It hurt, it really hurt as Camille took up a seat in the circle of chairs. Gather together the suspects.

She sat as far away from him as she could, but she could still feel his steady green gaze on her. It took some time to realise why she hadn't recognised him. Her mental image of Detective Inspector Poole was unchanging from ten years ago, with his ridiculous British stuffiness and heavy wool suits. But unlike the one preserved in her memory this man had been distorted by the years, with grey in his beard and white touching his temples. He didn't even have a tie. A stray thought zipped through her mind that he was thinner than she remembered, cheekbones sharper, a small but obvious scar under his left eye. It was undoubtedly him, but like she was looking at him through a funhouse mirror.

But those eyes in the weathered face were still the same.

This time Catherine was playing the role of Inspector and seemed to be relishing it as she casually circled them. Danny and Elliot were behind the bar, neither of them having a lick of what was going on but not willing to leave just yet in case there was another arrest in Honoré that week. The front door rattled. Realising a moment later that the bar was locked, one of the windows was levered up with the tip of a screwdriver and seconds later Dwayne Myers scrambled smoothly through the window. Fidel Best followed a moment later rather less smoothly, catching his foot and almost falling flat on his face.

Apparently the two of them were mid-argument.

"-we're supposed to be police officers." Fidel was complaining.

"You're a police officer." Dwayne said. "I'm retired."

"Should I be concerned about how easily you broke into my place?" Catherine asked.

Dwayne gave a noncommittal shrug before he made a show of dusting off his shorts and straightening up. "Sarge, you called-?"

Lucky Number Seven swallowed, before rising to his feet, his shoulders set defensively like he expected physical attack.

The smile he gave was pained.

"Er, hello lads."

Dwayne's gaze connected with his, and any lingering doubt Camille may have had about the man's identity was swept away.

"Chief?" The word was said with disbelief, hope, and just a little bit of terror. Actually, quite a lot of terror. Quick as a flash, Dwayne tugged a little flask from his pocket and popped the top before splashing Number Seven with the contents. "Begone from here, devil! Back to Baron Samedi and his spectres!"

There was an incredulous moment when Camille was so tempted to laugh.

"Have you entirely lost your mind?" The other man demanded, and the indignation was painfully familiar. He shook himself off, grumbling, before sniffing his hand. "Are you trying to exorcise me with rum?"

"It was blessed by Father Mulligan!" Dwayne protested, looking at the flask. A moment later he seemed to realise that the phantom before him hadn't disappeared into a puff of smoke or screamed and dissolved, and dropped the flask. "Chief!"

And to the man's consternation, Dwayne grabbed him in a tight hug. Richard's arms hung by his sides for a moment before he raised his hands and patted Dwayne on the back awkwardly.

"Well, if it doesn't send the devil back to hell we can always light it on fire." Camille said darkly as Aimèe settled herself in her mother's lap, bottle in one hand and her lizard in the other, not interested in the adult drama in the least.

There was a flash of something across Richard's face like he hadn't really been anticipating her hate, but seconds later the shutters came banging down and any emotion was instantly masked. He looked away from her. "Dwayne?"

Dwayne was still holding tight, like by doing so he was keeping his Chief in this world and not allowing the devils to take him.

"Dwayne! I need my arms!"

"Oh. Right." Dwayne let him go. Richard's face was red with embarrassment as he took a step back, putting some physical space between him and the people that were once his friends. "Well, this is… awkward."

"You can say that again."

"You best have a very good explanation for this, alors aide-moi mon Dieu." Catherine's voice carried the promise of death should he displease her.

"I – yes, of course."

Fidel forced himself to speak. "How can you – I took your pulse. You were dead." And just like that he was the young officer that needed his mentor again, voice full of loss.

"Dead as a doornail." Dwayne agreed, and Camille was torn between telling him off and laughing at the look on Richard's face in that moment. "Kicked the bucket. Bought the farm. Passed into the Great Beyond!"

"Yes, thank you." Finally he sighed. "Effectively I was."

"But how… are you… here?" Dwayne asked hesitantly. "There was a – in your – " He made a repeated stabbing motion at his own chest.

Richard's hand briefly hovered over his heart. "Thank you Dwayne, I do remember. I was there."

Oh, there was the snark that made Camille's head hurt.

"But how didn't you-"

He ran a hand back through his hair. "It's… complicated."

"Not really." Roger Sadler stepped in, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded behind his head.

"Uncomplicate it." Camille said stiffly.

