Death Knocks Twice

by Robert Thorogood

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ Richard said. ‘Why don’t you go down to Honoré harbour? Speak to the boat charter companies, and just double check to see if Rosie Lefèvre chartered a boat on the morning of the murder to go to Montserrat.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Fidel said, still unable to wipe the smile from his face. He put on his Police cap and strode out of the station.

  Once he’d left, Richard turned back to his partner.

  ‘So, in summary, it looks like Tom is our most likely suspect,’ he said.

  ‘I’d agree.’

  ‘After all, he’s now inherited the plantation. But do we really believe that he’d kill both his estranged father and his older sister to get his hands on the family business?’

  ‘People have killed for less,’ Camille said.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Richard agreed. ‘You know what I keep thinking? We’re missing something.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I do. The case just isn’t adding up for me. I think there’s something fundamental we’re not getting. Some fact we’ve got the wrong way round. Or aren’t looking at the right way. And then if we could just invert it – or flip it over so we could see the other side – then we’d finally understand why Freddie had to die, and why Lucy then had to die a week later.’

  There was a clatter of footsteps on wood, and they all looked over to see Fidel re-enter the Police station at speed.

  ‘Okay, you won’t believe this,’ Fidel said, ‘but I think I may have just broken the case wide open.’

  ‘You have?’ Richard said in amazement. ‘You’ve already found someone who hired Rosie a speedboat?’

  ‘No sir, not that case.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, sir, I was on my way to the harbour on foot, but you know how it’s market day today?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Richard always knew when it was market day, because he had to fight through the various tourist nick-nack stalls, rum, DVD and clothes sellers, just to get to work – and with everyone irritatingly wishing him a ‘good morning, Inspector!’ when all he wanted to do was get to work unharassed.

  ‘Well, I was just heading down through the market when I saw a young man selling bottles of rum out of a rucksack at his feet.’

  Richard and Camille were stunned.

  ‘Our rum seller is currently in the market just outside our Police station?’

  ‘It’s what it looks like to me.’

  The three Police officers went over to the window that overlooked the veranda and the car park beyond. It was just as Fidel said. The market was in full swing, but at the far end of it, they could see a young man sitting by a load of old bottles of clear liquid with a hand-made sign that said ‘Local Rum, $5 a bottle’. The man was wearing a filthy old vest and tatty shorts, but what drew Richard’s eye was the mass of blonde-ish dreadlocks piled up in a bun on top of the man’s head.

  There was no doubt about it. This was their fabled bootleg rum seller.

  ‘Well, this shouldn’t take too long,’ Richard said, and strode out onto the veranda and down the steps to the yard to effect his arrest.

  ‘Wait, sir!’ Camille called, knowing that the young man would guess that Richard was a Police Officer the moment he saw him approaching. Camille wasn’t wrong.

  The rum seller looked over as Richard strode down the steps, saw Camille and Fidel emerge from the Police station just behind, and he then scrabbled a few of the bottles into his canvas bag before legging it.

  ‘Stop that man! Police!’ Richard shouted, but that only made everyone in the market look over at Richard.

  ‘No, don’t look at me! Catch that man!’ Richard shouted at the various market sellers, gesticulating wildly at the rum seller’s fast-departing back as he dashed down the hill and out into the main road. But the Police were after him. Or at least, Fidel and Camille were after him, because Richard soon found that he’d lost sight of the rum seller through the market.

  Camille and Fidel chased the man across the main road and down onto the strip of beach that ran all the way around the bay of Honoré. Arriving at the sea was something of a dead end for the man, so he turned left and ran along the white sand just as Camille and Fidel stormed onto the beach themselves.

  ‘Keep on his tail!’ Camille shouted to Fidel, and swerved back up the beach – dodging under a washing line of colourful clothes that was strung between two houses – and emerging at full pelt onto the main road. She knew that unless the man was going to attempt to swim to safety, he’d eventually run out of beach and would have to head back up onto the road – where she’d make sure that she’d be waiting for him.

  With her feet pounding the hot tarmac, Camille saw the man dash across the road only twenty yards ahead of her, and then he raced into the small car park that serviced the harbour. Camille crossed the road to cut the man off and saw Fidel emerge – fists and knees pumping – from the side of the houses by the beach.

  They had their bootleg rum seller in a pincer.

  The man ran up to his vehicle, slung his rucksack into the back of it and then scrabbled a set of keys from his pockets, but before he could get his keys into the lock, Camille caught up with him and smashed the keys out of his hand – the keys flying through the air and skittering to a stop on the hot asphalt – and then she yanked the man’s other hand behind his back and slammed his body over the bonnet of his vehicle.

  ‘You’re under arrest,’ she said as she pulled out her handcuffs and started to cuff the man who was panting hard from the exertion of the chase.

  But even as Camille let the adrenaline of the chase wash out of her body, she couldn’t stop grinning at what she was seeing. Fidel arrived only seconds later, his face shining with sweat, and he stopped a few feet short of where Camille was standing.

  And then he grinned just as widely as Camille.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ Camille said. She grabbed the man roughly by the scruff of his shirt collar. ‘You’re coming with us.’

