The Killing Of Polly Carter. Robert Thorogood
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was too busy at a local Rotary event to attend. His mother came, though, and did the buffet beforehand and hoovering afterwards.
In short, Richard would have been hard pressed to know which of his two parents he’d have more difficulty spending two weeks with: his dad, who always looked at him with such disappointment; or his mum, who always looked at him with such hope.
There was a loud honk from outside his shack and Richard snapped out of his reverie. His mother wasn’t due to arrive on the island until later that afternoon, so who was that outside trying to get his attention? The car horn honked again. And, before Richard could even get up, it honked again another two times.
Richard’s shoulders sagged. There was only one person on the whole island who’d so rudely interrupt his peace like this, so he went through his galley kitchen and opened the back door. Or rather, he tried to open the back door, but, as was typical, it was jammed shut by a build-up of sand on the other side. This was merely one of the almost infinite number of ways that the Caribbean tried to spoil his entire existence, Richard knew. All it took was a light breeze and a sunny day to loosen the individual grains of sand on the beach—and it was always a bloody sunny day—and whole dunes would start to build up against the walls of his shack.
Giving the door a proper shove with his shoulder, Richard finally got the door moving, the whole lean-to annexe to his shack shuddering as he finally managed to scrape the door open.
Richard briefly flinched at the sudden burst of sunlight—he never got used to how much sunshine there was in the Caribbean—but he saw that his initial suspicions had been correct. Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey was waving a happy hello to him from the driver’s seat of the battered police Land Rover.
Camille’s skin glowed in the sunshine, her hair was glossy and untamed, and she wore an electric-blue vest top, but Richard didn’t much notice any of this, if only because he knew that the staff rota had Camille down as having a day off, so why had she turned up at his shack?
‘Careful of that sand, sir!’ Camille said with mock seriousness as he awkwardly picked his way across it. ‘It might get into your socks.’
Richard knew that Camille found it incomprehensible that he insisted on wearing a dark woollen suit, polished shoes, a white shirt and a tie in the tropics, but, for him, the matter was a simple one. A policeman wore a dark suit, and Richard didn’t see why he should have to lower his standards just because he’d been posted to the Caribbean.
‘What are you doing here?’ Richard asked.
‘Oh, and a good morning to you, too,’ Camille said, now a lot less jauntily.
‘But it’s your day off,’ Richard said, unable to stop himself from glancing at his wristwatch to make sure his mother hadn’t in fact landed on the island yet.
‘What’s up?’ Camille asked, sharp as a knife, and Richard cursed silently to himself. His subordinate never missed a thing.
‘Oh, nothing,’ he said with what he hoped was insouciance.
‘Why are you looking so guilty?’
‘I’m not looking guilty.’
‘You are.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are.’
There was a long pause while both of them realised that the conversation wasn’t going anywhere.
‘I’m not,’ Richard said.
‘You are.’
‘Look,’ Richard said. ‘Much as I’d love to continue this game of “You are, I’m not”, can you please tell me what on earth you’re doing at my house on your day off?’
Camille’s jaw set in instant irritation, and Richard wondered what he’d done wrong this time. As ever, he found Camille’s inner thoughts impossible to divine. On the one hand this was because she was female, spontaneous, passionate and always wanted to think the best of people, and—on the other hand—it was because she was French, which, Richard felt, was what military analysts would very much call a ‘force multiplier’. So, as Richard stood sweating on the white sand in his Marks & Spencer suit, he genuinely didn’t know how he’d managed to cause offence, and had even less of an idea about how to mend the situation.
‘Okay,’ Camille eventually said. ‘I’ll tell you what I’m doing here, but on the condition you tell me what that book is.’
Camille indicated the book in Richard’s hand. He’d picked it up just before he’d left his shack. It was his intended lunchtime reading.
‘Oh this?’ Richard said, only now realising that the book wouldn’t be that easy to explain. ‘It’s just a … you know, a field guide to the insects of the Caribbean.’
Camille’s eyebrows rose at this news. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I, um, I found it at the station, and I thought it would be fun to learn about the insects of the Caribbean.’
‘You thought it would be fun?’
‘Yes.’
‘Learning about the insects of the Caribbean?’
‘Anyway, I’ve told you what I’m reading. You’ve now got to tell me why you’re here.’
‘Oh,’ Camille said, as though it were of no consequence. ‘There’s been a suspicious death.’
‘What?’ Richard blurted.
Camille grinned, and said, ‘Sorry. Should I have said sooner?’
Richard dashed round to the passenger side of the police jeep, opened the door and climbed in.
‘Yes you bloody well should have said sooner!’ he huffed, belting himself into the passenger seat as fast as he could.
Camille watched her boss make sure that his buckle was properly clicked into its housing, then check there were no twists in the belt itself as it went over his shoulder, before then giving two tugs on the strap to confirm that the auto-lock mechanism was indeed working satisfactorily.
‘Come on,’ he said impatiently. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Camille couldn’t help but smile to herself as she put the jeep into a low gear and drove off across the bumpy sand in the direction of the main road.
As Richard walked into Polly Carter’s house for the first time, he sneezed. This was because it may have been a grand villa in a stunning jungle setting—with orange-painted shutters to the windows, a bright blue front door and a red-tiled roof—but it was as messy as hell on the inside, and everything was covered in dust. Artefacts from Polly’s world travels, random pieces of furniture, local artworks and stacks of old magazines, books and photos were piled pell-mell so that sharp-edged Perspex awards sat next to ancient tribal masks, the antique dining table had modernist chrome chairs arranged around it, and the walls were just as crammed with modern collages as they were with faded oil paintings.
But it was only when Camille showed Richard the garden that he knew the meaning of true horror, because he discovered that the house was built near a cliff, and he was now expected to walk down the stone steps that had been carved into it so he could reach the body on the beach below.
‘But there’s no safety rail!’ he said as he stood looking at the Health and Safety nightmare that lay ahead of him.
‘Come on,’ Camille said. ‘We need to get to the body. And it’s not as bad as it looks.’
Richard looked at the stone steps again and saw that maybe Camille had a point. They were roughly hewn, but they were a good four or five feet wide. What’s more, although there was a vertical drop to almost certain death if you fell over the edge, there was actually a little escarpment of dirt and scrubby bushes