By the time Poole left the police station, Sergeant Best ("Fidel, sir," he had said, with a big smile) had called the Palm Court, among other places, to arrange discrete witness statements, and Officer Myers ("Dwayne," he had grinned) had got on to requesting the Moores' bank statements, a task made easy by the fact that James had made no secret of which banks they favored in their blogs.

Inspector Goodman ("It's Humphrey. Gosh, where did I put that –") had printed out Sasha's blogged wedding photo and Helen's ID picture for Poole himself to go over, inking in the differences between the images and what he had seen of 'Sasha' in the last few days. This was so the records of procedures done for 'Sasha Moore' at the Saint Lucia surgery, ordered by Sergeant Bordey, could be matched to them and Poole's statement.

"This'll provide us with what amounts to a second witness," Goodman had explained, grinning widely as he reached for yet another bit of posting tac to add the photos to the growing dossier on the whiteboard. Poole found himself impressed with the team's efficiency and cohesion, even as, when the results began coming in and the officers began running it to their Inspector at the whiteboard, he found himself being edged further and further away, toward what turned out to be Camille Bordey's desk.

He only realized that, of course, when he felt something whisper-light flop over one shoulder, and turned to see his handkerchief lying there, with her smiling behind it, her lips nearly kissing the transmitter end of the handset she held. "Thank you for coming in," she murmured. "We'll take it from here and contact you when we're ready."

At that very strong hint, Poole edged up out of the chair and off around the sergeant's desk toward the furthest veranda door. He took no offense at the dismissal; he was used to being sidelined once his part in a job was done. But as he made to pass her chair it swiveled, and Sergeant Bordey, one hand over the transmitter, stopped him in his tracks by extending a slim foot at the end of a slender, shapely leg, into his path. "You are at the Port Royal," she stated, rather than asked.

Poole had not, to his recollection, told the police where he was staying, not even in his statement. It was a detail he had left out; that must be why she was asking. "That's right, suite 502," he said.

"And how is the tea in the restaurant?" she asked.

The expression that must have passed over his face seemed to tell her the whole story. Her smile became ravishing, and at the same time oddly shy. "Un instant, s'il vous plaît," she told the phone, then withdrew something from her modest purse and passed it to him. It was a bit of pasteboard, fifteen different colors and all of them garish. He took it by reflex, noting it was the Saint-Marie equivalent of his own business card, although his was bland white with discrete corner logo and block capitals. This one was for a place called Catherine's Bar. The photo showed a low building, nearly smothered in trees, on what looked like a side street. Confusingly, the modest sign in the picture read 'La Kaz'.

"The best tea in Honoré," Sergeant Bordey was assuring him.

Well, this was unexpectedly civil. Poole heard the brisk reports of the officers and the equally enthusiastic summing-up of their SIO at the whiteboard, but it was the welcome on the lovely face of the Sergeant he was looking at, for the first time with no thought of how inappropriate it might be for him to do so. "Ah. Um, thank you, Sergeant Bordey."

"Camille," she murmured, still with that shy, intimate smile. "Please."

He muttered something like an acknowledgment, said he'd be, well, she knew where, because, well, she'd said, and he'd be, well, there, and vanished, flapping the card. It was only when he was back in the whirl of the market, refusing yet another chance at a coconut, that it struck him. How had she come to remember he had asked for tea?

...

"Esmeé Outlook," Camille announced, pinning the blurb photo to the board. "According to Will Teague it's their newest villa, converted from a private home other side of the Beaumont plantation."

"And right on the slope of the volcano," Fidel said, looking grave. "There'll be only the one road up, only one entrance."

"And a sheer drop on all the other sides," Dwayne finished. "This'll be a piece of cake!"

Camille hoped so, for the sake of the civilian who had volunteered to walk into that den to beard whatever dragon may be lurking there. "Not so easy for us, getting to any crime scene if we're denied access through the front door," she added.

She returned to her desk, only half-listening to Fidel trying to talk Dwayne out of commandeering a helicopter or renting some gear to scale the deck from the rainforest below. Once seated, she glanced across to her boss's "office", to find him in his chair with his handset to one ear, face serious. In his free hand he was twirling a bit of white pasteboard over and over, between two fingertips.

Patiently, Camille waited until the action men had moved back to their stations, and she could hear her SIO responding to someone's measured statements. "Yes, London branch, Euston Tower . . . HR, please . . . Hello? This is DI Humphrey Goodman, calling from Saint-Marie . . . it's an island. Sorry, a British Overseas Territory . . . yes, I'm with the Met; well, I was . . . it's about one of your employees, a Mister Richard Poole . . . oh."

Now, Camille decided, would be as good a time as any to tune out and analyze just what had happened today, and what she expected to happen in the next few days, from both her professional and personal points of view, before she quite lost her naturally volatile temper.

A civilian, an intelligent Englishman with an apparently stressful job in a well-known consultant firm, had walked into a police station four thousand miles from his home and announced he was going to be murdered. Even with the circumstantial evidence he had produced, that was sufficient cause for her boss, who had shown himself to be inept in every field except the detection of crime, to get on the phone to the UK and make inquiries as to the mental stability of said civilian. Well and good, professionally. It was only sense that the Saint-Marie Force should have as much complete information as they could get, in order to prevent a possible serious miscarriage of justice. Professionally, Camille approved.

"But that wouldn't necessarily be a sign of personality disorder? I mean, say, if you were to claim you're under threat of . . . no, I'm not saying he is . . ."

Personally, Camille wanted to pull that handset out of her boss's grasp and club him with it. Why? Because a civilian, an intelligent Englishman who obviously had problems expressing his deeper emotions, whether from past damage or the natural diffidence of his race, had at great personal risk, walked into a police station four thousand miles from his home and announced that he was about to be murdered. It was not a cowardly panicked reaction; he had carefully thought it through and collected what evidence he could to support his claim, and had told his story rationally and calmly, if with a certain nervous edge that displayed a completely understandable fear. Camille had read it all, as surely as the man himself had seen that the woman he was told was his old friend was, in fact, not.

She ignored the piece of her mind that kept insisting that this Sasha had not been just Mr Poole's old friend. That was neither here nor there. Nothing to do with the fact that, personally, Camille was seething.

Why had Humphrey asked for her opinion if he was going to ignore it? More importantly, what would be the consequences for that brave, lonely man Richard Poole, if his firm was to be given the idea he was coming apart at the seams?

Professionally, she would follow the directions of her chief and support whatever he determined was actionable in the pursuit of justice, if necessary in the face of physical danger.

Personally, she was planning to go to her mother's bar after her shift and . . . do what?

Camille opened her daily report file and began to fill in the template blanks. She was bored, that's what it was. Ever since Humphrey had blown her cover in the James Lavender case, she had settled market disputes, chased stray goats, even collected parking fines . . . heady stuff, after her years of undercover work in Europe and the Caribbean. True, there had been the occasional murder, with trafficking of some variety as a garnish, but lately, comfortable as home was, after Europe, after living by her considerable wits every day . . .

She settled to her routine work, the edges of her mind worrying at the image of maman's bar and who she hoped would be there when she arrived.

...

Notes:

An SIO is a Senior Investigating Officer in the British Police, usually a Detective Chief Inspector but on the tiny island of Saint-Marie, a humble DI.