It must have been a bad, though perhaps not entirely unexpected, moment for Horace Headley when the Jamaican police force's fugitive squad showed up last month at the house the man accused of murder shared with his girlfriend and their young daughter in the east Kingston neighbourhood of Rockfort.
Almost 18 years had elapsed since a botched robbery in Scarborough turned into a shooting that left reggae music producer Stanley Shearer dying in his office from seven bullet wounds, and three other men charged with murder.
And while two of the accused have long been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, Mr. Headley, now 40, fled via Florida to his native Jamaica, where he was living quietly and staying well below the police radar.
But a scuffle with a neighbour led to a complaint about him, and a subsequent police computer check revealed that Mr. Headley had been sought by Canadian authorities since 1991 on charges of first-degree murder, attempted murder and robbery.
"He was surprised, he thought everything was through the window and that he wasn't being pursued any more," said Detective Sergeant Howard Rowe, who heads the Jamaican Constabulary Force's fugitive unit.
Flown back to Canada last week in handcuffs and shackles, Mr. Headley is now in an east Toronto jail cell awaiting his next court date.
But however unready he may have been for that door knock, it was business as usual for the police who scooped him up.
A few days after he was arrested in April, Toronto murder suspect Devon Vivian, 20, was returned to Canada to face trial in the June, 2007, west-end slaying of Jose Hierro-Saez, 19, killed when two people in a car pulled up alongside him and opened fire.
Three other people were wounded in the attack, which police believe was prompted by an altercation at a flea market near Kipling Avenue. And three months after it took place, the second suspect, 21-year-old Anthony Grant, was also arrested in Jamaica and brought back to Toronto.
In all, 15 such fugitives were picked up last year by Jamaica's fugitive squad and shipped back to the countries in which they are accused of various offences - chiefly back to Britain, Canada and the United States - and in most years the total is higher.
Almost all are wanted on murder charges. Some fight extradition. Others, such as Mr. Headley, do not.
As part of the Commonwealth, Jamaica is an easier country than many others from which to extract a suspect sought in Canada, although that's not true of all Commonwealth members. Sri Lanka, for instance, normally does not allow its nationals to be extradited.
But wherever their origin, criminal charges are rarely as old as in the case of Mr. Headley, escorted back to Toronto by Detective Sergeant Reg Pitts and Detective Bob Wilkinson of the homicide squad.
Both officers specialize in cold cases, some of which are regularly updated on the squad's interactive web site torontopolice.on.ca/homicide/unsolvedcold.php.
And with two other men already convicted of second-degree murder in the Shearer slaying - Delroy Anthony Cain and Kirk Conrad Watson - making the third and final arrest was satisfying, Det. Sgt. Pitts said.
"We're very pleased to get this done, now we can put this victim to rest once and for all."
Jamaican police brought Mr. Headley from the main Kingston jail to the capital's small airport where the two Toronto detectives took over.
The three then boarded a regular commercial flight, sitting at the back of the plane with Mr. Headley given the window seat.
On the plane, he voiced worry about what would become of his spouse and daughter but behaved well, Det. Sgt. Pitts said.
"Horace was fine, he was no problem to us at all. I guess he was probably waiting for that door knock some day because he knew the fate of the other two who were charged and convicted."
In both Jamaica and Canada, police say law-enforcement links are getting better all the time.
"This is a result of improved confidence in our ability to share intelligence and implement effective operations, especially with the U.S.A., Canada and the U.K.," said Les Green, the assistant commissioner of the Jamaican Constabulary Force.
As well, said Toronto police spokesman Mark Pugash, Mr. Headley's arrest "illustrates our point that homicide investigations are never shut. In the last couple of years, we've significantly increased the size of our cold-case unit. Results in these cases are enormously important."