Well, the main problem with having a full-time job AND a child is that my writing time is squeezed into the three hours on a Saturday afternoon when she goes to theatre class. So you can imagine my annoyance when I came down with a horrible bug on Friday night that kept me in bed for the next two days.

Fully recovered now and back to it. Usual disclaimers apply. And I swear the new series'll be out by the time I finish this...

Chapter 13

Camille applied the brake suddenly, and the jeep screeched to a halt. On the whole, it was just as well that there was no other traffic on the road.

She turned and stared at him. "Are you serious? You think this was not a case of accidental overdose?"

"It just – it's just something that came into my mind," he said, slowly and a little uncertainly.

This was supposed to be a relatively straightforward case of drug trafficking, albeit one that had gone horrifically wrong for six young people on Sainte-Marie and possibly others elsewhere. Get Interpol to help track down the perpetrators, transfer them to Guadeloupe for trial, get the doctored drug off the market - and job done. It wouldn't be over for the grieving families, of course, but at least it would be one less problem for the under-resourced Honore police force to deal with.

But now? Suddenly, things seemed a little more complicated – and he couldn't entirely explain why. It was an instinct – not based on any really strong facts, although he had a sense that the facts were there, if only he could get them straight in his head…

Or was he simply over-complicating things?

He stared through the windscreen at the empty road ahead of them, glittering in the unforgiving noon heat. It was that dead hour of the day, just before lunch, when the already high temperature began to rise further. The tourists would still be cooking themselves on the beach and regretting it later, but the sensible locals would be heading for the shade of restaurants and bars to have a long, lazy lunch, before heading home to snooze the hottest hours of the day away.

He had to shade his eyes against the glare, and wished for the hundredth time that he could hang on to a pair of sunglasses without losing them instantly. The heat haze hurt his eyes, but it was still better than looking at Camille. He felt unable to meet her eyes, half-fearing the scorn or incomprehension that he might encounter there.

Humphrey was used to getting a certain 'look'. He remembered it from childhood whenever he said something a little unusual that his parents didn't understand; he remembered it from his training days, and from his early days on the force. That "what is the lad on about now?" expression that his friends and colleagues would share with one another, apparently unaware that he could see them.

The 'look' had lessened a bit in Bournemouth, especially after he'd solved that cold murder case, and then had returned to some degree in London, but with a more world-weary and tolerant element to it. And then, here in Sainte-Marie…

Humphrey was well aware that his subordinates found him odd. They were a tolerant bunch here, though, and he'd worked hard to gain their respect. He was pretty sure by now that his senior team of Camille, Fidel and Dwayne would go wherever he led them, but even so, every now and then there'd still be that 'look', even between the three of them.

And, the point was, he couldn't blame them. Humphrey knew he took leaps in logic that others couldn't see and that he somehow could never find the works to explain properly. His mind would carry on springing ahead, from fact to fact, like a mountain goat jumping from rock to rock, even as he tried to slow down enough to explain his reasoning. Distracted by other thoughts, his explanation would come out muddled and he didn't have the time to clarify things.

It would only be at the end of the case, when he would bring all the evidence together. During his first case here, he'd been confused when the team had insisted that he had that excruciatingly embarrassing denouement with all the suspects, but now he could see why. It saved him having to explain it all at the bar afterwards.

So…right now, he wanted to explain his reasoning, but he didn't know if he could make it make sense to Camille, not so early in the investigation. And he dreaded the look that would be in her eyes. The worst of it was that he'd always been able to tolerate the look before – to accept with weary resignation that his methods would never be understood perfectly – but now, and for the first time in his life, he simply couldn't bear to see it. Not from her. Never before had it mattered so much for someone to understand him.

And his knee was aching and his head was pounding from the heat and…and he suddenly felt quite ridiculously hungry. He remembered that he'd had practically nothing to eat yesterday and that breakfast this morning had consisted of one Weetabix and a quick cup of tea on the run.

She muttered something French and probably uncomplimentary under her breath, before abruptly swinging the jeep around in the road and heading back down the road again.

"Camille – what are you doing?"

"Finding you a drink," she muttered. "You look awful and I bet you didn't eat much this morning, did you? I thought not. And, anyway, I need a drink after that. And probably lunch."

And with her usual instinct for finding good places, she took a sharp turn up a steep stony lane through some trees and, after a few minutes, drove out onto a plateau with a panoramic view across farmlands towards Honore and the coast. There was a small, shady-looking café-bar and, within a few more minutes, they were seated under a parasol with icy cold bottles of beer on the table in front of them.

