A few phone calls later and Richard was talking to the head of personnel at the Hollywood studio Phil was writing his script for. At first the woman-with-the-sing-song-voice was reluctant to help, but once Richard explained that he was heading up a murder case—and they’d both worked out that when he said ‘murder’ he meant ‘homicide’—she said that company guidelines therefore allowed her to share information with the police.
Putting aside Richard’s surprise that a company would have H.R. guidelines for one of their employees being involved in a murder inquiry, he was soon able to get the information he needed.
For starters, the head of personnel was able to confirm that the company had been disappointed with the box office for Phil’s last film, but he had a two-picture deal with them, so they were trying to make the best of a bad lot.
‘But you were disappointed with the performance of his last film?’ Richard asked.
‘The numbers were terrible,’ the woman said breezily. ‘It tanked.’
‘And did you know that Phil booked himself into rehab after it came out?’
‘Did we know?’ the woman asked. ‘It was our idea he booked himself in.’
‘Because of his anxiety?’
‘His anxiety?’
‘Yes, Phil told us he was in rehab for anxiety.’
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
‘It wasn’t anxiety, was it?’ Richard said.
‘Well, I’m sure he was very anxious after the movie came out.’
‘But that’s not why you suggested he go into rehab, was it?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘So can you tell me why he did?’
The woman on the end of the line sighed.
‘Well, it was never confirmed, but we’d heard rumours from the movie set that Phil had been on drugs for the whole shoot.’
‘While he was making the film?’
‘That’s what the rumours said.’
‘Could it have been heroin?’
‘As I say, I can’t confirm or deny that he was on any one drug for sure. Or we’d have sacked him on the spot. But, after the movie came out, we got Phil’s producer to remind him that he had a Moral Turpitude clause to his contract, and maybe now would be a good time to book himself into rehab if he needed to.’
‘He has a Moral Turpitude clause in his contract?’
‘Everyone who works for us does.’
‘And do you think he’s been clean of drugs since he got out of rehab?’
‘Well …’ Here the woman paused briefly, and Richard could tell that she was weighing up her options, so Richard kept silent. ‘As it happens, three weeks ago we got an anonymous tip-off that he was using drugs again.’
‘You did?’
‘We did. So we’ll be testing him for drugs when he next returns to the studio lot.’
‘And if he fails that drugs test?’
‘Oh that’s easy. He’ll be in breach of his contract and we’ll cancel his next movie.’
‘Then can you tell me? This tip-off, do you have any information on who it was from?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m looking at Mr Adams’s personnel file here, and all it lists is the cell number of the person who called the tip-off in.’
‘But that could be enough. Could you tell me the phone number of the person who tipped you off?’
Richard was amazed to hear the woman read out Polly Carter’s mobile phone number to him.
Polly Carter had tried to destroy Phil Adams’s movie career just before she’d been murdered.
Chapter 11
Richard rang Phil Adams and learnt that he was already in Honoré that morning, so he asked him to pop into the station when it was convenient.
Phil strolled into the police station fifteen minutes later.
‘This is quaint,’ he said, looking about himself.
Richard smiled to himself as he offered Phil a chair by his desk. As everyone else already knew—and Phil was about to find out—Camille really didn’t like people who patronised her island. And, in fact, as Richard and Camille set up on the other side of the table, Richard decided that there was little point beating around the bush anyway. So he just launched in.
‘Thanks for stopping by,’ he said, ‘as we just want to know why you told us you were in rehab for anxiety, when you were really there for drugs abuse?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Is it true, or isn’t it?’
Phil looked worried. ‘What else do you want to know?’
‘Are you refusing to answer the question?’
‘What else do you want to know?’ Phil repeated. ‘Very well. What drugs have you been taking on Saint-Marie while you’ve been here?’
All Phil’s self-confidence crumbled before the police’s eyes.
‘What … drugs?’
Richard leaned forward, as though about to share a secret, which, in a sense, he was.
‘Because that’s why Polly tipped off your movie studio back in Los Angeles, isn’t it? Since you’ve been on Saint-Marie, she’s caught you taking drugs again.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Just tell us how Polly found out about your drugs use.’ Phil licked his lips as he tried to find the moisture to speak.
‘When she invited me out here, I thought it would be like old times. I’d do my work during the day, but by night we’d party. Only, when I told Polly we should get stoned, she got all holier than thou, saying she’d not gone through all the effort of rehab for me to start using drugs in her house again. I was shocked. This wasn’t the Polly I knew. But I needed help with my writing—that’s what drugs give me, they help me be creative—so I decided that when I wanted to get a buzz, I’d go to the tunnel under her house.’
‘So you knew about that?’
‘Sure,’ Phil said. ‘It’s where we used to get caned back in the day. But I think Polly got suspicious. A few days after I got here, I was down in that old cave snorting a line of coke and she found me. She said she’d noticed the key to the bookcase was no longer in her filing cabinet.’
‘So you also knew how to get into the locked drawer in Polly’s study?’
‘What’s the big deal? I’ve known the combination to that filing cabinet for years. The padlock was set to her birthday. She was that vain.’
‘So you admit you got the key to the bookcase from there?’
