beverages.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And above all else, we still make rum on Saint-Marie. I won’t have the island’s reputation as the best rum producer in the world tarnished by this man and his dangerous, third-rate product.’
‘Well, sir, we’ll look into it,’ Richard said, somewhat disappointed. When was he going to get a decent criminal case?
There was a ‘ting’ from the front desk of the office, and Richard and his team turned and saw a woman with her hand hovering over the little brass bell on the counter top.
‘You’ve got to help me!’ she said in desperation.
Knowing that his team would have to attend to the young woman, Selwyn put his peaked cap back onto his head and smiled for Richard’s benefit.
‘I’ll expect a report on the bootleg rum seller,’ he said, before sauntering out of the office.
‘Yes, of course, sir,’ Richard said, already heading over to the woman. She was about thirty years old, had pale skin, straight black hair and was wearing an old black cotton dress that was now faded to grey. But what Richard noticed most was how jittery she was. She looked like a startled deer who could bolt at any second.
‘Can I help you, madam?’
‘You’ve got to,’ the woman said, her voice breaking as she spoke. ‘There’s someone stalking me. Up at my house. And I’ve just seen him and chased him. But he got away. You’ve got to come with me!’
‘Someone’s been stalking you?’ Richard said, unable to keep a note of excitement out of his voice. This was more like it. A proper case.
‘And he could still be there,’ the woman said in desperation. ‘We’ve got to get back at once. See if we can catch him.’
‘Of course. Do you live nearby?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Do you live nearby?’ Richard repeated. ‘Have you come to the station on foot?’
The woman looked at Richard in surprise.
‘Don’t you know who I am?’ she asked.
‘Should I?’
‘You’re Lucy Beaumont, aren’t you?’ Camille said as she joined Richard at the desk.
Richard realised he’d heard of the Beaumont family when he’d first arrived on Saint-Marie, but he’d never really listened to what he’d been told. All he could remember was that they were some kind of ancient British family who’d been on the island for generations, and they ran a coffee plantation half way up the south-western slopes of Mount Esmée, the island’s active volcano. Oh yes, Richard realised, that’s why he’d never been interested in finding out any more about the Beaumonts. They lived on an active volcano.
But if this young woman was being stalked, then it was their duty to investigate, volcano or no volcano. Richard turned to Dwayne.
‘Dwayne. Take Fidel to the Fort Royal hotel. See what you can find out about the Commissioner’s bootleg rum seller, would you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Dwayne said.
‘Which leaves you and me, Camille,’ Richard said. ‘And I suggest we accompany Ms Beaumont back to her house and find out exactly what’s going on.’
After Richard had first arrived on Saint-Marie, it had taken him quite a few months to get his head around the fact that there was a live volcano on the southern half of the island. Admittedly, Mount Esmée was such a huge geological feature that it could be seen from everywhere on the island, but it seemed so improbable to Richard that people would share an island with an active volcano that he’d presumed that, at some level, it wasn’t real. Even when he heard about the Great Eruption of 1979, which had apparently shot lava hundreds of feet into the air and sent a terrifying pyroclastic flow down the side of the mountain at a hundred miles an hour – wiping out dozens of homes and killing 34 people – he remained in denial.
Now, as Camille drove the Police jeep up the tight hairpin bends towards the Beaumont Plantation, Richard found himself suffering an existential crisis. He was sitting in the sweltering heat of a vehicle that he knew hadn’t been serviced for over a decade while a Frenchwoman was driving it ever-higher up a real life volcano. What had gone wrong with his life?
‘Watch out!’ Richard shouted as an oncoming motorbike took a wide line around a tight bend in the road.
‘Will you please calm down,’ Camille said.
Richard could sort of see Camille’s point. After all, she was an excellent driver and he knew it probably didn’t help that he kept shouting ‘Brake! Brake! Brake!’ as they approached every corner, so he instead decided to grab hold of the dashboard and not let go.
He was still holding onto the dashboard when, ten minutes of stomach-sloshing fear later, Camille brought the Police jeep to a juddering halt by a row of wooden farm buildings half way up the mountain. Richard took a moment to calm himself. It seemed even hotter – if that were possible – this high up the mountain. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze, and all he could hear was the ticking of the jeep’s diesel engine as it started to cool down. Richard looked through the windscreen and saw that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Typical, he thought to himself. He was about to get roasted by the scorching heat again. With a weary sigh, he opened the passenger-side door and stepped out of the jeep.
It started raining. And not just any rain, either. Richard found himself standing in a full-on torrential downpour. He looked up at the sky, but couldn’t see anything close to a cloud either directly above his head or even nearby. He was always prepared though, so he went to the boot of the jeep, grabbed his emergency umbrella and put it up with a satisfying whomp. There, he thought to himself, that was better.
It stopped raining.
Only now did Camille step out of the jeep, and Richard had a brief out of body experience where he could see that his partner, Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey – who was wearing dark green cotton trousers and a short-sleeved checked shirt – was now standing next to a pasty-faced middle-aged Englishman who was wearing a black suit, black brogues and was holding a funeral umbrella in the bright sunshine.
‘It’s not raining, sir,’ Camille said.
‘I know that, Camille,’ Richard said, trying to keep his dignity intact as he lowered his umbrella and returned it to the boot of the jeep. There still wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but Richard knew that he hadn’t imagined the brief tropical downpour. His woollen suit was damp with water, and he could see that the dry mud he was standing on was now covered in little craters where the raindrops had drilled hard into the ground. When would the tropics ever make any sense to him?
‘Okay, sir, so what do you know about the Beaumont family?’ Camille asked her boss as they watched Lucy park her car a little way away.
‘Not much,’ Richard replied, trying to ignore the fact that his suit was now steaming. ‘Other than the fact that they’re very rich.’
‘Very
