As Camille joined Richard, he looked for the freshest-looking plaque, and saw it at once. It was deep blue, and it had white writing on it announcing that ‘André Morgan, whose life was ripped from us too soon’ was interred inside. Richard could see that the plaque was dusty, so he pulled his hankie and wiped it clean. There. That was a bit better.
‘Sir?’ Camille said, as she looked at the doorway.
‘What is it?’
‘I think someone’s opened this door recently.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Look at the ground under the hinges,’ Camille said, indicating the thinnest scattering of rust on the tiled floor directly beneath the hinges of the barred gate.
‘You’re right,’ Richard said as he inspected the hinges, and he could see a brightness to the metal where the rust had recently rubbed away. ‘So who’s been in here?’
Richard peered into the main body of the crypt, but it was shrouded in darkness. He took hold of the iron bars of the gate and tried to pull or push it open, but it wouldn’t budge.
‘It’s locked,’ Camille said.
Richard looked at the old lock that was keeping the door secured. It was decades old – and didn’t look very strong – but it was very definitely locked shut.
Richard tried to remember what Stefan had told them about the key to the family crypt. He had the only key to the crypt. Although that wasn’t quite right, was it? Richard also remembered that André had got a copy made so he could meet his girlfriend down here just before he got his job in London. But that had been over twenty years ago.
‘Wait here,’ Richard said, stepping back to the main avenue and pulling his notebook and phone as he went.
Richard phoned the bakery in Honoré and was soon speaking to Stefan Morgan. He explained that he wanted Stefan to confirm that he’d not gone into the family crypt after he’d seen Pierre.
There was a shocked silence at the other end of the line.
‘I’m sorry?’ Stefan eventually asked.
‘I just wanted you to confirm. Did you go inside your family crypt after you saw Pierre?’
‘No, I told you. I visited, but I stood outside. There’s a plaque to André on the wall. That’s as close as I got.’
‘Then can you tell me, do you currently have the key to the crypt to hand?’
‘I’d imagine so. I don’t know.’
‘Can you check that you still have it?’
‘I keep it in my desk drawer here,’ Stefan said, and Richard heard a thud as the phone was put down. This was followed by the sound of someone rummaging in a drawer.
‘Here it is,’ Stefan said, picking up the phone again.
‘You have the key with you?’ Richard asked.
‘I do. But why are you asking?’
‘Do you know, apart from the copy your son made twenty years ago, have there been any other copies of the key made?’
‘Absolutely not. That’s why it was so shocking André made his copy. There’s only supposed to be the one key, and it stays in the possession of the most senior member of the family. That’s me, and it’s a point of pride that I’m allowed to look after it.’
‘Then can you tell me the last time you opened the family crypt?’
‘What is this?’ Stefan asked, warily.
‘When did you last go into your crypt?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Just please tell me the answer.’
‘It was years ago.’
‘Really?’
‘At least three years, I’d say. Maybe four.’
‘Thank you,’ Richard said, hanging up the call.
It didn’t make sense. If the crypt hadn’t been opened in years, why had they just found fresh rust on the ground under the hinges? Richard tried to imagine that the Morgan crypt was where Pierre had been hiding, but that didn’t quite add up, either. How could Pierre have been coming and going if Stefan was still in possession of his key?
‘Sir,’ Camille called from the gate to the crypt, ‘I’ve had a bit of an accident.’
‘What’s that?’ Richard said, returning to his partner, but he stopped dead in his tracks as he arrived.
The gate to the crypt was open.
But he could see that it had been wrenched open on the side where the hinges were – or rather, as Richard looked more closely, where the hinges had been.
‘Camille, what have you done?’
‘I don’t know how it happened,’ she said in fake innocence. ‘I was just inspecting the door with this iron rod, and the whole gate popped open.’
Camille held up an old iron rod that Richard guessed had fallen from the bannisters on the veranda above.
‘Sir, if we think a crime’s being carried out, or is about to be carried out, we don’t need a warrant.’
‘And what crime do you think is about to be carried out? The occupants in there are all dead.’
‘That’s the thing, sir. We won’t know, unless we go inside. And I don’t have to remind you, a killer’s on the loose. So if Pierre’s been hiding here, there’ll be evidence through that door. We just have to go in and see for ourselves.’
Richard looked at his subordinate and for once he realised he agreed with her. This was too important to wait on a warrant.
‘Alright,’ Richard said. ‘Follow me.’
‘And I’ll just keep hold of this bar if that’s okay,’ Camille said, and Richard saw her grip the iron rod with both hands like a baseball bat.
‘Okay,’ he said as he stepped down into the dusty darkness.
Inside the crypt, the air was musty, and there was a strange smell. It was sort of sweet and sickly. Richard pulled his hankie out and put it over his nose. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he could see that the far wall was covered in little metal doors that were rusting and dented. He guessed that this was where the family coffins were placed.
