A Taste of Death Read online

  In fact, I was beginning to think quite a bit about Slattery. He seemed very zealous when it came to investigating me and very lethargic when it came to anyone else.

  As I walked up to the Greyhound in the darkness, I noticed that, like Hampden Green, there were no streetlights in Chandler’s Ford; it struck me at how surprisingly insular the villages round here could be. We were probably only about thirty or forty miles from where I had lived in North London, but out here in the Chilterns at times was like being in the middle of nowhere. There was a certain crazed and, to my mind, utterly misplaced, pride in this insularity too from the local populace.

  In the Three Bells I had seen two men nearly come to blows over who was more local. One, aged twenty-three, had said he’d lived in the village all his life, i.e., twenty-three years, the other, aged forty, had pointed out he’d lived here thirty years, thus making him seven years more local. Being ‘local’ was worn like a badge of honour. I knew their respective ages because they were central to the (very loud) drunken argument. The other had said, maybe, but you weren’t born here, you grew up for ten years in Yarlsdene, and that’s five miles away. Therefore, you are obviously a foreigner.

  Like angels dancing on pinheads. Who cared? They did, and it could be funny, and it could be scary. Like Morris Men are. They may look ridiculous, but what they’re doing is very dark indeed. But that’s the countryside for you. The thing was, not so many people lived in Chandler’s Ford, but I would bet a week’s takings that, even if they knew who had run Harding over, they’d rally round, clam up and say nothing.

  Local murders for local people.

  I reached the pub and looked in the dirty window. Sure enough, there was Farson and Hat Man propping up the bar. The latter was wearing a trilby tonight, as his cowboy-style hat floated along down the Bourne somewhere. I’d looked that up too when I was on Google. Seemingly it disappeared into a sinkhole some five miles away. I wondered if his hat had gone too, disappearing with the waters down into the bowels of the earth. Like the Styx.

  A hat for Charon.

  I hoped so.

  They were with another two ageing, seedy macho men. What a crummy clientele the Greyhound had! One wearing a cracked faux-leather jacket and slicked-back Brylcreemed hair, improbably black, and another, tall and skinny with bottle thick glasses. These two were about fifty. There were no women in the pub, unsurprisingly. They were playing some sort of card game with the landlord that involved a lot of shouting, waving of arms and banging the cards down.

  Probably not contract bridge then, nothing intellectually more complex than Happy Families. The four of them reminded me of some of the people I’d met in prison, useless lowlifes who were perpetually on the lookout for people they could intimidate.

  ‘Have you got Mr Bun the Baker?’ I could imagine them saying to each other. I could easily believe any of them capable of running an OAP over. They would probably find it funny. I was glad I’d broken Farson’s nose, I just wish I’d hit him a few more times.

  When it came to Whitfield’s death I wasn’t so sure about their role. For a start, I didn’t think any of this lot seemed man enough to do it. I’d hit Whitfield, but I knew what I was doing and Whitfield was drunk, and confused; angry, yes, but his heart hadn’t really been in it. He could have taken any two of this lot on and won handsomely. Let’s not forget too he was armed when he died and I couldn’t see him going gently into that good night. For Whitfield to have been killed with his own gun implied that whoever was with him had Whitfield’s trust. None of this lot would have had that. He wouldn’t have passed Farson or Hat Man a loaded shotgun.

  Slattery, though … or the Earl whose land he had been on when he died.

  Also, Whitfield’s killer had the ability to run athletically. I must have played the scene over and over again in my mind like a GIF on Twitter. Over and over again, on a loop in my brain.

  Like now.

  The body lying there, the field, the horses in the far corner, the stile, and in the distance the figure running away with speed and grace.

  Could the Earl have done it? He was probably on performance-enhancing drugs for his Eastern European floozies – maybe he’d taken a handful of amphetamines that fateful morning?

  I crouched outside impotently in the darkness wondering what to do. So far I had ascertained that Farson knew some unpleasant-looking people, which was hardly a breakthrough.