"Simple, really. It all comes down to Angie." He raised an eyebrow at Richard. "I don't know if you want to send her chocolates or push for an extension for her stay at the loony bin."

"Quoi?" Catherine asked.

The look Sadler got was poisonous and the two men regarded each other with disdain. Like the sun rising gently over the horizon it dawned on Camille.

"You're MI5, too."

Dwayne's expression cleared with a dawning expression like everything was suddenly making sense. "MI5? Are you James Bond, Chief?" There was an excited note in his voice.

"James Bond was MI6." Richard said absently. "Foreign intelligence. MI5 is domestic security."

"Then if you're domestic security, why are you here?" Camille asked sharply.

His eyes narrowed, briefly pursing his lips. "There may be a slight loophole allowing me to operate here as Saint Marie is a British Overseas Territory."

None of that seemed to make a difference to Dwayne. "Were you a spy before?"

"I was never a-" He shook his head. "No, I was an ordinary police officer until about a year after I – Died. Recovery took… some time, and then there were the recruiters. Not that I had much of a choice, though."

Camille eyed him cautiously. From a logical point of view he wouldn't have been the first officer who had disappeared into the shadowy world of intelligence gathering, but… "Which had something to do with Angela Birkett as well."

He looked down. "I – yes, I suppose. A bit."

"A bit, he says." Sadler said into Richard's silence, rolling his eyes. "A bit. You might have even got away from Helen and James if Angie hadn't been a total nutter!"

"She's not a nutter." Richard murmured. "She just needed help."

"Help?" Sadler argued incredulously. "You ended up in the world's armpit and your little stalker still tracked you down! RP, she got her hands on Aconite to garnish your cuppa. What d'you think would have happened if Reid hadn't stabbed you and scared the shit out of her? A little Romeo and Juliet action, I'd reckon, the bunny-boiler caught up in her fantasy, a little light murder-suicide as she watched you suffocate."

Her breath caught. Camille had studied exotic poisons and knew that Aconite poisoning involved extreme disorientation and confusion, a decreased heart rate to the point where it would mimic death, and eventual lung paralysis. Suddenly the fact that he had been found slumped in his chair with no evidence of a struggle made a horrible new sense. Richard's shoulders were set stiffly, but Camille couldn't help but notice the shiver that shot through his frame at those words.

She suddenly had a horrible vision of struggling for breath, mind clouded and foggy as an icepick came plunging down wielded by someone she thought was a friend.

"You were poisoned?"

He seemed to wrench himself back to the present. "Didn't you do a toxicology screen?"

"Of course. Who do you think I am?"

"Did you read the report?" He demanded.

"I… by the time we got the results back from Guadeloupe, we had already arrested Helen Reid and James Moore and had confessions." Camille said defensively.

"You didn't read it?" His look was disbelieving. "You can't be serious-"

"I skimmed it!"

"You skimmed it?"

"Don't you use that tone with me, espéce de misérable menteur sac á merde!"

"Femme harpie méchante." He shot back.

That took her by surprise, but not for long. Her grin was sharp. "Oh, now he speaks French."

"Easy on, Rich." Sadler's eyebrows rose. "Not like it would have made much of a difference anyway. Aconite doesn't ping on a standard tox screen and you know it."

The two of them glared at each other for a long moment. Then Aimèe squirmed, wanting to get down onto the floor. The baby scooted across the floorboards and settled herself under the chair Dwayne had pulled up for himself. Camille watched her progress, trying to slow down her angry heartbeat.

Fidel strode away a bit as if to try and rid himself of manic energy, before spinning sharply and marching back. Camille could tell that the loss had turned into betrayal on realising that he was here. "I'm sorry, I can't - The whole time you were alive! And you didn't tell us!"

"I'm sorry." Was all Richard said.

"Honoré mourned you. We mourned you!" The same anger that currently fuelled Camille was also coursing through Fidel. "And the whole time you were alive and well. Joke's on us, I guess. Stupid little backwards islanders, what would we do without the mighty English?"

And Camille felt that in her bones.

Richard flinched. "It's rather more complicated than-"

"My son is named after you!" Fidel cried. "I named my son after you and the whole damn time you were alive and never thought of us at all!"

The following silence was painful.

"That's not true." The words were uttered quietly, and Richard dropped back into his chair, head in his hands. "That's not true at all."

"Isn't it?" Camille asked. "It's been ten years and you never once tried to reach out-"

"I died." He said bluntly. "I died and when I came back, it seemed like you had all moved on. There was a new DI, you were all happy having beers and playing cricket on the beach. I didn't think – we all knew each other for two years. Who seriously makes any kind of long-lasting impact on someone in two years?"

