A Sprinkle of Sabotage

by Fiona Leitch

  ‘Oh my God…’ I said, horrified, as I realised what his twisted body reminded me of. Nathan reached out to check for a pulse in his neck and I snatched his hand out of the way. ‘Don’t touch him!’ I cried out. Nathan looked surprised. ‘There might be a possibility of contamination.’

  ‘What…?’

  ‘He’s quite clearly dead. But look at him. Look at the way his hands are clenched.’ I swallowed. ‘I’ve seen that before. Haven’t you?’

  Nathan looked at me keenly. ‘What is it? What are you thinking?’

  I stood up and moved to the other side of the trailer, where I couldn’t see Jeremy’s vacant staring eyes; they were freaking me out slightly. To my immense relief, Nathan stood up and joined me.

  ‘You remember the Salisbury poisonings?’ I asked. Nathan nodded.

  ‘Of course I do. The Russian guy and his daughter, and the poor local lady who died. Novichok poisoning.’ He raised an eyebrow sardonically. ‘You’re not telling me Jeremy was poisoned by Russian spies?’

  ‘No, of course not. But one of the Salisbury coppers got sick from touching something at the scene, so the Met taught us how to recognise the signs in case there were other attacks. There are a lot of Russians in London, you know…’ I gave a hollow laugh. ‘Daisy was already keen for me to leave the force, but that, and then the nutter with the van, they were the final straw.’ I’d left the Met after a terrorist had driven a van at a crowd of people I’d been helping to evacuate from a tube station following a hoax bomb threat. ‘Anyway, I’m no expert, but this looks like a nerve agent.’ I swallowed hard. ‘A neurotoxin. Like the toxic substance in pufferfish.’

  The police came, and the ambulance, but as we already knew, it was too late for Jeremy. Scene of Crime had come along as a matter of course; they always attended, wherever possible, when an unexpected or unusual death had occurred. Nathan told them of my suspicions, and as pufferfish poisoning wasn’t exactly a common cause of death in the UK, let alone in sleepy Cornwall, every precaution was taken; I wasn’t the only one who’d had training after the Salisbury incident in 2018. The trailer was cordoned off, and officers in disposable gloves, masks, and overalls went in to examine the body. The body. It hadn’t taken long for him to go from being Jeremy to ‘the body’. It always felt wrong to me, somehow, to stop using the victim’s name so quickly. It was like you were reducing someone to the lowest common denominator: alive or dead. The deceased.

  I sighed. I always get philosophical when I’m tired.

  ‘I know nothing about pufferfish,’ began Nathan.

  ‘You surprise me.’

  He smiled. ‘Good, I do try. I know nothing about pufferfish, but is there any reason why Jeremy would have a reaction to it but not the others?’

  I stared at him. There was a horrible feeling in my gut that had nothing to do with that over-emotional eel I’d had problems with earlier. ‘Oh God, I hadn’t even thought about that. It’s nothing to do with having an allergic reaction or anything. It’s mega toxic. If they all ate it, they’ll all get sick.’

  ‘So assuming all or at least some of them did eat it, why is there only one dead body on the carpet?’ asked Nathan.

  ‘Has anyone checked Kimi’s caravan to make sure they’re all still alive in there?’ I asked. We looked at each other, then hightailed it up the steps to the leading lady’s trailer. We nodded to PC Trelawney – or Old Davey, as he was known, despite not being that old (that’s a famous Penstowan long story) – who was stationed on the door, and went inside, half expecting to see the rest of them laid out on the floor.

  Thankfully, they weren’t. Everyone was sitting quietly, wrapped up in their own thoughts. Zack and Aiko sat together, holding hands, which made me feel glad for a moment, although quite how she would react when we told them what we suspected the cause of death to be, I didn’t know. I did know, however, that by the look of abject misery and guilt on Zack’s face, he already knew.

  ‘Thank you for waiting,’ said Nathan. Mike Mancuso snorted.

  ‘Like we got a choice.’

  Faith looked annoyed. ‘A good man died tonight. Have some respect,’ she spat. I noticed the slight emphasis on good, and it struck me as being a little odd, but then maybe she just didn’t like Mancuso. He was loud, brash, and a touch abrasive, and he perhaps wasn’t the best company to be cooped up with in a caravan, certainly not after losing a friend and colleague in such horrible circumstances.

