Murder in the Caribbean

by Robert Thorogood

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Busy?’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ Richard said, knowing that he and his team were nothing of the sort. In truth, things had been frustratingly quiet for the last few weeks. The only incident that had required any proper policing was a dispute between two neighbours, one of whom owned a cockerel that had taken to crowing every night from midnight to dawn. The dispute had threatened to escalate into violence until Dwayne had taken the offending rooster into custody, killed it, cooked it, eaten it, and then pronounced the case closed. Such was island life sometimes.

  ‘Then I’m sorry,’ Selwyn said, looking nothing of the sort, ‘but I’ll be adding to your burdens.’

  ‘What have you got, sir?’

  ‘A very important case.’

  ‘Of course,’ Richard said, reaching into his inside jacket pocket and pulling out his notebook and silver propelling pencil. He flicked the notebook open to a fresh page and waited in anticipation.

  ‘You see,’ Selwyn said, ‘I was at a charity rum tasting yesterday afternoon, and I got into conversation with the man who owns the Fort Royal Hotel.’ Richard knew the hotel well, having once solved the murder of a bride there. ‘And he says his hotel guests are being scammed by a ruthless criminal with no concern for the consequences of his actions.’

  ‘They are, sir?’ Richard said, his interest piqued. Finally, was this going to be a case worthy of his and his team’s talents?

  ‘Apparently so.’

  ‘And what’s this criminal doing?’

  ‘Well, he’s set up a roadside stall and he’s selling bottles of bootleg rum.’

  Richard’s pencil remained hovering above his notebook.

  ‘He is, sir?’

  ‘It’s affecting sales in the bar at the Fort Royal.’

  ‘And. . . that’s it, is it?’

  Selwyn pursed his lips.

  ‘We rely on tourists on this island, Inspector.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘And the tax revenue from duty being paid on legal alcoholic beverages.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And above all else, we still make rum on Saint-Marie. I won’t have the island’s reputation as the best rum producer in the world tarnished by this man and his dangerous, third-rate product.’

  ‘Well, sir, we’ll look into it,’ Richard said, somewhat disappointed. When was he going to get a decent criminal case?

  There was a ‘ting’ from the front desk of the office, and Richard and his team turned and saw a woman with her hand hovering over the little brass bell on the counter top.

  ‘You’ve got to help me!’ she said in desperation.

  Knowing that his team would have to attend to the young woman, Selwyn put his peaked cap back onto his head and smiled for Richard’s benefit.

  ‘I’ll expect a report on the bootleg rum seller,’ he said, before sauntering out of the office.

  ‘Yes, of course, sir,’ Richard said, already heading over to the woman. She was about thirty years old, had pale skin, straight black hair and was wearing an old black cotton dress that was now faded to grey. But what Richard noticed most was how jittery she was. She looked like a startled deer who could bolt at any second.

  ‘Can I help you, madam?’

  ‘You’ve got to,’ the woman said, her voice breaking as she spoke. ‘There’s someone stalking me. Up at my house. And I’ve just seen him and chased him. But he got away. You’ve got to come with me!’

  ‘Someone’s been stalking you?’ Richard said, unable to keep a note of excitement out of his voice. This was more like it. A proper case.

  ‘And he could still be there,’ the woman said in desperation. ‘We’ve got to get back at once. See if we can catch him.’

  ‘Of course. Do you live nearby?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Do you live nearby?’ Richard repeated. ‘Have you come to the station on foot?’

  The woman looked at Richard in surprise.

  ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ she asked.

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘You’re Lucy Beaumont, aren’t you?’ Camille said as she joined Richard at the desk.

  Richard realised he’d heard of the Beaumont family when he’d first arrived on Saint-Marie, but he’d never really listened to what he’d been told. All he could remember was that they were some kind of ancient British family who’d been on the island for generations, and they ran a coffee plantation half way up the south-western slopes of Mount Esmée, the island’s active volcano. Oh yes, Richard realised, that’s why he’d never been interested in finding out any more about the Beaumonts. They lived on an active volcano.

