Murder in the Caribbean

by Robert Thorogood

  The jury didn’t believe him, and Pierre was convicted of murder and robbery, and was sent down for twenty-five years. For the first fifteen years, he was incarcerated in Holloway prison, but, as was usual for foreign offenders, he was repatriated to a Saint-Marie prison for the last few years of his sentence. The fact that he’d finally left prison after serving only twenty years suggested that he’d also been given time off for good behaviour.

  Richard leant back in his chair to try to process everything he’d learned, but he was interrupted by the arrival of Camille and Dwayne. Dwayne was holding a cardboard box of possessions.

  ‘What did you get from the halfway house?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Nothing we hadn’t already seen, Chief,’ Dwayne said. ‘But I’ve got the bottle of beer and glass Pierre was drinking from, so we can check them for fingerprints.’

  ‘As for me, sir,’ Camille said, plonking herself down onto the chair behind her desk, ‘once she got going, Pierre’s next-door neighbour never stopped talking, but I think I got everything.’

  ‘Did she give you anything new in her statement?’

  ‘Not really. It’s the same as she told us. Pierre turned up three days ago. Three men arrived soon after, argued with him, and left. And then, later that afternoon, one of the men returned, and Pierre left with him in his car.’

  ‘And he’s been in hiding ever since,’ Richard said, finishing Camille’s story.

  ‘Got it in one.’

  ‘But who were the men who met him?’ Fidel asked. ‘And which of them was the one who came back?’

  ‘Well, Fidel,’ Richard said, ‘I think that’s a very good question indeed.’

  Richard explained how he’d just read Pierre Charpentier’s original case file, and how Pierre had been part of a four-man gang who’d robbed a Bond Street shop of over two million pounds’ worth of jewels. And how Pierre had shot a member of staff dead before he made his escape.

  ‘Then how did they catch him?’ Fidel asked.

  ‘Pierre left his fingerprints on the gun he used.’

  ‘He did?’ Dwayne asked, surprised. ‘That’s not too clever.’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t too clever.’

  ‘Did they positively identify him in any other way?’ Camille asked.

  ‘I don’t believe so.’

  ‘There wasn’t any CCTV inside the store?’

  ‘The case notes don’t mention anything about CCTV.’

  ‘And he never took off his motorbike clothes, gloves or helmet at any time during the robbery?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So no-one was able to place him visually at the scene?’

  ‘This, I believe was very much the point Pierre’s defence brief tried to make.’

  ‘So the only thing that actually links Pierre to the murder is a weapon that had his fingerprints on?’

  ‘Not quite the only thing,’ Richard said. ‘He was from Saint-Marie, and he was in London at the time. Oh, and the man he shot dead was also from Saint-Marie. We’ll have to look into him. His name was André Morgan. But you’re right, Camille. If it was indeed Pierre Charpentier who committed murder that day, he was very foolish leaving his own gun behind at the scene. But that’s not what interests me. What interests me is, where did Conrad get his money from?’

  This statement took everyone by surprise.

  ‘What?’ Dwayne asked.

  ‘Well, it was you, Dwayne, who said that despite having no real talent, Conrad “came into money” about twenty years ago. And you also said it could have been mob money that funded him. So what I’m wondering is, what if it wasn’t mob money?’

  ‘Do you think he was maybe one of the robbers?’ Fidel asked, his eyes widening.

  ‘Well, let’s look at what we know. Pierre was jailed twenty years ago. Not just for murder, but also because of his part in a four-man heist of a jewellery store in London. Even though he always denied he was involved in any way. But then, according to our witness next door to Pierre’s safe house, on the very day he got out of prison he was met by three men.’

  ‘Oh I see!’ Fidel said. ‘They were the other three members of the gang.’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ Richard said. ‘And although our witness’s sight isn’t what it might once have been, her hearing’s good enough, and she said very specifically that these three men were already arguing before they arrived, and then Pierre joined in the argument soon after. And the nub of the matter was the fact that he was demanding they hand over “his share”. In fact, he kept asking, “where is my share?”. Now, what do you think that could refer to?’