  ‘Can you tell us exactly what happened to Mr Mayhew?’ asked Nathan. Everyone immediately opened their mouths and began talking, so Nathan held up his hand and turned to Sam. ‘You, please. Mr…?’

  ‘Pritchard. Sam Pritchard. Well, we were all sitting around the table eating, everything was great, and then Jeremy started acting kinda weird, like he was drunk—’

  ‘Was that weird for him?’ I asked. ‘I understand he had a drink problem.’

  ‘He was fighting it,’ said Faith. ‘He was on the wagon, until tonight.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sam. ‘And he’d only drunk a little, which was what made me notice it. And then he just kinda went rigid, like he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even open his mouth, because he was trying to say something…’

  Aiko shuddered, and I saw Zack reach over with his free hand to squeeze hers.

  ‘And then he started moaning and had a seizure, and ended up on the floor, vomiting, and then he just … stopped. Dead.’

  I shivered. What a horrible way to die. Nathan wrote everything down in his notebook, then looked up.

  ‘It’s too early for us to say for definite what caused Mr Mayhew’s death, but at this stage it appears to be misadventure rather than a deliberate act, so—’

  Zack looked up at me, then at Nathan, and said quietly, ‘It was the pufferfish, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Until we get lab results back…’ said Nathan calmly, but Zack shook his head and stared straight at me, a hint of pleading in his eyes; he just wanted to know the truth.

  ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

  I couldn’t say yes for certain, but the poor young man was in an agony of not knowing and I wanted to relieve him of it if I could; although, of course, that would lead to the even worse agony of knowing, knowing that he’d been responsible (albeit unintentionally) for someone’s death.

  ‘We really don’t know for certain, Zack, but that’s what it looks like,’ I said. Kimi looked at him in fury.

  ‘What do you mean, it was the pufferfish? The fugu? You told me you knew what you were doing!’ she hissed at him. She shot to her feet, clutching Princess the Pekinese to her chest as if she were going to flounce out of the trailer. Except it was her trailer, and she didn’t have anywhere else to flounce off to at the moment.

  ‘I do know what I’m doing!’ he protested, then subsided. ‘At least, I thought I did. I trained in Japan—’

  ‘Well you obviously didn’t train hard enough!’ spat Kimi. She rounded on me. ‘You. You were supposed to be keeping an eye on him. What kind of goddamn chef are you?’

  I felt my cheeks flush. Because yes, I was the chef, and maybe the buck should have stopped with me. But I’d watched him and I had been so pleasantly surprised, impressed, and in actual awe of his filleting skills that it hadn’t even crossed my mind to stop him serving it. I wasn’t sure what to say, but by now Kimi had turned on someone else: Sam.

  ‘And you! How could you ever let him think this was a good idea? This has put the whole movie into jeopardy, hasn’t it? You totally should have put your foot down and told him he couldn’t serve it.’

  ‘I told him it was fine,’ said Mancuso. Faith looked up sharply and glared at him. ‘What? It’s eating raw fish, for Chrissakes, it ain’t diving with sharks.’

  ‘Except it killed Jeremy,’ said Zack, his words heavy with enough guilt and grief to silence everyone else. ‘I killed him.’

  Aiko wrapped her arms around him as he buried his head in her shoulder. Kimi, who was still standing, watched her sister, her lip curled with disgus
t and her foot tapping angrily.

  ‘When you’ve quite finished,’ she said, ‘perhaps you’d like to tell me what’s going to happen to everyone else who’s eaten this killer fish. Hmm? Has no one else thought of that?’

  I looked at Nathan; we’d needed to warn them that they might feel some ill effects too, but Kimi was going to make them hysterical and convinced they were all going to die if we weren’t careful. And to be fair, what I knew about pufferfish you could probably write on the back of a postage stamp, so who knew? Maybe they would all die. But I didn’t think so.

  The others were starting to look alarmed. We had to nip this in the bud. I looked at Nathan with a question on my face: may I?

  ‘Knock yourself out,’ he murmured.

