The Food Detective (19 page)

Des put it succinctly. ‘Looks as if someone doesn’t want you to get that back in a hurry.’

Pete was already out, pulling on tough gloves and wrestling with the wood spaghetti. Someone had added odds and ends of barbed wire, damn them.

‘And of course,’ I panted, joining in as soon as Des had thrown me a spare pair of gauntlets, ‘even if we get rid of all this, there’s a good chance the car still won’t come unstuck.’

‘It’ll come all right,’ he said, with quiet confidence.

And it did, ten minutes later, with a plop straight from a children’s comic. It was so foul with mud that I agreed the safest thing was to take it straight to a garage so that the underneath could be checked.

Which was how I now came to have a hire car. Which I pulled up nose to nose in the back yard with a four-wheel drive that looked vaguely familiar.

No, they all looked the same, didn’t they, these big silver-finished monsters? I bent to lock my titchy little job – nothing as sexy as a zapper – braced myself for an hour of real cooking pressure, and marched in.

Chapter Twenty

‘There you are!’ Lucy sounded as exasperated as if I were one of her siblings, late after school. ‘We’re rushed off our feet and there’s no one except us to cook. Robin’s doing his best but he can’t be in two places at once. Though,’ she added, pulling herself together with a ghost of a grin, ‘you seem to manage it.’

I dropped my jacket and bag on top of my walking shoes and donned my pinnie. A quick – OK, thorough – scrub of the hands and I was ready. ‘Get me up to speed,’ I said, leafing through the orders. ‘Most of these are specials, so we should be able to knock them off in no time. Start up the deep fryer.’

‘It’s on. And Robin prepared a load of potatoes this afternoon.’

‘Chip them then. Now, chicken, lamb steaks – moussaka? How the hell did we get an order for moussaka?’

‘It’s on the specials board.’ She looked as scared as if she’d written it up in error herself.

I sniffed. ‘And I’d say it’s in the oven. Well done, Robin.’

‘Bloody butcher delivered lamb mince, not beef,’ Robin said, erupting through the service door with another order. ‘He’d really cocked up – it was all really weird cuts and joints I didn’t recognise. When I said I wouldn’t pay, he threatened to take everything away. I said fine, but leave the lamb, which I did pay for, because moussaka’s one thing I can do well. And, hey presto, when I did the supermarket run, there was an offer on aubergines and mushrooms.’

My organic butcher messing up? I’d have thought he was one person I could have relied on. Unless someone had phoned through a false order. Not impossible when I thought about the Portaloos. But I didn’t have time to worry about that now. ‘Good lad. But why all this activity?’ I wondered aloud. ‘It’s Thursday. Bell ringing night. There’s usually no activity at all till nearly ten and then there’s a rush on pints.’

‘Half the village seems to be here. All the regulars are back,’ Lucy said.

‘We’ll worry about this later,’ I said. For ‘we’ read ‘I’. ‘OK,
team: you’re working wonders. You know where you are. Just tell me what I can do that’ll be most useful. When there’s a break, we’ll take a breather and regroup. OK? No arguing, I mean it.’

Robin blinked. ‘Could you – would you mind manning the bar?’

I didn’t even correct his sexist language.

If I was front of house, as it were, I wasn’t going to appear like a river-cooled hippopotamus. Somehow I’d managed to get mud in my ears, up my trousers and even my sweatshirt, as well as more obvious targets. I stripped down in two minutes flat, dived under the shower and was back grabbing clothes before I was properly dry. The first top I reached happened to show my décolletage, so I added a glittery necklace. OK, it was your classic
barmaid
look, so just to improve the shining hour I added frosted eye shadow and particularly glossy lipstick. The hair was rapidly becoming a disaster so I mussed it vigorously and went wild with the spray. Diamanté mules completed the ensemble. Tony would have smacked my bum and told me I looked a right trollop.

Perhaps I did. After all, something about me made Reg Bulcombe drop his pint glass. Literally. It must have been almost full, too. The fire simply died, and wet ashes splattered all over his feet and those of his cronies. Magic.

It was worth the effort of fetching first the broom and shovel and then the mop and bucket – all that power walking over hill and dale had found me out more than I cared to admit. One or two of the more brazen men stuck out their legs so I could mop the worst off their boots and jeans. Reg Bulcombe, to catcalls and jeers, none of them mine, strode out and would have slammed the door behind him, I’m sure, had he not run smack into Nick Thomas.

