Oh dear! I'm sorry I've kept you all waiting so long. Yes, this fic will continue, but my updates are notoriously slow, so if you wanted to wait until the status is complete, I wouldn't blame you. It's my own fault - well, not my fault that I work full time and also have a young child to look after, but I don't help myself by trying to write 2 multi-chapter fics at the same time!

Thank you for the lovely reviews, including the guest ones. They are much appreciated and when I can, I like to reply to individuals, even if just to say a personal "thank you" to taking the time and effort to review. Please remember that if you're reviewing as a guest, I can't reply to you, much as I'd like to.

Usual disclaimers: the characters and location belong to Robert Thorogood and Red Planet Pictures/Atlantique Production and I make no money from this.

Chapter 9

Thump…thump…thump…

There was the sound of muffled drumming, somewhere far away in the darkness.

It seemed to be coming nearer, becoming more distinct, but he couldn't see anything…after a few minutes (or was it hours?), he realised that this was because his eyes were shut.

He was afraid to open them; afraid of what he would see, afraid of leaving this cocoon of darkness that felt strangely safe to him. He knew instinctively that the world outside his own head was a dangerous place right now and he was fearful of the pain and disorientation that awaited him. And so he kept his eyes tightly shut.

Time passed, and the drumming faded before coming back, stronger than before. He may have dozed, but suddenly he was more aware.

Aware enough to know that he was lying on his side on a hard, unpleasantly damp floor, with one of his arms positioned awkwardly beneath him, and that his leg hurt like hell. In fact, the hot beating pulse that was drumming through his body might be originating from that one bright hard source of agony… Or was it from his head?

He risked opening one gummy eyelid and then the other. The darkness receded to some degree, but he felt a stab of pain right behind his eyes that made him hiss and close them again, quickly.

Dimly, he was aware of someone calling his name, over and over. Gradually, the voice overpowered the sullen thumping. Recognising it, he opened his eyes again.

The light was dim and he could make little out. He was lying on his side with his face very close to a gritty rough surface and his limbs splayed haphazardly. He realised after a moment that he was lying in an approximation of the recovery position…which was good news, in a way. It meant that somebody didn't want him to choke or drown in his own vomit. Even if they weren't that concerned about drugging him.

"Humphrey! Can you hear me?"

He opened his mouth, trying to respond. "Ysmgll…"

Well, that didn't sound right. He swallowed and tried again, finding that he could only produce a croak. His mouth was abominably dry and there was a foul taste on his tongue.

Cautiously, he tried to stretch his legs out. The pulsing pain in his leg spiked agonisingly, but he was relieved to find that he could still move it. The arm under his body was numb and immobile, but he somehow managed to push himself into a sitting position.

He rubbed his dead arm while taking in his surroundings. Sunlight came dimly through cracks in the roof, and with these rays, he was able to make out that he was in a hut roughly twenty feet by eight. The walls and ceiling looked to be rough wooden slats, and he was sitting on a filthy, damp concrete floor, which had puddles in various locations. Apart from some stacked crates in one corner, the hut was empty. He could hear the sound of waves crashing onto the sand fairly close by and smelt the unmistakable tang of salt, mixed in with the musty atmosphere in the hut.

He hardly dared to look at his right leg, but it appeared to be still swathed in the loose bandage. It felt swollen, tight, hot…little pulses of agony throbbing in time with his heart. So much for that alcohol staving off infection…

"Humphrey!"

He located the sound, turning awkwardly to look over his shoulder. "C'm'lle?"

She was propped up against the wall right behind him, with her ankles tied together and her arms twisted behind her, also presumably tied together. She was hunched up a little, with her hair hanging over her face. Even in his dazed state, she looked to be in pain.

He tried to croak another enquiry but coughed instead. He licked his lips; they felt cracked and gritty, and he grimaced in disgust, spitting bile from his mouth. He looked around, hopefully.

She seemed to guess his thoughts. "They left a bottle of water, but get me out of this first."

Somehow, hearing her voice seemed to clear his foggy brain. "Yes, of course."

Not trusting his ability to stand, he shuffled awkwardly on his bottom in her direction and examined the rope binding her ankles. It was thick, with large knots that were not that difficult to undo – or wouldn't have been if only his left hand wasn't still numb. Having finally released her legs, he moved around to tackle her wrists.

She sighed in relief when he finished, hunching up further to rub her wrists and ankles. "Bottle over there. The youngest one dropped it on the floor after the others left. Muttered something about how you might need it."

