Читать книгу Death Knocks Twice - Robert Thorogood, Роберт Торогуд - Страница 8

Detective Inspector Richard Poole was in a bad mood.

This wasn’t in fact all that unusual. Not to say that he was always in a bad mood, far from it. Sometimes, he simmered without quite boiling over. And at other times he felt too worn down by the whole shooting match of life to get a proper grump on. But today wasn’t one of those days. Today he was in a fury so complete that he was in grave danger of going ‘the full Rumpelstiltskin’.

As was so often the case, the object of Richard’s ire was Police Officer Dwayne Myers.

‘Then how about you try this one, Chief?’ Dwayne said as he stood by his desk holding up a brightly-coloured Hawaiian shirt.

There was a stifled laugh from the direction of Camille’s desk.

‘What’s that, Camille?’ Richard asked.

‘Nothing, sir,’ Camille said in her most grown-up voice. ‘But I think Dwayne’s right. That shirt would really suit you.’

‘It wouldn’t,’ Richard said.

‘I think it would, sir.’

‘It wouldn’t, Camille. I just said.’

‘But why not? It’s fun.’

‘Fun?’ Richard squeaked in a high falsetto that, frankly, surprised all of them. He coughed to put the gravel back into his voice. ‘You call that aberration of a shirt “fun”?’

‘I reckon so,’ Dwayne said. ‘And Camille’s right. You’d look great in it.’

‘Right, that’s it,’ Richard announced, standing up from behind his desk. Having commanded his team’s full attention, he shot the cuffs of his white shirt, did up the middle button on the jacket of his woollen suit and stepped out into the centre of the Police Station.

A trickle of sweat slipped down from Richard’s hairline, and he glanced at Police Officer Fidel Best’s desk, to check that he had gone back to his work. As the youngest member of the team, Fidel generally stayed out of the skirmishes and outright civil war that could sometimes engulf the office. Richard was pleased to see that Fidel was looking at his monitor in a way that suggested that he was indeed keeping himself to himself.

Richard pulled a hankie from his jacket pocket, wiped the sweat from his face and turned to face Dwayne.

‘I’m your commanding officer, and I’m telling you to put that…garment down. Right. Now.’

‘But seriously, Chief,’ Dwayne said. ‘I’m only trying to help. You have got to get into some lighter clothes. That woollen suit in this climate will be the death of you.’

Richard jutted out his jaw. He found his subordinates’ desire to get him into more casual clothes deeply irritating. Didn’t they appreciate just how very elegantly he was already dressed? And hadn’t they any idea just how hard it was keeping his black brogues polished to a parade ground sheen when most of the island was covered in fine grade aggregate – or, as the tourist brochures were so intent on calling it, ‘sand’?

‘I’ve worn a suit every day of my working life, and I’m not going to stop now just because I’ve had the misfortune of being posted to the bloody Caribbean.’

Dwayne exhaled.

‘Okay, Chief.’

‘Thank you.’

Dwayne’s face brightened as he grabbed up another shirt from the pile of clothes on his desk.

‘Then how about you try this one?’ he asked, before realising that the shirt he was now holding was a billowing confection of gold satin with silver tassels.

Even Dwayne was surprised.

‘Okay, maybe not this one. But how about this?’ he said, putting the disco shirt down and picking up a far more acceptable shirt in a sky blue colour.

‘Dwayne,’ Richard said with the rattle of death in his voice. ‘That shirt doesn’t even have sleeves.’

It was true. It wasn’t so much a shirt as a vest with ideas above its station.

Richard strode over to Dwayne, grabbed the shirt from his hands and dashed it back onto the pile of clothes on the desk.

‘Dwayne. Let me be clear. Hell would have to freeze over before I’d wear any of these clothes.’

‘Although, sir,’ Fidel said, finally joining the conversation. ‘If hell did freeze over, you wouldn’t want to be wearing shorts and Hawaiian shirts anyway.’

Richard turned and looked at Fidel to see if he was winding him up. It was clear from his helpful smile that he wasn’t.