No, I didn’t drop the mop. I nodded him to a table and carried on with what I was doing. Dumping the regulation Wet Floor easel near the epicentre of the erstwhile flood, I scanned the floor for further splashes. The floor and customers. One woman, a smartish townee about my own age, was vainly mopping her tights. Her escort didn’t know whether to laugh with the others or get outraged in a suitably alpha-male way.

‘Why don’t you come up to my private bathroom?’ I
whispered
discreetly.

There’d be some tights somewhere in one of my drawers, much cheaper than the free meal I probably ought to be offering.

‘I got the impression,’ Nick said mildly, over a mug of my finest organic drinking chocolate, not the normal tipple for the bar but one we could all share, ‘that something upset our Reg.’

He’d got back in time for bell ringing, he said, but found it cancelled. Well, it would be. Reg had called a celebration of my humiliation. Yes, in my own bar. Lucy had got wind of this, and, to my eternal gratitude, sacrificed her one evening of self-
indulgence
to help Robin, hoping the two of them could wing it. Without the men and Lucy, and with Mrs Greville mysteriously absent too, there’d been nothing for it but for Aidan to call off the session. He’d given Nick half an hour of private coaching, that was all, which pleased Nick because his jauntering around the countryside had made his stomach play up and he needed food. All this came out in a rush, as if he were a naughty school kid trying to fend off a bollocking he knew was due to him.

As if I’d given him cause! I had raised one eyebrow as I’d taken his order, and he might well have perceived it as ironic and even accusing. But I’d said nothing I wouldn’t have said to my other customers, nor that I wouldn’t have wanted overheard. I suppose you might say I’d rather kept him in suspense, a state that pleased me since it gave me my preferred upper hand.

‘Upset?’ I pulled a face as Lucy and Robin tittered.

Robin licked a chocolately moustache, put down his empty mug and coughed delicately. He and Lucy had already heard all about my day, it was late and it was more than time for Lucy to be home – after all, it was a school day tomorrow and since she hadn’t had time to do any homework tonight she’d no doubt have to be up at the crack of dawn to deal with it.

I nodded, getting up to shoo them out, stopping Lucy only to stow the remainder of the excellent moussaka in my favourite basket for her to carry home. ‘You’ve both worked wonders,’ I said for the umpteenth time. Fishing in my pinnie pocket, I pressed a twenty-pound note into her palm and another into
Robin’s. ‘For you, not the taxman. Nor anyone else,’ I added to Lucy.

Not that she’d take any notice. I waved them off. The yard was still blessedly free of offal.

‘Robin seems a decent kid,’ Nick began as I returned to the snug to find a skin growing over my chocolate.

Excellent. I dipped my little finger in to swish it out and relish it. The best part, in my opinion. And it always makes grown men shudder, for some reason.

‘A real find,’ I agreed. ‘He’s only supposed to be a barman, but he turned his hand to everything this evening.’

We could have gone on like this all night, two middle-aged folk having a pleasant meaningless chat. That’s probably what Nick wanted. At least until he could decently yawn and back out gracefully, escaping before breakfast the following morning because of pressure of work.

I’d got too much adrenaline still sloshing round my veins to be able to sleep. Besides which, I went nowhere until Robin got back in. Should we talk about the news item I’d found in Brum or the goings on down here? Or, as Robin slammed the back door and audibly bolted it, should I let Nick off the hook? After all, there was nothing to be done about anything till tomorrow afternoon. Friday morning was chopper lesson morning and nothing would make me miss that. And there was no doubt he’d be on tenterhooks until I had said something. Perhaps I’d just leave it at that.

Almost.

‘Tell you what, Copper,’ I said, pulling myself out of the chair, to which my limbs seemed anchored, ‘you and I need to have a good long talk. I’ll call into your office at about two tomorrow, shall I?’

There’s nothing like a good shag and a flying lesson to make you feel good about yourself, not unless it’s a good shag and a flying lesson preceded by a good tally on the bathroom scales. All my rushing round and my forgetting to eat yesterday had helped the scales ignore the hot chocolate and enabled me to award myself a gold star in the form of lunch at the Castle after a swift gob-swab
– DNA sample to you – at Taunton nick. The food was designer scrumptious – the sort of thing I’d got in mind for the White Hart when everything was up and running. More scrumptious even than Piers, the smell of whose sweat and aftershave still lingered enough for me to feel sexy all over again.

