The Food Detective

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Honoured, I’m sure. Wouldn’t it make more sense,’ he said, putting the iron on its heel and switching off, ‘if I took her? Hell, Josie, don’t look at me as if I’m some bloody paedophile. She’s younger than my own daughter.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s what they all say.’ I reached for my keys.

  ‘I was hoping,’ he said, suddenly as bright-eyed as the kid policeman I’d once thrown my stilettos at, ‘to try out my new toy. You probably didn’t see it. It’s parked at the front, because I wasn’t sure how big your yard is. Or how big the toy is.’

  ‘Not another one with a bloody gas-guzzler! Jesus, you people! Have you no idea how much pollution they push out?’ Not nearly as much as my chopper rides, truth to tell, but no one knew about those.

  His face fell.

  I might have gratuitously smashed a kid’s train set. ‘But at least you have the excuse that you need it for your job,’ I conceded without waiting for him to plead, ‘not just for the school run. And presumably you know how to drive the thing – unlike all the mothers round here who think they’re giant dodgems.’

  His smile was bleak. What nerve had I touched this time? ‘It’s the greenest I could find,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Well, why not give it a spin?’ I checked my watch. ‘There won’t be any customers now. If there are, tough. I’ll just give Lucy a shout.’

  ‘Will you be doing the cooking for this restaurant of yours yourself?’ asked Nick, now fully dressed again in garments so drab I almost wanted to tell him to slip the kimono on again. He broke a five minutes’ silence. He leaned back from the table, dabbing his lips with the linen table napkin, smug as a paterfamilias at his board.

  Double-damask linen tablecloth. Silver cutlery. Bone china. Well, the food deserved it. As for the decorative candles in silver candlesticks, they weren’t meant to be romantic – they were there in case of another power failure.

  ‘Some of the time,’ I agreed. ‘After all, I do pretty well everything now.’

  ‘I should think you’re guaranteed a regular clientèle, then.’ He managed a smile.

  ‘Local fresh vegetables, local free range chicken cooked in good quality wine –’

  ‘Local?’ He must be feeling better to try teasing me.

  ‘My preference is New Zealand. It’d be hard not to make a meal taste good,’ I said, clearing the dishes on to a tray – I’d never been good at clever waiting with plates stacked along my arm, especially with my own china.

  When I returned from the kitchen, he asked, ‘So you’ll be going for a niche market?’

  ‘For the restaurant. And as good as I dare for bar meals. You’ve barely touched that wine.’

  ‘Best on a full stomach,’ he said, drinking quite deeply. ‘You neither, actually.’

  ‘Best for a flat stomach. But I wouldn’t object to another glass. There are times I’d love to go on a bender and eat and drink a whole week’s worth of points in one sitting.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ He was topping up my glass, but paused to look at me.

  ‘Because you don’t lose as much as I’ve lost without a good deal of will power. And there’s another stone to go. And it’ll take even more will power not to pile it all on again. I’ve seen it dozens of times. The scales. The panic. The diet. And then you get bored or upset or plain greedy and on it all goes again. And then it’s the scales, the panic and the whole lot all over again. Which is why I don’t just diet, I exercise. Which is why I saw the pink water and the barbed wire on the footpath and Bulcombe armed with a spade. You’re in a better position than I am to find how all these are connected. But I’ll start you off. Your first weekend here, you found yourself flattened into the hedge. By a large, unlit lorry, Sue said. Which road, Copper?’

  ‘The obvious one. The one leading directly from here to the campsite.’

  I stood up to reach out my large-scale ordnance survey map, spreading it on the table in front of him. ‘I can’t see anything on here to attract large unlit lorries. Can you?’

  He looked furtive, then embarrassed. ‘Not without my reading glasses, I can’t.’

  ‘Go and get them then. That’s how you’re singing for your supper tonight – by helping me work this out.’

  I’d loaded the dishwasher by the time he returned, clutching a swish-looking laptop, plus his reading glasses. He installed himself at the dining table again, checking for a place mat to go under it before I could even yell.

