A/N: This story is now complete, but I am currently working on a multi-chapter fic called "Closure for one or closure for none", set post 2.1 If you enjoyed reading this, you might like to take a look.
"Natural, he's gotta be a natural!" "No, man, he's a goofy-footer, believe me." The older officer spoke with the confidence of an expert on the subject. Fidel looked doubtful and then shrugged. "Well, it's not likely we'll ever get a chance to find out - can you imagine?" And the two men burst into laughter at the thought, laughter which was cut short by the arrival of the subject of their speculation, and just behind him, their DS, looking annoyed. Camille often looked like that these days, Dwayne thought, and who could blame her, stuck with the most annoying man on the island, possibly even in existence, as her boss. At present, said boss, DI Richard Poole, formerly of the London Metropolitan Police, was looking suspiciously from Dwayne to Fidel, and back. "What's so funny, hmmm? Police work is not normally a laughing matter, even here in this godforsaken hellhole. So what's the big joke, then?" he snapped, sounding more irascible than usual.
Behind her boss's back, Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey rolled her eyes heavenward and exhaled sharply. He's in an even worse mood than usual today, and I'm right out of patience, she thinks. From the moment she collected him for work, he's been vile, more uptight and irritable than she has seen him in weeks. First of all, he said she was early, even though she knew she was right on time. Then he criticised, in rapid succession, her driving (too fast), the traffic on the island's main road (too slow), the weather (too hot, too humid and too sunny), the tourists meandering through the marketplace (too touristy), the coconut seller outside the station (too pushy) and now, apparently, their co-workers, for being too happy. Dwayne and Fidel stop mid-laugh and say "Nothing, Chief, nothing", but Richard continues to glare at them, before huffing in disbelief and moving past them to his desk. Camille raises an eyebrow in silent enquiry, and Dwayne winks at her as if to say "I'll tell you later". Fidel nods imperceptibly in confirmation, his eyes merry despite the wet-blanket presence of the Chief.
Both men are too resilient and laid-back to allow their withdrawn, difficult, socially awkward boss bother them unduly. Camille does not normally let Richard get under her skin, either, but today everything about him sets her teeth on edge. Dropping into her chair, she kicks her feet up onto her desk, leans back, and considers the ways in which, by his mere presence, he is managing to irritate her.
First of all, there's that haircut, she notes unkindly. It is really dreadful, with a fringe chopped high across his forehead, and cut too short to allow his hair to sit properly, causing random bits to stick out. He's probably cutting it himself, rather than risk a visit to one of the local barbers, she decides. His face is already flushed with heat, perspiration beginning to appear on his forehead. If he would just dress for our climate, he'd be so much more comfortable, and not look as if he were perpetually on the verge of heatstroke. What a silly man, always insisting on a long-sleeved shirt, tie, and heavy wool suit. It's amazing that he doesn't pass out daily, it must be like living in a sauna. And he's not much better when he's off duty, either, with those flannel pyjamas he always sleeps in, despite the muggy, breezeless nights that prevail on the leeward side of the island where his shack is. He must wake up every morning drenched in sweat…her imagination recoils in revulsion at the thought. Fortunately, he has embraced the necessity of taking at least one shower, if not two, daily, so at least the rest of them don't have to put up with the reek of an overheated, underwashed Englishman.
Camille's nose wrinkles at the idea, just as he glances up to see her scornful gaze resting upon him. He blinks in confusion and looks back down at his desk, shoulders hunching defensively. She is not moved to pity as she continues her assessment of all that annoys her about him. That round-shouldered stance he adopts whenever he feels insecure, threatened or unsure about something, for example. Sometimes she just wants to give him a good shake, and then tell him to stand up straight and carry himself like the senior officer he is. Her glance skims back to his face. It's not a classically handsome face, but redeemed in her opinion by a pair of unusual green eyes, which light up when he smiles. It's a shame, then, that he does it so rarely, more often scowling or squinting instead.
Her eyes travel over the rest of his ensemble, right down to his highly polished black Church's shoes, and everything she sees makes her want to scream, from the precisely knotted striped tie which is so mind-numbingly boring she feels like yawning, to the navy pinstripe three-button suit, which he seems to have found at the back of his father's wardrobe. Fusty is the only word for it, she mused. If only he would consider visiting one of Saint-Honoré's Paris-trained tailors, he could be wearing lightweight, impeccably tailored French couture instead of that baggy old thing, which was just so…so English!
For a brief moment, she contemplates how her boss might look thus attired, in a sleek jacket that emphasised his shoulders and skimmed over his hips, instead of swamping his entire silhouette, with a fitted, coloured shirt, no tie, a good haircut, and perhaps a slip-on loafer by Hermes or Prada instead of his Oxford lace-ups. Camille gives up, shaking her head to dislodge this intriguing image. He is so quintessentially an English copper, she could dress him in head to toe Yves St Laurent, and he would still look like a character straight off The Bill. He is impossible, in short, and she is stuck with him, and his moods, his sulks, and his unbearable pomposity. It is making her skin itch just thinking about it, and suddenly she can't bear being in the same space as him for a single moment more. She knows exactly what she needs to do, and she needs to do it now. Rising gracefully from her chair, she crosses to Dwayne's desk and seizes a dog-eared book lying on top of a pile of incident reports, flicks it open, runs her eyes over a certain page, then looks at Dwayne questioningly. He smiles back at her and nods his head, and she turns on her heel and crosses to the door, then disappears out into the bright light of mid-morning.
Richard, watching this silent exchange in puzzlement, suddenly realises she is leaving the station, in the middle of the day, without as much as a word of explanation. Typically unreliable French, he thinks irritably, and clearing his throat loudly, asks just where she thinks she's going in the middle of her shift? Camille looks back over her shoulder and says, "I'm going to check out a break" as if this should be the most obvious thing in the world, and a minute later, he hears the Defender cough into life and trundle off. Immediately, he feels as if the weight of the world has lifted from his shoulders, and he slumps back in his chair as he enjoys the respite from Camille's antagonistic and frustrating presence.
