Murder in the Caribbean

by Robert Thorogood

  ‘Mr Morgan?’ Richard asked.

  The man looked up, as though he was surprised to see the Police.

  ‘That’s right. I’m Stefan Morgan. You’d better sit down,’ he said in a wheezy voice, indicating a couple of plastic bucket chairs nearby.

  As Richard pulled out his hankie and dusted the thin sheen of flour from his chair seat, he saw that Stefan was probably in his sixties, and he was one of those men who was so plump that his breathing, even in repose, required a degree of effort. But it was more than that, Richard thought to himself as he folded his handkerchief and slipped it back into his jacket pocket. The man looked defeated.

  ‘He was such a good boy,’ Stefan offered to no-one in particular as he went back to looking at the old documents in the box.

  ‘Do you have a photo of him?’ Camille asked.

  Stefan handed over a photo of a young, smiling man standing behind a jewellery counter. His skin seemed to glow with good health, and there was a sparkling intelligence in his eyes. Richard could see why he’d been a shop assistant. He looked keen and ready to serve.

  ‘That was taken in Honoré,’ Stefan said. ‘Just after André started at the jewellery shop.’

  ‘He looks like a lovely boy,’ Camille said.

  ‘He was,’ Stefan said in a whisper. ‘And his life was taken from him.’

  ‘By Pierre Charpentier,’ Richard added, wanting to get Stefan to focus on the issue at hand.

  ‘By Pierre Charpentier,’ Stefan agreed, and Richard could see a stiffness come into Stefan’s demeanour.

  ‘Who you saw when he left prison.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Stefan turned to look at Richard, puzzled.

  ‘Do you have kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you have no idea. No idea what it’s like to hold that new life in your hands. And that feeling of love – the unconditional love you feel for that life. How desperately you realise you’d do anything for them. Lie, steal, cheat and kill if necessary. And that’s the very first moment you meet them. You just know you’ve got to protect this young baby. It’s overwhelming. And then when someone takes that child’s life from you? There are no words to describe what that’s like. The horror.’

  Stefan stopped speaking so he could re-catch his breath.

  ‘It killed my wife,’ he said.

  ‘It did?’ Camille said.

  ‘She couldn’t handle the grief. She got so weak that first year after André’s death, she got a virus. We never knew what it was. But she didn’t fight it, and then she got pneumonia. And when she went to hospital, it was like she gave up. She was dead two weeks later. From a broken heart. And it was that man’s fault. That man who killed my son. He has the blood of two people on his hands. My son. My wife. The only two people I’ve ever cared about.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Camille said.

  ‘And as you can see, I now hide in the back office.’

  Stefan reached for an opened can of Coke on his desk and took a large slug from it.

  ‘Can you tell us the last time you saw Pierre Charpentier?’ Richard asked.

  Stefan paused briefly, mid-gulp, and then he put the can back down on his desk.

  ‘You want to know about the day he got out of prison?’

  Stefan plucked a tissue from a box and daintily wiped his lips, although Richard got the impression that he was trying to buy himself a few moments to ready his story.

  ‘It was simple. I just needed to see him. That man. And I needed him to see me. He had to know I was still out here.’

  ‘So you waited for him before he left prison?’

  ‘I knew he’d be released just after 10am. That’s when all prisoners are released. So I drove up to the prison and made sure I was waiting there from nine.’

  ‘What car do you drive?’ Richard asked.

  Stefan was surprised by the question.

  ‘An old Nissan.’

  ‘What colour is it?’

  ‘White.’

  ‘You drive a white Nissan car?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And do you own any other cars?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you drove up to the prison in your white Nissan, and were waiting outside. Do carry on.’

  ‘That’s right. And I knew he was coming because a taxi pulled up outside the main gate just before ten. This was it. The moment I’d waited for for twenty years. And then the doors to the prison opened and there he was.’

  As Stefan said this, both Richard and Camille could see that he was reliving every moment.

  ‘The man who’d murdered my son. He also saw me.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘He put his hand up to his head to block the sun. So he could see me.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I took a step forward so I was standing in the road, and I just looked at him. I wanted him unsettled.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘He took a few steps towards me, and then he stopped. I think he recognised me. I mean, it had been twenty years since he’d seen me. My wife and I had attended every day of his trial, and I’ve changed a lot since then . . . but I think he worked it out. He took a step back, it was like he stumbled. And I started walking towards him, I couldn’t help myself. I mean, he looked pretty lean and fit, like he had when he went into prison. And I’m just this fat old man who eats too many pastries, but I couldn’t help myself. As for what I was going to do when I reached him, I had no idea. But I wanted to see him up close. And as I crossed the road, he turned and got in the taxi, and it drove off. I think I scared him.’

  Stefan paused to collect his breath, and Richard could see a sense of pride burning in the old man’s eyes.

  ‘So that’s all I know about Pierre. But what I want to know is, why are you so interested in him?’

  ‘Well,’ Richard said, not wishing to reveal his hand entirely, ‘since he left prison, his name has come up in conjunction with another investigation. Since which time he seems to have done a runner.’