  ‘His share of the jewels!’ Fidel said.

  ‘Exactly. Despite his protestations of innocence, Pierre was one of the robbers that day. And I think that for the last twenty years, as he rotted in a high security prison, there was only one thing sustaining him. And that was the knowledge that all he had to do was keep quiet and the moment he left prison, he’d finally get his share of money from the heist.’

  ‘You really think he kept quiet all that time?’ Dwayne asked sceptically.

  ‘I think anyone with the right incentive would keep schtum. And two million pounds’ worth of jewels is quite the incentive. I imagine that once the rest of the gang had paid their fence and any other intermediaries to re-cut the stones, they’d maybe have cleared as much as a million pounds by the end. So, divided by four people, that’s a quarter of a million pounds each. And in Saint-Marie dollars that’s maybe as much as three to four hundred thousand dollars per gang member.’

  ‘Yup,’ Dwayne said, now in accord. ‘I’d keep quiet for a lot less. Especially if I was already in jail for murder.’

  ‘So what are we saying?’ Camille asked. ‘Was the day Pierre got out of prison the day he also found out he wasn’t going to get any of his money?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I think happened,’ Richard agreed. ‘His share of the cash had been spent. Or mismanaged. We don’t know. But we do know how angry Pierre was to find out that his share was missing. And this was after he’d spent twenty years believing he’d be rich when he left prison. Just imagine what it must have been like if he really did find out his share of the loot no longer existed. It would push anyone over the edge.’

  ‘So that’s why he killed Conrad,’ Camille said. ‘And why he then broke into Conrad’s house immediately afterwards and left that fake ruby. It was a message. Just like you said.’

  ‘But who was the message for?’ Dwayne asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Richard said darkly. ‘And that’s what’s worrying me.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Okay,’ Richard said to his team, ‘imagine you’re Pierre Charpentier. If you wanted somewhere secret to hide on the island, where would you go?’

  Fidel, Camille and Dwayne were full of ideas. It was possible Pierre was hiding in a nearby boarding house or hotel, or was staying in the local homeless shelter, or maybe just living rough in the jungle. Really, he could be anywhere. And as the suggestions arrived thick and fast, Richard made a list of them on the whiteboard. Having done so, he then divided the list up among himself and his team. But first, Fidel was to go to the Prison and speak to the guards and whoever else he could find to discover who Pierre was friends with, Camille was to try to discover what kind of digital footprint Pierre was leaving now that he was out of prison, and Dwayne was to go and tap up whatever contacts or informants he could find, to see if Pierre’s return to civilian life had caused any ripples on the island.

  As Dwayne put his Police cap on and left, Richard ghosted out after him and stopped him on the veranda.

  ‘And Dwayne?’ he said. ‘About the whole spying thing . . .’ Dwayne smiled easily.

  ‘You want to apologise?’

  ‘Apologise?’ Richard said, confused. ‘No, I just wanted to say that I may not be able to keep tabs on you while you’re visiting every dodgy bar on the island, but if I find out you’ve actually sloped off and hooked up with Amy McDiar
mid again, there’ll be trouble, I can tell you.’

  ‘Hang on. You’re not apologising to me?’

  ‘What is there to apologise for?’

  ‘You ran an observation on my house.’

  ‘You make it sound like a bad thing.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Anyway, it wasn’t anything so formal as an observation. I just hid in a bush.’

  ‘You hid in a bush?’

  ‘But you were with your girlfriend when you should have been working on your sergeant’s exam.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I can revise any time, Chief. But I only met Amy a few weeks ago. What we’ve got’s really special. And you know, we’re still at that stage of our relationship.’

  ‘And what stage would that be?’

  Dwayne looked at his boss, trying to work out if he was pulling his leg. ‘“What stage”?’

  ‘That’s right. I said, “what stage”?’

  ‘You honestly don’t know what I’m talking about?’

  ‘All I know is, you were with your girlfriend when you should have been revising. And you even let her visit you at the Police station.’

