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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
Josie Welford desperately hopes for a fresh start. Widow to one of Britain's most wanted criminals, she begins a new venture as the licensee of the local pub in Kings Duncombe, and soon becomes a thriving member of the community. That is until Inspector Nick Thomas, the man who put her husband in jail, appears on the scene. Now an inspector for the Food Standards Agency, he advises Josie to change from her local suppliers. How could Josie ever have foreseen the terrible consequences of this simple decision? Very soon she finds herself an outcast once more, ostracised by her erstwhile friendly neighbours. Even her employees are being warned off. Her hopes of a new life in tatters, she hears that the local vet has disappeared. Could the two things be connected? And why does everybody act as though they have a secret to hide? Bringing a reluctant Nick on to the case, Josie prepares to investigate.
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The Food Detective
JUDITH CUTLER
For Gill and Keith Bassett
– dear friends and mines of information
Thanks to Sue Manning for help with all sorts of veterinary facts you’d rather not know.
Contents
Chapter One
‘He says he only wants a sandwich, Mrs Welford, and can he have just tap water with it,’ Lindi reported, eyes wide. ‘Weird, or what?’ Pity she spoiled the effect by looking over my shoulder at her reflection in the mirror and fiddling with a strand of hair.
I put down my pencil. ‘A night like this and a man doesn’t want a decent drink! What’s wrong with him?’ I wasn’t just humouring her: if I’d ventured from hearth and home through this sort of rain, I’d have wanted at least a twenty-year-old malt. In fact, I might just have one now, just as soon as Lindi had dealt with her latest crisis. She liked a bit of drama, did Lindi – in the absence of the real thing, she invented one every night. Though this seemed a mite more genuine than most, on a Lindi scale, at least.
She wound a tendril of hair round her finger. ‘He might have a stomach ache.’ No, not quick on jokes, either. I didn’t know why I kept her on, flashing her boobs in her skimpy tank tops. It wasn’t to please the customers. Kings Duncombe was hardly alive with testosterone-fuelled males ready to bed her in the hay. It was an ugly hamlet in the back of beyond, and until I’d started to make changes, the White Hart would continue to be the exclusive preserve of old men with weak bladders and foul teeth.
‘Tell him there’s no one in the kitchen tonight.’
‘I did. But he says all he wants is a sandwich. And a glass of tap water.’
‘Just the regulars in the bar?’
‘Well, there’s Mr Tregothnan, and Lucy Gay’s dad, and –’
‘The usual suspects. How many?’
‘Seven. Maybe eight if you count this man.’ She dropped her voice to a confidential whisper, thick with local burr, though we were the only people in the room, my sitting room, well away from the public rooms. ‘Maybe he is bad, Mrs Welford. He do look ever so pale.’
‘Better get him a bite before he fades away. Make sure everyone’s got a refill before you leave the bar, though.’ I wouldn’t put it past them to help themselves otherwise. If they were as generous with their measures as they were with their puddles on the gents’ floor, I’d be bankrupt within a month.
Back to my calculator, then. The White Hart wasn’t going to be a failing country boozer much longer: not if I had a say in it. Alehouse and restaurant was how I’d remodel it. The present snug would become the restaurant, and the filthy storeroom in which rumour insisted the last landlord had kept his prize shagging-sheep would do nicely for a replacement snug. Some would say the regulars wouldn’t notice if I left it as it was. But I’d do the decent thing, make it warm and cosy and the sort of place you wouldn’t mind joining the locals in if you were waiting for your table. It wasn’t as if the present snug owed anyone anything. There wasn’t a comfortable chair in the place. The settles were old, which equalled murder for any modern spine, and the plastic patio chairs were almost as horrible as the green aluminium patio tables they were arranged round. Poor sandwich man would no doubt be stuck at one of them – the yokels would be huddled round the fire, their backs firmly to him. Oh, he’d practically feel the draught from their ears as they listened in to any conversation he might be having, but that was all he’d feel. Nothing of the fire, what was left of it after Lindi had almost let it go out – she was always surprised when she was left with nothing but ashes – and after they’d coughed and hawked and spat.
She was pithering with her damned hair again. I’d have sacked her weeks ago, except the only other girl in the village interested in working for me was Lucy Gay, and since she was only sixteen I couldn’t let her do more than serve meals and wash up. Oh, yes – the Law and I were Best Friends these days. It had been hard enough work to get my licence – can I help it, I said, an innocent woman, if my husband gets sent down for a few years on some trumped up charge?
‘Lindi! We have a customer, you said!’
She sauntered off.
I was just about to treat myself to that whisky when she came back upstairs again. Anyone else with an expression on her face like hers would have managed a canter, if not a gallop.
‘You should see his hands! All bloody!’
‘Bloody as if he’s killed someone?’
‘Bloody like someone’s had a go at him, more like. And not just any old how – as if, as if they’ve tried to – you know, do what they did to Jesus!’
I awarded marks for imagination. ‘People don’t get crucified in the autumn, Lindi. They do that at Easter. Come on, he hasn’t got bleeding great holes in his hands, has he?’
