f9f1e-fd2f-52a3-b864-de685040d90b)
Booklist (#ulink_5bf61c96-aea9-50f8-9e0a-1ff6d42828a4)
Title Page (#ud70a95e9-8f00-5f72-ba6e-1e24bc06cbcb)
Copyright (#ulink_7897b3ca-0d2f-54b5-b0b9-98a29dd9b79b)
Praise (#ulink_d9d4456b-e79c-5432-a482-914834c49040)
Dedication (#u3084fc1b-2d6e-532f-aabc-1d3024b4254f)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_cf3b1078-4397-5fa2-9bde-fd741b4d3634)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_636077a3-f7be-50d8-825c-e0938378c526)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_43c92f7f-9173-59ef-97b6-bb557ee771fb)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_41e3ab8d-8575-5941-b0a1-7ca8634b7ea5)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_67c84faa-98a1-503b-92df-e71e8fee3db3)
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)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Where do you want me to start? At the beginning? Okay. Then you have to go back twenty years. That’s when it all began. With a single gunshot. Nothing before then matters. I was born, I lived my life, but it was in that moment that everything changed. Everything. You can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like. You think you can, but you can’t. I used to think the feelings inside me would go away. Somehow. That it wasn’t possible to feel like this forever. But guess what? It is. Not that I let on. I got good at hiding it. It used to surprise me, how everyone would look at me and think I was normal. They didn’t know about the furnace I had churning inside me. It became like a game. I’d see how normal I could be. No-one ever knew the truth. And over the years, the decades, that fire inside me changed. It got tighter and denser. And then one day, I realised it wasn’t a fire at all. It had become like a diamond. A diamond of pure hate. It made me laugh to feel that power inside me. Knowing that it was what was keeping me sane. And then, finally, the twenty years were up, and I knew I was ready. It was time. Time for revenge.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_93bd0464-42b4-5ccd-ba9a-420112e1c2f9)
Ordinary Police Officer Dwayne Myers had lived in the same house his whole adult life. It was a concrete-poured bungalow that was set in lush jungle that rose behind and above the sleepy town of Honoré on the western coast of the Caribbean island of Saint-Marie.
Where the money had come from to buy such a desirable plot of land was, fortunately for Dwayne, never quite established by the Saint-Marie Tax Office. He was also lucky that he’d not had a visit from the island’s Planning Officer since then because, while he’d started building a two-storey house, his money had run out half way through. This meant that when he took occupancy of his new home, his builders had only completed the ground floor, although they’d left the necessary steel rods poking up out of the ‘roof’ should Dwayne ever wish to finish building the floor above.
He never had.
In fact, as the years passed, Dwayne had come to like the way the steel rods jutted out of his bungalow. You always knew which house was his, he’d say proudly to anyone who asked.
But then, the unfinished house was entirely in keeping with the decades-long decline that had gripped Dwayne’s front yard. Where there wasn’t dirt, there were rusting motorbike parts, and where there was neither, there were weeds, some of which had grown into fully fledged bushes. And littered around as though dropped by an absent-minded giant was the front end of an old taxi, a trailer on tyres that had lost their rubber years ago, and a wooden speedboat that was rotting into the ground where it lay.
However, on this particular morning, perhaps the most surprising feature of Dwayne’s garden was the Englishman in a suit who was holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes while hiding in a bougainvillea bush by the front gate.
The man was Detective Inspector Richard Poole.
He’d been staking out Dwayne’s house for the last hour, and he was deeply unhappy. Not that that was much of a change for Richard. He’d been born unhappy.
As for why he was hiding in a bush, that could easily be explained by the fact that, three weeks before, Dwayne had announced that he wanted to study for his sergeant’s exam. Richard had been suspicious from the start, if only because Dwayne had never before tried to advance his career in any way. Frankly, it was sometimes a struggle to get him to attend his annual appraisal.
Something was up. Richard was sure of it. And when he learned that Saint-Marie Police regulations allowed officers studying for exams to spend a morning a week at home for ‘personal study’, he realised what it was. Dwayne had embarked on the whole endeavour as an elaborate ruse to bunk off work one morning a week, hadn’t he?
That’s why Richard had spent the last hour hiding inside a bush, a pair of binoculars clamped to his eyes while trying to ignore the spiders and other stinging insects that could at any moment be crawling into his shirt collar. Or up his trouser leg. And he was very definitely ignoring the rivers of sweat that were running down his back, and the feeling of itching and prickly heat as it built up on his skin where it was touching his thick woollen suit. But he wasn’t leaving his bougainvillea bush. Not until he’d proven that Dwayne was skiving.
Richard saw movement and swivelled his binoculars just in time to see Dwayne throw back the curtains of his bedroom window and yawn. Luckily for Richard, the windowsill and brickwork saved him from finding out if the bottom half of Dwayne was as similarly naked as the top half, but this was the confirmation Richard had been looking for. He checked the time on his wristwatch. It was nearly 11am.
‘Got you,’ Richard muttered to himself.
Richard smashed out of the bush, opened the crumbling picket gate that led onto Dwayne’s property – and then, when he found that the picket gate had come off in his hands, he put the whole thing to one side so he could stride unencumbered up to Dwayne’s front door.
With a sharp rat-a-tat of his knuckles against the door, Richard announced his presence.
There was no answer, but Richard wasn’t in a rush. He waited a little while longer and then he knocked on the door again. But much louder this time. After a few more seconds, Richard was gratified to hear the slap of feet as Dwayne approached. The security chain rattled as it was unhooked, and the door finally opened.
‘And what time do you call this?’ Richard said, pointing to his wristwatch, before realising that the door hadn’t been opened by Dwayne.
In fact, it had been opened by a woman with mussed-up blonde hair. And she was barefoot, Richard noticed, just before he realised that this was because she wasn’t wearing any trousers for that matter. As for the rest of her clothes, it very much seemed to Richard as though the woman was holding a bath towel loosely across her front, and was possibly otherwise completely naked.
Oh heavens, Richard realised in a panic, the woman had answered the door wearing next to no clothes! He immediately fixed his eyes on an area of space directly above the woman’s left shoulder, causing the woman to laugh easily as she turned her head to call back into the room.
‘Dwayne, it’s your boss,’ she said with what Richard recognised as an Edinburgh accent.
Before Richard could ask how this woman could possibly know who he was, she turned and padded off into the recesses of the house, Richard making sure to keep his eyeline fixed firmly mid-air.
‘What are you doing here, Chief?’ Dwayne said as he came to the door. Richard finally lowered his eyes and was relieved to see that Dwayne had thrown on a bright blue silk dressing gown that depicted Chinese fighting dragons, even if it only just reached down to the top of his thighs.
‘What am I doing here?’
‘Sure. You’re supposed to be at work.’
Richard was rendered almost speechless. Almost.
‘You answer the door and have the gall to say that it’s me who should be at work?’
‘Oh I see, something’s up at the station, and you’ve come to pull me from my books.’
‘Your books?’
‘Sure. You know what it’s like. Thursday is for home study.’ As Dwayne said this, he winked slowly for his boss’s benefit.
‘Why did you just wink at me?’
‘Because, Chief, Thursday is for “home study”,’ Dwayne said with another slow wink.
‘But that’s clearly not what’s going on here. Especially as I just saw you open the curtains to your bedroom wearing next to nothing. Not to mention your friend I just met, whoever she is.’
‘That’s Amy,’ Dwayne said with a delighted smile. ‘She’s something, isn’t she?’
‘I’m sure we can all agree she’s something, but she shouldn’t be walking around in a towel on Police time.’
‘But she’s not on Police time. She’s on holiday.’
‘I don’t care what she’s doing on the island,’ Richard interrupted, ‘it’s what you’re doing on the island that bothers me. Because you’re supposed to be using Thursday mornings for personal study time.’
‘Why do you keep saying that?’
‘Because it’s supposed to be what you’re doing!’
This statement seemed to take Dwayne by surprise.
‘But you never really meant that, did you?’
‘Of course I meant it!’
Richard took a deep breath to steady his rising blood pressure. Dwayne was a good copper in many respects, but it was safe to say that his and Richard’s approach to work weren’t entirely universe-adjacent.
‘Oh right,’ Dwayne said, understanding finally coming to him. ‘You actually want me to be doing personal study on my mornings off.’
‘They’re not mornings off, they’re study periods!’
‘Okay okay,’ Dwayne said, holding up his hands, ‘you’ve made your point. I’ll make sure I work every Thursday from now. But don’t worry, no harm done. I mean, it’s not like there’s much going on on the island at the moment.’
Before Richard could reply that it really wasn’t for Dwayne to decide what was or wasn’t ‘going on’ on the island, they both saw a flash of light from the direction of Honoré harbour that was followed a few seconds later by the crack and boom of a massive explosion.
‘What the hell was that?’ Richard said as a thick cloud of black smoke started to blossom from about half a kilometre out to sea.
‘I don’t know about you, Chief, but that looked to me like an explosion.’
Richard turned back to his subordinate and dead-eyed him.
‘Dwayne. Get dressed. Personal study’s over.’
By the time Richard and Dwayne arrived at the harbour, the smoke from the explosion had long since cleared, and they found Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey and Police Officer Fidel Best securing the Police launch, which was really no more than an old wooden skiff that had a pair of massive engines strapped onto the back and the words ‘Saint-Marie Police’ written in white down the side.
‘Did you see that, sir?’ Fidel asked, as he pulled the old tarpaulin off the steering position.
‘Of course I did, or what do you think I’m doing here?’
‘Anyone know what it was?’ Dwayne asked.
‘I was on the veranda of the station when it happened,’ Camille said, ‘and I saw a ball of fire out in the harbour. I think a boat went up.’
‘Then we need to get out there,’ Richard said as he boarded the boat and sat down on the bench that ran down one of the sides.
‘Yes, sir,’ Camille said, joining him as Dwayne cast off. Camille started the twin engines, Dwayne stepped onto the boat and it started to move off.
‘Not too fast!’ Richard yelped as Camille opened the throttle and the boat started to surge through the water.
‘What’s that, sir?’ Camille asked over the roar of the engines.
‘Not too fast!’
‘Can’t hear you, sir,’ Camille shouted as Richard’s old school tie freed itself from his suit jacket and started flapping wildly behind him. It was perhaps a sign of how seriously Richard was holding on for dear life that he didn’t make any attempts to grab it and force it back down the front of his suit jacket so that sartorial decorum could be restored.
As Camille drove the boat in a wide arc around the clutch of yachts that were at anchor, she, Dwayne and Fidel shared grins, knowing how much their boss hated any kind of physical danger, real or imagined.
They came across their first piece of debris from the explosion less than a minute later and Camille cut the engines, the launch slowing to a slooshy stop almost immediately.
Looking about themselves, the Police could see that it was one of those days in the tropics of almost perfect stillness. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the sea seemed to be breathing as it gently rose and fell, and there were sparkling diamonds of reflected light all around them on the water. But there were also what looked like thousands of different-sized pieces of ripped-up wood floating on the surface of the water.
‘Look, over there!’ Fidel said, and they all saw that there was something much larger floating in the water just off their port bow.
With a quick squirt of power, Camille steered the launch towards the object, and it revealed itself to be the back end of an old boat. The prow should have been pointing vertically downwards towards the sea bed, but Richard could see that the front half of the boat was missing from where the explosion had split it in two.
The section of the stern that was still just above the water line had the boat’s name written in white letters. It was called Soundman.
‘Anyone know who owns the boat?’ Richard asked, before he realised that his team was looking at an area of the hull just above the painted name. As Richard looked for himself, he could see why. There was a bright smear of what looked like blood. In fact, the way the smear ran down the wood, it was easy to imagine that someone who was heavily bleeding had briefly clung to the side of the boat before subsiding and slipping into the sea. There even appeared to be a rather macabre handprint in blood just to the side of the smear.