  ‘But she only came here to see you.’

  ‘I don’t want to meet your girlfriends, Dwayne. I’m trying to solve a murder case. And so are you, I’d like to add.’

  Dwayne cocked his head to one side as he considered his boss. He knew that Richard was English, and uptight and repressed, but was he really this English, uptight and repressed?

  ‘Good,’ Richard said, misreading Dwayne’s silence as agreement. ‘I’m glad we’ve finally sorted that out.’

  And with that, Richard tried to return to the main office, but he found that Camille was standing in the doorway holding a printout, and, seeing the look of disapproval on her face, he realised she’d been standing there for some time.

  ‘What?’ he asked defensively.

  ‘Oh, nothing, sir,’ Camille said, ‘I just wanted to let you know what I’d got on Pierre so far.’

  Richard grabbed the piece of paper from Camille’s hand and headed back into the office. After a sympathetic glance at Dwayne, Camille followed.

  Richard read the printout as he sat down behind his desk.

  ‘So, Pierre Charpentier is fifty-four years old. He’s got no siblings. No wife. No children. And his parents died when he was fifteen. So that pretty much rules out his family as the people who could be providing a refuge for him. And as for his record, I see that before he committed murder, we’d had him in for questioning on seventeen separate occasions. For acting as a fence, aggravated assault, burglary – this is quite the rap sheet, Camille.’

  Richard didn’t look up from the printout, because he could sense that Camille was standing in front of his desk, a hand on her hip and an eyebrow raised. And once again Richard was getting the distinct impression that he was ‘in the wrong’, but he refused to give in to it.

  ‘Yes, quite the rap sheet,’ Richard repeated, in the hope that Camille would perhaps get bored and wander off.

  She didn’t, so Richard eventually lifted his eyes from the paper.

  ‘What was that?’ Camille asked.

  ‘What was what?’

  ‘You have to apologise to him.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘You know who. Dwayne.’

  ‘Now, don’t you start,’ Richard said.

  ‘But he’s in love!’

  ‘In love,’ Richard snorted. ‘For this week perhaps. But that man has more girlfriends than I’ve got . . .’ Richard couldn’t quite find the right word to end his sentence. ‘Socks,’ he eventually said.

  ‘Socks?’

  ‘Yes. Socks. Anyway, you know what I mean,’ Richard said, getting up and heading in a huff to inspect the whiteboard.

  ‘But I think this time it’s different. She seems really into him. And I know he really likes her.’

  ‘Look, Camille, no-one is more thrilled than me that Dwayne is “loved up”, but that’s no excuse for slacking off.’

  ‘But what if you found love, sir?’

  As Camille said this, Richard was popping the lid on his favourite black board marker, and it pinged into the air and dropped to the floor.

  ‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ he said irritably as he bent down to pick up the lid.

  ‘Because if you found love,’ Camille continued, ‘I know we’d all be pleased for you. And if you then spent a bit too much time with that person, I know we’d all understand. No, better than that. We’d be happy for you. And we wouldn’t interfere.’

  ‘I haven’t been interfering.’

  ‘You went and spied on him.’

  ‘That wasn’t interfering. That was being a responsible line manager. Now, if you don’t mind, we’ve got a killer to catch. And seeing as your background check suggests that Pierre Charpentier doesn’t have a ready network of family to rely on, the question of where he’s hiding becomes even more acute.’

  ‘You’re right there, sir,’ Fidel said, relieved that the conversation had moved on from his boss’s love life. ‘And I’m still not making much progress on that front. Although I’ve spoken to the taxi driver who drove Pierre to his halfway house that morning. He said Pierre seemed really pumped to be out of prison. He noticed because he’s had the prison contract for years, and most people are a bit lost when they first come out. Or are emotional. But he said Pierre wasn’t like that at all.’

  ‘He was “pumped”?’

  ‘It was like he had a sense of purpose. That’s how the taxi driver put it to me.’

  ‘I see,’ Richard said as he went back to study the whiteboard where the names Conrad Gardiner, Natasha Gardiner and Pierre Charpentier were written up in big bold letters.

