5 months before

Was it really him? Himself, Dwayne Archie Lewis Myers, a student?

He'd gone to school - sometimes - but was always bored. His teachers were so boring, and why learn that stuff in the first place?

Angles and Pythagoras - when would he need that, as a cop? Kings and queens of England?

Much better to bunk off, hang around with older guys, listen to music, make connections. Learn to be a cool guy, y'know? 'Cos everyone speaks to the cool guy, and that was a trick he could use.

His father had been a cop; cousins and sons of his parents' friends were in the police. He wanted to catch crooks and jail them. So there wasn't much in school to keep his interest.

Antigua, on the other hand -

- a knock came to his door. Dr. John Gold. He had knocked on Dwayne's door every morning since he'd arrived, and that had been nearly two weeks ago.

Up, and ready, Dwayne opened the door, then locked it behind him, hoisting up his bag onto its shoulder.

And he had enjoyed it, enjoyed learning. He was sure he would have enjoyed learning just as much if it wasn't a pretty face teaching him.

And he has made mistakes, but Ms Brook has made sure that he didn't feel bad about them. In fact, she has taught him a lot - firstly, how to wash up glassware properly.

"It needs to be clean, sparkling, with no trace of detergent. All of that can contaminate the samples and give inaccurate results, rogue positives, and so on," she had told him.

So a week of washing up before Dwayne was shown around the rest of the lab: fingerprinting, toxicology, handwriting analysis, ink analysis, blood testing, DNA analysis, computer forensics, ballistics, fibre analysis, microscopy, pathology, dirt samples, glass refraction. Tablet assays.

Now that's more like it, he thought after the third week, when he began to be taught how to carry out the tests. When I've learned all this, we can definitely do this at Honoré.

"Then there'll be your exam," Charlotte Brook told him, which would happen at the end of his six month period. Of course. It was expected. Commissioner Patterson would demand no less.

"Marnin'!" he called to John, who was looking at the dead flowers in the trough. John had explained his parents were from Guadeloupe and Saint Marie, his parents having island - hopped several times when he was child.

"I went to Paris," he had told Dwayne, who was yawning. "Te, man," the doctor exclaimed, "Were you up all night?"

"Studyin'," Dwayne confirmed as they headed away from the accommodation and onto the path that led them to the forensics laboratory.

"Studyin'?" Dr John nudged him. "Cam aan, not the Dwayne Myers I heard of."

"Got to," he told Dr. John, turning to lock his room door, "Got ta learn it all, ya know? Got ta get back to Saint Marie, and make our forensics work.". He smiled, as a face came into his mind's eye.

"Heeey, ah know that look," Dr. John said, holding the door open of the orange landrover. Dwayne, with a full bag and books under one arm, threw his belongings onto the back seat. "But, ya know…she's not my type."

"What?" John Gold exclaimed, slipping the landrover into first gear. "Not the pretty Charlotte Brook?"

"Ah, she's pretty all right," Dwayne nodded. "But - "

"But, she's turned you down?"

"Ah asked her out for a drink a coupla times, man!" And it would have been good if she'd've said yes. Dr. John had told him she wasn't married, had no boyfriend. Been in Antigua two years, highly recommended, Dr. John had told him, Commissioner Somerton had been to see them when Frank Potter had left.

He had been the forensic laboratory manager for twenty years before that, a Scottish man who was practically a native. He had retired, and gone to live on Guadeloupe with his wife. And Charlotte Brook had been appointed.

"She worked for a lawyer company forensic laboratory six year before coming here," Dr. John had told Dwayne the first morning he had come had come to collect him. Coming out here was a promotion - she is good at her job.

"And no time for a lovely life," Dwayne had commented.

"Ah, no, I wouldn't say that," Dr. John had told him. "I saw her a few months ago out with a man - looked very intimate, too. But…not recently. An'" he had added, conspiratorially, "She always there first in the morning, always leaves last. Or works overnight when we have a lot in - " Dr. John tapped the side of his nose, "Like when Saint Marie want its forensic samples - blood, DNA, fingerprinting…all the crime scene samples - they want the results yesterday!"

"Ah, well, we have criminals to catch."

"And Charlotte, that is to say, Ms Brook, is there, trying to get them all done. When Harris went home, ya knaw - he did the nights. But no-one replacing him. So Ms Brook does it."

"I'm here," Dwayne reminded Dr. John, "I can help. And dat's what I'm learning' for, Honoré station, and there will be less work for Ms Brook - and you - to do."

John Gold paused for a moment, turning into a side street that led to Saint Martin.

"True," he said, after a moment. "But it's more work for her while she's teachin' you.". Dwayne grinned.

"I'll be the best student," he told his new colleague. "I want to learn these things."

And he wanted Ms Charlotte Brook to work a little less, he a little freer, let loose a bit. Come out with him for a drink.

"Yes man, and I tink she could relax a bit," he added.

"Relax? You ain't ever gonna get anywhere with Ms Brook, no matter how many times you ask her out," John told him. "If she ain't here she's back in her place, reading or writing reports. She's so…English…"

Ye, she is that, thought Dwayne. So very English. And he liked that.

He watched Charlotte Brook walk along the street in the opposite direction, smooth down her skirt before walking up the steps to the forensics lab.

She wasn't just arriving; she had breakfast from one of the market stalls wrapped up in a paper bag - a roll, and fruit, and a box of teabags. Dawn, perhaps, was when she had arrived?

Yes, Ms Charlotte Brook was very English.

And her stiff encouragement for them to get into the lab was just…just worth Dwayne trying once again to ask her out.

88888888

6 months before

"DS Neil Stevenson?" Commissioner Patterson had decided to meet Constable Myers' replacement himself. Saint Marie customs had just completed his background check, and he had indeed been on his way back to the UK from Singapore, and was indeed willing to stop and work in the island.

"It's a refreshing change, meeting an English policeman actually wanting to be in the Caribbean," The commissioner told him. "You're dressed for the weather," he added.

"Ah, well, yes," he told Selwyn Patterson, "I am single, have no need to worry about a family like some officers.. I like sunny I am happy to take short notice gigs." Neil Stevenson smiled. Commissioner Patterson didn't.

"Well, lucky for us we could divert your route from Jamaica. Or we would have been short handed." He nodded to his car, one painted several different colours and whose manufacturer could have been anybody, for all identifying insignia had disappeared. Quite unlike the commissioner.

"You can start tomorrow, get settled in tonight. Rooms at the back of the station are now free. This suit you?" He watched Neil Stevenson look through the windows, and then back to the road that was heading south to Saint Marie's capital.

"It will, it certainly will, chief," he told the commissioner. "And my DI is…British, yes?"

"He was at the Met as well, though, I understand it to be a large organisation, you probably won't have come across him. Detective Inspector Richard Poole."

DS Stevenson kept his head still, then tuned it slowly. It couldn't be as easy as all that. Could it? Poole here, Brook over at Antigua?

"Never heard of him. Though I bet we will know some of the same people." He smiled, and nodded as the station came into view. "That the place?"

"Yes," the commissioner replied, fully committed as he was now to the plan. This man was an obnoxious know-it-all. However, it was too late to back out now, and they needed another officer. It would just have to do.

"Great, great," DS Stevenson mused, as the car stopped near the foot of the steps. Neil Stevenson got out, and with it, his case. "Thank you very much for meeting me, Commissioner, I look forward to starting work here."

As he saw the figure of DS Bordey coming down the steps, added to himself, "Looking forward to this very much indeed."