The Food Detective (23 page)

‘If I lure them away,’ I yelled, squinting up at him, ‘can you slip out of that jacket and fall forward? Sort of somersault?’ I added as I got his attention.

He peered through the fading light. ‘Too far. Could break something.’

‘Hmm. Like your neck. Any chance you could throw me your car keys?’

‘Not a key. Stupid bit of plastic.’

‘Whatever it is. Can you get at it? Here, boy. Nice doggie. There’s some nice soft Josie meat here. Come on! Look. Nice bare wrist.’ I snatched it back just in time. I’ll swear I heard the snap of those damned teeth. Yes, they’d sliced my skin. The wire fence gave under their weight too much for me to try that dodge again. I ran a few more feet. But then I saw the glint of wire. I was back in gin trap territory. In deepening dusk.

Back to Nick. His hands were running with blood but he was holding something towards me, much as if he were proffering a dog biscuit. The movement unbalanced him. His foot was in
jaw-range
.

‘Kick for God’s sake,’ I yelled. Then I remembered my secret weapon, and directed a good squirt between the eyes of the lead dog. ‘Just hold on!’

In virtual darkness, as the interior light automatically faded, it took me valuable seconds to suss out how the card worked, but once started the vehicle responded like a Rolls Royce cum tank.
There. It smashed through undergrowth and traps alike, bucking and surging over whatever obstructed it. Hell, it was just like those TV adverts. I might almost be converted. Pulling as close to the netting as I could, I levered myself over into the passenger seat ignoring as best I could the protest of every fibre involved in the exercise.

Nick couldn’t do it, could he? Ashen faced, he hung exactly as I’d left him.

‘You can do it! Come on, Nick! Just roll! Pretend you’re diving into a swimming pool. Think of the blue clear water. Ease yourself into it. Nice gentle roll! Think how warm and soft the water will be as it welcomes you.’ What twaddle I was talking. Even the dogs’ snarls sounded mocking. Well, sod them for a start. Let them bite on a bit more foam. Lasting side effects? I hoped not. They were only doing their job, after all. But I’d always rated humans above animals, and these had clearly tasted blood. Nick’s yes, and near enough mine.

With a cry of utter despair, Nick rolled.

Abandoning the dogs to their fate, I sprinted round to break his fall if I had to. But the silver monster bore him up like a newly benign dragon. Twisting, he dropped his legs over my side, and slithered down, almost knocking me over. Clinging to each other like lovers, we managed to stay upright.

Somehow I was in the driving seat again. Nick was in beside me, slamming the door.

‘Reverse? Where the hell’s sodding reverse?’ By chance I found it, and we hurtled backwards, Nick, not yet belted in, tossed around like a rag doll. I’d never mastered reversing fast, despite Archie’s best efforts, and we weaved and rolled. Fortunately. As I pulled up alongside my hire car, I realised what the noise was I’d hardly registered: gunfire. How much a shield the four by four’s door would be I’d no idea, any more than I could guess if the hire car would protect me. Or if Nick would be able to manage his monster. All I knew was if either of us failed to drive hell for leather away, no headlights, of course, we’d be gunned down. And if we left a car behind, it’d be totalled, one way or another. Nick must have realised the same. More agile than me, he was already in the driver’s seat and pulling away as
my car fired. We went off in the fastest convoy possible, both vehicles swinging from side to side as much with the force of acceleration as with the drivers’ joint efforts to dodge bullets. How I avoided a huge truck bearing down on me, God alone knows. Maybe He acknowledged my breathless thanks by making its driver misjudge the bend and stuff his bumper into the bank. Let him worry about that: I was too busy concentrating on picking up the occasional glow of Nick’s intermittent
brake-lights
. At last he judged it safe to use his lights; I’d have done the same if I’d known how mine worked. At least he’d spot any oncoming traffic first. Spot? Mow down, the pace he was going.

At last we reached the village, and its scatter of streetlights. He slowed to a sedate thirty. I found the light switch. There, two Sunday trippers by chance returning to base at the same time. We pulled up side by side. Even though he’d cut his lights and engine, the car wasn’t still. Correction, Nick wasn’t still. I heaved open his door to find him shaking so much he must be having a fit. He was. A fit of laughter. He roared, slapping his thighs and
throwing
his head back, tears pouring down his face.

