Death In Paradise season 13 is here, and the series gets underway in dramatic fashion with its milestone 100th episode. The landmark instalment sees the team facing a particularly personal case when Commissioner Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington) is shot by an unseen assailant, while DS Naomi Thomas (Shantol Jackson) is left dealing with the awkward aftermath of her drunken kiss with Officer Marlon Pryce (Tahj Miles) at the Christmas party.
Here's what went down in the opening episode of Death In Paradise season 13...
We begin with a flashback to 50 years ago, where we see the young Selwyn (Marson Francisco) arriving late to his entrance exam for the police force after his bike gets run over by a van. In the present day, Selwyn is being honored for his 50 years of loyal service at a special dinner at the Royal Yacht Club of Saint Marie. Afterwards, the club's acting manager Marlon Collins (Sean Maguire) comes over to check that everything's okay — and avid fans will remember we first met Marlon way back in the show's very first episode when he was chucked in the cells at Honoré police station for stealing yachts. Quite the turnaround! Not everyone is convinced by his turning over a new leaf though — Selwyn thinks that Mr Collins has seen the inside of a police cell too many times in the past.
Not all that comfortable being the centre of attention in this manner, Selwyn goes out onto the jetty for a drink and some fresh air — where a man wanders up behind him, clutching a pistol and fires, hitting Selwyn in the back. The Commissioner gasps and falls into the water as the gunman flees.
Fortunately, he's rescued in the nick of time, and Marlon Collins (and given the presence of two Marlons in this episode, we'll be referring to them as "Marlon Collins" and "Officer Pryce" here to avoid confusion) rings for an ambulance. Naturally, Saint Marie's finest rush to the scene, and DI Neville Parker (Ralf Little) arrives to be told by Officer Pryce that the Commissioner has lost quite a lot of blood. Officer Pryce volunteers to accompany the Commissioner to the hospital in the ambulance while Neville, Naomi and Officer Darlene Curtis (Ginny Holder) interview the witnesses. It's clear, however, that the team are all deeply shaken that the Commissioner has been left fighting for his life — and in the ambulance, Officer Pryce urges him to hang in there because the people of the island need him.
Neville and Naomi survey the crime scene, wondering who would try to kill Selwyn. The first people on the scene after Selwyn was shot were Marlon Collins, and Selwyn's friends Lincoln and Jacqueline StClair (Leon Herbert and Cathy Tyson). Lincoln explains that he was buying cigars in the clubhouse when he heard a sudden loud bang — a gunshot. When they ran outside to see where it had come from, they saw the Commissioner floating in the sea, and Jacqueline saw a man in grey overalls driving away in a pick-up truck, looking distracted and intense. She says the vehicle was old and rusty, pouring out exhaust fumes — and Marlon Collins remembers having seen the man hanging around the club earlier. Although Jacqueline can't remember the full registration number of the vehicle, she can recall enough to match a report that Darlene's just received of a road traffic accident two miles away involving a white pick-up truck.
The driver is Alton Garvey (Mensah Bediako), who fled the scene, but Naomi finds a pistol on the passenger seat. He also left his phone behind in the cab, allowing the team to go through his recent calls and texts. Keen-eyed Neville notices a cufflink on the ground near the van with the Saint Marie Yacht Club emblem on it, and grabs it as evidence.
Neville heads to the hospital, where the Commissioner has regained consciousness. Selwyn asks if they know who did it, but when Neville shows him Alton Garvey's driving licence, the Commissioner doesn't recognise him at all. A background check on Alton Garcey reveals that he has no criminal record, leaving the team baffled as to what he could possibly have against the Commissioner.
After the others leave for the night, Naomi takes Officer Pryce aside for a private chat, knowing how much he cares about the Commissioner, wanting to check he's all right — but when she goes to give him a reassuring hug, Officer Pryce backs off, saying he thought she was about to kiss him again. Naomi realises he's winding her up, and he apologises — and this time the two have a genuine, sincere hug.
