Death Knocks Twice

by Robert Thorogood

  Richard and Camille could see that Lucy’s truck was parked on its own, so they went over to it and Camille fished out her mobile phone from the hessian sacks in the back.

  ‘Well, I’m happy I didn’t lose that,’ she said, to complete her fiction. ‘But now we’re here, I wonder where Lucy is?’

  Richard couldn’t help noticing that the fishermen were still staring at them.

  ‘How about we get back in the jeep,’ he said, ‘and just drive around?’

  Camille noticed Richard’s sideways glance at the fishermen.

  ‘Are you frightened, sir?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Then I know,’ Camille said, an idea suddenly coming to her. ‘Let’s go and talk to those fishermen.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I suggest we go and talk to those two fishermen. See if they saw where Lucy went.’

  ‘You mean those fishermen over there?’ Richard said, and only then did he realise that he was pointing at the two men at the exact same moment that they were already looking at him. The men responded to Richard’s interest by starting to walk towards him, oozing menace.

  ‘Oh no worries,’ Camille said. ‘Looks like they’re coming to talk to us.’

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ Richard said to his partner. ‘I’m your superior officer, and I’m ordering you to get back into the jeep so we can carry out a vehicular sweep of the area.’

  Camille barely managed to stifle her laugh as she followed an already-departing Richard over to the Police jeep.

  ‘Okay, sir,’ she said as she climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Seeing as you’re so sure that this is the best course of action.’

  ‘Yes, well I am,’ Richard said, irked – not for the first time – by how Camille so often seemed to have the superior status in their conversations even though he was her commanding officer.

  As the two burly fishermen closed in, Camille reversed the Police jeep and calmly drove out of the car park. She then started driving up and down the nearby streets. The buildings here tended to be only one storey high, and there were plenty of structures that were derelict or even reduced to rubble. It didn’t make sense to Richard or Camille that Lucy would have anything to do with anyone in this part of town, so where was she and what was she doing here?

  After twenty minutes of fruitless searching, Richard decided that Lucy could really be anywhere by now. And there was little point running an observation on her truck back at the car park. After all, if they asked her where she’d been when she eventually returned to it, she could just fob them off with a lie. So Richard and Camille drove back to the Police station.

  When they entered, they discovered Dwayne hard at work behind his desk. Richard asked him whether he’d been able to get hold of Freddie’s doctor in London.

  ‘Sure did, Chief,’ Dwayne said, ‘and she told me that Freddie was a long-standing alcoholic and heavy smoker who only rarely visited her, and was resentful when he did. But Freddie collapsed earlier in the year, and when he was taken to hospital they carried out a number of tests that revealed that he had advanced cancer of the liver.’

  ‘So he really was dying?’ Camille asked.

  ‘The doctor said she didn’t expect him to survive the year,’ Dwayne said. ‘Especially seeing as he was refusing to be treated.’

  ‘He was?’

  ‘That’s what she told me. He wouldn’t accept chemotherapy or any of the other treatments on offer. And even when the doctor gave him pills to help slow the cancer, he didn’t bother taking them. “It’s like he had a death wish”, that’s what she said. Her words, not mine. Not that it would have made much of a difference, according to the doctor. His cancer was pretty advanced when they found it.’

  ‘Which is interesting, isn’t it?’ Richard said. ‘Because I think our killer almost certainly didn’t know that Freddie had cancer.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘After all, why would anyone risk a twenty-five-year sentence for murder if they knew that Freddie would be dead soon anyway?’

  ‘Good point,’ Dwayne agreed. ‘So who knew that Freddie had cancer?’

  ‘Well,’ Camille said. ‘According to Matthew, the only two people who knew that Freddie was dying were him and Hugh. So are we saying we should strike them off our list of suspects?’

