Updated A/N: I have changed the title from "Closure" to "Closure for one or closure for none" after realising that MillionMoments previously published a story called Closure, to avoid confusion...there's enough confusion going on between Richard and Camille already!
A/N: Set post 2.1, this story stands apart from my earlier story, Under the Skin, but the two could be read as companion pieces.
Yes, it seems I've done it again. Put my foot in it somehow, Richard thinks, wincing as he hears the sharp click of Camille's fingers – a sure sign that he really has made an ass of himself. It irks him that his DS has taken it upon herself to correct all his faux pas, and yet, part of him really wants to know what he has done. Well, I can rely on Camille to tell me, every time. She stalks off out of the Honoré police station, stiff with anger, not even looking round to see if he is following. Richard sets his jaw and follows her around the back of the building, grateful that the nearby cells are currently unoccupied. He doesn't care to have an audience, criminal or not, for this particular set of revelations. As soon as he turns the corner and sees her standing there, waiting for him, he knows it's bad. Both hands are on her hips, one foot is tapping impatiently, and there is a dangerous gleam in her brown eyes. "Yes?" Richard ventures, hoping that she is going to be quick about this. Doesn't she know I'm waiting for the Forensics lab on Guadeloupe to ring through those DNA swab results? Camille glares at him, and he takes a step back. "No. This time, you tell me. Why do you think we are here?" Her usually lilting, accented English sounds hard and flat with anger.
Richard blinks in surprise and thinks back over their earlier discussion, before drawing a blank. He shrugs in response. He never knows what he's done wrong, it seems, until she tells him. Camille's look changes to one of disbelief, and then she snaps at him, "Richard Poole, you are unbelievable. How is it possible for you to see the tiniest details in a murder investigation, and yet be so blind to normal social conventions? Surely even you must know that what you said in there was inexcusably rude. How could you speak to me like that in front of the others? Do you know what it is you were implying?!" Ah, light dawns. Richard hunts about unsuccessfully for an appropriate response, before taking up his usual defensive stance of going on the attack. "Well how was I to know that the subject of your date last night was suddenly off limits? You seemed keen enough to talk about it yesterday!" She stares at him for a beat, before speaking in a low, tightly controlled voice that fills him with dread. "For future reference, when I say I don't want to talk about it, I mean it. It doesn't mean that you get to take cheap shots at me." Seeing the puzzlement in his eyes, she rolls hers in annoyance and explains curtly, "Women don't like it when men ogle them and then make comparisons to other women. And for your information, I don't care what who this Lucy is, I don't care if you did spend the night with her, I don't want to hear about it! What is the matter with you, hey?"
A deep blush has suffused her DI's face, creeping up from his buttoned-down collar to his neatly trimmed hairline, as an extraordinary look passes over his face. He appears to be lost for words. Camille folds her arms, shifts her stance slightly, tilts her chin out, and settles in to wait. This had better be good, she tells him mentally, you had better be vraiment désolé, or I will finally lose all patience with you, you rude, inconsiderate, pompous, ridiculous man! In the face of such an aggressive display, Richard makes a couple of false starts, stuttering and halting, before he manages to get a coherent sentence out. "Firstly, I do not ogle you, it would be both unprofessional and inappropriate of me, and I take offence at the suggestion. Secondly, I asked about your date because you are constantly telling me to take an interest in my colleagues' lives. If I expressed myself poorly, then I apologise for that, but not for making what was intended as a perfectly innocent enquiry. Thirdly, Lucy is my telescope. If you must know, I've had her since I was fourteen. I just had her shipped over, and after I went home from babysitting for Fidel and Juliet, I spent the rest of the evening stargazing, as it's about the only thing I actually enjoy doing here. So, have I explained myself sufficiently?" he replies, his tone acerbic, but his eyes are anxious and uncertain; he knows he is on shaky ground, and he still doesn't fully comprehend what Camille is so upset about.
After a long minute of silence, Camille, realising he has nothing further to say, turns her back on him and walks away, wordlessly and fast. Suddenly she whips round and says in a voice he has never heard her use, "You know what, Richard? I'm through with this. I'm done," and she leaves him standing there, staring after her, trying to work out what she means. She's still angry, he realises, but I don't know what else she wants from me. The idea of sitting in the office, surrounded by his team, with a hostile and unhappy silence emanating from Camille, does not appeal. Instead Richard sinks onto the bench on the back veranda, staring at the worn floorboards, cradling his aching head between his hands. Camille's final question, what is the matter with you? burns in his mind. That's the 64,000 pound one, all right, he admits. The one he has never been able to answer. Whatever's the matter with Richard Poole, he's never been fun, he's never been cool…he dismisses AA Milne and closes his eyes, thinking back.
