скачать книгу бесплатно
‘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.’