  ‘Not so fast,’ Richard said, ‘but it’s something we should bear in mind.’ Richard turned back to face Dwayne. ‘What else have you got?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ Dwayne said, picking up a pile of printouts, ‘the Greenwich Police have also been in touch to say they’ve finished searching Freddie’s room in his almshouse. And they’ve emailed over a whole load of photos of his room – and scans of his personal papers, bank statements and so on. They’re here, sir.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Richard said as Dwayne handed over the pile of printouts.

  Richard remembered how Matthew had said that he’d only been in touch with Freddie once a year, and then only by letter. But was he telling the truth? That’s what they needed to find out.

  ‘Did the Greenwich Police find any letters from Matthew Beaumont?’

  ‘They didn’t find any personal letters from anyone.’

  ‘I see. Then did they send over Freddie’s phone records?’ ‘He doesn’t have a mobile phone. But they sent over a printout of the phone records for the main landline for the almshouse.’

  ‘They did?’ Richard said, impressed by the diligence of the Greenwich Police as he started looking through the printouts in his hand.

  ‘Are you looking to see if Matthew has been in touch with him?’ Camille asked.

  ‘I am,’ Richard said, as he pulled the almshouse’s phone records from the pile of paper and spread them out on Dwayne’s desk.

  He saw it almost at once.

  There was one phone call to the almshouse that was marked ‘INTERNATIONAL’ – and when Richard looked more closely, he could see that the number that had rung into the almshouse had a Saint-Marie dialling code.

  ‘Look,’ Richard said. ‘On the fifth of August, someone phoned the almshouse from a Saint-Marie phone number at 18:37, UK time. The phonecall lasted nine minutes. I think it’s fair to presume that the recipient of that call was Freddie Beaumont.’

  ‘But if it was 18.37, UK time,’ Camille said, ‘what time is that on Saint-Marie?’

  ‘11.37am,’ Richard said as he took the printout over to his desk and typed the Saint-Marie number into a reverse directory on his computer.

  He was surprised by what he discovered.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘The Saint-Marie phone number that called the almshouse that day belongs to the public phone box just opposite Catherine’s bar.’

  ‘It does?’ Camille said.

  ‘But this is a major breakthrough,’ Richard said, ‘because it means that we now know that someone rang Freddie Beaumont in the UK on the 5th of August from a public phone box on Saint-Marie at 11.37am our time. Three weeks before he was murdered. And spoke to him for nine minutes.’

  ‘So how can we work out who made the call?’ Camille asked.

  ‘Well,’ Richard said, heading over to the list of suspects on the whiteboard. ‘I think we can safely assume it must have been one of the family, can’t we? So I suggest we go through the Beaumonts’ bank statements, emails, messages and so on for the 5th of August and see if we can prove that any of them were near Catherine’s bar at 11.37am. But let’s all start with Matthew. Since he’s the person we already know has been secretly in contact with Freddie for the last five years, I bet you he’s the person who made the phone call.’

  ‘I agree, sir.’ Camille said.

  Unfortunately for Richard and his team, it soon became apparent that there was no paper trail that put Matthew anywhere near the payphone in Honoré on the 5th of August. So Richard suggested they widen their search to include all of the Beaumonts.

  ‘By the way, where’s Fidel?’ Richard asked Dwayne later that afternoon, apparently apropos of nothing. />
  Dwayne recognised that his boss was frustrated at their lack of progress and was looking for someone to kick, so he tried to be as neutral as possible.

  ‘He’s still looking for the three-wheeled vehicle, sir,’ he said.

  ‘He is?’ Richard said in irritation. ‘Why can’t he find it?’ ‘He’s doing his best, sir.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Sir,’ Camille called over from her desk. ‘I think I’ve found something.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Maybe. I’m looking at Hugh Beaumont’s credit card statement, and he doesn’t spend any money anywhere near Honoré on the 5th of August, but he does make a transaction that day. A quite significant transaction.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘He spent six hundred and ninety-nine dollars with Saint-Marie Airlines. At 12.45pm.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘I mean, it could just be a coincidence, but I’m also looking at his diary’ – as she said this, Camille held up some printouts of Hugh’s diary – ‘and as far as I can see, he’s not flown anywhere since the 5th of August. And nor does his diary list any flights coming up. Not as far as I can tell.’

