The Food Detective (12 page)

‘No. But I did ask Ron Snow where Lindi was – you know, I made it sound like a laddish nudge nudge, wink wink.’

I didn’t want a discussion of histrionics. ‘And…?’

‘And it seems she’s around in the village – but for some reason she’s not coming to work here any more.’

‘Hell! Did you get any idea why not?’

‘As soon as I started asking questions he clammed.’

‘Guiltily?’

‘Clammily.’ He swirled the glass, sniffing appreciatively. ‘This is very good.’

It was outstanding, wonderfully flinty but with plenty of other aromas and flavours. ‘I only drink very good wine. I don’t want to get hung over. Anything else to report? Come on, what did you pick up at the vicarage?’

He sat down carefully and took a couple of appreciative sips before looking up at me. ‘I’m not your junior officer, Josie. I went to ring the bells because that’s what I do; I had a bite with Sue because she’s a decent woman and she asked me. I wasn’t there to spy.’

It was too good a wine to throw over him. In any case, I
wasn
’t one to give up at the first hitch. ‘But…?’ I prompted.

‘But nothing.’ He sipped again. ‘I think Lindi may be going to work for Mrs Greville, too, though I’m not sure on what basis. You’ll have to ask Lucy.’

‘Assuming, of course,
she
reappears. Copper, why should two
of my staff disappear without a word in the space of one week?’

He looked at me as if I were a recalcitrant sergeant. ‘Are you a good employer?’

‘I’m fair. I work them hard and expect the highest standards. But I also pay well over the odds. Very well over.’

‘Rumour has it you bullied Lindi.’

‘Me!’ I didn’t know which to disbelieve more, the accusation or the sudden flood of tears to my eyes. Me, tears?

‘Over the Fred Tregothnan business.’

‘I only tried to teach her how to tell a groper to push off – politely. Duty of care, Copper – I’ve got a duty of care to my employees!’

‘You don’t have to justify yourself to me. But if they think you bullied Lindi, how d’you think they feel about your treatment of Tregothnan?’

‘Proud, I should hope – the women, at least.’

‘Not all women like their assertive sisters.’ He emptied his glass in one gulp – a sin with such a classy wine. Maybe it would irritate his ulcer as much as it irritated me. ‘Anyway, tomorrow I really do have to spend a day at work, and I ought to be in early. So if you’ll excuse me –’

I got to my feet. ‘What time do you want breakfast?’

He was within an inch of saying he didn’t have time to eat, or that he’d catch something on the way. But he quailed before my eye like a kid before its head teacher. ‘Is seven-thirty too early?’ he asked humbly.

Chapter Twelve

Friday started badly and got worse. First there was a phone call from Piers, saying he’d gone down with a throat infection, which had given him absolutely solid ears and that he’d have to cancel our lesson. He didn’t even sound up to what we referred to as theory lessons, our nickname for our other activities, so I wished him well and resigned myself to a dreadfully mundane day,
kicking
pebbles as I headed for the shop and my paper like a sulky schoolgirl.

And at the shop I might well have been back at school. Oh, any of the schools I’d been inflicted on. Back then, as soon as the kids twigged I had Romany blood in me they’d start on me – hurling abuse (though not as much as I hurled back at them), jostling me, pulling my hair. Others, less brave, just gave me the silent
treatment
.

There was no hair-pulling at the shop. But plenty of silent treatment. Jem and Molly were nowhere to be seen, but that was nothing unusual – the hours they kept the shop open they
couldn
’t be there all the time. They employed on the till a rota of school and college kids, a couple of hours here, three there, just scraping together the national minimum wage to pay them. Usually, if I didn’t have to buy anything else, I’d just catch the kid’s eye and they’d hand my
Guardian
over the heads of those with full baskets – they all knew I was on that prepayment scheme.

Today, all my efforts to catch young Al Tope’s eye were in vain. So in vain I thought maybe someone waiting had complained about my queue jumping and would berate him, not me, if I did it again. I did the obvious thing: I picked up a basket and worked my way along the narrow aisles, coincidentally finding a couple of things I needed and remembering others. But as I reached for the Thai fish sauce, someone stepped in front of it. And stayed there, big impregnable back towards me, ignoring a firm but polite tap on the arm and a clear, ‘Excuse me.’ Bar applying a shoulder and heaving there was nothing I could do.

The same thing happened by the cheese and again by the
vegetables
. If the first man was a stranger, the other two weren’t –
one was Reg Bulcombe’s brother, the other an occasional crony of Wally Hall, the regular drinker. If I dodged sideways, so did they. Well, well, well. If they thought that was going to upset me – OK, they were right. But they’d never get a hint of it. The
people
who’d really suffer would be Jem and Molly, because I always made a point of buying as much as I could from them, no matter how much cheaper the supermarkets might be. Damn it, I had a contract with Molly’s sister-in-law to supply daily fresh
vegetables
.

