Death Knocks Twice

by Robert Thorogood

  ‘Also get them to look under the name of Helen Moncrieff,’ Richard suggested. ‘It’s possible she kept her family name.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll see what I can find.’

  While Camille got on with her enquiries, Richard stayed at the whiteboard to update it with the latest developments from the case. He was soon frustrated. This was because, even when Richard put aside the ‘who’, ‘why’ and even the ‘how’ of the murder, there were still so many unknowns. For example, did the piece of paper they’d found in Freddie Beaumont’s pocket with ‘11am’ written on it mean that Freddie’s presence in the shower room was pre-arranged, or did it mean something else? And talking of pieces of paper, what was written on the burnt piece of paper that they’d found in Tom’s office? Richard had locked the bound packages of charred paper in the bottom drawer of his office desk while the photo paper developed, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to open the packages to see if the experiment had worked for another week at least. And there was no guarantee that the photo paper would have picked up what had previously been on the piece of paper, even then.

  Oh, Richard thought to himself, and while he was considering all of the unknowns of the case, he couldn’t possibly forget the mystery that sat at its very heart: just how had the killer managed to escape from a locked room after killing Freddie Beaumont?

  A few minutes before it was time to close the station up for the day, a dusty Fidel trudged back into the office with Dwayne at his side. But whereas Fidel looked ready to drop, Dwayne was relaxed, and his uniform was crisp and freshly pressed.

  ‘Fidel!’ Richard said, desperate for some good news. ‘Tell me that this time you’ve found our mystery three-wheeled van.’

  Fidel looked at his boss and shook his head, the shame of his failure eating away at him.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I haven’t. And I’ve spoken to every owner of a three-wheeled van on the island as far as I can tell. And driven past every house within a two-mile radius of the Beaumont Plantation to see if anyone has a Piaggio 50 three-wheeler van parked outside their house. And I found one.’

  ‘You did?’ Camille asked.

  ‘But I don’t think it’s the van we’re looking for.’

  ‘Didn’t its front wheel have the distinctive cut in it?’

  ‘It didn’t have any wheels. And it was up on blocks. It didn’t even have an engine inside it.’

  As the young Police Officer slumped down at his desk, Richard began to realise that if Fidel had been unable to find their three-wheeled van, then maybe it really was undiscoverable. After all, there was no doubting Fidel’s diligence and commitment to the job. And it would be easy to hide such a small vehicle in a barn under some tarpaulin almost anywhere on the island.

  ‘How about you, Dwayne?’ Richard said. ‘Did you find anyone down at the old port who knows what Lucy Beaumont was doing there this morning?’

  ‘Sorry, Chief. No dice. And I asked everywhere. All the nearby streets. The bars. Everywhere.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Sure did.’

  Richard looked at how fresh and clean Dwayne looked.

  ‘In the dust and sunshine? You really pounded the streets all afternoon?’

  ‘Tell me about it!’ Dwayne agreed, and turned his attention back to his computer monitor.

  ‘Dwayne?’ Richard said.

  ‘Yes, Chief?’

  ‘I don’t believe you’ve spent all afternoon going door-to-door. Not from the state of your uniform.’

  ‘Oh,’ Dwayne said, finally understanding. ‘You’re wondering how I managed to stay so clean? Well that’s easy enough to explain. You see, it was so hot and sweaty down by the old fish market that I had to go home and have a shower and a change of clothes afterwards.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Which was lucky, I can tell you.’

  ‘It was?’

  ‘Sure. Because you know how the best ideas hit you when you’re having a shower?’

  Richard didn’t particularly, if only because, when he was standing in his shower in the shack, he was usually terrified that he was about to be attacked by flying-crawling-biting-stinging things.

  ‘You see, it occurred to me, Lucy could have gone anywhere after she parked at the fish market. I mean, you looked for her on the streets and couldn’t find her. And I asked my contacts and no-one had seen her, either. So I thought to myself, what we needed to do was narrow down the search area. And to do that, maybe we should go through Lucy’s computer and phone records to see if we can find any text messages – or contacts – or emails – that Lucy has sent or received with anyone who’s based down by the old fish market in Gosier. Maybe that’ll help us work out where she was going this morning.’

