The Food Detective

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Cheeky sod. No breakfast things?’

  He flushed like a guilty schoolboy. ‘I was just shaving when –’ He stopped, grabbing his stomach as if he’d been stabbed.

  All that stuff about food last night, and then looking as if he’d thrown up in the gents – did he have an ulcer? ‘Tablets?’

  ‘In one of these boxes.’ He looked helplessly around.

  ‘You’d better eat something. Dry toast.’ I dug out a toaster and plugged it in. ‘Where’s your bread?’

  He passed a Sainsbury’s carrier.

  ‘You’ll have a round with me?’

  Thick white sliced? I didn’t think so. ‘I’ve already eaten, thanks. You’d better take yourself off to Dr Cole.’ I pointed at his midriff. ‘He’s twenty years behind the times, but at least that means he doesn’t feel bound to experiment on you.’ I perched on one leg, put my boots back on, first the left, then the right, then reached for the Barbour.

  ‘How did you get the idea the police were after you?’ he asked, twenty minutes after I’d expected him to.

  ‘Obvious. A stranger in the village. Short hair. Keeps himself to himself in the bar. It doesn’t take much to put that lot together.’

  ‘Keeps himself to himself! They bloody froze me out. You should have seen them!’ What a surprise. ‘And what would they be looking for, the police?’

  Tony’s fortune, of course. ‘If you can’t work that out you’re a bigger fool than I took you for. But they’d have it all wrong. I earn my own living now.’

  He managed a thin smile. ‘Josie, anything in your bank account, even in an old sock under your bed, is none of my business. Now. I’m not DI Thomas, West Midlands Police. I’m plain Nick Thomas.’

  ‘So why are you here?’ I paused, the Barbour zip halfway up.

  ‘I told you. New job.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The Food Standards Agency. Investigating officer.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! You are going to be little Mr Popular round here, aren’t you! You’d be better off letting the police rumour grow.’

  He bridled. ‘I don’t see why. If people have nothing to hide.’

  ‘Nothing to hide? People here make their living out of agriculture and don’t need some government spy living slap in the middle of them.’

  ‘If I spy it’s to protect the public: I mean, farmers round here need protection from –’

  ‘Spies like you!’

  ‘Come on: how did BSE get into the food chain? Because feed manufacturers wanted quick profits and thought it would be nice to feed total herbivores recycled meat products. Those farmers didn’t know what was in the feed. So it’s my job to make sure manufacturers are putting into feed what will be good for animals. And for us. If you’ve ever seen a case of new variant CJD –’

  ‘Oh, it’s all stuff got up by the media. Old folk die every day of Alzheimer’s.’

  ‘And kids of sixteen? Eighteen? Who ate beef burgers made from nice fresh beef thinking they were safe?’

  A man with a stomach like that shouldn’t get so aerated. I changed gear a bit. ‘Do you remember that politician – the Minister of Agriculture or whatever – trying to force his kid to eat a burger. And the kid had more sense than he did and shoved it away? Oh, Nick, they’re such fools, aren’t they! Thinking we’ll buy that crap.’

  ‘But people do. More to the point, people sell it to them,’ he added. ‘People sell over-age cattle, complete with spinal cord material —’

  ‘That’s coming in from Europe —’

  ‘And some farmers are doing it here. Why not? They get good prices for beef that’s less than thirty months old —’

  ‘Pitiful prices, more like!’

  ‘But virtually nothing for stock that’s over that magic thirty months,’ he overrode me. ‘Wouldn’t you be tempted? To take it along to a mate’s place, way out the back of beyond, and set up a little abattoir? If I were a farmer down on my uppers, I’d be tempted.’

  ‘But I don’t suppose you’d succumb.’ I stared at him. ‘You reckon this meat – this thirty-month-old meat – wouldn’t be kosher?’

  ‘Neither kosher nor halal!’

  ‘Eh? Oh, I get you.’

  ‘Not the sort of thing I’d want to eat,’ he added, ‘with or without my ulcer.’

  I found myself grinning. ‘I don’t half miss the food, Nick. A good curry. Down Ladypool Road. All that halal meat being made into wonderful curries and baltis. Tell you what, I’ve found a good place in Exeter: you can stand me a meal one night. When your stomach’s better.’