‘I’ll call the coastguard,’ Dwayne said, pulling out his phone. ‘They can maybe winch the boat out of the water and help us get it back to shore. And in answer to your question, Chief, Soundman belongs to a guy called Conrad Gardiner. He lives in a house on the beach to the side of the harbour.’
‘And what do you think happened here?’
Richard’s subordinates looked at each other, nonplussed.
‘It exploded,’ Fidel eventually said.
‘I can see it exploded,’ Richard said in exasperation. ‘But how did it explode? Do boats normally explode?’
This time it was Dwayne’s turn to answer.
‘No, Chief.’
Richard pulled a hankie from his jacket pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow, his face, and then the back and front of his neck.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘we need to keep this bit of boat above water. And we also need to keep our eyes peeled for any survivors.’
Even as Richard said this, he could see that there was no-one in the water near the debris, either alive or dead.
Within half an hour, the coastguard’s bright yellow rescue boat had arrived and was starting to winch the rear end of the boat onto its deck. This allowed Richard to order Fidel and Dwayne to stay with the coastguard and coordinate the safe return of the boat while he and Camille drove the Police launch in wide circles through the expanding spread of floating debris. All they found were various pieces of detritus – from plastic jerry cans to kitchen implements and even an old white plastic chair – but they couldn’t find anything that seemed to shed any light on exactly what had happened.
Once it became apparent that there was nothing left to find on the surface of the water, Richard ordered Camille to drive them back to harbour. When they arrived, Richard saw a small crowd of locals gathered on the quayside. Richard couldn’t imagine why. After all, the explosion had happened hundreds of metres away, there was nothing much for the crowd to see, but then he noticed that everyone seemed to be clustered around one woman in particular.
While Camille tied the boat up, Richard saw the crowd jostle the middle-aged woman forward, and he went to find out what was happening.
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you all to move on,’ he announced as he came within earshot. ‘There’s nothing to see here.’
‘But is it true?’ the woman at the front asked.
‘Is what true?’
‘That it was Conrad’s boat?’
‘It’s still early in the investigation.’
‘But was it Conrad’s boat?’ she said again, almost begging.
Before Richard could reply that he couldn’t possibly comment, Camille pushed past him and took the woman’s hands in hers.
‘Natasha,’ she said, ‘I’m so sorry. It was Conrad’s boat.’
‘Detective Sergeant?’ Richard said, irked that Camille had so effortlessly taken control of the situation.
‘Yes, sir?’ Camille replied.
‘You know each other?’
Richard indicated the woman. He could see that she was perhaps in her late forties, and was dressed somewhat dowdily, with a simple skirt, blouse and cardigan.
‘This is Natasha Gardiner,’ Camille said. ‘Conrad Gardiner’s wife.’
‘Oh,’ Richard said. ‘I see.’
‘But it was definitely his boat . . .?’ Natasha asked, her eyes desperate with worry.
‘I’m sorry,’ Camille said. ‘It was.’
‘Then where is he?’
‘We don’t know. But we didn’t see him in the water, so maybe he got away before it happened.’
Richard decided that enough was enough. If it was unprofessional that they should be talking about the incident before they’d even finished their first survey of the scene, it was doubly bad that they’d be doing so in front of a crowd.
‘Perhaps we could have this conversation somewhere a little more private?’ he asked Camille.
‘Good idea,’ Camille agreed. ‘Natasha and Conrad live only a couple of houses away, we can talk there.’
Natasha’s house was precisely the last place on earth Richard wanted to visit, but he couldn’t see a diplomatic way of explaining this to his partner, so he just harrumphed by way of an answer.
‘Good!’ Camille said, and then started to lead Natasha off, telling her how she shouldn’t prejudge the situation, there were a million things that may have happened, and maybe they’d find a very damp and embarrassed Conrad already waiting for them back at her house. This seemed to settle Natasha a little, but it did nothing to improve Richard’s mood as he followed behind.
Natasha’s house was a one-storey bungalow that led directly onto the little beach of Honoré. It had a green and white striped awning out front, and a couple of hanging baskets of flame-red flowers either side of the front door. The inside of the house was just as quaint, with simple furniture, and sea shells arranged on shelves.
‘Now, why don’t I get us all a glass of water,’ Camille said, heading to the sink. ‘And maybe you could tell us a bit about where Conrad was going this morning.’
‘Well, I don’t know. Not exactly. Only that Conrad always goes out fishing every morning.’
‘He’s a fisherman?’ Richard asked.
‘Oh no, he’s a music producer. Or he was for a time.’
‘So what does he do now?’
‘Well . . . you know. This and that. I mean, we don’t need so much money to get by, now we’re older.’
‘But he goes fishing every morning?’
‘Not every morning. Sometimes he doesn’t get up in time. But most days.’
‘And do you ever go out with him?’
‘Me? Oh no, I’m not welcome. You see, Conrad never catches anything much. For him, it’s more about getting away, I think. You know what men are like.’
Natasha addressed this last comment to Camille as she came over with two glasses of water.
‘Here you go,’ Camille said.
‘Thank you,’ Natasha said gratefully as she took her glass. ‘And you think he maybe wasn’t on the boat when it went up like that?’
‘It’s a possibility,’ Camille said.
‘But we can’t really talk about specifics this early in the investigation,’ Richard said. ‘Although you should perhaps know that we found a smear of blood on the one remaining part of the hull we could find.’
‘Oh,’ Natasha said as this information sank in.
‘It may not be blood,’ Camille said with a warning glance at her boss to soften his approach. ‘And even if it is, it’s possible it belongs to someone other than your husband, of course.’
‘But he always goes out on his own. No-one else would have been with him. If you found blood . . .?’
Richard could see tears forming in Natasha’s eyes.
‘Can I ask,’ he said, ‘was your husband’s boat safe?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, are you surprised he had this accident?’
And with that, the tears came.
Richard looked at Camille, partly in helplessness, and partly in irritation. As far as he was concerned, it was entirely his partner’s fault that they now found themselves in this situation. This was far too soon to be talking to a key witness.
For her part, Camille ignored her boss’s disapproval and went and knelt by Natasha.
‘You mustn’t worry. We still don’t know what happened.’
‘But where is he?’
‘We’ll find him. If he’s out there, we’ll find him.’
As Camille continued to console Natasha, Richard realised that he was now something of a spare part to the whole conversation. So he wafted his arms a bit. He didn’t quite know why, but as he did so, he had the flash of a memory of being at college parties where, no matter what room he went into, no-one seemed to want to talk to him. In fact, Richard remembered how college parties had been a type of living hell. They were full of all of the beautiful and confident people, and he’d drift from room to room being roundly ignored. Before his memories spiked too painfully, Richard decided to keep himself busy by poking around.
On a nearby shelf, he found a collection of photos that charted the growth of a young woman from a baby up to the day she graduated from college, a mortar board on her head and a scroll in her hand. This was no doubt Natasha’s daughter. But Richard could also see photos of Natasha and a man he presumed must be Conrad, her husband. The photos were taken at parties, and Natasha and Conrad were laughing or dancing together in all of them. They looked a handsome couple, Richard thought to himself, and he realised he had trouble matching the vivacious young woman in the photos with the older woman he’d just met. But then, he had to remind himself, Natasha had just discovered her husband had possibly recently died.
As for the photos of Conrad, he looked as though he was always having a good time. He was laughing in every photo, or smoking a cigar, or raising a toast with his bottle of beer.
Seeing that Natasha was still crying, Richard slipped into a little corridor that led from the main room. He saw an open door. Telling himself that seeing as Natasha had invited him into her house he didn’t need a warrant, he pushed the door open a bit further, and what he saw inside shocked him.
The room had been trashed, with all its contents tipped over or dashed to the floor. What’s more, Richard could see that the room’s one window had been smashed, and there was a fist-sized chunk of concrete lying in the middle of the glass-strewn rug.
Clearly, someone had thrown the chunk of concrete in through the window, but what had happened next? Had this person then climbed in afterwards looking for something? Or had the room been smashed up just for the hell of it?
Richard was about to return to Natasha to find out what she knew about the break-in, when his eye caught something red and shiny sitting in the centre of a small writing desk to the side of the room. Unlike the rest of the furniture, this one table had been left standing. But what was on it?
Richard picked his way across the room until he could see the object more clearly..
It was a ruby.
A big, fat red ruby that was significantly larger than any jewel Richard had ever seen before. In fact, it was so large, Richard knew it couldn’t be real. It must have come from some kind of theatrical costumier’s or joke shop.
But what on earth was a ruby doing in the middle of the desk?
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_70d033f2-fc80-564b-b054-4a57dedb159a)
Richard returned to the main room of the house and explained what he’d just seen.
‘I don’t understand,’ Natasha said. ‘There’s been a break-in?’
‘It’s how it looks,’ Richard said, and then he asked Natasha what the room was usually used for.
‘It’s Conrad’s. His den. It’s where he likes to go. You know, when he wants some peace and quiet.’
‘Then can I ask, have you been in his room today?’
‘No. Conrad doesn’t like me going in there.’
‘Do you recall hearing the sound of glass smashing at all today?’
Natasha rose from her chair.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
‘If you could just answer the question.’
Natasha looked to Camille for support, and she nodded kindly, which seemed to give her strength.
‘Okay. Well, no, I didn’t hear any glass smashing today.’
‘Thank you. And have you been in the house all day?’
‘I’ve been cross-stitching a kneeler for the church.’ As Natasha said this, she indicated some brightly coloured threads that were piled on an occasional table nearby.
‘I see. You’re involved in the local church?’
‘Of course. Aren’t you?’
Richard didn’t quite know how to reply, if only because he always felt a touch bashful that religion had never quite ‘taken’ for him. As he tried to think of a suitable reply, Camille stepped in.
‘And what church do you belong to?’
‘Father Luc Durant’s. He’s such an impressive priest. Don’t you think?’
Richard had no idea who Father Luc was, but he recognised that he was in danger of losing control of the interview entirely.
‘Then can I ask,’ he said, ‘if you didn’t hear any glass smashing, and you were here all morning, what time did you leave?’
‘How do you mean?’ Natasha asked.
‘Well, we first met you at the harbour. So when did you leave your house for the harbour?’
Natasha frowned as she considered her answer.
‘That’s easy enough to explain. I left when . . . you know, I heard the . . . the boat . . .’
‘You heard the explosion?’
‘Not that I knew what it was. It was just this terrible noise.’
‘What time was this?’
‘It was just after eleven, I think. I was listening to the news on the radio.’
‘And then what did you do?’ he asked.
‘Well, I got on with cross-stitching. I didn’t think it had anything to do with me. But about five minutes later, Morgane Pichou came and knocked on my door. You know Morgane? She runs the tourist centre in Honoré. Anyway, she said she’d been down at the harbour when the explosion happened, and she’d heard that it was Conrad’s boat that had just . . . well, that it had just happened to. I didn’t know what to think. And then my phone rang. It was the harbour master, Philippe. He said I should come down to the harbour at once. There’d been an accident. I still didn’t believe it could be true – I still don’t believe it . . .’
‘So what time did you get down to the harbour?’ Richard asked, aware that Natasha was about to start crying again.
‘I don’t know. Twenty past. Something like that.’
‘And just to be clear, you were definitely in the house the whole morning before the explosion?’
‘Yes.’
Richard paused to collect his thoughts, because this meant that if Natasha could be believed, the break-in must have happened after she’d left her house following the explosion. After all, if it had happened at any time before, she’d surely have heard the glass smashing. But what sort of person would break in to Conrad’s house after his boat had just exploded? Were the two facts connected, or was it just a coincidence?
