A Taste of Death: The gripping new murder mystery that will keep you guessing
H.V. Coombs
The first murder happened while I was making meringues…When Ben Hunter moves to become head chef at the Old Forge Café in the quiet village of Hampden Green, a tricky recipe for egg-based desserts isn’t the only thing he gets embroiled in. As he struggles with a whisk in his first week, he gets an unexpected visit from DI Slattery – there’s been a murder and he’s a suspect. Ben resolves to get to the bottom of the mystery, and he soon discovers that this sleepy Chilterns village is covering up a whole lot more than an appetite for sweet treats…
A Taste of Death
The Old Forge Café
H. V. COOMBS
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
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www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2017
Copyright © H.V. Coombs 2017
Cover illustration © Head Design
H.V. Coombs asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9780008235796
Version 2017-11-14
To J.A.W. xx H.V.C
Table of Contents
Cover (#uae8a6c82-7a89-5295-b143-a31634f568a1)
Title Page (#u57fdea00-d18d-5a73-b9db-458a0e1fa384)
Copyright (#ub36c1031-bc91-5e82-af4d-dde4e980b9c4)
Dedication (#u375a0ad9-c9fa-5426-ac3a-b87a3b3ef292)
Prologue: Friday, 15 January (#ua9efaf54-ef6e-53e1-8896-7452d3523c28)
Part One (#uc369ca19-856e-5e2d-9805-b194c74ff7cc)
Chapter One: Thursday, 7 January (#u614528df-b0aa-5f92-bf73-1427d7d246ea)
Chapter Two (#u3e96ef2e-20d3-502a-b377-37180c28062a)
Chapter Three: Friday, 8 January (#u47daabfc-4414-5d46-a9de-70de48adf93d)
Chapter Four: Friday, 8 January, early afternoon (#u996d84ba-59fa-5bdc-b192-12afff09ae26)
Chapter Five (#ub21ac7e9-008f-5dc4-b956-62eae684cb03)
Chapter Six: Monday, 11 January, lunch (#u990fdc29-71b3-5b5a-a8de-26233c3f659f)
Chapter Seven: Monday, 11 January, evening (#u79bc55d2-6861-5b1f-96ca-02d935f32825)
Chapter Eight: Tuesday, 12 January (#u5fba389d-03fe-5c27-b2fa-eb51ebc2e49a)
Chapter Nine: Wednesday, 13 January (#ud77a4226-71ba-5986-8af8-d17ebba02cd2)
Chapter Ten: Thursday, 14 January (#u34cf216f-2ea9-594a-9955-010953d8863b)
Part Two (#u5386dceb-2bf9-5225-b1c3-ed18fa5d2d37)
Chapter Eleven: Friday, 15 January, 9.30 a.m. (#u43fa6414-deca-5b9d-9f60-b9e55c4ccd89)
Chapter Twelve: Friday, 15 January, 6 a.m. (#u56115bea-aea8-53e4-a14d-90fc58e33570)
Chapter Thirteen: Monday, 18 January (#u1e737add-ffe3-5449-b9c6-da77a3c2fafe)
Chapter Fourteen: Tuesday, 19 January (#u45ea83f8-dc12-5ff7-b5ad-cec10b61504e)
Chapter Fifteen: Wednesday, 20 January, early evening (#u5a52a7de-c464-53b0-a369-97f49d191019)
Chapter Sixteen: Thursday, 21 January, afternoon (#ua67be7fe-1fbb-56d0-b157-7bfb0c5d9b88)
Chapter Seventeen: Thursday, 21 January, late afternoon (#u5fbd1de7-686a-5e4a-93ff-3abd8f6eaa44)
Chapter Eighteen: Friday, 22 January (#u6824b57f-295e-5db6-a19f-c8b3f5cd08c8)
Chapter Nineteen: Friday, 22 January, lunchtime (#u86ae2e5f-5a2f-58a1-9306-990b2b34e313)
Chapter Twenty: Friday, 22 January, afternoon (#u00757a43-5647-5def-92dc-cd1df67963a8)
Chapter Twenty-One: Friday, 22 January, late afternoon (#uad8a7fa0-a827-51fa-b375-f584fee6e04d)
Chapter Twenty-Two: Saturday, 23 January, midday (#u81bbe8db-4e92-5b0f-a97f-f9f56c5211ec)
Chapter Twenty-Three: Saturday, 23 January afternoon (#ufed4db50-a267-5f59-9df9-73b1657784d1)
Chapter Twenty-Four: Saturday, 23 January, night (#u3f13c1f5-3137-562c-b2d1-a4e17247076b)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#ufd0073e5-e759-59c1-a173-04b1b6f827f0)
Chapter Twenty-Six: Monday, 25 January (#u2a9d9697-76ec-52f5-a284-194869125322)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#u7456f851-7093-529a-833f-670ca9a05d53)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#ua59dc0fe-4403-50f2-be8a-f59fbfd3e651)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#ucb8b7f6f-ef7b-5192-ac2f-4b9e8963445f)
Chapter Thirty (#uef3d6721-7164-528d-94af-682d40ba9284)