"Then why are you here?" She asked pointedly.

"Because right now you're in danger." He said just as quietly. "And no matter what you think of me, I am not callous enough to simply watch you walk into a minefield."

The fury was rising again, like the tides ebbing in and out. "Because I have never been in danger before now." She said sarcastically.

Richard ignored her. "You've told Dwayne and Fidel about the cocaine operation, I assume?"

She was silent.

"So that's a yes?"

"You know it is." Camille snapped.

"We believe it's connected to Silent Sweep." He said gravely. "That's why I was there that night, why we were, to shut off the local branch."

Camille's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"To force the smugglers to divert through the Caribbean to get to the UK." Richard said calmly.

"We do not need more drugs in the Caribbean!" Catherine exclaimed, horrified. "Richard Poole, your time in the shadows has affected your mind, imbécile anglaise!"

"You're right, of course." He said, and Catherine closed her mouth in surprise. "But it's forced the bosses on the back foot. They don't have access to the resources they normally do, so we now have the ability to catch them unawares."

"I don't understand." Fidel said. "What is the connection between that operation and Silent Sweep?"

"Money, of course." Richard gave him a look like he had expected Fidel to be better, to connect the dots earlier. "In the aftermath of a police raid, a few bricks of cocaine disappearing here and there? Over time, it would add up to quite a lot. Easily enough to sustain an underground operation without money disappearing from government coffers and potentially setting off alarm bells with independent agencies."

"It still sounds risky to fund your operation with drug money."

"People do it all the time." He shrugged. "Legitimate businesses are funded with dirty money all over the world."

"We're talking about police." Fidel exclaimed.

"Who controls the evidence lockups?" Richard countered.

Normally she would dismiss it as a conspiracy theory, but Camille's mind was back at her station listening to Roger Sadler filling her in about the situation. When we get too close they cut loose one of the minnows to take the fall-

"You think Selwyn is involved."

"No." He said. "But I do think that someone has used Commissioner Patterson's rather… opportunistic tendencies to set him up as the perfect scapegoat."

"Superintendent Dooley." Fidel said without a hint of indecision. "It has to be."

He paused. "That's a theory."

"What happens now?" Dwayne asked uncertainly. "Chief? What do we do?"

And despite the distrust, betrayal and anger still hanging thick in the room, everyone turned to look at Inspector Poole. Richard looked down at his linked hands.

"I am here right now to tell you that you all must stay away." He said. "Do not interfere. You could be risking the case. And your lives. You all – particularly you, Dwayne, need to keep your heads down and try to stay out of trouble until my people have made arrests."

Dwayne snorted. "Boring."

"And what are you going to do?" Camille asked sharply.

"Me?"

"Oh, don't try that innocent look on me, Richard Poole. You tell me now, or-"

"Or?" There was a hint of a dare in his narrowed eyes.

That was when Catherine took back over. "I tell Annabeth's girls at the hairdressers that you faked your death to chase a pirate lord across the Caribbean." There was a note of triumph in her voice.

"Like anyone would believe that absurdity for a moment." He scoffed.

"Yes, they would. There are still tales of the dashing Inspector Poole, solving cases from beyond the grave." Catherine said. "And I can promise you that you would never get a moment's peace ever again."

"You wouldn't."

"Poursuivre, try me."

The two of them exchanged hard stares. Rock, meet hard place. Now it was up to who crumbled first.

Eventually Richard's nose screwed up. "I'm going to speak to Patterson while he's still on the island."

Camille raised an eyebrow. "How? You aren't going to get far with the French officers even with the fancy new title. Are you going to risk your cover by identifying yourself to try and creep by?" In fact, plenty of the officers would take even more pleasure in turning him away if Richard had said he was with the British Security Service. "You need me."

"You flatter yourself." He said flatly.

"I am an officer with Paris, vous comprenez?" She replied. "I am not the enemy-"

"Enemy? Good God-" Richard snorted.

"-I am more likely to be granted permission to visit Selwyn without raising any red flags, and you know it." She flung out a hand to punctuate her point.

Oh, the look she got right then Camille was intimately familiar with. It was the look that told her exactly how much Richard wished he could strangle her, but was rigidly holding himself in place so he didn't go to jail.

She offered her hand, her smile savage.

"Partners?" She asked innocently.

alors aide-moi mon Dieu – so help me God

espéce de miserable menteur sac á merde – you miserable lying sack of shit

femme harpie méchante – evil harpy woman

Please excuse my dodgy French.