  ‘He’s committed another crime?’ Stefan asked. ‘I don’t believe it. He only got out of prison last week.’

  ‘At this stage, all I can say is that we just need to ask him a few questions. So, do you know where he is?’

  ‘No. I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Or have you had any contact with him?’

  ‘No. I didn’t even have contact with him when he got out. I just walked towards him, he got in his car, and that was that. The last time I saw him.’

  ‘Okay. Then do you mind me asking, what do you know about the explosion that happened in the harbour last Thursday?’

  ‘You mean, Conrad’s boat?’

  ‘Oh, you know him?’

  ‘Of course. It’s a terrible thing that’s happened.’

  ‘I’d agree with you there. Can you tell us a bit about your relationship with Conrad?’

  ‘Well, I’ve known him for years. As a person you could talk to in a bar. Or go to if you needed someone to do the odd job for you. You know, he built the store room round the back of the building.’

  ‘Did you know him when he was a record producer?’

  For the first time, a laugh bubbled up in Stefan’s throat.

  ‘Record producer? I don’t know what you think he was, but he was no record producer.’

  ‘But he made records,’ Richard said, puzzled.

  ‘He threw parties, that’s what he did. Don’t get me wrong, they were good parties, but they were terrible records. That man had more money than sense. No-one was surprised when his business collapsed. I think he’d just used the whole thing to hang out with young people. And girls in particular.’

  ‘He liked hanging out with young girls?’ Camille asked.

  ‘He’d always have a string of hopefuls on his arm.’

  ‘Even though he was married?’

  ‘But he’s married to Natasha, isn’t he? I don’t know if you’ve met her, but she’s
a weak woman. She could never control her man. So Conrad just slept with who he wanted. Or he did back in the day.’

  ‘Have you seen him at all in the last few weeks?’

  ‘No. Can’t say I have. But are you saying Pierre Charpentier is somehow connected to his boat exploding?’

  Richard ignored the question.

  ‘Can you tell us where you were last Thursday at about 10am?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Stefan was thrown by the question.

  ‘Just so we can rule you out of our enquiries.’

  Stefan didn’t know what to say, but he reached for a little diary on the desk in front of him.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, turning back the pages with his chubby fingers. ‘So, if you’re asking where I was when Conrad’s boat exploded, I can tell you I was on Guadeloupe, at the General hospital. If you must know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was . . .’ Stefan said, not entirely comfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. ‘Do you really need to know?’

  ‘It would be a great help,’ Camille said.

  ‘Okay . . . so I was having an MRI scan.’

  ‘You were?’

  ‘I recently had a fall, and when I went to the local hospital, they found a shadow on my X-ray. In my liver. They were worried it was cancer, and the blood tests weren’t good. So yes, last Thursday I had to go to Guadeloupe and have a full body MRI scan.’

  ‘Have you had the results?’ Camille asked.

  Stefan noticed the empty Coke can on his desk, picked it up, crushed it in his hand, and dropped it in the empty waste paper basket under his desk.

  ‘They need to run more tests before they can be sure. But at this stage, it’s a question of what stage cancer I’ve got, and where it’s spread, not whether I’ve got it.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Camille said.

  ‘Can I pick you up on something you said?’ Richard asked, unaware of how crassly he was shattering the mood in the room.

  Stefan shrugged.

  ‘Whatever you like.’

  ‘It’s just, you said you and your wife both attended Pierre’s original trial in London.’

  ‘That’s right. We attended every single day. And stood and cheered at the end when he was convicted. Cheered and cheered.’

  ‘And you also said your son was a good boy. And I’m sure he was. In fact, I’ve read the case notes, and his manager at his store in Honoré was very positive about him.’

  ‘He was always a hard worker.’

  ‘At first,’ Richard added. ‘Because the manager also said André had perhaps taken his foot off the pedal in the time just before he left for London.’

  ‘That was that woman,’ Stefan said dismissively.

  ‘And what woman would that be?’

  ‘A few months before he left the island, Stefan started staying out late. I wasn’t joking when I said he was a good boy. It wasn’t like him at all. He was a good Christian boy before then. But he started going to bars and drinking too much. And we could smell cigarette smoke on his clothes. And found ganja in his room. We were horrified. This wasn’t our son. And it wasn’t. He’d started dating this girl, and she was corrupting him.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘That was the thing, we never met her. She refused to come to the house when we were here, and Stefan wouldn’t tell us her name. He said that if we knew who she was, we’d try and split them up. And he was right, because it was his manner changing that hurt us the most. He became insolent. Like he didn’t care.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Richard said, trying to make sense of what he was being told. ‘You never knew her name?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell us. It was his secret, he said. But then, after a few months of this, the manager of the jewellery store rang us and said he wasn’t happy with André’s work. So we banned him from seeing her again. We were the enemy to him by this stage. But he wasn’t earning enough money to move out and get his own place, so we knew he’d have to do as he was told. And my wife started spending much more time at home. To make sure André and his girlfriend stopped using our house for their . . . encounters. You see, we always got the impression that this girlfriend of his didn’t have a place of her own, so we hoped this would stop them meeting up. And it seemed to work. André was still just as sullen, but he seemed to have stopped seeing the girl. And then I got a phonecall from our local priest. He said he’d seen André and a young woman going into the family crypt in the cemetery just outside Honoré.’

