Murder in the Caribbean. Robert Thorogood

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СКАЧАТЬ she’d left her house following the explosion. After all, if it had happened at any time before, she’d surely have heard the glass smashing. But what sort of person would break in to Conrad’s house after his boat had just exploded? Were the two facts connected, or was it just a coincidence?

      ‘Mrs Gardiner, could you follow me?’ Richard asked, before leading Natasha and Camille into the corridor where Conrad’s room was. As he pushed the door open, Natasha gave a little gasp and her hand shot to her mouth.

      ‘Is this a surprise to you?’

      ‘Of course,’ Natasha said, deeply shocked. ‘I mean, Conrad’s not the tidiest person, but he’s not this bad. Everything’s been thrown onto the floor. Hasn’t it? And the window’s been smashed.’

      ‘I think it was smashed with that piece of concrete there,’ Richard said, indicating the chunk in the middle of the room. ‘Which is why I was asking if you’d heard the sound of any glass smashing today. I think it would have made a considerable noise when that rock came in through the window.’

      ‘Of course. I didn’t hear any smashing this morning.’

      ‘Can you see if anything’s been stolen?’

      Natasha scanned the room from the doorway.

      ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I wouldn’t say Conrad had anything worth stealing.’

      ‘Then can you tell me if this belongs to him?’ Richard said, entering the room and going over to the table where the bright red ruby was sitting.

      ‘What is it?’

      ‘It looks like a ruby.’

      Natasha’s expression of concern briefly froze, and Camille and Richard exchanged a glance – both knowing that the ruby had just registered with her.

      ‘A what?’ Natasha asked.

      ‘A ruby,’ he replied.

      Natasha didn’t speak for a few moments.

      ‘Does it mean anything to you?’ Camille asked as kindly as she could.

      Natasha seemed to come to a decision.

      ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘But you’re saying it’s a real ruby?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ Richard said. ‘I doubt it. It would be worth millions.’

      ‘Then I’ve no idea how that got there,’ Natasha said with finality.

      ‘Do you think it belongs to your husband?’ Camille asked.

      ‘Oh no. Where would he get something like that from?’

      Richard bent down to give the jewel a good inspection. It lay on its side and was cut so that it was fat at one end but sharpened to a point at the other. Richard could see tiny air bubbles trapped inside, making it clear that it really was just a trinket made of plastic.

      ‘So you’re saying this jewel doesn’t belong to your husband, and doesn’t belong to you, either?’

      ‘That’s it exactly,’ Natasha said, happy with Richard’s assessment. ‘I’ve never seen it before in my life.’

      ‘Then I wonder who put it there?’

      ‘I’ve no idea.’

      ‘Don’t you? Only you seemed to recognise it.’

      ‘I didn’t,’ Natasha said, and Richard could see how sincere she was. ‘I was just surprised. I couldn’t work out what it was doing there.’

      ‘Which is very much the question, isn’t it? Can you imagine why anyone might have wanted to smash that window there, break in to your house, and then place a paste red ruby on this desk here?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Are you sure about that?’

      ‘Oh yes. I’ve no idea what it can possibly mean.’

      Natasha seemed to have got control of whatever doubts she’d previously had, and Richard could see that he wouldn’t be getting any more from her for the moment.

      ‘Okay, we’ll have to treat this room as a secondary crime scene, so we’ll need to have our officers process it. And we’ll need to take your fingerprints as well, Mrs Gardiner. Just so we can exclude them from whatever we find in this room, of course. And can I ask where we might be able to find sample fingerprints from your husband?’

      Natasha looked into the room and indicated a spilled bottle of rum on the floor that was lying next to an old metal tumbler. ‘That’s Conrad’s bottle. And his glass. His fingerprints should be on both of them.’

      Richard thanked Natasha for her time and told her they’d update her with news of her husband the moment they had any. In the meantime, she was to wait until one of his officers returned to take her fingerprints and start processing the room.

      ‘So what do you think of Mrs Gardiner?’ Camille asked as they walked the short distance back to the Police station.

      ‘I think she’s in shock.’

      ‘But the ruby didn’t surprise her entirely, did it?’

      ‘I’d agree with you there, Camille.’

      ‘So why did she deny all knowledge of it?’

      ‘Indeed,’ Richard said as he stopped at the bottom of the slope that led up to the Police station. As he did so, he saw two people emerge from the station.

      ‘Oh no, no, no, no, no, no,’ Richard said, and started racing up the steps two at a time.

      Camille had no idea what Richard was doing, but, looking up, she saw that Dwayne was standing on the veranda and was chatting easily to a very attractive blonde woman. Camille smiled to herself. So that’s what had upset her boss.

      As for Richard, he was a man on a mission as he strode onto the veranda of the Police station and found Dwayne talking to Amy, the woman who had answered the door that morning wearing only a towel.

      ‘Officer Myers, what the hell is going on?’

      ‘Chief?’ Dwayne said, startled by his boss’s sudden arrival.

      ‘What are you doing here?’

      ‘How do you mean, “here”? I work here.’

      ‘But I left you strict instructions to get the remains of the boat to shore. So how come you’ve been inside the station with a civilian?’

      ‘Whoa,’ Dwayne said, holding up his hands. ‘Back up there a moment. Fidel and me have got the boat to shore. But we need to process the blood we found on it. And lift whatever prints we can find. So I came back to the station to pick up the Crime Scene Kit. And when I got here – only minutes ago, I can tell you – I found Amy waiting for me.’

      ‘You СКАЧАТЬ