  But if this young woman was being stalked, then it was their duty to investigate, volcano or no volcano. Richard turned to Dwayne.

  ‘Dwayne. Take Fidel to the Fort Royal hotel. See what you can find out about the Commissioner’s bootleg rum seller, would you?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Dwayne said.

  ‘Which leaves you and me, Camille,’ Richard said. ‘And I suggest we accompany Ms Beaumont back to her house and find out exactly what’s going on.’

  After Richard had first arrived on Saint-Marie, it had taken him quite a few months to get his head around the fact that there was a live volcano on the southern half of the island. Admittedly, Mount Esmée was such a huge geological feature that it could be seen from everywhere on the island, but it seemed so improbable to Richard that people would share an island with an active volcano that he’d presumed that, at some level, it wasn’t real. Even when he heard about the Great Eruption of 1979, which had apparently shot lava hundreds of feet into the air and sent a terrifying pyroclastic flow down the side of the mountain at a hundred miles an hour – wiping out dozens of homes and killing 34 people – he remained in denial.

  Now, as Camille drove the Police jeep up the tight hairpin bends towards the Beaumont Plantation, Richard found himself suffering an existential crisis. He was sitting in the sweltering heat of a vehicle that he knew hadn’t been serviced for over a decade while a Frenchwoman was driving it ever-higher up a real life volcano. What had gone wrong with his life?

  ‘Watch out!’ Richard shouted as an oncoming motorbike took a wide line around a tight bend in the road.

  ‘Will you please calm down,’ Camille said.

  Richard could sort of see Camille’s point. After all, she was an excellent driver and he knew it probably didn’t help that he kept shouting ‘Brake! Brake! Brake!’ as they approached every corner, so he instead decided to grab hold of the dashboard and not let go.

  He was still holding onto the dashboard when, ten minutes of stomach-sloshing fear later, Camille brought the Police jeep to a juddering halt by a row of wooden farm buildings half way up the mountain. Richard took a moment to calm himself. It seemed even hotter – if that were possible – this high up the mountain. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze, and all he could hear was the ticking of the jeep’s diesel engine as it started to cool down. Richard looked through the windscreen and saw that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Typical, he thought to himself. He was about to get roasted by the scorching heat again. With a weary sigh, he opened the passenger-side door and stepped out of the jeep.

  It started raining. And not just any rain, either. Richard found himself standing in a full-on torrential downpour. He looked up at the sky, but couldn’t see anything close to a cloud either directly above his head or even nearby. He was always prepared though, so he went to the boot of the jeep, grabbed his emergency umbrella and put it up with a satisfying whomp. There, he thought to himself, that was better.

  It stopped raining.

  Only now did Camille step out of the jeep, and Richard had a brief out of body experience where he could see that his partner, Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey – who was wearing dark green cotton trousers and a short-sleeved checked shirt – was now standing next to a pasty-faced middle-aged Englishman who was wearing a black suit, black brogues and was holding a funeral umbrella in the
bright sunshine.

  ‘It’s not raining, sir,’ Camille said.

  ‘I know that, Camille,’ Richard said, trying to keep his dignity intact as he lowered his umbrella and returned it to the boot of the jeep. There still wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but Richard knew that he hadn’t imagined the brief tropical downpour. His woollen suit was damp with water, and he could see that the dry mud he was standing on was now covered in little craters where the raindrops had drilled hard into the ground. When would the tropics ever make any sense to him?

  ‘Okay, sir, so what do you know about the Beaumont family?’ Camille asked her boss as they watched Lucy park her car a little way away.

  ‘Not much,’ Richard replied, trying to ignore the fact that his suit was now steaming. ‘Other than the fact that they’re very rich.’

  ‘Very rich and extremely secretive. Sir, could I say something?’

  ‘Of course. What is it?’

  ‘You seem to be on fire.’