‘Tell you what,’ Dwayne said. ‘The guy on the market said there was no rush getting these back to him. He was having problems selling them anyway. So how about I just put them in the back office? You can look at them another time, when you’ve got a moment. What do you reckon to that?’

As though Richard had just agreed with his plan, Dwayne picked up the pile of shirts and shorts from his desk and went through the bead curtain that led to the cells.

Richard finally let out a breath that he hadn’t even known he’d been holding. At least that was that problem dealt with.

‘Good morning, team,’ a mellifluous voice announced, and the island’s Commissioner of Police, Selwyn Patterson, sauntered into the room, his hands thrust deep into the trouser pockets of his rumpled khaki uniform.

‘Good morning, sir,’ Richard said, knowing that the Commissioner’s arrival was never good news.

Selwyn removed his peaked cap, held it delicately between forefinger and thumb, and gave the office a once over.

‘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 whole 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.’

Richard looked about himself. It wasn’t much to go on, was it? An old tramp had been spying on Lucy from the jungle. And when Lucy had tried to confront him, he’d run away.

There was a sudden bang from nearby – followed by a flock of parrots squawking into the air above the jungle.

‘What was that?’ Lucy asked.

‘That sounded like a gunshot,’ Camille said to her boss.

‘What?’ Lucy said, panicking.

‘Quiet!’ Richard ordered, trying to work out where the sound had come from. Like Camille, he’d already guessed that the sharp retort had been from a gun of some kind. But where had it come from?

There was a second bang, and, without thinking, both Camille and Richard started running towards the noise – Richard this time pushing through the vines and vegetation without any thought for his personal safety – or that of his suit – and they soon burst out of the jungle and back into the blinding sunlight of the cobbled yard. There was no-one nearby. So where had the gunshot come from?

Lucy joined them only moments later.

‘What do you mean, that was a gunshot?’ she asked.

‘Stay here,’ Richard said, before turning to Camille. ‘There might still be a shooter on the premises. We need to check the farm buildings.’

Camille marvelled at how a man so personally timid could be so apparently brave when there was clear procedure to follow, but Richard was already heading off to investigate the nearest farm building.

‘Saint-Marie Police!’ he called out before entering the open door.

Over the next few minutes, Richard and Camille announced themselves before entering the nearby farm buildings one by one, but there was no sign of anyone who might have fired the two gunshots, let alone any sign of what the gunshots might have been aimed at.

Richard reconvened with Camille in the centre of the cobbled yard.

‘It was definitely a gunshot, sir.’

‘Two gunshots, Camille. I agree’.

Lucy came over to join the Police, and Richard turned to her.

‘Do you have any idea why we just heard gunshots?’

‘No,’ Lucy said, but even as she said this, Richard and Camille could see the young woman’s gaze slide towards one of the few buildings they hadn’t yet searched. It was a long stone barn – a bit like a stables – with five evenly-spaced openings along the side, although Richard could see that the middle opening had a thick wooden door built into it. And while there was a gabled roof of red tiles running the length of the building, the area of roof directly above the central wooden door rose high into the air in a cone-shape that was shorn off at the top in a way that reminded Richard of the main body of a windmill. Or perhaps – more accurately – a Kentish oast house. But it was as Richard was looking up at the cone structure in the middle of the building that he realised he could see puffs of smoke or steam gently rising out of the top of it.

‘What’s that building over there?’ he asked Lucy.

‘It’s the old drying shed,’ she said.

‘Let’s check it out,’ Camille said, and started jogging towards the building.

Richard and Lucy followed, and by the time they arrived at the building, Camille was already trying the handle to the heavy wooden door, but it wasn’t budging.

‘It’s locked,’ she said.

‘Is there a key to this room?’ Richard asked Lucy.

‘I don’t think so. There’s just an iron bolt you slide across on the inside.’

Richard looked at the door and could see that it was ancient – maybe over a hundred years old – and it had wide black iron hinges holding it in place. It was the sort of door you’d expect to find on a safe-room in an old castle. Entirely solid, entirely impregnable, and with a locking mechanism that could only be accessed from the inside.