  I flapped a hand and picked my way through all his boxes to the door. He flapped one back. Lindi had been right about the plasters on his hands, too.

  ‘You want to look after yourself, you know. Especially with this job of yours. Tell you what, you just tell folk you’re a civil servant. Altogether safer, if you ask me.’

  Chapter Two

  The one person I didn’t want to meet on my way back to the village was Sue Clayton, our curate. She always insisted on giving you a lift, even if you’d rather be on your own thinking, or, in my case, exercising off another calorie. She looked so hurt, almost resentful, if you tried to refuse that I’d given up trying, accepting each time as graciously as I could.

  ‘I thought I was an early bird,’ I said, cramming myself into the passenger seat of her Fiesta, ‘but you’ve obviously been working already.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ignoring the implied question and grinding a gear.

  How anyone could do that to a modern synchromesh gearbox always defeated me, as did the idea that anyone could see through her windscreen. She’d never mastered the controls that directed hot air on to it, and dealt with condensation by polishing with the palm of her hand. So she had not just a runny screen, but also a greasy one.

  ‘I hear our newcomer has stigmata,’ I said.

  ‘Not really.’

  So she’d met him already.

  ‘But I’ve seen them – with my own eyes.’

  ‘Scratches,’ she said.

  ‘Where did he get them from, I wonder?’

  She shrank further from me, but then had to crane forward to see through a clearish patch the size of a postcard.

  ‘Someone put plasters on his hands at least,’ I prompted.

  ‘Yes. I hate this corner.’

  So did everyone with any sense. I always slowed to walking pace so I could get into first. Sue tried it in third. To be fair, she tried most things in third. The poor little car would probably die never having got into fifth. I glanced at Sue. She probably wouldn’t either. The dream of my life was to get her to go on the town with me. You know the sort of thing: shop for England, nice lunch, another shop. Maybe a hairdo and a facial. She certainly needed the hairdo. Ponytails are fine and dandy when you’re young with thick, shiny hair; when you’re in your forties and your hair’s not just fine but thinning and very dull, it’s a pretty unforgiving style. Especially if you use rubber bands to confine it. If only she’d have it all lopped off and a spot of colour. Was it her dog-collar that stopped her, making her eschew the pleasures of the flesh, as it were, or lack of cash?

  ‘What did you make of him?’ I asked, when we were safely on the straight again.

  Yes, straight but still narrow. And deep – we were probably eight feet below the level of the fields. No room for mistakes.

  ‘Boorish.’

  Sometimes her choice of word surprised me. ‘Boorish?’

  ‘I was driving back from Evensong at Abbots Duncombe last night in the pouring rain and found him in the hedge. So I offered him a lift.’

  My face pulled itself. ‘Sue! A complete stranger! Was that wise? OK, OK! I’ve read my Bible too, but – anyway, what was he doing in the hedge, for goodness’ sake?’

  ‘He said something about an unlit lorry. He’d jumped into the hedge to avoid it. And he’d got scratched to bits. And all he’d talk about was car maintenance and driving techniques. Mine. Boorish.’

&
nbsp; Biting the hand that drove you. I couldn’t fault his intentions, just his tact. ‘He fetched up in the bar last night. Gave Lindi quite a turn, I can tell you.’

  ‘I don’t know why. He was quite presentable by the time I’d finished.’

  ‘You’d done a good job with the first aid, but he still didn’t look very well.’

  She stared at me, not reducing her speed. The car slewed towards the hedge. ‘Is that why you went to see him?’

  ‘I didn’t go to see him,’ I lied flatly. Close as the grave Sue Clayton might be, but my past was mine and mine alone, and Nick might feel the same. ‘I met him on my morning walk, that’s all. He seemed better. I gave him the name of a doctor, just in case.’

  ‘It must be strange, living in a mobile home. Especially at this time of the year, when all the other caravans on the site are locked up for the winter.’

