A Meditation on Murder

by Robert Thorogood

  There was a clatter from next door, a voice shouted ‘Chief!’—and then Dwayne bombed into the room. He saw the homebrew chemistry lab and his eyes widened in wonder. ‘Wow.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Sorry. I went up to the house, found Fidel searching some room underneath it—man, but that’s a tough job you’ve given him.’

  ‘A job you might have offered to help him with.’

  ‘And not tell you what I’ve just found out?’ Dwayne looked at his boss, delight in his eyes. ‘Because I’m telling you, I think I’ve worked out who our killer is.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Who is it?’ Camille asked.

  ‘Not in front of a witness,’ Richard said. ‘Dominic, would you go next door and shut the door behind you as you go?’

  Dominic tried to look affronted as he indicated his homebrew chemistry lab. ‘But what if you try to plant evidence on me?’

  ‘Just go next door, would you?’ Richard said, exasperated. Really, Dominic was like a surly teenager sometimes, he thought to himself.

  Once Dominic had finally left the room and closed the door behind himself, Dwayne went in close to Richard and Camille, keeping his voice low as he filled them in on his breakthrough.

  ‘Well, Chief, you were right to make me look into Ben Jenkins’s time in the UK before he went out to Portugal,’ Dwayne said. ‘Because it turns out that he’s been in prison. And he wasn’t locked up for just any crime either, he was convicted of Wounding With Intent back in 1996. But get this, because this is where it gets good: he served the second year of his sentence in 1997, and guess where he was banged up?’

  ‘Don’t tell me it was Brixton Prison,’ Richard said.

  Dwayne beamed. ‘Got it in one.’

  Camille was amazed. ‘Why’s that important?’

  Richard turned to her. ‘Because in 1997, Aslan Kennedy—or David Kennedy as he was then—was serving the last year of his prison sentence. Also, by a startling coincidence, in Brixton Prison.’

  Camille looked at Dwayne in wonder. ‘You’re saying Ben Jenkins and David Kennedy were both in the same prison at the same time?’

  ‘But it gets even better,’ Dwayne said. ‘Because, for that last year David Kennedy was in prison, he and Ben Jenkins shared a cell together.’

  ‘You’re kidding me!’

  ‘Then we’ve got to go and interview him at once.’

  ‘And that’s where we have a problem. Because I’ve just been up to his room and the door was already open. It’s completely empty. None of his things were there. So I went downstairs and spoke to the receptionist who said that Ben Jenkins had settled his bill and checked out half an hour ago.’

  ‘He did?’ Camille asked.

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘The receptionist didn’t know. He didn’t even order a taxi, he just paid his bill and walked out of the front door with his suitcase. That’s the last she saw of him. But she did say this: he was in such a rush to settle up and go, he didn’t even turn around as he left when she offered to get him a taxi.’

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ Richard said. ‘We’ve still got his passport, haven’t we?’ All of the witnesses had had to hand in their passports immediately after the murder to make sure they didn’t try and leave the island.

  ‘Locked up safe and sound in the safe at the station.’

  ‘Then where does he think he’s going?’ Richard asked. ‘Dwayne, get on to the ports and airports—and hire boats—whatever you can find both legal and less legal, I want Ben Jenkins’s photo circulated and fast. That man is not getting off Saint-Marie, okay?’

  Dwayne looked at his boss and saluted.

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Chapter Ten

  While Fidel continued to search for drawing pins and burnt notebooks in the hotel cellar, and with Richard photographing all of the ingredients in Dominic’s chemistry lab, Dwayne and Camille tried to track down Ben Jenkins. For his part, Dwayne went out on the road to the airport and nearby harbours to get the word out: if anyone saw a man answering to Ben Jenkins’s description trying to get off the island, they were to call the police. As for Camille, she went back to the station to see if she could uncover any more leads that could explain why Ben Jenkins had suddenly done a runner.

  ‘So what have you got?’ a hot and bothered Richard asked Camille as he returned from The Retreat later that afternoon with a smartphone full of photos of the ingredient labels from Dominic’s lab.