‘Not as such. But you can see the blood through his plasters. Here!’ She pointed to her outstretched hand. ‘Right in the middle, here!’ Hand still splayed, she touched the other palm. ‘And,’ she dropped her voice again, ‘he’s got deep scratches round his forehead. At least they’re not bleeding now. But they have been. Like he’d been wearing a crown of thorns.’
I ought to ignore her, but what else was there to intrigue me on a wet Sunday in the foothills of Exmoor? ‘Has he got sandals, long brown hair and a Che Guevara beard?’
Frowning a little, she said, ‘His hair’s like my dad’s.’
Short back and sides with little pretension to fashion, then. Dead boring too, if he was anything like Lindi’s dad.
‘Palestinian or Israeli accent?’ I pressed. Maybe I shouldn’t have that single malt. They always said landlords drank their profits if they weren’t careful. In any case, that glass of Rioja I’d had with my supper seemed to have gone to my head. I mimed a Shylock shrug: ‘Oy vey?’
She chewed the strand she’d played with before, as if I’d set a desperately hard GSCE question. ‘More like yours.’
Someone from Birmingham! I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. You come down somewhere as remote as this to leave your past behind you, don’t you? Not that I had a past, of course. Tony did, of course, God rest his soul. The sort of past that might encourage some of his old contacts to look me up, more’s the pity. It’s one thing having your old man being on the wrong side of the law; it’s another finding you’re supposed to be jolly chums with a whole lot of other ex-cons. And their wives, girlfriends and general hangers-on. No, anyone coming to look me up would get the shortest of shrifts. Whatever a shrift is. I’d have to look it up. A very cold shoulder, anyway.
‘He’s not local, then?’ I asked, wishing I hadn’t got into this. It might have been mildly entertaining, but the last thing I wanted was Lindi getting the idea there was something about me to gossip about.
‘I’d have known him if he was, wouldn’t I?’
I nodded. Round here local meant this village. ‘Better go and keep an eye on things. And if Mr Tregothnan gets too frisky, get rid of him.’
‘Oh, I don’t like to. It’s only a bit of fun. He don’t mean nothing by it, does he?’
So fondling the kid’s breasts was only a bit of fun, was it? ‘Don’t they teach you anything about sexual harassment at that school of yours? Arm’s length, Lindi – that’s the best way. Off you go now.’
She set off, but hesitated by the door. No. Not to say anything. To give that hair of hers one last fiddle.
‘Go on! Shoo!’
People didn’t normally spend long in the gents. In, quick slash, out. That’s the usual. And who could blame them? Stinking black hole. It makes me retch just to sluice it with a hose every day. But this guy did. Mr Sandwich and Water. Then he shot out, wiping his mouth and shuddering. That was normal, at least. As was his haircut: the boring sort I’d imagined. And then I twigged: it wasn’t just normal. It was familiar. I nearly retched myself. The bastard. When I paid him a visit the next day it wouldn’t be to ask after his health.
‘It’s harassment: that’s what it is, Inspector Thomas!’ I stood on the step of his mobile home – one of the fixed ones in the Happy Valley site – and confronted him.
He put his hands up as if to fend off my words. No, let them ricochet round him.
‘Sending the filth down here to check up on me.’ I stepped inside uninvited, just as he must have done countless times when he was a cop.
‘Josie Welford,’ his mouth announced as he backed away. He looked as surprised as I felt. Maybe I was wrong: maybe he hadn’t come down here to spy on me. In which case, I gave him Brownie points for recognising me. I’d lost the best part of four stone, changed my hair from the big brassy with black roots that Tony liked to a gentle bob, silvery gold, the best colour the priciest salon in Exeter could manage. Before I’d mostly sported dramatic flowing Kaftans, which never did disguise all my flesh; now I was country practical in a hooded waxed jacket and wellies. Most of all I was minus those grotesque fancy specs, more appropriate to a stage transvestite. Not only could I see better with my contacts, you could see that I had serious cheekbones.
But I still didn’t buy the coincidence. ‘Harassment!’ I repeated, as if I’d just paused for breath. ‘Typical of the filth, to have the brass neck to send you chasing round after me. You! The one who had Tony sent down. The one who ruined the best years of my life.’ I’d always been known for my swearing, so I slung a few profanities at him, just like the old days but with less venom. Actually, maybe with more style.
He stared, his face working. Any other man, any other time, he could have laughed and got away with it. It was hard to take myself seriously, when each swear word was accompanied by a drip from a Barbour. But to laugh at the old me was to invite a kick in the balls and a crack on the skull as you went down. Unless I laughed at myself first.
‘Twenty years. It must be all of twenty years,’ he said. ‘Birmingham Crown Court.’
I almost pitied him. Those days I was a big-haired, big-mouthed virago, calling down all the curses of heaven on him for what he’d done to my man. ‘Fifteen years!’ I’d screeched. ‘Fifteen bloody years! For a man Tony’s age. A decent man! Now he’ll never go to his son’s wedding, never see his grandchildren.’ Blame the Gippo blood a couple of generations back for the bad language. Tony had hated it and made me clean up my act, except, he said, when circumstances merited it.
