The Chinese Takeout

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Protect? She strikes me as having a thick enough hide.’

  ‘I don’t think the devil himself has a hide so thick he’d risk the Martins’ ire. Cold, penetrating ire.’

  ‘Executive ire,’ I agreed, ‘honed on myriad minions. I Googled them,’ I explained. ‘She worked in the food processing industry – she’s a major player – and he’s in an international biochemistry firm. Which once belonged to his family, but then got floated on the stock market, resulting in a personal profit of millions. And he’s still in place as a director.’

  ‘So – ah, here’s Bishop Jonathan.’ He cut the call immediately.

  I returned to the real world of paying bills. The sun shone so brightly into my office I had half a mind simply to take the map and drive round looking for the sites Andy had marked. Then I imagined the disappointment on his face if I deprived him of what he seemed to consider as a treat. And the anger on Nick’s if I did anything foolhardy. So I adjusted the blinds and got on with the day job.

  Any plans I had to listen in to the Martins’ reaction to Lawton’s news were thwarted by an inrush of friendly but vocal elderly walkers and the Martins’ consequent decision to demand room service. Fuming that I only had myself to blame for offering such privacy when they’d first arrived, I ferried through to their quarters plates of ploughman’s and chilled water. But I returned the instant I could to my rightful role of making money rather than squandering it on people who neither needed nor deserved it.

  And enjoyed myself, as usual, by being able to surprise folk. Two men were chuntering about their gluten-free diets, and I was able to provide them with wheat-free pizzas (OK, I’d bought the bases, but the toppings were my own, and the delight very much shared); then I reassured a woman that today’s soup was dairy-free.

  ‘Someday someone ought to set up a funny diet restaurant,’ I joked as I took her order. ‘They have vegetarian ones: why not lactose-free or gluten-free?’

  ‘So long as they’re fun,’ she responded. ‘Have you seen some of the recipe books? You don’t want to be done good to all the time. You just want to enjoy the wonderful food you once ate. What I want more than anything else is a cheese sandwich! And try getting that dairy-free.’

  ‘I will,’ I declared. And meant it.

  ‘What do you mean, they’ve left?’ I demanded, putting down the tray of coffee with extreme care.

  ‘Exactly what I said,’ DI Lawton said, her face an interesting mixture of amusement and embarrassment. ‘They were so furious that they couldn’t make arrangements for the funeral they simply packed their bags and went.’

  It takes a lot to stun me. At very least, I was taken aback. I sat heavily on the sofa to catch my breath.

  ‘Without – without paying,’ she added, as if braced for my reaction.

  Andy returned from the bathroom, eyes widening when he saw me. ‘Er—’

  ‘My fault,’ I sighed. ‘I did offer a freebie.’

  Time for Lawton to stare. ‘Them? A freebie? But they’re loaded! Stinking!’

  Suddenly I warmed to her.

  ‘Tim had them on record as school teachers,’ Andy explained. ‘So Josie most charitably—’

  ‘And stupidly!’ I inserted.

  ‘—offered them accommodation here. I don’t suppose they paid for last night’s meal either, did they?’

  ‘I didn’t ask them,’ I confessed. ‘Having made the offer, I felt honour bound to stick to it, even when I saw the car and the clothes. And even when I was on the receiving end of their attitude. All that good food, all that wonderful wine!’ I lamented. Then I perked up: I’d had an idea. ‘Tell you what, if they go round behaving like that in their business as well as their private lives, they must have made a lot of enemies. I wonder if it was one of them who killed the boys. And if that was why the Martins were so deadpan. Damn it, they made Tang look positively effusive!’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ Lawton protested.

  ‘Nor me.’ Andy seated himself beside me.

  ‘Sorry. I’ll try to slow down. I wondered if someone had threatened them or Tim if they dealt badly again. Or to stop them dealing badly. I don’t know. It’s not so much left-brain as off the wall. I did print some stuff off about their companies,’ I admitted to Lawton. ‘Would you be interested?’

  ‘Might save one of my team a moment… I suppose,’ she continued, more slowly, ‘that they were who they said they were? Not just con artists?’

