The Chinese Takeout

by Judith Cutler

  I nodded, knowing exactly where the insurance shortfall would come from but wondering how I could ensure its total and permanent anonymity. But at last I had a chance to probe a little.

  ‘Are we lucky enough to have a churchwarden with a background in business?’ I asked with a duplicitous humility I was sure Andy would see through. ‘We’ll need a good deal of knowledge of Mammon, won’t we?’

  Andy offered a serious shake of the head. ‘Alas, the Church of England isn’t renowned for its financial acumen.’

  ‘All that poor investment losing millions!’ Corbishley snorted indignantly. ‘Mrs Welford’s right. We need proper financial advice.’ I tried to look demurely gratified. ‘As a matter of fact I have a colleague who may be able to help.’

  ‘Alas, all you’ll be able to do is raise money and put it towards repairs, should they be authorised,’ the bishop chimed in. I cursed him under my breath – he was right, of course, but he’d wrong-footed me nicely. ‘There’s no guarantee that St Jude’s can be rebuilt.’

  I overrode him as best I might. ‘What was your line of business, Mr Corbishley?’

  ‘Chemicals,’ he said offhand.

  ‘What sort of area?’ Damn, Nick’s question was horribly ambiguous.

  ‘Up in the north-east,’ he replied.

  ‘I meant, what sort of chemicals? Phiz, my son, wanted to take a chemistry degree, but the department suddenly shut up shop,’ Nick added. He spoke with a passion the others couldn’t understand. While he and his daughter were getting on much better, Phiz had set himself firmly against reconciliation. As soon as this business was over, I was going to have to make a little trip to Birmingham to sort that one out. Elly and I had agreed this at a girlie meeting Nick knew nothing about.

  ‘Chemists are quite an endangered species, aren’t they? Several universities have closed their chemistry departments,’ Bishop Jonathan observed.

  Which got Corbishley neatly away from our questions and on to an attack on government education policy. Drat and drat and drat. I wouldn’t have minded if people had got aerated, but Bishop Jonathan decided to switch off anything painful and charm us, keeping the conversation as bland as boiled rice. I searched in vain for an opening to quiz Corbishley further.

  No one noticed – or, at least, remarked on – the excellent starters and soup. No one complimented Robin on the excellence of his steaks, his fish, or the brilliant tagine. This was a quasi-North African dish of lamb, aubergines, tomatoes, onions, garlic and chickpeas, given a lovely hit of cinnamon and harissa paste. Authentically it would come with couscous, but one of my regulars had a wheat allergy so I’d tried marrying it to brown rice. The match might have been made in heaven. At last Andy caught my eye and nodded approvingly, so not everything had been gastronomic pearls cast before ecclesiastical swine.

  At long last, over some blissful local artisanal cheese and a choice of home baked bread or biscuits – there seemed to be tacit agreement that desserts would be too frivolous – we discussed the funerals.

  ‘Have you managed to contact Tim’s parents yet?’ I asked.

  ‘I only got their answerphone, and – to be honest, I couldn’t think of a halfway appropriate message and I gave up. I’ve asked their local vicar to go round,’ Andy said.

  ‘What a job!’

  ‘All part of a parish priest’s daily round,’ declared the bishop.

  ‘Telling parents their son had been roasted alive? It’s usually the police that get that job,’ Nick muttered, with such fury we all ignored the inaccuracy.

  ‘It will be good to meet them when they come down for the funeral,’ Bishop Jonathan continued, undeterred.

  ‘Surely they’ll want Tim’s at their local church,’ Nick said. ‘I know if anything happened to my son I would.’

  Bishop Jonathan quivered with potential affront.

  ‘A funeral there, and a memorial service in one of Tim’s own churches?’ I suggested quickly. ‘St Faith and St Lawrence might just be big enough.’

  ‘Or even the Cathedral,’ Andy said, roused from wherever he’d been.

  ‘Of course. Absolutely. We could ask the choir to do something major: what about Faure’s Requiem, for instance?’

  ‘And Tang?’ Nick pricked the funereal balloon. ‘What about him?’

