"You're a bloody idiot, you know that, right?"

"It seemed prudent," Richard murmured. "To make contact now and head off the team going off on their own and getting into trouble beyond their means."

Roger scoffed. "Yeah, you tell yourself that's why you decided to go about that whole bar fiasco."

"What exactly are you implying?"

The other man didn't look at him, fiddling with the recording equipment. "Please, that panto you put on to see whether Bordey would recognise you? Mate, I don't think you've cut the strings to this place as much as you think."

A muscle twitched in Richard's cheek. He must have done something truly terrible in a past life to be lumped with Roger-sodding-Sadler for seemingly the rest of eternity.

"You're delusional."

"And you're in denial."

With a groan, Richard sank down into a nearby armchair. "You know, I really thought I had enough of you years ago."

"As if I could be so lucky." Roger deadpanned, and something in Richard twinged. After all, the man was probably the closest he had to a real friend these days, and the two of them had virtually hated each other since they were barely out of their teenage years. That was terribly healthy of him. Sad. His life was just bloody sad and pathetic. Groaning, he stretched out with his feet on the footstool.

Staring at the thing he was tinkering with, Roger looked unimpressed. "Would you like your pipe and slippers, milord?"

"And the newspaper too would be nice while you're at it." Richard said idly, and one of the techies snorted, but quickly masked it with a cough. Most of the others were young, decades younger than Richard and Roger were, and he had to think that at this stage of his life he was only still here because he had been essentially grandfathered into the operation.

This job had been in the works since long well before he… died. Richard remembered first waking up looking into the face of Roger Sadler and immediately thinking that he was in Hell, before learning a bit more and finding out that he really wasn't that far off.

There was a knock at the door.

"Clearance has been authorised. You're good to go for Patterson."

Richard bit back a groan as he stood back up. The mileage was really starting to add up. Maybe after this arrest he'd finally be able to retire.

"Thank you, Emma."

"They're not going to let you retire." Roger said.

"What?" There was a small note of startlement in his voice. Surely he wasn't as mentally incapacitated yet to be unknowingly voicing his thoughts aloud? And if he was, Richard was going to be in a lot of trouble.

"I know that sigh." Rog said. "That's your why am I still working for these bastards? sigh. Thames House. They're not going to let you retire. Not completely. You get results."

"Excuse me, I believe you'll find that the choice is entirely up to me."

"And you just keep on telling yourself that." The other man snorted. "Besides, I guarantee that you'd be getting bored about halfway through the first day."

"Oh, please, that's not true."

"You were all excited about that one day off in uni, until you got bored, cleaned the flat, cleaned my flat, baked a batch of brownies, put the snow chains on Sasha's car and wrote a treatise on naval warfare in 13th century Sweden. You were born middle-aged."

Richard glared at him. "Are you coming or shall I take Clarence?"

"What the hell, RP. Live vicariously, take the new guy." He dusted off his hands. Finally Roger looked up. "You know she's going to be tailing you, right?"

Oh, without a doubt. Though for some damned stupid reason, he couldn't bring himself to be truly righteously outraged about it.

"And while Inspector Bordey is tailing me, she won't be interfering in more pressing issues of the investigation."

"I'm going to see you eat those words." Roger waved a sandwich towards him. "And then I'm going to laugh."

Saint Marie Correctional Centre sat on a sheer cliff with only one access road, the only avenues of escape available to a prisoner that had managed to get out of the cell sheer drops on three sides or the heavily-gated and manned access road. Very medieval. Directly opposite separated by access roads, barbed wire and bricks sat the Women's Correctional, a little smaller but no less imposing looking. Combined, the prisons had a population of 89, most of the prisoners long-term residents.

The last .1% were being held by the police awaiting extradition to face trial overseas.

Richard had been seconded to Saint Marie for only a little over two years, but with how many times he and his sergeant had made this trek, he expected he had probably walked the distance of the entire island and back.