‘Mrs Gardiner, could you follow me?’ Richard asked, before leading Natasha and Camille into the corridor where Conrad’s room was. As he pushed the door open, Natasha gave a little gasp and her hand shot to her mouth.
‘Is this a surprise to you?’
‘Of course,’ Natasha said, deeply shocked. ‘I mean, Conrad’s not the tidiest person, but he’s not this bad. Everything’s been thrown onto the floor. Hasn’t it? And the window’s been smashed.’
‘I think it was smashed with that piece of concrete there,’ Richard said, indicating the chunk in the middle of the room. ‘Which is why I was asking if you’d heard the sound of any glass smashing today. I think it would have made a considerable noise when that rock came in through the window.’
‘Of course. I didn’t hear any smashing this morning.’
‘Can you see if anything’s been stolen?’
Natasha scanned the room from the doorway.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I wouldn’t say Conrad had anything worth stealing.’
‘Then can you tell me if this belongs to him?’ Richard said, entering the room and going over to the table where the bright red ruby was sitting.
‘What is it?’
‘It looks like a ruby.’
Natasha’s expression of concern briefly froze, and Camille and Richard exchanged a glance – both knowing that the ruby had just registered with her.
‘A what?’ Natasha asked.
‘A ruby,’ he replied.
Natasha didn’t speak for a few moments.
‘Does it mean anything to you?’ Camille asked as kindly as she could.
Natasha seemed to come to a decision.
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘But you’re saying it’s a real ruby?’
‘I don’t know,’ Richard said. ‘I doubt it. It would be worth millions.’
‘Then I’ve no idea how that got there,’ Natasha said with finality.
‘Do you think it belongs to your husband?’ Camille asked.
‘Oh no. Where would he get something like that from?’
Richard bent down to give the jewel a good inspection. It lay on its side and was cut so that it was fat at one end but sharpened to a point at the other. Richard could see tiny air bubbles trapped inside, making it clear that it really was just a trinket made of plastic.
‘So you’re saying this jewel doesn’t belong to your husband, and doesn’t belong to you, either?’
‘That’s it exactly,’ Natasha said, happy with Richard’s assessment. ‘I’ve never seen it before in my life.’
‘Then I wonder who put it there?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Don’t you? Only you seemed to recognise it.’
‘I didn’t,’ Natasha said, and Richard could see how sincere she was. ‘I was just surprised. I couldn’t work out what it was doing there.’
‘Which is very much the question, isn’t it? Can you imagine why anyone might have wanted to smash that window there, break in to your house, and then place a paste red ruby on this desk here?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Oh yes. I’ve no idea what it can possibly mean.’
Natasha seemed to have got control of whatever doubts she’d previously had, and Richard could see that he wouldn’t be getting any more from her for the moment.
‘Okay, we’ll have to treat this room as a secondary crime scene, so we’ll need to have our officers process it. And we’ll need to take your fingerprints as well, Mrs Gardiner. Just so we can exclude them from whatever we find in this room, of course. And can I ask where we might be able to find sample fingerprints from your husband?’
Natasha looked into the room and indicated a spilled bottle of rum on the floor that was lying next to an old metal tumbler. ‘That’s Conrad’s bottle. And his glass. His fingerprints should be on both of them.’
Richard thanked Natasha for her time and told her they’d update her with news of her husband the moment they had any. In the meantime, she was to wait until one of his officers returned to take her fingerprints and start processing the room.
‘So what do you think of Mrs Gardiner?’ Camille asked as they walked the short distance back to the Police station.
‘I think she’s in shock.’
‘But the ruby didn’t surprise her entirely, did it?’
‘I’d agree with you there, Camille.’
‘So why did she deny all knowledge of it?’
‘Indeed,’ Richard said as he stopped at the bottom of the slope that led up to the Police station. As he did so, he saw two people emerge from the station.
‘Oh no, no, no, no, no, no,’ Richard said, and started racing up the steps two at a time.
Camille had no idea what Richard was doing, but, looking up, she saw that Dwayne was standing on the veranda and was chatting easily to a very attractive blonde woman. Camille smiled to herself. So that’s what had upset her boss.
As for Richard, he was a man on a mission as he strode onto the veranda of the Police station and found Dwayne talking to Amy, the woman who had answered the door that morning wearing only a towel.
‘Officer Myers, what the hell is going on?’
‘Chief?’ Dwayne said, startled by his boss’s sudden arrival.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘How do you mean, “here”? I work here.’
‘But I left you strict instructions to get the remains of the boat to shore. So how come you’ve been inside the station with a civilian?’
‘Whoa,’ Dwayne said, holding up his hands. ‘Back up there a moment. Fidel and me have got the boat to shore. But we need to process the blood we found on it. And lift whatever prints we can find. So I came back to the station to pick up the Crime Scene Kit. And when I got here – only minutes ago, I can tell you – I found Amy waiting for me.’
‘You came back to get the Crime Scene Kit?’
‘I said.’
‘So why haven’t you got it in your hands right now?’
Dwayne was puzzled that his boss was so interested.
‘I was thirsty after all that hard work in the sun. So I got a drink of water with Amy here, and now – what you’re interrupting – is me telling her I’m busy on a case and we’ll have to meet up later on.’
Richard didn’t believe a word Dwayne was saying. He’d been sloping off work and hanging out with his new girlfriend again, Richard was sure of it.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve caused a problem,’ Amy said in her lilting Edinburgh accent.
‘It’s not you who’s caused a problem,’ Richard said, stiffly.
‘And anyway, it wasn’t Dwayne I came down here to see,’ she continued, and then she gave Dwayne a playful punch on the arm. Dwayne winced in melodramatic pretence that the punch had caused him mortal pain. Amy pulled a shocked face, and Richard sighed internally at the whole teenage horseplay of it all. As far as he could tell, Amy was in her early forties, and she and Dwayne were surely old enough to have got beyond what his mother called the ‘giggling and pinching’ stage of courtship.
It was only once he’d finished his thought process that Richard realised that he’d not quite registered what Amy had said.
‘How do you mean, you didn’t come to see Dwayne?’ he asked, as Camille joined them on the veranda.
‘Well, isn’t it obvious?’ Amy said. ‘I came to apologise to you.’
‘Apologise?’
‘Of course. For answering the door to you wearing only a towel this morning.’
Richard’s face flushed, and Amy smiled with an understanding of his embarrassment that just made his cheeks burn an even deeper shade of red.
‘Yes, well,’ he blustered. ‘It wasn’t quite what I expected, but don’t worry, I’ve seen worse. I mean, better. Or not better – that’s not right. I just mean, I’ve seen . . . if I’m honest,’ Richard said in quiet despair, ‘I don’t quite know what I mean.’
‘You just mean,’ Amy said, smoothing over Richard’s awkwardness, ‘you’re used to seeing semi-naked women.’
‘Well, normally only on the mortician’s slab, if I’m honest,’ Richard said by way of keeping things light, but it was only as he looked at Camille and Dwayne’s horrified faces that he realised how creepy he must have sounded.
‘Anyway,’ Amy said awkwardly, ‘no harm done. I just wanted to apologise. And introduce myself properly to you. I’m Amy McDiarmid.’
Amy held out her hand, and Richard was relieved finally that normality had resumed.
‘Richard Poole,’ he said. ‘How do you do.’
‘Very well, thank you,’ Amy said, as amused as Richard’s team was at his formality. ‘Although, I wanted to ask. Did you manage to see any birds this morning?’
‘How do you mean, did I see any birds?’
‘Well, it’s just, I couldn’t help noticing. When you came to the door, you had a pair of binoculars around your neck.’
‘You did?’ Dwayne said. ‘I didn’t notice.’
‘That’s right,’ Amy said. ‘A nice pair of binoculars.’
‘But you’re not into birdwatching, Chief,’ Dwayne said.
‘I don’t think he was birdwatching,’ Camille said as she realised what the binoculars meant. ‘You were spying on Dwayne, weren’t you?’
‘It’s not how it looks,’ Richard said weakly.
‘You were spying on me?’ Dwayne said, amazed.
‘But Thursday mornings are for revising for your sergeant’s exam. And I’ve never seen you with any of the revision materials in the office. Or talking about how hard the work is. In fact, I’ve seen no evidence you’ve even started work on your exams. So I just wanted to check up on you. You know, that you were actually studying.’
Dwayne stared long and hard at his boss.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘if you’d been using your binoculars to get a glimpse of a beautiful naked woman, I reckon I could understand where you were coming from. But snooping on colleagues to check they’re looking at a load of old books . . .?’
Richard didn’t quite know what to say. Dwayne was making it sound like he was in the wrong and not Dwayne.
‘Now, I’ve got a Crime Scene Kit to get,’ Dwayne continued primly. ‘Amy, I’ll see you later.’
Dwayne gave Amy a quick kiss on the cheek, and then he turned and entered the Police station.
‘Don’t worry,’ Amy said kindly, touching Richard’s besuited elbow. ‘You know what Dwayne’s like. He’ll forget about all this in no time at all. He doesn’t bear grudges.’
Richard’s mobile phone rang in his jacket pocket.
‘If you’ll excuse me, we’re in the middle of an active case, I’ll need to answer my phone, it could be important.’
Richard stepped to one side, which gave Amy a moment alone with Camille.
‘You really answered the door to him wearing only a towel?’ Camille asked.
‘I’m afraid I did.’
‘I’d have paid anything to see his face.’
‘He went bright red.’
‘I bet he did.’
‘You know what? Your boss is just like Dwayne said he’d be. But even more so.’
Camille smiled. She’d spent a long time with Richard, and she’d long ago realised that most of his sudden squalls of anger and stick-in-the-mud curmudgeonliness came from an upbringing that had straitjacketed him from the moment he put on his first suit, shirt and tie aged four. Camille believed that inside her boss, just as surely was the case with every human, there was a free spirit bursting to get out. In the meantime, she found herself a wry spectator to his wrecking-ball social interactions. And the fact that Richard was utterly dedicated to solving crimes went a long way in her mind to making up for all his other inadequacies. Mind you, she thought to herself, he’d crossed a line when he’d started spying on Dwayne with a pair of binoculars. She knew she’d have to speak to him about that later on.
Richard returned from his phonecall, energised.
‘Okay, that was Fidel, Camille. He says he’s found something on the boat we need to see. At once. Amy, you’ll have to excuse us.’
‘Of course,’ Amy said, and called out, ‘Send my love to Dwayne,’ as she started clipping down the stairs to leave the Police station.
‘I’d rather not,’ Richard replied before turning back to Camille. ‘Right then, seeing as we’ve now got two scenes to work, I suggest we split up. You take the Crime Scene Kit back to Natasha and Conrad’s house. Dust the window frame and windowsill for fingerprints. Also, someone should see if there are any prints on that chunk of concrete that was used to smash the glass. And while you’re about it, check for footprints in the soil outside the window, and do a quick door-to-door. Did any of the neighbours see or hear anything suspicious like breaking glass before or after the explosion this morning? And above all else, make sure you bag the paste ruby. It was left on the desk for a reason, and I suggest we find out what it was.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Dwayne came out of the station holding the large metal flight case that was the station’s Crime Scene Kit.
‘Dwayne,’ Richard said, ‘Camille will need the kit for herself, she’s working a secondary crime scene. So I want you down at the harbour running a door-to-door. And also go yacht to yacht for that matter. Did anyone see Mr Gardiner go out on his boat this morning? And was anyone with him, or was he on his own? We still don’t know who was on his boat when it exploded.’
‘Were you really spying on me?’
‘We don’t have time for this now, Dwayne. I also need you to get onto the Saint-Marie dive school. I want them in their scuba kit and scouring the sea bed where the boat went down. I want a list of everything that sank from Conrad’s boat.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Camille said to Dwayne. ‘I’ll talk to him about snooping on you.’