  ‘You know what?’ Richard said after a few moments. ‘If Conrad’s dead and Pierre’s in hiding, that doesn’t mean we’re without leads.’

  Richard pointed at Natasha’s name on the board.

  ‘Because we now know the ruby was left behind because of the burglary twenty years ago. And Natasha Gardiner was married to Conrad twenty years ago. I think it’s time she told us the truth.’

  Leaving Fidel in the station, Richard and Camille returned to Natasha’s house. They found her sitting in the front room.

  ‘Mrs Gardiner?’ Camille asked as she and Richard entered the room.

  ‘Have you any news?’ Natasha asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, we haven’t.’

  ‘He can’t be dead. I just don’t believe it.’

  ‘We’ll let you know the moment we have anything definite. But in the meantime, there has been a development elsewhere in the case. We’d like to see if you recognise this man.’

  Camille handed over a copy of Pierre’s mugshot and, as Natasha looked at it, she seemed to crumple.

  ‘Oh god,’ she said, her hand going to her mouth.

  ‘You recognise him?’ Camille asked.

  ‘It’s that Pierre man, isn’t it?’

  ‘You know him?’

  Natasha nodded.

  ‘And he’s the reason why a ruby was left behind in your house, isn’t he?’

  Richard could see that Natasha had no ready reply.

  ‘Mrs Gardiner?’ he asked sternly, but Natasha only had eyes for Camille.

  ‘You go through life,’ she said, ‘and you just hope the past won’t catch up with you. But that’s not how life works, is it?’

  ‘The ruby is connected to your past?’ Camille asked.

  ‘Not mine,’ Natasha said. ‘And I wasn’t sure when I saw that ruby. I mean, I had an idea. I worried, but I didn’t know for sure. That’s why I didn’t say anything. But if that man Pierre is behind all this, then I know exactly why he’s done what he’s done.’

  As Natasha said this, she burst into tears.

  Richard rolled his eyes to himself. Bloody hell, why was it always so hard getting witnesses to talk without them turning on the water works?

  Natasha pull
ed a hankie from the sleeve of her cardigan and tried to wipe the tears from her face.

  ‘My husband was a good person,’ she said in between her sniffs. ‘You have to believe me. He was kind to me, and a loving father to our daughter. He meant well in so many ways. But he was also weak. In the past more than now, but what he did caused a stain it’s not possible to wipe away. And it was all because of him,’ Natasha said, indicating the photo of Pierre. ‘Because if Conrad was a good man under it all, Pierre was the worst. I knew he was trouble from the start.’

  ‘You knew Pierre from before he went to prison?’ Richard asked.

  ‘I married Conrad twenty-five years ago. I was flattered by his attention, and I just ignored my parents who said Conrad wasn’t any good. I was full of myself. Feeling all grown up at nineteen years old. Having a boyfriend with a motorbike. If I could reach back in time, I’d slap myself in the face and tell me to walk away.’

  ‘You now feel your parents were right?’

  ‘They were right. But they were also wrong. Conrad was a good man. Like I said. It’s just he loved money. And music. He loved the whole music scene. I always encouraged him to become a roadie or sound technician, but it required too much work. He just talked about this amazing career in music he was going to have, but he never did anything about it.

  ‘Then, a few years into our marriage, he started hanging out with Pierre. That was the worst time, because I could see how dangerous he was. He had these dead eyes, you know? And you could tell, when he was looking at you, he was just trying to work out how much use you were to him. Conrad and I argued a lot about him. And my husband became secretive. I knew he was seeing a lot of Pierre, but what could I do? Our daughter Jessica was two years old and quite a handful. And then one day, Conrad said he was going away for a few weeks, and the next time he saw me, we’d be rich. I knew that this was somehow connected with Pierre, and I begged him not to go, but Conrad wouldn’t listen. He said my responsibility was to Jessica, and his responsibility was to provide for us. That’s what he was doing. And then, one day, Conrad was gone. He didn’t leave any details of where he was. He just vanished into thin air.