‘Brown powder?’
‘It was heroin.’
‘Your sister tried to trick you into smoking heroin?’
‘She was in a really self-destructive streak at the time, and I think she was lashing out. If she was in that much pain, she wanted everyone else to be in pain as well.’
‘Then how can you not hate your sister after she tried to trick you into smoking heroin?’
Claire looked evenly at Richard.
‘Because I didn’t smoke the heroin. I dodged the bullet. And anyway, I’ve had a long time to get used to her. She’s my sister. Dangerous to know. Damaged. But I don’t hate her. I decided long ago that I pitied her.’
Richard realised that his thighs were prickling from the heat that had built up inside his woollen suit, so he went for a little walk around the study, desperate to create any kind of draught that might bring cooler air towards him. It didn’t really work, but he found himself standing by the floor-to-ceiling bookcase that ran down the side of the room. It occurred to him that there was something about the bookcase that was maybe out of place, but he couldn’t quite work out what it was. Was it the books themselves?
Now wasn’t the time for mulling books and bookcases, Richard told himself, so he turned back to face Claire.
‘So what are you doing here this time?’ he asked. ‘Seeing as Polly tried to hook you on heroin the last time you saw her.’
‘After I returned to the UK, Polly really crashed. I mean, really crashed. She had a massive overdose. Nearly died.’ Richard could see how this was affecting Claire. ‘Then, by January of this year she contacted me and said she’d got her strength back enough to finally put herself into rehab. And this time she’d stick it out. And you know what? She did. She completed the full programme.
‘But the point is, when Polly left rehab in March of this year, she contacted me again and said she was finally clean, and that she was much more at peace with herself. And what’s more, she wanted to make amends with me. Would I come out for a holiday? I didn’t know if it was a good idea, but I hadn’t seen Polly in nearly a year, so I decided to come out. That was two weeks ago, and I have to say, I’ve seen no evidence that she was still on drugs while I was out here.’
‘And how has Polly been around you on this visit?’
Claire frowned. ‘It’s hard to say. She was sometimes up—really good fun—and sometimes she seemed down. Worried, almost.’
‘And you’re sure it wasn’t heroin that was affecting her mood?’
‘I don’t think so. Polly always used to smoke her drugs openly in front of anyone, and none of us have seen her take anything stronger than a cigarette since we’ve been here.’
Richard remembered what Phil had told him. ‘Then, if you’re saying she was sometimes worried, could it have been money worries?’
‘She didn’t mention any money worries to me.’
Richard looked up at the chandelier that hung from the ceiling and it made him think of the identical chandelier in the sitting room next door. This thought made him look back at the bookcase, as it reminded him that the two rooms were ostensibly identical to each other—with the same bay windows, floor layout and chandelier in the centre of both rooms—and the only difference was the bookcase that ran down the side of this room, Polly’s study.
But then Richard realised a far more interesting point. Claire’s mobile phone had been found inside the chandelier of the sitting room next door, and they’d just found a surveillance bug in Polly’s bedroom. Were these two facts perhaps related?
‘Can you tell me,’ he said, ‘have you been bugging your sister?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘We’ve found some kind of surveillance device in Polly’s bedroom just now. Did you put it there?’
Claire was at first surprised. And then she was shocked. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you saying someone’s been bugging my sister?’
‘Then what can you tell me about the threatening letters your sister has been receiving?’
Claire looked at Richard a moment before answering. ‘You know about those, do you?’
‘Why don’t you tell me what you know?’
‘Well, I don’t know what to say, I’ve not seen them myself, but Polly told me that someone had been sending her anonymous letters. Hate mail. I guessed it was someone from her world of drugs, so I never enquired too much. As I’m sure you can guess, Polly’s hung out with plenty of criminal types in her time.’ Claire manoeuvred her wheelchair so that she was now looking directly at Richard. And Richard noticed that her front left wheel stuck again briefly before she could get the wheelchair to move. ‘But you’re right to ask, because I’ve been thinking, what if these threatening letters were being sent by the person I saw on the cliff steps just before Polly died. You know, the person I saw going down the steps wearing the yellow raincoat?’
‘Yes,’ Richard said, ‘can I ask about that? Are you sure you didn’t see who was wearing the yellow raincoat?’
‘I’m sorry. I was dealing with Polly at the time. All I saw was a flash of yellow as whoever it was went down the steps of the cliff just as we arrived at the top of the steps. But it was definitely someone.’
Richard asked a few more questions to try and help Claire unlock her memories, but it was no good. She couldn’t remember seeing anything more than she’d already said. So, thanking Claire again for her time, Richard decided he’d go back to the scene of the crime and try to work out for himself what Claire might or might not have seen that morning.
As he arrived at the cliff top, Richard pulled his hankie from his pocket, and, seeing as no one was watching, he wrung the warm sweat out of it onto the grass. This heat! he thought to himself as he looked out at the overwhelmingly blue sky and the just-as-overwhelmingly blue sea. But then Richard noticed a tiny cloud far off near the horizon. He felt a fleeting sense of solidarity with that one rain-making device in the whole dazzling firmament. He and the cloud were both of them out of step with the rest of the Caribbean.