He gets as far as the previous evening, and the worrying and perturbing sensations he experienced when he saw Camille approaching his table, dressed to kill and smiling expectantly at him. It was like his ultimate dream and his worst nightmare colliding, and if that thought wasn't enough to alarm him, he could have sworn that just for a moment, Camille seemed to be genuine in her assumption that her mother had set up a date for them, before he realised that she must be joking (not a very funny joke, as far as he was concerned) and pointed her in the right direction, towards a tall, impossibly handsome young man a couple of tables away. He had thought that she was just sharpening her seduction skills before moving onto the real quarry for the night. The worrying part was that it would have worked, if she had continued to sit smiling across the table from him, her attention focused on him, looking luminously beautiful in the soft Caribbean night, seemingly happy to be there. But he knows how unlikely, if not downright impossible that would be, festival of Erzulie or no, and is enormously relieved that he took defensive action just in time to send her on her way, and that Fidel's arrival allowed him to escape from an increasingly agonising scenario. As he paused on his way out of the courtyard, forcing himself to watch as Camille met her date, he saw her kiss the other man lightly on both cheeks in the French manner of greeting, and the queer, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach was enough to tell him that it had been a narrow miss.
Richard had tried to read a book at Fidel's (Rosie, blessedly, slept soundly until her parents' return, as he had been promised she would), before returning, wide awake and very unhappy, to his little beachside bungalow. Although he made a fuss about everything to do with the island, in truth, he enjoyed these rare nights when a slight breeze stirred the palms, and the smell of ozone from the surf out front charged the air with an electric tang (but he would no more have admitted this out loud, than he would have run naked through Waterloo station at rush hour). In a melancholy state of mind, he drank a couple of bottles of the local beer while scanning the skies with Lucy-the-telescope, searching the stars in a familiar and soothing pattern. Nothing unusual out there tonight; he wished he could fly away to one of those distant constellations, away from Saint-Marie, from his life here, and most of all, far, far away from Camille Bordey.
In all his life, he has never met anyone so irritating, so frustrating, so French…nor so intuitive, so beautiful, or so vivacious. When she sat down at his table, smiling brightly, wearing that amazing red dress, it had taken all of his self-control not to go along with her light-hearted role-playing. He had so much wanted to believe that she was there for him, but her mother had already made sure he knew that Camille would be enjoying a date with an unfeasibly good-looking young man, as Richard headed out to the outdoor patio with his book and his tea. There had been a certain hardness of eye there as she had spoken with him, he felt. Catherine Bordey didn't really like Camille socialising primarily with her colleagues – she had said so, more than once. "Fidel is married, Dwayne is a player, and who else is there? Non, non, she needs to make some other friends, meet different people", she had often been heard to observe to her regular patrons, apparently oblivious to Richard's presence in the coolest corner, huddled behind a week-old Times with a pot of (black) tea. Catherine never mentioned him in her list of Camille's colleagues. And why would she, seeing as I manage to upset or insult her nearly every time I see her. Small wonder, then, that Catherine didn't think much of him, much less consider him to be someone who belonged in Camille's social circle other than in the role of Awkward and Annoying (un Anglais!) Boss.
Truth be told, I don't think much of me, either, Richard muses as he stares at the grey, splintering wood of the veranda. In London, I'm buried amongst nine million other human beings, and I live my sad little life without anyone actually noticing me, most of the time. If they do notice, it's never a good thing. Like a chameleon, I understand the importance of camouflage, of staying hidden, of keeping a low profile. Maybe that's why I don't mind Harry-the-lizard hanging around the house. That, and it does help keep the bugs down…funny, I'd far rather think about huge bloodthirsty tropical bugs, or pythons, or that giant centipede I found in the shower this morning, than delve into the bottomless pit of my own failures and inadequacies…why was I ever sent to this wretched place? A slim brown foot suddenly appears in his field of vision, then another. His heart begins to race. She's back, all is forgiven! His glance flickers upwards, sure that she has come to tell him to stop sulking and come back inside. Before he can speak or get a proper look at her face, Camille informs him in cool tones that the forensic lab is on the phone, and would he be so good as to step inside and take the call, as she was not his secretary, but a decorated Detective Sergeant? She turns on her heel before he can reprimand her for her highly inappropriate attitude, walking off with a sharp little jerk in her step that tells him exactly where he stands. Looks like I'm still in the doghouse, then. I will never, ever, understand either women in general, or this one in particular. Sighing, he heaves himself off the bench and follows her, his shoulders tense with apprehension. Camille deliberately presents her back to him as he walks in, and they speak no more that afternoon.