It had been teamwork, of course: I knew it even as I cursed him. The Drugs Squad; a bright young forensic scientist; a good prosecution lawyer; a jury brave enough to withstand the threats exuded by Tony’s henchmen surveying the court (they’d made even me feel sick, and I was on their side); a judge handing down the long sentence. But it was easier to pick on one man as the villain. So I’d followed him all the way down Corporation Street hollering and shouting. I’d thrown more than words: I’d pulled off my stiletto shoes (quite a relief – the damned things always did cripple me – and hurled them at his head). I must have run fifty yards on the wet pavement before I’d realised I was barefoot.
On bad days, the really bad ones, maybe he’d remembered those curses. In detail.
He probably remembered how I’d had to stop and peel my laddered stockings – no, not tights, which Tony loathed – and rip them off and sling them too. He’d insisted on returning the shoes. Quite a nice grin and a courtly bow. He’d had a little bit of style in those days. These days? Something seemed to have taken the heart out of him. It was as if someone had rubbed him out and forgotten to colour him in again. Apart from the deep scratches on his forehead, that is.
And all that must have been – what? eighteen? twenty? – years ago. Tony Welford, love of my life for all he’d been old enough to have been my father, grandfather even, had been gone eight years now. And not a day when I didn’t miss him, even if it was only to thumb my nose at his memory when I did things he’d have hated. Like losing my blubber.
‘What about a bucket?’ I waved my golfing umbrella at him. Not that I played, you understand. But the weather they got round here you needed all the protection you could get. If I didn’t need the brolly, I carried a useful walking stick, to fend off overenthusiastic dogs and brambles.
‘Bathroom,’ he said, taking it and disappearing.
Protection like wellies, for instance. Tony would never have had a woman of his seen in wellies. Maybe he’d have thought the Barbour was a way of getting in with the local hunting and shooting toffs. More like he’d have thought it showed solidarity with his beloved monarch. Yes, he kept a photo of Her Maj on the wall of his Long Lartin cell. He’d been known to land men in hospital for expressing republican views.
When Nick got back I was still in his living room, half-sitting on the arm of the settee, trying to push one boot off with the other foot. I’d slung the Barbour across a standard household remover’s cardboard box. I had my choice of a dozen or more, some already opened, the rest still taped closed. Where on earth could he possibly hope to stow so much in a place as small as this?
He’d always been the man to offer civilised gestures. Today he didn’t look as if he could remember any.
‘You’re the first visitor in my new abode,’ he managed. Suddenly he bowed deeply, sweeping his arm in an ironic invitation to admire it. At least I hoped it was ironic. The place was a tip. Well. It would be. He’d only moved in over the weekend, according to Molly at the shop.
For answer I stuck out my left wellington boot – he could pull it off. And the other one. Even when I’d been big, I’d had nice feet. I was still proud of them. Size four and nice high arches. ‘How about offering a lady a coffee? Though if it’s instant muck I’ll have tea.’
‘Only powdered milk anyway,’ he said.
‘You’re joking! In the heart of some of the best dairy land in the country and you haven’t got any bleeding milk! What the hell are you doing, man?’
‘Settling in. Only arrived yesterday. Too late to get proper supplies. I just brought the bare necessities.’
‘Including no doubt your booze and a pack of cards. Oh, everyone knew,’ I said, standing up to peer into another box. ‘Though all that came much later, didn’t it?’
‘No booze; no cards,’ he said.
‘Proper little plaster saint you’ve turned into, I must say. What about that tea, then? So long as you make it weak, I’ll manage without milk.’ I patted my hips. Only another stone to shed, but they said that was the hardest.
He opened his mouth, but thought better of it.
I nodded as if he’d spoken. ‘WeightWatchers. Tony liked a bit of flesh on a woman. Now he’s gone before, God bless him, I can lose a bit. Try, anyway. They say it’s harder after fifty and they’re bloody right. Don’t you need to switch the kettle on? Or does your water boil itself?’
‘Sorry.’ He swilled mugs, shaking them dry. ‘You said weak?’
‘Like a nice healthy pee specimen,’ I agreed. ‘And no sugar, either.’
‘I ought to offer you lemon.’ He was making so much effort you could see it.
I looked slowly round the kitchenette. ‘Oh, yes? Well, mind you get one in for next time I come.’
He stared: was I pulling his leg?
‘Hey, get the teabag out! It’ll be stewed.’
‘Sorry. Here – is this OK?’
I peered at the tea. ‘It’ll do. Thanks. So what are you doing down here, if you’re not harassing me?’
‘A new job. Starting in about an hour’s time.’
‘Job? My God, the lord high Inspector Thomas must have retired! Why did you never get further than inspector? You’d got enough between your ears. Yes, you were a bright lad. We all thought you’d go a long way.’
He shrugged.
‘After all, your face always used to fit.’
‘I’m not so sure about that.’ He swallowed. ‘I’ve done my stint and taken the retirement cheque. But what with one thing and another, I – well, I needed another job.’
I dug in one of the boxes – he’d already started to empty this one, and came up with a photo of girl celebrating something with a glass of bubbly.
‘Elly,’ he said. ‘When she got her A level results.’
