In his memory, Richard once more sees Sergeant Thompson, standing next to the Commissioner, waiting to meet him at the airport, muttering something his normally excellent hearing couldn't quite catch, before giving him a small, polite smile. He recalls the practised way in which she had swung into the drivers' seat of the horrendous old police Land Rover and then managed to avoid most of the ruts and potholes as she took them back to the station, and her tone of voice when he had raised the issue of the island's inhospitable climate with her ('well, take off your jacket, then' she had drawled, with a look of exasperation at having to explain this to yet another Englishman shipped in to lord it over her). He puzzles anew at Lily's sudden kindness and consideration in offering to take him to his quarters first to freshen up, just at the point that he was certain he was about to expire from the heat beating down on him through the window of the old, un-air conditioned vehicle. And then there's the way in which she had upped the ante by telling him that his deceased predecessor, Charlie Hulme, had not been a typical Englishman, but had been charismatic, thereby triggering not only Richard's personal insecurities and uncertainties, but his male competitive instinct to somehow outdo his (admittedly dead) rival. Yes, she had read him, all right, and then proceeded to employ her feminine intuition to influence and control him until he had been pointing this way and that at her whim. He blushes at the thought of it. Such a stupid, ridiculous, rookie's mistake.
Richard had to admit, he had been thoroughly taken in by her on the professional front, too. She had been so damn helpful when they were going over the crime scene in the panic room at Lord Lavender's palatial residence; seemingly so eager to learn from him ('what's that?' she had curiously asked, spotting his laser distance finder) and willing to accommodate his demands. Not that he thought they were demands, rather he felt that they were eminently reasonable requests. Recall the evidence from another island, where it had inexplicably been consigned; take statements; assist him at the crime scene; drive her senior officer about. It was all in a day's work for any Sergeant of police, and she had done everything he had asked without complaining; but if Richard had been paying more attention to her, he would have noticed the little eye-rolls, head-tosses and sarcastic vocal inflections which accompanied her acceptance of whatever order or instruction he had given her. His father would have called it dumb insolence, and what's more, Richard decides glumly, dear old Dad would have been right. Lily had been almost unable to mask her contempt for him at times, but he had missed most of it, so caught up in misery at finding himself in his own personal version of Hell-on-Earth had he been.
He does recall one moment though, when she had replied to his innocent enquiry of "How do you get anything done on this island?" with a distinctly snarky-sounding, "Beats me how we get out of bed in the morning," a pronouncement delivered in such a loaded tone of voice that he had turned to look at her warningly. In hindsight, he wonders how he could just have overlooked it – normally he is a stickler for propriety and insisting on the respect due to his rank, if not to himself personally. Lily had gotten away with it, he feels, because most of the time she had managed to look and sound professional. It still makes him sick, though, when he considers that he had followed her around for days without realising he was in the company of a scheming, amoral murderess. His professional pride had taken a battering over that, but when compared with the damage Lily had inflicted on his personal pride, this pales into insignificance. More unwanted memories surface, and this time Richard gives into them, wallowing in self-loathing and disappointment. I need another beer…
He should have known something was up when she started to ask him about his life in London, as they had strolled along the beach a few days ago. In Richard's experience, women do not fall over themselves to make his acquaintance, much less make personal enquiries about his life. If he had been at home, he's sure he would have seen the set-up coming from a mile off; people who live packed into the controlled chaos that is London don't waste their time making small talk or polite conversation with strangers, and more than most, Richard is adept at keeping others at arm's length. For the most part, it is simply lack of interest on his part – most people, he has observed, are boringly predictable, and he has long since learned that their interests are limited to a few well-worn topics: their partners (or lack of), their children (or lack of), their dislike for whatever it is that they do for a living and who they do it with, where they are going (or have been) on holiday – Richard just can't find it in himself to care about any of it, and he doesn't mind who knows it, either. He has sometimes heard people whispering behind his back, "Asperger's, you know," and hasn't bothered to correct them. Why should he care what others say about him, when he holds most of them in contempt to begin with? He might love living in London, but he certainly doesn't love his fellow citizens. Mostly, Richard Just Wants To Be Left Alone…and so he is. People go out of their way to avoid him, and that's exactly how he likes it.
Yes, if only he had been at home, she would never have gotten under his guard. But here, where nothing is familiar, with the stress of a murder investigation pressing upon him almost as oppressively as the insidious heat and ever-present humidity, he had actually welcomed her friendly overtures…What on earth was wrong with me, he wonders. Richard drains his second bottle of beer, and rolls the still-cool glass bottle across his forehead in a futile bid to gain relief from the muggy evening air…even when the sun goes down, it's still hotter than Hell…what sort of people would actually WANT to live here, much less pay to visit? It is all quite beyond his comprehension. "Mad as a bag of frogs, the lot of them," he mutters darkly, retrieving yet another beer, before returning to the veranda and continuing his brooding.
Sunk in his self-recriminations, Richard does not notice the moonlight silvering the lagoon before him, nor the blaze of stars hung low across the soft black sky; he fails to see the gently swaying palm fronds as the faintest breeze ruffles them, or hear the myriad sounds of a tropical night: the low thrumming of cicadas, the chirping of crickets, the high-pitched squeaks of fruit bats on the wing, or the distant strains of reggae drifting towards the isolated shack from the other side of the lagoon. Taking a deep breath and huffing it out again in an attempt to ease the tightness in his chest, Richard does not register the scent of night-blooming jasmine, piercingly sweet, nor the softer fragrance of the red frangipani which grows behind the shack. He does not sniff appreciatively at the sea air, nor does he pick up on another, sweeter, heavier smell, like burning grass, which is coming from further down the beach…a smell which he would have recognised and hunted down zealously, if he had come across it in Camden Markets, but which here goes unnoticed, buried amongst the thousands of new sensations and experiences of Saint-Marie, and none of which he wants.
"What's a typical London experience, something that fills you with joy?" he again hears Lily asking, and he knows now that he must have looked at her blankly, from the amused look on her face as she says "Tell me," …and to his complete surprise he did, beguiled by her interest. Richard takes another long swig of his beer and winces in embarrassment as he recalls the cosy scene in the White Hart which he had conjured up for her, and then her innocent-sounding enquiry -"Alone?" He knows now that she had been playing him all along, that she had already shrewdly (and correctly) assessed him as an awkward loner, uncomfortable with the sort of light conversation that seems to come so easily to the rest of the human race – the inconsequential, unimportant banter which makes up the majority of their communications. Richard has never felt at ease discussing his life outside of work, and he fervently wishes now that he had stuck to his lifetime habit of avoiding engaging with people socially. I'm no good at it anyway, and now look what's happened – I should have just walked away…
Richard groans aloud as he replays the scene in his mind's eye; that awkward little moment where it dawned on him that, quite unfeasibly, he was alone on a tropical beach with a pretty woman, talking to her… he sees once more Lily's demure smile at his embarrassment and confusion, and then, excruciatingly, his recalls his final words to her that night… "Good work, you've been fantastic…" sounding, he realises in hindsight, like a gauche teenager. He may as well as have said, "Cool, laters!" as he has often heard kids on the Tube say, incomprehensibly, into their mobile phones. It's the oldest trick in the book, using feminine wiles to get around a chuckle-headed male, and until now he has prided himself on his invulnerability to such transparent manoeuvres. Richard drains his final beer for the night on that thought, and grimly takes himself to bed, to lie, sleepless, in the sweltering heat, and wonder why he has only ever thought to buy flannel pyjamas.