He shuffled across the floor again and grabbed the bottle of water. It looked OK; the lid was sealed. He opened it and sipped cautiously. The water was unpleasantly warm but didn't taste as if it had been doctored. He took several large gulps, washing out his mouth in the process, and his head cleared a little.

"Hey! I could use some of that too," she protested.

"Sorry." He passed the bottle over. She had raised her head slightly, pushing her hair back, and he gasped at her swollen jaw and the bruises already darkening her face.

"Camille! God, what did they do to you?"

She gulped the water down and then grimaced, touching a cut on her lip. "Oh, they just didn't like me 'resisting arrest'."

"You fought them? All three of them?"

She stopped dabbing at her lip and glared at him. "Of course I did! I didn't know what they were planning to do! For all I knew, they were going to drop us overboard, and you were – well, completely out of it. When they started dragging us to the boat…"

"Boat? Where are we now? On the beach…?"

"Yes, in some kind of hut, which explains why it's so damp in here. We're at that bay I told you about – with the unused jetty. Near the abandoned coffee plantation." She prodded her jaw warily. "That older man – the one you thought you knew – he punched me and I think I blacked out for a moment. And then he put a sack over my head. But at least they didn't take us with them on the boat. I think they had considered it. Instead they dragged us in here and tied me up. At least he took the sack off before they left – although I think it was mainly to smirk at me. And then they left, and I heard the sound of a motorboat. I'm pretty sure they've gone, so we can rest for a few minutes before trying to get out."

"Bastard," he spat out, surprising himself with the level of vitriol in his voice. Ridiculously old-fashioned though it might be, his blood was up at the thought of a man hitting a woman, even if she was a police officer…

"It probably did not help that I'd just stuck my knee right in his – you know," she commented.

He looked up at her in surprise. There was just the suspicion of a smile lurking in the corners of her mouth, as she delicately stretched out her fingers, examining the split and bruised knuckles that spoke of a good fight.

He choked out a laugh. Ridiculously grateful that she could still find humour in the direst of situations. "You – oh, Camille, you… You. Are. Brilliant! I lo -." Somehow he managed to cut off the words, substituting rather weakly with, "I – uh – I hope you know that."

To avoid meeting her eyes, he tried to pass his left hand over his forehead before remembering that the arm was still a little leaden.

"The youngest man – the one who left the water," she said, watching his stiff motion. "He was the one who put you in the recovery position. He was the only one that seemed to care, but he was too scared to stand up to the others. I felt…" she swallowed. "I had the impression that he was sorry about something."

"I should think he was," he said, indignantly. "When I get my hands on them…"

He left off rubbing his shoulder to touch her cheek very gently, careful not to make contact with the swollen jaw. She observed him carefully, silently, and then her eyelids fluttered shut. Was it his imagination or did she lean very slightly into the light pressure of his fingertips, just for a fraction of a second, before moving her face away again?

"No, it was more than that. He seemed…oh, I don't know." She sighed, shaking her head. When she spoke again, her voice was harder, more practical.

"You said you knew him from somewhere."

He rubbed his face, feeling utterly wretched. The muzziness was starting to fade, leaving him with a nasty headache. After-effects of the drug, he supposed. That woman had seemed so kind…

"I did. I just didn't remember until you mentioned it. He was at the Residency. I was there… yesterday? How long was I out?" he asked, suddenly.

"Over three hours, I think. It felt like a long time, anyway. I was getting a bit worried…although you snored, so I knew that you were at least breathing. I wonder what they gave you?"

He felt his head gingerly. "Whatever it was, it certainly packed a punch."

"And I was supposed to have taken it too. That was why she put it in the coffee and added so much sugar to disguise the taste." She shuddered. "It was pure chance that I didn't drink it. Anyway…" She looked up at the ceiling, as if assessing the light from what little she could see of it. "Judging by the way the sun has moved, it's coming up to six now. We left that village just before half past two, and we were on the road for about twenty minutes, roughly another ten minutes after you became unconscious. I know it was nearly three when we stopped, because I was fiddling with my phone, trying to work out a way of sending a message to the station. That was when they took it off me - ."

"Wait a minute!" he interrupted. "Are you saying you travelled another ten minutes, knowing that you were being abducted? I mean, didn't you try to jump out, or something?"

"And what would I have done with you?" she asked, irritably. "You were like a sack of potatoes!"

"You could have left me," he suggested, quietly.

She sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, looking at him intently, her face strangely blank. "Would you have left me? Completely helpless, unable to defend myself? When you knew that the truck was heading in the direction of a bay with notoriously rough seas, and you had no idea just how ruthless those men were?"

"Well, no, of course not -."

"Well, then." Her eyes didn't leave his face. He couldn't read any particular message in them, but he saw that her hands were shaking.

He reached over and took one of them in his. Rather to his surprise, she didn't resist. Her slimmer fingers curled around his large hand tightly, almost possessively.

"So…uh, where was I? Oh yes, the Residency. I was there yesterday. Some shindig of the Commissioner. I remember I felt very out of place." He closed his eyes, picturing it as he spoke. In the gardens, hot in his jacket and making awkward small talk with the rich matrons of Honore. Stepping back to avoid a woman's over-enthusiastic gestures, and bumping into a man in the flower beds right behind him. Turning slightly, an automatic 'sorry' on his lips. The man – a gardener – looking at him impassively before turning away…

"Why did you think he was a gardener?" Camille interrupted his description.

"Um – I don't really know," he admitted, trying to remember. "He was wearing gardener's overalls, I think? Or something like. And was wheeling a large potted plant in a wheelbarrow. And no one was challenging him. I guess I just assumed."

"Seems reasonable," she commented. "Sir Selwyn only employs one gardener, and the grounds are large. He 'borrows' additional gardeners from the Botanic Gardens, so no one would be surprised to see a new face… But obviously he wasn't a gardener."

He nodded. "Smugglers. Didn't you say this harbour used to be used to transport goods to Guadeloupe? That orchid…?"

"Wouldn't be the orchids," she interrupted. "They wouldn't survive the journey. They need to be preserved properly and transported by plane. No – it's something to do with the Commissioner. They've stolen something from the Residency and took it out disguised in a potted plant, but what? It's not as if he keeps anything particularly valuable there – he's too canny for that. There are some artworks, but they would be too easily traced. No buyer would take the risk. What could they possibly take from the Sainte-Marie Residency that wouldn't be recognised and tracked through the Caribbean?"

She frowned for a moment, trying to visualise the Residency, and then shook herself. "OK. I guess we had better start trying to get out of here if you're well enough. Do you think you can move now?"

That was debatable. His head was still very muzzy and he felt as if he could drink an entire lake, his mouth was so dry. His muscles felt shaky, but on the other hand he was shivering, so perhaps moving around would be a good thing. He scrambled to his feet and found that he could manage as long as he didn't put too much pressure on his injured leg. He shivered violently and was newly conscious of his thin t-shirt and Bermuda shorts. There was a much fresher breeze on this side of the island, and it whistled through the slats in the hut.

Camille made her way to the large double-doors and tried the handle, seeming unsurprised when they wouldn't budge. She looked around, but there were no windows – what little light there was came through the slats in the roof.

Talking of which… He hobbled to the nearest wall and began to push and pull at the wet slats, trying to find a weakness, but the little structure seemed surprisingly sound and appeared to be reinforced with vertical planks at crucial sections on the outside. It was surprisingly well-constructed for what appeared to be a simple beach shack.

"Not that I'm an expert on beach huts or anything but… you'd expect some of the wood to have rotted by now since it's so wet," he commented, making his cautious way along the wall.

"It's in surprisingly good condition," she agreed, from the opposite wall.

"It occurs to me," he added, after a few fruitless minutes, "- that it's quite new. Or has been rebuilt recently. If that gang has been storing stolen goods here, they wouldn't want anyone breaking in."

"Mmm." She had stopped pushing at the wooden slats along the walls and now stood staring fixedly at the cracks in the roof. Although the dimensions of the hut were fairly small, the roof was high – well out of even Humphrey's reach.

"I need to get up there," she muttered.

He looked around, a little helplessly. "Could be tricky."

Her eyes alighted on the empty crates and she walked over to take a look. She picked up one crate and wrinkled up her nose as it fell apart in her hands.

"Rotten. And they wouldn't be high enough anyway." She gave him an assessing look. "Could you bear my weight for a few minutes?"

He doubted it and even more so when he realised that she was considering standing on his shoulders. Even on one of his better days, he was liable to stumble and drop her, so with a sprained knee and an infected cut that was making him feel light-headed…

But it really did look like their only option. Camille tried a few judicious kicks around the doors, trying to dislodge whatever was barring them from the other side. She then went around the floor on her hands and knees, trying to find a gap between the wood and the concrete floor, while Humphrey applied his shoulder to a few promising-looking panels. There was a gap between wall and floor, all the way around the hut, but it certainly wasn't big enough for even Camille to slip through, and the wooden panels were fixed solid.