‘Pretty kid. Not much like you. I suppose you had the usual police marriage. The wife comes third after the job and the boozer. And then she ups and offs. Good for her. So you’ve got to work because you’re still paying maintenance and there’s the kids to put through college. It’ll do you good to do a decent nine till five job for a change.’ So what was it? I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of having me ask.
‘Tea all right?’
I mimed a spit. ‘Typhoo!’
‘I always thought it was a perfectly good tea.’ He put on a poncy expression: ‘What would Madam prefer to go with her lemon? Assam? Earl Grey?’
‘Cheeky sod. No breakfast things?’
He flushed like a guilty schoolboy. ‘I was just shaving when –’ He stopped, grabbing his stomach as if he’d been stabbed.
All that stuff about food last night, and then looking as if he’d thrown up in the gents – did he have an ulcer? ‘Tablets?’
‘In one of these boxes.’ He looked helplessly around.
‘You’d better eat something. Dry toast.’ I dug out a toaster and plugged it in. ‘Where’s your bread?’
He passed a Sainsbury’s carrier.
‘You’ll have a round with me?’
Thick white sliced? I didn’t think so. ‘I’ve already eaten, thanks. You’d better take yourself off to Dr Cole.’ I pointed at his midriff. ‘He’s twenty years behind the times, but at least that means he doesn’t feel bound to experiment on you.’ I perched on one leg, put my boots back on, first the left, then the right, then reached for the Barbour.
‘How did you get the idea the police were after you?’ he asked, twenty minutes after I’d expected him to.
‘Obvious. A stranger in the village. Short hair. Keeps himself to himself in the bar. It doesn’t take much to put that lot together.’
‘Keeps himself to himself! They bloody froze me out. You should have seen them!’ What a surprise. ‘And what would they be looking for, the police?’
Tony’s fortune, of course. ‘If you can’t work that out you’re a bigger fool than I took you for. But they’d have it all wrong. I earn my own living now.’
He managed a thin smile. ‘Josie, anything in your bank account, even in an old sock under your bed, is none of my business. Now. I’m not DI Thomas, West Midlands Police. I’m plain Nick Thomas.’
‘So why are you here?’ I paused, the Barbour zip halfway up.
‘I told you. New job.’
‘Which is?’
‘The Food Standards Agency. Investigating officer.’
‘Jesus Christ! You are going to be little Mr Popular round here, aren’t you! You’d be better off letting the police rumour grow.’
He bridled. ‘I don’t see why. If people have nothing to hide.’
‘Nothing to hide? People here make their living out of agriculture and don’t need some government spy living slap in the middle of them.’
‘If I spy it’s to protect the public: I mean, farmers round here need protection from –’
‘Spies like you!’
‘Come on: how did BSE get into the food chain? Because feed manufacturers wanted quick profits and thought it would be nice to feed total herbivores recycled meat products. Those farmers didn’t know what was in the feed. So it’s my job to make sure manufacturers are putting into feed what will be good for animals. And for us. If you’ve ever seen a case of new variant CJD –’
‘Oh, it’s all stuff got up by the media. Old folk die every day of Alzheimer’s.’
‘And kids of sixteen? Eighteen? Who ate beef burgers made from nice fresh beef thinking they were safe?’
A man with a stomach like that shouldn’t get so aerated. I changed gear a bit. ‘Do you remember that politician – the Minister of Agriculture or whatever – trying to force his kid to eat a burger. And the kid had more sense than he did and shoved it away? Oh, Nick, they’re such fools, aren’t they! Thinking we’ll buy that crap.’
‘But people do. More to the point, people sell it to them,’ he added. ‘People sell over-age cattle, complete with spinal cord material —’
‘That’s coming in from Europe —’
‘And some farmers are doing it here. Why not? They get good prices for beef that’s less than thirty months old —’
‘Pitiful prices, more like!’
‘But virtually nothing for stock that’s over that magic thirty months,’ he overrode me. ‘Wouldn’t you be tempted? To take it along to a mate’s place, way out the back of beyond, and set up a little abattoir? If I were a farmer down on my uppers, I’d be tempted.’
‘But I don’t suppose you’d succumb.’ I stared at him. ‘You reckon this meat – this thirty-month-old meat – wouldn’t be kosher?’
‘Neither kosher nor halal!’
‘Eh? Oh, I get you.’
‘Not the sort of thing I’d want to eat,’ he added, ‘with or without my ulcer.’
I found myself grinning. ‘I don’t half miss the food, Nick. A good curry. Down Ladypool Road. All that halal meat being made into wonderful curries and baltis. Tell you what, I’ve found a good place in Exeter: you can stand me a meal one night. When your stomach’s better.’
I flapped a hand and picked my way through all his boxes to the door. He flapped one back. Lindi had been right about the plasters on his hands, too.
‘You want to look after yourself, you know. Especially with this job of yours. Tell you what, you just tell folk you’re a civil servant. Altogether safer, if you ask me.’
Chapter Two
The one person I didn’t want to meet on my way back to the village was Sue Clayton, our curate. She always insisted on giving you a lift, even if you’d rather be on your own thinking, or, in my case, exercising off another calorie. She looked so hurt, almost resentful, if you tried to refuse that I’d given up trying, accepting each time as graciously as I could.