The cell door clanged closed. "Ten minutes." There was definitely one advantage to coming back now. And that was that the majority of the justice workers he had known in his time had moved on to other avenues of employment; Detective Inspector Richard Poole didn't mean anything in the slightest to the new generation that was coming in, and therefore the chance of being identified was incredibly low.

"Commissioner Patterson?"

The man didn't look up until he said his name, and realising it was someone new, he stood up off the little cot. Patterson's jaw was unshaven and bereft of the armour afforded by the uniform, Selwyn Patterson was just another old man running to seed.

But what came next kind of caught Richard by surprise.

"Inspector Poole."

While even Camille had paused for a moment before smacking the blue blazes out of him, Patterson immediately recognised Richard, not even the slightest bit confused on his identity. Patterson gripped his hands together behind his back, playing at casual. "You're looking well." He paused. "Considering."

"So are you. Considering." Richard replied. "I must say that I'm a little surprised that you remember me."

"I remember everyone I lose." There was not even the slightest hesitation in Patterson's grave voice, and no matter whatever past animosities may lie between him and Richard, Richard knew that right now, in this, he was not lying.

"This is DC Clarence Bell." He introduced his offsider, who nodded politely. Bell held promise as an investigator, but the young man was certainly no Fidel Best. "We're here on behalf of MI5."

At that, Patterson really didn't look all that surprised. Richard couldn't say that he wasn't a little bit disappointed by the non-reaction. "What do you need to know, Inspector?"

Richard sat on the single chair.

"I'll see what I can do to help you with the charges, but I'm not going to pretend that I'm going to be able to get you off. It's on public record what you were willing to do to keep me here, and everyone on the island knows that you were partial to a free drink or a spa day with visiting personalities." Part of Richard hated what he was saying; after all corruption was corruption, but at this junction of his life he had been forced to reluctantly accept that it was rather the devil you know than the devil you don't.

Patterson's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"Tell me about December 31st, 1999."

December 31st, 1999. Half of the world was excited with the idea of moving into the new millennium and looking forward to all the doubtless great advances humanity was bound to take in the year 2000 and beyond, and the other half were obsessing over the day all of the world's pocket organisers would surely rise up against Man and slaughter all.

Richard had vague recollections of being a uniform at the time and subsisting mainly on caffeine and crisps as he juggled the job while studying for his detectives' exam. Being vomited on by drunk drivers, checking out neighbourhood prowler calls put in by busybody curtain-twitchers, and getting his head kicked in breaking up pub brawls in between borrowing handbooks and late-night study sessions and exams that made him want to poke his eye out with a pencil.

He'd spent New Year's Eve on patrol with a few of the other young single officers who'd drawn the short straw in the roster, and a grizzled DCI who was the whole cliché: a month from retirement and genuinely with no fucks left to give who'd spent the night unabashedly poking through the detectives' desks before settling down and religiously smoking under a big no smoking sign.

They toasted in the new year with peppermint schnapps that tasted like toothpaste.

"How do you know about-?"

"I've had a long time to catch up on my reading." Richard said.

Patterson nodded, and sat back down on the cot. "That, Inspector, was the day the Saint Marie Police Force fell apart."

He had read the files from end to end, of course, but there was always context that could be added to a case. Looking back, he could see the echoes of the case reverberating through the very fabric of the island, even after all this time. Especially after all this time.

"Honoré wasn't always a four-man station, you know."

Richard had an inkling of that the moment he had started snooping around the station years ago only to find an untidy jumble of desks and chairs in a storeroom out the back and a locked boiler room, which seemed rather redundant for the Caribbean and therefore merited further investigation. Trying each of the keys on the massive jailer's ring Richard had inherited from the late Charlie Hulme, he'd got into the boiler room to find a cupboard full of discarded uniforms and an old cabinet stuffed with staff files and police badges.

At the time he had fully intended to examine the situation further, but then Camille broke into his shack and his sergeant was arrested for murder and it was all full steam ahead from there.