  Malins, who’d doggedly and silently eaten everything put before him, suddenly spoke up. ‘That’s a matter for his Embassy. In these multicultural days, you daren’t offend anyone. There’ll be a Confucian temple or whatever. I know they wear white.’

  At least I’d been right on that. Encouraged by my ecumenical success, I said, ‘Hang on! Isn’t there a Chinese Christian community? There’s a church near the National Portrait Gallery. Though I can’t for the life of me remember which denomination.’ These senior moments! Baptist or Catholic? Some difference!

  ‘Josie’s right. He sought sanctuary in a Christian church,’ Nick continued, growing in passion. ‘And in the very short time he was with us, he and Tim had become inseparable. I’d hate to think of two funerals, a Premier league and whatever the old first division calls itself these days. Unless we could prove he’d have wanted otherwise,’ he added, suddenly retreating into his old Eeyore self.

  His gloom fell even on Bishop Jonathan, who evinced an aversion to coffee, even decaffeinated, after eight.

  As people were getting to their feet, Andy said quietly, ‘Bishop Jonathan, I think we should anticipate all these grander services with a very simple one tomorrow. Evensong. At St Faith and St Lawrence.’

  To do him justice, the bishop nodded. ‘Of course. I’ll clear whatever’s in my diary and take it, if that’s agreeable to everyone.’

  It was. The party broke up very swiftly.

  ‘Prosy buggers,’ Nick said, stomping off to his room with no further ado. I popped into the kitchen to thank Robin and Pix, not to mention the scullions.

  ‘Tomorrow morning’s meeting still on, gaffer?’ Pix came from near Birmingham, and apparently enjoyed puzzling the locals with his native lingo. Though I dimly recalled the old geezers in Hardy sharing the honorific, I’d stopped reading him after the hanging in Jude the Obscure: perhaps I should start again.

  ‘Don’t see why not. I know I’ve been lead-swinging since Sunday, and I know you could run a place this size blindfold and with one hand tied behind your back. But I like to stay involved,’ I finished mildly. ‘And I’ve got an idea I want to run by you. OK?’

  ‘Just the one?’ asked Robin, eyes twinkling.

  ‘One good one’s better than two average. Or three boring.’

  ‘You sound like that woman in Emma: you know, that picnic,’ Pix said, almost leaving me gaping.

  ‘On Box Hill?’

  ‘That’s right. We did this adaptation and toured it for a season round village halls.’

  ‘In your actor phase, yes?’

  ‘I was Mr Knightley,’ he said, ageing ten years and looking down his nose.

  ‘You two and your books,’ Robin grumbled. He yawned and stretched. ‘See you at this ’ere meeting, then.’

  ‘Samphire? Round here?’ Pix demanded, stifling a yawn, as he always did at our nine-thirty get-togethers.

  ‘I’m not suggesting you scale up and down Hartland Point and gather it yourself,’ I said, pouring more coffee, but eschewing pastries at the very pinnacle of the points scale. ‘And I don’t even insist on samphire, delicious though it is. There are all sorts of herbal miracles in the hedgerows, according to the Internet. We’re not close enough to the sea to get all of them, but how about dandelions for starters? And chickweed? Bitter cress? Ivy toadflax? Goodness knows we’re awash with enough weeds in the herb garden.’

  ‘I suppose you couldn’t get much more organic and natural than that,’ Robin conceded. ‘What about other things, though? And once you’d weeded the herb patch, where would we get more?’

  ‘You’re the walker, gaffer.’ Pix leaned pointedly back in his chair. ‘Who better than you to source the stuff?’


  ‘I’ll do my best. There’s this book I saw on the Internet that tells you all about it. I’ve sent for a copy. Now, Robin, could you check out the laws applying to foraging? There are bound to be some.’ He’d dropped out of a Law course and occasionally fingered his books. It’d be a total pain if rereading them made him go back to Uni, but that was a problem I’d just have to deal with. I might find some way of helping with those huge student debts he’d end up with, too.

  ‘Like all wild swans belonging to the Queen, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Robin donned his sober face. ‘Why this sudden enthusiasm, Josie? Are we going into the red, or something?’

  ‘You know we’re not!’ I shared the books with them every week. They knew to the last penny how much we had in the current account. About the rest, of course, zilch, and that was how it was going to stay, or I would have Tony’s hands reaching down from heaven to box my ears.