  ‘I use this for the job,’ he said. ‘It’s not got just large-scale maps, you can enlarge whole sections. And there’s another programme that gives you aerial views of everything. Want to see?’ He vacated his chair so I could look at the screen – I’ve never worked out why you can only see from one angle. Something to do with the plasma, I suppose.

  ‘So you need aerial views for your work?’

  ‘Hardly. But I do need the maps. And a handy in-car guide to where I am and how to dodge traffic jams. A manor this big, I can justify a few bells and whistles.’ He paused. Was he waiting for me to apologise? He ought to have known by know that Josie Welford didn’t do apologies.

  ‘“People muthst be amuthsed”,’ I muttered.

  He looked at me sharply. ‘Orwell?’

  ‘Dickens. So this is the White Hart, God’s eye view?’

  ‘Right. And here it is’ – he leant across me – ‘on the OS map. And this is how you enlarge it. See?’

  ‘Clever,’ I conceded. ‘Tell me, does that chariot of yours have one of those on-board computers to say if you’re parking safely?’

  ‘Yep. And it changes out of four-wheel drive when I don’t need it.’

  ‘So it’s got more whistles and bells than the Last Night of the Proms,’ I said, amused and almost approving. ‘And your campsite is here? And the road runs here. So what we need to look for is where your road intersects with my path. Right?’

  ‘Right. Which would be –’ he put a hand on the back of my chair and peered – ‘there.’

  ‘But there’s nothing there.’

  ‘Officially. So let’s change programmes and look from the air. Do you know about grid references? Because that’s what you need to type in.’

  His turn for the chair.

  ‘Explain as you go: I’d rather learn to fish than be given one.’

  ‘If you can read a map you’re halfway there,’ he said. ‘This is how it works…’

  Apt pupil I may have been, but I soon reached out the Laphroaig and a couple of crystal glasses. ‘So we’re no nearer knowing what’s there.’

  ‘Only because these aerial photos may have been taken before the whatever it is was built.’

  ‘I thought you said it was constantly updated by satellite or something.’

  ‘Or because your path leads to another path that intersects with the road. No whisky, thanks.’

  ‘Water? Plenty of that, after all.’

  ‘Not even that, thanks.’ He oozed embarrassment. ‘Do you want to do another scan?’

  ‘Not tonight, thanks. I need my beauty sleep. I don’t yet run to a residents’ lounge, but you’re welcome to sit in the bar as long as you want. Or here, of course,’ I added, not wishing to sound too offensive.

  ‘All that swimming’s left me weary, thanks very much.’

  The lights flickered and died.

  I lit two of the dining table candles from the dying fire, giving him one and keeping the other for myself. ‘Did Lucy leave you plenty of blankets? What kind of landlady am I? I should have checked!’

  ‘She left enough for an army. I suspect the towels she found were yours, by the way – they rather stood out against the utility tiling. And she’d found a kettle and tea bags from somewhere, even some little pots of milk.’

  ‘She’s got her head screwed on, that kid. Right: do you want a morning call or was your alarm clock amongst the things you rescued?’

  Chapter Nine

  I didn’t exactly spring out of bed – my joints didn’t go in for springing these days �
�� but I got up more quickly than usual to check the power, which was mercifully back on, and the weather. It was no longer raining, even if it looked as if it might start again any moment. Though there were plenty of huge puddles, the roads no longer ran with floodwater. Good. It wouldn’t suit me to be marooned. I was showered and dressed and just thinking about breakfast when Nick tapped on my door, shaved and wearing what I took to be his work clothes. He looked more on the point of leaving than demanding a full English.

  ‘I was just wondering about the things in your boiler room,’ he said.

  ‘I doubt if they’ll be dry enough to wear yet. In any case, you’re surely not going into the office – you’ll be needing to make insurance claims and generally sorting out your life.’

  ‘Where better than the office? And I can buy some new clothes in Taunton.’