  ‘You thought that, did you?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Sure did, boss,’ Dwayne said, beaming.

  ‘In the shower?’

  ‘In the shower.’

  ‘I see,’ Richard said, and as much as it chagrined him, he could see the logic of what was Dwayne was suggesting. After all, there was no doubting that Lucy had refused to tell them where she was going that morning – and had looked shifty as hell as well. She’d been up to something. Maybe the evidence of that ‘something’ would be in her records somewhere.

  ‘Fidel?’ Richard said. ‘I’m going to release you from trying to find the van.’

  ‘You are, sir?’ Fidel said with all the disbelieving hope of someone who’d been in solitary confinement for months and had just been told that the door was open and he was free to leave.

  ‘I am,’ Richard said. ‘Help Dwayne go through all of Lucy’s contacts, phone records and financial statements, and see how many times she’s had any kind of interaction with people and companies in Gosier, would you? It could be phone calls, diary appointments or purchases in shops. Just find every link she has, and then we can work through them.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Fidel said, and then headed over to Dwayne’s desk before his boss changed his mind.

  Selwyn ambled into the office.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ Richard said, and it was only as he spoke that he realised he’d done next to nothing about the Commissioner’s rum seller ever since Dwayne had chased and lost him.

  ‘So,’ Selwyn said. ‘How’s the case going?’

  ‘The case?’

  ‘That’s what I said. “The case”.’

  Having been caught out before, Richard wasn’t going to be caught out again.

  ‘And by “the case”, do you mean our ongoing murder case of a member of the Beaumont family, or do you mean the case of the man who’s suspected of selling bootleg rum?’

  ‘Our bootleg rum seller, of course.’

  ‘Of course, sir. Just checking.’

  ‘So how’s it going?’

  ‘Well, since you’re asking, Officer Myers went down to the Toubana hotel and saw that the suspect was indeed selling rum from the roadside. Just as you said. However, when Officer Myers approached to make his arrest, our suspect made a run for it. And despite Officer Myers’ valiant attempts, he lost the suspect in the jungle behind the Toubana hotel.’

  ‘So the sly dog saw you approaching, did he?’ Selwyn said to Dwayne.

  Dwayne stood up from behind his desk to answer.

  ‘He did, sir. I was wearing my uniform. And when he saw that I was a member of the Saint-Marie Police, he took off like a rocket. And I gave chase, but he had a head start on me.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Selwyn said, as he considered what Dwayne had just said. After chewing it all over for a little while longer, he turned back to Richard. ‘Then it seems there’s only one course of action that remains open to us.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘We need someone to approach our suspect who’s not in uniform. And, seeing as our suspect’s modus operandi is to prey on innocent tourists, I think we need to serve him up an innocent tourist.’

  ‘I don’t understand, sir,’ Richard said.

  ‘I think you should go undercover, Inspector
.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I think you should go undercover to catch our bootleg rum seller. In fact,’ Selwyn said, warming to his theme, ‘I think you should go undercover as a British tourist who’s here on holiday, and then I bet you’ll be able to get close enough to our suspect to arrest him.’

  ‘But sir, this just isn’t possible.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, for starters, I’ve got a murder case to run.’

  ‘Of course. I quite understand. So I suggest you go undercover this evening – when you’ve finished up here for today. For overtime, of course.’

  ‘You want me going undercover today?’

  ‘This evening,’ Selwyn said with relish.

  Richard threw a desperate glance at his team for help, but he could see that Fidel was already back at his desk, making a phone call – damn Fidel and his unswerving work ethic, Richard thought to himself – and while Dwayne and Camille were free to help him, it was clear from the grins on their faces that they had no intention of doing so. Damn them as well, Richard thought to himself as he headed over to the whiteboard to buy himself time.

  ‘Well, sir,’ he eventually said. ‘I’d love to help you. I really would. But unfortunately I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ Selwyn said with an edge to his voice.