  I think when I left Hampden Green I had some vague idea of following him back to his home and finding his car. It was now obvious to me that was going to be pretty impossible. I might have been able to tail him down a motorway but not along a single-track road with passing places. Talk about obvious.

  I scratched my head and then was forced to move fairly quickly for cover as I saw the headlights of a car approaching the pub. I ran across the strip of car park and crouched behind the three wheelie bins that stood there. The bins were overflowing and stank to high heaven. They were also very close to the wall and I was jammed between their metal and its rough brick. The bins weren’t just overflowing with refuse, dirty smelly water was running off them and on to me. It was foul. Like a hideous shower. The landlord was obviously not in the habit of washing them out very often and the smell of rotting vegetables with an overlay of off-fish was so strong you could almost touch it. I wondered when they were last emptied as bin juice effluvia trickled off my head and down my neck. I guessed the landlord was the kind of guy who would almost certainly be having a dispute with the garbage company.

  I saw the headlights wash over them, and heard the loud throbbing of a powerful engine. The car stopped and the door opened and closed with a solid-sounding thunk. I peered round my bin.

  I recognised the car immediately, it was a Maserati.

  I also recognised the man who was driving the car and my eyes widened in surprise.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘So, what do you think the Earl was doing there?’ asked Naomi. She had kindly lent me her bathroom after I had dropped her car back. I could see her nose wrinkling from the stench that I’d imported back from the Greyhound’s car park.

  I was wearing one of her towelling dressing gowns. Naomi’s bathroom was wonderful, a state- of-the-art shower, a big, deep bath, gleaming marble surfaces, heated towel rails and full of pots and tubs and bottles of the indulgent things that women buy to wash themselves.

  I wasn’t complaining. All I had in my shower was some shampoo. It was also emphatically not a ‘power shower’. Lukewarm water dribbled reluctantly out of it and the plastic curtains that hung down clammily on a rail on those sad white plastic rings smelled of damp plastic and mould. There are few things in life more depressing than an old-fashioned crappy shower, and I speak from a lifetime’s experience of depressing events.

  Not having much hair to distract it, my shampoo doubled as body wash, or ‘soap’ as I liked to think of it. So I had spent a happy half hour in Naomi’s enormous bath scrubbing myself with exfoliating mango body lotion (a kind of gritty fruity sludge) getting the smell of the Greyhound’s bins off me.

  ‘I don’t know, it could be something as innocent as simply enjoying the company of Farson and his friends for the evening, but why would anyone want to do that?’

  We were now sitting in her lounge while my clothes that she’d washed for me whirled around in her dryer. I was in the armchair, Naomi was on the sofa. I thought to myself what a kind woman she was. Not many people had let me use their bathrooms and did my laundry for me. She poured herself another glass of Sancerre.

  ‘So what do you think is happening? Would you like some of this?’ She indicated the bottle.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said, ‘when I get back to the restaurant I’ve got quite a lot of work to do. I’ve been given the green light to reopen. It’s going to take me about eight hours to get all the prep ready.’

  I looked at the clock on the wall: eight p.m. My heart sank. I thought, I’ll work till two in the morning and get up at seven to finish off wha
t’s left, that should do it. Francis was in at ten, Jess at eleven and she’d get the restaurant set up.

  I so didn’t want to have to go back to work. I was warm, comfortable and enjoying Naomi’s company. She was wearing a white baggy jumper and black leggings. Her dark eyes looked enormous in her small face, she looked incredibly sweet and slightly solemn. Her fingernails were painted red. I longed to hold her, bury my face in her long, dark hair.

  Every now and then I could hear the percussive rattle of the buttons on my trousers against the drum of the dryer as they whirled around. It was a surprisingly soothing sound, I guess it was the sound of domesticity, something I hadn’t known since Claudia and I had split up.

  It reminded me of what I had been missing.

  A life shared.