‘God, that was fun,’ he gasped.

Maybe it was true what they said about women having no sense of humour. I’d always thought I could see the funny side of things. So maybe mine had simply gone AWOL. I certainly wasn’t laughing at the sight of his shredded clothes and bloodstained flesh. Or at my own injured hand, now beginning to throb.

He was. Although he was trying to achieve and moreover keep a straight face, another little chuckle would force his lips apart and ring round the yard.

Arms akimbo, my own face entirely serious, I leaned forward, my face as close to his as my lack of inches and his bloody throne of a driving seat would permit. I said what I’d wanted to say ever since I saw him alone at that abattoir, as every single joint and muscle locked in spasms of pain as vicious as any dog’s jaws. ‘You idiot. You bloody stupid fool. Taking risks like that.’ I was crying with pain. But then, as I recalled how silly he’d looked on that barbed wire, a rag doll blowing in the wind, I might have been laughing too.

And, come to think of it, by now Nick might be crying.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I stomped straight past Nick up the stairs and into his en suite bathroom, turning the taps on full. Shame I had to ruin the effect by going back down and returning with the cooking salt, which I shovelled in by the handful.

‘That’ll clean up the superficial cuts. Then we’ll see if either of us needs A and E,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave a pot of tea in your room. My sitting room in half an hour. OK?’

Because if he needed a cuppa and a hot bath, I did too. I’d added salt to the bathwater in the hope that it would act as a general antiseptic, but sloshed in lavender oil too, not just for the smell but also for its healing properties. Of course, I should have dashed off and sprinkled some in Nick’s too, but that was one sort of room service I drew the line at. Until I could move again, at least. I now had a new crop of bruises, and running had taxed muscles that even the fiercest walking didn’t trouble. But at least I only had one dog nip, one requiring a pretty small plaster, and my tetanus was bang up to date.

Nick would be in far worse state, I told myself as I hauled myself out, patting rather than rubbing myself dry. It was very tempting simply to sling on my dressing gown, but that might complicate matters and I compromised by digging out an old baggy velour tracksuit that added a stone to my appearance but chaffed nowhere. Moccasins completed the domesticated ensemble. Nick had clearly had the same reservations, denying any sexiness by wearing maroon socks with his dressing gown. Or perhaps he didn’t realise how deeply unseductive socks were with a dressing-gown.

I sank to his feet with a first aid box in my hands. ‘Are you up to date on your jabs?’

‘For this job? Everything going a week before I started. What do you make of the cuts?’

‘You bled like a stuck pig, but they’re all superficial. I wouldn’t have thought any of them needed stitches. I’ve got plenty of those butterfly things.’

‘Flutter away!’

I bathed away blood still sluggishly oozing from a couple of cuts from his forehead. The pink water reminded me of the stream.

He must have noticed too. ‘I’ll get on to the water company tomorrow – pull a bit of rank,’ he said, without my saying anything. ‘See what Mrs Greville has to say about that.’

I put down the dressing strip I’d been about to apply. ‘Mr Chic. He must be Mrs Greville’s son. I knew he reminded me of someone. That’s who! Luke Greville, MEP, no less.’ No reason not to apply the strip. I got on with it. ‘The one who got the order of the boot to Europe for doubtful scams. The family’s involved with all this, Nick, you mark my words. I wonder why he didn’t eat with the rest of them last night.’

Before he could say anything, there was a terrific banging on the front door. Nick was still fit enough to take the stairs two at a time. I followed more decorously, body resenting every step.

‘Robin! What’s the matter?’ For he was too wild-eyed simply to have forgotten his key.

‘It’s Lindi! She’s gone!’ He almost fell into the hall.

Nick bent to gather him up. He was wearing passion killer knickers.

‘Gone where?’

‘I don’t know! One minute we were walking along the road, you know, getting acquainted. Next she’s not there. Literally
disappeared
from the pavement beside me. No idea where!’

Raising an ironic eyebrow, I caught Nick’s eye. ‘Just how were you getting acquainted?’

Robin had the grace to flush. ‘How do you think?

‘Was she enjoying the process as much as you were?’ I asked. ‘Or did she decide to do a bunk?’

‘As it happens,’ he said, sounding genuinely huffy, ‘she was asking about videos we should get when I next had an evening off. And I was explaining I wasn’t an evenings-off person and didn’t she have to work too and we’d have to think of another time and turned – and there she was, gone.’