  ‘Then ring the airline, would you?’ Richard said. ‘I agree. The fact that Hugh bought an airline ticket within an hour of our mystery phone call to the UK is definitely worth looking into.’

  As Camille made the call, Richard went back to the whiteboard to try and make sense of the names and information that was written there. One of these people had killed Freddie in the shower room. Richard was sure of it. But who was it?

  Richard was still deep in thought when he heard Camille end her phone call.

  ‘Oh okay, thanks for your help,’ she said, putting the phone back down into its cradle. ‘Sir, we were right to look into the 5th of August, because the airline desk has just confirmed that Hugh Beaumont bought a return ticket from London Heathrow to Saint-Marie, on the fifth.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘But the flight wasn’t booked in his name. It was booked in the name of Freddie Beaumont.’

  Richard and Dwayne were stunned.

  ‘It was Hugh who paid for Freddie to come out to the Caribbean?’ Dwayne asked.

  Richard picked up a board marker and angrily drew rings around Hugh Beaumont’s name on the white board.

  ‘Even though Hugh told us that he’d not been in touch with Freddie for years,’ he said. ‘And let’s not forget that it was also Hugh who told Matthew that Freddie was a fraudster, and no-one should contact him under any circumstances.’

  ‘He’s been playing us from the start,’ Camille said.

  ‘He has, hasn’t he?’ Richard said, putting the lid back on the board marker with a satisfying pop. ‘In which case, I suggest we go and interview him and find out why.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  While Richard and Camille went to the plantation to interview Hugh, Richard sent Dwayne down to the old harbour area in Gosier. It still annoyed him that they’d not been able to work out what Lucy had been doing there, and he knew that if anyone could winkle out any gossip from the ne’er-do-wells who hung around the fish market, it would be Dwayne.

  Dwayne had readily agreed. After all, an afternoon spent sharing gossip in the waterfront bars of Gosier was very much his idea of an afternoon well spent.

  As for Richard and Camille, once they’d arrived at the plantation, they found Hugh at the far end of one of his coffee fields standing by an easel and canvas. He was so engrossed in what he was doing that he didn’t hear the Police arrive, and when Camille called out ‘Mr Beaumont?’, he spun around, a look of fury in his eyes.

  ‘What the hell—’ he said before realising it was the Police who’d interrupted him, and Richard saw how

  quickly Hugh composed himself, adopting his usual ‘man in charge’ manner again.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Hugh said with a self-deprecating smile. ‘I don’t like being interrupted when I’m working.’

  But Richard had seen that briefest spark of anger. And Richard also couldn’t help noticing how quickly Hugh had hidden it. Just like Matthew seemed to have a bruised psyche hiding under his glossy exterior, maybe there was anger inside Hugh that he was just as careful to keep well-hidden?

  Whilst Richard was storing this thought away for later consideration, he looked at the picture on the easel that Hugh was painting and was surprised by what he saw. The painting was mostly pink and yellow swirls where the sky might have been, and the rolling fields of coffee plants were represented in the painting by thick red and black streaks that had been applied with a palette knife. It was only because Richard could see the view that Hugh was painting that he was able to correlate the crazed swirls and stabs on the canvas with the real world setting at all.

  And it was as Richard was looking at the painting that he realised that all of the abstract paintings that he’d seen in the family’s sitting room must have been painted by Hugh as well.

  God, Richard thought to himself, Hugh was terrible at painting.

  After all, here was a majestic view of the coffee fields as they rolled down to the Caribbean Sea, but he hadn’t even managed to make the sky blue, or the fields green.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Hugh said, correctly interpreting Richard’s silence. ‘The colours I choose make sense to me. Anyway,’ he continued, wiping the excess paint from his knife with an old cloth, ‘I guess you’re not here to talk about my art.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Camille said, surprising Richard. After all, Richard tended to agree with Hugh that they weren’t there to talk about his painting. Especially now that he’d seen the quality of his painting.