‘Not now you won’t,’ Richard said, heading down the stairs. ‘I need to see Fidel, and you both need to get on with your jobs.’
A few minutes later, Richard was striding along the concrete quay towards where he saw the back half of Conrad’s boat resting on its side. Fidel was erecting ‘Police – Do Not Cross’ tape around it, and to the side of the quay, the Saint-Marie Coastguard were making good the winch on their boat.
‘Okay, Fidel, what have you got for me?’ Richard called out as he approached.
‘Well, sir, the explosion wasn’t an accident.’
‘You know that?’
‘I do, sir.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Let me show you.’
Fidel led Richard around the structure, and Richard could see that the wooden sides of the hull were jagged and torn in a way that looked as though a leviathan had risen from the deep, snapped the boat in two with its jaws – and this was the bit of the boat it had then tossed aside.
Passing the sharp edges of the hull, Richard saw that the interior of the boat had been mostly ripped out by the explosion, although there were still plenty of old pipes and rusting metal fixings sticking out at crazy angles. Mercifully, there were no smears of blood here, but Richard watched as Fidel stepped up to a dirty grey tube that ran along the inside of the boat and which was fixed with red cable ties.
‘Okay, sir,’ Fidel said, ‘I think that this section of the boat was once the engine compartment. And this tube here was the fuel inlet to the engine.’
‘So where’s the engine?’
‘I imagine it got blown from its housing and sank with everything else. But the thing is, on boats like this, the engines tend to be at the rear. In a tight and enclosed space directly under the driving position.’
‘Okay,’ Richard said, wondering where Fidel was going with this.
‘It can make them seriously dangerous if there’s any kind of cut or tear in the fuel inlet. Like we’ve got here.’
Fidel indicated a point on the pipe with his forefinger, and Richard could see that there was a deep cut that ran along it for about three inches.
‘How did that get there?’
‘I’ve looked at it, and it’s pretty neat. I think someone slit it open using a sharp knife.’
‘But why would they want to do that?’
‘Well, a tear in the fuel line like this isn’t enough to let much petrol leak, but it’s enough to let fumes from the petrol get out.’
‘Oh,’ Richard said, understanding finally coming to him. ‘Petrol fumes that then build up inside the enclosed space.’
‘Exactly, sir. And then, the tiniest spark and the whole thing goes up.’
‘But how did you find that rip?’ Richard asked, looking at all the dozens of feet of pipes that ran around the inside of the boat’s hull.
‘Well, sir, I was carrying out a visual inspection of the wreck when I found this.’
Fidel walked around the inside of the boat and pulled down a mess of what looked like electric cables that were tied together with parcel tape. But as Richard looked more closely, he saw that there was something else that the parcel tape was holding in place.
It was a mobile phone.
What was a mobile phone doing taped to the inside of an engine compartment?
As Richard looked again, he could see that it was one of the old-fashioned plastic phones that had no touchscreen, it just had buttons and the smallest of screens for the minimum of text.
But there were also two thin electric cables emerging from the housing of the phone – and the plastic at the end of each cable was stripped back to reveal copper wires. Richard took a step back, the sheer enormity of what Fidel had uncovered hitting him.
‘Good grief,’ he said.
Someone had sliced into the fuel pipes of the boat so that the enclosed engine compartment would fill with petrol fumes. But this person had also taped a doctored phone inside the same engine compartment. When the boat was heading out to sea, the compartment filled with petrol vapour, and this person had then rung the number of the mobile phone. The incoming call had turned on the circuit that was supposed to drive the motor that made the phone vibrate, but it had been re-routed to a couple of cables that led outside the casing. And once the current was flowing in these two little cables, the electricity had arced and caused the tiniest of sparks.
The spark had caused the petrol to explode, and the boat had blown apart.
Despite the heat, a shiver ran down Richard’s spine.
Fidel was right. Conrad hadn’t died in some tragic accident at sea.
He’d been murdered in cold blood.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_78888b66-9962-5a28-ae1f-f0ed518e69f6)
Of the many things that irritated Richard about the tropical island of Saint-Marie, perhaps the one that infuriated him the most was just how small it was. It’s not that he had an objection to its size per se. After all, as he often had occasion to tell his team, he’d holidayed many times on the Isle of Wight as a child, so he knew something about island living. But it was one thing to take a vacation on an island, and quite another to run a Police investigation on one.
For starters there were no forensic or pathology labs on Saint-Marie, so whenever Richard needed to process any kind of physical evidence, it had to be sent ‘off island’ to Guadeloupe. But the island’s size also meant he only had access to two Police vehicles. One of these was a battered old Mark II Land Rover that was painted mustard yellow and had the crest of the Saint-Marie Police Force on the bonnet and sides. For all Richard publicly grumbled about the vehicle, he couldn’t help but feel a grudging affinity with it. Like him it was British, hadn’t even been remotely designed for tropical climes, and yet here it was, chugging along and doing the best it could in very testing circumstances.
But if Richard tolerated the Police Land Rover, the same couldn’t be said for the other Police vehicle, a sputtering Harley Davidson motorbike that had an attached, almost-certainly illegal sidecar. Only Dwayne was qualified to drive the infernal machine, and Richard only travelled in it under sufferance. After all, as he’d tell anyone who asked, if the answer is ever ‘get on a motorbike driven by Dwayne’, you’ve very definitely been asking the wrong question.
However, the most irksome aspect of island living, as far as Richard was concerned, was that the distances were often so small that the quickest way to get somewhere was to walk. And while Richard loved the idea of walking in theory – particularly on a crisp winter’s day, the grass stiff on the ground with frost – it was quite a different matter yomping through the blistering heat of the tropics wearing a thick woollen suit.
Sweating heavily, Richard arrived at Mrs Gardiner’s house, and found Camille inspecting the earth beneath the smashed window. Having updated her that he and Fidel now believed Conrad had been murdered, Richard asked what Camille had so far been able to find.
‘Not much of anything, sir,’ she said. ‘There are no footprints out here. And no cigarette butts or anything else that suggests anyone was here. And the window’s not overlooked by any of the neighbours, so they didn’t see anything, either.’
‘Did they hear the moment the window was smashed?’
‘I’ve asked whoever I can find who was nearby at the time, and no-one saw or heard anything suspicious.’
‘I see,’ Richard said, disappointed. ‘Then what about the window frame?’
Camille explained that she’d just finished inspecting the outside frame, and it was so rough and weather-beaten it wasn’t possible to lift any fingerprints from it.
‘Then what about the break-in? Has Mrs Gardiner got any theories?’
‘None. Although I asked her to have a proper look at everything that was thrown on the floor, and she said she’s not sure, but she thinks nothing’s been stolen.’
‘In which case, the break-in was all about leaving the ruby.’
‘Which is kind of crazy, sir.’
‘I’d agree with you there. Because, why bother?’
‘It’s a message, isn’t it?’
‘That’s what I’m thinking. It’s got no intrinsic value, so it must be symbolic somehow. Or a warning of some kind.’
‘To Natasha?’
‘It’s a possibility. Because it wasn’t a message for Conrad, was it? I mean, with him dead, he’s not going to receive it, is he? Look, let’s talk to Natasha again. We need to tell her the explosion wasn’t an accident, and I want to press her a bit more about this ruby.’
Richard and Camille went into the house, but Natasha was nowhere to be found. However, the French windows were open, and they could see that she was standing on the beach down by the sea.
‘Oh, bloody hell,’ Richard said to himself as he stepped out of the house and onto the bright white sand. He hated walking on beaches in his brogues, and he still couldn’t quite believe that it was an occupational hazard he had to endure on an almost daily basis.
‘Mrs Gardiner?’ Camille asked as they approached, but Natasha didn’t turn round. She just kept staring out at the distant horizon.
Richard cleared his throat to get the woman’s attention.
‘If he’s in the water, he’ll come in here, won’t he?’ Natasha said, almost to herself. ‘I mean, this is the nearest beach.’
‘It is,’ Camille said, kindly. ‘But there have been developments. It looks like maybe your husband’s boat didn’t explode by accident.’
Natasha’s brow furrowed, but she didn’t say anything.
‘It looks like it was set off by an IED,’ Richard said. ‘An improvised explosive device.’
This finally registered with her.
‘I’m, sorry . . .?’
‘Now, I understand this is a terrible shock,’ Camille said before her boss could be any more insensitive, ‘but if someone was behind this terrible event, then every passing hour will make it harder for us to catch them.’
‘You’re saying it wasn’t an accident?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘But why would anyone want to do that to Conrad?’
‘That’s what we’d like to know.’
Natasha took a moment to compose herself, and then she said, ‘No, it’s not possible. It’s monstrous.’
She then headed back to her house. After a quick glance of surprise at each other, Richard and Camille followed her across the sand.
‘You don’t think anyone could have wanted to harm your husband?’ Camille asked.
‘No way.’
‘Even though it looks as though someone did?’
‘But who’d want to harm him?’ Natasha said, turning and looking at the Police officers with what Richard realised was a fair amount of desperation. ‘Everyone likes Conrad, that’s the whole point of him. He’s popular.’
‘Do you mind me asking, what exactly does he do?’
‘Well, it’s like I told you before. He does this and that.’
‘But what sort of “this and that”?’
‘He used to be a record producer. With his own recording studio and everything. He’s always been a champion of island music.’
‘He used to be a record producer?’ Richard asked
‘For many years. But you can’t keep making hit records. Your luck eventually runs out, and that’s how it went with Conrad. He hit a bad patch, and when the money ran out he had to let his studio go.’
‘That must have been hard,’ Camille offered.
‘Not to Conrad. Nothing is ever a problem to him. If we’re rich, and we’ve had plenty of money in the past, he’s happy. If we’re poor, he’s also happy. He’s just happy with everything and everyone.’ This comment really seemed to resonate with Natasha. ‘So it’s just impossible that anyone would do this to him. You must have made a mistake.’
‘You think so?’
‘I know so.’
‘Then perhaps you could explain why a ruby was left on a table in your husband’s study?’
There was a flash of surprise in Natasha’s eyes that Richard could see her quell just as soon as it appeared.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Because I think you know what it means.’
‘I don’t.’
‘It’s better if you tell us what you know now,’ Camille said, playing the role of the ‘Good Cop’.
‘But I don’t know anything about why that ruby was put there. Nothing at all. I promise you.’
Natasha said this statement with such finality that Richard was left in no doubt that she meant it. The only problem was, both Richard and Camille knew she was lying. But why would she lie about why a ruby was left in her house?
Just before it was time to finish for the day, Richard gathered his team at the whiteboard in the Police station.
‘Okay, so what have we got so far?’ he asked, popping the lid on a fresh board marker.
‘Well, sir,’ Fidel said, ‘I’ve lifted the prints from the bottle of rum you got from Natasha’s house. And assuming those prints belong to Conrad, I can say that they match the fingerprints we’ve been able to lift from the blood we found on Conrad’s boat.’
‘It was his handprint in the blood?’
‘I’ve got definite matches for his first, second and third fingers on his right hand, and matches for his left thumb and first finger.’
‘So it really was Conrad who was injured in the explosion.’
‘And who then slipped down the side of his boat into the water,’ Dwayne added. ‘Which means he went into the water bleeding.’
Richard shuddered. They all knew how slim the chances were of a heavily bleeding man lasting long before attracting the attention of a nearby shark.
‘And it was a big explosion,’ Dwayne said. ‘Anything that could do that to a boat could do a lot worse to flesh and bone.’
‘Poor man,’ Camille said.
‘Although,’ Richard asked, ‘are we sure he didn’t survive?’