The next day, Naomi tells Neville that she found a note in Selwyn's study saying "I know your secret" and "if you want me to keep quiet, you need to pay me" with Jacqueline StClair's name at the top. When Neville and Naomi arrive at the hospital to ask Selwyn about the note, they are surprised to find Jacqueline is already there with him. Selwyn is not pleased that they've been looking through his private business, but explains that Jacqueline came to see him a few weeks ago saying that she'd received threatening texts — she was worried about officially involving the police, so she asked Selwyn to investigate off the record as a friend. She was being blackmailed about an affair she was having with the yacht club manager - not Marlon Collins, but his predecessor, Romone Prince. Selwyn had found out that the texts came from an unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile, but hadn't managed to trace the owner. Neville and Naomi wonder if Alton was the blackmailer, and if he shot Selwyn because Selwyn was onto him — but, as Selwyn is quick to point out, he wasn't onto him. He does admit that he argued with Jacqueline at the lunch yesterday because he's good friends with Lincoln, and didn't feel comfortable lying to him. Neville takes Jacqueline's phone and replies to the blackmailer agreeing to pay the money, in order to draw them out into the open.
Returning to the police station, Neville is keen to find Romone Prince and get his side of the story. Darlene tells him that the lab has confirmed the gun found in Alton's truck definitely belonged to him, and was the weapon used to shoot Selwyn. Officer Pryce has also found a newspaper in Alton's truck with a story about Selwyn's celebration lunch, which has been circled. Alton Garvey calls the station, wanting to speak to Neville. He says that he didn't mean to shoot Selwyn, he wasn't thinking straight and doesn't know why he did it, but hangs up before Neville is able to get any further information out of him.
Neville wonders if this could have been a hired hit on the Commissioner, but Naomi points out that Alton Garvey is a pretty poor choice of hitman — he was drunk, got seen leaving the scene, and crashed his truck leaving an incriminating weapon behind. She has also been looking for Romone Prince, and has learned that he is on a sabbatical from the yacht club to take a 12-month round the world sailing trip, which is why Marlon Collins is currently running the place.
Jacqueline messages Neville to tell him that the blackmailer has replied, and goes to the agreed drop-off point with the money. While the team are on stakeout waiting for the blackmailer to show up, Naomi takes the opportunity to have the "awkward conversation" with Officer Pryce about the kiss. She assures him that it didn't mean anything, and she just wants to make sure that she hasn't ruined a really good friendship. He assures her that she hasn't — "it would take way more than a drunken kiss to do that". Guess who turns up to collect the money? None other than Marlon Collins, who finds himself under arrest yet again.
At the police station, Marlon Collins admits to sending the blackmail messages to Jacqueline — he had a run of bad luck playing poker and desperately needed money. He found out about the affair because he was working closely with Romone, but insists that he didn't know Jacqueline had gone to Selwyn about it. He does suggest that Lincoln StClair might have had a motive to shoot Selwyn, because Lincoln knew his wife was having an affair, but thought that it was Selwyn she was seeing.
When Neville goes to speak to him, Lincoln admits that he had his suspicions about Jacqueline and Selwyn because he followed her to Selwyn's house after she'd claimed she was going to the tennis club. Neville puts him straight about Jacqueline's affair with Romone and Selwyn privately helping her with the blackmail, and Lincoln indignantly insists that, despite thinking that Selwyn was fooling around with his wife, he definitely wouldn't have shot him over it.
Naomi's had no luck getting hold of Romone Prince so Neville suggests they get in touch with Marine Traffic, who may be able to track the yacht he's sailing on. Officer Pryce has dug up Marlon Collins' extensive criminal record, and Neville notes that DS Camille Bordey had a few run-ins with him back in the day, so he decides to give her a call and see if she can shed any additional light on the matter. But when he videocalls Camille (in a delightful surprise cameo from Sara Martins), she's a little bit busy — she's in labour! Catherine (Élizabeth Bourgine) is with her and suggests that Neville calls back later.
Darlene, meanwhile, has been carrying out further background research into Alton Garvey, and discovers that he was been looking after his mum, who had been housebound for nearly 50 years. She died a year ago, at which point Alton was planning a fresh start — but he struggled to find work and got into debt. This explains why he may have been angry and unhappy, but why would he have taken it out on the Commissioner?
At the hospital, Selwyn's asleep when someone sneaks into his room under cover of darkness: it's Alton. Selwyn awakes and recognises him. Alton tells him that he is there to do what he has to do — and he's sorry. The scene cuts to black. Oh no! Selwyn!
