‘You’ll be back at the station in half an hour,’ she said.
‘Yes, Camille. That’s the plan.’
‘Then I’ll see you then, sir,’ Camille said.
Camille hung up, and Richard put his mobile away.
So that was it. They’d caught their murderer.
Richard remembered back to the moment when he’d stood over Aslan’s body and made his solemn promise. He’d sworn he’d catch his killer; and he’d done just that.
So he was trying to feel satisfied that he’d delivered justice—and restored order to the world—but, in truth, Richard just felt empty. And this was because what he couldn’t get out of his mind was the memory of his brief encounter with Julia on the beach.
Because he now knew that Julia had been entirely innocent all along. She’d never been manipulating anyone. And that meant that when she’d come to his beach—and gone for a walk—and tried to go swimming with him—that had all been entirely genuine.
As, indeed, had been the moment when she’d kissed him.
And when she’d agreed to go for a drink with him.
Richard bent down to the sand and picked up another round pebble. This one was about the size of a side plate he decided—but much heavier, of course—and he carried it over to the little tower of washed-up pebbles that he was building on the beach. It was hard work getting about the sandy beach in a suit and brogues, but only ten minutes later he was able to stand up and look at his handiwork.
He’d constructed a little wishing tower on his beach. It was, in truth, a touch lop-sided, and it was nowhere near as tall as the one he’d seen here with Julia, but it was nonetheless a tower entirely built with his own hands.
And although he knew that what he was doing was ludicrous, Richard made himself close his eyes while he made a silent wish.
Once he’d finished making his wish, he opened his eyes in time to see a stone slip from the top and the whole thing collapsed in a heap of rubble.
This was just typical, Richard thought to himself. The one time in his life he tried to open himself up to a new experience, of course it went wrong. And, now he was thinking about it, what on earth was he doing in the middle of a beach wearing a woollen suit and brogues? He needed to get back into the shade and get the sand out of his shoes and socks.
He returned to his shack across the sand and, by the time he’d reached the verandah, he was berating himself for having even tried to build a stupid tower of stones in the first place. You couldn’t wish for a companion for life and have them turn up just like that. Life wasn’t a fairytale where wishes came true.
Richard caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye.
No, he thought to himself, dread clutching at his heart. It couldn’t be.
Ever so slowly, he turned his head and found himself looking into a pair of beady eyes sitting atop a devil-may-care grin.
A little green lizard was sitting on the balustrade.
And in that awful moment, Richard realised that somehow—impossibly—Harry wasn’t just an ordinary lizard.
He was a homing lizard.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I’d like to thank Tony and the team at Red Planet who bought my original Untitled Copper in the Caribbean pitch and then, through equal parts inspiration and sound judgement, helped me shepherd it to the screen. So, to Tony Jordan, Belinda Campbell, Simon Winstone and Alex Jones I owe the show’s very existence and success on TV. I’m also grateful to the BBC, who gave a prime-time series to a writer with no previous broadcast credits—and for that I have to thank the commissioning genius of Polly Hill and Ben Stephenson.
As for Death in Paradise, the novel, I’ve had direct help from a few key friends. To start with, just as each script for the TV show is developed under the masterly guidance of James Hall, James was also kind enough to read early drafts of the treatment for this book and stop the more excessive mistakes I was otherwise about to make.
Then, once I had a half-way decent treatment, I have to thank both my literary agent, Ben Mason, and TV agent, Charlotte Knight, for putting the deal together with Harlequin UK, who have been an inspiration to me: from Donna Hillyer’s help at the start of the process through to Sally Williamson’s life-saving interventions towards the end—and all overseen by the eversparkling Alison Lindsay. An author couldn’t have wished for a more supportive team.
There are those closer to home I also need to thank: Richard Westcott read an early draft of the book and gave life-saving notes, all of which I then incorporated into the second draft; Nicholas Dunham put up with my idiot questions about the UK legal system and always found time to answer; Molly Ker Hawn made critical interventions before, during and after the process of writing; Georgie Bevan read the nearly finished manuscript and her words of encouragement helped massively; and I should also like to thank my mother, Penny Thomas, who not only read the manuscript and cheered me on (as she’s always done), but also gave me a lifelong love of reading in the first place and crime thrillers in particular. I must also thank my children, Charlie and James, for their tolerance of the fact that Daddy seems to spend most of his life in a shed tapping away at a computer.
And finally, I must thank Charlie and James’s mother, my wonderful wife, Katie Breathwick. She’s read and responded to every draft of everything I’ve ever written over the last decade-and-a-half and she’s always given her unwavering support, even to the duff stuff. It’s been a long journey getting here, it’s not always been an easy ride, and whatever professional and personal success I’ve subsequently had I owe entirely to her. Thank you, Katie.
ISBN: 978-1-474-00658-3
A MEDITATION ON MURDER
© 2015 Robert Thorogood
Published in Great Britain 2015
by Harlequin MIRA, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited,
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