‘You mean, building a studio, and then launching band after band and never making any money?’
‘It doesn’t seem like a very sustainable business model.’
‘It wasn’t. But then, the rumour was he used mob money to set up his studio.’
‘He had links to gangsters?’
‘That’s what people used to say. That the money he had wasn’t clean. And I can tell you, Conrad used to hang out with some pretty shady people back in the day.’
‘He was a gangster himself?’
‘I don’t know I’d go that far. But his friends were. No doubt about it. He was the sort of guy who, when he builds a studio, you don’t ask where he got the money from.’
‘So what’s he been doing since he gave up record producing?’
‘He’s like a lot of men on the island. He does what he can to get by. You know, seasonal work when the tourists are around, and who knows what the rest of the time.’
‘But he’s dodgy?’
‘He was dodgy. I don’t know about recently. I’ve not heard anything.’
‘But if he’s got that sort of background, it could explain why someone wanted him dead.’
‘It could, although he was never a big fish. So whatever he’s been up to, it’s been pretty low grade stuff for a number of years.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘Sure. Enough to say hello to, anyway. I liked him.’
Richard was slightly wrongfooted.
‘Despite him being a criminal, Dwayne?’
‘Of course,’ Dwayne said easily. ‘But there are worse crimes than being a criminal.’
At this pronouncement, Richard threw his hands up in the air and returned to inspect the information on the whiteboard.
‘Then what of the wife, Natasha?’ he called back to the room. ‘Anyone have anything on her?’
‘Not me,’ Dwayne said.
‘She said she went to church, didn’t she? Fidel, do you know Natasha Gardiner?’
Fidel, as a good family man, attended Sunday services at Honoré church every week.
‘I don’t think so, sir,’ Fidel said. ‘If she goes to church, it’s not the church here in Honoré.’
‘That’s interesting. She goes to church, but not to her local church.’
Richard went to his desk to check his notes. He found what he was looking for almost at once.
‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘She told us she goes to Father Luc Durant’s church. Anyone know where that is?’
Richard’s team didn’t, so Richard decided to do some digging for himself. It didn’t take him long to discover that Father Luc was a Catholic priest who ran a church on the south side of the island, but there didn’t seem to be anything else of note about him or Natasha’s role in his church. So Richard tried to see what he could dig up on Natasha on the Police Computer Network, but didn’t get anywhere. She had no presence as far as he could tell, and he couldn’t find any specific references to her on any of the government databases or on the local newspaper website, either.
She seemed to be entirely without interest.
And yet, Richard knew that she hadn’t told them the whole truth about the ruby.
In lieu of having any character references for Natasha, Richard decided to ring her church and spoke to a woman who explained that she was Father Luc’s secretary. When pressed, she was able to reveal that Natasha came to church every week, she was heavily involved in all of their charity endeavours, and there was no way at all that she would participate in anything ‘dodgy’. She was an upstanding member of the community.
This wasn’t exactly what Richard wanted to hear, so next he got the number for Morgane Pichou at the tourist office, seeing as she’d been the person to tell Natasha that there’d been an explosion in the harbour. Unfortunately for Richard, when he spoke to Morgane, she made it clear that there was no way Natasha could ever have been mixed up in her husband’s disappearance. According to Morgane, although Conrad was a bit of a layabout, Natasha loved him deeply and had done so ever since they’d met decades before.
It was all hugely frustrating for Richard, and his mood didn’t improve when Camille returned.
‘Sir,’ she said as she sat down at her desk, ‘I’m convinced there’s something Mrs Gardiner’s not telling us.’
‘Go on,’ Richard said.
‘I mean, she was hit hard when I told her that we now think her husband was missing presumed dead. She was distraught. And I believed her. But I got the feeling that she was also guilty somehow. Or maybe that’s too strong. But something was gnawing at her.’
‘You think she could be involved in his death?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Because the two people I’ve spoken to say she couldn’t have been. So why’s she acting so strange?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
Fidel called over from his desk.
‘Oh okay, sir, I think you need to see this. The computer’s got a match for the fingerprint I lifted from the SIM card.’
‘It has?’ Richard said as he headed over to Fidel’s desk.
‘It sure has. The fingerprint belongs to a man called Pierre Charpentier.’
‘And who’s he when he’s at home?’
‘Well, this is where it gets interesting. His prints are on the system because, twenty years ago, he committed murder during a robbery in London. So he’s been serving a life sentence. First in Holloway prison in London. And then, five years ago, he was transferred to the Central Prison on Saint-Marie.’
‘Hang on,’ Richard said, trying to process what Fidel had just said. ‘You’re saying that the print on the SIM card you found on Conrad’s boat belongs to a man who’s in prison for murder?’
‘What’s more, he committed his murder all those years ago while he and his gang were robbing a jewellery store in London.’
This got the team’s attention, and now it was Camille and Dwayne’s turn to head over to Fidel’s desk.
‘He knocked off a jewellery store?’ Dwayne asked.
‘He sure did. And now we find his fingerprint on the detonator of a bomb, and a big fat fake jewel left at the victim’s house. It’s all connected, isn’t it?’
‘But hold on,’ Richard said. ‘How could Pierre whoever-he-is have killed Conrad at all, seeing as he’s currently in prison?’
‘That’s the thing, sir. He isn’t in prison.’
‘But you just said he was.’
‘That’s the whole point. He’s been in prison for the last twenty years. But he was released three days ago.’
The team looked at each other, absolutely stunned.
Richard was the first to recover.
‘Then I suggest we find this Pierre Charpentier as a matter of some urgency,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’
It’s amazing what you learn in prison. Who knew you could make an improvised bomb out of an old phone and a few wires? And it was so easy to set up. Conrad had no security on his boat. The hatch to his engine compartment wasn’t even