Richard Poole has never worked with anyone who bothers him so much, and he could do without the experience. Generally, he works alone, or at best on the periphery of someone else's team, barely tolerated. His reputation for obsessively connecting every last detail of a case, but being completely clueless with people, has followed him throughout his career, and he has become so used to loneliness that working with the close-knit Saint-Honoré team causes him perpetual anxiety. Dwayne and Fidel are bad enough, with their casual friendliness and attempts to include him in after-work drinks, but Camille is something else again. Even a simple commute to work (he has never missed the morning madness of the Tube so much) is fraught when she is involved.
Just this morning, she had arrived too early to pick him up (thereby, to his eternal mortification, seeing him unshaven, bleary-eyed and still in his night attire), then she drove like a maniac, swerving around potholes and slamming on the brakes when caught behind dithering drivers (French, he was sure, struggling with driving on the correct side of the road). The day was already blazing hot, he could hardly breathe in the humidity, he had a sneaking suspicion that he had sweated through his suit, and to top things off, Camille was even more voluble and opinionated than usual. Richard longed for the vast anonymity of London, for tea with proper milk, for weather cooler than his own body temperature, for low grey skies, for the Times crossword, for the White Hart and his favourite bitter, for big red buses and the Sainsbury's Local up the road from the West Croydon Tube stop near his house, and roast beef with Gravox, and for everything, just everything. He was more homesick than he had been in his first term at boarding school, more lonely than when he had been excluded from his own college's Freshers Week festivities when he first went up to Cambridge, and more perplexed by Camille than by any other human being he has ever met.
From their first meeting, as she sat sobbing on the unmade bed in Charlie Hulme's shack, to a moment ago when she left the room talking about checking out breaks, Richard has not been able to make sense of her. She's mercurial, illogical, maddening, and possessed of a sinuous beauty the likes of which he has never before seen, and which fills him with great unease, especially when she comes to work wearing nothing more than sandals, a vest top and a pair of shorts (proper enclosed footwear, apparently, is optional for members of the Royal Saint-Marie Police Force). He is sure that it must be against regulations for female personnel to dress so casually, but the thought of having that particular conversation with his DS…he scrubs his hands across his face and slumps down further in his chair, admitting defeat in advance. With his precise perfectionist's mind's eye, he recalls images of Camille. Wearing that gaudy checked shirt, the first day he saw her. In a tiny, dark blue bikini as she dived from James Lavender's motor launch, her honey-coloured body a long slim streak against the cerulean blue water, then later, sitting in a cell, still clad in that bikini and one of Dwayne's old shirts, which somehow only served to emphasise her state of undress; dancing in her mother's bar in shorts and t-shirt, the first time she took him there; or today, wearing loose linen shorts and a magenta-coloured strappy top, which highlighted the glow of her skin and her deep brown eyes glinting with amusement as she took in the sight of him, dishevelled and sleepy, and still in his blue-striped pyjamas.
When she arrived at his shack this morning to collect him, before their personalities collided yet again like thunderheads before a storm, for a heartbeat of time, he had actually felt pleased to see her. That was an alarming realisation, and one he had buried beneath an outburst of righteous indignation at her untimely appearance. If he was brutally honest with himself (and why not, he was with everyone else), Richard had been thoroughly unsettled by yesterday's incident involving Camille and a murderous butler, in which she had exposed the man's true nature by taunting him until he had seized her around the throat in rage. It had been a dangerous and stupid thing to do, in Richard's professional estimation, but what had been far more frightening to him were the words that she had used to unmask the killer.
"There's a passion in your heart, isn't there, William? And like all uptight men, when you release that pent-up passion, it's overwhelming, isn't it? Why isn't the world ordered like you'd wish it? Why doesn't it understand you? Why don't women want you? Because they don't, do they? They've never wanted you…" at that point, the seemingly imperturbable butler had grabbed her, choking off her cruel words, and there had been a bit of a scuffle until Dwayne, Fidel and he had gotten things under control.
That night, lying in bed, sleepless and stifling in the muggy stillness, Richard had replayed those words over and over, his eidetic memory relentless in recreating her exact words and tone of voice. He had never felt so exposed, in fact finding himself naked on a crowded Tube (a recurring dream since his childhood) would have been far preferable to the nightmare her knocking had awoken him from this morning, drenched in sweat, clammy-skinned and disoriented by the sound of her voice calling his name.
Every word she had spoken to William had left Richard feeling very vulnerable, and terrified at the accuracy and ease in which she had read the situation. He knew that it wasn't merely the adrenaline surge caused by taking down William (with a cocktail shaker – very Bond, if I do say so myself) which had made him shake for hours afterwards. No, it had been the shock of hearing a complete stranger describing his innermost secrets and his greatest fears. Richard felt like one of those sea creatures, a whelk or winkle, which had been prised out of its protective shell with a pin, its pale soft body curled around on itself, totally defenceless. He hated it.
In his nightmare, Richard had somehow replaced William, and he heard Camille say those awful things again, her walk feline as she moved slowly towards him, her eyes holding his as with her words she ripped away any illusions he might have had that no-one really saw him, no-one could possibly know the truth of him. As she came nearer and nearer, his heart pounded with sheer terror, he felt weak at the knees, light-headed and as if he was rooted to the spot; at the same time, he was desperate to run away from this woman who saw into his soul with such clarity. Richard tried to speak, but no words would come; his mouth was dryer than the whole Sahara, and when she was finally standing in front of him, saying, "They've never wanted you!", his response was not to fasten his hands about her throat in murderous rage as the butler had done. Instead, to his dismay, he began to cry, great body-wracking sobs that painfully forced their way out of his tight throat and sent tears rolling down his cheeks.