Chapter Thirty-One (#u057b3537-2c2e-5526-bb5d-1f9b62c1790c)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#uaf592483-384c-509c-b9df-404e665d9ca6)
Chapter Thirty-Three: Tuesday, 26 January (#u1068ca0b-1c4c-5ec1-95c1-177ed1564953)
Chapter Thirty-Four: Wednesday, 27 January, early morning (#u9d207694-faba-5283-a36e-2b5a10a99816)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#u67dcbced-1fe1-5821-9251-72823de70f78)
Part Three (#u783dcb23-546f-5b96-aaa9-767e6d602efe)
Chapter Thirty-Six: Wednesday, 27 January, mid-morning (#u0e4df528-e30a-55f7-b3fb-4bd3ef9917e1)
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Wednesday, 27 January, noon (#uafd2603f-e489-5d5a-8ecf-f195deb98fea)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#u9f10e7fb-a0d2-5a41-8ec8-b32e70eb4238)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#u98c99180-6195-5b03-ab1e-dd7993ad7eea)
Chapter Forty (#u538564e2-9a14-5a67-8bca-eadfac313c67)
Chapter Forty-One (#ua45f5fd4-250d-5ac7-8c6d-47f207e7c2ba)
Chapter Forty-Two (#u997143bc-93d8-520a-a438-ab531a38bc75)
Chapter Forty-Three (#u67fa78b2-23b7-5d4d-940c-6325e9ed44ed)
Chapter Forty-Four (#u645adab2-2230-5f7d-a234-37d73ea7a782)
Chapter Forty-Five: Monday, 1 February (#ue3e31ceb-a674-5765-8119-6b4257565695)
About the Publisher (#u0d524b4d-97c0-51e7-a9ca-a769d9a0ee70)
PROLOGUE (#u7f83a833-3bad-5880-9fcb-139b4990c145)
Friday, 15 January (#u7f83a833-3bad-5880-9fcb-139b4990c145)
I heard about the first murder while I was making meringues.
Meringues, so simple, yet so fiddly. They are like a metaphor for leading a good life. On the face of it so easy, yet the potential for disaster is huge. So, there I was in the kitchen, the gigantic Hobart mixer was running, fitted with a balloon whisk attachment. I had separated five egg whites and put them in the large stainless steel mixing bowl with a hundred and sixty grams of icing sugar. Sugar gives a meringue both body and weight. Body and weight. Always crucial, for both people and solidified foam dishes.
There was a pounding on the kitchen door. As insistent as the noise of the mixer, but not as comforting. It wasn’t a polite announcement of someone’s presence, it was an angry statement of intent. I slowed the mixer down, and it quietened itself from a deafening rattle to a comforting whir, then I went to open the door. I think I knew who it was before I even touched the handle.
‘Do come in, DI Slattery,’ I said politely.
The inspector entered with his usual air of haughty disdain. In the short time, only about a week, that I had known him, I had learned that the DI had what is charitably known as a forceful personality. It was typical Slattery that, instead of politely ringing or knocking on the front door, he had let himself into the kitchen yard and used the kitchen one, off limits to the general public. But that’s Slattery for you, given to making statements as well as taking them down. His cold, angry eyes were aggressively trying to find any excuse to arrest me, or at least that’s the impression he gave. I could be wrong. It was certainly the look that he usually wore. Maybe deep down Slattery warmly empathised with me. Somehow I doubted it.
‘Busy, Ben?’ his tone sarcastic.
I shrugged. ‘As you see.’ I turned up the machine, watching the white mixture whirl around until stiff peaks formed. If you overbeat meringues they can weep syrup, creating an unpleasant, sticky soggy mess. In short, a disaster.
No one likes a mess.
I turned the machine off and moved the bowl to a work-surface.
DI Slattery looked at me.
‘Have you been out this morning?’ he asked. I considered the question as I sifted icing sugar and some cornflour into the mix. I think I knew that he wasn’t checking on how my running regime was going.
‘Did you know that undissolved sugar can lead to grittiness and weeping in a meringue?’ was my reply. I started folding the white powder into the very white egg mix. It’s why I was using icing sugar, rather than caster.
