Robert Thorogood - Death Knocks Twice

‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but there’s something I think you need to see.’

‘There is?’ Richard said.

‘Yes, sir. Although can I ask the family a question first?’

‘Of course,’ Richard said.

Fidel turned to the room and was suddenly awkward.

‘Well, it’s just…you see, I was wondering if any of the family own any kind of three-wheeled van at all? Or it could be a three-wheeled motorbike.’

‘No,’ Hugh said. ‘We’ve got two cars we share between the five of us, but nothing that’s got three wheels.’

‘Then maybe there’s a three-wheeled vehicle on your plantation somewhere?’ Fidel asked.

The witnesses were just as sure that there were no three-wheeled vehicles anywhere on the plantation, so Richard thanked the family for their time, and then he and Camille followed Fidel back to the murder scene. On the way, he asked Fidel why he’d wanted to know about three-wheeled vehicles.

‘It’s probably best if I show you, sir,’ Fidel said.

‘Very well. How did you and Dwayne got on trying to catch the Commissioner’s bootleg rum seller?’

‘Well, sir. We spoke to the manager down at the Fort Royal hotel, and he confirmed what the Commissioner told us. There’d been a guy on the roadside trying to sell knocked-off bottles of rum to the guests as they came and went from the hotel.’

‘Did you see him?’

‘We didn’t. He was gone by the time we arrived.’

‘Then did you get a description of him?’

‘Not in the time we were at the hotel. Camille phoned us and told us you’d found a body, so we dropped everything and came straight here.’

‘Quite right,’ Richard said, already wishing he could kick the bootleg rum seller into the long grass. But experience told him that once the Commissioner had expressed an interest in a case, he tended to stay involved until the bitter end.

As Richard mulled how best to manage the Commissioner’s expectations, Fidel led them to a group of buildings just beyond the old drying shed.

‘Where exactly are we going?’ he asked.

‘Don’t worry, sir. It’s just through this building.’

Fidel went through the open door and Richard was instantly hit by the aroma of coffee beans. It was overpowering, Richard thought, as he looked about himself. The room was full of some kind of fabric conveyor belt that led into and out of various old bits of cast iron machinery that were painted dark green. The paint was flaking in places, and there were signs of dark rust on some parts of the machinery.

‘What is this?’ Richard asked.

‘I think this is where they pack the coffee, sir,’ Fidel said, indicating a palette tray of empty hessian bags at one end of the assembly line. Richard could see the words ‘Premiere Bonifieur blend, Beaumont Plantation, Saint-Marie’ printed onto each bag. But before Richard could make much sense of how the machinery might have worked, Fidel was leading across the floor again and taking them through another open door that led out to the bright sunshine and jungle on the other side of the building.

‘You searched out here?’ Camille asked, impressed.

‘Well, it didn’t take me too long to gather, bag and log the physical evidence in the jungle clearing, so I thought I’d check the buildings near to the scene of the murder. See if I could find anything.’

‘And what exactly is it that you found?’ Richard asked.

‘That’s the thing, sir, I don’t know if it’s much, but I did find this.’

Fidel pointed down at the dusty ground, and Richard and Camille could see a set of tyre tracks in the dirt. And, as Fidel had suggested to the witnesses, they clearly belonged to a three-wheeled vehicle of some sort.

But if the family said they didn’t own any three-wheeled vehicles, then whose vehicle did these tracks belong to?

Richard saw that the tyre tracks continued along the side of the building for about twenty yards, and then they turned and disappeared between two thick bushes. On the further side of the bushes was the main road that serviced the plantation.

Richard realised that if someone had driven a three-wheeled vehicle up to this side of this building, they could have approached from the main road without being seen by anyone who was in the courtyard. It was essentially a private way for a vehicle to access the plantation. And then Richard remembered something else. There’d been a sudden burst of heavy rain when he and Camille had arrived at the plantation at about 11am. So had these tracks been left before or after the downpour?

Getting down on his haunches, he inspected the tyre tracks more closely, and could see that they – and the dirt all around – were pitted with indentations from where the heavy drops of rain had fallen.

‘Whatever vehicle was here, it left before the downpour at 11am,’ he said. ‘I can see that these raindrops fell onto the tyre tracks after they’d been made.’

‘Oh,’ Fidel said, disappointed.

‘However, you’re right, Fidel,’ Richard said. ‘It’s interesting, isn’t it? There’s a three-wheeled vehicle up here recently enough that the tyre tracks are still fresh in the dirt, it didn’t arrive or leave by the main entrance, and none of the family drive a three-wheeled vehicle, or know of one operating on the plantation.’

Richard looked at the middle tyre print more closely, and saw a distinctive ‘cut’ in the mud that repeated every couple of feet or so. Whatever the vehicle was, the rubber of the middle wheel was damaged – which would possibly make identifying the vehicle that little bit easier.

‘As long as this remains an unexplained phenomenon, then I want you to get some plaster of Paris from the Crime Scene Kit, and make casts of these tyre prints. In particular, I’d like you to make sure you get a decent cast of this repeating mark on the front wheel.’ Here, Richard indicated the repeating ‘cut’ mark in the middle tyre’s print.

‘Yes, sir,’ Fidel said, thrilled that his lead was important enough to be taken seriously.

‘And while you’re doing that, Camille and I need to look at the murder scene again, because I think we’ve got a bit of a problem.’

‘We do, sir?’ Camille asked.

‘I think we do.’

Back at the murder scene, Richard and Camille found Dwayne photographing the body.

‘Have you been able to identify the victim yet?’ Richard asked.

‘Not yet, Chief. Although I think he could be a Brit.’

‘You do?’

‘He’s got some loose change in his pockets, and plenty of it is UK currency.’

‘He’s got British coins in his pockets?’

‘He has, sir.’

Dwayne handed over a small see-through evidence bag to his boss that was full of coins.

‘But I also found a receipt in his back pocket you might want to look at.’

Dwayne handed over an evidence bag that contained a cheap till receipt with blue ink so faded that it was hard to read.

‘You need to turn it over,’ Dwayne suggested.

Richard turned the evidence bag over and could see that on the other side of the receipt, someone had scribbled ‘11am’ in biro.

‘It says ‘11am’,’ Richard said. ‘He was killed just after 11am.’

‘Suggesting to me, Chief, that our victim was perhaps here for a pre-arranged meeting.’

‘Now that’s interesting,’ Richard said, and handed the evidence bag to Camille for her to inspect. ‘So this murder was possibly premeditated. Have we really got nothing beyond a few British coins to help us work out who this man was?’

‘I’m sorry, Chief. Although the victim’s got a pretty distinctive scar on the forefinger of his left hand.’

Dwayne crouched down and turned the victim’s left hand over, indicating an old scar that ran along the victim’s forefinger. It was white, ridged, and a good two inches long.