  ‘It’s not fire, Camille. It’s steam.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You’re steaming, sir.’

  ‘It’s the rain in my suit. The sun’s making it evaporate, okay? It’s just basic physics.’

  ‘Of course it is, sir.’

  Ignoring the smirk on his partner’s face, Richard turned and looked at the plantation buildings as Lucy headed over. There were old barns, workshops, and other structures all made from the same grey stone, and they were all arranged around an ancient cobblestoned yard. In fact, if it wasn’t for the palm trees and jungle pressing in on all sides, Richard could imagine the farm buildings fitting just as well into a village scene back in Dorset. Oh, and the active volcano looming above the plantation, Richard noted to himself – that was the other clue that he wasn’t on a farm in Dorset.

  As Lucy reached the Police, Richard took charge.

  ‘We’d better not waste any time,’ he said. ‘So can you tell us what you saw and when?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ she said, nervously. ‘But I don’t really know where to start.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Camille said, knowing that if her boss was all clanking metal cogs, she had to be the oil. ‘Just tell us what happened in your own words.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it started a couple of weeks ago,’ Lucy said. ‘And I didn’t know it was happening at first. If you see what I mean. It was just a feeling I got. That someone was watching me. You know, that feeling where your skin prickles?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Camille asked.

  ‘You know, when your skin creeps because you think someone’s looking at you? Well, I had that feeling a couple of weeks ago. When I was down here. But I couldn’t work out if anyone was actually looking at me. It was just this sensation I had that I was being watched. So I told myself I must be imagining it – even though it’s happened quite a few times since then. Mostly when I’m down by these buildings. Or out in the coffee fields.’ Here, Lucy indicated the land as it sloped down the mountain from the courtyard, and Richard could see that the whole hillside was covered in neat rows of densely-packed bushes, each about ten feet high.

  ‘Oh, are those coffee bushes?’ Richard asked.

  ‘They are.’

  ‘Where the coffee berries grow?’

  ‘We call them cherries, but yes, that’s where they grow.’

  ‘I see,’ Richard said, none the wiser. ‘Sorry, why do you call them cherries?’

  ‘Because the fruit of the coffee plant is red like a cherry. Don’t you know how coffee is made?’ Lucy asked, surprised.

  ‘Well, I know it comes in jars,’ Richard said before realising that this was probably the wrong thing to say.

  ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ Camille said, trying to get the interview back on track. ‘But you were telling us that you felt you were being watched when you were down by these farm buildings?’

  ‘That’s right. And a couple of days ago I thought I’d got proof. I was just getting into my car when I had the feeling again – that someone was spying on me – and when I spun round, I caught this quick flash as whoever it was ducked behind that wall over there.’ Here, Lucy pointed at a stone wall that separated two buildings. ‘I was shocked, I can tell you. But I made myself go over and look behind the wall. If I’m honest, I was really scared. But what I saw was kind of the worst thing possible.’

  ‘Why?’ Camille asked. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Whoever it was had gone. They’d just vanished into thin air. It was really spooky. Because I was sure I’d seen someone, but they were no longer there. And after that moment, I started to doubt my own shadow. It even occurred to me that maybe I’d been seeing things. But then this morning, I finally saw him. The guy who’s been stalking me. Plain as day. Let me show you.’ Lucy led them off to a clump of vegetation that pressed up against the side of one of the old buildings. ‘I was just coming back from the fields when I looked over and saw a man standing to the side of this bush here.’

  ‘And it was definitely a man?’ Richard asked, eagerly pulling his notebook and pencil from his inside pocket.

  ‘Oh yes. This old guy with a beard and straggly grey hair down to his shoulders. He looked like a tramp if I’m honest.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something like 10am. Or just after.’

  ‘What colour was his skin?’

  ‘I think white.’

  ‘Did you recognise him?’

  ‘No. But I only saw him for a split second. Because the moment he realised that I’d seen him, he ran back into the jungle just beyond the bush here. And then I did a pretty stupid thing. I chased after him. Look.’ Lucy went over and indicated a couple of thin branches on the edge of the jungle. They were snapped back, and Richard could see the white sap seeping from the exposed wood inside.

