Chapter 6
A/N: The story LIVES. I apologise sincerely for the delay in updating. It is a very different style from what I usually write and I often can't get my brain to write in it!
It was an early start to Guadeloupe – the first ferry over. It didn't bother Camille, she was a morning person. As, apparently, was Huang. Whist Saunders huddled inside with a (likely) disappointing cup of tea, Camille and the DCI stayed out on the upper decks taking advantage of the cool breeze. The say was shaping up to be unbearably hot, and the sun had only been up for a couple of hours. "I love boats," DCI Huang offered just after they ferry set off. "When I was a small girl still living in Shanghai, my father would often have business that would take him to Chongming Island, on the Yangtze River. I would beg to go with him on those overcrowded ferries. I don't know why it appealed so much, but every boat or ship I am on takes me right back to holding my father's hand on the ferry deck. Watching the land recede away, then running to the other side of the boat to see our approach to the dock. Every time I go somewhere new, whether it is for a holiday or a work trip, if there is some kind of boat based tour you can guarantee I'll do it."
"Do you sail?" Camille asked. She didn't see the point in not making conversation. Maybe Cherry Huang was offering up all this information to try to get Camille onside, maybe she just wanted a chat. But maybe it was also possible for Camille to influence Huang.
She gave a small smile, "No, actually, I don't. Though I suppose it would be a logical hobby to take up? I guess I prefer to let somebody else do the work – possibly the only part of my life where that is the case. Perhaps I'll take it up when I retire. Do you?"
Camille shook her head. Then, to keep the talk going, she asked, "When did you move to the UK?"
Huang turned around, leaning against the barriers and no longer facing the sea, "Oh, when I was seven. Never quite mastered a perfect English accent despite living there all these years."
Camille shrugged, "I grew up bilingual and I still have a French accent. Though my school was largely French speaking."
The rest of the ferry trip consisted of more work based discussions. Camille shared what she knew about the forensic services in Guadeloupe. She was also familiar with the Doctor who would be carrying out the post-mortem, a consummate professional called Dr Celia Letourneur. Well, professional except for one thing. "Do you speak any French?" Camille asked, biting her lip when she heard who the pathologist was.
"Well, um, enough to get by on holiday. I did a bit in school."
"Just start off greeting her in French and I assume you can remember how to say je m'appelle..?"
"Yes, yes," Haung told her, nodding. "And what is the reason for this?"
"She can't abide people who don't try the language. I am positive if you introduce yourself in French she'll hear your accent, know you aren't a native speaker, and switch to English. If you didn't she would probably pretend not to speak English and make me translate." Camille wondered if she should be telling Huang this. But for Richard's sake she wanted things to go smoothly.
"Right," Haung said. "She sounds like an interesting character."
"She really is a very good pathologist," Camille stressed. DCI Huang seemed willing to accept her word on this.
Huang pulled off the French introduction smoothly. Camille noted the hint of a smile on the ruby red lacquered lips of Dr Letourneur at the rather atrocious accent, but she didn't comment on it. Instead she said, "Yes, pleased to meet you. We shall talk in English, no? Camille will help me if I forget a word, which you must forgive."
"Of course," Huang said, as if she was the one doing Dr Letourneur a favour.
"I hope you do not mind that I already took a few samples for toxicology, and sent the body for x-rays." She nodded at an envelope that presumably contained the films. "We are all busy people - I thought this efficient. I have waited for you before making incisions."
"Merci," DCI Huang said. Perhaps she thought the odd bit of extra French wouldn't hurt. "I'm grateful you are allowing us to observe."
DS Saunders had so far maintained his composure. Of course, he had also managed to entirely avoid looking at the body (Camille found herself unable to use the name of the woman she had seen alive not so long ago. Now was a time for distance.), already laid out naked on the gurney for examination. However, at the word "incision" his eyes were drawn irresistibly towards it. Camille wouldn't have guessed it could be possible for a man so pale already to actually get whiter, but he did. DCI Huang took one look at him and instantly decided he was better off elsewhere. She sent him off to another part of the building to enquire as to how long the toxicology results would take.
Dr Letourneur donned her protective goggles and gave them a small smile. "I could have told you this." She tilted her head to one side. "But then, I think, perhaps he is best off not in the room. It is always so inconvenient when the weaker sex faints at upsetting things, is it not?" Camille knew that the athletic doctor enjoyed kickboxing in her spare time. She knew her own skills in hand to hand, and was pretty confident DCI Haung would be adept as well. In this instance, DS Saunders probably had been the weakest in the room in both physical strength, as well as stomach. Camille marvelled internally at how it would not have been so many years ago that the statistical likelihood of a female DS, DCI and pathologist working the same case would have been astronomical.