Pulling his attention back to the cliff top, Richard tried to imagine what had happened on the day of the murder. Polly had pushed Claire to the top of the cliff—that much was known. But between Polly and Claire disappearing behind the border of shrubs and Polly being thrown to her death, they only had Claire’s word for what had happened during the key seconds before the murder.
So what had happened just before Polly was killed?
Richard was interrupted in his musings by the sight of Camille striding around the clump of shrubs towards him holding her notebook in her hand. And, as she came closer, Richard once again noticed how her skin seemed to be burnished bronze in the sunlight. Whereas his skin, he knew, was probably most like an old bar of soap you’d expect to find lurking at the bottom of a washbag: entirely worn out, dull, and not so much white as being absent of colour. Although, Richard realised, in this heat, his skin wasn’t so much like a bar of soap, it was more like when you remove the pastry lid to a nice steak and kidney pie, and see that the underside of the pastry is still uncooked and pale, but steaming. That was what his skin felt like to Richard.
Richard shook himself from his reverie as Camille reached him.
‘Okay, sir,’ she said. ‘So I’ve been putting pressure on the telecoms company to release the name of the person the SIM card from the surveillance bug was registered to, but they didn’t want to give me the information without a warrant.’
Richard knew how big companies were reluctant to assist the police unless all the necessary warrants had first been issued.
‘But I kept going at them, explaining that this was a murder case, moving up the chain of command, until I spoke to the head of the company on the island. He was able to get up the details for me, and you’ll never guess who owns that bug.’
‘Why? Who is it?’
‘Juliette Moreau.’
‘What?’ Richard said, puzzled.
‘The bug is registered in Juliette Moreau
’s name.’
Richard was stunned.
Why on earth would Polly’s housekeeper have been bugging her bedroom?
Chapter 7
Richard and Camille approached Juliette and Alain’s house along the gravel path from Polly’s garden. They could see that Alain was outside with the hood up on his old Citroën car and Richard was pleased to see that although Alain had an oily cloth in his hand, he was wearing smart trousers and a clean white short-sleeved shirt. Richard had always admired men who could do messy work without getting messy themselves.
As for Juliette, she was sitting in the shade of the bungalow’s verandah looking at her smartphone, which, considering why they were there to see her, Richard thought to himself, was an irony.
‘Mrs Moreau, could we have a word?’ Richard said as they went through the little gate that led into the front garden.
Juliette looked up from her phone.
‘Of course,’ she said.
Over by the car, Alain wiped the oil from his hands and came over as well. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.
‘We’d just like to ask your wife a few questions.’
‘Then, mind if I stick around?’ Alain said, putting the cloth down and pulling over a spare chair. Richard and Camille looked at Juliette.
‘Mrs Moreau, do you mind us speaking to you in front of your husband?’ Camille asked.
Juliette looked at the police as though the question was ridiculous.
‘No, of course not.’
‘Good,’ Richard said, taking over the interview. ‘We just wanted to ask you once more where you were at 10am at the time of the murder.’
Juliette was surprised by the question.
‘Well, I told you,’ she said. ‘I was out on a training run. For my triathlon. I explained all this to your colleague.’
‘You mean, Police Officer Fidel Best?’ Richard asked.
‘That’s right. He said he’d be checking it out.’
‘I see,’ Richard said as though he was merely following a dull train of thought through. ‘Then can you tell me why you put a surveillance bug under Polly Carter’s bed?’
Juliette hadn’t seen the question coming, and it was as though someone had slapped her in the face. And, just as gratifyingly for Richard, he could see that Alain was also looking at his wife, startled.
‘What?’ Juliette eventually managed to say.
‘We know the SIM card inside the bug is registered to your credit card. And the bug was taped to the underside of Polly’s bed. So, QED, you’ve been bugging her, the only question is: why?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Juliette said, but it was clear she was trying to buy herself time.
‘Don’t lie to us,’ Richard said. ‘The telecoms company are sending over the original contract you took out with them for the SIM card. But we already know it has your name and address on it. And your signature.’
Juliette looked from the police to her husband, confusion in her eyes. But there was a moment, Richard saw, where she seemed to come to a decision. He’d seen it often before, and Camille recognised it as well. Against her wishes, Juliette was about to tell them the truth.
‘Very well,’ she said, drawing herself up straighter in her chair. ‘Since you’re asking. I don’t deny it. I placed that bug there.’
‘I see,’ Richard said, trying to hide his surprise at Juliette’s resolve. ‘And may we ask why you did that?’
Juliette’s lip curled into a sneer as she said, ‘Because my husband had an affair with Polly Carter last Christmas and it’s how I managed to catch them at it.’
All the life seemed to drain out of Alain’s face as his wife said this, and Richard could see shame flood his cheeks.
‘But that’s what that woman was like,’ Juliette said. ‘If she wanted something, she just took it. I hated her.’ Richard was shocked that a witness in a murder case would ever admit to hating the deceased, but he was reminded of how Fidel had said Juliette was a hard woman. Looking at Juliette now, Richard could see what Fidel meant.