Richard had not cried in more than thirty years, but he still remembered how, it seemed. He buried his face in his hands to hide his embarrassment and shame from Camille, tears still leaking through his fingers, then he heard her say angrily, "And no wonder, you, you are a rude man! You are ignorant, full of your own self-importance, expecting everyone to follow you around and hang on your every word? From now on, you will treat me with a little more respect, or I will be forced to forget I'm a police officer. Okay?" her forefinger drilling into his chest as she emphasised her words. At that point, he wondered how her finger poking his shirt could sound like a fist knocking on wood, and why it was that she was calling out his name when she was standing right in front of him, and why his eyes felt prickly with unshed tears, and most of all, why was he in his pyjamas, blinking at the infernally bright sunlight…and then he realised that he was no longer asleep, as he caught sight of Camille, hands on hips, standing on the veranda of the shack, and looking at him with a mixture of amusement and impatience.
Richard experienced a moment of almost total discombobulation, before falling back on his lifetime habit of using attack as the best form of defence, and lambasting his DS for arriving early, even though he knew that his nightmare had caused him to oversleep, and he was being very unfair to Camille. She had rolled her eyes at him and said, "Ten minutes, then I'm leaving and I'll send Dwayne to pick you up on the bike, if you would prefer?" No, no, he most decidedly did not prefer, so he had been forced to have a sketchy shower and shave, then clamber, already beginning to sweat as the temperature rose steeply, into shirt, suit and tie. After inspecting his shoes closely for scorpions and spiders, he shoved his wool-socked feet into them, wincing, for he had picked up some sea-urchin spines in his right foot after yesterday's ill-advised paddle in the sea (all Camille's idea!) and strode out, ready for the day, nine and a half minutes later.
Camille was waiting in the Defender, engine already running, and as he hauled himself up into the old vehicle, he saw the bruises around her neck, the result of her encounter with William yesterday. Any other woman would have covered them up with makeup and a high-necked top, he thought, but not her. Not this stubborn, reckless, bloody-minded DS – she's wearing them like a badge of honour. His eyes must have lingered too long on one spot, a particularly nasty looking bruise at the very base of her throat (which must be from William's right thumb, he deduces, to mark her skin with that much force) and she flicked him a hostile glance before her attention was taken up as she wrestled the Defender out of a pothole big enough to bury a body in. Out of embarrassment and nervousness, he had started up with a litany of complaints until they had arrived at work. There was another reason, too - he had not wanted to start talking about yesterday, and especially not about those few seconds where she had not only revealed the truth about William, but about him as well. That was still too raw, so raw that he had decided never to think about it in her presence again, lest she somehow telepathically pick up on it. Where Camille was concerned, he was learning to expect the unexpected. It wouldn't surprise him if she turned out to have some sort of ESP, even if outwardly he scoffed at the idea of anything he couldn't physically prove.
Richard slowly became aware that some considerable time had passed, and he wondered where Camille had disappeared to. What break had she been talking about? Straightening up in his chair, he made enquiry of Dwayne. The junior officer looked uneasy, then smiled, "Eh, Chief, how about I show you?" Which is how Richard found himself again in the hated sidecar of Dwayne's old Triumph motorcycle, hanging on for dear life as they careened across the island, closing his eyes in terror at the sight of oncoming traffic, with the merciless tropical sun beating down on his tin hat of a helmet. Bumping down a narrow track, Richard caught scent of the ocean, but a restless and active ocean, not the calm water of the lagoon his shack was located on. He realised that they were on the windward side of the island, where the surf rolled in and the wind whipped froth off the whitecaps. He could not conceive of a reason for Camille to be here, as this part of Saint-Marie was virtually uninhabited. Dwayne suddenly reefed his contraption off the track, killed the engine, and pointed towards the beach in front of them. Richard extracted himself from the sidecar, dusting himself down (his good navy suit would never be the same again), squinting towards the water. "They must have a death wish, going in there alone!" he muttered, catching sight of a solitary surfer far out from the shoreline, sitting astride their board, waiting for the next set.
Dwayne grinned and handed him a pair of binoculars, and Richard's mouth fell open as he focused the old Zeiss field glasses on the board rider. He felt sure he had seen that blue bikini before, and that wild, curly mop of hair…Camille?! What did she think she was doing, out there by herself, during her shift? He watched in amazement as she suddenly turned the board around and started paddling just in front of what he was sure must be a killer wave which had loomed up out of nowhere, and then she was on her feet in one swift movement, and his growing respect for, and fear of, Camille increased exponentially as she cut across the glassy face of the wave, turning and twisting like a bird on the wing, intuiting the water's mood and movement until she was into the shallows. Dwayne yelled out and waved, and Camille's head turned in their direction. She waved back at Dwayne, and then paddled towards shore until she could stand up and walk out, board under one slender arm. She was like a Caribbean Aphrodite emerging from the waves, Richard thought in complete distraction, only instead of wearing a simpering smile and a lot of golden hair, she appeared to be yelling angrily at him while tugging her bikini bottoms back into place with her free hand. Camille stormed up the beach towards the Defender, heaved her board into the back, and re-emerged with a towel wrapped about her slim waist, then snapped her fingers irritably. Richard looked behind him for the safety of Dwayne's presence, only to discover that he had gone, silently wheeling the bike away while Richard had been watching Camille emerge from the water. She waited, arms folded, one hip cocked, every line of her body rigid. Sighing internally, he started towards her, only to yelp in pain and hobble the rest of the way, his right foot throbbing with each step. Camille watched him, realising he was in serious trouble as he limped towards her. By the time he reached the Defender, his face was pale despite the midday heat, and he was biting his lower lip in pain. "Sit," she commanded, swinging open the passenger side door and standing back to allow him to comply. Richard slumped into the seat and stuck his right foot out in front of him, frowning. Camille bit back her annoyance and said, "Take off your shoe, then," but when he leant forward, he groaned in pain. "I think I'd better not move, would you mind terribly..." and proffered his foot to her. She swiftly unlaced the shoe and tugged it off, and Richard cried out. "Don't be such a baby," she scolded, before peeling off the accompanying sock and gasping in shock at the sight of his foot. "Mon Dieu! Inspector, what have you done?" she asked, looking at the puffy flesh and the red streaks spreading out from the instep. She rolled his trouser leg up a couple of inches, and was relieved to see the angry-looking streaks had not spread any further, although the fish-belly whiteness of his skin appalled her. She looked up at him, curious as to why he was so quiet, and saw that he had fainted.