Phil nodded.
‘Then you must have also seen the anonymous letters she kept in there?’
‘I didn’t. I told you, I don’t know anything about any anonymous letters.’
‘But they were in the same drawer as the key to the bookcase.’
‘Well, if they were, I didn’t see them.’
‘And you expect us to believe that, do you?’
‘To be honest, I don’t much care what you believe, I’m telling it to you straight. How it happened.’
‘Okay. So you got the key without noticing the letters that were also in there, went down into the tunnel and were snorting cocaine when Polly discovered the key was missing and came and found you. Is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how did she react when she saw you?’
‘She was angry. Very angry indeed. She said I’d let myself down, I’d let her down. And if I didn’t stop at once, she’d do something drastic to stop me.’
‘Like phone up your movie studio and anonymously tip them off that you were still a drug addict.’
‘That’s right. I didn’t believe she would, but then she rang them in front of me so I could see. She said she had to tell them for my own good.’
‘Which means that the moment you return to the States, they’ll test you for drugs, discover you’ve been using—you’ll be in breach of your contract—and they’ll be able to cancel their commitment to make your next feature film.’
Phil frowned. Worried.
‘It’s why I didn’t dare tell you the real reason I was in rehab the first time we talke
d. If you started investigating me for drugs, I was worried you’d find out that it was Polly who snitched on me to the studio.’
‘Because it means you’ve got a motive to want her dead.’ Phil didn’t dare say anything.
‘Okay. Then tell us, how did you react after she’d phoned your movie studio?’
‘I was angry. I’ll admit that much. At first at least. I mean, she’s transgressed enough in the past, and we’ve all had to forgive her—and here she was telling me that this one weakness of mine meant I’d have to lose my career!’
‘The shame of it,’ Richard said, remembering the original background reports on Phil Adams’s family—how they were all diplomats, bankers and academics. He couldn’t imagine a more ‘establishment’ family, and he was sure they’d be appalled to learn that Phil was a drug addict.
Camille looked at Phil carefully. ‘When she betrayed you like that, you had to get revenge, didn’t you? So you killed her.’
‘What? No!’ Phil was horrified by the accusation. ‘I was only angry to start off with. Because Polly was right—I needed a kick up the arse to get clean, and her telling the studio they had to test me was just what I needed to focus my mind. I stopped taking drugs there and then.’
‘So, if we test your hair, it will show you’ve been clean of drugs for the last few weeks?’ Camille asked.
Phil frowned.
‘Well, no,’ he said. ‘I’m just saying I was clean after she told the studio. Since she died …? I’ve fallen off the waggon a bit, but the point still holds. I’m going to get clean before I go back to the States. And as long as I am clean—which I will be—I’ll pass all the tests the studio puts me through, so Polly won’t have done anything to affect my career. In fact, the way I see it is, by forcing me to kick my habit, she’s maybe saved my career.’
‘But you admit you’re still using?’
‘Here and there. It’s been hard.’
‘Heroin?’
‘No way,’ Phil said, recoiling. ‘I wasn’t lying to you when I said I found Polly’s drugs use tough to handle. Cocaine’s about my limit. I need it for … well, for confidence.’ Richard looked at Phil with the briefest twinge of sympathy, because he could finally see that he wasn’t the super-smooth operator he pretended to be. He was someone with only fragile confidence.
Richard dismissed Phil, reminding him that they could press charges against him for possession of drugs at any time. But Richard knew he had some serious thinking to do. After all, how could Phil’s version of Polly—where she was so opposed to his drugs use that she was prepared to jeopardise his career to stop him using—be squared with Luc’s statement that he’d sold her ten thousand dollars’ worth of heroin three days before she died—a fact that seemed to be corroborated by her withdrawal of ten thousand dollars three days before she died?
It wasn’t possible that Luc and Phil’s stories could both be true, so which of them was lying?
Richard gathered his team at the whiteboard.
‘Okay, everyone,’ he said. ‘So, what of Phil’s testimony can we believe?’
‘Well, sir,’ Fidel said, ‘We searched his room straight after the murder and we found no drugs anywhere, be it cocaine or heroin.’
‘But we did find evidence of cocaine use in the tunnel under the house,’ Camille said. ‘And he’s just confessed he’s been using, both before and after Polly’s death.’
‘But why was Polly so opposed to Phil’s drugs use when she ordered ten thousand dollars of heroin from Luc three days before she died? Or is Luc lying?’
‘I reckon he’s telling the truth,’ Dwayne said. ‘I’ve been asking around, and everyone’s still talking about the big sale Luc made a few weeks back. In fact, he had to call in a lot of favours to get that much heroin together. And since then, he’s been settling all his debts and splashing his cash.’
‘So he really did sell the heroin to Polly?’ Camille asked. ‘It’s what it looks like to me.’
‘And there’s something else, sir,’ Fidel said. ‘Because I’ve been thinking that if Luc’s Polly’s dealer, then where’s the benefit in killing her? Even if it got him ten thousand dollars. Surely she’s worth more to him alive than she is to him dead?’
‘Yes, good point,’ Richard agreed. ‘So, once again we find ourselves back at the beginning. Seeing as Polly had no drugs in her system when she died, then who did she order the ten thousand dollars of heroin for?’