"And before you say anything about drinking and driving -," she warned him severely, "- I intend to soak it up with a large dish of the fish stew that they specialise in here – in fact, it's all they serve here. And so will you. It's delicious."

And she passed him the bread basket with a meaningful look. As he took a slice of crusty bread, two steaming bowls arrived, and as the spicy aroma hit his nostrils, he realised just how hungry he was.

They were appreciatively silent for ten minutes as the bread and seafood bouillabaisse disappeared, the spicy dish perfectly countered by the cold beer. Then Humphrey sighed and leaned back in his seat.

"Thank you. I needed that." He used the last slice of bread to chase the final drop of stew around his plate before cramming it in his mouth.

She didn't say anything about his bad manners, simply gazing out at the beautiful view. "The irony is that I had been planning to bring you here – twenty-four hours ago."

He followed her gaze, across tropical green fields made hazy by the heat, towards the far-off outskirts of Honore. From here, he could just make out the pink smudge of the old Residency, where the Commissioner lived.

"Seems longer than twenty-four hours, doesn't it?" he mused.

In truth, he could hardly recall the accident and what had happened prior to it - what he had felt and thought and feared. The events following it had served to make his earlier emotions and fears quite ridiculous and immature. What did it matter, in the scheme of things, if he found his DS dangerously attractive? He no longer feared charges of misconduct, of censure, of expulsion back to London. Which did not mean it was alright to bother Camille with his feelings, he told himself severely. Especially not when she was so clearly still in love with Richard Poole.

He suddenly became aware that she was looking at him quite intently, and he wondered if she really did know what had made him panic yesterday. He flushed at the thought and looked away, digging in his pocket for the handkerchief that was, quite miraculously, there. He mopped his sweaty face and made a point of folding the cloth carefully before putting it away.

"Well – go on, then." Camille was still staring at him with that oddly intent expression. "Amaze me with your deductions about what killed Emilia Lawrence."

He glanced around them – the few people who had been sat at the tables had already departed and the bored-looking waiter was at the bar, a safe distance away. He smiled, a little tentatively. "So, you don't think I've gone completely nuts? I mean, most people…"

She rolled her eyes. "After all this time? Humphrey, between you and Richard, I don't think I'd be really surprised by anything that I'm told by an eccentric British policeman. If you tell me that there's more to this than drug trafficking, I'll listen." She reached out, a little hesitantly, and touched his forearm lightly. "You don't need to convince me," she added, softly. "I'll always have your back – you know that."

"Thank you," he added, quietly, very aware of her fingers on his wrist.

She suddenly seemed to realise that she was still touching him and withdrew her hand quickly, looking oddly flustered for a moment. "There are certain gaps in the story…"

"There – see?" He gestured at her, excitedly. "You can sense it too. It's not just me…"

He began an abortive search of his trouser pockets, but she pre-empted him, holding out a Hello Kitty notebook and pen with just the suspicion of a twinkle in her eye.

Sheepishly, he took them off her, flipped the notebook open and started to scribble. "Let's work out what we already know. Emilia was apparently the sixth person to die from this drug - on Sainte-Marie, anyway - but, firstly, we don't yet know if that's what actually killed her and, secondly, she didn't fit the profile. She hated drugs, was very fit, very body-conscious. She wasn't the type to experiment, and especially not at a party, where she was described by a witness as being tense and unhappy. So…"

He began to scribble as he talked, his writing getting wilder as he went along, underlining certain points with a heavy pencil. After a few moments, he presented the notebook to Camille:

Why did Emilia leave her friends to go to the party?

Why did Eddie invite her to go when he intended to take drugs. Didn't he know she wouldn't approve? Was she as anti-drugs as her parents thought?

If she knew what Eddie was going to do and was unhappy/angry/tense, why did she stay at the party for another four hours?

Why did she steal the drug? To stop Eddie taking it? If so, how did she end up taking it herself?

Did she take it or are we supposed to think she did?

Who was she seen arguing with at 6.30/7.00? Eddie or someone else? [If Eddie, he is lying about how he spent the night]

She stared at the points for a moment, before saying slowly, "I think I can add another question to this. If Eddie is not lying, then exactly when did she get hold of the drug? We know that Benny saw Emilia walking away from Eddie at around 2.30 and we know that Eddie went off to make his little transaction after that – so, let's assume sometime before 3AM. We are then told that, instead of smoking the joint immediately, he put it in his pocket and was apparently distracted by a girl that he may or may not have slept with, but certainly woke up in bed with. That was some time before 8.30, and he found that his joint had been stolen from his pocket. He then wandered around looking for his sister and presumably found her a few minutes later. So…if Emilia was the one who took the joint off her brother, she must have found him at the party again sometime between 3 and 6.30."

