The Killing Of Polly Carter. Robert Thorogood

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СКАЧАТЬ plush carpets in her home, Jennifer would get down on her hands and knees and use nail scissors to give the individual thread a haircut. And after she did the washing up—always wearing washing-up gloves, of course—she’d then put on a second pair of washing-up gloves so that she could wash up the first set of washing-up gloves—unaware, Richard thought, that she risked falling into a logical feedback loop where she spent the rest of her life washing up the gloves she’d just used to wash up in. When Richard had tried to explain this to his mother, she’d smiled delightedly–‘You’ve always been so clever, darling’—and then gone off to plump up sofa cushions with her bare fists.

      It was fair to say that Richard had a complicated relationship with his mother.

      Far more so, in fact, than he did with his father. After all, his father, Graham—a one-time Superintendent in the Leicestershire Police Force—was entirely consistent in how he handled his son. No matter what Richard did, it always left his father disappointed. What was more, Graham was always the first to point that he’d done the same thing as Richard, but much better—or at an earlier age—or he’d chosen to go down a different path entirely.

      So, when Richard was the first member of his family to be sent to private school, his father had managed to give the impression that it was only because no one thought Richard was clever enough to get into the local state-funded grammar school, where Graham had himself gone. And as top scholar—a fact Graham managed to mention nearly every time he was alone with his son, which, if truth being told, wasn’t that often.

      Seven years later, when Richard got a place at Cambridge University, he finally felt that he’d proven to his father that he did indeed have a brain, but on the one occasion that Graham Poole visited his son in the three years he was there, Graham spent the day pronouncing that he himself had of course gone to the ‘University of Life’ where he’d learnt the real lessons in life, got the rough edges knocked off him quicker, and he’d not turned out too badly, had he?

      When Richard announced that he was going to join the police force—as his father had done—Graham had sucked air in through his teeth as though Richard was making a very brave choice indeed. And then, when Richard threw a party to celebrate his promotion to Detective, his father 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.’

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