‘I thought I was an early bird,’ I said, cramming myself into the passenger seat of her Fiesta, ‘but you’ve obviously been working already.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ignoring the implied question and grinding a gear.
How anyone could do that to a modern synchromesh gearbox always defeated me, as did the idea that anyone could see through her windscreen. She’d never mastered the controls that directed hot air on to it, and dealt with condensation by polishing with the palm of her hand. So she had not just a runny screen, but also a greasy one.
‘I hear our newcomer has stigmata,’ I said.
‘Not really.’
So she’d met him already.
‘But I’ve seen them – with my own eyes.’
‘Scratches,’ she said.
‘Where did he get them from, I wonder?’
She shrank further from me, but then had to crane forward to see through a clearish patch the size of a postcard.
‘Someone put plasters on his hands at least,’ I prompted.
‘Yes. I hate this corner.’
So did everyone with any sense. I always slowed to walking pace so I could get into first. Sue tried it in third. To be fair, she tried most things in third. The poor little car would probably die never having got into fifth. I glanced at Sue. She probably wouldn’t either. The dream of my life was to get her to go on the town with me. You know the sort of thing: shop for England, nice lunch, another shop. Maybe a hairdo and a facial. She certainly needed the hairdo. Ponytails are fine and dandy when you’re young with thick, shiny hair; when you’re in your forties and your hair’s not just fine but thinning and very dull, it’s a pretty unforgiving style. Especially if you use rubber bands to confine it. If only she’d have it all lopped off and a spot of colour. Was it her dog-collar that stopped her, making her eschew the pleasures of the flesh, as it were, or lack of cash?
‘What did you make of him?’ I asked, when we were safely on the straight again.
Yes, straight but still narrow. And deep – we were probably eight feet below the level of the fields. No room for mistakes.
‘Boorish.’
Sometimes her choice of word surprised me. ‘Boorish?’
‘I was driving back from Evensong at Abbots Duncombe last night in the pouring rain and found him in the hedge. So I offered him a lift.’
My face pulled itself. ‘Sue! A complete stranger! Was that wise? OK, OK! I’ve read my Bible too, but – anyway, what was he doing in the hedge, for goodness’ sake?’
‘He said something about an unlit lorry. He’d jumped into the hedge to avoid it. And he’d got scratched to bits. And all he’d talk about was car maintenance and driving techniques. Mine. Boorish.’
Biting the hand that drove you. I couldn’t fault his intentions, just his tact. ‘He fetched up in the bar last night. Gave Lindi quite a turn, I can tell you.’
‘I don’t know why. He was quite presentable by the time I’d finished.’
‘You’d done a good job with the first aid, but he still didn’t look very well.’
She stared at me, not reducing her speed. The car slewed towards the hedge. ‘Is that why you went to see him?’
‘I didn’t go to see him,’ I lied flatly. Close as the grave Sue Clayton might be, but my past was mine and mine alone, and Nick might feel the same. ‘I met him on my morning walk, that’s all. He seemed better. I gave him the name of a doctor, just in case.’
‘It must be strange, living in a mobile home. Especially at this time of the year, when all the other caravans on the site are locked up for the winter.’
This was the closest you got to girlie talk with Sue. All my life I’d had at least one decent woman friend, often two or three, the sort you can share that day I described or just ring up when you want to let your hair down. I’d never have got through all Tony’s years of bird without Claire and Nesta, and then his McMillan Nurse Nell had become a mate – we still emailed each other at least once a week for a good natter. Sue didn’t seem to have a natter-mode.
‘Strange – and very lonely.’ I thought about my early days in the village. ‘Why don’t you rope him in as a bell ringer?’
‘What if he isn’t a churchgoer?’
‘Ringing bells would certainly make him one. Go on – it’s hard to make friends in a community like this if you’re not a playgroup parent or doing our sort of job.’ I could feel her eyebrows shoot up. I didn’t pursue images of the confessional and counselling, tasks shared by priests and publicans alike. ‘You know: working with people.’
‘What about his new colleagues?’
Talk about stony ground.
‘He can’t be at work all day every day. Any idea what he does, by the way?’
She shrugged. ‘He didn’t say.’
How could anyone be so incurious? Someone in her line of work, too. Tired of pushing on closed doors, I sat back and watched the countryside go past, the little I could see, that is, through the foul windscreen. So Nick had told her off for bad driving, had he? Ten out of ten for good intentions, zero for tact. He used to have something very like charm. What had changed him? I couldn’t see him surviving very long in a job like this new one unless he mended his ways.
Sue dropped me not at the pub but at the vicarage, because I’d insisted I wanted to go to the village shop and an extra quarter of a mile would be good for me. I was glad, all the same, when she pulled off the main street into the road leading to her house. She mistimed the turn: if she often cut it as fine as that, in her place I’d have moved the terracotta pots a bit. In any case, they weren’t bringing much beauty to the garden – whatever the plants still growing in them had been, now they looked totally woebegone.
She didn’t invite me in. Well, that suited me. I had a day’s work ahead of me.
