Murder in the Caribbean

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‘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.’