‘Saint-Marie Police!’ Richard called out. ‘Open up this door!’

There was no answer. As Richard saw Camille go to investigate through one of the open doorways nearby, he turned to face Lucy.

‘Is there another way in?’

Lucy shook her head. ‘No, it’s just an old room we’ve converted into a shower room. This is the only way in.’

Richard stepped back from the door and looked up at the raised area of roof. Steam was now very definitely billowing out of the cone. So he took a deep breath, steadied himself a moment, and then ran for the door and shoulder-barged it.

His left shoulder exploded in pain, and he recoiled in a whimper.

‘Bloody hell, that hurt.’

Then, as he rubbed his shoulder to get some feeling back into it, he saw Camille re-appear from the nearby doorway, but now she was holding a massive sledgehammer. Where the hell had she got that from?

‘Is there any other way in?’ he asked her.

‘Not that I can see, but I found this,’ she said.

‘A sledgehammer?’

‘We need the strongest person here to smash that door in.’

‘And you think that’s me?’

‘As it happens, no, but you’d be offended if I didn’t ask you first. So please be as quick as you can, sir, we need to get in there.’

Camille shifted the weight of the sledgehammer over to a now speechless Richard and went to stand with Lucy.

Richard now realised that he was wearing a beautiful woollen suit while also holding a super-heavy weapon of destruction. The sort of super-heavy weapon he’d always seen manly men use. The tiniest hint of a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

He turned to face the door and took a moment to steady himself. And then, knowing that he was now holding hundreds of pounds of power in his hands, Richard opened his mind to all of the resentments he felt at being posted to the tropics. How he couldn’t get a decent pint of bitter, a slice of bread, or even a proper cup of tea. How he’d found a black scorpion lurking in one of his slippers that morning. Then Richard thought about how bloody hot it was at all times, and how desperately he craved just one morning of crisp winter, with mist hanging in the air, and frosted grass crunching underfoot. And, as he gave in to his normally-suppressed feelings of frustration at the almost infinite vicissitudes of his life, Richard felt a powerful wave of emotion rise up inside him and, before he even knew he was doing it, he was swinging the sledgehammer through the air and thumping it dead-eyed into the door just beneath the handle with a thunderous crack.

Richard exhaled. Oh, that had felt good. But had it worked?

Richard saw the door swing back an inch on its hinges, and he could see that the frame had splintered where the bolt had torn free of its housing.

Richard caught a look of wonder on Camille’s face, but she was quick to hide it when she realised that her boss was looking at her, and she pushed past him to enter the shower room. Richard dropped the sledgehammer to the ground as Lucy entered the room after Camille, and then he followed .

As he stepped into the room, Richard was almost instantly swallowed by a fog of hot steam. Remembering that Lucy had called this building ‘the shower room’, Richard guessed – and could also hear – that a powerful shower was turned on somewhere nearby.

Richard wafted the door open and shut a few times to help clear the steam, and he was soon able to see that the room was empty – although, now he was looking, he could see that there was an object slumped on the floor to the left hand side of the room.

The object looked like a human body.

A human body that wasn’t moving.

As Camille went to inspect the body, Richard was pleased to see that Lucy had kept her distance and was standing on the other side of the room.

‘Please don’t move or touch anything,’ he told Lucy, indicating that she was to stay exactly where she was, and he went over to the shower that was built into the side of the wall, and which was thumping hot water down onto the mosaic-tiled floor to the side of the body. As Richard twisted the dial on the wall to turn the shower off, he saw that the body belonged to a man.

‘He’s dead, sir,’ Camille said.

Richard saw that the dead man looked to be in his sixties. He was wearing old jeans, a cheap grey shirt that was frayed at the collar and seams, and a tatty old pair of trainers that had once been white but were now grey and falling apart. Richard also saw that the man had matted grey hair that went down to his shoulders, and a nicotine-stained beard that was similarly straggly.