‘I don’t see how he could have done,’ Fidel said. ‘I reckon we were at the scene within twenty minutes. So if he was alive – either on his boat or in the water – we’d have seen him.’
‘Then could he have swum ashore before we got there?’
‘No way. The nearest land was Honoré beach, and that’s where we came from. If he was in any condition to swim to safety, we’d have passed him on our way out. And I was checking the water the whole time, sir. I didn’t see anyone swimming anywhere.’
‘Very well. We’ll need to tell Mrs Gardiner that her husband is missing presumed dead. Camille?’
Camille sighed, but knew it made sense that the task fall to her. After all, she was the only detective at the station who wasn’t Richard Poole, and that was reason enough for her to handle all of the conversations that required any kind of sympathy.
‘Okay,’ she said, and went to her desk to get ready to leave.
‘Then, Dwayne,’ Richard said, ‘what did you get from going door-to-door at the harbour?’
‘Well, Chief, I spoke to whoever I could find, and three witnesses all said that they saw Conrad get onto his boat on his own this morning.’
‘No-one else was with him?’
‘That’s what they’re saying. And the harbour master, Philippe, said he talked to Conrad this morning and was sure he was on his own. In fact, Conrad asked Philippe to help load his scuba kit onto the boat because there was no-one else around to help.’
‘He took scuba diving kit out with him?’ Richard asked.
‘That’s what Philippe said. But the important thing is, Philippe’s ninety-nine per cent sure that no-one else was on the boat with Conrad. Unless they were hiding in the cabin.’
‘I see,’ Richard said, already feeling frustrated that the explosion had ruined their primary crime scene. How could they run forensics or test any of their theories when half the boat had sunk to the bottom of the sea?
‘Then did you speak to the Saint-Marie Dive School?’
‘I did. And tomorrow they’re putting together a team to scour the seabed under where the boat went down.’
‘Oh, Camille,’ Richard said to his partner as she headed for the door, ‘were there any fingerprints on the ruby that was left at the scene?’
‘No, sir. There wasn’t a single fingerprint on it.’
‘Now, that is interesting, isn’t it?’
‘You’re right, sir. Whoever put it there made sure there was no way of tracing it back to them,’ Camille said, and then she headed off.
‘And yet, it must have been bought from somewhere on the island. Dwayne, can you ring all the shops where you think it would be possible to buy a fake ruby. I want to know where it came from.’
‘Okay.’
‘Which brings me to you, Fidel. What have you been able to glean from the mobile phone detonator you recovered from the boat?’
‘Well, sir,’ Fidel said, leading them over to his desk where he’d separated the mobile phone from the wires, and had also removed its back cover and battery. ‘I dusted the tape and outer casing for fingerprints. There aren’t any.’
‘Like the ruby,’ Richard said. ‘Which, again, makes sense. Our killer’s got to be careful.’
‘But I also removed the battery and casing and dusted them all over as well. You know, just on the off chance I could find a fingerprint or trapped hair or something.’
‘Of course. But nothing?’
‘Got it in one, sir. Nothing. Or so I thought. Because I then decided to dust the SIM card before I tried to work out what the number was and where it had been bought from.’
Richard was impressed.
‘You dusted the SIM card for prints?’
‘You’ve got to be thorough, sir,’ Fidel said, believing that Richard was chastising him. ‘And I found a partial fingerprint on the contact side of the SIM card.’
‘You did?’
‘Better than that, I was able to lift it. And the thing is, it doesn’t match any of the exclusion prints we took for Conrad Gardiner. Or his wife, for that matter.’
‘The print from the SIM card belongs to some unknown third party?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Have you uploaded the print to the CPCN?’ Richard asked eagerly.
The Caribbean Police Computer Network was one of the few saving graces of working on Saint-Marie as far as Richard was concerned. It was a database of information that unified all of the Police forces in the Caribbean, and also linked to data held by the FBI and Europol.
‘I uploaded it as soon as I could,’ Fidel said, ‘and I’ve set it looking for a match.’
‘Very good work. Very good work indeed. Although, did you by any chance learn anything from the information on the SIM card?’
‘Nothing that I think will help us. Because it’s got its IME number, so I ran it through the computer. It’s a Saint-Marie number, but it’s a prepaid phone that was sold just over a year ago.’
‘Has the shop that sold it kept any details?’
‘They haven’t. In fact, it’s that dodgy phone shop down by the harbour. Just by the booth where you buy tickets for the glass-bottomed boat.’
‘And they won’t tell us who they sold it to?’
‘No way.’
‘Can’t we get a warrant and force them?’
‘When I spoke to them, they said they’ve lost their records. And anyway, the phone was sold for cash, there’d be no way of tracing who they sold it to.’
‘So the phone is a dead end?’
‘Not necessarily, sir. Seeing as it was used to set off the bomb, it must have received a phonecall at 10am this morning. I’ve put in a request with the phone company. They’re going to let me know what calls were made to or from that SIM card as soon as they can.’
‘Good stuff, Fidel,’ Richard said. ‘Then what do we know about Conrad Gardiner? His wife Natasha said he was a record producer or something back in the day.’
Dwayne laughed.
‘“Or something” more like, Chief.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean, he played at being a hotshot record producer, but he had no taste. So he’d scout whatever talent he could find. You know, a young band, or a guy who did his own thing and reckoned he needed a great producer to take him to the next level. Anyway, Conrad would convince these people to sign to his label. He’d then cut a record in a studio he had built, and then he’d announce the band by throwing a party. And they were great parties, I can tell you. But the bands were always the worst, and the records never sold.’
‘Then what made him go into producing?’
‘No idea.’
‘And how did he carry on if he was so unsuccessful?’
‘You mean, building a studio, and then launching band after band and never making any money?’
‘It doesn’t seem like a very sustainable business model.’
‘It wasn’t. But then, the rumour was he used mob money to set up his studio.’
‘He had links to gangsters?’
‘That’s what people used to say. That the money he had wasn’t clean. And I can tell you, Conrad used to hang out with some pretty shady people back in the day.’
‘He was a gangster himself?’
‘I don’t know I’d go that far. But his friends were. No doubt about it. He was the sort of guy who, when he builds a studio, you don’t ask where he got the money from.’
‘So what’s he been doing since he gave up record producing?’
‘He’s like a lot of men on the island. He does what he can to get by. You know, seasonal work when the tourists are around, and who knows what the rest of the time.’
‘But he’s dodgy?’
‘He was dodgy. I don’t know about recently. I’ve not heard anything.’
‘But if he’s got that sort of background, it could explain why someone wanted him dead.’
‘It could, although he was never a big fish. So whatever he’s been up to, it’s been pretty low grade stuff for a number of years.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘Sure. Enough to say hello to, anyway. I liked him.’
Richard was slightly wrongfooted.
‘Despite him being a criminal, Dwayne?’
‘Of course,’ Dwayne said easily. ‘But there are worse crimes than being a criminal.’
At this pronouncement, Richard threw his hands up in the air and returned to inspect the information on the whiteboard.
‘Then what of the wife, Natasha?’ he called back to the room. ‘Anyone have anything on her?’
‘Not me,’ Dwayne said.
‘She said she went to church, didn’t she? Fidel, do you know Natasha Gardiner?’
Fidel, as a good family man, attended Sunday services at Honoré church every week.
‘I don’t think so, sir,’ Fidel said. ‘If she goes to church, it’s not the church here in Honoré.’
‘That’s interesting. She goes to church, but not to her local church.’
Richard went to his desk to check his notes. He found what he was looking for almost at once.
‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘She told us she goes to Father Luc Durant’s church. Anyone know where that is?’
Richard’s team didn’t, so Richard decided to do some digging for himself. It didn’t take him long to discover that Father Luc was a Catholic priest who ran a church on the south side of the island, but there didn’t seem to be anything else of note about him or Natasha’s role in his church. So Richard tried to see what he could dig up on Natasha on the Police Computer Network, but didn’t get anywhere. She had no presence as far as he could tell, and he couldn’t find any specific references to her on any of the government databases or on the local newspaper website, either.
She seemed to be entirely without interest.
And yet, Richard knew that she hadn’t told them the whole truth about the ruby.
In lieu of having any character references for Natasha, Richard decided to ring her church and spoke to a woman who explained that she was Father Luc’s secretary. When pressed, she was able to reveal that Natasha came to church every week, she was heavily involved in all of their charity endeavours, and there was no way at all that she would participate in anything ‘dodgy’. She was an upstanding member of the community.
This wasn’t exactly what Richard wanted to hear, so next he got the number for Morgane Pichou at the tourist office, seeing as she’d been the person to tell Natasha that there’d been an explosion in the harbour. Unfortunately for Richard, when he spoke to Morgane, she made it clear that there was no way Natasha could ever have been mixed up in her husband’s disappearance. According to Morgane, although Conrad was a bit of a layabout, Natasha loved him deeply and had done so ever since they’d met decades before.
It was all hugely frustrating for Richard, and his mood didn’t improve when Camille returned.
‘Sir,’ she said as she sat down at her desk, ‘I’m convinced there’s something Mrs Gardiner’s not telling us.’
‘Go on,’ Richard said.
‘I mean, she was hit hard when I told her that we now think her husband was missing presumed dead. She was distraught. And I believed her. But I got the feeling that she was also guilty somehow. Or maybe that’s too strong. But something was gnawing at her.’
‘You think she could be involved in his death?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Because the two people I’ve spoken to say she couldn’t have been. So why’s she acting so strange?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
Fidel called over from his desk.
‘Oh okay, sir, I think you need to see this. The computer’s got a match for the fingerprint I lifted from the SIM card.’
‘It has?’ Richard said as he headed over to Fidel’s desk.
‘It sure has. The fingerprint belongs to a man called Pierre Charpentier.’
‘And who’s he when he’s at home?’
‘Well, this is where it gets interesting. His prints are on the system because, twenty years ago, he committed murder during a robbery in London. So he’s been serving a life sentence. First in Holloway prison in London. And then, five years ago, he was transferred to the Central Prison on Saint-Marie.’
‘Hang on,’ Richard said, trying to process what Fidel had just said. ‘You’re saying that the print on the SIM card you found on Conrad’s boat belongs to a man who’s in prison for murder?’
‘What’s more, he committed his murder all those years ago while he and his gang were robbing a jewellery store in London.’
This got the team’s attention, and now it was Camille and Dwayne’s turn to head over to Fidel’s desk.
‘He knocked off a jewellery store?’ Dwayne asked.
‘He sure did. And now we find his fingerprint on the detonator of a bomb, and a big fat fake jewel left at the victim’s house. It’s all connected, isn’t it?’
‘But hold on,’ Richard said. ‘How could Pierre whoever-he-is have killed Conrad at all, seeing as he’s currently in prison?’
‘That’s the thing, sir. He isn’t in prison.’
‘But you just said he was.’
‘That’s the whole point. He’s been in prison for the last twenty years. But he was released three days ago.’
The team looked at each other, absolutely stunned.
Richard was the first to recover.
‘Then I suggest we find this Pierre Charpentier as a matter of some urgency,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’
It’s amazing what you learn in prison. Who knew you could make an improvised bomb out of an old phone and a few wires? And it was so easy to set up. Conrad had no security on his boat. The hatch to his engine compartment wasn’t even locked. It was simple. Under cover of night, I taped the phone inside, and then it was just a case of working out which tube was the fuel line that led from the petrol tanks. A quick slice with a knife, and the job was done. It was amazing. The rush I felt knowing I now had his life in my hands. After two decades of waiting. One call, that’s all it would take. And that’s all it took. I dialled the number when his boat was out in the harbour where everyone could see it. I then waited a few seconds for the call to connect, and then the boat went up. Just like that. Boom. Then, when everyone rushed to the bay, I went to his house and smashed in the back window. Wrecking his study wasn’t part of the plan, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt alive. Finally alive. And then I left the ruby. That had always been the plan. To leave the ruby. Because it wasn’t enough to kill Conrad. I wanted to make a statement. To let the whole world know. I was back.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_cc3e2e3f-5a89-5a80-a3ef-8e098a271b71)
It took a quick phonecall to the administration department of the Central Prison to find out that Pierre Charpentier had indeed left prison three days before, and his registered address was a halfway house a few miles away.
