‘No, sir. There wasn’t a single fingerprint on it.’
‘Now, that is interesting, isn’t it?’
‘You’re right, sir. Whoever put it there made sure there was no way of tracing it back to them,’ Camille said, and then she headed off.
‘And yet, it must have been bought from somewhere on the island. Dwayne, can you ring all the shops where you think it would be possible to buy a fake ruby. I want to know where it came from.’
‘Okay.’
‘Which brings me to you, Fidel. What have you been able to glean from the mobile phone detonator you recovered from the boat?’
‘Well, sir,’ Fidel said, leading them over to his desk where he’d separated the mobile phone from the wires, and had also removed its back cover and battery. ‘I dusted the tape and outer casing for fingerprints. There aren’t any.’
‘Like the ruby,’ Richard said. ‘Which, again, makes sense. Our killer’s got to be careful.’
‘But I also removed the battery and casing and dusted them all over as well. You know, just on the off chance I could find a fingerprint or trapped hair or something.’
‘Of course. But nothing?’
‘Got it in one, sir. Nothing. Or so I thought. Because I then decided to dust the SIM card before I tried to work out what the number was and where it had been bought from.’
Richard was impressed.
‘You dusted the SIM card for prints?’
‘You’ve got to be thorough, sir,’ Fidel said, believing that Richard was chastising him. ‘And I found a partial fingerprint on the contact side of the SIM card.’
‘You did?’
‘Better than that, I was able to lift it. And the thing is, it doesn’t match any of the exclusion prints we took for Conrad Gardiner. Or his wife, for that matter.’
‘The print from the SIM card belongs to some unknown third party?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Have you uploaded the print to the CPCN?’ Richard asked eagerly.
The Caribbean Police Computer Network was one of the few saving graces of working on Saint-Marie as far as Richard was concerned. It was a database of information that unified all of the Police forces in the Caribbean, and also linked to data held by the FBI and Europol.
‘I uploaded it as soon as I could,’ Fidel said, ‘and I’ve set it looking for a match.’
‘Very good work. Very good work indeed. Although, did you by any chance learn anything from the information on the SIM card?’
‘Nothing that I think will help us. Because it’s got its IME number, so I ran it through the computer. It’s a Saint-Marie number, but it’s a prepaid phone that was sold just over a year ago.’
‘Has the shop that sold it kept any details?’
‘They haven’t. In fact, it’s that dodgy phone shop down by the harbour. Just by the booth where you buy tickets for the glass-bottomed boat.’
‘And they won’t tell us who they sold it to?’
‘No way.’
‘Can’t we get a warrant and force them?’
‘When I spoke to them, they said they’ve lost their records. And anyway, the phone was sold for cash, there’d be no way of tracing who they sold it to.’
‘So the phone is a dead end?’
‘Not necessarily, sir. Seeing as it was used to set off the bomb, it must have received a phonecall at 10am this morning. I’ve put in a request with the phone company. They’re going to let me know what calls were made to or from that SIM card as soon as they can.’
‘Good stuff, Fidel,’ Richard said. ‘Then what do we know about Conrad Gardiner? His wife Natasha said he was a record producer or something back in the day.’
Dwayne laughed.
‘"Or something" more like, Chief.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean, he played at being a hotshot record producer, but he had no taste. So he’d scout whatever talent he could find. You know, a young band, or a guy who did his own thing and reckoned he needed a great producer to take him to the next level. Anyway, Conrad would convince these people to sign to his label. He’d then cut a record in a studio he had built, and then he’d announce the band by throwing a party. And they were great parties, I can tell you. But the bands were always the worst, and the records never sold.’
‘Then what made him go into producing?’
‘No idea.’
‘And how did he carry on if he was so unsuccessful?’
‘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.
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