He can't believe it. He just can't believe it. This week is now officially the worst week of his life. It is worse than his first tearful week at boarding school, worse than the hideous week that he suffered with chicken-pox when he was five, worse than the brutal week at Hendon Police College doing the entry-level PT course (he never wants to wear a tracksuit, ever again) as an aspiring constable, even worse than the terrible week in which his grandparents' dog Laddie had been run over and killed by a milk van. The slings and arrows which outrageous fortune has previously hurled his way are merely minor inconveniences, however, when compared with this, the bombshell to end all bombshells. He is stuck. Here. On a hateful tropical island, full of sunshine and sand and tourists and blood-sucking bitey things and to top it all off, the French! He is marooned, thousands of miles from home, and all because once more someone has played a nasty trick on him.
Not even the extremely belated arrival of his wheelie bag, finally liberated from the confines of Heathrow's Lost Luggage store, is enough to mollify him. The contents of the bag are of next to no use to him in this infernal climate, he now realises, but it seems he is stuck with them. Here. So he has wrestled and dragged and kicked and shoved the bloody thing along the beach to the decrepit hut the local constabulary deems to be suitable accommodations for "foreign officers" (how can I be a foreign officer, he thinks irritably, when I'm a British national in a Commonwealth nation?). Personally, he is certain that the shack ought to be condemned – who ever saw an architecturally sound domestic structure with an actual, live, tree growing through the sitting room and out of the roof? And surely it must be breaking about six different zoning regulations, to have it so close to a beach. They'd never stand for it in Croydon!
Too hot and agitated to think straight at the intolerable situation in which he now finds himself, DI Richard Poole, apparently now formerly of the London Metropolitan Police, decides to take a shower, hoping beyond hope to cool off, and wash this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day away (he had once seen a small boy on the Tube, clutching a book with a similar title, and had been torn between wanting to berate the mother for giving her child such depressing reading material, and telling the child that it was best to be making an early acquaintance with the idea that the world was, in fact, exactly as the book's title suggested, so as to avoid disappointment in later life) With a final glare at his wheelie bag - those wheels may never roll again after the off-road workout I've just given them, I wonder if the lifetime warranty covers sand damage? Richard heaves it up onto the splintery wooden veranda – it's a miracle the floorboards haven't been completely eaten away by white ants the size of obese beagles – and stops dead, staring inside what is apparently now his long-term residence in amazement.
Charlie Hulme's rather squalid bachelor arrangements had offended each and every one of Richard's fastidious senses, and it had been all he could do to keep his obsessive cleaning streak under control and focus instead on the case at hand. It had been a battle, though, and in the end he had compromised by tackling the worst of the mess (the used condoms under the bed had sent him dry-retching out to the veranda, before arming himself with elbow-length rubber gauntlets and a very long stick) and telling himself unconvincingly that the rest of it really didn't matter, as before long he would be back home, back in the land of double-glazing, fitted carpets, and radiators ticking soothingly through the night. Back in the land of supermarket aisles filled with cleaning products in five different fragrances, of salt-activated water softeners and yes, of power showers. Oh, how he missed his lovely push-button power shower, now that he was faced with a shower that he practically had to run around beneath in order to get wet at all. Having had a bloody great key shoved inside the ancient, rusty shower rose (thank you, Lily, he thinks irritably) had not helped matters much, but even with this impediment removed, the water flow and pressure left much to be desired. He rubs a hand over his face, and looks again, still disbelieving the evidence of his own eyes.