  This was the closest you got to girlie talk with Sue. All my life I’d had at least one decent woman friend, often two or three, the sort you can share that day I described or just ring up when you want to let your hair down. I’d never have got through all Tony’s years of bird without Claire and Nesta, and then his McMillan Nurse Nell had become a mate – we still emailed each other at least once a week for a good natter. Sue didn’t seem to have a natter-mode.

  ‘Strange – and very lonely.’ I thought about my early days in the village. ‘Why don’t you rope him in as a bell ringer?’

  ‘What if he isn’t a churchgoer?’

  ‘Ringing bells would certainly make him one. Go on – it’s hard to make friends in a community like this if you’re not a playgroup parent or doing our sort of job.’ I could feel her eyebrows shoot up. I didn’t pursue images of the confessional and counselling, tasks shared by priests and publicans alike. ‘You know: working with people.’

  ‘What about his new colleagues?’

  Talk about stony ground.

  ‘He can’t be at work all day every day. Any idea what he does, by the way?’

  She shrugged. ‘He didn’t say.’

  How could anyone be so incurious? Someone in her line of work, too. Tired of pushing on closed doors, I sat back and watched the countryside go past, the little I could see, that is, through the foul windscreen. So Nick had told her off for bad driving, had he? Ten out of ten for good intentions, zero for tact. He used to have something very like charm. What had changed him? I couldn’t see him surviving very long in a job like this new one unless he mended his ways.

  Sue dropped me not at the pub but at the vicarage, because I’d insisted I wanted to go to the village shop and an extra quarter of a mile would be good for me. I was glad, all the same, when she pulled off the main street into the road leading to her house. She mistimed the turn: if she often cut it as fine as that, in her place I’d have moved the terracotta pots a bit. In any case, they weren’t bringing much beauty to the garden – whatever the plants still growing in them had been, now they looked totally woebegone.

  She didn’t invite me in. Well, that suited me. I had a day’s work ahead of me.

  My electric kettle had other ideas. Just as I fancied a decent cup of tea, it gave up the ghost. I suppose the logical thing would have been to use the pub kitchen’s kettle, but I didn’t fancy having to trot upstairs every time I wanted a cuppa. A trip to the outskirts of Taunton, then, to Comet or wherever. That was the trouble with the rural life, as Nick Thomas would soon discover: there was no popping down to a convenient shopping mall. Though out of town shopping might have ruined many a town centre, at least it meant I didn’t have to tangle with Taunton’s traffic. And it was easy to park, especially on a wet Monday morning.

  I’d chosen my kettle and was just sauntering round checking out anything else that might take my fancy when I noticed Nick Thomas. He too was clutching an electric kettle, and like me seemed to be browsing. He’d just fetched up by the TVs. All I meant to do was wave. Then I saw his face.

  God, not an other terrorist attack. I too stared at the banks of screens. But all I found was some daytime TV pap.

  And he wasn’t moving. Not even blinking. His face was ashen, pouring with sweat. What the hell? He wasn’t having a heart attack, was he?

  I moved closer – you can’t do straight lines in enticing consumer mazes. He looked like Tony’s kid brother Sam, who scared us all witless with his sleepwalking. But you don’t fall asleep in the middle of a superstore. Before I could get to him, or even call, he seemed to shake himself and toddled off to the checkout.

  He’d be embarrassed if he thought I was spying, so I thought about a new hairdryer and pondered an electric carving knife.

  ‘That man you just served,’ I said at last, plumping the kettle on the desk. ‘Was he all right?’

  The young man rocked his head. ‘Looked as if he’d seen a ghost, didn’t he? But his money was good, so who was I to argue?’

  Who indeed?

  There was no sign of him when I came out.

  Although there wasn’t much call for suppers, which is why I could take the odd evening off, lunchtimes often attracted a little knot of villagers and a few serious walkers. You’d have thought weather like today’s – it was sluicing down now – would have put off all but the most hardened drinkers, but several of the big-boot brigade were huddled at one of the patio tables, casting envious glances at the locals monopolising what I’d made sure was a pretty good fire.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Reg Bulcombe said, leaning on the bar as if hoping I’d be as generous in my display of flesh as Lindi, ‘I wouldn’t mind one of your steak baguettes. Well cooked, mind. Nice lot of onion.’ Since he said exactly the same every lunchtime he graced us with his presence, which was three or four days a week, I didn’t need to write it down. But I did, jabbing the slip of paper on the bills spike just to tell him he wouldn’t get away without paying, as he’d tried, a couple of times when I’d broken routine.