But what was perhaps most noticeable was the handgun that Richard could see was loosely held in the dead man’s right hand where it lay on the floor. And seeing as there was no-one else in the room when they’d smashed the door in, Richard realised that it was pretty obvious what had happened here. The man – whoever he was – had come into the shower room, bolted the door from the inside, and then committed suicide by shooting himself with the handgun.

Before Richard rolled the body over to reveal the dead man’s face, he briefly noticed that the man lay on the floor directly between the shower and the drain that was set into the centre of the mosaic-tiled room. And although the water from the shower had run down to the old man on its way to the metal-grilled hole in the floor, his body had formed something of a barrier, and the water had gone around him on either side on its way to the drain. In other words, Richard realised, the shower hadn’t been running long enough to really drench the man’s clothes and start seeping underneath the body as it ran away. The area of floor that lay directly between the body and the drain was still bone dry.

This briefly puzzled Richard. After all, it made sense that the man would have turned on the shower before committing suicide. It was a well-known – if somewhat macabre – fact that most suicides were carried out with some consideration for those who were about to discover the body. This was why so many gun suicides happened in bathrooms. The person about to commit suicide knows that bathrooms are altogether easier to clean of blood than any of the other rooms in a house. And the fact that this man had turned on the shower and positioned himself by the drain before he shot himself suggested that this suicide was no different. The man had wanted to make sure that whatever blood he created with his death would be sluiced away afterwards.

But if the shower had been turned on before the man had taken his own life, the tiles should have been wet all the way between the shower and the drain. After all, while it was plausible that the body became a barrier to the water after it had collapsed to the floor, it didn’t seem possible that no water at all had made it to the drain before the man had killed himself. And yet, the tiles between the dead body and the drain were entirely dry. Maybe there was some kind of timer on the shower that had turned on after the man had killed himself, Richard wondered to himself. Either way, Richard filed away the puzzle of whether the shower had been turned on ante or post mortem for later consideration.

It was time to turn the body over and discover the man’s identity.

Richard took hold of the body’s shoulders, and Camille looked over at Lucy.

‘I think you should leave.’

‘I want to see his face.’

‘But we don’t know how damaged the body is.’

‘I don’t care,’ Lucy said desperately. ‘I have to see.’

Camille looked at Richard. He nodded. It was okay by him.

With a grunt of effort – cadavers were always surprisingly heavy – Richard turned the body over, but he and Camille needn’t have worried about gore. There was only the smallest of blooms of blood seeping onto the man’s grey shirt above the heart area. But, once again, Richard noticed that although the back of the body was wet with water, the clothes to the front of the corpse – where the body had been touching the floor – were still bone dry. It was looking increasingly as though the man was dead and on the tiles before the shower had been turned on.

As for the body itself, Richard could see that the man’s face was hollow-cheeked and craggy-lined from age. And although his skin was greyish-white, his cheeks and nose were a purple starburst of burst veins. He had clearly been a drinker. Adding to the impression of an old man who didn’t look after himself was an unruly pair of grey eyebrows and a long beard that seemed almost yellow rather than white, and which was very distinctly nicotine-stained around the mouth – from the cigarettes, Richard could smell from the man’s clothes, that he smoked.

‘It’s him,’ Lucy said simply.

‘This is the man you saw stalking you this morning?’

‘It is.’

‘And who you then chased into the jungle?’

‘That’s right,’ Lucy said, but Richard could see that something was making her frown.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. It’s definitely him. It’s the man I chased into the jungle.’

Lucy was still troubled by something.

‘What’s wrong?’ Richard asked.

Lucy kept on looking at the man on the ground.

‘Ms Beaumont, what is it?’

‘It’s just, I don’t know who he is.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, I only got the briefest of glimpses of him before now. But I always reckoned I’d maybe recognise him if I ever got up close.’

‘And you don’t?’

‘I don’t,’ Lucy said. ‘In fact, I’ve no idea who that man is at all.’

Richard looked at Camille.

And then he looked from Camille back to Lucy.

‘Then who the hell is he?’