  ‘Okay, I’m not an expert, but the speed with which Mr Mayhew took ill and then died suggests to me that he either had more of the fish, and therefore more of the toxin, than the rest of you; or, that the toxin wasn’t distributed evenly throughout the fish, and he was unfortunate enough to get a piece that was more heavily contaminated than the rest, meaning that you may have got lucky and been given a portion that was less toxic, or even not toxic at all. Or the final possibility is that he had some underlying health condition that may have made him more susceptible.’ I looked around at the assembled guests. ‘Basically, the fact that he’s dead and the rest of you are all still standing suggests to me that none of you are about to join him.’

  Aiko swallowed hard. ‘I feel nauseous,’ she said. Sam nodded.

  ‘I do, too,’ he said.

  Nathan and I exchanged looks that said, oh crap.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘There are cars outside. Maybe we should get you all checked out at the hospital—’

  ‘But there’s no antidote, is there?’ said Zack. Shut up! I thought. ‘We’ll just have to ride it out.’

  ‘What do you mean, ‘ride it out’?’ demanded Kimi, angrily.

  ‘He means you’re just gonna have to get sick, and if you’re lucky you won’t die,’ said Mancuso. It was a rather more brutal way of saying what Nathan and I had been thinking, but at least it shut them up.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The diners got themselves together as Nathan arranged cars to take them all to the nearest hospital, in Barnstaple. Although there were already a couple of police cars on the scene, we decided it would be prudent (and less conspicuous) to use unmarked ones. The last thing Mike and Sam wanted was word getting out about Jeremy, at least not until they’d spoken to the movie’s investors, and the last thing Nathan wanted was swarms of press in Penstowan, crawling over the town, pestering him, and getting in the way of the investigation. The slightest whiff of fame was enough to set some of them off, and the scent of a celebrity death, probably caused by another celebrity, would be sure to cause a stampede to our little part of the world.

  Aiko was naturally very pale, but she was starting to look even paler. She really did not look well. Zack saw me watching her as she went to get into a car, and gave me a wan smile.

  ‘Well, this ain’t quite the end of the night I was hoping for,’ he said. ‘But I caused this, and I feel fine, so I’m going to stay with her in the hospital and look after her.’

  I patted him on the back. ‘Don’t beat yourself up over this,’ I said. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he said, but I could see by the look in his eyes that he would never forgive himself, even if everybody else did.

  The first two cars departed, leaving Nathan to drive Faith and Kimi. Kimi had looked massively put out when Aiko had got in the car with Zack, and Faith hadn’t looked too keen on sharing with Kimi and her dog, but that was tough.

  Nathan was on the phone. He ended the call and turned to me. ‘That was Dr Hawkins at the hospital. They’ve managed to find beds for everyone, and she’s on standby in case they need her. Not that there’s anything much she can do except try and be reassuring.’

  I watched Kimi fussing over her dog inside the car. ‘It must be scary, knowing you’ve eaten something that could kill you. Did she say how long it could take for it to affect someone?’

  Nathan shook his head. ‘She really doesn’t know. But her educated guess is that if it’s going to do anything, it’ll do it tonight. Hopefully the worst that will happen is a headache and vomiting until it’s out of their system.’ He looked at me, a wry smile on his face. ‘Why is it that every time I try to have a serious conversation with you, a dead body turns up?’

  I smiled. ‘Maybe fate is trying to tell you something.’

  ‘I hope not.’ He looked into my eyes. ‘Jodie—’

  In the front passenger seat of Nathan’s car, Faith had obviously got sick of waiting because she leaned across and pressed the car horn, making us both jump.

  ‘Keep your hair on,’ muttered Nathan.

  ‘To be fair, she might be feeling poorly herself,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’ He looked at me, suddenly serious. ‘Do you feel all right? You were there with Zack when he was preparing the food. Did you try any of it? Or touch anything?’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine. I still can’t believe that he did anything wrong, to be honest. I was really impressed with his knife skills. Anyway, I cleaned down with soapy water and bleach, so if there was any toxin on my hands it’ll be long gone. And you? You didn’t touch anything at the scene?’

  ‘No.’ We became aware of Faith who had turned around in her seat and was glaring at us. He shook himself. ‘I’d better take them.’ He reached out to touch my arm. ‘Take care, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay. See you tomorrow,’ I said. It felt completely inadequate.

