In the Kitchen (3 page)

Oona thought for a moment. Gabriel looked over the kitchen floor and saw Victor emptying a plastic bag of frozen chips into a deep-fat fryer. Frozen chips were banned; all frozen vegetables were banned since Gabriel took charge, five months ago. But there was Victor, the smartarse, carrying on as if he were a law unto himself.

'She come through the agency,' Oona was saying, 'yes, that's right, mmm.' The sentence finished but she continued, mmming and yesing, soft little soothing sounds uttered beneath her breath as if she had divined his mounting rage and would blanket it with her mumbles.

'She shows up, tell her to get lost again. I'm not having it.'

'I goin' to give her a warnin',' said Oona. 'Got to have two or three warnin's.'

'No,' said Gabe. 'She's only agency.' He shrugged to show he was taking no pleasure in this. 'I'm sorry, Oona, but she's fired.'

The kitchen, along with the rest of the Imperial Hotel, was a product of the Victorian age. But while the lobby and function rooms, the bedrooms and bathrooms, the stairways and corridors and vestibules had been transmuted into twenty-first-century spaces within a nineteenth-century shell, the kitchen –

despite numerous refurbishments and refittings – retained its workhouse demeanour, the indelible stamp of generations of toil. It was a large, low-ceilinged room; roughly square with two dog-legs attached, the first containing the vegetable prep area, the other housing the industrial-size dishwashers, one each for plates, glasses and pans. Beyond the washers and sinks was a short corridor that led to the unloading bay, where trucks pulled up from the early hours of the morning until late in the afternoon and to which Ernie (a lifer even by Oona's standards) scuttled back and forth from the tiny prefab hut where he sighed over his poetry and the computer that scared him half to death. Going back into the hotel but out on a wing from the main kitchen, just before you reached the offices filled with toothy young marketing assistants, was the pastry kitchen. In contrast to the big kitchen the air in here was permanently cool, in theory because of the nature of the work, but whenever Gabe walked in or even past he could not help but feel it was because of Chef Albert, whose icy breath could chill the warmest of hearts.

From where Gabe was standing now, with his back to the pass and his hands on the edge of the hot shelf that ran two-thirds the length of the room, he could not see these far reaches of his domain. He could see the larder, sauce, and fish and meat sections. He could see the tiny work station where one of the commis dished up endless burgers and fries for room service, turning back and forth between stainless steel worktop and the fry baskets and grill, circling round and back, round and back, like a dog settling down for a nap. And he could see the way that decades of half-hearted refits, of misaligned edges and a mishmash of equipment, gave the place a desperate kind of look, as if it were only just managing to hold itself together.

Even the floor, he thought, gives up. The tiles, he judged, had been laid in the last few years, heavy duty red-brown stone. But they failed to make it up to the edges and into the corners where archaeological trails of slate, terracotta and lino could be found. When the kitchen was busy, when knives wheeled and pans slammed, when the burners hissed and flared, when the white plates marched, when the chefs shouted orders and insults and jokes, swerving and bending, performing the modern dance of cuisine, this place was transformed.

But today the lunch service was dead. One of the porters, a Filipino in a dark green boiler suit, pushed a mop over the tiles with such detachment that it was the mop that seemed animate, dragging the porter along. On the grease-spattered back wall, painted an institutional sage, a health and safety poster and a ripped-out Page 3 pin-up fluttered in the stale draught of the electric fan. In twos and threes, beneath the life-sapping fluorescent lights, the chefs gossiped and planned cigarette breaks. What a place, thought Gabe, looking away, at the grilled and bolted back door and the barred and lightless window. What a place: part prison, part lunatic asylum, part community hall.

The printer that stood on the pass and connected with the restaurant till began to whirr. Gabriel grabbed the docket. 'Battle stations,' he called. 'One consommé royale, two whitebait, one red mullet, one cacciatore, one osso buco.

Let's go.'

'Chef,' said Suleiman, approaching with a Tupperware box, 'I have been playing around with the consommé garnish. A chiffonade of sorrel and chervil.' He displayed the contents of the box and then kissed his thumb and forefinger.

'Really, really tasty. You think it's OK?'