"Yes, quite," DCI Huang agreed dryly with the doctor.
Dr Letourneur retrieved the tools of her trade. "A review of the X-rays showed no apparent recent fractures, though an ankle seems to have broken and heeled at some point. A careful external examination also shows no obvious injuries…"
And so it continued. Camille absorbed all of the information as it was passed on, knowing it would also be written up in perfect French and English by Dr Letourneur by the end of the day. She listened to the facts laid out before her, the largely empty stomach contents, the cyanosis, scar tissue in the uterus, the removal of wisdom teeth and TB lesions of the lungs. Some of these facts would be relevant to the case, others were just part of the story of the victim's life. They didn't know yet – it was there job to shift through and find out.
Finally, hours later, it was done. They bid Dr Letourneur goodbye, heading out of the chilled autopsy rooms into a blast of heat. Blinking up at the sun, Camille wondered where DS Saunders had been all this time. She expected DCI Huang to pull out a phone and call him to return, but when she went rummaging through her bag it was not a mobile she retrieved, but a pack of cigarettes.
"Do you mind?" She asked Camille, who shook her head. How else was she supposed to respond? "Do you want one?" Huang offered, and Camille shook her head again. "When did you quit?"
It was not something Camille had ever been asked before by other smokers. Had Huang read something on her face that told her she had smoked in the past? "I only smoked for three months," Camille told her. "When I was undercover. It was kind of essential for the operation and I didn't enjoy it all that much."
"Oh yes, you did a lot undercover didn't you?" Haung acted surprised, as if she hadn't read Camille's file. Or perhaps the significance of undercover work had just hit her, because she said next, "I have done a bit as well." She took a long drag and looked like she was thoroughly enjoying the cigarette. "More than 'a bit' I suppose. Most of it for professional standards operations, but I have done one or two other operations."
"You didn't like it?" Camille guessed, and guessed correctly because Huang nodded.
"I liked the results, and I was good at it, very good, but I didn't enjoy the process," she said honestly. "It isn't easy being somebody else, cutting ties with yourself. And I'm not convinced you don't lose a little of yourself every operation." She finished her cigarette, and frowned, "That went too quickly."
"Trying to quit?"
She let out a little laugh, "Always! I've smoked since I was a teenager. Managed quitting only the once, for about a year." She went quiet for a moment, her face distant, making Camille wonder what it was that had caused her to take up the habit again. Huang caught Camille studying her and quickly came back to the present. "Every physical the police medic gives me a lecture about giving it up. But you know what? A lot of my friends hit my age and suddenly put on weight they just can't shift. It hasn't happened to me yet, and I like to tell myself it's the cigarettes." She shared a conspiratorial smile with Camille. Then she added, almost as an afterthought, "Richard doesn't seem to have managed to avoid the middle aged spread either."
Camille held her breath for a moment. Had DCI Huang really just let the truth slip so easily? The Chief Inspector gave her a sidelong glance after she had been silent a moment. Raising a single eyebrow, she told Camille, "I was thinking last night, you are far too smart not to have figured out we already know each other."
Camille nodded in acknowledgment, "Yes, ma'am. It was…apparent."
Huang was studying her packet of cigarettes, flicking the lid open and shut as she debated having another. "Well, I'm not here because I hate him and want to see him go down," she said. "Just in case you were wondering."
Camille had been coming to that conclusion herself. There was a tension between them now, at least a more pronounced one than before. Camille had a thousand things she wanted to know, but would never ask, and Huang knew it. "Where do you think DS Saunders is?" She asked, in an attempt to get the pair of them on to a less controversial topic.
An eye roll greeted that question. "Oh, probably off flirting with some French lab tech!" she said with a flap of her hand, dropping her cigarettes back into the hand bag and now pulling out the phone. "He soon forgets his 'dedication' towards me, as you put it, when I am out of sight. And don't French women find their language spoken with an English accent really sexy?"
Camille just shrugged as DCI Huang connected to her colleague, trying not to recall with affection Richard's own half a dozen French phrases pulled out only in the direst of situations. She was sure that Haung knew that the whole team felt more than just a professional regard for their chief of police. But there was no way Camille wanted her to learn exactly how she felt about Richard.
A/N: Speaking of Richard, I promise he is back next chapter!