"Assuming it was Eddie's joint and not another." Humphrey sighed. "For all we know, Eddie's joint might have been stolen by someone else at the party. But then, assuming Emilia did take it from Eddie for the purpose of stopping him using it, why did she stay at the party after that? Why didn't she simply destroy it and leave?"

"She may have been scared by the neighbourhood – too afraid to leave without him?" Camille suggested.

He frowned. "That's a fair point. But then, she left her friends in the early hours to walk alone to the party when her brother texted her. That doesn't sound much like someone who was intimidated by the neighbourhood or too nervous to be out alone at night. More likely she hung around to try to get Eddie home."

"But what convinced her to go in the first place?" Camille wondered. "From what we've heard about them both, it doesn't sound as if she would enjoy spending time with her brother. Was there something in his text that made her think he was in trouble? And, if so, why would she leave him alone? If she cared enough to go across town, by herself, in the middle of the night, why didn't she try to take him away from the party immediately?"

He sighed again. "Too many 'whys'. We need to know exactly what happened during that three-to-four hour period. Either she had the opportunity to take it off him, and perhaps she was going to turn it over to us for investigation – but in that case, why hang around? – or she didn't take it off him at all. Someone else did, but tried to make it look as if she'd taken it. But why would they need to do that?"

"Perhaps they had to," Camille said, quietly. "Perhaps something happened to Emilia and this was a way of passing her death off as a drug-related accident. There's that argument at 6.30 that the witness saw – between Emilia and a tall, blond-haired man. What if that was Eddie – what if they argued and he attacked Emilia…and then panicked and tried to cover up?"

They were silent for a moment, staring at the view as the waiter came to collect their plates. Humphrey was visualising the photograph of Emilia and Eddie that he'd seen in Fidel's file the previous night; the wide grin on the pretty teenager's face, one arm slung casually around her brother's shoulder. And the older sibling's slightly glazed smile as he leaned into his sister's embrace…

"It doesn't fit," he said, slowly. "It wasn't that kind of relationship. He was psychologically weaker than her, I think, even though he was older. He depended on her and she looked after him…and they loved each other, I think. I don't believe he'd be capable of that."

"Not all that many tall blondes at the party," she commented, wryly. "It was a party for locals mainly. But there were a few other White people there, and it could have been someone else. So…if not Eddie, then who did she argue with? Can we assume that she was killed by that other man, whoever he was?"

"Another question. And a problem." He explained as she gave him a quizzical look. "The hospital didn't find any obvious injuries. No head injury, and no bruising apart from that caused by their own resuscitation attempts. Which means…"

He saw her eyes widen in understanding.

"Which means that if she wasn't killed by the drug, if she was killed by something else…it wasn't an accidental injury." She frowned, speaking slowly. "She wasn't hit over the head or pushed. She was killed by something more subtle. Perhaps it was a drug, but something guaranteed to kill more quickly and quietly than the joint. An injected substance?"

"And it also means that her killing was planned in advance of their meeting." He took the notebook back from her, and wrote three more questions:

What happened between 2.30 and 6.30?

Who was Emilia seen arguing with at 6.30?

What really killed Emilia?

He looked at this for a moment and then dialled the office.

"Fidel? Sorry, me again. I want Edward Lawrence brought in for questioning later today, as soon as he's back from his little trip. Try to do it subtly, but arrest him if he resists – on a charge of withholding information. We need to know a lot more about what happened at that party. And ask Dwayne to track down that girl that he claimed to wake up in bed with – see what she remembers. Also, I want to hear from the hospital as soon as they know the cause of Emilia's death for certain… Thanks."

He disconnected the call. Camille was looking at him, enquiringly. "So, what do you want to do now? On to the village or back to Honore?"

He ran his fingers through his hair and grimaced. "Let's go on. We've still got a trafficker and attempted murderer to track down."

She nodded at the hovering waiter for the bill. He looked at her, more than a little touched by her faith in him.

"Camille?" But as she looked at him questioningly, he found himself unable to convey what he really wanted to say. "Um…thank you."

The little smile on her face told him that she understood without further explanation. As they returned to the jeep, they were silent but there was a strange sense of peace between them. A shared understanding that there were words to say and issues to be resolved between them, but that the current time was not quite right for that. They were both too focused on the case.