Neither of us laughed at the cliché. ‘Come and show me where she disappeared,’ I said, grabbing a jacket from by the back door.
Oh, and a torch. Six o’clock and it was pitch dark. ‘We won’t have any drinkers,’ I flung at Nick over my shoulder, ‘but in case we do maybe you ought to be dressed.’

The clear sunny day had given way to an clear icy night. Because we had so few streetlights, the stars always seemed larger and brighter than they did in Brum. Light pollution, wasn’t that what they called it? Huddled into my jacket, head down, I set the briskest pace I could manage, Robin making little dashes forward and then back again to my side, like an excited puppy.

‘Here. It was about here.’ He stopped by one of the less attractive runs of Victorian cottages, what would be called a terrace in a city, complete with entries between blocks. Why anyone should have economised like this in a village goodness knows – unless, of course, they were tied to the Greville estate, at a time landowners thought the worst was good enough for their serfs. Yes, when the hymn writer produced those lines about the
Rich man in his castle
, saying it was right for a
poor man
to be
at his gate
. I stared, hands on hips. Two front doors opening on to the street, separated by a gated entry. Find the lady. Just like the card game.

‘You tried knocking on all three?’

‘’Course I did.’ He tried again, hard enough, as on my door, to waken the dead.

No response. Except from the church bells – not the full peal, with Nick
hors de combat
- which made us both jump like frightened dogs. Turning, I did the nearest I could to a scuttle. ‘I know who to ask!’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Got to change. You and Nick cope with the bar. No food on Sundays. Ever. Or not till I come back from Evensong.’

‘You’re going to ask God, are you?’ he asked as sarcastic as young Short would have been.

‘Maybe. And certainly His representative in the village.’

Evensong wasn’t my favourite service, because Sue simply didn’t have the voice for it. To be honest, neither did most of the choir, though they now boasted a tenor who looked suspiciously like Mr Chic. Correction, Mr Greville. I wondered if he ingratiated himself with a spot of Morris dancing as well. He was hardly
Placido Domingo but did add a certain something. Lucy was singing her head off too, but while she might be a gutsy bell ringer, she’d never be another Charlotte Church. As we knelt for the first prayer, I had to bargain with the Almighty: if He wanted me down here, He’d have to make sure He could get me up again.

Sue’s sermon reminded anyone listening that she used to be a junior-school teacher. I tried to work out why I’d come – after all, I could just as easily have hovered outside and pounced at the psychological moment. But there is, after all, something to be said for standing where feet had stood for hundreds of years – give or take a bit of Victorian prettification – expressing the same hopes and fears in more or less the same words.

It was Lucy I grabbed first afterwards, as she emerged from the vestry still stripping off her cassock, ready to dash home.

‘Where’ll Lindi be?’

She stopped dead. ‘Thought you didn’t want her tonight.’

‘No more I do. But she literally disappeared from the street while Robin was chatting her up. By that run of terraced houses.’

‘The ones with the entries? Well, she could be down any one of them. And there’s a path down the back, connecting them all. So she could be anywhere,’ She concluded helpfully. ‘But I’ve got to go, I mean, really – ‘She flashed a look at her watch and pulled a face.

‘See you Tuesday,’ I said, patting her arm as she fled.

I hung around making small talk with anyone prepared to talk to a publican. Mrs Greville lingered, nodding graciously at a flower display I seemed to have done years ago and telling me how nice it still looked. But she took very good care to tuck her arm into that of her chic son and propel him lickety-split out into the night, hardly even pausing to shake Sue’s hand.

I joined the line of other worshippers ready to do just that, holding back so that I wouldn’t be overheard murmuring that I’d love a word with her and why didn’t she pop into the White Hart as soon as she was free. She looked more alarmed than enthusiastic, but agreed. Something about the set of her shoulders told me that a glass of wine rather better than she could afford might just hit the spot. Of course, it would mean throwing her and Nick
together, and the length of time it took him to escort women home I might not see him till next weekend. But if that was what it took to worm information out of her, so be it.

Nick had managed to calm down Robin somewhat, possibly by assuring him that I’d come back with all the answers and possibly Lindi herself. His face fell like a child’s.