My electric kettle had other ideas. Just as I fancied a decent cup of tea, it gave up the ghost. I suppose the logical thing would have been to use the pub kitchen’s kettle, but I didn’t fancy having to trot upstairs every time I wanted a cuppa. A trip to the outskirts of Taunton, then, to Comet or wherever. That was the trouble with the rural life, as Nick Thomas would soon discover: there was no popping down to a convenient shopping mall. Though out of town shopping might have ruined many a town centre, at least it meant I didn’t have to tangle with Taunton’s traffic. And it was easy to park, especially on a wet Monday morning.
I’d chosen my kettle and was just sauntering round checking out anything else that might take my fancy when I noticed Nick Thomas. He too was clutching an electric kettle, and like me seemed to be browsing. He’d just fetched up by the TVs. All I meant to do was wave. Then I saw his face.
God, not an other terrorist attack. I too stared at the banks of screens. But all I found was some daytime TV pap.
And he wasn’t moving. Not even blinking. His face was ashen, pouring with sweat. What the hell? He wasn’t having a heart attack, was he?
I moved closer – you can’t do straight lines in enticing consumer mazes. He looked like Tony’s kid brother Sam, who scared us all witless with his sleepwalking. But you don’t fall asleep in the middle of a superstore. Before I could get to him, or even call, he seemed to shake himself and toddled off to the checkout.
He’d be embarrassed if he thought I was spying, so I thought about a new hairdryer and pondered an electric carving knife.
‘That man you just served,’ I said at last, plumping the kettle on the desk. ‘Was he all right?’
The young man rocked his head. ‘Looked as if he’d seen a ghost, didn’t he? But his money was good, so who was I to argue?’
Who indeed?
There was no sign of him when I came out.
Although there wasn’t much call for suppers, which is why I could take the odd evening off, lunchtimes often attracted a little knot of villagers and a few serious walkers. You’d have thought weather like today’s – it was sluicing down now – would have put off all but the most hardened drinkers, but several of the big-boot brigade were huddled at one of the patio tables, casting envious glances at the locals monopolising what I’d made sure was a pretty good fire.
‘Tell you what,’ Reg Bulcombe said, leaning on the bar as if hoping I’d be as generous in my display of flesh as Lindi, ‘I wouldn’t mind one of your steak baguettes. Well cooked, mind. Nice lot of onion.’ Since he said exactly the same every lunchtime he graced us with his presence, which was three or four days a week, I didn’t need to write it down. But I did, jabbing the slip of paper on the bills spike just to tell him he wouldn’t get away without paying, as he’d tried, a couple of times when I’d broken routine.
While his drinking partner, Ted Gay, Lucy’s dad, stared at the menu as if he could afford anything on it, I said, ‘All this beef, Reg – are you on this Atkins Diet or something?’ Maybe I was trying to drop a hint: he was carrying four stone more than he should – yes, I know, there’s no one like a convert for being sanctimonious, his face that bluish red I associated with high blood-pressure and heart disease.
‘Bit of good meat never hurt anyone, did it, Ted?’
Ted mumbled something into the pint he couldn’t afford. Six children at school, the oldest Lucy, and his wife, virtually the breadwinner with all the cleaning jobs she’d gathered, died of cancer. Lucy did her best, bless her, making sure the others got their free school meals and had the best food she could manage at home. But Ted had never been much of a one for a hard day’s work, and with so much booze inside him – no, not from the White Hart but from supermarket cans – only the kindest of his old employers now employed him for old times’ sake. They were braver than me: I quailed at the thought of an alcoholic on the business end of a chainsaw or machete.
Reg leaned even more confidentially towards me. His breath mixed beer, fags and halitosis in equal proportions. ‘Your freezer must be pretty empty by now. You want me to fix you up with another delivery?’
I dropped my voice to match. ‘You’re sure this isn’t off the back of some lorry?’
He flinched as if I’d struck him.
‘Come on, Reg: only joking. But it’s such a good deal you’re getting me.’
‘All local grown. No middleman, see. No need for this talk of lorries.’ He sounded genuinely offended.
I hesitated. ‘Thing is, I need the invoices and receipts you promised for the taxman. And it’s coming up to the time when I need to get every last shred of paperwork to my accountant. You promised them last week.’ And every week since I’d taken delivery.
‘I did say it was cash only, Mrs Welford.’
‘And I paid cash, didn’t I? But I need the paperwork, Reg. Can you fix it?’
‘You can rely on me. And in the meantime, another load for that freezer of yours? Come on, the amount I eat it must be empty by now.’
‘So must you be. Come on, Reg – one thing at a time. I’ve got to go and work my magic in the kitchen. Hi, Lindi! It was cold first thing.’
‘I didn’t think it was so bad. Wet, of course,’ she conceded.
‘What I’m trying to say, very kindly,’ I hissed, as she shook her coat and hung it up, ‘is that you’re twenty minutes late. Again. Come on, Lindi – I can’t serve here and cook lunches, can I? Wash your hands, and then see if those hikers want to order. Go on. Shoo!’
The meat looked good; it smelt good; it certainly tasted good. Damn Nick Thomas for making me wonder whether it was good.