When Richard told his team Pierre’s address, Dwayne offered to come along.
‘Why?’ Richard asked.
‘Let me put it this way,’ Dwayne said. ‘It’s not the sort of place someone like you wants to get lost in.’
As the Police jeep arrived, Richard found himself agreeing with Dwayne’s analysis. For the last few minutes they’d travelled down a narrow dirt road that cut through a field of sugar cane, the thick stalks pressing in on either side. Then, once the field ended, the track opened up into a dirt clearing that contained half a dozen clapboard houses that were nestling in scrubland right next to the sea.
Camille parked the Police jeep by some overflowing bins. There was no-one around. Just some laundry drying on a line and a scrawny dog sleeping in the shade of an old pick-up.
It felt like something out of the Wild West, Richard thought to himself.
‘Come on, let’s get this over with,’ he said, heading to the crumbling building that was listed as Pierre’s halfway house.
Stepping up onto the porch, Richard knocked loudly on the wooden door. There was no answer from inside, although Richard saw a net curtain twitch in a house nearby. Interesting, he thought to himself. The enclave wasn’t as deserted as he’d first thought.
Richard took a few steps back and looked at the upstairs windows of the old building. They had yellowed copies of the Saint-Marie Times taped to the inside, and there was a bush of some sort growing out of the gutter above.
‘Let me see what I can do,’ Dwayne said, heading around the side of the house.
‘Dwayne!’ Richard called out after him. ‘We don’t have a warrant.’
‘I know that, Chief,’ Dwayne replied, before disappearing.
Richard knocked on the door again, but there was still no answer.
‘Mr Charpentier!’ he called out. ‘Saint-Marie Police. Are you there?’
Richard noticed the net curtain at the nearby house twitch again. Whoever was inside was very interested to see what was going on.
After knocking on the door for a third time, Richard was gratified to hear the sound of footsteps approaching from inside. He took a step back to make sure he wasn’t within striking distance of Pierre when he opened the door and pulled his warrant card, ready to show it.
There was the sound of various chains being lifted, bolts being slid back, and then the door opened inwards.
‘Detective Inspector Richard Poole of the Saint-Marie Police Force,’ Richard said.
‘I know who you are,’ Dwayne said as he finished opening the door.
‘How did you get in there?’ Richard asked, quietly furious.
‘Well, that’s the funny thing, Chief. The back door was open, so I just walked in.’
‘The back door was open, was it?’ Richard asked, sceptically.
‘I mean, it took a bit of effort, but it was definitely open. Eventually.’
After a moment’s indecision, Richard pushed past Dwayne into the house, his interest in Pierre’s whereabouts drawing him in. After all, if the back door really were open, they could claim that they were investigating the security of the house as a matter of community policing. If Dwayne had broken in, then that was something he’d have to explain to a tribunal if it ever came to that.
As Richard looked about himself, he saw that the house was shabby, and was only furnished with the bare minimum. He saw a little sidetable with an ashtray and packet of cigarettes and matches next to it. There was also a bottle of beer that Richard saw was half full.
Pulling on a pair of crime scene gloves, Richard went into the kitchen at the back of the house and saw a brown paper bag on the worktop. Inside there were a few basic groceries, none of them unpacked. And from the smell coming from the bag, Richard guessed that it had been sitting out in the heat.
There was also a see-through folder to the side of the groceries that contained all the literature from the prison explaining the ups and downs following a spell inside. Richard also found an open brown envelope, and he used his pencil to raise the flap so he could see its contents. It was full of what looked to be about a hundred dollars in low denomination notes.
‘He left in a hurry, didn’t he?’ Camille said from the doorway. ‘He’s not even finished his beer.’
‘That’s what it looks like to me,’ Richard agreed. ‘And, from the state of his food here, I don’t think he was here for very long.’
‘So what happened?’ Dwayne asked.
Richard looked about himself. There were no signs of a struggle. In fact, it looked as though Pierre had only just popped out for a few minutes. As Richard went back into the front room, he half expected to find a cigarette still smouldering in the ashtray.
‘Dwayne,’ he said, ‘I want you to bag the physical evidence.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘As for you and me, Camille, I think we’ve got a lead to follow up.’
‘We have, sir?’
A few moments later, Richard and Camille had gone to the house next door where Richard had seen the curtain twitching. Having knocked loudly on the door, they soon heard a shuffling of feet from inside the house.
‘Hold on, hold on,’ a voice called out.
The door opened to reveal an ancient woman who was almost entirely bent over, and seemed only to be kept upright by a claw-footed hospital walking stick that she was gripping firmly in her right hand.
She lifted up her head, and Richard could see that her eyes were cloudy.
‘Are you the Police?’ the woman asked.
‘We are,’ Camille said. ‘We just wanted to ask you a few questions about your neighbour.’
‘What neighbour?’
‘The man who moved into the house next door three days ago,’ Richard said. ‘I’m sure you saw him.’
‘I didn’t,’ the woman said before retreating from the door and trying to shut it. ‘I can’t help you.’
Richard put his hand out to stop the door from closing.
‘But you see everything around here, don’t you? I saw you checking us over when we arrived.’
‘And there’s been quite a serious crime committed,’ Camille said, far more kindly. ‘If you could give us any help, we’d be so very grateful.’
The old woman considered her answer for a moment, and then she sighed.
‘Alright. What do you want to know?’
‘Did you see the man who moved into the house three days ago?’
The woman laughed with a wet cackle.
‘I don’t see anything. Can’t you tell?’
The woman made an extra effort to lift her head, and indicated her cloudy eyes.
‘Is it your cataracts?’ Camille asked.
‘Everything’s a blur to me now.’
‘But you were spying on us,’ Richard said, unable to keep the note of disapproval from his voice.
‘I was robbed last year. I have to be careful.’
‘So you can see some things.’
‘I can’t see much, but I know where you are.’
‘Then did you see someone move in three days ago?’
‘I did. A taxi arrived in the morning. I could tell it was a taxi from the colour. It was deep red. And a man got out. I heard him thank the taxi driver. It was a man’s voice.’
‘And he went into the house next door?’
‘You know, the prison use it for people who are just released from jail?’
‘They do?’ Camille asked innocently.
‘So you get all kinds of goings on. I don’t like it. But I’m old, no-one cares what I think.’
‘Do you remember what time this was?’ Richard asked.
‘I don’t know. It was in the morning. Maybe after eleven? It was before I’d had lunch, and I always have lunch at midday.’
‘And what did this man do once he’d arrived?’
‘Well, nothing that I know of.’
‘Nothing?’
‘He went into his house, and I didn’t think about him again until that afternoon.’
‘Well, that’s very helpful, thank you,’ Camille said. ‘Although, why did you think about him that afternoon?’
‘Because of the men who came to see him.’
‘What’s that?’ Richard asked.
‘Well, I was sitting on the porch in the afternoon when I saw a car arrive. I don’t know what sort it was, before you ask, it parked too far away. It was just a blur. But I saw three men come from it and then go into the house next door.’
‘And you’re sure there were three of them?’
‘Oh yes. I could see the shapes of three people.’
‘And they were all men?’
‘I heard three voices. They were all male. In fact, they were arguing as they approached.’
‘Do you know what they were arguing about?’
‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening too closely.’
‘Then do you perhaps remember anything they said? Any phrase, or even just a single word?’
‘I’m sorry, all I can tell you is they were three men, and they were arguing about something. Mind you, that was nothing compared to what happened next.’
Richard was about to ask the old woman to explain, but Camille put her hand on his elbow, indicating that he should keep quiet. She’d recognised that their witness had finally warmed up and was enjoying the sound of her own voice.
‘The man who’d arrived first – he was wearing a blue jacket – was happy to see them to start off with because he greeted the three men like old friends. But after a few minutes I heard the man in the blue jacket start to get angry.’
‘Did you hear what was said?’
The woman thought hard.
‘It was something about him wanting his share, I think. That’s right, he kept saying “where’s my share?” over and over. And then the three men who’d arrived together started arguing among themselves as well. It got quite heated, and it ended with the man in the blue jacket telling them he wanted them all to leave. And a few minutes later, that’s what they did. But I got the feeling the three men left with their tails between their legs. They weren’t so chatty on the way out as they’d been on the way in.’
‘And it was the same three men who left as who’d arrived?’
‘I think so. The man in the blue jacket was still in his doorway after the others had left.’
‘I appreciate you don’t see too well,’ Camille said, ‘but can you describe any of these men at all to us?’
‘I’m sorry. I think one of them had a red top. Like a T-shirt. But I couldn’t tell you anything else.’
‘Did you maybe see what colour their skin was?’
‘They were dark-skinned.’
‘And did they speak with local accents?’
‘Oh yes, very definitely. They were all from Saint-Marie. Or from an island nearby.’
‘So they were three dark-skinned men who you think were from the island?’
‘That’s right,’ the old woman said with another chuckle. ‘Which isn’t bad for someone who can’t see, is it?’
‘It sure isn’t,’ Camille agreed.
‘Then what happened?’ Richard asked.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, we’ve just looked around your neighbour’s house, and it looks like he left somewhat suddenly at some point.’
‘Oh, that was later that day.’
‘It was?’
‘I was in my kitchen when I heard a car pull up outside. I didn’t think much of it, and I didn’t even see which of the men had come back, but I saw the first man who’d arrived that day – the man in the blue jacket – step out of his house. I could see that from my window. He said something and then I saw him leave. A few seconds later, I heard a car start up and drive off.’
‘Did you hear what he said?’
‘I think he said something like, “I thought I’d never see you again.”’
‘“I thought I’d never see you again”?’
‘And I’m sure he said something else, but I didn’t catch it. But he then walked from the house, and you know what? Now you mention it, I’ve not seen him since. Or any of the other three men, either, for that matter. Not that I’d recognise them, of course.’
‘Have there been any other visitors since then?’
‘No. No-one.’
Richard looked back over the notes he’d taken, trying to make sense of what he’d just learned. Who were the three men who’d visited Pierre on the day he left prison? Where had Pierre then gone off to when one of them returned later on? And, seeing as Pierre very obviously hadn’t been back to his halfway house since then, where was he now?
As for the identity of the three men who’d visited that day, Richard had a theory he wanted to test, especially considering how Pierre had apparently been overheard demanding to know where ‘his share’ was.
Richard asked Camille to take the old woman’s formal statement, and while she was doing that, he drove back to the Police station.
As he entered the main office, Fidel stood up excitedly.
‘Sir, I’ve got something.’
‘You have?’ Richard said.
‘I sure have, because I’ve been processing the evidence Camille bagged from Conrad’s office. And you know that chunk of concrete that was used to smash in the window? I’ve been checking it for fingerprints, and guess what? It’s borderline admissible, but I was able to lift half a thumbprint from a pebble that was buried in its side.’
As he spoke, Fidel led Richard over to his desk and showed him the chunk of concrete. Bending down to inspect it more closely, Richard could see that it was rough–there’d be no way to lift any kind of usable fingerprints from it – but Richard could also see that a few smooth pebbles were embedded in the block, and Fidel had dusted each of them with graphite powder.
‘And?’ Richard asked.
‘The fingerprint also belongs to Pierre Charpentier, sir.’
‘It was Pierre who threw the rock through the window?’ ‘It was.’