That decided her, and she swiftly closed the door and marched around to the driver's side. As she gunned the Defender's engine, he came round, and she asked him again, "What have you done? Your foot, it looks like hell." He glanced down at it and grimaced, before replying with "Feels like hell, too. And it's all your fault!" glaring at her truculently. Camille, concentrating on navigating the narrow track from the beach, tightened her grip on the steering wheel and set her jaw rather than be drawn into an argument with him. "Yes, that's right, I actually took your advice and went into the sea, and now look at me, dying of some venomous bite, I shouldn't wonder," he ranted, and then sharply inhaled as the Defender bumped over a particularly rough patch, his knuckles turning white as he held onto the door strap. Camille shot him a look out of the corner of her eye, thankful that they were almost onto the main road, where she would be able to get him back to Saint-Honoré and to a doctor quickly. "What did you tread on, did you see?" she enquired, and he looked at her incredulously. "It was a bloody great sea urchin, but what difference does it make? It just proves my point, that the ocean is a very dangerous place", he barked at her, and was surprised when she pulled over abruptly, turned off the engine, and whipped round in her seat, eyes flashing. "Inspector Poole, I am sorry you are in pain, I am sorry that you ever went in the ocean, I am sorry you are stuck here, and I am even sorrier that I am stuck with you too, and yes, some things are poisonous, but you're the most toxic thing on this island, so if anything else bit or stung you, it would probably die. So how about you just sit there quietly, and I will get you to the hospital as soon as I can, and then they can put up with you instead."
Camille's tone brooked no argument, but Richard began to speak anyway. She held up one slim brown hand, and said sharply, "Enough. Do you know why I went surfing today? Because I needed to do something that reminded me I was alive, after feeling a murderer's hands around my neck yesterday, and then having a boss who didn't even ask me how I was this morning. Because it's the one place I can go on this island where I'm sure you won't be, and instead you turn up with a poison foot and tell me it's all my fault! "Camille went off into a mixture of English and French at that point, and Richard lost track of what she was saying as the throbbing of his foot was becoming unbearable. Finally he said, through gritted teeth, "OK. I apologise for everything, now will you please take me to the hospital?" Camille stopped her diatribe mid-flow and looked (he thought) slightly contrite that she had forgotten that he was in fact in considerable pain, and then she started the Defender. They drove in silence for the rest of the journey, Camille's eyes focused on the road ahead as she expertly avoided the ruts and potholes, Richard white-knuckling it all the way to the little general hospital.
Upon arriving at Casualty, Camille went inside, leaving him in the vehicle, and then swiftly re-emerged with two strapping young wardsmen in white scrubs, and a wheelchair. Between them, they lifted Richard out, and settled him in the wheelchair, his swollen foot propped in front of him. Camille had turned to get back into the Defender, when she heard Richard asking for her as he was wheeled away. What the hell does that man want with me now? she wondered irritably as she caught up to him in a few long strides. "Yes, Inspector?" she enquired impatiently, and was amazed at his reply. "Erm, here's the thing, I don't really like hospitals, you know, and I really hate needles…would you mind staying for a bit, just till I know what they're going to do?" His tone was uncharacteristically meek, and he glanced up shyly at her. Suddenly he looked very young, and despite her annoyance and frustration with him, Camille felt a tug on her heartstrings. He's alone, in a strange country, and something has happened to him that would never happen in London, she thought, no wonder he's scared. She nodded, and fell into step next to him as the wardsmen wheeled him into an examination room and hefted him up onto the high, old-fashioned hospital bed. Camille took up a vantage point by the window on the other side of the room, looking out into the lush tropical garden, bright with plumeria and bougainvillea, and the room fell silent, each of them occupied with their own thoughts.
Camille's, a jumble of conflicting emotions, culminating with a frisson of unease as she remembers the queer little moment when the Inspector looked at her from his wheelchair, his green eyes wide with pain and anxiety, and asked her to stay. I had better be more careful, or he's going to get under my skin in more ways than one…
Richard's, dominated by the intensifying pain radiating from his foot, now swollen to twice its usual size and pulsing with each rapid beat of his heart. He is aware that his heart rate is up, and he is fairly certain that it's not entirely due to his infected foot, but in part inspired by the fact that he is alone in a room with Camille, who is still wearing only a towel and her bikini top. He sees that she has wrapped her arms around her torso in response to the air conditioned chill of the hospital, and with some difficulty he struggles out of his jacket and holds it out to her. "Here, no sense in you freezing to death", he begins hesitantly.