And damn him for making me spend an afternoon in front of the computer. I’m old enough to prefer books, but I couldn’t see me flagging down the mobile library and asking for all they’d got on BSE and CJD. Not someone who ran a pub, for goodness’ sake. It’d be all over two counties before you could say mad cow. In any case, when I’d been a mature student I’d learned at college how to surf, so I might as well polish my skills.
First I got through all the official stuff – including that put out by Nick Thomas’s very own Food Standards Agency. Then I started following trails. And wished I hadn’t. It was one thing dying a paralysed gibbering shadow when you were ninety, quite another to go like that at nineteen. I looked at photographs of kids who’d thought all they were eating was a harmless burger – just like that one Nick and I had talked of this morning. God, I’d have liked to force feed the wretched politician, cram him like a Strasbourg goose. Was he terrified every day his daughter had a headache or forgot something? Did he quake every time she stumbled in the street? I hoped so.
My feet took me inexorably downstairs. To the freezer. I hated throwing out good meat. But if it wasn’t good meat, what else could I do with it?
Chapter Three
I distributed plates of lunchtime ploughman’s to Tuesday’s walkers – who well might have been yesterday’s recycled – and sauntered over to collect a few glasses from the regulars. Yes, of course Lindi should have been doing it. But if there was any gossip going, I wanted to hear it.
For some reason the group round Reg fell silent as I approached, so I started a conversational hare myself.
‘What’s this new bloke doing out at your campsite then, Reg? Not the weather for the open air life, I’d have thought.’ Though the pub walls were nearly two feet thick, and the windows in deep recesses, you could still hear the rain sluicing down, as if someone had forgotten to turn off a celestial tap. It was a good job I’d already started my improvements: I’d just had the gutters cleared and the drains rodded.
‘Oh, ah. He’s a funny one all right,’ Reg guffawed, slapping his leg. ‘You know what I found him doing this morning? Trying to bury a cat, for God’s sake.’
‘A cat? Did he bring it down with him?’
There was a tiny shuffle from the others, which took me straight back to my long-forgotten schooldays when someone was trying not to snitch.
‘Found it, he says. Dead. I told him to shove it in that there council paper bin, but seems that was too easy. He wouldn’t even put his cardboard boxes in there. Said it’d mess up the recycling or summat. “Come on, man,” I says, “who’s going to tell? Not me, that’s for sure.” But no, he squashes everything into the back of that car of his and off he goes. Said something about the recycling centre.’
‘He took a dead cat to the recycling centre!’
‘Well, no. Reckon he must have left that back at his caravan. Said he’d dispose of it tonight. With a bit of luck, I says, it’ll wash away and spare you the trouble.’
‘Dispose of it? How can he dispose of it? I mean, it isn’t likely he’d have brought a spade down here with him, is it? No garden,’ I explained, as Reg and his mates looked as if they couldn’t conceive of a life that didn’t involve a spade.
‘Ah. Suppose not. Anyway, he said he’d put the poor bugger under his caravan and deal with it this evening. If it isn’t washed away by then.’ Reg repeated. He hawked and spat. ‘We might be needing Noah’s Ark, but there’s only room for live moggies, that’s what I told him.’
I joined in the general mild laughter before disappearing back to the bar. Lindi finally registered there were glasses to be washed, and I withdrew to the kitchen to await developments – like Reg huffing and puffing round to find out why there was no meat on the menu and why I hadn’t pressed a repeat order into his hand as soon as he’d appeared.
By now the whole village must have heard I’d tipped all that meat into the big kitchen waste bin, which had been emptied this morning. With luck, there must have been as many theories as villagers. I wasn’t sure what to tell him. There was no point in falsely accusing people of selling unlicensed meat. Not until I knew. After all, it had seemed to be good quality. But the receipt business bothered me. Any legitimate supplier would surely provide the paperwork another business needed. Meanwhile, I had to source some more meat, and if my prices went up to match, tough. When the restaurant was open serving high quality food, customers would expect to pay accordingly. What if I went one step further and made it a completely organic restaurant? Would that be possible? Not just Reg but all the locals would huff and puff, but their days in the snug were limited anyway.
Upstairs in my quarters the phone rang. I decided to take the call. It wouldn’t do Reg any harm at all to wait. And I’d always wanted to try my hand at vegetarian cooking.
‘Beans on toast? I’d rather been hoping for one of your steaks,’ Nick said that evening as I poured him an extra-long G and T.
‘Do steaks and gastric ulcers mix?’
‘I saw the Boots pharmacist. She’s given me some wonder drug, the best you can get without prescription. I thought I’d test it out.’
‘Unless you want to risk the pickled onions in a ploughman’s, it’s beans on toast or a salad,’ I said. ‘Problems with my freezer,’ I added innocently
He held my gaze. I looked over his shoulder. If I started talking food supplies it might blow his cover. I assumed he’d had the sense he’d been born with and was taking my advice.
‘So how was work? Tough being a new boy, I should think.’
He nodded. ‘Not just the new boy. Pretty well the only boy. There are only five of us in the whole country.’
‘So you’re the cat that walks –’
‘Cat?’
Ah.
‘You know, that cat that walks by itself. Or were you thinking of another cat?’