  ‘Just to check out the rectory and to blag a free stay on a country pub? I’m not knocking the idea per se, Inspector, but they’d want a good reason.’

  She looked agreeably surprised by my venture into Latin. I didn’t tell her getting Latin GCSE was another of the ways Tony had passed his time. ‘I’ll risk life and career by getting them checked out,’ she said. ‘A car number would be a good start.’

  ‘In my register. It’s on the reception desk. I’ll nip and get it.’ I had a sudden vision of the page torn out, with Boy Scoutery needed to lift the details left on the page beneath, but no, it was all intact. I fetched the printouts at the same time, passing them over with a sunny smile.

  She phoned, waited and produced a rueful, wrinkle-full grin. ‘Unless they nicked the Martins’ car, they are who they say they are. But I will double check. What a pair! You know,’ she continued, ‘this coffee is wonderful.’

  ‘That isn’t what you were going to say,’ Andy observed.

  She had the grace to blush. ‘I was going to say, how nice it is to have you cooperating with us, Mrs Welford. You seemed very hands off before.’

  ‘On the contrary, I wanted to take over the investigation myself. If I had, I might have got someone round with mug shots before now! My assault: remember? Not to mention the two little runts in the black BMW that tailed me.’

  She muttered and made an irate note.

  My facial expression certainly said something about getting a move on. I added, ‘And also I’d know everything you’ve done and everything you’ve found out.’

  In the circumstances, it wasn’t surprising she sighed, ‘Shall we swap information, then? What have you got so far?’

  ‘Uh, uh. You talk while I drink this coffee. I give free lunches – no, I can’t possibly charge just you – you give free updates. Only what you’d have told the Martins had they stayed.’

  She shrugged. ‘What we have is very little. The throats of the geese were cut by a sharp implement we’ve not found yet, possibly a kitchen knife – I don’t suppose any have gone missing from here recently?’

  ‘If they had, I’d be on the phone before you could say – well, knife. Dangerous weapons: I keep them locked up.’

  ‘OK. The wounds suggest their assailant was left-handed. Pathologist stuff – don’t ask. The same is true of the two victims. They were definitely dead before the fire. We have reason to believe that this was caused deliberately: the fire service forensic team—’

  ‘In other words, that dog with the bootees?’

  ‘Exactly. But dogs’ noses are supposed to be good enough to sniff out cancer, aren’t they? They found traces of an accelerant. Petrol to you and me. We have no reason to believe that anyone wanted Father Martin killed, though we have not officially ruled this out.’ She cast a sideways glance at Andy.

  ‘I’m sure it was Inspector Lawton’s questions on this subject that offended the Martins and led to their unseemly departure,’ he said.

  She nodded in acknowledgement. ‘But we are fairly sure, as I think you are, that it was Tang who was the target. The only question is, whose?’

  ‘Hang on.’ I raised a hand. ‘You’ve just said talking about Tim made the Martins bolt. Does this mean you’ve come round to my weird theory?’

  She put down her cup and stared. ‘No. But I’ll tell you what: I’m going to check. Just on the off chance. Now.’ She got to her feet.

  ‘I suppose you couldn’t somehow impose a family liaison officer on them? To see what he or she can pick up on them?’


  ‘That’s absolutely not why we offer a liaison officer!’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said, meek as if I absolutely believed her.

  She snorted. ‘And, more to the point, I think they’ve turned one down once. However, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have another go. Right. I’ll be off. Mrs Welford—’

  ‘Josie,’ I corrected her expansively.

  ‘If you want to bill me for their lunches, I can run them through expenses.’

  ‘You’re on. I suppose you wouldn’t want to pick up the tab for the rest of their jolly? No? Well, it was worth a try,’ I said amicably. ‘While I write out the bill, you may want to look at some photos Andy and I took the other day. They’re meant for Nick, as part of his job, you understand, but you never know if they’ll ring any bells.’

  Andy looked at me in disbelief. But he burrowed in his briefcase, at first with confidence, and then with increasing desperation. ‘They’ve gone! I know I put them there this morning. I know I did. I checked. Like you check the front door – twice, three times.’

