5 months earlier, Honore police station
"Late, DS Stevenson," DI Richard Poole instructed as an Hawaiian-shirted, Bermuda-shorted man ambled through the swing doors of Honore police station, stifling a smile with his hand, the effect of a night out returning for its due.
"Sorry sir, but you know…" Stevenson waggled eyebrows up and down at the inspector and continued the gesture to Fidel. Richard Poole got up from behind his desk and strode three paces towards the errant DS.
"No, I don't know," he told Neil Stevenson, thrusting a handful of paper towards him. He took them, then yawned again.
"Carrie, that was her name," he added, and raised his eyebrows to Camille, who turned and sighed audibly, and shook her head.
"A young man's gone missing, seventeen, on holiday with a group of friends. From Jamaica." DS Stevenson looked at the papers in his hands through bleary eyes, and sighed.
"I can do that," he told Poole, "But I was hoping for a different gig for a change."
"And you'd have got one, had the Commissioner himself not insisted that you deal with the international cases." DS Stevenson looked at the files again, and then held them in his hands, as Richard Poole stared at him, impassively.
"Fair enough," he told DI Poole, then smiled a leery smile towards Camille and took a couple of steps towards her. "And afterwards," he asked Camille, "Wanna go out the out fer a drink tonight?" Camille turned away.
"No."
"Go on, you know you want to - "
"DS, I distinctly heard DS Bordey say no," Inspector Poole told him, sharply and had taken a step between Neil Stevenson and Camille. "Besides, no dates in the station. Ask one, ask us all." The new DS frowned.
"All of us, on our date?" he pressed. Camille groaned and was about to say something, when Richard gestured to the door.
"Take the Landrover. Constable Best can go with you.". Let's see what your reaction is to that, Richard thought to himself.
"All right all right, keep yer hair on, Dick!"
"I beg your pardon?" Richard Poole narrowed his eyes angrily. Only one person was allowed to call him that, and it was ready stirring up memories.
"I said," Neil Stevenson repeated, "Keep yer hair on, sir, and I'll get the keys."
"Yes, and I want DS Bordey to go with you." The look, the imperceptibly small pause, which was shen superseded by Camille's reaction.
"Sir!" she protested, but then saw Richard Poole's face and what he had asked her to do. "That is, yes, I'll interview the boy's family; sergeant Stevenson can take statements from witnesses."
It was for Richard; Camille wouldn't have done it for anyone else. If she expected the sleazy behaviour to continue in the landrover, she was cautiously relieved that it hadn't.
They returned two with witness statements. The parents had been beside themselves that their son had disappeared into thin air. No mobile records suggested that he had been in contact with anyone untoward.
"The boy had gone out to surf, with one of the "For Hire" boards, put the money in the machine and gone out," Neil Stevenson told them. Camille was watching him, then got the hint at the pause, and looked across to Richard Poole.
"His mother thinks he must have drowned."
"I don't fink he draahnd," Stevenson put in, with his London accent, "The board was put back."
"But the cameras are not fixed cameras and did not capture the time the board was put back - " Camille showed Richard the stills from the cameras. "The lifeguard, who is in charge of the "For Hire" boards doesn't remember seeing anyone either - it was a busy beach."
"Hmm.". DI Poole placed them on the case board and drew out the connections.
"Family holiday, mother grew up on Saint Marie, father from Jamaica, Marigold and Rudolde Silva. Mother went over to work and met him, had Lawrence…this is their first trip back to Marigold's place of birth, staying with her brother." He turned to officer Best.
"Fidel, there were two missing boys about a month ago, see if they have any connection with Lawrence de Silva…school, organisations, church.
"I, erm, can do background checks, Stevenson offered. Camille turned from the board and glanced at him, then looked pointedly at Richard.
"Yes, you do that and - " and Richard Poole's eye caught sight of something on Neil Stevenson's desk. A figurine.
"Where did you get that?" Of a viking.
"Can't rightly say, mebbe on holiday?"
DI Richard Poole picked up the viking with the hornless helmet on his desk.