"Honoré Station had a staff of twelve on rotating shifts, with another five that covered the night shifts. There wasn't even just one station in the city. There was a secondary station in North Honoré, a station in Port Royal, another around the other side of the island with a coroner's office, and a dedicated telephone exchange. We were never going to compete with the other islands, of course, but we could handle our own.

"I was a DI then, when it happened, under Superintendent Pierre Bauhm."

Patterson's face twisted as he said the name.

"Where were you when Bauhm was arrested?"

"International police training at the Met. But you already know that."

Richard ignored him.

"Pierre Bauhm was a vicious beast." There was a fiery spark in Patterson's eyes. "He beat out confessions. He took bribes in front of officers. He was racist and sexist and arrogant. He embezzled from the island and forced us to close files to the advantage of famous friends."

Richard bit down on his tongue, thinking of all the times he had been dissuaded from following an avenue of investigation in case it should happen to upset the status quo. Pierre Bauhm was a vicious beast, and unfortunately at the time a lot of that would have been put down to being an old-school copper from a different generation. Standing up to him would have been an almost impossible task.

"And you were the one that reported the Superintendent?"

"I did. I reported it when I was at the Met. It felt… safer, not on the island." Patterson heaved a heavy sigh. "And I was hated for it. But I had never foreseen that I would be destroying the Force. I had knocked over the first domino, Inspector, and the carnage was horrific."

He had to wonder whether that was one of the reasons why Selwyn Patterson was still on the island after all this time and had never moved on. Civic pride could carry you so far, but guilt could cement your feet to the ground.

Patterson's initial whistleblowing gave investigators a way in, and the carnage was horrific.

"Bauhm was arrested, and then it all came out. DCI Monet was arrested for coercion of witnesses. DCI Tanner was arrested for manslaughter. Three detectives I thought were my friends were arrested for possession and dealing. A DI was planting evidence. Two sergeants were pressuring office staff to doctor paperwork. Office staff had been embezzling from station accounts. A junior PC had been leasing his yacht so pirates could slip guns past the authorities."

A uniformed police constable with a yacht should have been a warning in itself that something untoward was going on, even on Saint Marie, but he didn't comment on that.

"And Pierre Bauhm was at the top, knowing it all and holding it over all of you." Richard said.

"Three months before I was sent to the Met, my DS was shot." Patterson said. Richard could hear the emotion in his voice after all this time, and knew that that was truly the catalyst for Patterson to reach out. "I knew without a doubt who had done it, I tried to pursue it, but Bauhm closed the case."

That was extremely hypocritical after all the times that Selwyn Patterson had interfered in his investigations, but Richard didn't bother to call him on it.

"You went after him anyway?"

"Until an anonymous tip was made that there was a corrupt officer in his station, and that they knew who it was."

Richard raised an eyebrow. "You, I assume."

Patterson nodded. "The name of the officer given was mine. Bauhm… suggested to me that he could be mistaken, but the evidence the whistleblower offered was compelling, not that I ever knew what it was. He gave me two options. Speak and deny and face prison and investigators tearing my life apart, or simply be silent and Bauhm would support me against any charges."

Ah. A veiled threat and a frivolous accusation, with the offer of support if only the officer did exactly what he was told. Offering to make the whole thing go away if only they were a good little policeman. It was a story that no longer shocked Richard. Arguably that was also Superintendent Bauhm's biggest mistake, making an accusation when there was no actual physical evidence against Selwyn Patterson, arrogant enough to believe that he could rule by fear forever.

"I played along, was sent to training, and made the report to the authorities in Britain. That was the first time I thought I might actually leave the police, leave Saint Marie. I had to… disappear for some time."

Richard could understand that. He had been getting threats from other good ol' boys the moment he had arrested Doug Anderson. It sounded dramatic, but if he had been in Croydon he wasn't entirely sure he would have survived. Many members of the good ol' boys were in prison themselves now, but there were still one or two who occasionally whinged about Little Dickie who had dismantled the club. It was probably good that most people below a certain rank were still labouring under the delusion that he was dead.