He gave me the kind of look which made me thankful for modern policing. Slattery, six feet two and although carrying a fair bit of surplus flesh, was a powerfully built man. Now in his forties and with nearly three decades in the force, he could doubtless remember more robust CID interrogation methods than polite conversation.
I had the feeling nothing would have pleased him more than a return to the good old days of police questioning.
‘In answer to your earlier question, no I haven’t,’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘Because,’ he said, ‘Dave Whitfield’s dead.’ He smiled his mirthless smile at me. ‘Do you know anything about it, Ben? You don’t seem very surprised.’
‘No.’ I peered into the meringue mix. No, I wasn’t surprised. Peaks were beginning to form.
‘And where exactly were you this morning?’ asked Slattery.
My mind went back to when I had first met Slattery and Whitfield.
It didn’t have to travel very far.
PART ONE (#u7f83a833-3bad-5880-9fcb-139b4990c145)
‘Tell me what you eat : I will tell you what you are.’
Brillat-Savarin – The Philosopher in the Kitchen
CHAPTER ONE (#u7f83a833-3bad-5880-9fcb-139b4990c145)
Thursday, 7 January (#u7f83a833-3bad-5880-9fcb-139b4990c145)
I had first met Slattery one week earlier: the day I had my very low-key opening. I’d bought the restaurant and officially exchanged on the thirty-first of December. I guess that I wanted my new venture, which was essentially my new life, to begin on a New Year. It felt right, and there is always that optimistic sensation that everyone has at the beginning of January: this will be my year! This is my time. I was no exception. Or in my case, this will be a year of no regrets, of positivity, of expunging the past.
I’d been in the village, Hampden Green in the Chiltern Hills, a week. Just one week. It felt an awful lot longer. In the past few days, I had brought in painters and decorators to give a more contemporary feel to the restaurant than the chintz and cream décor favoured by the former owner. I had not expected my first customers at the Old Forge Café to be two uniformed policemen and a Detective Inspector. It most certainly wasn’t the demographic that I had in mind when I bought the place.
And, as omens go, inauspicious. The arrival of policemen on my doorstep brought back aspects of my past I had hoped to put behind me.
The café had previously been owned by a Mrs Cope, an archetypal fluffy-white-haired lady in her late sixties who smelled of face-powder and rosewater and had eyes like a cobra. I had looked over the books and the operating costs. The Old Forge Café turned a reasonable profit but I could see big room for improvement. It also fitted all the personal criteria that I was looking for: location, accommodation and tranquillity. Additionally, it had a very well-equipped kitchen with a state-of-the-art oven and gas range.
For the poet T.S. Eliot, April might have been the cruellest month; for the hospitality industry that’s not the case. It’s the beginning of the year. I had officially opened the place on a Friday in January, the hardest month to make money in catering. Everyone’s broke after Christmas, everyone’s depressed, and the weather’s usually awful. It’s not weather for going out. Out here in the South Bucks countryside was no exception. Mind you, my staff bills were low, I didn’t have any.
It didn’t take me long to realise that Mrs Cope not only had the eyes of a snake, but the morals of one. Buy in haste, repent at leisure. The kitchen equipment, now I came to actually use it, instead of being hurried around by an estate agent, was in a terrible state. For example, the door fell off one of the fridges on about the third use and I had to wedge it shut with a sack of potatoes. A lot of the restaurant furniture was quite literally falling apart and the less said about the structure of the building, the better. The painters and decorators had had a field day pointing out more and more horrors revealed by their work.
But despite these setbacks, I was happy. Start off small and grow with the business, that was my short-term plan. I figured that as profits grew I could rebuild the place around me. I wasn’t even too concerned about the potential lack of customers – it’s always a problem in January.
I put together a simple menu with a few clever touches. It was a café menu; I had no liquor licence. Things had to be made from low-cost ingredients so I could make a decent profit margin as I couldn’t get away with high prices and there was no buffer of profit on alcoholic drinks.
Not being too busy suited me. I felt that I would rather take a low footfall and turnover on the chin and work through the bad times of January and February, growing organically, than start out when things traditionally went well. Battling adversity, well, I was kind of used to that. And it was undeniably pleasant to wake up in the flat above the restaurant and savour the silence.
For the last two years I had been living in noisy central London kitchens, eighteen-hour days, cramming as much experience as I could in with kids who were twenty years my junior. It was a steep learning curve. My one-bedroomed flat in Kentish Town had been equally noisy. And prior to that, my rock-bottom, my time spent banged up at Her Majesty’s pleasure, had been far from relaxed.
I also didn’t mind the fact that I had hardly any personal effects in the flat that came with the restaurant. Not now that Mrs Cope’s stuff had gone. It wasn’t just the furniture that she had removed. She had taken not only the lampshades, but the lightbulbs too. That seemed a bit excessive, but, I reflected, Mrs Cope was a thoroughly vindictive woman.