"Just a token from home, like," Stevenson added. " Got it from a town near the beach, lovely place. Had a church with a famous soldier in it, did something really famous in the First Works War Higher ground overlooking it, could almost be in here, when the weather's just right. Can't remember the name though, " Stevenson added, wistfully.
"That could take us a long time to investigate; I bet a lot of towns in the UK match that description.". Richard returned it to Stevenson's desk.
"Only one I would ever go to,"Stevenson continued, "Big island, just along the way…red squirrels on it.". DI Richard Poole gave DS Neil Stevenson a pointed look.
"When you've quite finished reminiscing about summer holidays, sergeant," DI Poole replied, not taking his eye off the little viking, "Background checks of all members of the family, of friends, of neighbours. Anything that might help us figure out the whereabouts of a seventeen year old Lawrence de Silva.
88888888
Camille had come over to the shack rather late, just as Richard Poole was about to undress for the proprietariness of his pyjamas when a knock came to the screen door.
"I saw DS Stevenson acting in a way that was very odd," she told him, after she had entered and accepted the invitation to sit.
"How so?" Richard asked her.
"Well, his notes were very vague. He did not record the name of the lifeguard who gave him the report, not did he note down the time and place they interviewed. He couldn't ignore the CCTV, though, but it was I who had to ask the harbour master for hard copies of the surf boards."
She leaned in towards Richard. "And, the harbour master greeted him not with, "Why are you here?" but, "Back again?"
Richard Poole thought about what she had just told him, and wondered later whether there should have been the time when he had stopped Camille from talking to him about Stevenson. Instead he smiled, and put a hand on her lower arm, briefly.
"He has been investigating several things that the Commissioner believes are related." His mind's eye fixed on the little viking again for a moment. "But, I agree. If you are out with him again, anything else you think might be suspicious…"
"I will," Camille told Richard Poole. "Good night, sir."
"Good night," Inspector Poole replied. He was involved - clearly, and so was she, as if being four hours away by ferry stopped Richard believing she was entirely without blame. Stevenson too.
But, to get the King, sometimes you had to catch the rats. And several rats were already in glass cages, displaying their guilt as clearly as a lorikeet in mating season.
Refusing to dwell on Charlotte Brook any longer, DI Richard Poole closed and locked his shutter doors and retired to bed.
888888888
Two weeks earlier, St Honoré police station
"Are you sure you need all this stuff?" Fidel Best asked Dwayne Myers. They were moving boxes into what was about to become Saint Marie's first forensics laboratory, " - a proper one, not just us at a table round the back with things in the medical store.
"Yes-aye!" Dwayne declared. "Me a forensic analyst now, I took my exam over at Guadeloupe a week ago, all official - watch it!" he added, as Fidel bumped the one labelled, "chromatography" up the stairs. "Let me give you a hand."
It should have been three of them moving the kit. The commissioner had called Richard Poole away unexpectedly that morning, and had instructed Neil Stevenson to go with Fidel to meet the boat. Dr. John Gold had assisted in the loading and, by all accounts, "Charlotte Brook" had signed off all of the instruments that Dwayne had learned on.
"Where is he?" Dwayne asked, annoyed at the DS who seemed to not be there when you needed him. Stevenson would then hang around sometimes as if to compensate, as if to fool you that the disappearances were in your own mind.
As well they might be: he had asked Fidel and Camille if they had noticed the same thing, but both of them shrugged and shook their heads.
"Where is who?" came a voice from behind them. Dwayne was glad he had Fidel with him, because the unease at what he had thought he had witnessed two nights before had recurred regularly when he happened to see Stevenson.
Dwayne had given chase, but the man was gone. Charlotte had said she was fine, and she had fallen.
Maybe because he had heard that line so often, Dwayne didn't press her on it. Most of the time it was code for assault; sometimes someone really had fallen.
"Want some help?" Neil Stevenson scared the steps and stood beside Fidel. Then he got the door and held it open as Dwayne and Fidel got it through.
"Don't know what's in here; who'd have thought a gas chromatograph would be so heavy.