Camille turns away from the window at the sound of his voice, and she sees him properly for the first time since his arrival on the island; a shy, awkward, vulnerable man who hides his insecurities behind an impenetrable wall of bluster, avoidance and bluff. She walks towards him, and gratefully slides into the jacket, touched at his consideration. He glances up at her and half-smiles, "Looks better on you than it ever did on me", and then the doctor enters the room, whistling at the sight of Richard's foot. "That's nasty-looking, what have you stood in, then?" Camille catches sight of her DI's face and intervenes before he completely alienates Dr Carrier, as the script embroidered over his breast pocket proclaims. "It was a sea urchin, in the lagoon," she offers, and Dr Carrier pulls up a stool and sits down to examine Richard's foot, handling it gently in response to his sharp intake of breath, nodding as he sees the tell-tale black points under the puffy skin, each surrounded by a whitish pocket of pus. "Well those will have to come out", he tells them, and Richard blanches. "Erm, what do you mean, exactly?" He speaks tensely, and Camille feels genuinely sorry for him as the doctor explains that he will have to cut each spine out (with local anaesthetic, of course). Richard looks as if he might be sick. "Can't, can't you just pull them out? With tweezers or something?" he asks, his voice higher and tighter than usual. Doctor Carrier shakes his head, "They're embedded too deep now, if you had come to see me last night, then maybe I could have pulled them out, but not now". Richard looks at Camille, and says, "You know how I said I really hate needles? I hate the sound of this even more." She puts a hand reassuringly on his forearm for a moment, and says, "I have an idea". Taking the doctor aside, she confers with him in French, and finally he shrugs his shoulders and says in English, "Okay, we'll give it a go. I'll send in a nurse to help ", and the two of them leave together, Richard looking after them in consternation as he is left by himself.
A couple of minutes pass, and then Camille reappears with a wide smile. "Magnaplasm!" she exclaims, holding up a small brown glass jar. Taking the stool vacated by Dr Carrier, Camille busies herself with rolling up the Inspector's trouser leg, and when he squeaks in protest, she raises an eyebrow and brusquely tells him, "Up or off, your choice", which silences him , as he most certainly is not going trouserless, in front or her, or indeed anyone else. A young male nurse arrives, pushing a trolley with a large, steaming bowl of water, several towels, forceps of different sizes, a kidney dish, and various other items, all of which Richard eyes suspiciously. The nurse (Walter, according to his nametag) glances at Camille; one of those wordless conversations that she seems to specialise in takes place, then Walter sets a small paper cup with two pale green pills down next to the forceps. "Would one of you like to enlighten me as to what is going on? I am the patient, after all!" Richard grumbles, apprehensive at all this medical paraphernalia. Camille sighs, and explains that she has persuaded the doctor to try another method of removal, by first soaking the affected area in hot salt water, then by applying a powerful drawing agent, called Magnaplasm, to bring the spines to the surface, where they could be easily removed with forceps. "No cutting?" he clarifies, and both Camille and the nurse reassure him that no cutting will be necessary. "Right, then let's get on with it", he declares, sounding braver than he feels. Walter picks up the little paper cup of pills and hands it to Richard with a glass of water. "Take these, you'll feel better" the nurse offers encouragingly. Richard frowns at the pills, and is about to hand them back, saying he never takes drugs as they dull his faculties, then he sees Camille's face as she contemplates the task ahead without the benefit of having him doped up on Diazepam, and decides that he would actually quite like his faculties to be dulled for the next hour or so. Obediently, he takes the pills.
Everything goes a bit hazy for Richard after that, but he is pretty sure that his foot was immersed in scalding hot water by Walter for an eternity, and that then Camille (of all people!) applied a thick, chalky white paste over most of his foot with a surprisingly gentle touch. He remembers feeling woozy after that, and having to lie down, his Magnaplasmed foot hanging off the bed. He must have drifted off for a bit, because when next he looks at his foot, it is neatly bandaged. He looks around the room and realises that he is alone. Confused, Richard seizes the buzzer hanging next to his bed, pushing it repeatedly until Walter appears in the doorway. The nurse does not come in. "Yes sir?" he enquires hesitantly. "Why am I still here? What's going on? Where's my sergeant? I want to leave immediately. And why are you hanging about over there?" come in rapid succession. Walter looks harassed, but before he is able to respond, Camille appears, marching straight over to Richard with a dangerous glint in her eye. She holds up one hand and counts off the answers on her fingers. "You are still here because apparently, you do not react well to Diazepam, as we found out when you tried to take a swing at Walter when he was only trying to treat your foot. I took over from him, because you wouldn't let anyone else touch you. Even then, the doctor had had to give you further sedation before I could remove the spines. You've been out for about two hours. And yes, I got all of the spines, they're in this dish here if you want to see. As for Walter, he refuses to enter the room because you threatened him with arrest if he comes within three metres of you." Camille folds her arms and gives Richard a long, level look. "Now, if you can manage to behave yourself, I will drop you home. You will have to keep off your foot for the rest of today, and put some antiseptic cream on it for the next few days, but you should be OK." Her tone of voice is militant, and her eyes are still dangerous, so Richard decides (for once) that discretion is the better part of valour, and allows himself to be reinstalled in a wheelchair, then transferred back to the passenger seat of the Defender. From the position of the sun on the horizon, he realises it must be late afternoon, but he is so tired from the events of this strange day, and the effects of his earlier sedation, that he is fast asleep before Camille is in the driver's seat.
Camille looks across at him and smiles in spite of herself. He looks so different asleep, his strong-boned face almost sweet in repose, the worry lines around his mouth and across his forehead softened. She is profoundly grateful for the silence though, as she drives to his house. It has been a very trying afternoon. Richard had indeed not reacted well to Valium (why was she not surprised?) and when he had made an uncoordinated, but earnest attempt to hit Walter as he immersed Richard's foot in the bowl of hot water, she had only been able to calm him by sending Walter out of the room , and saying she would finish the job herself. Walter had been only too pleased to leave; he could see that Camille's presence had a very different effect than his own on the Englishman, and wisely decided to leave her to it. Once they were alone, Richard had been like a lamb, as the full effect of the additional sedation had kicked in, and she had no difficulty in extracting nearly a dozen small black spines from his instep, drawn to the surface of his skin by the Magnaplasm. As she had worked on the spines, Camille decided he had good feet, for someone who never took his shoes off. She looked at his hands, lying limply on the bed, and noted the same clean, straight-cut nails, and the square, strong shape of them. If he would only make the most of himself, she thought, he could be quite an attractive man, in an uptight, English way, of course, before rolling her eyes at her own train of thought. This is the most annoying man in the universe, she reminded herself, so let's just get the job done. And forget whatever nonsense he just said, he's got enough stuff in his system to knock out a horse. Forget how he was looking at you, like a man with a strong thirst looks at cool, fresh water. Forget the softness shining in those green eyes, and the sorrow, too, as he looked at the ring of bruises around my neck. Camille drops the final offending spine into the kidney dish, and reaches for a strong antiseptic cream to cleanse the wounds with, before he comes back round again.