  ‘Well, sir… you see… we’ve just made a crucial breakthrough in our case.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Yes we have,’ Richard said, going over to Dwayne’s desk. ‘Because Officer Myers here has just found a crucial link between one of our suspects – Lucy Beaumont – and a contact of hers that she visited clandestinely in Gosier this morning.’

  Dwayne smiled broadly at the rare compliment, and only subsequently realised that the compliment wasn’t entirely true.

  ‘I have?’ he asked his boss.

  ‘Of course you have,’ Richard said. ‘And following up on your lead will take me all evening.’

  ‘It will?’

  ‘Yes, Dwayne,’ Richard said, desperately trying to communicate with his eyes that he needed to be saved. ‘It will.’

  While Dwayne tried to work out why his boss was looking at him like a tropical frog with constipation, Fidel said, ‘Okay, thank you very much for your help,’ into his phone and then slammed it down into its cradle.

  ‘Okay, sir, I think I’ve found it already,’ he said, and it was clear from his tone of voice that he hadn’t been following the conversation in the office while he’d been on the phone.

  ‘You see?’ Richard said, now going over to Fidel’s side. ‘This is a fast-moving case, sir. It really needs my full attention.’

  ‘It is fast-moving,’ Fidel agreed, still with no idea of just how high the stakes were for his boss. ‘Because I typed Gosier into the search field of Lucy’s emails on her phone, and there was only one hit. But it was an email that Lucy sent in January of this year to a woman called Zoe Winstanley who works for a firm of solicitors who are based in Gosier.’

  ‘And what was the email about?’

  ‘It was to ask for a meeting.’

  ‘In January of this year?’

  ‘That’s right. And when I looked the company’s address up, I discovered that not only are their offices in Gosier, they’re actually only two streets away from the fish market. So I rang the number at the bottom of Zoe’s email – that’s who I was speaking to just now – and she’s just confirmed that she saw Lucy Beaumont again this morning. But more than that, Zoe said that she’d been thinking of ringing us anyway. Because she thinks she’s got information that’s pertinent to the murder of Freddie Beaumont. In fact, she said that she thinks she maybe knows why Freddie was murdered.’

  ‘She does? But what reason did she give?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, she said she couldn’t possibly tell me over the phone.’

  ‘But she thinks she knows why Freddie was killed?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  ‘And she’s the person who Lucy secretly visited this morning?’

  ‘She is. She said she wants to talk to you as soon as she could.’

  ‘Then wait there a second, Fidel,’ Richard said, turning back to the Commissioner and privately marvelling at how life had, for once, dealt him an Ace at the precise moment that he needed it. ‘You see, sir, as I was saying, I’d love to go undercover for you tonight. I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing. But, unfortunately, I really ought to interview this Zoe woman as a matter of urgency.’

  Selwyn looked disappointed.

  ‘Yes. I can see that’s a priority.’

  ‘And I promise to get to the rum seller case just as soon as I can after that.’

  ‘Oh don’t worry about that, sir,’ Fidel said to Richard. ‘Zoe said that she’s out of the office now. She won’t be able to see you until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘So that’s when I arranged your meeting with her. For first thing tomorrow morning. Which will allow you to go undercover after all.’

  Richard’s mouth opened, but he discovered that he’d lost the power of speech. He could understand it when Camille betrayed him – she was French, and a woman to boot – but how could a junior officer like Fidel double-cross him like this?

  Much too late, Fidel realised that maybe his boss hadn’t been telling the truth when he’d told the Commissioner that he’d rather spend the evening working undercover.

  ‘Oh,’ Fidel said. ‘I think I see what I’ve done now.’

  Richard leant in close to Fidel’s ear and whispered with a voice like dust, ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘Well that’s sorted,’ Selwyn said with finality. ‘Seeing as you have to wait until the morning before you can get back to the Beaumont case, that leaves you with the perfect opportunity to go undercover as a tourist this evening. I suggest you start with the beaches near Honoré, Inspector. I want our rum seller caught.’