  While his drinking partner, Ted Gay, Lucy’s dad, stared at the menu as if he could afford anything on it, I said, ‘All this beef, Reg – are you on this Atkins Diet or something?’ Maybe I was trying to drop a hint: he was carrying four stone more than he should – yes, I know, there’s no one like a convert for being sanctimonious, his face that bluish red I associated with high blood-pressure and heart disease.

  ‘Bit of good meat never hurt anyone, did it, Ted?’

  Ted mumbled something into the pint he couldn’t afford. Six children at school, the oldest Lucy, and his wife, virtually the breadwinner with all the cleaning jobs she’d gathered, died of cancer. Lucy did her best, bless her, making sure the others got their free school meals and had the best food she could manage at home. But Ted had never been much of a one for a hard day’s work, and with so much booze inside him – no, not from the White Hart but from supermarket cans – only the kindest of his old employers now employed him for old times’ sake. They were braver than me: I quailed at the thought of an alcoholic on the business end of a chainsaw or machete.

  Reg leaned even more confidentially towards me. His breath mixed beer, fags and halitosis in equal proportions. ‘Your freezer must be pretty empty by now. You want me to fix you up with another delivery?’

  I dropped my voice to match. ‘You’re sure this isn’t off the back of some lorry?’

  He flinched as if I’d struck him.

  ‘Come on, Reg: only joking. But it’s such a good deal you’re getting me.’

  ‘All local grown. No middleman, see. No need for this talk of lorries.’ He sounded genuinely offended.

  I hesitated. ‘Thing is, I need the invoices and receipts you promised for the taxman. And it’s coming up to the time when I need to get every last shred of paperwork to my accountant. You promised them last week.’ And every week since I’d taken delivery.

  ‘I did say it was cash only, Mrs Welford.’

  ‘And I paid cash, didn’t I? But I need the paperwork, Reg. Can you fix it?’

  ‘You can rely on me. And in the meantime, another load fo
r that freezer of yours? Come on, the amount I eat it must be empty by now.’

  ‘So must you be. Come on, Reg – one thing at a time. I’ve got to go and work my magic in the kitchen. Hi, Lindi! It was cold first thing.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was so bad. Wet, of course,’ she conceded.

  ‘What I’m trying to say, very kindly,’ I hissed, as she shook her coat and hung it up, ‘is that you’re twenty minutes late. Again. Come on, Lindi – I can’t serve here and cook lunches, can I? Wash your hands, and then see if those hikers want to order. Go on. Shoo!’

  The meat looked good; it smelt good; it certainly tasted good. Damn Nick Thomas for making me wonder whether it was good.

  And damn him for making me spend an afternoon in front of the computer. I’m old enough to prefer books, but I couldn’t see me flagging down the mobile library and asking for all they’d got on BSE and CJD. Not someone who ran a pub, for goodness’ sake. It’d be all over two counties before you could say mad cow. In any case, when I’d been a mature student I’d learned at college how to surf, so I might as well polish my skills.

  First I got through all the official stuff – including that put out by Nick Thomas’s very own Food Standards Agency. Then I started following trails. And wished I hadn’t. It was one thing dying a paralysed gibbering shadow when you were ninety, quite another to go like that at nineteen. I looked at photographs of kids who’d thought all they were eating was a harmless burger – just like that one Nick and I had talked of this morning. God, I’d have liked to force feed the wretched politician, cram him like a Strasbourg goose. Was he terrified every day his daughter had a headache or forgot something? Did he quake every time she stumbled in the street? I hoped so.

  My feet took me inexorably downstairs. To the freezer. I hated throwing out good meat. But if it wasn’t good meat, what else could I do with it?

  Chapter Three

  I distributed plates of lunchtime ploughman’s to Tuesday’s walkers – who well might have been yesterday’s recycled – and sauntered over to collect a few glasses from the regulars. Yes, of course Lindi should have been doing it. But if there was any gossip going, I wanted to hear it.