  ‘Did you check while the Martins were there?’

  ‘Surely not. I can’t even remember their being on their own.’

  I chimed in. ‘Where did you put the case when you left the bishop?’

  ‘In the back of my car. You know, never leave anything in the passenger seat, in case you get “taxed”. Years of working in an inner city,’ he explained.

  The more the conversation circled, the more obvious it became that the Martins must have seized an opportunity to rifle it.

  ‘It’s something you might want your family liaison officer to talk about,’ I said. ‘Not an accusation, of course. After all, the briefcase could have tipped over, the bishop might have picked them up – there might be all sorts of innocent explanations. Anyway, why should they want aerial views of food-processing plants?’ As a Parthian shot I added, ‘And get your minion to fix a time for me to check those mug shots, eh?’

  It wasn’t until she’d gone that I ‘found’ the packet of photos – down the side of the sofa on which I’d been sitting.

  Andy goggled. ‘How on earth did that get there?’

  I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Who knows?’ And then I felt Tony’s hand on my shoulder, telling me not to press my luck. And congratulating me on not losing my unpractised skills.

  Andy gathered coffee cups, not meeting my eye. Then he started on the ploughman’s plates. ‘All this food wasted. My mother told me to eat every scrap, but no one except me seems to do that, these days.’

  I nodded. ‘Didn’t I read that we throw about forty per cent of our food away? That we’ve got the best fed rats in Europe?’ Had he twigged what I’d done? There was a real tension between us.

  I waited while he opened the kitchen door. ‘Thanks.’

  The kitchen was pristine, as if no one had ever so much as peeled an apple in it. Excellent. I could hardly let my standards slip below those of my staff, so I attended to all the scraps, and, the dishwashers already in action, washed up by hand. All the time Andy was mooning round, looking at lists and first aid notices and fire blankets without feigning a satisfactory interest in any of them.

  ‘I thought,’ he said at last, in the tone of a little boy late for his trip to the park, ‘we were going on a hunting expedition.’

  ‘So we are. But being meticulous in a restaurant kitchen isn’t a matter of choice, Andy, or responding to a psychological compulsion or whatever. It’s obeying the law. Heavens, I can’t believe I said that! Put it another way, it’s preventing people contracting all sorts of nasty food-poisoning bugs. I’ll be with you in five minutes. And I mean five. Promise.’

  It was probably seven, but he didn’t complain. He’d used the interval while I changed to appropriate one of the round tables in the restaurant and lay the photos of the possible sites on the map. ‘We’d have done better with pins and coloured string,’ he greeted me. ‘But this isn’t bad, considering the Martins are supposed to have nicked the photos. What’s going on, Josie? All that business when you’d put them down the sofa yourself?’

  ‘You didn’t see, did you? Must have lost my touch.’ Never apologise, never explain, as the man said.

  ‘No, of course I didn’t. Or I’d have said something there and then. No, probably I wouldn’t. At least it galvanised Lawton into action. And she’d been very remiss not to follow up the ID business. But it – let’s say, it totally disconcerted me.’

  ‘And is that a good or a bad thing?’

  He sighed heavily. ‘I really don’t know.’ And then he did surprise me. He looked me straight in the eye. ‘Do you?’

  Are phones primed to ring at the wrong moment? Mine at least? I grimaced. ‘Sorry. But it says here it’s Bernie Downs. The galvanisation seems to have worked.’ I took the call. ‘Half an hour would be fine,’ I confirmed without thinking. ‘And by the way, tell your DI we’ve found the photos.’ I turned to Andy. ‘All the same, I’d rather we didn’t have this lot lying around in full view. Hey, what are you doing?’

  ‘Just putting the map reference on the back of each photo. See? Using the coordinates?’

  ‘All Chinese to me,’ I quipped. And then, to my absolute horror, I started to cry. ‘No. Don’t dare be nice to me. Don’t even think about it. Get on with what you’re doing and leave me to sort myself out.’ Which I did with a viciously cold shower and meticulous make-up.