  Camille explained that according to the court records Dwayne had been able to dig up, Ben had had a disagreement with a local garage owner back in 1995. Ben had said that he’d been sold a second-hand car that had had its odometer tampered with, but the local garage owner denied it. When Ben discovered that the car had in fact been clocked, he went to the garage owner’s house and beat him viciously with a baseball bat.

  Ben had already been done for criminal damage twice before—he clearly had a history of violent behaviour—and when the judge came to convict him, she gave him six years.

  He was imprisoned in Brixton Prison, just as David Kennedy had been, and it was in Ben’s second year that the two men shared a cell. At the end of that year, David was released—and one year later, so was Ben.

  But everything else they’d learnt about Ben still seemed to stack up. He hadn’t got into trouble with the authorities in Portugal since moving there after he left prison; and Camille couldn’t find any record of Ben having been to Saint-Marie before.

  ‘Then what about contact between Ben and Aslan?’

  Richard guessed that it must have been the killer who’d persuaded Aslan to invite all the Ponzi victims to the island at the same time. Therefore, if Ben was the killer, there should have been evidence somewhere that he had been in touch with Aslan at some point over the last few months.

  Camille said, ‘I’ve gone through Ben’s mobile phone records again. And his landline in Portugal. He’s made no phone calls to Saint-Marie and received no phone calls from Saint-Marie. And I’ve been through The Retreat’s phone records and, as far as I can see, there have been no phone calls to any kind of Portuguese number.’

  ‘Then what about emails?’

  ‘Fidel’s already been through Aslan’s laptop. There was no email trail from any of the witnesses, let alone Ben Jenkins.’

  ‘Then what if Aslan’s deleted the email trail?’

  ‘Then maybe it’s still on his service provider’s server …?’

  Richard considered what his next steps should be. Trying to get the local service providers to release their customers’ emails was nigh-on impossible, even with a warrant. However, it was worth a try.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You keep going through whatever phone records you can find. Anything strange—or you can’t explain—presume it’s a lead and track it down. I’ll see what I can get from Aslan’s service provider.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  For the next few hours, Richard and Camille tried to find the proof that Ben had indeed been in touch with Aslan, but to no avail. Aslan’s email service provider wasn’t interested in helping Richard, and Camille continued to find no evidence of Saint-Marie numbers that Ben had dialled or received from Portugal, either from the records of his mobile phone or his landline in Vilamoura.

  It was one of those sultry afternoons when the clouds seemed to gather thick in the sky and press down, presaging torrential rain, and Richard had difficulty staying focused on his task. As he sat at his desk, marking out the passing minutes with each drop of sweat that rolled down his forehead, his thoughts began to drift into a soupy dream state. He thought about his lizard—about how much he had to get rid of him—how awful it had been bumping into the Commissioner—but, above all, his thoughts kept slipping back to images of Julia Higgins. Of her in her cut-off jeans and tight lime-green T-shirt in the cells. Of the look in her eyes when she went to hug him outside on the verandah. And how her golden hair seemed almost to be on
fire when the sun caught it. Julia really was a delight, wasn’t she? Richard found himself thinking idly, sweat now tightening his shirt collar to his neck. Unlike his partner, Camille, who, while by all accounts—and by all known biometrics—was beautiful, was too stroppy. That was her problem. Too feisty.

  ‘Too bloody rude,’ Richard mumbled out loud, completely unaware of the look of surprise Camille shot him. ‘Pretty, mind. So pretty.’

  Richard slowly toppled off his chair and fell to the floor.

  Camille was over to her boss in a second. ‘Sir!’

  Richard lay in a crumpled heap, his chair spilt off to the side. Camille loosened the tie around her boss’s neck before grabbing his collar and pulling it open, Richard’s top two shirt buttons pinging off as she did so.

  Richard was out cold, and Camille grabbed up an old case file from his desk and started wafting air at his face.

  ‘Sir, wake up! You fainted. Sir! Richard!’