  ‘You have a family crypt?’

  Richard had always found it odd that on Saint-Marie families didn’t bury their dead in military rows with headstones all neatly aligned. Instead, each family would often have a crypt in which they buried their whole family. And, as humans would be humans, some of these would be bigger and more ornate than others, so the graveyards of Saint-Marie were full of structures that often had stairs that led to floors and even verandas above the crypt so that candlelit celebrations could be held on feast days like the Day of the Dead. And, although Richard knew there was no health or safety or planning permission attached to these haphazard structures, they all conformed in the sense that every inch of every structure was always covered in alternating black and white square tiles, as though the buildings were made from massive chess boards. When visiting a graveyard in Saint-Marie, it was like being trapped in an Alice in Wonderland maze of crazy and improbable two-tone buildings.

  ‘Our family have had a crypt at the Honoré cemetery for nearly one hundred and fifty years,’ Stefan said proudly. ‘It’s on the main avenue. Right at the top of the hill. And there’s still space inside for another hundred years.’

  Richard didn’t quite know what the correct response to this sort of crypt-based bragging was, so he just said, ‘Well done. But, before André left for the UK, are you saying that your son was visiting the family crypt with his girlfriend?’

  ‘That’s what the priest said. It didn’t seem possible. Not when I had the only key. But I decided to go and check. There’s a locked metal grille that stops people going down the steps to where the bodies are kept. And I could see that no-one had tried to force it. I was surprised. How could André have been going into the crypt if he hadn’t broken in? Anyway, I used my key to open the gate and went down into the chamber. It’s not that big. There’s a wall of metal drawers where the coffins go. And some stone sarcophaguses that used to be used for the laying in of bodies, but we haven’t done that for decades. Anyway, once I was in there, I also found a pile of clothes on the tiles in the corner. And there was an old turned-over hubcap from a car that was full of cigarette butts and crushed roaches from spliffs. And empty bottles of rum. My perfect son. My kind, sweet son. I couldn’t believe it. We’d banned him from meeting this woman, so he’d started going to the family crypt with her. It was disgusting.’

  ‘So what did you do next?’ Camille asked.

  ‘I confronted him about the crypt, and he just admitted it. Like it wasn’t a problem. He said we couldn’t control his life. He was an adult. So he’d got my key to the family crypt copied, and that’s where he’d been taking his girlfriend. Well, I don’t need to tell you, this caused the greatest of all possible rifts, because André was desecrating our family ancestors’ resting place, but he just didn’t care. Not that it was his fault, I had to keep telling myself. It was this woman he was with who’d led him astray. Who’d bewitched him. That’s how André’s mother and I looked at it. He’d been bewitched. Then, a few days later, André announced he’d applied for a job at the head office in London, and he was going to move there. Just to get away from us.

  ‘And then, just like that, he was gone. And he didn’t ring. Didn’t write. Didn’t text. We didn’t know what to do. He was our only son, and he’d just gone away. And we told ourselves this was a natural part of growing up. That we had to let him go so he could come back. And then, about three months later, we got a knock on the door from the Chief of Police in Honoré. He said he’d just g
ot off the phone with the Metropolitan Police in London, and he had some very bad news.’

  Stefan couldn’t continue as he remembered the day he was told that his son had been murdered. Camille reached over, squeezed the old man’s hand, and he looked at her with tears in his eyes.

  Richard wasn’t quite ready to let Stefan off the hook just yet.

  ‘What happened to the girlfriend?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The woman who you think bewitched your son?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I suppose she’s still on the island somewhere.’

  As Stefan said this, Camille’s phone started to ring. She made her excuses and left the room to take the call.

  ‘Can I ask one last question?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Shoot,’ Stefan said.

  ‘After you saw Pierre on the day he was released, what did you do?’

  The question surprised Stefan.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Did you follow Pierre when he got into his taxi?’

  Stefan looked deeply uncomfortable.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Do I have to answer this?’

  ‘Eventually,’ Richard said, his voice hardening. ‘Either here now or back at the Police station later on.’

  ‘Alright. I suppose it doesn’t matter. After I’d seen Pierre, and he’d gone off in the taxi, I got back into my car and drove to Honoré cemetery. It’s where André’s buried. I didn’t go into the crypt, but I just stood outside. I told my son I’d confronted his killer and he’d run away, his tail between his legs. I hoped it would make me feel better, but it didn’t, because all I kept thinking was, that evil man was now free, and my beautiful son was still dead, and had been for the last twenty years.’

  Richard could see the pain in Stefan’s eyes, but there was also an anger there, too. Understandably, Richard thought to himself.

  ‘Sir, that was Fidel,’ Camille said, returning to the room. ‘He’s just taken a phonecall from a member of the public. A grey Citroën car has been found abandoned in the jungle.’

  ‘A grey Citroën car?’

  ‘And not just any kind, sir. It’s a Citroën CX.’