A Meditation On Murder. Robert Thorogood

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.’

      ‘I’m a police officer, would you stop stroking my arms?’

      ‘But this isn’t possible.’

      This got Richard’s attention. ‘What’s not possible?’

      Dominic exhaled as if he was about to deliver some very bad news.

      ‘You don’t have an aura.’

      Richard looked at Dominic a long moment.

      ‘I know I don’t. Auras don’t exist. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to stay exactly where you are while we go and inspect the body.’

      ‘But your team all have auras.’

      ‘We do?’ Camille said eagerly, holding up her hand for her boss to wait. She wanted to hear this out.

      ‘Of course you do,’ Dominic continued, smiling easily for Camille’s benefit. ‘Yours is yellow, golden … it’s like sunlight. Warm. Impetuous. Open. Sexually adventurous.’

      Camille seemed delighted by this analysis as Dominic held her gaze much longer than he needed to, and Richard found himself noticing that Dominic wasn’t just tanned, muscly and heroically square-jawed, he was also extremely good-looking. In a slightly obvious way of course, Richard found himself adding as an afterthought in his head.

      Dominic next turned his attention to Fidel and considered the air that encompassed him.

      ‘As for you, you’re blues and greens … of kindness … valour. Hard work. Hey, you’re one of the good guys.’

      Fidel blushed. He was clearly just as thrilled with his ‘reading’ as Camille had been with hers.

      ‘Oh for heaven’s sakes!’ Richard said. ‘Thank you, Mr De Vere, but I can see that people are congregated over there’—Richard pointed at the Meditation Space as it sat some way away on the lawn—’and I want to make this clear: my colleagues and I are going over to the crime scene right now, and you’re going to stay right here.’

      ‘But what about me?’ Dwayne said, eager as a puppy dog. ‘What’s my aura?’

      Richard huffed in indignation as Dominic turned to Dwayne and took his time to consider. But then a knowing smile slipped onto Dominic’s lips.

      ‘You’re like me. A shape-shifter.’

      Dwayne beamed at what he perceived to be the highest of compliments.

      ‘I knew it.’

      Dominic turned back to Richard. ‘But I’m telling you, when I look at you, I don’t see … anything.’

      ‘Whereas I see a murder scene over there, so thank you very much for your help. Team, you’re with me, but if you try to move even an inch’—Richard said this to Dominic—’I’m going to arrest you for wasting police time.’

      Richard strode off across the lawn, his team trying not to catch each other’s eyes as they got into their boss’s slipstream. After all, it wouldn’t do to turn up at a murder scene giggling.

      But then, there was no chance of Richard or his team laughing by the time they arrived at the Meditation Space, where they found six shell-shocked Brits sitting or standing on the grass. Five of them were wearing white cotton robes that were variously spattered in drying blood. The sixth of them—Rianka—was sitting on the grass on her own. She was wearing a long Indian-style skirt with little mirrors sewn into the hemline, a light summer blouse, and leather sandals.

      ‘Okay, my name’s Detective Inspector Richard Poole,’ Richard said. ‘And this is Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey. Can any of you tell me what happened?’

      ‘That’s simple,’ said a well-tanned man in his fifties with a Yorkshire accent, a thick gold chain just visible around his neck. Richard also had time to notice a chunky gold watch on the man’s wrist. Clearly he was seriously wealthy.

      ‘The name’s Ben Jenkins,’ the man said. ‘And you should know, that woman over there, she says her