‘But Lucy’s on to it. And I hope to enlist the services,’ I said, realising the enormity of my pun only as I said it, ‘of our vicar.’ I carefully avoided Nick’s eye – but he’d know what I expected of him. Which was not to get himself whipped up into a moral disquisition, as he had last time. ‘She should be around any minute.’

‘The sodding vicar! What’s he got to do with anything?’

‘She. And she knows more about this village than most
outsiders
. If anyone can help –’

‘What about an insider?’

I nodded. ‘I’ve tried the only really friendly native I know – Lucy. She said Lindi could be anywhere and I believed her.’

‘Where does she live? So I can go and talk to her.’

He was well smitten, wasn’t he? I only wished the object of his passion was more deserving.

‘I don’t think that’d be a good idea, Robin,’ Nick chipped in. ‘Her dad doesn’t like her having anything to do with us grockles. When I walk her home, I have to stop thirty yards away. Don’t you?’

‘Well, yes. But this is an emergency! Surely he’d –’

‘Lindi might have just not wanted to go out with you – have you considered that? Might prefer your room to your company and just be too shy to say it.’

I chortled derisively. ‘Too shy! Our Lindi! I don’t think so!’

Nick raised a warning finger. ‘Hang on, Josie – Lindi would rather put up with Tregothnan’s attentions than tell him off. Perhaps she just thought discretion was the better part of valour. Now what are you up to, young man?’

‘I’m phoning the police!’

‘And telling them what? That a lass who’s not even your girlfriend ran away from you? Know what they’d do? Laugh their socks off. You wait to hear what Sue thinks – she’s got a wise head
on those shoulders of hers.’

Unforgivably I caught his eye and mouthed, ‘Apart from when she’s driving!’

We both sniggered, which did nothing for Robin. Fortunately there was soon a tap at the back door, Sue letting herself in, country-fashion, as I’d not yet had the privilege of doing anywhere in the village.

She flushed an unlovely shade of brick when she saw Nick and me together, but pulled herself together with commendable speed to address a still sulky Robin.

‘Had you two had a row? Or had you come on too strong too quickly? You’re sure? Well, when I get home I’ll make a few phone calls.’

‘Home? Why don’t you join us here for a bite of supper? Use the phone in my living room while I cook.’

The poor woman seemed to have one layer of skin too few, the way her colour flooded and ebbed as she no doubt weighed up the merits of eating with Nick and sharing him with two others.

‘I was going to stir-fry some very nice odds and ends of beef fillet,’ I said, ‘with mange tout and tamarind and …’

‘I’ll show you where the phone is,’ Nick interrupted me, risking a complicitous wink over his shoulder as he led her out.

‘What’s all that about?’ Robin demanded.

‘Private joke,’ I said. ‘Tell you what, if she comes up with the goods and you want to express your gratitude in the most
appropriate
way, you could valet her car, inside and out. She’s always so busy doing things for others,’ I embroidered, ‘that she never has time for herself. Tell you what, why don’t you lay up in my flat? It’ll be nice and warm and less like work.’

Supper was a sadly flat affair, nothing, I suspect, to do with ambience or with the food, which was well up to standard, but perhaps because of our different hopes and fears. Sue confessed to having drawn several blanks, but – surprise, surprise – agreed with Nick that calling the police wouldn’t be helpful.

‘There’s no point in exposing yourself to ridicule,’ she said flatly. ‘And it might do more harm than good if they did take you seriously and come sniffing round the village. No, no more wine,
thanks. I’ve got to drive, remember.’

‘Why not leave your car here overnight? It’s only a step – OK, a longish stride! – to the rectory.’ I let the bottle hover enticingly over her glass.

‘I’ll walk you back,’ Robin said, unhelpfully. ‘You never know, we might just see something. Someone. Whatever.’

The poor woman’s eyes had flicked to Nick before she replied. ‘No. Honestly. I’ve had enough,’ she concluded ambiguously.

‘Come on, you’re over the limit already,’ I said. ‘How often do you let your hair down, Sue?’

I’m not sure what my motivation was. Nine-tenths of me really wanted her to enjoy life a bit more, and in my terms there was no better way of doing that than eating, drinking and enjoying good company. OK, in my terms the company might well have been solo, and the location private. But with luck I could keep Robin back to help wash up, and Nick could do the honours. After that it was up to them.