  I returned to the restaurant to find a pot of tea waiting for me. But no Andy. And no map or photos either.

  The idiot! The absolute stupid idiot! With no more idea of how to look after himself than a babe in arms! Except, of course, he’d got enough nous to switch off his mobile. If I’d allowed myself to cry, this time my tears would have been pure frustration.

  Or was that an oxymoron too?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘You’re positive you don’t recognise any of these faces? Absolutely positive?’ Poor Bernie Downs took it as a matter of personal failure on her part.

  Hard-hearted in the face of her pleading, I shook my head firmly.

  ‘Tell you what, I’ll ask the villagers who said they’d witnessed it. After all,’ she added as kindly as if I were ninety, ‘you’d have been very upset, very shocked.’

  I suppressed a fierce desire to snarl, not least because they should have been questioned the day I was run down. ‘OK: let’s go through one more time.’ Once or twice I caught myself with a false memory, I wanted so much to get an ID. And then: ‘Yes! Yes, I’m sure that’s him!’

  Downs made a note, but didn’t overwhelm me with her enthusiasm. ‘I thought you said you hardly saw the BMW driver.’

  ‘I eyeballed him! I yelled at him!’

  ‘I thought you said he was clean shaven.’

  ‘Easy enough to shave a bit of facial fungus, for goodness’ sake!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Look at that expression: look how knowing it is. My assailant had exactly that look.’

  ‘So, unfortunately, have a lot of young scrotes. But we’ll follow him up.’

  ‘I have a pretty good memory for faces. Especially the faces of people who try to run me over.’

  She nodded. ‘Just to make sure, let’s try the national data-base.’

  ‘But—’ On the other hand, if I’d been indignant about Lawton’s laxity, how could I complain when someone was trying?

  So we clicked away, Bernie prompting me as if her life depended on my finding someone. We must have been at it half an hour, bless her. At last, hardly remembering who I’d said it was in the first place, I pointed to my watch: ‘Afternoon tea?’

  I was well into preparation for the evening, when a phone rang. My mobile. So it wasn’t a late booking or a cancellation, for which I was grateful. A bit of stability was called for, in my professional as much as my personal doings. Which was why I didn’t respond immediately to the call, which was from Andy: if he left a message, I could judge better how to react.

  It sounded as if he m
ight have written it down or even rehearsed it. Either that, or he was better at leaving phone messages than most. ‘Nil returns, so far, I’m afraid. Both places I checked out on the way home had proper signs outside, labelled vans coming and going: everything looked eminently respectable. I’ll speak to you soon, I hope.’

  At least he hadn’t been torn apart by a dozen slavering guard dogs or got himself kidnapped and beaten up. I returned to my onion peeling – yes, we all mucked in together, which is why we made such a good team. So the tears pouring down my face were purely chemical in origin when, suddenly panicking that his call was a sop to kidnappers to put me off the scent, I returned his call.

  ‘Sorry: I’m just off to the cathedral for a confirmation service,’ he said. ‘Literally getting in the car now.’

  ‘Is there some sort of ceremonial booze up afterwards? No? Suppose you call me then.’ But I had a feeling he was as angry as I was, him because of the photograph trick I’d pulled and I – well, because I was. So I certainly wouldn’t hold my breath. I cut the call without waiting for his response. After all, if my appointment was with fifty or so diners, his was with God.

  I was just tarting myself up for my evening front of house role when my phone rang. This time it was Abigail Tromans, the farmer’s wife. ‘Cheap chickens,’ she said.

  ‘And chickens cheep,’ I responded, foolishly, given that while Abigail is a shrewd businesswoman – compared with her husband, anyway – her sense of humour isn’t in the premier league.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Nothing. Sorry. Cheap chickens?’

  ‘Dan says there were a couple of free-range chicken farmers at the market this morning who supply one of the big places in Exeter. They’ve been asked to cut their prices. Halve them. Some other supplier’s come along, see, and is offering dressed meat at silly prices. Breast meat, it is, too.’

  ‘So it’s delivered to the restaurant without skin or bones?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I wonder what happens to the rest of the bird,’ I pondered aloud.