  I got home around 9.45 p.m. Daisy was already in bed, Germaine with her, but the dog padded softly down the stairs to greet me as I shut the front door. I could hear the theme tune to Mile End Days from the living room; Mum must be watching it on catch-up. I wasn’t sure I could watch it anymore, not now I’d met landlady Clara Brown in real life. Faith had not lived up to her public image – not as far as I was concerned anyway – and I didn’t think it was just because she’d tried to monopolise Tony.

  I made a fuss of Germaine and tiptoed up the stairs, hoping Daisy would still be awake because I really needed a cuddle; but when I stood in the doorway of her room I could hear her steady breathing, and I knew she was in the Land of Nod. I toyed with the idea of accidentally-on-purpose making a noise and waking her up, but soon dismissed it. I’d done that once when she was a baby and had regretted it immediately – and for the next three hours during which she’d cried solidly.

  ‘Night-night, sweetheart,’ I whispered, and went back downstairs, Germaine following quietly. At least I could cuddle the dog.

  ‘I thought I heard you come in.’ Mum looked up as I entered the living room and flopped on the sofa. Germaine jumped up next to me and put her head on my lap, gazing up at me adoringly. When she’d first come to us I’d had such good intentions about not letting her get up on the furniture, and they’d lasted all of about five minutes. ‘Did Nathan find you?’

  ‘What?’ I was surprised. ‘Did he come here?’

  Mum nodded. ‘Yes, didn’t he find you?’

  ‘Yeah, he did. He didn’t say he’d come here first…’

  ‘He said he really needed to talk to you,’ said Mum. ‘Poor Nathan, he must have a lot on his plate, what with his dad being ill and so far away. Did you have a talk?’

  ‘Not really. We got distracted.’ Mum grinned at me and I rolled my eyes. ‘Not like that,’ I said, aware of a note of disappointment in my voice. ‘Stuff happened, that’s all.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  I groaned. I knew she’d pester me until I told her, but she was about as good at keeping secrets as ducks are at basketball. I fixed her with a stern glare.

  ‘If I tell you, you cannot say anything,’ I said.

  ‘When have I ever gossiped?’ she asked, all innocence. I guffawed loudly. ‘Okay, I might be one for spreading the local news, but that’
s not the same as gossiping, is it?’

  ‘Erm, yes, yes, it is. I mean it, Mum, you can’t tell anyone. It’ll be all over the news soon enough and then you can say you already knew, but not before then.’

  She looked at me with wide eyes. ‘Blimey, what happened? Tell me!’

  I sighed. ‘Jeremy Mayhew died at the dinner party tonight.’

  She gasped – a genuine gasp of surprise. ‘Not that bloke from Bagnall? Daisy was just saying earlier how good he was.’

  I nodded. ‘Him.’

  ‘Oh no! What a waste. Proper ’andsum in his younger days, he was. I wouldn’t have said no to him even now, to be honest.’

  ‘Mum! The poor bugger’s dead. Have some respect.’

  ‘How’s it disrespectful to say he was a looker? He was a proper bad boy when he was younger, always in the papers… So what happened?’

  I hesitated. It was looking ninety-nine per cent certain that the pufferfish had done for him, and that it was therefore Zack’s fault, but I so wanted it not to be his fault that I didn’t want to blame him until we knew, absolutely, definitely, one hundred per cent what the cause of death was. So I just said, ‘We’re not sure. We think it was something he ate.’ Which was true.

  ‘Oh, that’s terrible! Not something you cooked?’

  I flushed. ‘No, not something I cooked! It was … an allergy or something. We don’t know yet. It happened very quickly.’

  ‘Poor man. Nasty way to go.’ She was right. It must have been very nasty.

  Mum went to bed not long after. I changed into my pjs and made myself a hot chocolate, then went to read in bed, but I couldn’t concentrate. My eyes went back over the same words, over and over again, without taking anything in. Eventually I gave up and just let myself think. Maybe it had been an allergy? Maybe that was why none of the others had been affected. Aiko and Sam had both complained of nausea, but the upset of the evening was enough to make anyone feel ill; it could just have been shock. Lots of people seemed to have allergies these days. Look at Kimi, with her long list of dietary requirements – although I wasn’t sure whether they were genuine or just her being faddy.