Still, I was enjoying the space. Just as well since I had so much of it. Uncluttered by things I couldn’t afford, I pretended I was enjoying the minimalist life. Who needs tables and chairs and a sideboard? Who needs a bed and a chest of drawers? Who needs a wardrobe, I wasn’t going to Narnia.
I led the police into the restaurant area, gave them a table, asked them what they wanted to drink – two cappuccinos for the PCs and a double espresso for the DI – and busied myself behind the counter.
The two uniforms were festooned like paramilitary Christmas trees with the tools of their trade, batons, Tasers, radios, other bits and bobs of equipment. They clashed horribly with the chintzy furniture of the restaurant which I couldn’t yet afford to replace.
I brought them their coffees. They looked me over in a markedly hostile way. Perhaps they missed Mrs Cope. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t from round here. Or maybe they just didn’t like my face.
Outside the windows of the tearooms the village of Hampden Green carried on its peaceful, unremarkable existence. The winter rain beat down unceasingly.
Through the glass I could see: the green itself (or the common as it was sometimes called); the children’s play area; the fitness/arts studio; twenty or so houses and the village pond. There was also a pub, the Three Bells, a rough kind of place with a pool table. It was one of two pubs in the village. Houses of various shapes and sizes fronted on to the green. The road bent around to the left out of sight, leading to the King’s Head, the other village pub.
The two pubs were indicative of the social divide of the place: BMWs and Mercedes at the King’s Head, pick-up trucks and vans at the Three Bells.
In short, a typical Chilterns village. But carrying on the good old country traditions of surly hostility to incomers.
‘What brings you gentlemen to Hampden Green?’ I asked. The uniforms glanced expectantly at the DI, their spokesman. He had a tough, good-humoured face, slightly battered and quite tanned. He also had a powerful physique under his suit, running slightly to middle-aged fat, and a very obvious ‘don’t mess with me’ attitude. He looked hard as nails.
He stood up and pointed out of the window.
‘You see that house, the one with the blue door?’
I could, and I did. I nodded.
‘That’s my place.’
It was said more in the tone of a warning than anything else. That’s my house, this is my turf, this is my patch. Like a dog cocking its leg, the DI was marking his territory. He looked at me in an intimidating way to underline the message. Satisfied, he carried on.
‘I’m DI Michael Slattery, by the way. Now, I am here to investigate a burglary that occurred down at Andy Simmonds’ place last night. Do you know Andy?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Well, he’s a pig farmer and butcher and he has a farm shop where he sells his meat. Last night someone forced the lock on his walk-in fridge and nicked about two grands’ worth of sausages. I’m investigating the crime.’
Blimey, I thought. What did he expect to find here? If I was the sausage thief, how would I get rid of them? A menu composed of nothing but sausage dishes? January is sausage month?
May I recommend our special: sausage parfait with a chipolata garnish?
Sausage slaw?
‘A DI?’ I said, quite senior for this sort of thing. I would have thought he would have had more important things to do than look into the sausage robbery and why did he need two uniforms?
‘Slow day at the office?’ I asked.
I’d like to say he looked at me with friendliness bordering on compassion. Instead it was a look in which dislike mingled with suspicion and more than a pinch of sarcasm. I felt that somehow I was failing to connect with DI Slattery.
I went back to my sausage musings. Mrs Cope would have shifted the sausage. That sounds like a dreadful double entendre, but what I meant was, bangers and mash, sausage casserole, sausage sandwiches, sausage and onion gravy. Or continental bockwurst mitkartoffeln salat. Home-made sausage rolls … I suddenly thought, my God, why am I mocking her? All of that sounds good, maybe not the casserole. I made a mental note.
‘Investigate sausage possibilities.’
But that was for later, right now I had the police to deal with. I waited for Slattery and his not so merry men to break the silence.
Outside the windows of the tearooms the village of Hampden Green carried on its peaceful, unremarkable existence. It continued to rain.
I looked at the trio of cops. Three pairs of eyes stared back at me with naked suspicion. I stopped looking at them and looked out of the bow-fronted window behind them instead. A kind of horrible silence ensued. Periodically one of the uniforms’ radios would squawk into life. He would ignore it.
Through the glass I could see most of the village. The green was deserted.
Slattery was the first to move. He stood up and pointed at the common.
‘Well, let’s just say that this is very much my patch—’ his gesture encompassed the whole village ‘—and I’m a tidy man and I like to keep things clean. Now, you’re new around here,’ he said, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, ‘so I would like to officially extend the hand of welcome, but if anyone should swing by offering prime pork goods at knockdown prices I’d be upset if you failed to inform me.’ He looked menacingly at me, so did his colleagues. ‘In fact, I’d be very upset.’