In the end, she gave him a helpless shrug and a meaningful look at the ceiling. He braced himself against a wall and cupped his hands to make a stirrup. She was as quick as she could possibly be, grabbing hold of a hook to take as much of her weight as possible once she was on his shoulders, with his hands around her ankles. He cringed as the hook creaked alarmingly, but she seemed unfazed, standing on tiptoe and stretching as high as possible to prod at one of the ceiling boards with a broken-off section of crate.

"Any luck?" he asked, hopefully. The sweat was starting to run down his face from the strain, and he was trying very hard not to notice the pain shooting through his knee.

She banged at a couple of boards with the crate and swore under her breath. "Feels just as solid as the rest."

"Camille, I think…" His injured knee was starting to buckle.

"Yes, OK." She shimmied down his body, jumping the last few feet. As she went to throw down the broken piece of crate, she hesitated and held it up again, sniffing the wood.

"What is it?"

"Don't know. Reminds me of something."

His ears pricked up. "Drugs?"

She frowned. "I don't…think so." However, she sounded unsure.

He looked around. "So…we really are stuck in here."

"Unless you have any bright ideas?"

He sighed, sliding down the wall to sit heavily on the floor, not really registering the dampness. "This is ridiculous! How can we be stuck in a stupid wooden hut? Don't you keep any tools on you – a Swiss army knife or something?"

She glared at him. "No. Do you?"

He indicated his flimsy beach clothes with a grimace. "I just thought, with the bike…"

She exclaimed. "The bike! I had forgotten that – it seems so long ago. Not that it'll make much difference." She slumped on the floor next to him. "Even if someone drives along that road, they're not going to be very curious about a damaged bike propped against a tree."

"Even if they are, who's going to connect that bike with you? I don't suppose you happened to drop by the station to see Fidel or Dwayne before you picked me up?"

"No." She sighed, running a hand across her eyes. "And they took my phone; it's probably at the bottom of the ocean by now."

"You sent a message to Fidel before we left the village."

"Yes, but it wasn't very informative. I left a message on his mobile, but there didn't seem much point in giving details when he couldn't come to collect us. I told him we'd had an accident and that I'd be in touch again once we got back to Honore." She paused. "I remember he sounded very worried in his message to me. I wonder what the case is?"

He shrugged. "Well, he can't help us at the moment. Let's try to think things through. We can't get out, so we'll have to wait until someone finds us."

He tried to sound brisk and practical to hide his concern, although it was clear that she understood the implications. At the weekend, it'd be a while before either of them was reported missing. Even when they were, they'd left very few clues for Fidel and Dwayne to follow. They had no idea of the intentions of the gang and whether they would return before they could be rescued.

She choked out an unamused laugh. "Waiting to be found doesn't sound very appealing to me. And if we're going to find a way out ourselves, it needs to be soon. We haven't got any lights on us and there's no artificial light around here, so once the sun goes…"

That was his fear too, but it seemed pointless to keep trying. Nevertheless, he took a piece of the broken crate and started poking it around in the minute gap between 2 overlapping planks of wood, trying to lever them apart. He noticed that she was doing something similar with a small stone that she'd found on the floor.

He changed the subject. "Unless you've got a better idea, let's talk it through. Back at the village, you sounded uncertain about the orchids being transferred. What was it that worried you?"

She shrugged, focusing on scraping away at the wood with her stone. "Nothing specific. It just seemed odd. In villages like that, they sleep on Sundays. They don't lift a finger, if they can help it. So, why were they transferring orchids on a Sunday? That implies that they'd just picked them that morning – but why? Surely they could have waited until tomorrow? It's not that big an industry – not big enough to employ workers seven days a week. And also…do you remember how quiet that place was? They might not do anything on a Sunday, but they usually sit outside their houses, gossiping with the neighbours. There was hardly anyone there, and all the front doors were closed. That's not Sainte-Marie custom."

"So…" Humphrey drummed his fingers. "The man removes something from the Residency, taking advantage of the party, which meant there were a lot of people in the grounds. Being dressed as a gardener, no one would have given him a second glance. I didn't. Would he have been able to get into the house, though? Most people were outside, so he might have been more noticeable there -."

"Maybe that's the case Fidel was called out to?" she interrupted. "Perhaps Sir Selwyn only just noticed that something is missing."

