Роберт Торогуд – Murder in the Caribbean (страница 7)
‘How did that get there?’
‘I’ve looked at it, and it’s pretty neat. I think someone slit it open using a sharp knife.’
‘But why would they want to do that?’
‘Well, a tear in the fuel line like this isn’t enough to let much petrol leak, but it’s enough to let fumes from the petrol get out.’
‘Oh,’ Richard said, understanding finally coming to him. ‘Petrol fumes that then build up inside the enclosed space.’
‘Exactly, sir. And then, the tiniest spark and the whole thing goes up.’
‘But how did you find that rip?’ Richard asked, looking at all the dozens of feet of pipes that ran around the inside of the boat’s hull.
‘Well, sir, I was carrying out a visual inspection of the wreck when I found this.’
Fidel walked around the inside of the boat and pulled down a mess of what looked like electric cables that were tied together with parcel tape. But as Richard looked more closely, he saw that there was something else that the parcel tape was holding in place.
It was a mobile phone.
What was a mobile phone doing taped to the inside of an engine compartment?
As Richard looked again, he could see that it was one of the old-fashioned plastic phones that had no touchscreen, it just had buttons and the smallest of screens for the minimum of text.
But there were also two thin electric cables emerging from the housing of the phone – and the plastic at the end of each cable was stripped back to reveal copper wires. Richard took a step back, the sheer enormity of what Fidel had uncovered hitting him.
‘Good grief,’ he said.
Someone had sliced into the fuel pipes of the boat so that the enclosed engine compartment would fill with petrol fumes. But this person had also taped a doctored phone inside the same engine compartment. When the boat was heading out to sea, the compartment filled with petrol vapour, and this person had then rung the number of the mobile phone. The incoming call had turned on the circuit that was supposed to drive the motor that made the phone vibrate, but it had been re-routed to a couple of cables that led outside the casing. And once the current was flowing in these two little cables, the electricity had arced and caused the tiniest of sparks.
The spark had caused the petrol to explode, and the boat had blown apart.
Despite the heat, a shiver ran down Richard’s spine.
Fidel was right. Conrad hadn’t died in some tragic accident at sea.
He’d been murdered in cold blood.
Of the many things that irritated Richard about the tropical island of Saint-Marie, perhaps the one that infuriated him the most was just how small it was. It’s not that he had an objection to its size
For starters there were no forensic or pathology labs on Saint-Marie, so whenever Richard needed to process any kind of physical evidence, it had to be sent ‘off island’ to Guadeloupe. But the island’s size also meant he only had access to two Police vehicles. One of these was a battered old Mark II Land Rover that was painted mustard yellow and had the crest of the Saint-Marie Police Force on the bonnet and sides. For all Richard publicly grumbled about the vehicle, he couldn’t help but feel a grudging affinity with it. Like him it was British, hadn’t even been remotely designed for tropical climes, and yet here it was, chugging along and doing the best it could in very testing circumstances.
But if Richard tolerated the Police Land Rover, the same couldn’t be said for the other Police vehicle, a sputtering Harley Davidson motorbike that had an attached, almost-certainly illegal sidecar. Only Dwayne was qualified to drive the infernal machine, and Richard only travelled in it under sufferance. After all, as he’d tell anyone who asked, if the answer is ever ‘get on a motorbike driven by Dwayne’, you’ve very definitely been asking the wrong question.
However, the most irksome aspect of island living, as far as Richard was concerned, was that the distances were often so small that the quickest way to get somewhere was to walk. And while Richard loved the idea of walking in theory – particularly on a crisp winter’s day, the grass stiff on the ground with frost – it was quite a different matter yomping through the blistering heat of the tropics wearing a thick woollen suit.
Sweating heavily, Richard arrived at Mrs Gardiner’s house, and found Camille inspecting the earth beneath the smashed window. Having updated her that he and Fidel now believed Conrad had been murdered, Richard asked what Camille had so far been able to find.
‘Not much of anything, sir,’ she said. ‘There are no footprints out here. And no cigarette butts or anything else that suggests anyone was here. And the window’s not overlooked by any of the neighbours, so they didn’t see anything, either.’
‘Did they hear the moment the window was smashed?’
‘I’ve asked whoever I can find who was nearby at the time, and no-one saw or heard anything suspicious.’
‘I see,’ Richard said, disappointed. ‘Then what about the window frame?’
Camille explained that she’d just finished inspecting the outside frame, and it was so rough and weather-beaten it wasn’t possible to lift any fingerprints from it.
‘Then what about the break-in? Has Mrs Gardiner got any theories?’
‘None. Although I asked her to have a proper look at everything that was thrown on the floor, and she said she’s not sure, but she thinks nothing’s been stolen.’
‘In which case, the break-in was all about leaving the ruby.’
‘Which is kind of crazy, sir.’
‘I’d agree with you there. Because, why bother?’
‘It’s a message, isn’t it?’
‘That’s what I’m thinking. It’s got no intrinsic value, so it must be symbolic somehow. Or a warning of some kind.’
‘To Natasha?’
‘It’s a possibility. Because it wasn’t a message for Conrad, was it? I mean, with him dead, he’s not going to receive it, is he? Look, let’s talk to Natasha again. We need to tell her the explosion wasn’t an accident, and I want to press her a bit more about this ruby.’
Richard and Camille went into the house, but Natasha was nowhere to be found. However, the French windows were open, and they could see that she was standing on the beach down by the sea.
‘Oh, bloody hell,’ Richard said to himself as he stepped out of the house and onto the bright white sand. He hated walking on beaches in his brogues, and he still couldn’t quite believe that it was an occupational hazard he had to endure on an almost daily basis.
‘Mrs Gardiner?’ Camille asked as they approached, but Natasha didn’t turn round. She just kept staring out at the distant horizon.
Richard cleared his throat to get the woman’s attention.
‘If he’s in the water, he’ll come in here, won’t he?’ Natasha said, almost to herself. ‘I mean, this is the nearest beach.’
‘It is,’ Camille said, kindly. ‘But there have been developments. It looks like maybe your husband’s boat didn’t explode by accident.’
Natasha’s brow furrowed, but she didn’t say anything.
‘It looks like it was set off by an IED,’ Richard said. ‘An improvised explosive device.’
This finally registered with her.
‘I’m, sorry . . .?’
‘Now, I understand this is a terrible shock,’ Camille said before her boss could be any more insensitive, ‘but if someone was behind this terrible event, then every passing hour will make it harder for us to catch them.’
‘You’re saying it
‘I’m sorry.’
‘But why would anyone want to do that to Conrad?’
‘That’s what we’d like to know.’
Natasha took a moment to compose herself, and then she said, ‘No, it’s not possible. It’s monstrous.’
She then headed back to her house. After a quick glance of surprise at each other, Richard and Camille followed her across the sand.
‘You don’t think anyone could have wanted to harm your husband?’ Camille asked.
‘No way.’
‘Even though it looks as though someone did?’
‘But who’d want to harm him?’ Natasha said, turning and looking at the Police officers with what Richard realised was a fair amount of desperation. ‘Everyone likes Conrad, that’s the whole point of him. He’s popular.’
‘Do you mind me asking, what exactly does he do?’
‘Well, it’s like I told you before. He does this and that.’
‘But what sort of “this and that”?’
‘He used to be a record producer. With his own recording studio and everything. He’s always been a champion of island music.’
‘He