  ‘You followed him into the jungle?’

  ‘I did.’

  Richard could see how anxious Lucy was.

  ‘And did you catch him?’

  ‘No. He had a head start on me, and the jungle’s pretty thick around here, so about ten steps in, I lost him altogether. That’s when I came back out here, got straight into my car and came down to the Police station to report the incident. Because, whoever he is, it’s got to stop.’

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘this man could be anywhere by now?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Well, let’s see about that,’ Camille said, and before Richard could stop her, his partner had pushed through the broken branches and started to wade into the thick jungle.

  ‘Camille, what are you doing?’ Richard asked, unable to keep the panic out of his voice.

  ‘Police work,’ she called back, at which point Richard saw her stop dead in her tracks. Oh God, he thought to himself, what if a giant spider had just jumped at Camille’s face? Fortunately for Richard, before he had to pretend that he was about to come to his partner’s aid, Camille headed off at a new bearing, and he realised that she’d only paused to check that she was on the right track before continuing on her way.

  As the dense vegetation finally swallowed Camille, Lucy turned to Richard.

  ‘We’d better follow her,’ she said, before pushing into the jungle and soon disappearing herself.

  Richard looked about himself in a panic. While he felt just about okay-ish letting one woman go into the jungle on her own – especially seeing as she was a trained Police Officer – he felt he couldn’t very well let two women vanish into the unknown while he stayed back here on the fringes, even though that was precisely where he wanted to stay. So, taking a deep breath to steady his internal shriek of terror, Richard stepped into the jungle.

  Within seconds, he was lost. The vines and vegetation pressed into his face, the fetid smell of the jungle was revolting – it seemed to be a pungent mix of rotting fruit and decaying animals – which, when Richard thought about it, was very possibly because the jungle was full of rotting fruit and decaying animals. He felt wh
ole rivers of sweat run down his back. Where had the women got to? Richard heard some branches snapping up ahead of him, and he made himself push through the sticky vegetation another ten or so paces until he saw the figures of Camille and Lucy through a thick screen of vines. Before he lost his nerve entirely, Richard covered the remaining distance like a mad marionette – his legs and arms lifting as high and wide as possible – until he burst through the wall of vines into a little clearing.

  As Richard dashed the burrs, berries and sticky godknows-whats from his jacket and trouser legs, he could see Camille looking directly at him and smiling broadly. He gritted his teeth. As far as Richard was concerned, it wasn’t his fault he didn’t function well in a tropical jungle, was it? His last posting had been in Croydon, for heaven’s sake.

  ‘You okay, sir?’ Camille asked, pretending to be concerned.

  ‘Yes. I’m fine,’ he said.

  ‘Then I think you need to see this. I’ve found something.’

  Richard went over and saw that Camille and Lucy had found an area of ground that was littered with empty water bottles, paper bags that had once contained fresh food, crushed cigarette packets and an empty bottle of cheap vodka.

  ‘Someone’s been here,’ Camille said, indicating the food.

  Richard saw a column of bright red fire ants – each seemingly the size of his thumb – marching up to and engulfing a bag that had once contained a pastry of some sort, and he took a couple of steps back.

  ‘Although I don’t see any evidence of anyone sleeping out here,’ Camille said, looking about herself. ‘No tent’s been pitched. Or bivouac. Or rain cover of any sort.’

  ‘I see,’ Richard said, lifting his feet up one by one to check that an army of fire ants weren’t already marching up his legs. ‘So tell me, Ms Beaumont, is there anything else you noticed about the man you saw earlier today?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ve told you everything I can remember. He was definitely a man. And he was definitely old. I didn’t really notice his clothes, but he had this beard – sort of whitish, sort of grey – and long-flowing grey hair. That’s all I saw. And I had no idea that he had any kind of camp in the jungle here.’