He nodded. Fred Tregothnan erupted into the snug with a great swagger.
‘Tell you what, Nick,’ I muttered, real side of the mouth stuff, ‘come up to my flat and have a coffee before you go. Now, Fred, what can I get you on this foul evening?’
‘You know what I want,’ he said, loud enough to draw everyone’s attention to his pelvic thrusting movements. ‘What I always want, of course.’
‘Didn’t your mother teach you anything?’ I asked tartly. ‘I want doesn’t get, remember.’ But I had to sound as if I were joking: landladies aren’t supposed to tell their customers to go and take a running jump. I waited till Nick was preoccupied counting out change, and dropped my voice. ‘Mind you don’t try anything on with Lindi or young Lucy, Fred.’
‘Oh, they don’t worry about that!’
‘But I do. In Lucy’s case I’m in loco parentis and I owe them both an employer’s duty of care. A joke’s a joke, but you touch up either of them and you’ll answer to me. Your usual?’ I added, back at normal volume. ‘Now, I don’t think you’ve met our newcomer, Mr Thomas. He’s down here working in Taunton as a civil servant – but you mustn’t hold that against him!’
There: cue for a lot of jokes about things in triplicate and the rest of the rubbish. And a chance for me to back out gracefully. ‘Beans, was it, Mr Thomas, or that salad?’
‘So Reg Bulcombe didn’t offer you a lift back, then?’
Nick looked round my living room as if he’d arrived in heaven, as well he might, after that tip of a mobile home. I followed his eyes. The genuine beams, the colour-washed walls hung with small but good paintings, the oak furniture polished to a glow with elbow-grease and wax. The floorboards were wide, with cracks between them that would swallow pound coins without noticing, and mostly covered with the best rugs I could afford. Yes, it looked good. What was the point of having money if you didn’t use it? Only I knew how much money was left – but I had a lot of receipts, all giving proper provenance. If the receipts showed a good deal less than I’d actually paid, that suited me and the dealers, who’d never objected yet to a little cash in hand.
‘No.’ He looked at me seriously. ‘Did you expect him to?’
‘Don’t see why not. You could take it turn and turn about, drinking and driving.’
‘Makes sense. But I didn’t come from the campsite.’ He was about to add something but seemed to think better of it. After a false start, he continued, ‘They’re not exactly night howlers, are they? Pooping their party at nine-thirty!’
‘Their cows prefer to be milked at five-thirty,’ I said.
‘Of course. Not a lot of working farmers in Brum. You’ve got this looking lovely. Will you be doing the same with the downstairs?’
‘If I have my way I will. And I’ve got planning permission.’
‘From the authorities, but not the locals.’ He wasn’t going to hand out advice to me the way he had to Sue Clayton, was he?
‘I didn’t ask the locals. The amount they bring in wouldn’t keep a mouse in cheese for a week. They’ll be all right anyway. Provided a bit of fresh paint doesn’t kill them. You’ve not been out back yet?’
He snorted. ‘I’d rather —’
‘— piss in a hedge than use the privy. I don’t blame you. I hose it and I bleach it and I hose it some more, but it still stinks. Ordure of ages. So it’s coming down. The temporary replacement’s out there. See.’ I pulled back the curtain and pointed at a couple of Portaloos. ‘My bathroom’s across the corridor if you want it. I’ll make the coffee.’
‘Would you mind,’ he said awkward as a kid, ‘if I passed on the coffee. Water. I’d love a glass of water.’
‘Whisky in it?’
‘When the tablets have worked properly. But if you –’
‘I’ll stick to coffee, thanks.’ But on reflection I joined him in water. Ty Nant. I’d bought it for its sexy bottles. The glasses were elegant, too – I was buying different styles here and there to consider for the restaurant.
Goodness knows why I was going to so much trouble for the man who’d sent down my Tony. To prove I could, I suppose. No, it wasn’t a matter of gracious forgiveness. It was to prove I wasn’t just the widow of an ex-con who preferred to live on the cheap on a council estate in Brum’s Bartley Green. We could have afforded somewhere nice – we had a lovely apartment in Spain – but Tony was obsessive about what he called his roots. Though why he could have for one moment thought his roots were in Bartley Green when in real life his folk came from Milan to run a chippie, no one, not even himself, could have said. It was a mistake, of course. If we’d bought the sort of house I’d wanted, just down the road in an altogether nicer suburb called Harborne, the way property values had risen I could have been a millionaire by now.
‘Sit yourself down, copper, and tell me about this cat,’ I said, curling up in my favourite chair.
‘Cat?’
‘The one you wouldn’t let Reg Bulcombe pop in a bin.’
‘It was a paper bin! A clinical waste bin, I’d have shoved it in there without blinking. But I don’t know that I’d want bits of dead moggie in my morning paper. Seriously, it could have contaminated a whole batch.’
‘So what did you do with it? I take it all your garden tools are in store somewhere. Unless you planned to go prospecting in them thar hills.’
He got up and pulled the curtain again. It had stopped raining. The village doesn’t run to streetlights, so even though just a few stars shone between the hurtling clouds, you could see the loom of Exmoor in the middle distance.