  ‘Where you can also get some breakfast, no doubt. Don’t be a fool, Nick – with a stomach like yours, you ought to eat before you do anything. I’m not much of a breakfast woman myself, but there’s what the supermarket insists is freshly-squeezed orange juice, fresh fruit and organic bread with that marg that’s supposed to reduce your cholesterol. Tea or coffee? Oh, and I eat in the kitchen, if that’s all right by you.’

  He nodded, looking more daunted than grateful, and followed me, sitting down like an obedient child.

  ‘What you also ought to be doing,’ I said, slicing bread and slotting it into the toaster, ‘is finding out whether Bulcombe really did alter the course of the stream – it might be an insurance scam, and I’d hate to see him getting away with it.’

  ‘You mean I might not be the target?’ He sounded doubtful.

  I turned sharply. ‘What other threats did you have apart from the dead cats? Come on, Nick: what are you hiding?’

  ‘A couple of headless rats. And I’m not sure the damage to the caravan was accidental.’ He mumbled as if was all his fault.

  ‘Damage? You didn’t say anything about damage.’ I plonked the toast rack on the table as if checkmating him.

  ‘It could always have been a log, I suppose – there was a lot of debris floating around. The current was pretty strong.’

  I reached across to tap his skull. ‘Hello? It there anyone at home in there? Something stove in your caravan and you think it’s an accident? On top of all those other things? For God’s sake, Nick you used to be a cop. For how many years? Thirty? When we crossed swords, you were a bright young man, destined to go far. You wouldn’t make it to parking warden on today’s showing!’

  He disappeared, like that cat in Alice. Not physically, of course. Just like he had in the superstore. Something switched off inside. I stared, almost as freaked out as he obviously was. I knew you shouldn’t wake sleepwalkers, should stop people in epileptic fits swallowing their tongues. But what about men holding a piece of toast in one hand, a cup in the other, staring at something horrible I couldn’t see?

  At last he put down the cup, and swallowed. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  Though I couldn’t see what bit of my diatribe he was agreeing with, I nodded. ‘So are you going to get in touch with the village bobby, or am I?’

  He blinked. ‘Village bobby? Is there one?’

  ‘Of course not. Not in these days of improved service to the community. But there’s a decent sized cop shop in Taunton. There’d be someone there you could talk to, surely to goodness.’

  ‘Not the most popular people, retired officers trying to tell those still serving what to do,’ he mused, sinking into officialese as if it were a pair of comfy slippers.

  ‘Not even when you come with evidence?’

  ‘I have no evidence. Not unless you want me to exhume a dead cat from Sue Clayton’s back garden.’ He changed direction with an almost audible crunching of gears worthy of Sue herself. ‘Isn’t there someone from the church who could help her with that? Dig it over, plant a few low-maintenance shrubs? It’s clear she can’t manage it on her own.’

  ‘Maybe you should lead the way by offering her driving lessons,’ I said, hoping he’d spot the glint in my eye.

  ‘I’ll dare if you dare offer to put her car through a carwash first,’ he responded, colour returning to his face. ‘Thanks for the breakfast. Look, Josie, it’s clear you’re not geared up for paying guests at the moment. But if you’re right, and there is something going on round here, it’d make some sort of sense for me to stay where I am. Would it be inconvenient? It’s not as if I want five star service, bed linen and towels changed every ten minutes. And I could eat in the bar. And I’d pay in advance, if you want.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ I said. ‘Until you find your feet, at least.’ Goodness knew what the village would say, the two of us holed up together. Half of me wanted to wave a couple of fingers in the air and tell them to count them. The other half wondered if a bit of chaperonage in the form of Tom’s pregnant Sharon might not be a good idea. I’d phone Tom when he’d had time to wake up – apart from his Sundays with me, Tom worked one of the late night shifts at an M5 service station, a job he was hopelessly overqualified for. ‘And there’s no need to pay in advance. That room of yours is so… Seventies? Sixties, even?… I don’t like charging for it.’

  ‘You might as well – I shall be chalking it up for my insurance claim,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘And meals, too.’

  ‘You shall have a bill, then – all properly receipted. That’s why I stopped buying my meat from Reg Bulcombe’s crony,’ I added. ‘No paperwork. All cash in hand.’

