“Are you…?” she began.
“Yes,” he said, resigned. “I’ve even got it with me.” He took the lime out of his pocket and showed it to her.
“Very nice,” she said. “That’s definitely a lime you’ve got there. I was going to say, are you going to want the à la carte menu or would you rather do the buffet?”
“Buffet,” said Fat Charlie. The buffet was free. He stood in the hall outside the restaurant holding his lime.
“Just wait a moment,” said the maître d’.
A small woman came down the corridor from behind Fat Charlie. She smiled at the maître d’ and said, “Is the restaurant open yet? I’m completely starved.”
There was a final thrum-thung-thdum from the bass guitar and a plunk from the electric piano. The band put down their instruments and waved at the maître d’. “It’s open,” she said. “Come in.”
The small woman stared at Fat Charlie with an expression of wary surprise. “Hello Fat Charlie,” she said. “What’s the lime for?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well,” said Daisy. “We’ve got the whole of dinnertime ahead of us. Why don’t you tell me all about it?”
ROSIE WONDERED WHETHER MADNESS COULD BE CONTAGIOUS. In the blind darkness beneath the house on the cliff, she had felt something brush past her. Something soft and lithe. Something huge. Something that growled, softly, as it circled them.
“Did you hear that too?” she said.
“Of course I heard it, you stupid girl,” said her mother. Then she said, “Is there any orange juice left?”
Rosie fumbled in the darkness for the juice carton, passed it to her mother. She heard the sound of drinking, then her mother said, “The animal will not be the one that kills us. He will.”
“Grahame Coats. Yes.”
“He’s a bad man. There is something riding him, like a horse, but he would be a bad horse, and he is a bad man.”
Rosie reached out and held her mother’s bony hand in her own. She didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything much to say.
“You know,” said her mother, after a while, “I’m very proud of you. You were a good daughter.”
“Oh,” said Rosie. The idea of not being a disappointment to her mother was a new one, and something about which she was not sure she how she felt.
“Maybe you should have married Fat Charlie,” said her mother. “Then we wouldn’t be here.”
“No,” said Rosie. “I should never have married Fat Charlie. I don’t love Fat Charlie. So you weren’t entirely wrong.”
They heard a door slam upstairs.
“He’s gone out,” said Rosie. “Quick. While he’s out. Dig a tunnel.” First she began to giggle, and then she began to cry.
FAT CHARLIE WAS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT DAISY WAS doing on the island. Daisy was trying, equally as hard, to understand what Fat Charlie was doing on the island. Neither of them was having much success. A singer in a long, red, slinky dress, who was too good for a little hotel restaurant’s Friday Night Fun, was up on the little dais at the end of the room singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”
Daisy said, “You’re looking for the lady who lived next door when you were a little boy, because she may be able to help you find your brother.”
“I was given a feather. If she’s still got it, I may be able to exchange it for my brother. It’s worth a try.”
She blinked slowly, thoughtfully, entirely unimpressed, and picked at her salad.
Fat Charlie said, “Well, you’re here because you think that Grahame Coats came here after he killed Maeve Livingstone. But you’re not here as a cop. You just powered in under your own steam on the off-chance that he’s here. And if he is here, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.”
Daisy licked a fleck of tomato seed from the corner of her lips, and looked uncomfortable. “I’m not here as a police officer,” she said. “I’m here as a tourist.”
“But you just walked off the job and came here after him. They could probably send you to prison for that, or something.”
“Then,” she said, drily, “it’s a good thing that Saint Andrews doesn’t have any extradition treaties, isn’t it?”
Under his breath Fat Charlie said, “Oh God.”
The reason Fat Charlie said “Oh God,” was because the singer had left the stage and was now starting to walk around the restaurant with a radio microphone. Right now, she was asking two German tourists where they were from.
“Why would he come here?” asked Fat Charlie.
“Confidential banking. Cheap property. No extradition treaties. Maybe he really likes citrus fruit.”
“I spent two years terrified of that man,” said Fat Charlie. “I’m going to get some more of that fish-and-green-banana thing. You coming?”
“I’m fine,” said Daisy. “I want to leave room for dessert.”
Fat Charlie walked over to the buffet, going the long way around to avoid catching the singer’s eye. She was very beautiful, and her red sequined dress caught the light and glittered as she moved. She was better than the band. He wished she’d go back onto the little stage and keep singing her standards—he had enjoyed her “Night and Day” and a peculiarly soulful “Spoonful of Sugar”—and stop interacting with the diners. Or at least, stop talking to people on his side of the room.
He piled his plate high with more of the things he had liked the first time. The thing about bicycling around the island, he thought, was that it gave you an appetite.
When he returned to his table, Grahame Coats, with something vaguely beardish growing on the lower part of his face, was sitting next to Daisy, and he was grinning like a weasel on speed. “Fat Charlie,” said Grahame Coats, and he chuckled uncomfortably. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? I come looking for you here, for a little tête-à-tête, and what do I find as a bonus? This glamorous little police officer. Please, sit down over there and try not to make a scene.”
Fat Charlie stood like a waxwork.
“Sit down,” repeated Grahame Coats. “I have a gun pressed against Miss Day’s stomach.”
Daisy looked at Fat Charlie imploringly, and she nodded. Her hands were on the tablecloth, pressed flat.
Fat Charlie sat down.
“Hands where I can see them. Spread them on the table, just like hers.”
Fat Charlie obeyed.
Grahame Coats sniffed. “I always knew you were an undercover cop, Nancy,” he said. “An agent provocateur, eh? You come into my offices, set me up, steal me blind.”
“I never—” said Fat Charlie, but he saw the look in Grahame Coats’s eyes and shut up.
“You thought you were so clever,” said Grahame Coats. “You all thought I’d fall for it. That was why you sent the other two in, wasn’t it? The two at the house? Did you think I’d believe they were really from the cruise ship? You have to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over on me, you know. Who else have you told? Who else knows?”