Suleiman was from India. He had spent less than three years in England but already his English was better than Oona's. He was the only person in the kitchen who showed any interest in food. A consommé royale did not have those herb garnishes. That would turn it into a consommé julienne. But Gabe did not want to discourage him. 'It's OK,' he said. 'Good work, Suleiman.'

Suleiman smiled. Though he brought to his smile the same thorough-going attitude with which he executed all tasks, stretching his lips wide and over his teeth, nodding his head and wrinkling his eyes, it did little to dent the seriousness of his face. Even in his white chef 's hat and coat and apron, even with his short – slightly bow – legs in blue check trousers and with a skillet in his hand, Suleiman did not look like a chef. He looked like a loss adjuster wearing a disguise.

Gabriel decided to do a walk round and moved past Suleiman, dispensing a quick pat on the back.

In the larder section Victor was idling, kicking his heels against the under-the-worktop fridge. He was one of those young men who mistook their nervous energy and frustration for charisma, which made him impossible to like. The way he stood, jutting his chin and tilting his pelvis, he thought he was back in some alleyway in Moldova, waiting for a hustle to begin.

'Keeping busy?' said Gabriel.

'What team you support?' said Victor.

'What?'

'Team. Team. Football.'

Victor wore cologne and plucked between his eyebrows. The boy was clearly in love with himself. 'Rovers,' said Gabriel. 'Blackburn Rovers.'

Victor made a hand gesture which indicated that Rovers were, in his view, only a so-so team. 'My team – Arsenal. Back home – Agro.'

'Makes sense,' said Gabriel. 'Excuse me for saying this, but isn't there something you should be doing right now?'

'No,' said Victor. 'What?'

'Work,' said Gabriel. 'That's what we come here to do. Remember? That's what they pay us for.'

'Be cool, man,' said the Moldovan in a stupid American accent. 'Look,' he said, with a sweep of the hand, 'everything ready.'

Gabriel checked over the salad tubs and garnishes. He pulled open the fridge doors and did a quick count of the cold starters: aubergine and mozzarella towers and fanned melons with Parma ham. 'All right,' he said. 'Well.' On a whim he stuck a spoon in the gremolata and tasted it. 'No. I don't think so.

Something's missing here.' He tasted again. 'What about the anchovy fillet?'

'Chef,' said Victor, folding his arms, 'there is no anchovy fillet. You want, I'll make the order.'

'Check the dry store downstairs.'

Victor looked at the floor.

'Haven't got all day,' said Gabe. 'The gremolata goes on the osso buco.'

'Chef,' said Victor. He held his palms in the air and grinned, labouring under the misconception that he could charm his way out of anything.

'Right now,' said Gabriel, keeping his voice low. He decided – it was a tactical decision – that if the bullshit continued he would 'put it on'. He never, hardly ever, lost his temper. But sometimes he put it on.

'No way I'm going down there,' said Victor. 'It spooks me, man. So he fell on some handle, right? Was it sticking in the back of his head?'

'Victor ...'

But Victor couldn't stop talking. 'Shit,' he said. It sounded like sheet. 'You gotta have respect for the dead, see? Respect, see what I'm saying?' He spent a lot of time watching American movies. Pirated DVDs, no doubt.

'I'm giving you an order,' Gabriel barked. 'Do as you are told.' He set his mouth. His father used to fly off on one. Nought to sixty in three seconds flat. He'd come home from a bad day at Rileys and sit by the gas fire shuffling the local paper and his feet. 'Tea on the table at six. Is it too much to ask?' Mum usually smoothed it over. Sometimes she yelled, 'Yes.' Then he'd go ballistic, shouting down the house and trembling, actually trembling, with rage. His ears turned crimson nearly up to the top where, it seemed, they went white hot. Gabriel waited out the storm with Jenny, sitting at the top of the stairs, and though his stomach felt funny, like he had a bout of diarrhoea coming on, he knew it was Dad who was pathetic because he couldn't control himself.

A cloud settled on Victor's face and he screwed up his features as though he'd been sprayed with disinfectant. 'Yes, Chef.' He spat.

'Never mind,' said Gabe, suddenly sick of everything. 'I'll go down there myself.'