  He laughed. ‘So you did take some notice of what I was saying about BSE, then!’

  ‘I had a good surf round the Internet. I came to the conclusion you had to treat this thirty month regulation with respect. And if you don’t know your steak’s birthday, you can’t send it a card, can you?’

  ‘It’s actually quite bad news for organic farmers,’ he mused. ‘Naturally reared cattle take longer to mature than your average commercial beast. So they’re not past their prime at thirty months – they’re well short of it, in terms of meat per carcass.’

  ‘The stuff I’m going in for makes up in flavour what it lacks in growth. But I couldn’t get Fred Tregothnan to give an opinion one way or another on organic food. Not in front of Reg Bulcombe, anyway.’ I paused. Had there been real needle over the vet’s bills? Enough for Fred to sit apart from his cronies?

  Nick sat down again. ‘Why should you mention Tregothnan in conjunction with Bulcombe?’

  ‘Well, you saw them – their backs at least – round the fire.’

  ‘Didn’t you think it odd, a professional man hobnobbing with all those yokels?’

  ‘You can tell a man who boozes, By the company he chooses,’ I quoted.

  ‘So who got up and slowly walked away?’

  ‘The last meal he had here, he ate on his own. He had this little spat with Reg – something about not spending in the bar money he owed in vet’s bills.’

  ‘In public? Not very tactful.’

  ‘Not a man for tact, Fred Tregothnan. When I banned him, he gave as good as he got, believe me.’

  ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Ah, you’ve been on the receiving end of my tongue when I was roused, haven’t you. Sorry, Copper, if you took any of it seriously. No hard feelings, I hope,’ I added lightly.

  He didn’t reply. My God, he had taken my foul words to heart, hadn’t he? If not in the cold light of day, at least at three in the morning when you can only think of bad things.

  I sat down again. ‘What happened to you that made you think I’d really cursed you?’

  ‘You see a lot of things as a police officer,’ he said in a remote voice, and left the room.

  It would have been better if he’d raised his voice or slammed the door.

  Fred Tregothnan wasn’t your sensitive type, not like Nick. He wouldn’t have turned a hair. Surely he wouldn’t. We’d talked once or twice about my distant ancestors after I’d told him off for calling someon
e a bastard gyppo. I’d told him I was entitled to have a foul mouth when roused – it was my only Romany legacy. But he had to watch what he called people, I said. He’d stayed away from the bar a couple of days on those occasions too.

  But he hadn’t left the villagers in the lurch.

  Maybe I ought to take a trip into Taunton Police Station myself – get my word in first.

  It was a good job Nick wasn’t there to see me. I was playing ‘confession is good for the soul’ with all I could give it, complete with tears and some sodden paper hankies.

  ‘I was very angry, Sergeant,’ I told the bored young woman who’d been landed with listening to the rants of this hysterical old woman. The fact that she was a good five foot six and no more than a size eight, if that, didn’t make her any more likeable. Even her hair was genuinely blonde. I pleaded, ‘I had to make him realise that what he was doing was completely out of order.’ God, I hated that phrase. What did it mean, for goodness’ sake? But everyone on The Bill seemed to say it, so perhaps I should try it on her.

  She nodded, absently, from the way she kept fingering it apparently more interested in a stray spot on her otherwise immaculate chin than in me. ‘Are you saying a grown man would be so upset by a few hard words that he left the village and hasn’t been seen since?’

  I managed a rueful smile. ‘Put like that it doesn’t make much sense, does it? I’m sorry, I’ve obviously wasted your time.’

  But she wasn’t as bored or as stupid as I’d thought her. ‘On the contrary. You’ve been very helpful. Tell me more about the incident that made you so angry. It wasn’t you he was assaulting, is that right? But one of your staff. Would she have –’

  ‘Lindi was inclined to think the whole thing was a joke, a bit of silliness. She didn’t want me to say anything.’

  ‘Have you discussed it with her?’

  ‘Only in a motherly way. I made her practise saying “No” out loud. A bit of assertiveness training,’ I grinned. There was no answering smile.