This morning, the little open plan dwelling had looked like a tidier version of Charlie Hulme's place; now, it looked like a photo out of 'Caribbean Home Beautiful', or whatever the local equivalent was. Every window-pane shone, the gritty, sandy floors have been swept and mopped, the dingy bathroom gleams, and the grease and dirt-encrusted kitchen which had made his skin crawl was now hygienically clean. The little bed was made up with fresh white sheets, and a set of fluffy white towels hang neatly on the foot-rail. Richard steps inside as if he was walking into Alice's Wonderland, breathing in the fresh fragrance of lemon furniture polish with a tiny, crooked smile which grows as he surveys his new domain. Gone were Hulme's obnoxious tropical shirts, cargo shorts and (Richard shudders) flip-flops; all Charlie's personal effects had been removed, and in their place was light, space and a sense of order that had hitherto been sadly lacking. Even the tree in the middle of the living area (parlour, his mother would have corrected him) no longer offended his sensibilities. Actually, he muses, taking in his transformed abode, the tree gives the room a certain je nais se quoi…French?! Why am I using French? I meant, it gives the room a certain air of eccentric style…
Richard steps into the kitchen galley, where a large hamper sits, tied with a bright yellow ribbon. There is a note attached to the hamper's lid. He opens it and reads, 'With Compliments, S. Patterson, Commissioner, Royal Saint-Marie Constabulary – now look in the refrigerator'. Puzzled, Richard reaches across and opens the fridge door, to find it stocked with bottles of water, beer, and even, to his astonishment, a small carton of fresh milk. Turning back to the hamper, he unties the ribbon, grimacing at the garish colour. First he unpacks fruit - a pineapple which he spikes his finger on (with much swearing), a hand of the local small sugar bananas, three mangoes (euggh!), and a large orange papaya which turns his stomach with its sickish odour, but then his smile widens as he sees a tin of English Breakfast tea, a couple of packets of biscuits (French, but better than nothing, he notes), several cans of baked beans, a crisp, fresh baguette (oh, what I wouldn't give for a half-loaf of Hovis white sliced, he thinks wistfully), a jar of honey, and a pot of something French and dark brown in colour. Peering at the label, Richard finally deciphers it. Chocolate spread. Seriously, they put chocolate on bread here? Well, that certainly explains a lot! He turns back to the fridge and peers back inside, this time noticing it has also been stocked with butter, cheese, sliced ham, and eggs. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make him feel welcome, and he very much doubts it is the Commissioner.
He does not like the thought of being made to feel welcome; the last person on the island that seemed to be friendly with him had turned out to be a stone-cold killer. Lily. His shoulders tense reflexively as a particular memory surfaces. He pushes it away and heads into his now spotless bathroom for a shower, trying to distract himself with activity from the thoughts tumbling through his head. It's no good, though, and by the time he has bathed, put on his pyjamas (newly arrived from Heathrow), unpacked the rest of his belongings and made himself baked beans on baguette (no Hovis, he sighs again), he is feeling very uneasy indeed about the whole Lily thing. He is ashamed that he allowed his personal feelings to get in the way of the murder investigation, and that he has shown such poor judgement in doing so. Richard, suddenly severed from everything familiar and struggling to make sense of a strange place, had initially thought that the Sergeant was simply being helpful as she was duty-bound to be. He had been so busy with the details of the case at first, that he had forgotten to step back and look at the big picture. Of course, if the Commissioner had seen fit to share with me that little snippet about an undercover investigator working the same case, with the aim of unmasking a corrupt local police officer – I mean, it was never going to be me, was it?! I think he actually enjoys holding back crucial pieces of information…if he were anyone else, I'd have done him for obstruction of justice, or interference, or just for being a manipulative old bastard…
Richard scrubs his hands over his face in frustration, and gets up for a beer. Returning to his chair, he frowns to see the small green lizard perched on the armrest, head cocked, watching him warily. I should have been more like that lizard, he tells himself angrily. Watchful, alert, cold-blooded. Instead, I let my guard down, and Lily strolled right in to confuse and misdirect me. I made it easy for her, too, because I wanted to believe that she might actually be interested in me. Catch me doing that again! Richard shoos the reptile away with a flick of his hand, before resuming his seat and his sulk. I'm not sulking, I'm self-assessing…closing his eyes, he revisits different moments in his memory, moments in which he is interacting with Sergeant Thompson. The pit of his stomach drops as he realises just how skilfully the woman had played him, almost from the very beginning…