  ‘Tom told us that you had an exhibition at the Pascal gallery last year.’

  ‘I did,’ Hugh said, unable to keep the pride out of his voice.

  ‘What was that like?’

  ‘It was…’ Hugh tried to think of the correct word. ‘Transformative,’ he eventually said.

  ‘It was?’

  ‘Mainly because so many of the pictures sold,’ he added with a smile, not wanting to come across as too full-of-himself. ‘But I’ve been painting all my life. It’s what I loved doing at school. When everyone else was out playing rugby, or cricket – hitting things or people with balls, anyway – I’d lose myself in the art department, drawing and painting. And I carried on painting, even after I left school and took over the plantation here. It’s what I’d do at the weekends. Or on holidays. I always have my paints with me. But I’m strictly an amateur. The exhibition last year was very much a first for me, and it was Sylvie who put me up to it. She’s on the board of the gallery. She spoke to Pascal three years ago, so I had two years’ notice. But even so, it was exhausting getting together enough paintings I was happy with.’

  ‘You took the challenge seriously?’

  ‘More seriously than anything I’ve ever done before. Which is why I say it was transformative for me. You see, no-one laughed. Or said my paintings were rubbish. And, as I say, I even sold a few of them. And now I’m taking commissions. This painting here is for the Saint-Marie Country Club. Anyway, how can I help you?’

  ‘Well, that’s easy enough. We want to know why you didn’t tell us that you knew your brother Freddie was dying.’

  Hugh paused as he placed his now-clean knife into a wooden box he had on a little fold-up table to his side.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You knew that your brother was dying.’

  ‘I did?’ Hugh said, but Richard could see that he was trying to buy himself time.

  ‘Or was Matthew lying to us when he said he’d shown you the letter that Freddie had written to him?’

  ‘Oh you know about that, do you?’ Hugh said in a failed attempt to appear unflustered.

  ‘And we also know that you then told Matthew that you thought Freddie wasn’t dying. In fact, Matthew suggested that you lost your temper with him and said that Freddie’s letter was just another ruse to get more money from the family. And tha
t Matthew was to cease all contact with Freddie. Is that true?’

  Hugh decided to look at his painting, and Richard was about to tell him to answer the question when Camille touched her hand to his arm. Richard flinched, but got the message. He was to keep quiet. After a few more moments of introspection, Hugh spoke as though to nobody.

  ‘Alright. That’s what happened. I admit it.’

  ‘You told Matthew to cease all contact with Freddie?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘So why did you then buy flights for Freddie to come out to Saint-Marie yourself?’

  It was as if Hugh had been slapped in the face.

  ‘How…?’ he eventually mumbled. ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Never mind how we know, but do you admit it? Was it you who bought tickets for Freddie to come out to the Caribbean?’

  Hugh was panicking now – and Richard decided to push harder.

  ‘Which means that it was also you who rang Freddie from the public payphone in Honoré that morning as well. Seeing as it was you who then bought the flights only an hour later.’

  ‘I don’t know how you know…’ Hugh said, before trailing off.

  ‘It was you who rang Freddie from just outside Catherine’s bar?’ Camille asked.

  ‘It was,’ Hugh said, unable to think how else he could answer the question.

  ‘And it was you who then bought your brother a return flight from London to Saint-Marie?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘So why didn’t you tell us any of this?’ Camille asked, as if she were a friend who was only trying to understand Hugh better.

  ‘Because it isn’t that simple.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because, although I’ve not seen my brother for the last twenty years, there’s not a day I don’t think of him. Because I see his children. My children. And I know how great they are. And I think how damned selfish Freddie’s been his whole life. All he’s ever thought about is himself. Never anyone else. And never his own kids, who he gave up for adoption at the first opportunity.’