There were also two truly ancient stone sarcophagi on the floor, one to each side of the room. They were very plain, very dusty, and the stone lids didn’t look like they fitted very well.
Looking around, Richard couldn’t see any evidence that the crypt had been used as a temporary camp for Pierre. There were no provisions, no sleeping bag, no candles – no anything, really. Just dust and dry leaves.
But there was something Richard could discern, just on the edge of his consciousness. What was it?
‘Shh,’ he said to Camille.
‘I wasn’t talking.’
‘Be quiet.’
Richard stood stock still and tried to open up all of his senses to his environment. What was it that he was responding to?
And then he realised.
There was a buzzing noise. Barely discernible, but it was there, he was sure of it.
‘Can you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’ Camille asked.
Richard took a few steps to the side of the room and stood still again.
Yes, he was right. There was a buzzing noise. So faint he could barely hear it, but it was definitely there.
Richard bent down a little – it felt like it was coming from the floor.
He was wrong.
The noise was coming from the stone coffin on the left-hand side of the room.
A stone coffin that Richard saw had a powdering of stone dust on the floor all around it. Almost as if someone had recently scraped the lid off and then put it back on again.
‘Camille, it’s coming from inside the sarcophagus.’
This got his partner’s attention.
‘There’s something in there. Here, we’ll need to get the lid off.’
‘We can’t do that!’
‘We have to. Come on, bring your iron rod with you. We can use it as a crowbar.’
‘Okay, you’re the boss.’
Camille went to the sarcophagus and managed to jam the iron rod under the rough edge of the lid.
Richard grabbed the other end of the lid and got ready to lift.
‘After
three?’ Camille asked.
Richard gulped. Despite his bravado, he was deeply unsettled opening an old sarcophagus like this. Especially seeing as there was clearly something inside that was making a noise. But then he realised something.
‘After three, or on three?’
‘What?’
‘Are we going one, two, three, and then we push on four, or do we push on three?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then push as soon as I say three.’
Richard nodded. He understood.
Camille briefly looked up to the heavens to give her the strength to deal with her boss, before bracing herself to push.
‘Okay. One . . . two . . .’
As Camille said three, a number of things happened that were going to haunt both Police officers for the rest of their lives.
Firstly, the stone lid scraped upward, but as it did so, a cloud of black flies swarmed into the air in a sudden crescendo of buzzing as though released by Satan himself. And secondly, before recoiling violently, both Camille and Richard saw that there was a dead body inside the sarcophagus.
A body that had been dead for some time.
But that wasn’t what would stay seared into the Police officers’ minds.
And nor was it the single bullet hole that penetrated the dead man’s forehead.
As Richard and Camille ran from the crypt into the brightness of day again, flies streaming out of the crypt door behind them, what had shaken them to their core was the dead man’s identity.
The dead man was Pierre Charpentier.
And he had a bright red ruby placed over each closed eye.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As Camille phoned Fidel and Dwayne and updated them on what they’d just found, Richard tried to keep his spiralling thoughts in check.
It was Pierre who’d been committing the murders, it had to be. And yet, here was his dead body, a bullet hole in his forehead, and bright red rubies placed over each eye. He was a victim, just as Conrad and Jimmy had been.
What was more, considering the swarm of flies that had erupted from the sarcophagus when they’d removed the lid, Richard guessed that Pierre had been dead for some time. In fact, seeing how Pierre hadn’t been seen since the day he left prison, it was even possible that he’d been the first victim.
But if Pierre had been the first victim, who on earth had been carrying out the murders? What did this all mean?
It meant, Richard considered, mentally berating himself, that he’d had the case upside down, inside out, and the wrong way round from the start.
‘Okay, sir,’ Camille said, heading over, ‘Dwayne and Fidel are on their way. And so is an ambulance.’
‘Camille, tell me I’m not mad,’ Richard said, ‘but was that really Pierre Charpentier’s body in there?’
‘It was, sir.’
‘With a bullet hole in his forehead?’
‘And fake rubies over his eyes, sir. I saw it as well.’
‘Then what’s he doing there? How can our prime suspect be dead? All the clues have always pointed to him! The fingerprint we found on the SIM card on Conrad’s boat. The fingerprint we found on the lump of concrete he smashed Conrad’s window with.’
‘And don’t forget the print we found on the ruby in Jimmy’s mouth after he was shot, sir.’
‘Exactly!’
Richard looked around for something to kick in frustration, but just as he was lining up an old tin can for a wallop, he realised something.
‘They were all fingerprints,’ he said.
‘Sir?’
‘Well, just go with me on this for a second, would you? We know that Pierre was alive when he left prison. Obviously. The taxi driver and Stefan Morgan both saw him. And the half-blind old woman next to his halfway house also said he was alive when he arrived. Again, obviously.’
‘And she also said that Pierre was visited by three men.’
‘That’s right. Father Luc, Conrad Gardiner and Jimmy Frost – assuming that Natasha and Father Luc are telling us the truth about the members of the original gang.’