  ‘What do I think’s happening?’ I said. ‘I think that there’s something very fishy about that housing development and I think Paul Harding was killed because of it and I think your ex probably was too.’

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’ she asked.

  I was beginning to get very fond of Naomi and not just because earlier that day she’d phoned the Hobart stockist and bought me the oven of my dreams.

  When she had first asked me to look into Whitfield’s death, I had been reluctant despite the oven as payment. But I was actually beginning to, not exactly enjoy it, but become fascinated by what was happening, now I had lifted the lid on what looked like a criminal conspiracy. I felt compelled to go on. I had got so far, I really wanted to know the truth so strongly I surprised myself. I answered her question.

  ‘When the Land Registry get back in touch with me then I’ll know more. At least I’ll know who owns the land, but I have a horrible feeling that basically any enquiry is eventually going to come up against DI Slattery.’

  ‘What difference does it make whose fields they are?’ She looked puzzled.

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ I replied, ‘but if Dave’s death—’ in deference to Naomi I used his forename ‘—has anything to do with the Arcadia development it probably is relevant.’

  ‘It’s strange,’ she said ‘that the dead man, Paul Harding, should have that quotation on his tombstone; it’s like someone is gloating.’

  ‘Or boasting, or warning,’ I said, ‘it means “I too am in Arcadia” – it’s some sort of classical reference. It’s from a famous painting. Arcadia is some kind of countryside heaven. The other thing I was wondering, is, if I do discover anything concrete, what do you want me to do about it: tell the police?’

  I wasn’t looking forward to going to Thames Valley CID. They’d probably refer me to Slattery.

  ‘I just want you to keep me informed about everything that you’re doing,’ said Naomi. ‘I think that you’ve done brilliantly so far.’ She frowned. ‘I think we’ll keep the police out of it just for now, I’ve got a funny feeling about Slattery … I heard stuff about him from Dave occasionally. Rumours … I think he’s on the take, a dirty cop.’

  She drank some more and changed the subject. ‘You’re not really going to start work now, are you? Look at the time.’

  I was only too aware of the time.

  ‘I have to. I’m open tomorrow, I need to do the prep. I lost quite a bit of money being closed.’

  ‘Well,’ she pointed out, ‘you’ve saved on the cost of a shower, plus shower gel.’

  ‘And I smell of mango. That’s always a bonus.’

  She laughed. She had excellent teeth.

  ‘That’s true, I can smell you from here.’ She swung her legs up on the sofa beside her and pushed a hand through her hair. She looked at me with an expression in her eyes that I couldn’t really understand. I wanted to tell her how attractive I found her, but equally I didn’t want to break the spell of happy togetherness that we were sharing. I didn’t know what to do.

  ‘It’s often paired with lime …’ I said.

  ‘What is?’ She looked confused.

  ‘Mango,’ I said.

  She rested her chin on her hand and looked up at my face,

  ‘Is it really?’ she said politely.

  ‘Mango also goes well with scallops, it’s because of the citrus overtones,’ I added, in desperation. I really was losing the conversational thread. I don’t know a great deal about the art of seduction but babbling on about food was probably a bad idea.

  Perhaps I should try to go to bed with the head chef of the King’s Head, Graeme Strickland – we’d have so much more in common. I was going to say something insightful about prawns but sanity prevailed. A cavernous silence fell on the room.

  ‘The dryer’s stopped,’ I said, ‘I’d better get dressed and go.’

  I was hoping she’d say, ‘no, don’t go’ or words to that effect. ‘Please stay’ would have been good.

  Instead, ‘I’ll go and get them for you.’

  In some ways I was relieved. I really liked Naomi and I didn’t want to risk our relationship. I felt it was so delicate. If I made a pass at her and was rejected, it would be ‘awkie’ as Jess would say. If we ended up having a relationship would that jeopardise our friendship, or deepen it?

  Was I even ready for a relationship with someone – especially after the end of the last one – or was I happier on my own? Seeing Claudia again had rocked me more than I would have thought possible. God alone knew what I should be doing. I had experienced a lot of disappointment in my love life, such as it was, I didn’t want to add to it.