She pulled out onto the empty road again. "You don't think the two cases are related, do you? Was she investigating the traffickers? Maybe that's why she didn't just get rid of that joint – perhaps it was evidence."

"Yes, that had occurred to me too." He sighed, concentrating on the road ahead. "This is about to get far more complicated."

At the village, Mme Josephine was perfectly willing to be helpful. It might have been that she was afraid of being arrested herself. More likely she was afraid for her missing sons – and not only because they were likely to be tracked down by Interpol and arrested and charged with drug trafficking. She found it hard to look Humphrey in the face and addressed her remarks to Camille, speaking in that same mixture of extremely fast French-Creole that he had found oddly soothing last time he was here.

"She never really liked that man," Camille translated for him. "He moved into the empty house over there about six months ago. Called himself Pascal. Her sons first met him while doing some casual labour at the Botanic gardens. He seemed friendly at first, but she knew he wasn't 'local' – he didn't have the right accent. He told her he was from Montserrat and that his mother came from Saint-Marie and he had come back here to try to get in touch with some distant relatives. But she never saw anyone visit him."

"And her sons?"

Camille conferred with the woman again. "He claimed to be a trained gardener – and he did have quite a bit of knowledge, she says. He offered work to her sons. He seemed to have contracts, mostly with rich foreigners to carry out anything from basic maintenance to landscape gardening. They did some work for the Commissioner. She didn't know all that they did, but she does remember that they were there on Saturday."

"Which is where Eddie Lawrence met one of them and set up arrangements for his little transaction. But she must know that it wasn't just gardening they were up to," Humphrey urged, looking at the woman. She continued to avoid his gaze as Camille spoke to her in the same rapid dialect.

The woman hesitated, and he could see she was working out how much to tell them. Camille made a sharp comment and gestured abruptly towards Humphrey; at this, the woman threw him a panicked look and began to talk. He didn't know, but he suspected that his DS had put pressure on the woman by intimating that she would have been an accessory to murder if Humphrey had died yesterday as the result of the drug she had given him.

Camille nodded briskly as the woman poured out her story and asked a few questions, clearly verifying a few points. Leaving her to it, Humphrey moved a few steps away and examined the street. It was just as dead as it had been yesterday – in fact, he wondered how many of the dilapidated houses were still occupied. There was one truck parked nearby, but not the one that he and Camille had travelled in. Limping over to it, he saw that it was empty, but reeked of rotting vegetation.

Camille came and joined him. "First of all, she confesses to giving you a sedative, but it was just that – crushed sleeping pills, the kind you can buy over the counter. And she knows all about the drugs. She doesn't know where Pascal got the cocaine from, but she knows he's been mixing it with a herb that grows in certain places around here." She hesitated. "I didn't recognise the name she gave it – there are lots of traditional local names for these things – but I do know the flower she means. Calea ternifolia. It's used in diluted quantities to promote good digestion – I believe Maman occasionally takes it as a tea if she has indigestion, but a very minute amount. It has hallucinogenic properties if taken in large quantities, particularly if smoked."

"I see," said Humphrey, after a pause. "So…added to cocaine…"

"It would enhance the experience. It also, allegedly, helps people to remember their dreams," she added. "And he could dilute the cocaine by quite a bit and the cocktail would still give users quite a buzz."

"But also, in some cases, too much of a buzz," Humphrey commented, dryly. He eyed the house opposite. "Fancy a bit of house-breaking?"

But it turned out that the woman could be helpful in this matter too. She produced her own house key, a chunky affair that appeared to work on the other doors in the hamlet too. In no time, Humphrey and Camille were standing in a darkened, shabby, stone-walled room, contemplating the task ahead of them.

'Pascal' clearly wasn't a tidy man. Dirty mugs and plates lay on top of discarded clothing, and there were piles of paper everywhere and a large box containing dirty gardening tools. The house consisted only of a large living area downstairs with a small kitchen and bathroom at the back and a little staircase leading up to a couple of bedrooms.

Humphrey peered into the kitchen area; the sink was filled with cold greasy water and piled to overflowing with unwashed pans; flies buzzed around them. He wrinkled his nose and stepped back out again, not inclined to investigate the bathroom. Camille had popped upstairs; judging by the nauseated look on her face as she came back down, the upstairs area was no cleaner.

"We'd need a team to go through that lot," she said, gesturing towards the upper floor. "Preferably with bio suits. But I can't see any obvious signs of drugs. I don't think he keeps the cocaine here."

