Murder in the Caribbean

‘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?’