  ‘So why the sudden yen for freebies?’

  ‘It’s not the cost. It’s the flavour, the texture, the exquisite flavours you can’t get from polytunnel produce, no matter how good the producer.’

  The lads stared at me. ‘Oh, ah,’ Pix grunted, the two syllables epitomising extreme cynicism. ‘You’ve been reading too much bloody Wordsworth, gaffer.’

  ‘One of the worst poets ever to write some of the best poems,’ I snapped. ‘Or the best poet to write the worst poems.’

  ‘Unless it was his sister?’ Pix suggested.

  But we mustn’t get diverted into Eng Lit. I knew our discussions could while away hours. ‘Poetry apart, though, think of the cachet. Think of the publicity.’

  ‘Think of the egg on our faces if we served someone the wrong sort of something. I mean, we all know about mushrooms turning out to be toadstools – whoops! – so are any of these precious weeds of yours poisonous? And what if you got poison ivy instead of ivy toadflax? We wouldn’t know till the punters keeled over.’

  ‘Quite,’ Pix nodded. ‘So we really might need to recruit someone with a real knowledge of the local fauna to scavenge for us, rather than doing it ourselves.’

  My joints thought of all that bending and stretching and fervently agreed. In any case, I had a pub to run, another to think about buying and dodgy chicken to investigate. We adjourned the meeting, promising to consider, if I still wanted to poke my nose into other things, a third qualified chef whom we could train up to take over the Abbot’s Duncombe place if we took it on. I rather thought Robin and Pix would want him or her to specialise in the free herbal side.

  Time for dodgy chicken, then. Phoning the mobile number Michael Rousdon had given me, I hung on and on. No voice mail, no messaging service. I fizzed, slapping the desk in frustration. I was just about to go and walk it off when Pix called up. We’d had a sudden lunch booking for eight, in addition to our usual regulars. I wouldn’t care to give a hand, would I, since Robin was still shopping for tonight? Excellent! What better than a good session with a vegetable or two to rid oneself of frustration?

  Hell, I was so tired. The lunchtime special salad – chicken, bacon and avocado – had leapt out of the kitchen. I think the reason lay in the houmous dressing I used. The salad and a light soup and the ploughman’s platters. More and more people had crowded in. I suppose it was the suddenly warm weather that had brought them out. Yes, now I came to think of it, it was positively summery. Look at the sun on the forsythia.

  How dared those kids have died when they had this to look forward to? Had they fought? Had they hurt their assailants? For a moment I thought hopefully of DNA, but then I recalled the means needed to identify them. There’d be no traces under anyone’s fingernails. And no trace in the gutted church.

  How long had I stood with my forehead against my bedroom window? Long enough to leave a little patch I religiously polished off. The White Hart now ran to a cleaning lady, but it was imperative she spent most of her time in public areas, not chasing round after me.

  Time to blow some of these damned cobwebs away. The tougher the walk the quicker they flew, so today I rooted out heavy trousers and jacket, and boots, rather than shoes. I even found my gloves.

  Pix was standing at the reception desk staring in disgust at the phone. ‘You’ve got an answerphone – why don’t folk use it? Three times someone’s tried and not left a message. And then when I grabbed the phone, they put it down at the other end.’

  ‘You gave the name of the place, did you?’

  ‘As per your training, gaffer.’ He gave a mock salute, softened by a smile you’d call affectionate.

  ‘And the answerphone message is clear enough – thanks to you and your school of Olivier enunciation. Weird.’ I shrugged it off, but something in my bunion twitched. ‘I suppose,’ I added, turning back, ‘you didn’t try 1471?’

  ‘I did, as it happens. In case whoever it was just didn’t like answerphones and might have gone elsewhere. But they’d denied their number. Some poor sap in a call centre trying to make up his quota, maybe.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, easily, as if I meant it.

  I’d gone no more than a few yards before noticing Corbishley deep in conversation with a man in a metallic blue 4x4, clean enough to suggest he wasn’t a genuine farmer needing four wheel traction to get himself up his front drive – some round here were two miles long, and bore as much relation to your average block-paved path as St Jude’s bore to St Mark’s, Venice.