As she reaches the shack, now bathed in late afternoon sunlight, Camille reaches across and shakes Richard awake. She is not going to give herself a hernia trying to lug an unconscious man into his own home, and besides, he needs to fend for himself in certain matters, such as getting into those ridiculous old-man pyjamas he seems to wear whenever he is off-duty. Richard stirs in his seat and opens one eye, enquiringly. "You're home," she tells him, and gets out. He fumbles with the door handle, his coordination still impaired, until she opens it for him from the outside and offers him a hand. "I'm not ninety, thank you very much!" he snaps, and she moves away, watching as he clambers out stiffly, trying to keep his bandaged right foot off the ground. Richard balances precariously on one leg, trying to work out how to cover the few metres from the vehicle to the veranda. Losing patience, she makes as if to leave, and Richard yelps in protest. "You can't just leave me here!" "But you said you don't want any help, because you are not ninety!" Camille fires back. "Well at least onto the veranda, I'll be able to manage from there. Please?" he asks, adding the "please" like a little boy who has belatedly remembered his manners.
It's the 'please' that does it. Camille walks over to him and offers an arm, careful to allow him to choose how to best use her assistance. He settles for placing his right hand tentatively on her shoulder, and they take a couple of awkward steps before he almost loses balance altogether. "You've still got a lot of sedatives in your system, and I want to go home before midnight!", she says with some asperity, and before he can protest, she slides her arm snugly around his middle, and hitches her shoulder under his, so that she is taking the weight of his right side, and like that, they make it onto the veranda. With a final effort, she gets him inside and into his favourite armchair.
Out of the corner of her eye, Camille catches movement up high along the trunk of the living room tree, and turns to see the little green lizard that has taken up residence lately, watching the odd doings of the humans below. Odd indeed, she thinks, remembering with just a little more clarity than she cares to admit, how it felt to be so close to Richard, to have him lean on her, to feel his body in close proximity to hers. Maman is right, I've been alone too long, if even a few seconds of unavoidable contact with my boss is affecting me like this! Camille knew their bodies had fitted well together; not too much disparity in height, hers slim and strong where his was slightly soft around the edges, but with a latent physicality evident in his broad shoulders and in his not-yet-gone-completely- to-seed waistline. Not too bad at all for a fairly sedentary man of his age, Camille allows, then dismisses any further musings along this line as she sees that the DI has again fallen asleep, in his chair. She briefly considers waking him, then decides against it; she needs to get back to the station, she needs to be with other people, she needs not to be thinking about Richard Poole any more at all. Camille walks back to the Defender and leaves, coasting as far as the vehicle will roll before turning on the engine, so as not to disturb his sleep.
Richard waits until she has gone before opening his eyes; he badly needs to be alone, and he couldn't devise any other way to make her leave. He looks at his trembling hands, feels the heavy hammering of his heart, and realises that his light-headedness cannot be wholly attributed to Valium. Those few seconds of close contact with Camille, her warmth against his side, the indescribable sensation when her arm went firmly around his waist, the nearness of her, the scent of her…he feels completely overwhelmed by the reaction her casual closeness has aroused in him. Richard knows her only intention had been to assist him, but his body seems to have hijacked his brain in a completely unprecedented manner.
He feels most peculiar; his stomach seems to have dropped through the floor, he is flushing hot and cold by turns, and his memory keeps repeating those extraordinary few seconds in high-definition detail. Damn it, what's the matter with me? This is inappropriate at best and completely unprofessional at worst, he berates himself silently. She's my subordinate, she's got to be at least ten years younger, she's French and I'm fairly certain she hates me. Richard is overcome by a sudden wave of exhaustion at the reality of being stuck on Saint-Marie, so far away from everything familiar and safe (and enervatingly, soul-crushingly, screamingly dull, a tiny part of his mind whispers). He struggles up and heads inside, for once not bothering to do more than remove his shoes, peel off his socks, shirt and trousers, and make a brief visit to the tiny bathroom, before he crashes into bed in his vest and pants, feeling weariness claiming him as the medication reasserts itself once more. It must have been strong stuff…at least I can't feel anything in my foot…his thoughts drift as he hovers on the verge of sleep. I wonder why they gave me another hit…and then his eyes fly open in horror as a fragment of memory resurfaces.