This was nothing to do with a break-in. This was DI Slattery showing me who was boss, who ran Hampden Green. Satisfied with himself, he took his wallet out and handed me his card.
‘I’ll see you around,’ he said, as he stood up to leave
It was a threat rather than a promise.
I wondered what I’d done to upset him.
I guess I wasn’t local.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_0776ce98-835b-5243-a987-0a9015f092d5)
My next visitor was altogether more charming than the forces of law and order. It was only by chance that I actually heard her. I was making a coffee and walnut cake and had to go back into the restaurant to make an espresso that I was going to use for flavouring. It was then that I saw her through the glass of the front door. She waved at me to get my attention. I went over and let her in.
‘Hello,’ I said, ‘can I help you?’
I was talking to a girl who I guessed was in her late teens, early twenties, who had been trying without success to ring the bell by the restaurant door. I say ‘guessed’ because she was mainly concealed by a large umbrella that the heavy rain was bouncing off. It was ten o’clock in the morning but almost dark under the cloudy, black sky.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’ve been ringing the bell …’
Another thing that didn’t work, thank you, Mrs Cope, I thought. I’ll add it to the list.
‘It’s temperamental,’ I lied, which sounded better somehow than ‘broken’. ‘Broken’ was unprofessional, defeatist.
‘I’ve come about the job.’
‘Do come in,’ I said, ushering her inside. I took the umbrella from her and her coat, sodden and heavy from the hideous weather.
‘Have a seat …’
We both sat down and weighed each other up. I had put an A board outside saying that I needed waiting staff. I was amazed that the writing hadn’t been washed away. The marker pen for A boards was supposed to be weatherproof to a degree but it must have been undergoing a pretty severe test out there. I hadn’t been too confident that I would get any takers. There was not a lot of footfall in the village and the rain made people concentrate on the road rather than signs outside restaurants.
‘I’m Jessica, by the way, Jessica Turner, but people call me Jess.’
‘I’m Ben Hunter, chef proprietor.’ I smiled at how pompous that sounded. It was true, it was an accurate description of my job, but it sounded quite grandiose. You could be chef proprietor of a burger van when you think about it.
Jessica Turner was about five feet five with dark curly hair, large brown eyes and an attractive, lively face. She was well spoken and was dressed down in a baggy jumper, jeans and Cuban-heeled boots. She looked intelligent and good-humoured.
I explained my plans for the restaurant, she listened attentively and asked a couple of sensible questions.
I asked Jess about herself. She was a second-year student at Warwick University studying Computer Science. I nodded. I was impressed. I could use Windows and e-mail but that was about it. She’d be able to help me with Excel in between serving customers. And maybe a website. That’d come in handy. I could write a menu, but I couldn’t write HTML. Did she have waitressing experience? Yes, she did.
‘What kind of food are you going to do?’ she asked.
I made her a coffee and explained not only the menu, but its rationale. I had put together a simple menu with a few clever touches. It was a café menu, nothing too fancy or too expensive.
So, on the menu as well as restaurant dishes there were old warhorses like caramelised red onion and steak baguette. There was the inescapable ploughman’s (we were in the country, there were fields), but made with good cheese, home-made pickled red cabbage and piccalilli. I had added plenty of things that would not go off – I couldn’t afford the luxury of waste – so there were quite a few cutesy preserves and frozen desserts, parfaits, semifreddo and sorbets that would last and not have to get binned if unsold. Occasionally I’d add mysterious touches, compressed pineapple, a potato foam on the soup, that kind of thing. Stuff like that was old hat in London but still novel out here. I was a one-man band, so it couldn’t be too adventurous; I didn’t have the luxury of time, but it was good, it was honest and it represented reasonable value for money.
It was more like I was pitching for a job than she was, but I guess she was about the first person I’d had a chance to talk to about it.
‘That all sounds very interesting,’ she said. And the strange thing was, she sounded like she meant it.
The job was hers.
‘I’m afraid it’s only minimum wage, but you get tips, which you share with the kitchen staff.’
She nodded. ‘How many kitchen staff are there?’ she asked.
‘None, other than me. But I don’t get tips, since I’m the owner, so currently they’re all yours. But you will have to help with the washing up.’
She smiled. ‘I can wash up, Ben.’
She had a great smile. I think she was amused by the shoestring nature of the business. We agreed that she could start the following day.
‘So I guess I’d better take my sign down then,’ I said.
She looked puzzled.
‘What sign?’
‘The A board.’
‘I didn’t see the A board sign.’ She looked confused, as did I.