There was an impressive pile of files on Nick’s desk when I announced myself. I usually wanted to strangle him or protect him in equal measure; today I wanted to shake him into some sort of action.

‘I thought you were joking,’ he said weakly. ‘I’ve got masses to do. There’s this bastard buying condemned meat, cleaning it up and selling it to decent little restaurants as bona fide chicken.’

‘Decent little restaurants should check their sources,’ I said tartly, ‘as you know. Which is how my little adventure started. Since you’ve been away I’ve had a couple of generous gifts, a police car’s been trashed, and my own car was kidnapped. Fred Tregothnan’s accounts have materialised in my shed. So far I’ve said nothing to the police in case it implicated you in things you’d rather keep out of. But sooner or later someone will be asking you what you and Fred were talking about when you had your little
contretemps
a couple of weeks ago. And I shall have to tell the police about my expeditions.’

Gutted. It wasn’t a term I liked but it suited Nick’s expression. Instead of talking to him I might have filleted out his spine and other inconvenient bones.

Perhaps if I’d had children I’d have got rid of this inconvenient maternal streak. As it was my urge to shake the shit out of him was rapidly being replaced by a desire to make all better.

Enough of that.

‘Did you kill him?’ I asked brutally. Probably the same tone he’d used countless times himself, actually. Including to my Tony. ‘Come on, Nick.
Did you kill him?
Was that why you wouldn’t so much as come with me when I was looking round that abattoir? Why you’ve stayed away from the rendering plant? Because you killed him in one and disposed of him in the other?’

I’d never seen thought processes so slow. Even saying the words had rung bells for me. Now, very slowly, they seemed to be
making a similar tune in Nick’s skull.

‘No,’ he said, almost reluctantly. ‘But that might be what’s happened to him. There’s no evidence, though, is there, that he’s dead? Anything like blood at the house to make it a crime scene? And where’s his car? You don’t get rid of things like that without leaving some trace.’

Shrugging, I replied, ‘Minor problem.’ I spread my fingers. ‘Motive. Opportunity. If you don’t have them, who does?’

‘You told the police about the accounts,’ he said. ‘Pity. That’s the first place I’d look.’

‘In which case the Avon and Somerset Constabulary are no doubt getting a warrant even as we speak. How comforting. It means it’s not you or me. Possibly.’ I leaned forward on the desk, glad I was wearing a businesslike polo neck: flashing my boobs wasn’t on the menu at the moment. ‘You haven’t answered one of my questions yet, Nick. Possibly the most important one. Why were you arguing with him?’

‘I can’t remember.’

I almost believed him; DCI Evans certainly wouldn’t. ‘Not good enough. The villagers are grassoholics: they can’t resist snitching. Some kind soul told the police they saw Sue and me leaving Tregothnan’s house –’

‘Sue?’

‘She knew where the key was. We went to check he wasn’t lying ill in the bathroom or somewhere –’

‘You went for a good snoop!’

I smiled sunnily. At least he was less torpid.

‘So those accounts weren’t planted at all! You nicked them and thought better of it!’

‘Nope. If anyone took anything I’m afraid it might have been Sue, though you are not, repeat not, going to tell the police.’ I explained. ‘Forget it. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Yes, we went for a good snoop. It’s a very weird house, Nick. Not the house of a professional man with no one to spend money on except himself.’

‘As bad as a mobile home on a flooded field?’ he asked bitterly.

‘I presume you’ve got a sock under a bed somewhere. Full of
your lump sum, with your police pension keeping it topped up. You could buy tomorrow. On the other hand, he was
self-employed
and things have been bad for farmers ever since the year of Foot and Mouth. So he might not have had much money to flash around.’

‘Women?’

‘He was a flirt and a groper but if he had a proper adult relationship with a woman I’d be surprised. His mother kept her claws in him for years. But at least he inherited the house – he’s never had to buy his own. Tatty Land Rover. Clothes the Oxfam shop’d turn its nose up at. Where did his money go?’

‘And if he had and then lost money, what did he do to replace it?’ Nick was a changed man. He was visibly straighter, more alert. ‘That’s the question.’

‘Exactly. And almost as important as the one I asked you. What were you arguing about, the two of you? You have to remember. And tell me.’ Suddenly all sorts of stupid words were pouring from my mouth. Words like, ‘So we can sort this out together.’