  The man didn’t put up any kind of resistance as Camille started to walk him back to the Police station, but – as she’d known would happen – Fidel wasn’t looking at their captured rum seller. Instead, he only had eyes for the vehicle that the man had been trying to get into.

  It was a Piaggio 50 three-wheeled van.

  Fidel went up to the vehicle, got down onto his hands and knees and looked at the front wheel. It only took him a moment to find what he was looking for.

  There was a distinctive cut across the tread of the front wheel.

  ‘Camille,’ he called out as he rose to his feet. ‘This is the three-wheeled van I’ve been looking for all this time.’

  ‘Then congratulations, Fidel. You’ve finally found it.’

  Camille and Fidel shared a moment of triumph, and then they had the same thought at about the same time and turned and looked at their suspect.

  Just who the hell was he?

  And what on earth had his vehicle been doing up at the Beaumont Plantation on the morning that Freddie had been murdered?

  When Camille and Fidel marched their handcuffed suspect into the Police station, they found Richard already waiting behind his desk, a fresh pen and pad of paper in front of him.

  ‘I knew you’d catch him,’ Richard said, trying to cover for how inept he’d been as the chase started.

  ‘Thanks, Chief,’ Fidel said. ‘But it’s even better than that.’

  As Camille pulled up a chair for the suspect to sit in, Fidel explained that the man had tried to get away in a three-wheeled van that had a distinctive cut in the front wheel.

  ‘You’re kidding me?’

  ‘I’m not, sir,’ Fidel said, thrilled that he had finally delivered the three-wheeled van to his boss.

  ‘Fidel, I never doubted you,’ Richard said, before turning his attention to the man who was sitting in front of him.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said in his most
teacherly voice. ‘My name is Detective Inspector Richard Poole. What’s yours?’

  The dreadlocked man didn’t say anything.

  ‘Very well. Camille, take our friend here to the cells. We can leave him overnight and interview him tomorrow.’

  As Camille reached for the man’s arm, he pulled away.

  ‘Alright,’ he said, in what Richard guessed was a London accent, ‘I’ll answer your questions.’

  ‘Good. Thank you. So let’s start with, what’s your name?’

  ‘Andy Lucas.’

  ‘You’re from the UK?’ Richard said.

  ‘Essex,’ the man said.

  ‘Where in Essex exactly?’

  ‘Does it matter? I’m a citizen of the world.’

  ‘I’m sure you are, and I’m thrilled for you, I really am, but where are you from originally?’

  ‘Maldon.’

  The mention of Maldon sparked half a memory for Richard.

  ‘You are?’ he said. Maldon was a coastal town in Essex, but Richard couldn’t work out why it had just chimed with him. He was sure he’d heard it in connection with the case, but who’d said it? ‘Then can you tell me, how long have you had that three-wheeler van for?’

  ‘You want to know about my van?’

  ‘If you could just answer the question.’

  ‘Alright. I’ve had it a year or so.’

  ‘And do you have the requisite papers and licence for it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not a hard question. Do you have the correct insurance and vehicle registration documents for your van?’

  Andy looked for help from Camille.

  ‘What’s he talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about whether your van is legally roadworthy,’ Richard said.

  ‘Well,’ Andy said, still unsure as to why it was so important, ‘if you’re going to put it like that, then maybe not.’

  Richard harrumphed to himself. He then made a sharp note on a fresh piece of paper, and Andy got the impression that maybe, in the Police’s eyes, his lack of proper paperwork was somehow a worse crime than anything else he’d been up to.

  ‘But seriously. What’s my van got to do with any of this?’

  ‘Now can you tell me about the rum you’ve been selling on the island?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I’d like to know where you get it from to start off with, because it’s not legal.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘You left some bottles behind when one of my Officers chased you the other day. It’s very clearly bootleg. So where do you get it from?’

  ‘Alright,’ Andy said reluctantly. ‘A guy.’

  ‘You get your rum from “a guy”?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘And does this “guy” have a name?’

  ‘He lives on Guadeloupe.’

  ‘That’s not much help.’

  ‘It’s a guy I met on Guadeloupe, okay? He sold me a few crates of rum a couple of years back, but I couldn’t sell them anywhere near where he was. He’d already got that market sewn up. So I sailed the rum to Saint-Marie and sold them here.’

  ‘You have a boat?’

  Andy shrugged, indicating that maybe he did.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In Honoré harbour.’

  Richard got the name of the boat and the keys from Andy, and told Fidel to go down to the harbour to search it.

  Once Fidel had left, Richard turned back to Andy.

  ‘So, you’re saying that this “guy in Guadeloupe” sold you the bootleg rum “a few years ago”?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And it’s taken you this long to sell it?’

  ‘No. I came to Saint-Marie and spent a few months selling it in the bars around the island. And I liked it here. I mean, who wouldn’t? And you don’t need much money to get by if you’re living on your boat and are prepared to do odd jobs here and there. Anyway, when I ran out of rum to sell, I went back to my contact on Guadeloupe, bought some more, came back here and sold it around the bars of the island again. But, if I’m honest, the rum’s not the best quality stuff, so I’ve been running out of bars who are prepared to buy it from me.’