‘Then how did you know I needed a waitress?’
Her face cleared. ‘Oh, that. Well, someone told me last night.’
‘But I hadn’t put a sign up last night.’
She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Oh, Ben, you’re not from here. This is a village, everybody knows everything about everyone else’s business. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it in the end.’
We shook hands and I watched her back disappearing across the green as she trudged home through the rain.
I thought about what she had said. I suppose I thought it was quite sweet that everyone knew what everyone else was doing without Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter or other social media.
After all, it was a pleasant, friendly little village. What could go wrong?
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_abc9dbaa-66f9-587f-9f84-7ea8bb8930ec)
Friday, 8 January (#ulink_abc9dbaa-66f9-587f-9f84-7ea8bb8930ec)
The following day, twenty-four hours after DI Slattery’s visit and Jess’s hiring, there was the arson attack.
Coincidentally fire, in the form of smoke, had gone into what I was cooking at the time. I had just made and served a customer called Dave Whitfield, local builder/property developer, a smoked venison sandwich on rye with a small garnish of curly endive, beetroot and cornichons.
It would be fair to say that Whitfield was not shaping up to be one of my favourite customers.
Jess walked in as Whitfield started being Whitfield. I had met him briefly a couple of days ago in the local pub. I hadn’t been overly impressed with his personality then, and my opinion of him was getting progressively lower. Jess gave me a sympathetic glance as she passed by, heading for the kitchen to change into her apron.
‘What’s that?’ He pointed aggressively at the garnish. Most things about Whitfield were aggressive, his mannerisms, his bald (aggressively so) shaved head, his tattoos, visible on his arms and flowing up his neck, lots of red and blue and green (bright, vivid colours, no pastels for Dave), his general demeanour.
I explained. How it would enhance his eating experience, how the flavours were cunningly paired, how the vinegar that the small cucumber (which is what a cornichon is) was pickled in would cut through the richness of the meat. And didn’t it look good! He was having none of it.
‘Bollocks to that,’ he remarked judiciously. ‘No offence, mate, but when I want crap on my plate I’ll ask for it, OK?’
Idiot, I thought. I gritted my teeth, shrugged and fetched a plate, and deftly scraped off the offending items with the blade of a knife. For a mad moment I would willingly have plunged it into him.
Actually, I’d have changed instruments first.
I was using the back of my long, broad-bladed chef’s knife to clean the plate. For stabbing Whitfield to death I’d have gone for a long, thin but sturdy boning knife. It would have slid in much more easily.
As my old head chef used to say, ‘Always choose the right tool for the right job.’
The question of what is right and not right, a perennial problem. They say that the customer is always right. Not in the world of good food. There, the customer doesn’t know best, the customer is entitled to their opinion, but that’s all they’re entitled to. Not to demand changes to the menu. I’m quoting a chef I once knew; well, it was OK for him, he had the luxury of fame and money. I had neither. I did what I was told. I felt belittled, sad and dirty, complicit in Whitfield’s vandalism of my food.
The sandwich sat forlornly on the plate, uncomfortably naked like a middle-aged man on a nudist beach. Like a nude Dave Whitfield in a non-functioning jacuzzi.
He switched his baleful attention from me and the food to jabbing messages into the keyboard of his phone.
Tranquillity, I thought to myself, that’s what is needed.
I went back to the kitchen and did some Qi Gong breathing exercises and felt calmer. In and out, breathe in the energy of the universe. Zhan Zhuangs they’re called, there are five of them in all, well, five that I know about. Each one has a specific arm movement to maximise Chi. In and out, breathe in the energy of the universe, feel the Tao.
Jess walked in with an order in her hand while I was doing Number Five, standing in horse-riding stance, my arms bent at the elbows at forty-five degrees, my hands forming a kind of triangle.
‘Cheque on… are you OK?’ she asked nervously. I suppose I must have looked very odd, possibly slightly insane. I was facing the stove and my fingers were framing the stainless steel of the extractor fan hood, as though I were worshipping it.
‘Yes, Jess,’ I explained, ‘I’m just channelling the energy of the universe, please carry on …’
‘Well, that’s all right then … Just so long as you’re OK. Cheque on, one steak baguette, one minestrone soup with parmesan and rosemary focaccia … Are you sure you’re OK?’
I finished what I was doing, I felt a lot better for it. I put a frying pan on the stove and took a rump steak from my fridge and a tub of pre-cooked caramelised red onion. As I seasoned the meat I said, ‘Nothing like breathing into your Dan-Tian, Jess, all that Chi energy.’
‘Yes, oh wise one,’ she said in a mocking voice. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘That would be nice, thank you.’ I watched as she disappeared back into the restaurant. She was a damn good waitress.