Fortunately, they're just messing with us — Selwyn's fine, and Alton had merely come to give him a document. Darlene fields a call from the station, as someone has spotted Alton standing on a cliff edge. Neville and Naomi race to find him, and Alton explains what the document revealed: he and Selwyn sat the entrance exam for the police on the same day, and there was only one place available. Selwyn got the job even though he turned up late, and Alton's life went downhill after that. When he saw the article about Selwyn's celebration lunch, he got angry and went down to the yacht club to confront him. He didn't intent to shoot him, but he was really drunk and he took the gun because he didn't want to be ignored. He doesn't know what came over him, but when he saw Selwyn standing on the jetty, a voice in his head started saying "just do it" — he felt his arm raise, and he squeezed the trigger. He apologizes for shooting Selwyn and says he can't live with the guilt. Neville notices that Alton is wearing the same clothes he was wearing the day it all happened, and something clicks in his brain — he realizes that Alton wasn't really the one who shot Selwyn.
Naomi tells Neville she has a bad feeling about Romone Prince: Marine Traffic told her that the tracker on his yacht was turned off two weeks ago, and there has been no activity since. There's been no activity on his phone either — the only calls he's received in the last two weeks were from Naomi herself, and from the Commissioner on the day of the lunch. Neville asks her to get the dive team out to the exact location where Romone's yacht was lost. Neville calls Selwyn to ask if anyone else knew that he'd called Romone, and his answer appears to clinch the case.
All the suspects gather at the police station, where Neville explains what happened: Marlon Collins shot Selwyn. The cufflink found at the site where Alton crashed his truck was the giveaway, because it explained what happened at the crime scene. When Alton arrived at the yacht club, Marlon Collins saw him standing on the jetty with a gun and spotted a way to turn the scene to his advantage. Marlon Collins crept up behind him, raised Alton's arm up to point the gun at the Commissioner and whispered "do it" in his ear while putting pressure on Alton's trigger finger. But Marlon Collins didn't notice that his cufflink had come loose, and the recoil from the gun caused it to fall out into the turn-up of Alton's trousers, unseen by either of them, and it stayed there until it got dislodged as Alton fled the crash site.
Marlon Collins points out that this can't have happened, because he was in the clubhouse when the shot was fired, and there are witnesses to back him up. But Neville has an answer for that too: the pistol is small and wouldn't make much noise, and if the wind was blowing away from the clubhouse and out to sea, it's entirely possible nobody would have heard the gunshot at all. What they actually heard was the sound of Alton's truck backfiring, which Alton confirms happens whenever he starts the engine — and because Marlon Collins had seen Alton around the yacht club earlier, he already knew that. So, after the Commissioner was shot, Marlon Collins helped Alton back to the truck and then went into the clubhouse, waiting for the loud bang that people would perceive as a gunshot and making sure they would all see him there when it happened. Marlon Collins tells Neville that he has no proof, and Neville tells him that he'll be getting the lab to test the cufflink for Marlon Collins' DNA, as well as checking his uniform blazer for gunshot residue.
As for the motive: Marlon Collins was trying to cover up another murder, that of Romone Prince. His yacht — and his corpse — have just been found in the exact same location where the tracker was turned off two weeks ago. Crumbling under interrogation, Marlon Collins explains that Romone figured out that he was the blackmailer after seeing his phone. Romone confronted him on the yacht and threatened to go to the police, and when Marlon Collins tried to get his phone back, he pushed Romone too hard in the ensuing struggle, and Romone fell and hit his head. Marlon Collins was still on probation and would have gone back to jail for this, so he tried to cover it up by sailing the yacht out to sea and scuttling it. He was hoping this would buy him some time, but then the Commissioner came up to him at the lunch and asked him for Romone's phone number in order to speak to him about the blackmail. Marlon Collins already knew that Selwyn didn't trust him, and realised that he'd soon spot something was amiss when he couldn't get hold of Romone — so when he saw Alton standing there with the gun, he decided to give him a little extra nudge.
After solving the case, Neville checks back in with Camille, who has had a baby girl. Camille tells him that parenthood is going to be an adventure, and asks Neville what his next adventure will be — Neville isn't sure, but says that he's sure that whatever the future has in store for him, it won't be boring. Camille suggests he could start a blog about his exciting life on Saint Marie. Naomi, Darlene, and Marlon (who we can thankfully stop referring to as "Officer Pryce" now that the other Marlon has been arrested) stop by on their way to the hospital to see Selwyn, and Neville tells them about Camille's blog idea. Marlon wonders if it might not be a bit of a boring read, and Neville says that maybe someone out there might be interested in the life of a British detective in the Caribbean.
Sounds far-fetched to us. It'll never catch on...