  At the sound of his name, Richard’s eyes fluttered briefly and he began to come round.

  ‘Don’t worry, you just fainted. It’s your suit, sir. You shouldn’t be wearing a woollen suit in this weather.’

  Richard’s eyes opened properly and, without moving, he looked up at Camille’s face. He then flicked a furtive glance at the floor and realised that he was lying down.

  ‘Not again?’ he said.

  ‘I’m afraid so. I’ll get you some water.’

  While Camille got her boss some cold water from the fridge, Richard got onto his hands and knees, his head still spinning. As he paused a moment to regather his composure, Richard had a memory of saying something out loud just before he fainted. He had a sixth sense that it was something to do with Camille, but what was it? After a moment longer of thought, Richard decided that it probably wasn’t best to analyse any of the last few minutes of his life in any detail, and, grabbing onto the corner of his desk, he pulled himself back to his feet.

  He swayed a bit, but he knew he was going to be okay.

  ‘This bloody heat,’ he said.

  Camille came over with a glass of water and handed it over. Richard drank it down greedily.

  ‘But you can’t do anything about the weather, sir. You can do something about your clothes.’

  ‘And go around looking like a tramp, Camille?’ Richard said, pre-emptively irked. Now he was thinking about it, he realised that he was pretty sure he had indeed said something about Camille just before he fainted, but what was it? Oh well, it was gone now.

  Richard righted his chair and sat down in it again.

  ‘Thank you for saving my life,’ Camille reminded her boss to say.

  Richard was trying to do up the buttons of his shirt as she said this.

  ‘You’ve broken the buttons on my shirt,’ he said.

  ‘I’m so grateful,’ Camille said as her next suggestion of what her boss might say, but Richard was back up and running.

  ‘And how are you getting on with Ben Jenkins’s phone records?’

  ‘Hey, it’s no problem,’ Camille said, going back to her desk so she could continue going through the witness’s phone records. ‘But no luck so far.’

  ‘Then keep on looking,’ Richard said.

  It was only a minute or so later—as Richard was once again checking to see if he’d had an email from Aslan’s service provider—that it occurred to him that he’d maybe not thanked Camille for helping him out when he fainted. This made Richard feel bad. He should have thanked her. But the problem was, the moment had passed, hadn’t it? It would be weird to say thank you now, all these minutes later.

  A very hot and ash-smeared Fidel trudged back into the station holding a small cardboard evidence box.

  ‘Ah, Fidel!’ Richard said, glad of the interruption. ‘How did you get on in the hotel’s basement?’

  Fidel put the box onto his desk before turning to address his boss.

  ‘Well, sir, I don’t know what to think.’

  Richard resisted the urge to point out that this was no change, then.

  Fidel explained that he’d searched the basement for any further clues and hadn’t been able to find anything that seemed to be important. Not even another drawing pin—either by the router rack or anywhere else.

  However, he’d been able to scrape through the ash of the furnace using an old metal colander Rianka had lent him. And the thing is, the contents of the furnace had of course been almost entirely white ash, but Fidel had found some charred paper.

  Just as Richard had said he might.

  There were six pieces in total—each one no bigger than a raffle ticket—they were almost entirely burnt—but they had clearly once been scraps of white paper.

  ‘Do you think it’s the remnants of the notebook that was taken from the noticeboard?’ Richard asked eagerly.

  ‘I don’t know, sir, but I wasn’t able to find the metal ringbinder that should have been there as well. If these pages came from the missing notebook.’

  Camille said, ‘Then maybe the killer burnt the paper while disposing of the metal ringbinder elsewhere?’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ Fidel said, not entirely convinced.

  ‘Either way,’ Richard said going to the evidence box, ‘it’s interesting that you found bits of burnt white paper in the furnace, considering how we were looking for bits of burnt white paper.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Were you able to make out any handwriting on them at all?’

