Роберт Торогуд – Death Knocks Twice (страница 11)
‘That’s because I did.’
‘But how can that have even been possible?’ Richard all but shouted into the mouthpiece of his phone. ‘I mean, don’t you have security precautions in place to stop this sort of thing?’
‘Don’t use that tone with me, Inspector.’
‘Then what tone should I be using? Would you rather I sent you a big bunch of flowers with a card wishing you “condolences at this difficult time”?’
The Head of Security didn’t dignify Richard’s comment with a response, and Richard found himself exhaling heavily. He’d long ago come to understand – if not accept – that solving cases on a tiny tropical island was always going to be fraught with difficulties. For example, Saint-Marie was too small to have a local Coroner’s office where autopsies could be carried out. And there were no Ballistics or Forensics labs either. If Richard ever needed evidence processed by any kind of forensics lab, he generally had to send it to the far larger nearby island of Guadeloupe, and they rarely prioritised Saint-Marie’s needs. It’s why Richard insisted on as much of the crime scene evidence being dealt with in the office by hand. At least that way, he could have some control over how quickly it was all processed.
But for every ‘typical’ problem that Richard had to endure in his Police work, he was always staggered by just how many ‘atypical’ problems he also had to face. Like discovering that he was being thwarted in delivering justice for a murder victim because of an omnivorous iguana.
‘Look,’ Richard said, ‘far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, but if you’ve got an iguana in your cable ducts, then surely the first step is to remove it? By fair means or foul,’ he added darkly.
‘Oh don’t worry,’ the man said brightly, ‘we got the iguana out after only a couple of days. It’s just that while it was in there, it went pretty much where it liked, and that’s when it ate through the network cables. We’re still trying to work out exactly which ones. And once we do, we’ll have our computers back up and running in no time.’
‘So are you even recording who arrives and leaves the island at the moment?’
‘Of course. But we’ve been forced back into utilising the old system of writing every arrival’s name down in a ledger by hand, and I don’t need to tell you that this has stretched our border control resources almost to breaking point.’ Richard knew that when the man said ‘border control resources’ he was referring to a woman called Janice. ‘But I might be able to get some time this weekend to work through the books and pull the names of solo British travellers for you.’
Richard saw his opening at last. ‘Then how about I come up to the airport right now and go through the lists myself?’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’
‘Why not?’
‘Janice is using the book.’
Richard took a deep breath to steady himself. Then, as time passed, he realised it hadn’t made him feel any better. In fact, it was making him feel very much worse – and significantly hot around the collar – and then he realised that he hadn’t breathed out yet, so he quickly expelled the air from his lungs to stop himself from fainting.
‘Are you alright?’ the Head of Security asked.
‘Of course I’m fine,’ Richard said, still feeling a touch light-headed. ‘But you’re saying there’s no way I can get the names I need any quicker?’
‘Got it in one,’ the Head of Security said, glad that Richard was finally ‘on side’. ‘And I promise you, I’ll get you the names at the beginning of next week. Or maybe a few days later – depending on what I’m up to this weekend.’
‘Well, let’s hope you’re not too busy’, Richard said before thanking the man for his time and slamming the phone onto its cradle.
Only then did Richard look up and see that his entire team looking at him.
‘What’s wrong with you lot?’ he said tetchily.
‘Your face went very red, sir,’ Fidel said.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to take your suit jacket off?’ Dwayne asked.
‘Camille!’ Richard barked, not wanting to get sidetracked again by his team’s desire to get him into cooler clothes. ‘How are you getting on with identifying our victim?’
‘Well, sir,’ Camille said, ‘no-one’s contacted us or any of the other government agencies since this morning to report anyone missing.’
‘What about hospitals?’
‘None of them has lost any of their patients.’
‘Then what about hotels? He must have been staying somewhere at nights.’
‘Agreed, sir. But there are no reports of missing guests from hotels, either.’
‘So who the hell is he?’ Richard asked, his anger driving him up out of his seat. ‘I mean, come on, everyone! Theories?’
‘Well, sir,’ Fidel said, ‘he didn’t look too wealthy, did he?’
‘I’d agree with that.’
‘And the empty bottle of vodka we found in the clearing was pretty cheap.’
‘Yes. That’s true.’
‘And, without wishing to be indelicate, sir, he didn’t seem in the best condition, did he? Although, I suppose he’d been spending most of his time in a jungle for the last few weeks.’
‘Assuming Lucy Beaumont was telling us the truth,’ Camille said. ‘After all, she’s the only member of the family who ever saw the man.’
‘Yes,’ Richard agreed. ‘Assuming she was telling the truth. All of which rather begs the question: what exactly was our victim attempting to achieve up at the Plantation? Was it Lucy he was spying on, or was he up to something else, and it’s just one of those things that only Lucy saw him? Actually,’ Richard said, a new thought occurring to him. ‘While we’re on the subject of Lucy, can you fill me in a bit on the family? What do we know about them?’
There was an awkward pause while Camille, Fidel and Dwayne all looked at each other, not sure what to say.
‘Oh? Is there a problem?’
‘Well, Chief, they’re not a very well-liked family on the island,’ Dwayne said.
‘And why’s that?’
‘None of the old families who used slaves are much liked, sir.’
This comment caught Richard by surprise. He wasn’t so naive as to be unaware of both Britain and France’s appalling history of using African slaves to work on their plantations in the Caribbean. However, since Britain had abolished the slave trade in 1807, and slavery itself in 1833 – over 180 years ago – he’d not noticed much in the way of current tensions around the subject.
In fact, as a white Brit who was a guest on Saint-Marie, one of the first things Richard had done when he’d arrived was go to the library in Honoré and ask to borrow a book that would teach him the history of the island, with particular reference to how Saint-Marie had been treated by the British government. It seemed the least he could do as a Brit visiting a former colony. Richard was unsurprised – but nonetheless still chastened – to read about how deprivations, abuse and what could only be called outright kidnap and murder had been the basis of so many families’ wealth back in the UK during this period of over one hundred years.
As he looked at his team now and saw how grave and focused they were, he realised how wrong he’d been. The tensions were still there. It’s just that they were beneath the surface.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Well, Chief,’ Dwayne said, ‘there are so few families left who go back to the bad old days. But those few who are still here, and are still running the same businesses now as they were then, well, they’ve got blood on their hands.’
‘Yes, I can see that,’ Richard said.
Dwayne briefly smiled at his boss’s words. For all of Richard’s many faults – and there was no doubting that he had
‘So you’re saying that the Beaumonts still have enemies on the island?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Dwayne said. ‘But although there’s plenty of islanders who work on their plantation when it comes to harvest time, there’s very few who are happy working there full time.’
‘Yes. We saw that today, didn’t we? There was no-one else up at the plantation apart from the family.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So what do we know about the members of the family?’
Here, Camille got up some handwritten notes from the mess of her desk.
‘Okay, so Hugh Beaumont is fifty years old, is solely in charge of the plantation, and from the few enquiries I’ve made, he’s considered a pretty fair boss. Unlike his father William, who he took over from when he died back in 2001.’
‘You can say that again,’ Dwayne said. ‘William was a tyrant.’
‘He was?’
‘Sure was, Chief. The man was bad news. After Mount Esmée erupted back in 1979 and the coffee fields were wiped out, he drove his workforce to breaking point getting them to clear away the ash, rework the soil and replant the coffee plants. And all along he promised them a serious bonus if they got the fields ready again by the next growing season. When they’d completed the task – and in time – he gave them their bonus, which turned out to be a 10-kilogram bag of coffee each. It was a scandal at the time.’