‘It has to be Phil Adams,’ Camille said. ‘He admits to taking Class-A drugs while he’s out here, it’s got to be him.’
‘But why would Polly buy drugs for someone after she’d tipped off his employer that he was still using? It doesn’t make sense!’
Richard sighed heavily.
‘So what else have we got?’ he asked.
‘Well, sir,’ Fidel said, collecting up his notebook from his desk. ‘I’ve been going around the congregation at my church, and I still can’t find anyone who saw Alain at the church service on the Sunday morning that Polly was killed.’
‘You can’t? How many people have you asked?’
‘Well, I’ve been able to speak to just over fifteen so far.’
‘And how many people in total would there have been at that Sunday service do you think?’
‘For Sunday services, it would have been well over a hundred.’
‘Then is there a quick way of speaking to as many people as possible? It strikes me as odd that no one you’ve spoken to so far remembers seeing Alain at the Sunday service. I want it categorically proven whether he was there or not.’
‘Well, sir,’ Fidel said, thinking out loud. ‘It’s evensong tonight. Maybe the priest would let me stand up at the end and speak to the whole congregation directly?’
‘Please do. I want to know if Alain’s alibi checks out.’
That evening, Richard was in his shack trying not to think about his mother and what she might have been up to while out ‘clubbing’ with Catherine. To this end, he’d laid out the six anonymous letters on his desk, and had decided that although the labs had been unable to glean anything useful from them, there was still one test that could be carried out on them. And that was to inspect the newsprint on the other side of the cut-out letters that had been glued to the A4 paper. It was something of a long shot, though, and would involve permanently damaging the evidence, but Richard knew that desperate times called for desperate measures. So Richard had got everything he needed: a sharp scalpel, a can of WD-40 solvent, and a head torch.
Bending over his desk, Richard clicked his head torch on to full beam. His plan was to use the scalpel to lift the edge of each glued-down scrap of newspaper and then spray minuscule drops of solvent underneath it to dissolve the glue that held it to the A4. That way, he knew he’d be able to liberate each scrap of newspaper and possibly see what had been printed on the other side.
Richard started on the first letter—the lowercase ‘y’ from the message that otherwise spelled out ‘yOu ARe gOinG tO PAy’.
It was painstaking work, but, after a few minutes, Richard had managed to lift this first intact-but-by-now-very-sodden scrap of newspaper from the sheet of A4 it was glued to. He then, just as carefully, turned the little scrap of newspaper over to see what he could see was printed on the other side of it. Unfortunately, the scrap of newspaper was so drenched with liquid solvent, it was impossible to see. So Richard put it to one side, knowing it would become legible as the solvent evaporated and the scrap of newspaper dried out.
He then looked at the other sheets of A4 paper and counted a further seventy-six newspaper headline letters that had been used to make up the remaining messages. He sighed—but with satisfaction. This was exactly the sort of mind-numbing work he needed to stop the image of his mother in a nightclub from popping into his head.
It was 1am when Richard next got up from his desk. Although he’d failed to get some of the scraps of newspaper from the A4—they’d dissolved to mush when he’d used too much WD-40—he’d b
een able to liberate forty-three separate scraps of newspaper. They now sat on the table drying.
Richard cricked his neck, went over to his verandah, looked out at the swelling sea, and knew that he still needed to keep himself busy or he’d start thinking about his mother again.
Looking about his crumbling shack for something to do, Richard saw his laptop and remembered that he hadn’t yet listened to all of the recordings Juliette had made of her husband being unfaithful with Polly. Fidel had of course—and reported that there’d been nothing else of note on them—but Richard knew that he should listen to them himself. Ignoring the first recording for a moment—after all, he had already listened to most of it in the police station with Camille—Richard decided to start with the second recording Juliette had made. Richard remembered from Fidel’s notes, this recording was thirteen minutes long and was mostly filled with the sound of chirping crickets in the background. That seemed innocuous enough to keep him busy.
Richard pressed play on the sound file, sat back in his chair, and the sound of chirping crickets filled the air. In fact, as he listened, Richard realised that the night-time crickets in the recording were chirping a little faster than the real-life crickets that were chirping outside his window. And this nearly-but-not-quite synchronicity reminded Richard of how, when he was growing up, the windscreen wipers on his mother’s car moved to a slightly different time interval to the clicks of the car’s indicator lights. If both were on at the same time, they’d appear to be going at the same speed for a short while, and then the indicator lights would appear to speed up until it was impossible to imagine two rhythms more opposed to each other. And then they’d start to get closer together in timings until they appeared to be entirely back in sync again.
Richard could well remember being driven to school on rainy Monday mornings, the car steamed up on the inside, the wipers squeaking across the windscreen, and his feet just beginning to thaw from the fan heater while the rest of the car remained ice cold.
And with that thought, Richard’s defences collapsed and he let the despair in, not that he really knew how to articulate his feelings beyond a general sense of loss he felt for … well, what? What was it he felt loss for? Richard didn’t know, but he was dimly aware that his feelings of absence were for something that maybe he’d never even had.
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