  ‘But sir,’ Richard said, trying to buy himself time, ‘I’ve got nothing to wear.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Out of the corner of his eye Richard saw Dwayne leave his desk and go into the back office, but he didn’t have time to worry about what Dwayne was up to.

  ‘Well,’ Richard said, knowing that this was his last line of defence, ‘if you want me to look like a British tourist, I don’t suppose many of them dress in suits.’

  As Richard said this, he indicated his polished brogues, dark suit, white shirt and tie. The Commissioner frowned.

  ‘You’ve maybe got a point there.’

  ‘In fact, I don’t own any clothes that are even remotely touristy. And I can hardly go onto a beach wearing a suit and tie, can I?’

  ‘Yes. I see what you mean.’

  ‘No worries,’ Dwayne said with a smile as he stepped back through the bead curtain holding a pile of colourful clothes in his arms. ‘You can choose your outfit from this lot.’

  Richard realised that Dwayne was holding all of the shirts and shorts that he’d tried to get him to wear the week before.

  ‘Perfect!’ the Commissioner said, heading over to Dwayne and picking up a brown Hawaiian shirt that was covered in shiny yellow pineapples.

  ‘How about this one?’ the Commissioner asked.

  ‘Sir?’ Camille said to Richard, finally joining the conversation. ‘Can I make a suggestion?’

  ‘Please do,’ Richard said, desperate for any kind of help his partner could offer him.

  ‘Well, sir, it’s just an observation, really.’

  ‘Go on, then. Whatever you’ve got, Camille, I want to hear it.’

  ‘Well it’s just that I think the shirt the Commissioner’s holding would look perfect on you.’

  Richard looked at Camille and realised that he now knew what true betrayal was.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Richard didn’t want to get changed into his undercover outfit anywhere near his team, so he took his new clothes back to his shack and decided to have a shower first.
But it was only when he finally got into his shower that Richard discovered the water had been cut off. So, wrapping his towel around his waist, he went to his desktop computer to find out from the utility company’s website if there was a problem with the water supply, only to discover that the electricity to the shack wasn’t working, either. So he picked up his phone to complain to the electricity company that he couldn’t use his computer to look up why the water wasn’t working, only to discover that the phone line was down as well.

  Richard sat down on his lumpy bed. His phone line was dead, the electrics were out, the water was cut off, and he knew there was no point trying to use his mobile phone to sort out any of these problems. There wasn’t any kind of mobile phone coverage on the beach anywhere near his shack.

  And as he sat on the bed with only a thin towel wrapped around his waist, a quiet despair gripped Richard’s heart. He was living in a wooden shack in the Caribbean where the culture was French, the food was French, and where even the doors that led out of his main room were bloody French. And, to make matters worse – if that were even possible – he knew that he was now going to have to go out in public dressed like an idiot.

  Richard looked at the chair where he’d dumped the least offensive ‘tourist’ clothes that he’d been able to find from Dwayne’s selection, and he decided with a sigh that perhaps the only way he was going to put this whole sordid affair behind him was if he just got on with it. So, refusing to engage his brain too much, he got dressed in the shorts and Hawaiian shirt and then went into his little bathroom to check out his reflection in the mirror.

  The pasty-faced middle-aged man who was looking back at him was wearing a maroon Hawaiian shirt that was covered in yellow and red flowers, and a pair of loose denim shorts that had been cut off just above his knees. He’d been assured by his team that this was a ‘good look’, and yet, now that he was looking at himself in the mirror, Richard knew that this was very much the opposite of the truth.

  Why did he look so wrong in these clothes?

  It was his knees, Richard realised. His knees looked incongruous somehow. Not that they were ugly as such, but it was obvious even to him that his legs didn’t look right sticking out of a pair of shorts. His legs were too ‘English’. That was the problem, Richard decided. He had ‘English’ legs. So, although the rest of his body could go undercover, his legs quite clearly couldn’t. And nor could his white and sweaty face, now he was looking at it in the mirror. His face didn’t seem to fit his outfit any more than his legs did.