What if they extended the Coventry treatment to the bar itself? What if they boycotted it? Well, that’d be their loss, because there wasn’t another boozer for six or seven miles; with the last bus running at six on the days, of course, that it deigned to run, they’d be on detox pretty fast, unless they could find someone to drive them. As for me, I’d lose a steady but not major source of income. Most of the profitable food trade was from passing motorists and walkers, apart from people who came every Sunday from miles around for the lunches Tom Dearborn and I cooked. Well, just me, now, by the look of it.

I joined the queue, not attempting to engage in conversation and risk a snub. When my turn came, I simply asked for the paper and reminded him it was pre-paid.

Al stretched a hand for it. Wally Hall’s mate coughed loudly. ‘Don’t know anything about that,’ Al said, flushing and
addressing
the till.

Et tu, Brute!
‘’Course you do. Every Thursday for the last twelve weeks you’ve known about it. But if you want to make an issue, take this – and pop the change in the Air Ambulance tin.’ I dropped a tenner on the counter.

Exit, pursued by barely concealed hostility.

The answerphone was flashing when I got in. It could bloody well wait until I’d had a good strong coffee – and not the beans I use in the bar, either. Some I had in mind to go with liqueurs when the restaurant was open. A real gourmet glug. And all that nice caffeine to brace my shoulders.

Which, irritatingly, needed a good brace. And even more after I took the call. Nick. It seems that the Food Standards bosses had
heard he wasn’t hard-pressed down here and wanted his
assistance
with a really nasty case in the South East. He might as well stay there until it was done, given the warmth of his welcome here, hadn’t he? But he’d pay for the room, the same as if he were occupying it.

Would he indeed! Patronizing bastard. Thinking I needed his money to keep my head above water – though perhaps that
wasn
’t the best of images, in all the circumstances. And, of course, it wouldn’t be his money but the anonymous insurance company that paid – a nice victimless bit of fraud.

Possibly. But I wasn’t worrying about insurance premiums right now.

Maybe he was just reserving it, so if a coachload of stranded tourists turned up, I wouldn’t be able to oblige them. As if I could, with no cook and no bar staff.

So what about his company? Now the natives were restless, would I have preferred the presence of a man about the place? Or was it Nick they wanted to be rid of, not me at all? Was all that hostility meant to make me get rid of him? Did I put it around that he’d left or keep very mum indeed? Maybe a visit to Sue might be in order. If anyone had her finger on the pulse of village life, she did.

She was out. I left a message.

I shrugged. She probably regarded anything Nick said as in the Confessional anyway.

As for Nick, what on earth did I make of him? Talk about Jekyll and Hyde – not that I could ever remember which was which, and he certainly didn’t sprout fangs and do dastardly deeds. Quite the reverse. In an off moment, he could make a mouse look manly. Other times he was passive aggressive. And sometimes he was a decent man I was sorry I’d ever cursed. Well, I could un-curse him. Maybe it’d be better in church.

Or maybe I was being fey, and it was nothing to do with me, but a result of something in his police days, something Nesta should have reported on by now. It must be a week since I’d asked her to check on Brum’s headline news. It was all very well of her to say she’d got a new man and was too busy – you have to
get out of bed now and then, even with the best bloke. I poked the numbers on the pad as if I were driving in nails.

Nesta – technophobe Nesta, who hadn’t even been able to retrieve her messages till I’d shown her how – had only gone and recorded a new message for her answerphone. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be with you at the moment – I’m on holiday in Madeira with the sexiest guy in the world!’

Stupid cow, giving tempting information like that over the phone! I’d bloody well stood over her to make sure her original out-going message didn’t say anything about being out – and now she was telling all and sundry her house was empty. What kept her ears apart? Certainly not brains.

Lunchtime was terrific. I could have done with two bar staff and a couple of helpers in the kitchen. The media were in town! Well, three of them. The reporter, whose face I knew, of course, Nicola Rodway, her soundman, Chaz, and Wills, her cameraman. They’d come from Exeter to film the floods, and now they needed liquid refreshment. And some decent food. So I had another newsworthy story for them –
floods prevent staff getting to work, but heroic landlady does all herself
! And so she did. Thank God for microwaves and extendable lunch hours. Raiding my own collection, not the official cellar, I produced loads of wine on the house to compensate for their having to wait a little: that might have helped. I abstained totally, not wanting to present a cheery Santa Claus face to the camera, and talked solemnly about the harm to the tourist industry, not to mention the poor
farmers
, at this very moment struggling heroically to rescue their
livestock
. And what about the poor folk who’d lost their mobile homes? Their treasured possessions? Their memories? Then we all drank some of my connoisseur coffee and had a liqueur or two and they stowed their gear and went off into what might have been a sunset had there been anything other in the sky than bulging, rain-filled cloud.