He nodded. "He'll have a factory somewhere. That's where they were taking the so-called 'orchids' yesterday. Basically, he's watering down his cocaine by adding this herb. He must be making a packet producing it here and then shipping it out. And those two kids are siphoning off some of the finished product for their own ends. They're playing a dangerous game... So…what's all this paper, then?"

She flicked through a teetering pile of documents. "Invoices and orders, by the look of it." She picked one up at random and read it through. "I'm not a gardener, but this looks legitimate. I think he must know something about gardening."

"He probably does if he hit upon the idea of using that herb in a drug," he muttered, pulling another large pile of papers towards him. Inevitably, the pile collapsed and fell across the floor with a crash.

Humphrey and Camille looked at each other as the last of the papers fluttered to rest on the grimy floor. She shrugged and turned back to her own pile. "Well, it was already a mess in here. I don't think you could make it any worse."

He grinned. "True. Right then… the big question is, why so much paperwork?"

'Pascal Montefiore' was either extremely indiscreet or just hadn't expected anyone to be going through his belongings. The papers contained some legitimate contracts, and some of them were with names that he recognised – hoteliers, rich landowners, park curators and so on.

There were a fair number of other documents mixed in with the orders and contracts, including a couple of books on botany and a large number of maps of the island, many of them with circled areas and scribbled notations that they couldn't make out. Of his correct identity, they could find no trace, and there were no bank statements. And even with the books and maps, there seemed to be a lot of contracts.

"A lot for six months' work anyway," Humphrey noted, as he laboriously sorted through the papers. He stared at one. "Even one for a banana plantation. Why on earth would he need to provide 'basic landscape maintenance' at a plantation?"

She came and looked over his shoulder; his breath stuttered briefly as he caught the warm scent of her perfume before he forced himself to concentrate again. "It's code. It has to be. Look." Her finger pointed at the descriptions on his paper and one that she was holding out, which was for a farm. 'Maintenance' means something else. And, look at the cost. For a large plantation and a medium-sized farm, he's charging the same amount…"

He compared the examples and then pulled out some of the contracts that he had piled up. There were some that looked legitimate and were more specific about the exact work carried out, but for all the more remote locations – plantations, farms, swathes of privately-owned land - it was exactly the same contract. Same description, same amount.

"I don't think these are contracts at all," he said, slowly. "Or rather, they are, but not in the same way. They're not paying him. He's paying them." He looked at Camille. "Did you say that that flower was commonly grown?"

She frowned. "Yes - and no. It doesn't grow wild, but it tends to grow as a weed in cultivated ground. I don't know how well it grows on other islands, but I don't think it's very common. Maman buys small amounts from a street trader and he told her once that he does very well out of buyers from Guadeloupe who stock up on it. And you can't very easily go out and pick it – not without trespassing onto private land."

"So it grows in the type of ground found around farmland and plantations." He looked back at one of the contracts. "He's paying them for removal of the herb. He probably tells them that he sells it as a traditional medicine to other parts of the Caribbean – they wouldn't necessarily know it was being used to produce illegal drugs. And, judging by these and the amount of land covered, he's buying it very cheaply too."

She turned back to yet another pile of papers. "That suggests that what he told Mme Josephine might be at least partly true. He obviously knows the island, either because he spent time here in the past or his family really does come from here. He must have known that the herb was available here in big quantities. If only we could find out who he is. There must be something here that gives it away…"

They worked on in silence for another ten minutes, before Humphrey muttered a curse and abandoned his search. "I don't think we're going to find it here. He's rubbish at filing, admittedly, but he's got enough sense not to leave anything that'll give his identity away. There's nothing here that'll prove anything."

"Except possibly this." Her voice was a little muffled; she had moved away from him to check something that had been poking out from under a manky threadbare sofa. Her back was to him and she was holding a black leather document holder in her hands.

He limped over to her. "What is it?"

She turned slightly, so he could see the contents of the unzipped holder. It was crammed with notes – at a glance, he would say that there was at least ten thousand Euros in there. But Camille wasn't interested in that. She had pulled out a creased cheque and was holding it in his direction.

He whistled at the amount. "A hundred and fifty thousand in US dollars. He's doing pretty well out of this, isn't he?"

"Humphrey," she insisted, her voice stilted. "Look at the signature."

His gaze lowered to the signature line and his heart sank as he saw it. It was a flowing signature that he knew very well, almost better than his own, from any number of directives and expenses agreements and salary cheques.

Sir Selwyn Patterson.