In general, I had reason to be happy. Business was picking up. I had just finished dealing with a couple of tables of elderly people, contentedly munching their way through quiche, soup, sandwiches and assorted cakes. I had also served five well-heeled ladies who lunch. They are the kind of customer that I liked: tough, confident women in their mid-fifties to whom I, a sprightly forty-five, was a kind of babe. One of them had been shamelessly flirting with me, a situation I was happy to accept.
At twenty to thirty covers a day, as we refer in the trade to the number of meals ordered, I could break even and then I could eject Whitfield who I had learned, it was hardly a surprise, was pretty much universally locally detested.
In the kitchen I had asked Jess about him. ‘Who is that awful man Dave Whitfield?’
She rolled her eyes at the mention of his name. ‘Dave Whitfield, he’s local, he’s a pain in the arse.’ She was local too, but otherwise the polar opposite of Whitfield.
She obviously couldn’t stand Whitfield. Then she explained something that had puzzled me about the village green.
‘You know the houses on the other side of the green, opposite here?’
I nodded. There were several houses there (including DI Slattery’s, of course) overlooking the common. (The green was alive with notices: No parking anywhere on the common! Dog owners, Pick it up! No littering! Hampden Green was big on signage.)
She continued, ‘You know the one with the kind of blue Perspex tower that’s illuminated?’
Again I nodded. It was like a miniature version of the Shard in London in someone’s front garden. It must have been nearly three metres tall. This house cast an eerie blue light over the green at night. It was quite disconcerting, the way it glowed.
‘That’s Whitfield’s house,’ she said.
It all made sense. I had been wondering what kind of man would have a monstrosity like that in his garden. Well, here was the answer – it was Whitfield’s plastic tower, his turquoise aura. His own personal advert for his construction business. The letters D.W. were etched into it for all to see. Now I knew what they stood for.
‘How on earth did he get planning permission?’ I asked. Planning was a sore point. My window frames were rotten (thank you Mrs Cope!) and needed replacing. They were listed, though, and this added insanely to the cost. The point was any form of deviation from the established was fraught with difficulty and had to be ‘in keeping with the village’. You couldn’t just put any old window in, it had to be identical. And not just looking the same, the material had to be an exact match. God alone knows how Whitfield had managed to get his huge, glowing pillar through the council planning department. It certainly was not ‘in keeping with the village’ in any way, shape or form.
Jessica said darkly, ‘That’s the question everyone here asked. Let’s just say, money talks.’
There was a small window in the kitchen that overlooked the green. I could see a dark cloud rising from somewhere. I walked up to the window and Jess followed me, curious to see what had attracted my attention. Right now, Whitfield’s tower, clearly visible, a Perspex testament to what money and no taste can do, wasn’t talking but it was certainly communicating. In smoke signals. It was emitting a huge black column of the stuff. Not just smoke, big yellow flames licked upwards. It was very dramatic, like an illustration I had in my children’s Bible when I was very young. A fiery pillar. Jessica and I stared at it in fascination. At first I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.
‘Is that his …’ I started to say.
‘Yes,’ said Jessica. She had a triumphant smile on her lips as if she had been somehow responsible and was delighted with the way that things were going.
We both stared at each other, Jess happily, me perplexed, and then I quickly went to the door to go into the restaurant to tell him. I reached the entrance. Whitfield was sitting there with his back to the window, oblivious to the towering inferno in his front garden, scowling at his phone.
I made a motion forward towards Whitfield, to warn him, and Jess grabbed my jacket.
‘Don’t tell him,’ she urged, sotto voce, ‘let it burn!’
She dragged me back into the kitchen.
‘Shouldn’t we be calling 999?’ I said.
‘God, no. Someone will probably call them but I don’t see why it should be us. He made a really crap job of my uncle’s conservatory. Hopefully the fire will take his house with it.’ She scowled at Whitfield who was visible through the partially open door. He was still oblivious to his tower and its fiery state. ‘Payback time, that man’s got it coming,’ she added with extra venom. ‘Everyone hates him round here …’
Jess’s brown eyes were sparkling with dislike. She, like ‘everyone’, obviously really detested the man.
I heard the sound of sirens. Someone more charitable than Jess had obviously phoned the fire brigade. Then I heard the sound of the bell as the front door of the restaurant opened.
‘Oi, Dave!’ someone shouted.
It was one of the many builders who lived in the village, a tall, good humoured, grey-haired man called Chris Edwards.
Whitfield scowled at him. ‘What?’
‘Your tower’s on fire, mate.’ Chris was known for being laconic, I found out later.
Whitfield put his phone down, his back still resolutely turned to the window.