But it wasn’t raining yet, and since when had I been a fair-weather walker? It wasn’t as if calories took any notice of the weather. As I laced the boots, I’d no idea where I was heading. My feet took me back towards the village shop. Not into it, though. Not after
this morning’s treatment. In any case, there was something, now I came to think of it, that I wanted to check. I came to a halt on the bridge. There was plenty of water in the stream now. Enough to have brought out one or two sandbags by old doors well below modern street level. It was turbulent, swift-running water too, laden with detritus that snagged and tore at the banks, sometimes sticking, sometimes dislodging more. And it was muddy brown. No, not a sign of any pink. So what had happened to floods in the campsite? If my calculations were correct, the water should be going down nicely now. I’d love to check.

It was quite a step, however, and darkness was definitely falling – after all, I’d set out well over an hour past my usual time. For all I was used to moving briskly, today I felt vulnerable, and the car beckoned. Sure I’d eventually drunk a little with the media team, but not enough to turn a breathalyser the palest shade of green. And first, of course, find your breathalyser. If the rural police weren’t up to tracking down Fred Tregothnan, I didn’t expect them to be lurking in a lay by on the off chance of nailing me. Nor were they.

No, any lurking was the province of none other than Reg Bulcombe, whose lacy curtains twitched into action as soon as I parked. Ideally I’d have snook into the site unnoticed, but, caught in the act, I positively beamed at him, waving my fingers in an irritating little twiddle as I strolled up to his door.

I could hear his footsteps: I could almost hear his brains trying to work out what I was up to and debating if he cared enough to find out. Curiosity won in the end, and he poked his head round the door.

He could have warmed himself on my smile. ‘’Afternoon, Reg. How are you? I was just passing and thought I’d collect any mail for Mr Thomas.’

‘Ah. They said he’d shacked up with you.’

‘That’s what pubs are for, Reg – to accommodate people washed out of their homes when the floods come. Has the water started to drop yet?’ Playing ditzy, I set off for the field, Bulcombe padding after me in grey tweed carpet slippers. ‘Oh, it’s not so bad now, is it?’ I cooed. ‘But you’ll have such a lot to
do salvaging all those caravans, you poor man. Such a shame. I hope you can make the insurance folk dance to your tune, because you’ll be losing such a lot of money until people can come back. Oh, I’m so sorry.’

He shifted awkwardly, his slippers glooping in the mud. ‘Well, I’ll just have to pull my belt a notch tighter,’ he muttered.

‘What about other folk? Have they been as badly hit?’

‘Reckon no one’s escaped,’ he said, doom-laden as if the plague had struck and Kings Duncombe were a latter-day Eyam. He sucked his teeth.

My headshake was a mirror image of his, my sigh gusty enough to shift a cloudbank. I hated myself for ingratiating myself with him, as I’d done countrywide with the TV performance, but I had to live. By which I don’t mean make a living. Fred Tregothnan, a strapping man, had disappeared. I didn’t want to join him
wherever
he’d gone.

At least I could excuse my involuntary shiver. ‘This damp makes it feel so cold, doesn’t it – and you’ll catch you death if you’re not careful in those slippers of yours.’ I turned. Halfway back to the car, I asked casually, ‘Did you say if there was any post for Mr Thomas?’

As if there wasn’t enough wetness around, he spat, copiously. ‘I suppose I’d better go and see.’ He didn’t invite me in, despite spiteful little slashes of rain.

I could hear him chuntering away to himself, no doubt trailing mud from his slippers wherever he went. Hell, the man would know if there was any post for his only winter tenant – it wasn’t the sort of thing you’d forget, now, was it? He came back
empty-handed
, however. ‘No. But I’ll bear it in mind, Mrs Welford. If I get any, like. Be staying with you long, will he?’

‘He’ll be wanting his own place as soon as maybe, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Maybe not even in the village.’

‘You mean he’s pulling out already?’

‘He’s said nothing to me either way,’ I said. ‘So long as he pays his bills, what is it to me? Mind you, they’ll need another bell ringer if he does go. You ever thought of joining in, Reg? A big man like you would take to it like a duck to water.’

The washing up regarded me balefully the moment I ventured from my accommodation into the pub kitchen. Yes, all that and what I suspected might be something of an ordeal tonight – not that I’d let on by so much as a smudge of my mascara. Assuming anyone turned up to make it an ordeal, of course. Even as I donned rubbed gloves and apron I stripped them off again. I had a phone call to make. If anyone in the village were woman enough to brave public opinion, it was Lucy Gay.