  Oh well, I thought, that’s enough introspection. I can always make some chocolate éclairs. Choux pastry will always mend a broken heart.

  And like choux pastry my hopes had reached dropping consistency.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Monday, 25 January

  The next couple of days I devoted to getting the Old Forge Café back on track after my enforced closure. Or sublimating my emotional frustration and growing desire for Naomi through cooking. One and the same.

  I made choux pastry, I made éclairs. I remade my passionfruit mousse and wondered how best to lure Luke Montfort over to the restaurant. My plan – to stupefy him with mousse and then get him to reveal the secrets of the Arcadia development – seemed optimistic to say the least, maybe even far-fetched.

  It might not have been a great plan, but it was, undeniably, a plan.

  I phoned up the council, got through to the planning department and then a female voice asked who I wanted to speak to. I gave Montfort’s name and then my own.

  He took the call almost immediately, his voice sounded slightly suspicious. I wondered if he knew Farson and Hat Man or if they were simply sidekicks of Whitfield and whoever else made up Arcadia. One thing was for certain, Farson was not the brains behind it. I doubted if Farson had any. I couldn’t see him killing Whitfield, but I could easily imagine him setting fire to things, vandalising a car and even taking photos.

  I had added Farson and Hat Man to my growing suspect list together with the Greyhound’s landlord. I put a circle around them and a line linking them to Montfort with a question mark. If they were connected I wondered if Farson had informed him of the incident outside the pub. Or worse, Slattery. Was the DI – who must be coming up for retirement age – part of the cabal that was Arcadia? Was he hatching plans to supplement his police pension? They had all grown up together in the same village as well. It made for plausibly cosy connections.

  The scenario as I saw it so far was as follows.

  Arcadia was a development consortium led by Dave Whitfield and others, as yet unknown. They had obtained land and managed to get planning permission despite the fact that (a) it was greenbelt and (b) prone to flooding. Whitfield had a contact in the local planning department, viz. Luke Montfort, and already stood accused of bribing said official. The conspirators had fallen out. Whitfield had been harassed, the arson, the paint, the photo all designed to keep him in line. Whitfield had been murdered because he had finally, irrevocably, fallen out with his partner(s). They were obviously prepared to kill because they had
already murdered a local campaigner who might have blocked their plans and Whitfield had been nervous enough to want to hire me to protect him.

  That all seemed perfectly plausible to me.

  ‘Hi, Ben, how can I help you?’ said the voice down the phone. He sounded jolly, but in a strained kind of way.

  ‘Hi, Paul, I remember you saying that you were a fan of mousse.’

  There was a pause and then a relieved chuckle. That’s one of the good things about food, it’s reassuring.

  ‘Well,’ I continued, ‘I’ve just made the most fantastic passionfruit mousse – light, amazingly flavoured and yours for free if you and a companion spend more than ten pounds between you at the Old Forge Café.’

  I could sense his smile down the line.

  ‘Do you phone up all your potential customers individually?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘only the important ones who may have control over catering budgets for work-based events or who may be in the habit of meeting the movers and shakers in South Bucks.’

  I felt that this combination of flattery with a slightly implication of corruption would appeal to Montfort. We’re all men of the world together, kind of thing. And so it proved.

  ‘As it happens, I am being taken to lunch tomorrow and I will suggest your place.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said politely, ‘see you then.’

  He hung up and so did I. Bingo, I thought.

  I finished making a chicken liver parfait and, during service, tried Francis out on starters. I had taken photos of how they should look when finished and had had them printed out at the local Boots’ in Byfield. There were now ten photos of the cold starters and sandwiches with a checklist which I fixed on to the tiled surface above where the starter ingredients were kept.

  All Francis had to do was look at the picture, maybe read the description – a spec sheet as it’s known – to make sure everything was there that should be there, and off we go, job done.

  Foolproof.