"But, we come back to: how did he get into the house? Unless he had a waiter's outfit hidden under his overalls or something like that? Anyway… he brings that item to the hamlet, hides it among the orchids in the truck. That explains why they were moving them on a Sunday – because they had to get whatever it is off Sainte-Marie before Sir Selwyn noticed."

"But what could they hide on an orchid? If it was going out by the usual route, it'd be found at the depot where they pack the flowers -."

"Unless they have an inside man there. Someone who'd be there to receive and pack the flowers on a Sunday? Then they'd be ready to go out on the first flight to Guadeloupe on Monday morning, and from there to…wherever." He sighed. "I don't know. There's too much that could go wrong in that scenario. I supposed the boxes would be labelled for a specific destination, but even so, customs…"

"Customs wouldn't open them if they'd been packed at the depot…or I suppose they might open just the front window to check there were orchids inside," she commented. They both knew what she was referring too. The drugs trade on Sainte-Marie was pretty controlled. The compact size of the island coupled with strict controls on land use meant it was just about impossible to grow narcotics on the island, hence customs didn't usually expect to see anything illegal being exported. Imports were more of a problem.

They were silent for a few minutes, both of them busily chipping away at the wooden slats. Humphrey had managed to force his hand in between two panels enough to wriggle his fingers in the outside air, but the slats wouldn't give any more than that. The noise of the waves outside seemed to have grown louder.

"You know," Camille said, suddenly. "I don't think they store anything in here at all. If they did, it'd be more cluttered and we might find a useful tool. But there's nothing here, apart from those mouldy crates…" She paused in her work and looked around at the space and then up at the high ceiling, before exclaiming, "It's a boathouse! That explains why it's so empty. You could just about fit a motorboat in this space. They must keep it in case they need to make a quick getaway. And that would explain why it is so well-maintained. They'd be worried about one of the locals stealing the boat. It sounded quite powerful, from what I could hear, so it must be worth a bit of money."

He shivered. "It would have to be powerful if they launched it from here." He could hear the wind whipping up the waves in the bay; he was no expert on tides, but it sounded like an angry sea to him. It reminded him of the rough waters off the Purbecks in Dorset – or perhaps south west Cornwall. The sort of sea where boats could quite easily end up dashed against the rocks…

"Wait a minute," he said suddenly, urgently. "You say it's a boathouse. How would they get a heavy motorboat up onto the beach and into it?"

She looked at him blankly for a moment and then an expression of horror appeared in her eyes. "They wouldn't. Which means it's -."

"- filled with water at high tide," he finished. "Which also explains why it's so wet in here." He staggered to his feet and looked at the uneven concrete floor, at the salty puddles in the dips. Was it his imagination or were there already more of them?

Camille bit her lip as she also stood. "I should have realised sooner. Stupid! That was why that boy looked so sorry for us! And the tide – it's -."

"- coming in! I know!" He looked around desperately, trying to think. The rise and fall of the waves outside sounded much closer than they had before.

"It's not going to fill the hut right up."

"But high enough for a motor boat to float in it, including the keel," he pointed out. "Just how high is that likely to be on a motor boat?"

They looked at each other and then, obviously thinking the same thing, looked up at the hook in the wall that Camille had held on to earlier. It was about twelve feet off the ground, and there was another hook at the same height on the opposite wall, plus two more at the back of the boathouse.

"They probably chain the boat to those hooks, to stop it moving around too much in the waves," she said, slowly.

"Yes - which would be about deck level," he continued, desperately trying to remember anything he'd ever learned about boats during Sally's sailing days in Bournemouth. "And if we assume that the keel is roughly the same length as the hull to balance it out -."

"– then the water level in here should be about six feet at full tide," she finished.

"Is that even possible?" he asked. "For the tide to rise so high?"

"The tides are much higher on the west coast. It's quite sloping," she said, looking nervously up at the hook. Suddenly, it seemed very far from the floor.

He glanced at the doors. The swell of a wave splashed loudly onto the sand right outside and some water came under them and spread quickly across the floor.

"OK, OK…" he breathed in deeply, trying to calm down. "This is not good."

Camille gave him a desperate look. "Humphrey, what are we going to do?"

And I can testify to just how terrifying an incoming tide on the west coast of Britain can be, and how easy it is to get stranded. One minute you're just paddling around in ankle-deep water and then suddenly it's around your knees and looks dangerously deep whatever direction you look in.