‘Then that’s exactly what I wanted to hear.’
‘It is?’ Fidel asked, surprised.
‘Oh yes, because I think Pierre killed Conrad for a very specific reason and then left that fake ruby behind for the exact same reason.’
As Richard went and sat down at his desk, he told Fidel that a taxi had taken Pierre to his halfway house on the morning he was released from prison.
‘So contact the prison, would you? Find out what taxi firm picks up prisoners, and see if you can talk to the driver who drove Pierre that day. In particular, I want to know what sort of mood Pierre was in on the journey.’
‘Yes, sir.’
As Fidel started making calls, Richard logged on to the Saint-Marie Police Computer Network and called up the case file for Pierre Charpentier’s original crime. And what Richard read held him spellbound. Because, as he’d already guessed, Pierre hadn’t robbed the jewellery shop in London twenty years before alone. He’d been part of a gang of four. The men had driven up to the store on motorbikes just as a consignment of jewellery was being delivered. They’d then smashed up the shop with baseball bats until the manager handed over the delivery. Then, as they were leaving, one of the men pulled a handgun and shot a member of staff dead.
Richard read that the man who was killed that day was called André Morgan. He’d only been with the shop for three months, but what Richard noticed at once was that André was originally from Saint-Marie.
That would have to be followed up.
As for the men in the gang, they’d fled on their motorbikes just before the Police arrived at the scene.
However, the robber who’d fired the gun made one mistake. As he jumped onto the back of his partner’s bike to make his escape, his gun fell from his grasp and he wasn’t able to pick it up before the bike had driven off. This meant that although the bank robbers got away with their loot, the murder weapon was left behind at the scene, and was later retrieved by the Metropolitan Police. They were then able to lift a couple of fingerprints from the barrel of the gun. But the fingerprints didn’t match anyone on the UK Police database. Nor did they match anyone on Interpol’s database. In fact, the Police weren’t able to match the fingerprints with anyone. Even worse, although the motorbikes were later found dumped in a back street, the men had vanished into thin air. And the bikes had been stolen from Brick Lane the night before, so that was a dead end as well.
All told, over two million pounds’ worth of jewels had been stolen that day, and the Police didn’t have a single credible lead.
Then, a week after the jewellery heist, the Police received an anonymous phonecall. The message was left by a woman who, according to the notes Richard was reading, ‘had a thick Caribbean accent’. She told the Duty Officer that the jewel heist had been carried out by men from Saint-Marie. The woman hung up before she could be quizzed any further. The anonymous phonecall was later traced to a phone booth near Willesden Green Tube station, but the Police were never able to identify who the caller had been.
However, the tip-off meant that the Police in London sent copies of the fingerprints they’d retrieved from the murder weapon to the Police in Saint-Marie. It took quite a few days for the answer to come back to London, but it was worth the wait.
The Saint-Marie Police had a match for the fingerprints. They belonged to a well-known local hoodlum called Pierre Charpentier. And, even better than that, their records showed that Pierre had left Saint-Marie three weeks before the jewel heist, and had returned to Saint-Marie two days after it had been carried out.
The Saint-Marie Police swooped on Pierre and charged him with theft and murder. He was then extradited to the UK where he stood trial at the Old Bailey. When he was cross-examined, Pierre claimed that he’d had nothing to do with the jewel heist, and he was being set up for the murder as well. His defence was that he may have been in the UK, but he was nowhere near Bond Street at the time. As for the fingerprints that were found on the murder weapon, Pierre just kept saying that he was being set up.
The jury didn’t believe him, and Pierre was convicted of murder and robbery, and was sent down for twenty-five years. For the first fifteen years, he was incarcerated in Holloway prison, but, as was usual for foreign offenders, he was repatriated to a Saint-Marie prison for the last few years of his sentence. The fact that he’d finally left prison after serving only twenty years suggested that he’d also been given time off for good behaviour.
Richard leant back in his chair to try to process everything he’d learned, but he was interrupted by the arrival of Camille and Dwayne. Dwayne was holding a cardboard box of possessions.
‘What did you get from the halfway house?’ Richard asked.
‘Nothing we hadn’t already seen, Chief,’ Dwayne said. ‘But I’ve got the bottle of beer and glass Pierre was drinking from, so we can check them for fingerprints.’
‘As for me, sir,’ Camille said, plonking herself down onto the chair behind her desk, ‘once she got going, Pierre’s next-door neighbour never stopped talking, but I think I got everything.’
‘Did she give you anything new in her statement?’
‘Not really. It’s the same as she told us. Pierre turned up three days ago. Three men arrived soon after, argued with him, and left. And then, later that afternoon, one of the men returned, and Pierre left with him in his car.’
‘And he’s been in hiding ever since,’ Richard said, finishing Camille’s story.
‘Got it in one.’
‘But who were the men who met him?’ Fidel asked. ‘And which of them was the one who came back?’
‘Well, Fidel,’ Richard said, ‘I think that’s a very good question indeed.’
Richard explained how he’d just read Pierre Charpentier’s original case file, and how Pierre had been part of a four-man gang who’d robbed a Bond Street shop of over two million pounds’ worth of jewels. And how Pierre had shot a member of staff dead before he made his escape.
‘Then how did they catch him?’ Fidel asked.
‘Pierre left his fingerprints on the gun he used.’
‘He did?’ Dwayne asked, surprised. ‘That’s not too clever.’
‘Maybe he wasn’t too clever.’
‘Did they positively identify him in any other way?’ Camille asked.
‘I don’t believe so.’
‘There wasn’t any CCTV inside the store?’
‘The case notes don’t mention anything about CCTV.’
‘And he never took off his motorbike clothes, gloves or helmet at any time during the robbery?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So no-one was able to place him visually at the scene?’
‘This, I believe was very much the point Pierre’s defence brief tried to make.’
‘So the only thing that actually links Pierre to the murder is a weapon that had his fingerprints on?’
‘Not quite the only thing,’ Richard said. ‘He was from Saint-Marie, and he was in London at the time. Oh, and the man he shot dead was also from Saint-Marie. We’ll have to look into him. His name was André Morgan. But you’re right, Camille. If it was indeed Pierre Charpentier who committed murder that day, he was very foolish leaving his own gun behind at the scene. But that’s not what interests me. What interests me is, where did Conrad get his money from?’
This statement took everyone by surprise.
‘What?’ Dwayne asked.
‘Well, it was you, Dwayne, who said that despite having no real talent, Conrad “came into money” about twenty years ago. And you also said it could have been mob money that funded him. So what I’m wondering is, what if it wasn’t mob money?’
‘Do you think he was maybe one of the robbers?’ Fidel asked, his eyes widening.
‘Well, let’s look at what we know. Pierre was jailed twenty years ago. Not just for murder, but also because of his part in a four-man heist of a jewellery store in London. Even though he always denied he was involved in any way. But then, according to our witness next door to Pierre’s safe house, on the very day he got out of prison he was met by three men.’
‘Oh I see!’ Fidel said. ‘They were the other three members of the gang.’
‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ Richard said. ‘And although our witness’s sight isn’t what it might once have been, her hearing’s good enough, and she said very specifically that these three men were already arguing before they arrived, and then Pierre joined in the argument soon after. And the nub of the matter was the fact that he was demanding they hand over “his share”. In fact, he kept asking, “where is my share?”. Now, what do you think that could refer to?’
‘His share of the jewels!’ Fidel said.
‘Exactly. Despite his protestations of innocence, Pierre was one of the robbers that day. And I think that for the last twenty years, as he rotted in a high security prison, there was only one thing sustaining him. And that was the knowledge that all he had to do was keep quiet and the moment he left prison, he’d finally get his share of money from the heist.’
‘You really think he kept quiet all that time?’ Dwayne asked sceptically.
‘I think anyone with the right incentive would keep schtum. And two million pounds’ worth of jewels is quite the incentive. I imagine that once the rest of the gang had paid their fence and any other intermediaries to re-cut the stones, they’d maybe have cleared as much as a million pounds by the end. So, divided by four people, that’s a quarter of a million pounds each. And in Saint-Marie dollars that’s maybe as much as three to four hundred thousand dollars per gang member.’
‘Yup,’ Dwayne said, now in accord. ‘I’d keep quiet for a lot less. Especially if I was already in jail for murder.’
‘So what are we saying?’ Camille asked. ‘Was the day Pierre got out of prison the day he also found out he wasn’t going to get any of his money?’
‘That’s exactly what I think happened,’ Richard agreed. ‘His share of the cash had been spent. Or mismanaged. We don’t know. But we do know how angry Pierre was to find out that his share was missing. And this was after he’d spent twenty years believing he’d be rich when he left prison. Just imagine what it must have been like if he really did find out his share of the loot no longer existed. It would push anyone over the edge.’
‘So that’s why he killed Conrad,’ Camille said. ‘And why he then broke into Conrad’s house immediately afterwards and left that fake ruby. It was a message. Just like you said.’
‘But who was the message for?’ Dwayne asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Richard said darkly. ‘And that’s what’s worrying me.’
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_d9e441ad-3043-5b1f-a2b1-000b32354b4b)
‘Okay,’ Richard said to his team, ‘imagine you’re Pierre Charpentier. If you wanted somewhere secret to hide on the island, where would you go?’
Fidel, Camille and Dwayne were full of ideas. It was possible Pierre was hiding in a nearby boarding house or hotel, or was staying in the local homeless shelter, or maybe just living rough in the jungle. Really, he could be anywhere. And as the suggestions arrived thick and fast, Richard made a list of them on the whiteboard. Having done so, he then divided the list up among himself and his team. But first, Fidel was to go to the Prison and speak to the guards and whoever else he could find to discover who Pierre was friends with, Camille was to try to discover what kind of digital footprint Pierre was leaving now that he was out of prison, and Dwayne was to go and tap up whatever contacts or informants he could find, to see if Pierre’s return to civilian life had caused any ripples on the island.
As Dwayne put his Police cap on and left, Richard ghosted out after him and stopped him on the veranda.
‘And Dwayne?’ he said. ‘About the whole spying thing . . .’ Dwayne smiled easily.
‘You want to apologise?’
‘Apologise?’ Richard said, confused. ‘No, I just wanted to say that I may not be able to keep tabs on you while you’re visiting every dodgy bar on the island, but if I find out you’ve actually sloped off and hooked up with Amy McDiarmid again, there’ll be trouble, I can tell you.’
‘Hang on. You’re not apologising to me?’
‘What is there to apologise for?’
‘You ran an observation on my house.’
‘You make it sound like a bad thing.’
‘It was.’
‘Anyway, it wasn’t anything so formal as an observation. I just hid in a bush.’
‘You hid in a bush?’
‘But you were with your girlfriend when you should have been working on your sergeant’s exam.’
‘So?’
‘So?’
‘I can revise any time, Chief. But I only met Amy a few weeks ago. What we’ve got’s really special. And you know, we’re still at that stage of our relationship.’
‘And what stage would that be?’
Dwayne looked at his boss, trying to work out if he was pulling his leg. ‘“What stage”?’
‘That’s right. I said, “what stage”?’
‘You honestly don’t know what I’m talking about?’
‘All I know is, you were with your girlfriend when you should have been revising. And you even let her visit you at the Police station.’
‘But she only came here to see you.’
‘I don’t want to meet your girlfriends, Dwayne. I’m trying to solve a murder case. And so are you, I’d like to add.’
Dwayne cocked his head to one side as he considered his boss. He knew that Richard was English, and uptight and repressed, but was he really this English, uptight and repressed?
‘Good,’ Richard said, misreading Dwayne’s silence as agreement. ‘I’m glad we’ve finally sorted that out.’
And with that, Richard tried to return to the main office, but he found that Camille was standing in the doorway holding a printout, and, seeing the look of disapproval on her face, he realised she’d been standing there for some time.