‘What are you on about?’ he said angrily. The other man pointed and only then did Whitfield turn round and look out of the window. ‘JESUS!’
He leaped to his feet and was out through the door, running over the green in the direction of his house, helpfully indicated by a thick plume of smoke and the fire engine.
Jess went over to the door and closed it.
‘Hello, Chris!’ she said, smiling. Obviously she wasn’t against builders in general, just Whitfield in particular. ‘Can I get you anything to eat or drink?’
‘Hello, Jess, I’ll have a cappuccino since I’m here.’
He leaned his rangy, muscular frame against the counter and appraised the restaurant with that calculating air that builders have when it comes to property, then he turned to me. Now it was my moment to be appraised.
In all truth there probably wasn’t an enormous difference, no unbridgeable gulf between me and Whitfield. I think that most bald men in middle-age generally look quite similar. Rather like babies tend to look the same to me. If I were a bank robber, when asked for a description, witnesses would shrug, ‘Bald bloke, forties.’ That more or less describes half of the country’s males of a certain age.
If you were charitably minded you would say that I was powerfully built and had a certain physical presence. When I was young I’d been quite good-looking, model like, and although no longer in the head-turning business, I still got offers. But looks are, by their nature, ephemeral. Where I like to think I differed from the similarly shaped Whitfield, was a trace of warm sympathy behind my eyes and a general cheeriness that was undeniably lacking in the builder. Even the staunchest of Whitfield’s supporters would have to admit he was deficient in the geniality stakes.
Jess handed Chris the cappuccino, and smiled warmly at him. Perhaps he’d repaired her uncle’s conservatory after Whitfield’s ravages.
I offered him a biscuit from a batch I had made earlier. ‘Try one of these: langues de chat, I made them this morning …’ He accepted the biscuit, ate it suspiciously. Then his face brightened.
‘That’s good,’ he conceded, ‘can I have another one?’
‘So what’s happening with Shitfield’s tower, Chris?’ asked Jess, handing him another three biscuits. I winced internally; they’d taken ages to make, they were supposed to be a treat, not wolfed down by a hungry builder. They weren’t Hobnobs.
‘Burning nicely,’ said Chris. He smiled maliciously.
‘So did it happen by accident?’ asked Jess.
‘I doubt it.’ Chris sounded quite satisfied by that. He added, ‘Chinese Andy did the electrics, he doesn’t make mistakes. In my opinion, someone obviously doesn’t like Dave.’
‘Well, that narrows it down,’ said Jess sarcastically.
Chris stood up, unfolding himself from the stool. He was very tall.
‘So what are your plans for this place?’ he asked me.
‘I have a long and detailed business plan,’ I said. ‘I’ve got global ambitions. In the meantime, I shall be introducing a limited range of hot food as specials …’
‘To supplement the sandwiches,’ added Jess like a loyal chorus.
‘Well, I’ll tell the wife,’ he said, ‘maybe come in for lunch. Nice to have met you …’
‘Ben,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Well, Ken, I’ll go and see how the Blazing Inferno’s getting on.’
We watched him striding across the green, his long legs carrying him speedily towards the fire. I wanted to bring the subject of the langues de chat up but I didn’t want to offend Jess by telling her off. She had become invaluable.
The previous day after service, she had seen me with pen and paper, a ruler and a copy of the menu.
‘Working out costings …’ I said.
She pointed at the PC in the cubbyhole I call my office. ‘Why not use Excel?’
‘I don’t know how it works …’
She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Come on, Grandad, let’s see if we can drag ourselves into the twenty-first century. Do you know what a spreadsheet is?’ A deep sigh as I shook my head.
‘I know the word, but not what it actually means,’ I said.
‘Well, we’ll make a start today,’ said Jess. ‘Perhaps we’ll leave coding and website design for a later date, eh?’
I didn’t want to upset her. I had seen her writing up some menus for me, watching her fingers flying over the keyboard, effortlessly touch typing. If the price of Jess included staying up late to make biscuits, so be it.
‘I won’t hand out your biscuits to just anyone,’ she said, looking up at me. I nearly jumped out of my skin, had she added telepathy to her other qualifications? (Waitress experience in the Marriott, Birmingham, IT skills, local girl and former county swimming team [freestyle] and formerly Bucks junior girls eight-hundred-metre finalist.)
‘Chris eats out a lot, and he’s very influential.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘I wonder if he did it.’ She spoke thoughtfully. ‘Whitfield stitched him up a while ago, owes him thousands. You don’t mess with Chris. He’s certainly capable of burning Whitfield’s pillar to the ground.’
I shrugged. It was nothing to do with me.
Famous last words.
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