"But the island was behind me, and the remaining staff that had been victimised under Bauhm and his cronies. And after that the British decided that if they were going to keep bankrolling the Saint Marie Police Force as a UK protectorate, they were going to start taking an active role in the day to day running, and that was when they sent out their first English DI. They called him a 'troubleshooter'. He fired most of the remaining officers and forced out the civilian staff little by little until there was no choice but to leave.

"But they couldn't fire me, of course. It was known then what I had done, and I was the only tie to the heart of Saint Marie. If they had moved against me, the island would have revolted. So there I remained while everyone moved on. And now, every time I think that we may have a team that could be expanded upon, that I could take a next step with and truly rebuild, they move away, or go undercover, or die."

The tone was vaguely reproachful. "I can assure you I had no say in the matter." Richard said bluntly. "Do you remember the name of the DI?"

"I don't think I can ever forget." Patterson said. "Dooley. Maxwell Dooley."

The same Maxwell Dooley that was currently sitting in the commissioner's office at Government House.

"You haven't told anyone about Dooley's link to the island?"

Patterson snorted. "And make it look like I'm trying to incriminate someone else? If to you, a suspect immediately tried to implicate someone else, what would you think?"

That they were guilty as hell. He'd give Patterson that one.

Richard nodded. "All right, that will be all."

"That was all you wanted?" There was a vague confusion in his voice. "To go over things you already knew?"

Richard stood, nodding at Bell. "Thank you for your cooperation."

"Inspector Poole?"

"Yes?"

"It's time." Patterson said. "As cliché as it sounds, they've finally come for me in retaliation. Haven't they?"

Richard turned back to the commissioner.

"Perhaps. But every free drink or expensive restaurant meal or fancy party invitation you have accepted on account of being the Commissioner of Police hasn't exactly worked in your favour."

Part of him expected Patterson to object, but the man just seemed to accept the chastisement quietly.

"Perhaps you should be our Commissioner, eh, Poole?"

He smiled thinly.

"Excuse me if I say I'd rather stab myself in the eye first."

He should have expected it when Richard saw Camille and the current DI, Parker, approaching the cells with a prison officer in tow.

"Gentlemen." Camille said innocently. "You came from Selwyn Patterson?"

Oh, honestly. Richard was going to kill her.

"We are legal representation from Paris." Bell immediately slipped into the cover. "Clarence LaBelle." Bell introduced himself. "Ricard Palou."

"Truly, is that so?" Camille asked mildly.

"That's so." Richard said. "Je t'attendais plus tot."

He really had expected her sooner.

"J'ètais occupè." She shot back with a sharp smile.

Parker was looking between the both of them, not a clue to what they had said, before turning back. Richard could tell that Parker was going for a piercing intimidating copper look, but it was instantly shattered when a hand came up to slap at a mosquito on the back of his neck. Richard relaxed his shoulders slightly, forcing the policeman out of the set of his frame.

"You're efficient." Parker said idly.

"We're paid to be." Richard said calmly, trying his best to keep the English out of his voice. Funnily enough, he'd found learning to speak French itself was easier than actually learning how to speak English with a French accent and not sounding like Pepè le Pew every time.

"Of course." Parker said, eyes observant as he looked Richard over, and he knew from the files that out of the clowns and idiots that had succeeded him over the years, Neville Parker was the one that was most likely to have gone through all his predecessor's files in case they became pertinent to a current case, memorising methodology and crime scene photos.

And since Richard was in Goodman's first crime scene photos, there was a very good possibility that Parker could recognise him all on his own, without Camille's bloody interference. And as much as Richard loathed the beard, which he fancied made him look rather like he belonged in a barber shop quartet or as a 19th century riverboat captain, he had to admit that it had its uses to mask immediate recognition.

"Please feel free to check our references."

Parker plucked the business card Richard offered him from between his fingers, glancing at it briefly and slipping it into his pocket. Richard had a sudden concerned thought that he really should have worn gloves, but swept the worries away.

"Oh, believe me, I will."

Richard was aware of being watched the whole time as he walked away.

"Au revoir, Monsieur Palou." Camille called.