A Meditation On Murder

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 Rianka noticed was how the rooms were still as beautifully proportioned and airy as they’d always been; the rotten ceilings were just as high; the main staircase, while leaf-swept and missing many of its boards, was just as grand. To Rianka, the house was no less than a metaphor for the island itself—shabby on the outside, but full of soul on the inside—and, within the year, she’d restored the main house and grounds to their former glory and opened for business as a luxury hotel called ‘The Plantation’.

When Rianka then got together with Aslan, they’d increasingly started to market the hotel as a high-end health farm, and it wasn’t long before they’d relaunched the whole venture as a luxury spa that was now called ‘The Plantation Spa’.

The business went from strength to strength.

Then, as Aslan got more involved in exploring the spiritual side of life, he started offering holistic treatments and therapies to hotel guests—either led by him, or by other instructors he hired especially—and it wasn’t long before they’d relaunched the hotel for a third and final time as ‘The Retreat’.

For a good few years now, the hotel had been specifically tailored to the internationally wealthy who wanted to heal their minds just as much as they wanted to heal their bodies. Guests could sign up for sessions in healing, be it Crystal, Reiki or Sunrise; or yoga, be it Bikram or Hatha; or meditation, be it Zazen or Transcendental.

Now, as the police drove up the gravel driveway in convoy, their blue lights flashing dimly in the bright Caribbean sunshine, they could see that the main hotel building was the old plantation owner’s house; manicured lawns swept down to a private beach, and there were incongruous quasi-religious buildings dotted here and there around the grounds with hotel guests coming and going from them.

Richard, Camille and Fidel climbed out of the police Land Rover and Dwayne dismounted from the Force’s only other vehicle, a 1950s Harley-Davidson motorbike that had an entirely illegal sidecar attached to it. No one quite knew where this bike-with-sidecar had come from, or how it had got tricked up in the livery of the Saint-Marie Police Force, but legend had it—and records seemed to confirm—that it had joined the Saint-Marie Police Force just after Dwayne did. Not that Dwayne was saying.

Dominic came out of the house—still wearing flip-flops and cut-off shorts, but the gravity of the situation was such that he’d deigned to slip on a vest.

‘Man, I’m glad to see you,’ he said, running a hand through his lustrous hair before shaking his head a little so his mane would settle.

‘Yes,’ Richard said. ‘And who are you?’

‘Dominic De Vere. The Retreat’s handyman.’

Dominic was British and Richard could tell from his drawling accent that he was from a moneyed background. In fact, Richard knew the type well. Posh, dim, wealthy, entitled—and therefore able to waft through life exploring the counter-culture as a hobby. No doubt, if Dominic’s money ever ran out, he’d make a phone call to one of his old school chums, land a high-paid job in the City and then, for the rest of his life, complain that ‘the youth of today’ were feckless layabouts.

It was fair to say that Richard disliked Dominic on sight.

‘If you could just take us to the body,’ he said.

‘Sure thing.’

Richard had no interest in continuing the conversation with someone who wore a shark tooth on a string around his neck, so they all walked on in silence until they reached the corner of the house, which is when Dominic stopped and frowned. Richard looked at him.

‘Sorry, is there a problem?’ Richard asked.

It was clear that there was, but Dominic didn’t know where to start.

‘Go on,’ Camille said altogether more tolerantly.

‘Okay,’ Dominic said. ‘Well, it’s just …’

As Dominic stopped speaking, he started to waft his hands near Richard’s body.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Richard asked.

‘I’ve never seen this before.’