‘And there’s no reason to believe they’d both lie to us about that.’
‘Exactly. But after Pierre argued with Conrad about where the money was – again, confirmed by our half-blind neighbour – the three gang members all left.’
‘Although one of them returned later on. In a different car.’
‘A grey Citroën that this person had stolen from the harbour area of Honoré.’
‘That’s right.’
‘So why did they steal the car?’
‘Maybe they didn’t own a car and needed one.’
‘Maybe. Or maybe they did own a car, but they just wanted to return to the halfway house as secretly as possible. Because of what they had planned for Pierre.’
‘You think the person who came back is the person who killed him?’
‘At the moment, I don’t want to commit to anything, but we know someone killed him. So, one of the three gang members comes back and picks Pierre up in the grey Citroën. Later on, we find it pushed off a road in the jungle and torched, but with a very specific pea shingle caught in its tyre tread. That means the grey Citroën must have stopped at the cemetery at some point, and seeing as the cemetery is halfway between the halfway house and where the car was abandoned, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that Pierre was taken straight to the cemetery from the halfway house.’
‘To be killed?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘But why here?’
‘Well, it perhaps suggests that this case has more to do with André Morgan’s death than we originally thought. Don’t you think? After all, it was Pierre who murdered André. And we’ve just found his dead body a matter of feet from André’s last resting place. It can’t be a coincidence. And I’ll tell you something else. The metal gate to the crypt hadn’t been forced, had it? That suggests that whoever took Pierre in there to kill him had a key.’
‘Does that make Stefan Morgan the killer? As he’s the only person with a key?’
‘I don’t see how that’s even possible, seeing as he was inside an MRI machine on a different island at the precise time that Conrad was killed. But I can’t help thinking that there’s maybe one other person who might be able to get a key to a locked crypt.’
‘And who would that be?’
‘A priest.’
‘You think Father Luc’s the killer?’
‘Look at the facts, Camille. Three of the original gang members are all dead, leaving only one of them still alive. Father Luc.’
‘But why would he want to kill the other three? He’s a priest. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘And yet, everything we’ve been thinking about the case has turned out to be wrong, hasn’t it? Come on,’ Richard said, starting to stride down the hill. ‘I think we need to bring Father Luc in for questioning.’
‘But sir, we can’t leave the crime scene.’
Richard turned on his heels.
‘Dwayne and Fidel will be here imminently. And I don’t think we have a moment to lose.’
Richard strode off again, and Camille realised she had no choice but to follow.
As it happened, Richard and Camille reached the Police jeep just as Dwayne and Fidel tore up on the Police motorbike, so Camille was able to fill them in on what they’d found and where they were now going.
‘Come on, Camille, we haven’t got all day!’ Richard called out from the window of the passenger side of the jeep. Camille left Dwayne and Fidel and got into the driver’s side. Then, with a spray of bleached pea shingle kicking up behind, she put the vehicle into gear and drove off with sirens blazing and lights flashing.
Camille took the main road to the other side of the island, where Father Luc had said his retreat was. As she drove, Richard fished out his notebook and looked up the exact address Father Luc had given them, and then located it on the maps app of his phone.
‘So, Camille,’ Richard said, ‘you think a man of the cloth isn’t capable of committing murder?’
‘Of course not, sir. But this is a man who’s dedicated his life to God for the last twenty years.’
‘Which is very much the nub of the matter, I think. Because you’re right, I agree. Father Luc has dedicated his life to the island since his days as a jewellery thief, but I think that’s the problem. I mean, think about it from his point of view. Conrad and Jimmy left Luc to get on with his life, so they’d obviously come to terms with his decision to take Holy Orders years ago. And Luc had visited Pierre as often as he could to keep him on side as well. So as long as Pierre came out of prison and got his money, all would have almost certainly continued to be well in the world for Luc. He could even continue visiting Pierre. After all, what could be more priestly than staying in touch with a poor soul he’d apparently befriended during his prison sentence?
‘But then Conrad had to spoil everything by revealing he’d spent all of Pierre’s money. At which point, Pierre threatened to kill them all. And I have to confess, it was here that I made the biggest mistake of all. Just because Pierre had issued this threat, I presumed that he’d been the one who’d then carried it out. But, logically, that doesn’t necessarily follow, does it? After all, whether or not Pierre makes his threat to kill the other gang members, that doesn’t stop someone else from also having the same plan, does it?’
‘I suppose not. But are you really saying it was Father Luc who hotwired the grey Citroën?’ Camille asked as she changed down a gear, floored the accelerator, overtook an old man on an ancient moped, and then swerved back into the lane just as a massive concrete truck bore down on them coming the other way.
Once Richard had recovered his poise – having grabbed for dear life onto the hand support above the window with both hands – he turned to address Camille again.
‘But he was a criminal twenty years ago, Camille, and remember what Dwayne said? The car that was stolen was at least twenty years old, and so a technique from twenty years ago had been used to hotwire it.’
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