He is sitting on the hospital bed, watching worriedly as Walter approaches him to begin the process of cleaning his infected foot; then excruciating pain rips through him as his foot is plunged into what appears to be scalding hot water; next, the bowl of hot water goes sailing through the air as he wrenches his foot out of Walter's grasp with a string of words he would never normally utter. "He's trying to kill me!" he yells at Camille, whom he can see standing a few feet behind Walter, looking on in consternation (and, he is certain, with a hint of sadistic amusement in her eyes). Walter jumps back to avoid being doused in hot water, and Richard takes the opportunity to break for freedom, hopping down awkwardly from the bed and making a determined limp for the door. Walter stands in his way, trying to shepherd him gently back to bed; but he is DI Richard Poole of the London Metropolitan Police Force, and he knows a thing or two (doesn't he?) about self-defence. Or so he proclaims, squaring up to Walter, who tops him by a good six inches, and taking little practice jabs at his opponent. I refuse to stay here and be boiled alive bit by bit! I'm leaving and you can't stop me! he roars. Walter feints away from one of Richard's wild right hooks, and then, confusingly, Walter morphs into Doctor Carrier, whose right hand is holding an empty syringe. The doctor chuckles, 'No, but that should stop you for a bit", and then the room swirls around him and he feels someone (Walter?) catch him under the arms as his legs fold beneath him and everything goes dim. Things stay dim for an unspecified period of time, and then he becomes aware of Camille sitting in front of him, gently holding his foot with one hand while carefully applying Magnaplasm with the other. "So, you're back, then," she observes as he comes round, "just hold still, I'm nearly done with this bit." He looks at her, head bowed as she works, still wearing his good navy suit jacket (to his horror, she has unbuttoned and rolled back the cuffs), over her towel-and-bikini-top ensemble, and he thinks that he has never seen a kinder, sexier, or more beautiful woman in his life. Camille suddenly stops what she is doing, letting go of his foot and looking straight at him. "What did you just say, Inspector?" she demands in an incredulous tone of voice, eyeing him warily. He stares groggily at her as it dawns on him that he may have just told his DS that she is the kindest, sexiest and most beautiful woman he has ever met…but before he can muster his thoughts enough to speak, everything fades to black… Richard experiences nearly a minute of deep panic and total mortification at this idea, as he lies in bed, before sleep finally takes him.
Richard's nightmare returns as he falls into a deep sleep, and again he experiences the fear of being found out by Camille as easily as she called William's bluff. Again he weeps tears of loneliness in front of her, again he hears her telling him off for all his faults, but this time, as she pokes her finger into his chest to emphasise her (many and valid, he admits) points, the dream changes. He captures her hand, wrapping his fingers around hers, and with his free hand he gently traces the bruising on her neck. Her eyes lock onto his in astonishment, and when he says "I am so sorry, Camille, I should have anticipated how violent he was likely to be, I should have stopped him before he laid a finger on you," she looks as if she might faint in shock, so he gathers her into an embrace, wrapping his arms tightly around her until she reciprocates and slides her hands around his back. He amazes himself with his confidence and boldness, even in his dream state, and decides he would be happy to stand like that forever, his arms around her, his face buried in her beautiful black hair, feeling her heartbeat against his chest. So this is what it feels like, so this is happiness. This is how it is.
Richard is woken next morning by the dull pain in his foot, but it is nothing when compared to the aching sense of loss at the realisation that it was only a dream. Well, here we go for yet another day in Paradise, he thinks cynically, then hauls himself upright and looks at the clock. Seven-thirty a.m. He swings his legs out of bed, gingerly tests his weight on his right foot – sore, but not unbearable, certainly an improvement on yesterday – and reluctantly begins his morning going-to-work ritual.
At precisely eight-fifteen a.m., the Defender lurches to a stop in front of his shack, and Camille toots the horn to summon him from within. She doesn't want to see him in his pyjamas, or in any state of dress other than fully suited and booted. In fact she is not sure she wants to see him at all, after the strangeness of the previous day. Her annoyance and irritation with the fact that she is stuck with him as her boss still rankles, and apart from a perfunctory greeting as he gets in beside her, she stays silent during the drive in to work. For his part, the Inspector appears to be more morose and withdrawn than usual, staring fixedly through the windscreen until they pull up in front of the station.
Camille cuts the engine, and is about to exit the vehicle, when he speaks her name in a strangled voice, and she turns in her seat to look at him. He is sweating, his face is pale, his hands appear to be trembling even though he has locked them together in his lap, and he is making stuttering noises that remind her of Dwayne's motorcycle when it refuses to start. She waits for a few seconds, then prompts him with a "Yes, Inspector?" that holds more than a touch of impatience. He finally shifts his gaze to look at her, and she realises that while he is having enormous difficulty in expressing himself verbally, his eyes are doing the talking for him, as they dart down to the darkening bruises on her skin, then back up to meet her own eyes with a sort of desperate determination. Finally he bursts forth with, "I...I…I'm sorry, for what happened to you. The other day, I mean, with William…I shouldn't have let you get so close to him. I knew he was dangerous." His eyes are full of apprehension, nervousness and concern…and for the briefest of moments, something else. A shy, yet direct look she has only seen once before, in the hospital, and which causes her stomach to do backflips, much to her dismay. How does he do that? How does this wretched man do that to me? she wonders, and then nods in acknowledgment. "Thank you, sir, but I knew what I was doing. I'm pretty good at reading people, you know?" she replies lightly, and gets out. He nods once to himself, in relief, and then remembers he hasn't finished yet. "Camille?" he calls after her, and she turns around at the foot of the station steps, her grace and effortless beauty tongue-tieing him, as ever. "Erm, um, what I meant to say is…thank you." One eyebrow arches questioningly, as he stumbles on with "About yesterday, you know. The spines, and everything…you have my sincere thanks…" She makes a please-it's-fine gesture, and ascends the stairs, poetry in motion to the man who watches her hopelessly as she walks away from him. What is the matter with you, Poole? Why are you letting her get under your skin like this? Richard closes his eyes to compose himself, get his breathing back under control and let his heart-rate drop...I don't think she noticed, even if she is indeed pretty good at reading people, he reassures himself doubtfully, as he straightens his already straight tie and picks up his leather attaché case, before disembarking awkwardly from the Defender as he tries to avoid putting too much weight on his right foot.
He clomps unevenly up the stairs, and walks into a room full of laughter, which instantly puts him on the defensive. Dwayne and Fidel see him first, and with much snorting and spluttering, bring their mirth to a stop. Camille's French chatter trails off in the sudden silence. Richard casts about for something to break the tension in the room, and his eye falls upon the tattered book on the corner of Dwayne's desk. With two fingers he picks it up distastefully and consults the cover. "Annual Almanac of the Lesser Antilles", he reads out loud, then glares at Dwayne. "And what, exactly, does this have to do with police business, hmmm? Unless it's our business to know when to plant sweet potatoes or pick mangoes or whatever other indigestible crops this benighted place produces?" he enquires testily, face screwed up into a grimace of compounded gastronomic distaste and increasing pain, as his right foot makes its presence felt.