  As I passed, Corbishley straightened, pointing strongly northwards, and stepped back, apologising at nearly treading on me.

  ‘These townies,’ he complained, as the vehicle pulled swiftly away. ‘Coming down here with their big cars and lacking the most basic maps. Weekend sailors too – did you see the coast guards Plymouth way had to rescue a man trying to navigate with an Ordnance Survey map?’

  ‘Putting everyone else’s life at risk,’ I said, as he presumably hoped.

  ‘Quite so. And now I must hasten away. My wife, you know.’

  My headshake was designed to express both my ignorance and my potential sympathy.

  ‘Virtually crippled. Arthritis. And the drugs she takes for the pain – took, I should say! – seem to be implicated in the strokes she had last year. She’s virtually housebound these days, especially when the wind comes in from the east.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ That might explain his crankiness, too, of course.

  ‘But on a good day – I see you’ve installed ramps and a disabled – er – cloakroom. Perhaps we may…’

  ‘You’d be most welcome.’ Even if, as I strongly suspected, he wanted another freebie. ‘As you saw, we get very busy some nights. Could you just phone beforehand to make sure we have a table?’

  He was clearly taken aback. Should I gab on about making sure I could organise a table with easy wheelchair access? On the whole, Tony’s dictum about never giving more information than necessary, especially if it sounded like an apology, ringing in my ears, it was better simply to offer an affable smile.

  It seemed we were going our separate ways when he suddenly stopped. ‘Have you heard…is there any news? About the young men?’

  It was a very good question, and interestingly expressed. Particularly neutral, one might say. As for information, DI Lawton wouldn’t rush to share any gems with me. But she might well talk to Nick, if her prickliness with him were indeed a sign she was attracted. It wasn’t the best of odds, though. Andy was a more likely conduit of information. A phone call to him was certainly in order. Or so I told myself. Unless I could grab him after this evening’s service.

  ‘Nothing, I’m afraid,’ I replied. ‘Of course, the fire service, the police – they probably have different protocols.’

  He snorted. ‘These big organisations. All red tape and not letting the left hand know what the right is doing.’

  ‘You sound as if you speak from bitter experience,’ I prompted.

  ‘Indeed I do. All my years in industry… government here, Europe there. Couldn’t turn round w
ithout falling over some sort of inspector.’

  ‘Of course, in the chemical area…but you’d have to be very careful with pharmaceuticals, wouldn’t you?’ I rocked back on one hip, folding my arms loosely and nodding in readiness for a comfortable gossip. No response. ‘Or petro-chemicals?’

  ‘Heavens above! Look at the time! Can’t leave my poor lady wife on her own any longer. She’ll think I’ve run away to sea. Good day to you, Mrs Welford.’ He felt for a non-existent hat to doff, and compromised with a half-salute.

  Damn and blast. But I saw him off with a neighbourly wave, hoping he would think I’d been after no more than a casual chat. Had I pressed too hard? But I still didn’t know how he’d earned his crust.

  My feet were much more inclined to take me back to the village shop to see what a bit of a natter would unearth than to stride out into the country for some real calorie-burning, muscle-hardening exercise. As I dithered indecisively on the edge of the pavement, I felt rather than saw something approaching me fast, and simply reeled out of the way. I think my hand on part of the vehicle might have helped propel me. As it was, I went base over apex over the artistic line of potted daffodils and jonquils I brighten the White Hart’s boundary with. And someone switched off the sky.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  No, there it was. It was covered by a blackish-red mist, which thinned as I blinked. Blood? I must have hit my head on one of the dratted pots. At least bleeding meant I wasn’t dead. I mopped with a tissue. There: I’d live.

  What now?

  Scrabbling to my feet and giving chase was not an option. Not at my age. What I needed was more a period, as Jane Austen might have said, of quiet reflection.

  Were all the bits and pieces in the right place and preferably in working order?

  Possibly.

  Yes, of course they were! Don’t make such a fuss, woman.

  At least my walking gear of heavy trousers and quilted jacket would have saved me from gravel rash: I’d have hated playground knees. And that thought did bring me up fast. It was chucking out time at the school. What if the maniac continued his progress down the village street at that pace?