"Let me help.". He took Dwayne's place. "Get the door, Dwayne, see if we can get these out for you. Charlotte said they need to acclimatise before you fit the column and before the gas cylinder."
Neil Stevenson had been caught up in a drug smuggling operation, and had handed it over to DI Poole and the commissioner.
And all of that sounded very plausible until you realised who had said it, Dwayne thought. But he let Stevenson help them bring through the rest of the boxes, which took most of the morning.
They then returned down at the same time to an argument in progress. Camille was giving her full to a figure standing beside her, book in hand, attempting to write in it. But with each volley of DS Bordey, Ms Brook stopped and looked at her.
Suddenly, Camille fell silent and just stared at Charlotte Brook.
"If you don't get up, I'll drag you outside myself! You should NOT be sitting at the inspector's desk, leaning on it to write in your stupid, little book!"
"DS Bordey," analyst Charlotte Brook replied, her tone as cool as Camille's had been fiery. "I have to wait for the analysis equipment to be unboxed and acclimatised before I can verify they are working, before I leave. That's being done now. I am merely using my time to greatest effect by completing the handover reports, and this desk, belonging to…" she stopped, and looked at the neat nameplate, "DI Poole, is not an untidy pile of half-finished work reports strewn all over the place - "
"They are not strewn!" Camille retorted. "Ms. Brook, I find you rude, stubborn, petty, obnoxious, disrespectful and…and - "
"And I find you - " Charlotte began, "- kokèt, afèktueu, pa apwopriye ak Dick, epi LANVI!'
Charlotte got to her feet and pulled her things together, ensuring with added emphasis that she had not left anything of her own behind nor had disturbed Dick's desk.
More in shock because Charlotte Brook could throw insults in Creole than the guilty feeling that more rather than less of those insults had truth in them, she watched wordlessly as Charlotte Brook took herself towards the door, noting the viking on one of them."
"That's because there are more people than desks!" Camille managed to retort, but to Charlotte's retreating back.
"Ms. Brook," Dwayne nodded as she stepped out into the bright sunshine. "Charlotte.". Out here, with the sun's intensity, the heavy makeup could not completely disguise the bruises to her face.
"Dwayne, thank you for this; I'll be up to check them after lunchtime. When it's cooler."
"Why don't you - " he jerked a thumb towards the station, impressed at her ability in Creole.
"It has been made perfectly clear to me by your Sergeant that it is not convenient for me to stay."
"A drink then?" Dwayne asked, glancing to Fidel. "As it's lunchtime?"
Charlotte cracked, doing what she had promised herself she must not do again, let Dwayne Myers get under her skin.
She looked between the two policemen, her heart beating faster. No Neil Stevenson anywhere, Charlotte noted. She smiled. "Yes," she told him. "A drink would be great."
88888888
Three days earlier, Honoré police station
A scraping of oak, and DI Richard Poole put his hand in his desk drawer to dislodge whatever it was that was making it stick.
After a heft and a drag, ending in a little tilt, whatever it was moved out of the way and to one side allowing it to free up. He put his hand inside it and removed the offending object.
Richard Poole examined it for a moment before putting it into the breasts pocket of his jacket. Then, he got it back out again.
"Did you leave this in my drawer?" He asked Camille, who was filling in the most recent case of disappearance of two young boys off a pier close to where Lawrence de Silva has gone missing. Unsolved. That irked him.
"I've told you Camille, not up touch my desk, when I have my papers where I want them!" Camille Bordey squinted into the light.
She had been examining newspaper reports from many years back to see if there may be historical connections to the recent disappearances. These had been put onto microfiche and she had to examine them under a dark hood.
"No, never seen it before," she told him. She watched Richard Poole slip the little toy back into his inside pocket. Then, a thought occurred.
"She was there, Ms Charlotte Brook.". And before any of the myopic men with whom she worked could think up a flimsy reason to defend the woman, she began to walk towards the door, to head out into the sunshine and the rare, brisk breeze.
Just as she got to the door, Camille Bordey turned her head to the officer sitting closest to it. "I don't know what you ever saw in her, Dwayne."