The three local officers look at each other. For a clever man, their boss can be amazingly dim sometimes. Fidel volunteers, "It's the charts, sir. For the tides. We have to know when they are." Dwayne chimes in with, "Yeah, that's right, boss. People get up to all sorts of things round here when the tide's right…" Richard regards him balefully, then says, "I see. Like surfing, for example, instead of working?" sarcasm evident in his tone. Camille walks up to him and looks him in the eye. "Is that what this is all about?" she demands, and he quails slightly. "Um, no, not as such, but I do fail to see the relevance." She stares at him for a long minute before replying as if addressing a querulous child. "It is useful to know the movements of the ocean when you live on an island. Tides rise and fall, sometimes they bring things with them, at other times they take things away. If it is going to be a very big tide, then maybe we need to check on properties along the shore – like your house – if there has also been a storm. Or maybe we need to know when the moon is full, and when it is not, because drug smugglers and bootleggers do most of their work in the dark of the moon." Richard cannot hold her gaze, and his eyes drop to the floor as Camille explains a few more of the unwelcome realities of police life on Saint-Marie. She allows herself a tiny smile of amusement, then finishes with, "But of course, we mostly use it for the surfing", and his eyes snap back up to meet hers in indignation.
She's laughing at him, he knows it, but somehow he doesn't mind. Is this what it's like, to have friends? People who can make a joke with you, rather than about you? He feels light-headed at the prospect, and Camille sees the flicker of unease pass across his face. "Why don't you sit down and put your foot up? It's can't be good for it to be stuck inside that hot shoe," she suggests, and despite his grumbling protests, the next few minutes are a whirl of Richard-centric activity as he is seated, a footrest found by Fidel (improvising by upturning the waste-paper basket), his shoe unlaced, his sock rolled off and his bandaged foot propped up by Camille, and a bottle of cold water to wash down the painkillers he has been prescribed is helpfully put into his hand by Dwayne. Richard feels very conspicuous with all this attention, but at the same time, he can't help but consider how things would have played out if he had been back in London. There, he could have arrived at work dying of haemorrhagic fever, and no-one would have turned a hair, much less looked in on him in his isolated little workspace, situated outside the forensic lab in what he suspected had previously been a broom cupboard before his Super had seen fit to locate him there, well away from the rest of the Division. These people actually care, he thinks as he looks at their concerned faces, how extraordinary that they should care. About me. He feels a sensation dangerously close to the prickling of tears behind his eyes, and has to give himself a stern talking-to. Come on Poole, get it together, focus on something else, and a loose-end sort of thought occurs to him. He frowns, going back over the previous day's events. An unfamiliar term, which had caught his attention at the time, then been (understandably) overlooked, is teasing his memory, and finally he decides he has to know. "Sergeant?" he says, then "Camille," when she doesn't look up at first from the report she is writing. "Yesterday, I heard something I didn't understand…" Just one thing? her answering look says, but he flounders on. "Wh..what's a goofy footer? And what's so funny about it? Is it some local pejorative or colloquialism? I just thought I ought to know, you know." His voice trails off as he sees the looks on his colleagues' faces; Camille trying not to laugh, but about to fail miserably, Dwayne and Fidel, already grinning widely in anticipation of the answer. It is Dwayne, finally, who replies. "Boss, do you remember how Camille was standing on her board yesterday, on that wave?" Richard closes his eyes, seeing her rise up from the prone position she was paddling in, and onto her feet in one lithe movement. Dwayne's voice cuts into his reverie, asking him which foot was in front, nearest the nose of the board; Richard recollects for a moment, then says," Her left. Yes, definitely her left." Dwayne nods in agreement. "That's right, boss. Camille is a natural footer." Fidel, seeing his superior's confused glance at the floor beneath Camille's desk, hastens to add, "Most people are natural footers, they surf with the left foot forward for balance and direction."
Richard looks puzzled, and then says, "But what's a goofy footer, then?" Camille rolls her eyes (how obtuse can he be?) and explains patiently, "Not everyone is a natural footer. Those who prefer to surf with their right foot forward are referred to as goofy footers, because their way is the direct opposite of everyone else's." Richard ponders this for a moment, then says perplexedly, "But why is it funny? What were Fidel and Dwayne laughing about, then?" Camille pauses, then says delicately, "They were…speculating. About you, and whether you would be a natural footer, or a goofy footer, if they got you on a surfboard." Richard's eyebrows shoot up in alarm at the very thought, and then Dwayne shakes his head reassuringly. "It's OK, boss, we got our answer," as he points to Richard's bandaged right foot, propped up in state on the upturned waste-paper basket, and begins to shake with repressed mirth. "You're a goofy footer, just like I said all along!" and with that, the entire Saint-Honoré police force dissolves into tears of laughter, while Richard looks at them in bemusement, unsure whether he is the butt of the joke or not, until Camille gives him the first genuine smile he has ever seen from her, and says merrily, "Oh, Richard, live a little and laugh with us, it won't kill you!" and he feels a hesitant smile stealing onto his face in response. With us, she said with us! he realises, half-disbelieving, then something very like joy rises up in him, and he allows himself a cautious chuckle, which feels so good that it becomes a full-throated chortle, and then a proper, head-back, roar of laughter. He laughs at himself, at his ridiculous, bandaged 'goofy foot', and at suddenly finding himself in the midst of friends. For the first time that he can remember, Richard feels that he belongs, and he likes it. If I'm not careful, I could get used to this…