‘What?’ he asked defensively.
‘Oh, nothing, sir,’ Camille said, ‘I just wanted to let you know what I’d got on Pierre so far.’
Richard grabbed the piece of paper from Camille’s hand and headed back into the office. After a sympathetic glance at Dwayne, Camille followed.
Richard read the printout as he sat down behind his desk.
‘So, Pierre Charpentier is fifty-four years old. He’s got no siblings. No wife. No children. And his parents died when he was fifteen. So that pretty much rules out his family as the people who could be providing a refuge for him. And as for his record, I see that before he committed murder, we’d had him in for questioning on seventeen separate occasions. For acting as a fence, aggravated assault, burglary – this is quite the rap sheet, Camille.’
Richard didn’t look up from the printout, because he could sense that Camille was standing in front of his desk, a hand on her hip and an eyebrow raised. And once again Richard was getting the distinct impression that he was ‘in the wrong’, but he refused to give in to it.
‘Yes, quite the rap sheet,’ Richard repeated, in the hope that Camille would perhaps get bored and wander off.
She didn’t, so Richard eventually lifted his eyes from the paper.
‘What was that?’ Camille asked.
‘What was what?’
‘You have to apologise to him.’
‘To whom?’
‘You know who. Dwayne.’
‘Now, don’t you start,’ Richard said.
‘But he’s in love!’
‘In love,’ Richard snorted. ‘For this week perhaps. But that man has more girlfriends than I’ve got . . .’ Richard couldn’t quite find the right word to end his sentence. ‘Socks,’ he eventually said.
‘Socks?’
‘Yes. Socks. Anyway, you know what I mean,’ Richard said, getting up and heading in a huff to inspect the whiteboard.
‘But I think this time it’s different. She seems really into him. And I know he really likes her.’
‘Look, Camille, no-one is more thrilled than me that Dwayne is “loved up”, but that’s no excuse for slacking off.’
‘But what if you found love, sir?’
As Camille said this, Richard was popping the lid on his favourite black board marker, and it pinged into the air and dropped to the floor.
‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ he said irritably as he bent down to pick up the lid.
‘Because if you found love,’ Camille continued, ‘I know we’d all be pleased for you. And if you then spent a bit too much time with that person, I know we’d all understand. No, better than that. We’d be happy for you. And we wouldn’t interfere.’
‘I haven’t been interfering.’
‘You went and spied on him.’
‘That wasn’t interfering. That was being a responsible line manager. Now, if you don’t mind, we’ve got a killer to catch. And seeing as your background check suggests that Pierre Charpentier doesn’t have a ready network of family to rely on, the question of where he’s hiding becomes even more acute.’
‘You’re right there, sir,’ Fidel said, relieved that the conversation had moved on from his boss’s love life. ‘And I’m still not making much progress on that front. Although I’ve spoken to the taxi driver who drove Pierre to his halfway house that morning. He said Pierre seemed really pumped to be out of prison. He noticed because he’s had the prison contract for years, and most people are a bit lost when they first come out. Or are emotional. But he said Pierre wasn’t like that at all.’
‘He was “pumped”?’
‘It was like he had a sense of purpose. That’s how the taxi driver put it to me.’
‘I see,’ Richard said as he went back to study the whiteboard where the names Conrad Gardiner, Natasha Gardiner and Pierre Charpentier were written up in big bold letters.
‘You know what?’ Richard said after a few moments. ‘If Conrad’s dead and Pierre’s in hiding, that doesn’t mean we’re without leads.’
Richard pointed at Natasha’s name on the board.
‘Because we now know the ruby was left behind because of the burglary twenty years ago. And Natasha Gardiner was married to Conrad twenty years ago. I think it’s time she told us the truth.’
Leaving Fidel in the station, Richard and Camille returned to Natasha’s house. They found her sitting in the front room.
‘Mrs Gardiner?’ Camille asked as she and Richard entered the room.
‘Have you any news?’ Natasha asked.
‘I’m sorry, we haven’t.’
‘He can’t be dead. I just don’t believe it.’
‘We’ll let you know the moment we have anything definite. But in the meantime, there has been a development elsewhere in the case. We’d like to see if you recognise this man.’
Camille handed over a copy of Pierre’s mugshot and, as Natasha looked at it, she seemed to crumple.
‘Oh god,’ she said, her hand going to her mouth.
‘You recognise him?’ Camille asked.
‘It’s that Pierre man, isn’t it?’
‘You know him?’
Natasha nodded.
‘And he’s the reason why a ruby was left behind in your house, isn’t he?’
Richard could see that Natasha had no ready reply.
‘Mrs Gardiner?’ he asked sternly, but Natasha only had eyes for Camille.
‘You go through life,’ she said, ‘and you just hope the past won’t catch up with you. But that’s not how life works, is it?’
‘The ruby is connected to your past?’ Camille asked.
‘Not mine,’ Natasha said. ‘And I wasn’t sure when I saw that ruby. I mean, I had an idea. I worried, but I didn’t know for sure. That’s why I didn’t say anything. But if that man Pierre is behind all this, then I know exactly why he’s done what he’s done.’
As Natasha said this, she burst into tears.
Richard rolled his eyes to himself. Bloody hell, why was it always so hard getting witnesses to talk without them turning on the water works?
Natasha pulled a hankie from the sleeve of her cardigan and tried to wipe the tears from her face.
‘My husband was a good person,’ she said in between her sniffs. ‘You have to believe me. He was kind to me, and a loving father to our daughter. He meant well in so many ways. But he was also weak. In the past more than now, but what he did caused a stain it’s not possible to wipe away. And it was all because of him,’ Natasha said, indicating the photo of Pierre. ‘Because if Conrad was a good man under it all, Pierre was the worst. I knew he was trouble from the start.’
‘You knew Pierre from before he went to prison?’ Richard asked.
‘I married Conrad twenty-five years ago. I was flattered by his attention, and I just ignored my parents who said Conrad wasn’t any good. I was full of myself. Feeling all grown up at nineteen years old. Having a boyfriend with a motorbike. If I could reach back in time, I’d slap myself in the face and tell me to walk away.’
‘You now feel your parents were right?’
‘They were right. But they were also wrong. Conrad was a good man. Like I said. It’s just he loved money. And music. He loved the whole music scene. I always encouraged him to become a roadie or sound technician, but it required too much work. He just talked about this amazing career in music he was going to have, but he never did anything about it.
‘Then, a few years into our marriage, he started hanging out with Pierre. That was the worst time, because I could see how dangerous he was. He had these dead eyes, you know? And you could tell, when he was looking at you, he was just trying to work out how much use you were to him. Conrad and I argued a lot about him. And my husband became secretive. I knew he was seeing a lot of Pierre, but what could I do? Our daughter Jessica was two years old and quite a handful. And then one day, Conrad said he was going away for a few weeks, and the next time he saw me, we’d be rich. I knew that this was somehow connected with Pierre, and I begged him not to go, but Conrad wouldn’t listen. He said my responsibility was to Jessica, and his responsibility was to provide for us. That’s what he was doing. And then, one day, Conrad was gone. He didn’t leave any details of where he was. He just vanished into thin air.
‘I was so worried. And alone with Jessica. I didn’t know what to do. After a few days, I even went to the bars where I knew Pierre drank, and I started asking around. All I learned was, Pierre had vanished as well. Just as I suspected. Whatever Conrad was doing, he was doing it with Pierre. And the days turned into weeks, and I was falling apart. I heard no word from Conrad in all that time.
‘Then, three weeks after he’d gone, Conrad walked back in through that door.’ Natasha pointed at the door behind Camille and Richard. ‘And he was so full of himself, he said he’d struck gold. We were rich. But he wouldn’t tell me what he’d done to get the money. And even so, he said it would take a while to get his full share. I didn’t know what to think. I mean, Conrad had just vanished, and now he’d returned saying he was rich? There was no way what he had done was legal, and this is my shame. Although I tried to say I wouldn’t touch any of his money unless he told me how he’d come by it, my resistance wore down. If I’m honest, I was just so pleased to have him home. And so was Jessica. And the thing is, Conrad really was rich. Within a few weeks, he had all of this money. And it seemed to keep coming. He was throwing parties, wanting everyone to have a good time. It was so exciting, and I turned a blind eye to it all.
‘And a few months later, he bought that old recording studio up behind the old Priest’s house. It didn’t cost him much. You see, it was in a terrible state. But then he spent a lot of money on getting the best equipment shipped in. And signing young talent, as he called it. So he could promote these bands, and also record their music. He was so sure of himself. He was finally going to be a success. But there was still something not right about it all, I could tell. And I knew there was definitely something not right when I asked him if he was still seeing Pierre. You see, since he’d come back with all this money, he’d not mentioned Pierre once. Or gone drinking with him. But when I asked, Conrad just shut down and said he had nothing to do with Pierre any more. But I could see that Conrad was worried about it.
‘Anyway, I tried to stop worrying about what had happened to Pierre and just get on with my life. And there was so much that was good during that time. Jessica was just beautiful, Conrad had his music career going, and I should have been happy. But I kept worrying about Pierre. Where had he got to? What had gone wrong between him and Conrad? So, one day, I got up my courage and went back to one of the beachside bars. It was just a shack, really. When I asked the barman where Pierre was, he told me that he was in a prison in the UK for murder. I was shocked. And I went straight to the library where I did some research on the internet, and that’s when I found out the truth. Pierre had robbed a jewellery shop in London with three other men. He’d then murdered one of the employees in the shop and left his gun behind. And I could see the dates of the robbery matched the time that Conrad had been out of the country.
‘I confronted Conrad that night, and that was the only time he physically hurt me. He grabbed me so tight I had bruises on my arms for days. It was like he was trying to crush me, but Conrad said, if I wanted to live, I had to never mention Pierre’s name again. I didn’t know what to think. What had Conrad done? Or rather, I now suspected what Conrad had done. He’d been one of the other men, hadn’t he? That’s where our money had come from. It had been stolen, and a man had died. Our money was blood money.
‘But what was I supposed to do? Shop my own husband to the Police? And I read all the reports I could on the robbery and the trial, and I could see that the only person who’d used any violence was Pierre. In the end, I decided that the fact that Conrad had been so angry when I’d mentioned Pierre’s name was enough for me. It told me he’d not wanted what had happened to that poor man to happen. And then, I saw that the jewellery shop they’d robbed was part of a chain that had branches all over the world, and they’d even been insured. They’d not lost any money because of the robbery. So that’s what I kept telling myself. What had happened was in the past, and I couldn’t change that. And you know, the years passed, and we had other problems to deal with.’
‘Like what?’ Camille asked.
‘Well, it turned out Conrad wasn’t a very good music producer after all. I mean, he wanted to be. He worked hard. Up to a point. But he slowly slipped into his old ways. Hanging out with the wrong sort of people. And somehow, he seemed broken. By the time he’d spent whatever money he had, he’d lost all his confidence. His swagger. And he was distant from us.’
‘Including your daughter?’ Camille said, indicating the old photos on the mantelpiece.
Natasha looked at the photos, and a deep sadness overcame her.
‘As she got older, Jessica couldn’t understand why her dad didn’t want to spend any time with her. But I think it was shame that kept him out drinking in the bars or on his boat. That he’d not made anything of his life. You know, Jessica went to university on St Lucia, and Conrad didn’t visit her even once. I went when I could. It’s a good few hours on the boat to St Lucia, but I’d try and see her once a term. When she graduated, she stayed on St Lucia, and we don’t have the sort of money to keep going there, so we don’t see so much of her any more. And she’s not even coming back now. Even with her father . . . dead.’
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/robert-thorogood/murder-in-the-caribbean/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.