‘And the thing is,’ Juliette continued, ‘I know she’d always wanted my husband. A woman knows these things. But she’d never tried to get him before. She was too busy with her parties. Taking her drugs. And I thought my husband—my good, Christian husband—wouldn’t ever have his head turned by such a Jezebel.’
Richard saw Alain’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, and he almost felt sorry for the man. Almost, of course, but not quite. Infidelity, after all, was infidelity.
Camille turned to Alain. ‘Is this true?’ she asked.
Alain nodded meekly, ashamed.
‘What happened?’
‘I’ll tell you what happened,’ Juliette cut in before her husband could answer. ‘That harlot seduced my husband at Christmas—and after all these years of him lecturing me that I wasn’t a good enough Catholic!’
‘Alain?’ Camille asked Alain softly.
Alain looked at Camille like a little boy lost. ‘It’s true. I had an affair with Polly last Christmas.’
Richard looked at Alain. He seemed so straight-laced with his spotless white shirt and pressed trousers. Like someone out of an advert from the 1950s. He was hardly someone he could imagine Polly having a wild affair with. But then, there was no accounting for tastes, Richard reminded himself.
‘So this affair,’ Richard said, ‘happened before Polly checked herself into rehab in Los Angeles in January?’
‘That’s right,’ Alain said. ‘Our … liaison only lasted a few days, and it stopped the moment my wife confronted me with a recording of Polly and me.’
‘A recording of you in Polly’s bedroom?’ Richard offered.
Alain nodded.
‘Yes, can I ask about that?’ Richard said, turning to Juliette. ‘I mean, I know that what your husband did was wrong, but was it really necessary to put a surveillance bug in your employer’s bedroom?’
Juliette’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re not married, are you?’ Richard straightened the tie in his collar as he answered. ‘Actually, no.’
‘When you think your man’s cheating on you …’ Juliette left the sentence unfinished, but Richard got the gist. Juliette clearly believed it had been an act of temperance on her part to bug her husband rather than just kill him there and then.
‘So what happened when your wife confronted you?’ Camille asked Alain.
‘I … confessed to everything of course.’
‘Only after I played you the recording!’ Juliette spat. ‘No, that’s not true,’ Alain said, but with barely any fight in him. ‘I denied it at first, I admit that much, but the moment I realised what was at stake—our marriage, Juliette—our life together—I told you everything.’ Richard looked at husband and wife.
‘Then I’m curious,’ he said. ‘How did this surveillance bug work?’
‘It was simple,’ Juliette said, unable to keep a note of pride out of her voice. ‘When I knew my husband had gone up to Polly’s house, I could ring into the device and record what it was hearing.’
‘Then do you have the recordings you took from it?’
This threw Juliette.
‘I’m sorry?’ she said.
‘If you’re the sort of person who bugs bedrooms, I’m sure you’re the sort of person who keeps the recordings.’
Juliette looked at Richard, and seemed to be weighing up her options.
‘You’re right,’ she eventually said.
‘Then would you get what recordings you have for me?’ Richard asked as reasonably as if he was asking a neighbour if he could borrow a cup of sugar.
Juliette had no choice, really, so she got up and went into the house.
Richard noticed that, with his wife gone, Alain seemed to get even more closed-off, even more introverted.
‘You okay?’ Camille asked him.
‘She wasn’t a harlot,’ Alain said, now that his wife was absent. ‘You know. Polly. I mean, she was selfish, she could be wild, but she di
dn’t have a bad bone in her body. She was a good person, you have to believe that.’
Richard remembered how Alain had been gripped by grief when first he’d heard of Polly’s death. Of course he had, Richard realised. Only at the beginning of the year, he’d had a passionate affair with her.
‘How did it start between you and her?’ Camille asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It was just after Christmas and it was like her defences were down. She told me she’d ruined her relationships with her sister and both her parents. Her dad had died without forgiving her, she said, there was no way her sister would ever forgive her, either, and now her mum had also died without forgiving her. And as she told me all this, I saw how damaged she was. I got it into my head that she was like a little bird with a broken wing. I felt sorry for her.
‘So I tried to talk to her. I thought, at the time, I was motivated by my desire to do the Christian thing. To look out for my neighbour. But I soon realised … well, my interest in her wasn’t …’ Alain struggled to find the right word. ‘Pure,’ he eventually conceded. ‘But Polly also seemed interested in me. That’s what I couldn’t understand. And, I don’t know how it happened, but I was suddenly in bed with her. I felt so ashamed afterwards, that I’d committed adultery, but the next day … I went to her house again … and this time she was waiting for me. We both knew why I was there. It was like a dream, those few days, but that’s the problem with dreams. You wake up.’
Before Alain could say any more, Juliette returned with a USB key drive that she handed to Richard.
‘The recordings are on this,’ she said.
‘Thank you. And don’t worry, we’ll return it to you once we’ve copied it.’
‘No need,’ Juliette said. ‘You were right. I already have copies of the sound files.’
‘So tell me, Juliette,’ Richard said. ‘After your husband finished his affair with Polly, was it you who sent her those threatening letters?’
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