*

The catacomb walls, white paint over brick, were studded with beads of water, as if pricked by tears here and there. Naked light bulbs hung in the corridor, casting Halloween shadows against doors. It was the kind of place you expected footsteps to clang and echo but Gabriel's polyurethane clogs made barely a sound on the concrete floor. He passed by the locker rooms, one for the boys and one for the girls. Someone had drilled a spyhole between the two and Gleeson fired the Italian waiter, despite a dearth of evidence, for possession, perhaps, of hot Latin blood. Gabe glanced into the old fish room, the paint on the door so flaky that it appeared to have grown scales of its own. Most of the fish came ready-prepped these days and only the frozen fillets (permitted in the fisherman's pie) made the journey underground. The air still smelt like low tide, of sand and browned-out seaweed. He walked and the air grew steadily clearer, and then began to smell of bleach. Overhead, somewhere, a trolley rumbled by. The pipes and ducts and fearsome screeds of wiring that coated the ceiling sounded a continuous muted distress. Turning the first corner, Gabe wondered how long the catacombs would be if you laid them end-to-end. They would be difficult to unravel; laid out in epileptic fits and starts, twists and dead ends.

The kitchen was hardly the ideal layout either. When he had his own place he would insist on starting from scratch. Refit from top to bottom, he would absolutely insist.

Charlie wanted to start a family. 'I'm not getting any younger,' she said. She was only thirty-eight. When she looked in the mirror her gaze was sceptical, as if the plump-skinned, green-eyed, redheaded siren in the glass wasn't fooling anybody, Charlie least of all. Working as a singer didn't help. There were plenty of younger girls around. 'You and your stupid plan,' she'd say, stirring her martini. 'Don't plan on me hanging around.' Gabe thought he would pop the question on the day the contract was signed. Do you want to move in together? He knew the answer, of course. They'd find a new flat, maybe on the river, where he could watch the silty banks and unmoving flow of the Thames.

After a year, when they were sure, they could try for a child.

A child. He touched the bald spot at his crown and wondered if it was getting bigger. He was, he realized, standing by the yellow and black tape that marked off the place where Yuri had lived and died. He was puzzled, unable to remember what he had come here for. There had to be a reason. He supposed that he meant to spend a moment or two, simply to pay his respects.

'We could run away to Tobago,' Charlie had said, when she came off the stage.

'You dish up the surf 'n'turf, I'll be pouring the drinks.'

Gabriel stared at the floor, the steel trapdoor that marked some long-forgotten coal hole, the treacherously bladed handle, flecked with Yuri's blood. The door to the old facilities office stood open, the light still burned inside. The police had left the mattress and sleeping bags. Everything else had been taken – two black bin liners containing Yuri's worldly goods.

Gabe ducked under the tape and went into the office. He picked a sweet wrapper off the floor and put it in his pocket. The room was the size of a double bedroom with two shelved alcoves on facing walls. They had found a gas burner, a couple of pans, empty jars and spirit bottles, shaving foam and a razor, a change of clothes, a pill box with a lock of hair inside, and an old photograph – of a woman with a cleft chin and two little girls in big coats.

When she had sung her last set, Charlie's back always ached from standing so long in her heels. Her eyes ached from the smoke in the club. 'What about a cruise ship? I'll sing, you cook. Or the other way round if you like.'

A few more months and they'd move in together. She wanted to dock, not sail.

He looked around. He didn't know what to do. He had come to pay his respects to Yuri but had hardly given him a thought. He should have sent someone out for flowers. He would lay a bouquet on the spot. There was mould growing in the corner and one of the shelves looked charred, an accident with the gas burner perhaps. Thank God it was only himself that Yuri had managed to kill.

Yesterday morning Gabe had walked up to the body, stopped a couple of paces off and stood with his hands in his pockets, waiting a few blank moments before walking away again. Yuri was lying on his back, with thick, black blood like a hood cast up round his head. He had white hair on his chest, in short, singed-looking tufts. His stocky legs were skewed in different directions as though attempting to perform the splits or some kind of Cossack dance. The towel which he had been clutching had wrapped itself round a foot. He had a wise face, had Yuri: easy to miss when he was a man in a green boiler suit, shifting grease. But somehow, as he lay there splayed and naked, it wasn't hard to notice and his blue and kindly lips had parted, as if ready to dispense good advice.

'Don't know,' Ivan had said when the inspector asked what he knew about Yuri's family.

'No, no, nothing,' Victor said when asked what he knew about Yuri himself.