And none of this even included the constant and unrelenting humidity, which—Richard often found himself claiming—was well over one hundred per cent. (Of course, Richard knew that this was scientifically impossible, but he also knew that the one time he’d received a precious box of Walker’s crisps in the post from his mother, the crisps had gone soggy within minutes of him opening any of the packets. It was like some exquisite punishment that had been specifically designed to torture him. The insides of each packet contained perfect crisps right up to but not including the precise moment he opened the packet and tried to eat one, at which point they immediately went stale in the sultry tropical air.)
This and other wild roller coasters of despair looped through Richard’s mind as he lay in bed, wide awake, his bedside alarm clock clicking from 04:18 to 04:19, surely the most miserable minute in the twenty-four hour clock, Richard found himself musing.
A slick of sweat slipped down his neck and into the collar of his Marks and Spencer pyjamas, and before he could stop himself, Richard became a kicking machine, scissoring his legs in a frenzied attack on his sheets until they’d been balled up and dashed to the floor.
He slumped back onto the old mattress and exhaled in exasperation. Why did everything have to be so hard?
There was nothing for it, he might as well get up.
He turned on the lights and padded into the tiny kitchenette and washroom that had somehow been crammed into the inside porch of his shack as if by someone who no doubt felt that the galley kitchens on sailboats were altogether too roomy. Surely there was a way of packing even more cooking and cleaning equipment into even less space?
He went to the metal sink that was squashed in between his fridge and his front door, and discovered that he wasn’t the only person looking for a drink. A bright green lizard was already in the sink catching drops of water as they fell from the tap above.
The lizard was called Harry. Or, rather, Richard had named the lizard Harry when he’d discovered that the shack he’d been assigned to live in already came with a reptilian sitting tenant. And, like every flat-share Richard had ever been involved in, it had been a disaster from the start.
As Harry turned his attention back to catching drops of water with his pink-flashing tongue, Richard found himself thinking—not for the first time—that he should just get rid of the bloody creature.
But how to do it, that was the question.
A few hours later, Richard was sitting behind his desk in Honoré Police Station using the internet to research legal and possibly not-so-legal methods of household pest control when Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey swished over to his desk, a gleam in her eye.
‘So tell me … what do you want for lunch?’
Camille was bright, lithe, and one of the most naturally attractive women on the island, but as Richard looked up from his reverie—irked at the interruption—he frowned like a barn owl who’d just received some bad news.
‘Camille, don’t interrupt me when I’m working.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ Camille said, not sorry at all. ‘What are you working on?’
‘Oh, you know. Work,’ he said, suspiciously. ‘What do you want?’
‘Me? I just wanted to take your lunch order.’
Richard finally looked at his partner. She was young, fresh-faced, and threw herself at life with a wondrous abandon that Richard didn’t even remotely understand. In fact, as Richard considered Camille, he found himself once again marvelling at how much his partner was a complete mystery to him. In truth, he knew that he was limited in his understanding of women by the fact that he’d been educated at a single-sex boarding school and hadn’t had any kind of meaningful conversation with a woman who wasn’t either his mother or his House Matron before the age of eighteen, but Camille seemed even more impossible to comprehend than most women.
To begin with, she was French. To end with, she was French. And in between all that, she was French. This meant—to Richard’s mind at least—that she was unreliable, incapable of following orders, and was, all in all, a wild card and loose cannon. In truth, Richard was scared witless of her. Not that he’d ever admitted as much. Even to himself.
‘You know what I want for lunch, Camille,’ he said imperiously, trying to take back control of the conversation. ‘Because I’ve had the same lunch every single day I’ve been on this godforsaken island.’
‘But Maman says she’s got some spiced yams and rice she can plate up for us all. Or there’s curried goat left over from—’
‘Thank you, Camille, but I’d much rather just have my usual.’
Camille looked at her boss, her eyes sparkling as she got out her police notebook and made a big show of writing down his lunch order. ‘One … banana … sandwich.’
‘Thank you, Camille,’ Richard said, somehow aware that he’d been made to look stupid, but not knowing quite how it had happened.
Camille grabbed up her handbag, sashayed out of the room, and Richard waited to see who of Dwayne or Fidel would appear first from behind their computer monitors.
It was Ordinary Police Officer Dwayne Myers. But then, as the elder statesman of the station, this was no real surprise.
Richard tolerated Dwayne—liked him, even—but it was always against his better judgement. Dwayne was in his fifties but looked like he was no older than thirty and, while he wore non-regulation trainers and a bead necklace with his uniform, he was always immaculately turned out. In fact, it was something Richard had always felt he and Dwayne had in common, their sartorial precision. And while Richard knew that Dwayne wasn’t really very interested in being thorough, punctual or following any kind of orders, he was a marvel at digging up information through ‘unofficial’ channels. And on a small tropical island like Saint-Marie, there were a lot of unofficial channels.
‘Seriously, Chief,’ Dwayne said. ‘You can’t have the same lunch day after day.’
‘I went to boarding school for ten years. Watch me.’
And now Sergeant Fidel Best’s head appeared to the side of his monitor, his young and trusting face puzzled. Fidel was a proper copper, Richard felt. He was meticulous, keen, utterly tireless, and, above all else, he knew correct procedure. The only downside to Fidel was that he was overly keen, so he’d sometimes continue with a line of inquiry long after it was sensible to drop it. Like now, Richard found himself thinking, as Fidel said, ‘But, sir, don’t you get bored eating the same meal every day of your life?’
‘Yes. Extremely. But what can I do?’
‘Well, sir, order a different lunch?’
‘No, I think I’ll stick to my banana sandwich, if you don’t mind. You know where you are with a banana sandwich.’
‘I know,’ Dwayne said, almost awestruck by his boss’s dogged determination never to embrace change. ‘Eating a banana sandwich.’
The office phone rang and Richard huffed. ‘No, it’s alright, you two stay where you are, I’ll get it.’
Richard went to the sun-bleached counter and plucked up the ancient phone’s handset.
‘Honoré Police Station, this is Detective Inspector Richard Poole speaking. How can I be of assistance?’
Richard listened a moment before cupping the phone and turning back to his team.
‘Fidel. Phone Camille. Cancel the banana sandwich. There’s been a murder.’
Rianka had set up The Retreat eighteen years ago when she’d bought a derelict sugar plantation for a knock-down price. The main house had been abandoned for nearly fifty years by this time, but it wasn’t its outside that Rianka found herself responding to, it was the inside. Admittedly, the interior wasn’t much less damaged, but what