  Fidel explained that he’d not looked too carefully as he knew how fragile burnt paper was. Instead, he’d secured each piece in between separate sheets of non-toxic plastic—and then book-ended them with pieces of card he’d then wrapped in gaffer tape. The pieces were now ready either for unwrapping and processing in the station, or for sending straight on to the labs on Guadeloupe.

  Richard knew a technique for developing photographic imprints to reveal what was written on burnt paper, but it was hugely time consuming and there were too many pieces of paper here for him to process them all.

  ‘Fidel, can you please get these sent to the labs? I want to know if anything was written on them before they caught fire.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Oh,’ Camille said from her desk, and Richard and Fidel looked over.

  ‘Problem?’ Richard asked.

  Camille took a moment before answering.

  ‘I don’t know. But I’ve maybe found something in the phone records after all. Not that it’s got anything to do with Ben Jenkins.’

  ‘It doesn’t?’ Richard said, going over to join Camille at her desk.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Camille said. ‘But look here: we know Ann Sellars rang Aslan six weeks ago. We’ve got her records here and we can see she dialled a Saint-Marie number.’ Here, Camille got out Ann’s phone records and indicated the number that Ann had dialled in the Caribbean. She then got out The Retreat’s phone records and showed the record of the call arriving. ‘And when we look at The Retreat’s phone bill, we can see the call coming in here, and it’s a +44115 number.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Richard said. ‘Ann and Paul live in Nottingham. 0115 is the dialling code from Nottingham.’

  ‘But that’s the thing, sir,’ Camille said. ‘Because it’s not the only time that The Retreat received a phone call from Nottingham. In fact, it was called three other times from a Nottingham number, and each of the phone calls lasted between ten and twenty minutes.’ Camille indicated The Retreat’s records and Richard could see she was right. Someone else in Nottingham had rung The Retreat the day after Ann had rung, and the call had lasted twelve minutes. Then, a week later, there had been another call from the same number that was eighteen minutes long. And the last of the three calls had only been three weeks ago. It had been twenty minutes long.

  Richard said, ‘Good work, Camille. So who’s been ringing Aslan from Nottingham?’

  ‘There’s an easy way to find out.’ Camille picked up her office phone and dialled the number l
isted in The Retreat’s records. ‘I’m calling the number.’

  Before Richard could stop her, Camille held up her finger for silence in the office.

  ‘It’s ringing …’ she said, and then—after a few more moments of waiting—Richard heard someone pick up the phone at the other end.

  ‘Hello,’ Camille said. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey of the Saint-Marie Police Force.’

  Camille listened for a moment, and then frowned, puzzled.

  ‘What do you mean, you haven’t informed the police yet?’ she said into the phone.

  Camille jammed the phone against the crook of her shoulder. As she grabbed up a scrap of paper, Richard handed her his precious retractable pencil—Camille smiled a quick thanks—and then she started making notes as she listened to the person on the other end of the phone.

  ‘Really?’ she said. And then, ‘No way. You’re kidding me …’

  Camille went on to explain that she was just doing background checks in relation to another crime, took the details of the person she’d been talking to, and hung up.

  ‘What was that about?’ Fidel asked, eagerly.

  Camille was still puzzled as she checked over her notes. She looked up at Richard.

  ‘That was a nice woman called Veronica Gibbs. She’s the manager of the pharmacy where Paul Sellars works.’

  Richard said, ‘That was Paul’s pharmacy?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘So why’s he been phoning Aslan from his place of work?’

  ‘And why so many times?’ Fidel added.

  ‘That’s not what Veronica wanted to tell me,’ Camille said. ‘Because, according to her, she’s been thinking of ringing the police for some time.’

  ‘She has?’

  ‘She’s long suspected that Paul’s been stealing drugs from the store room.’

  Richard could tell from the look in Camille’s eyes that this wasn’t the end of the story.

  ‘And not just any drug,’ Camille said. ‘It’s something called Xyrax.’

  ‘But what’s that?’ Fidel said.

  ‘Well, let’s look it up and find out,’ Camille said.

  Camille typed ‘Xyrax’ into a search engine on her computer and got a result the moment she hit the return key.