  ‘Which explains your recent push into direct selling to tourists?’

  ‘Maybe. But I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Have you paid duty on the rum you’ve been bringing into the country?’

  ‘It’s not much rum. If you want to fine me for nonpayment of duty on a few crates, go for it.’

  ‘But the rum’s not legal in the first place.’

  ‘It isn’t?’ Andy asked, pretending to be surprised by the news. ‘I didn’t know that. Are you telling me my contact on Guadeloupe has been selling me hooky rum? No wonder people get ill when they drink it. But then, you only have to look at me to know I’m not a great businessman.’

  ‘Yes, I was coming to that,’ Richard said. ‘What exactly are you doing on the island?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, Saint-Marie is a long way from Maldon.’ Richard once again felt a resonance when he said the word ‘Maldon’, but what was it? Where had he heard the name before?

  ‘Alright,’ Andy said with a sigh. ‘If you must know, I got into a bit of trouble with a gang I used to run with back in the day. When I still lived in Essex. I had to get out of Dodge City, and fast. So I got on a ferry down to Spain. This was a good decade or so ago. And in Spain, I started working on boats. They’ve always been an interest of mine. And I got to be crew on a boat that came out to the Caribbean. When I got here, I realised this is where I should have been my whole life. I mean, the people, the pace of life, the sunshine – I fell in love with the place.’

  ‘But why Saint-Marie?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Of all the islands in the Caribbean?’

  There was the briefest flash of indecision in Andy’s eyes, and Richard suddenly remembered why the town of Maldon had resonated with him.

  ‘So tell me about you and Sylvie Beaumont.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You and Sylvie Beaumont.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What is there to understand? I mean, you’re from Maldon. And I remember now that she’s also from Maldon originally. So what’s the connection? And before you consider denying your relationship with her, we know that you and your van were up at the Beaumont Plantation just before Freddie Beaumont was murdered.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Who’s Freddie Beaumont? And what do you mean, “murder”?’

  Richard’s mobile started to ring, and he could see on the Caller Display that it was Fidel who was phoning. Perfect timing, Richard thought to himself. He could take the call and let Andy sweat.

  Richard answered his phone, listened for a few moments – all the time keeping his eyes on Andy – and then, with a curt ‘thank you’, hung up.

  ‘Now that’s very interesting,’ Richard said. ‘Because my officer tells me that he’s just boarded your boat at the harbour. And first of all he says it’s far more powerful than he’d have expected you to have.’

  ‘I travel around the Caribbean,’ Andy said, trying to sound as though this was the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘But he also says that it’s full of contraband. There are crates of bootleg rum. Packages of cigarettes. But he’s also found a dozen twenty kilogram bags that are labelled as being high grade Bonifieur coffee beans from the Beaumont estate.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So where did you get two hundred and forty kilograms of finest Bonifieur coffee beans from?’

  ‘You can’t prove it’s contraband.’

  ‘But I can prove that you were up at the Beaumont Plantation just before Freddie Beaumont was murdered. So unless you want us to connect you to his murder, then I suggest you start telling us the truth, and fast.’

  An
dy looked from Richard to Camille, and thought that he could see genuine sympathy in her eyes. He was wrong. And he was still misjudging Camille when he relaxed as she smiled.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve got an innocent explanation for all of this,’ she said.

  ‘I have,’ Andy said to her. ‘I’m totally innocent.’

  ‘Then what’s your connection with Sylvie?’ Richard asked.

  Andy held up his palms as if he was admitting that it was a ‘fair cop’ and that he’d come quietly.

  ‘Alright, then. I’ve got nothing to hide. She’s my cousin. About a million times removed. She’s one of my uncles’ in-laws’ kids or something.’

  ‘You’re related to Sylvie Beaumont?’

  ‘Barely. And I wasn’t joking when I said I fell in love with the Caribbean when I first came out here. But after a while, I remembered that I had a relation out here. Sylvie. And that she was rich. That’s what the family thought. She’d hooked herself a rich guy on an island called Saint-Marie. So I did the natural thing. I came here looking for her. But she wasn’t anything like I expected. And nor were her family.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well she hated them.’

  ‘She does?’

  ‘That’s how it looked to me. Her husband in particular. She said he had no backbone. That he’d tricked her into marrying him and now she was stuck with a man who couldn’t support her, and his brats. That’s what she always called her kids. “The brats”. When I asked her for some cash to help me out, she just laughed in my face. She said she didn’t have any money of her own.’

  ‘Is that what she said?’

  ‘That’s what she said. And I’d already told her I kind of kept body and soul together by doing this and that. So she said she had an idea. If I could get up to her family’s plantation, there was a place we could meet and she’d be able to give me twenty bags of coffee, each one weighing ten kilograms. She worked it all out, and she told me that each bag had a wholesale price of $400. If there were twenty of them then that meant they had a combined value of…’

  ‘Eight thousand dollars.’

  ‘Right. Eight thousand dollars. But I’d obviously have to sell them for less. She suggested selling them for about $350 per bag and then we’d split the money sixty-forty in her favour.’