A Taste of Death Read online

  I just wanted it to be me. I was surprised by how depressing the thought of her with someone else was.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, despondently. I have a way with words.

  Naomi must have sensed what I was thinking,

  ‘It’s nothing like that, I’m having a Tarot reading. Would you like to come round – you sound a bit odd?’

  ‘I had a bit of a run-in with a couple of guys,’ I warned her, ‘I’m fine, but I’m a bit dinged about.’

  ‘Oh my God! Are you hurt? Come over now,’ she said, her voice was full of tender concern. ‘Anna’s only just got here, I can reschedule. What happened?’

  I gave her an abridged version of the events and told her I’d be over in a short while.

  I rather slowly pulled a pair of boots on and a clean coat. All my muscles ached. Bending forwards was particularly troublesome. It wasn’t just the beating I’d taken, I felt slow and heavy and ponderous, like lead had been attached to my arms and legs. Shock, I guess.

  I left all the lights in the kitchen blazing, I don’t know why really, to deter anyone from coming back I suppose. It was a kind of primitive response to being attacked.

  I locked the kitchen door with my key. That had still been in my trouser pocket when Francis had helped me back inside. I suppose they could have taken it out of my pocket, unlocked the door, gone in, then replaced it, but I doubted it. What had they been looking for and how had they got in? I went into the storeroom, took down the spare and hid it under some tins of tomatoes that were on a shelf. Just in case. Then I crossed the yard and opened the gate. I looked back, my eyes narrowed.

  An hour or so ago I was lying unconscious down there, near my kitchen door.

  Four attackers – Farson, Hat Man, definitely – but who were the two others? Maybe the other men I had seen in the Greyhound? But there was one detail that I did remember, and I knew that if I saw it again I would know the identity for sure of one of them.

  Five minutes later I was at Naomi’s gate. It seemed a lot longer. I was walking very slowly. At the outset, I kind of wished that I had Francis to help me across the common in case my legs gave way. But the cold night air was a great reviver and by the time I got to her place I was feeling considerably better. The painkillers I’d taken were kicking in.

  I rested a minute or so, looking at the path that led to her front door. Her Audi was parked outside the low wall in front of her house and next to it was a BMW convertible that I guessed belonged to her Tarot psychic.

  I looked at Whitfield’s house, dark and mournful under the stars. There were bunches of flowers outside his section of the wall that villagers had left. A few doors further down was Slattery’s. Had he been one of the men laying into me? I rather doubted it. Slattery wouldn’t be so dumb as to associate with an idiot like Farson.

  But someone had tipped them off as to when I had left the pub. Or had they just been waiting on the off-chance? Surely not. Someone had told them where I was earlier that evening.

  Who knew? Was it someone in the pub? Or someone closer to home?

  I looked again at the flowers, just shapes in the darkness. I gingerly touched my damaged head. Would I have got so many floral tributes if I’d died? If I had been hit just that little bit harder it could well have happened.

  Well, I was still alive and, I thought as I opened the gate, at least I’d be under the roof of a friend.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  ‘My God,’ she said, opening the front door, her eyes widening as she looked at my face, ‘you weren’t kidding, you look just awful. Come in.’

  She ushered me into the lounge. She was wearing skinny jeans and a T-shirt, her dark hair was loose. I was feeling slightly lightheaded now. Despite my injuries, I admired the way the denim clung to her, she had an exemplary bottom. As a trained chef I notice these quality points. Even if I can barely move.

  The living room, as always, smelled exotic with its heady incense. There was only one light burning, the atmosphere was close, intimate. Shadows filled the room, a low fire burned red in the hearth. There was another woman in the lounge, this had to be Anna, the Tarot reader. I sat down and Naomi said to me, ‘You must be in shock, I’ll go and make you some herbal tea.’ She disappeared off to the kitchen. My head hurt like hell.

  I turned my attention to Anna.

  She didn’t look like my idea of a Tarot reader. She was dressed more for a boardroom than a gypsy fairground tent. She had white hair, cut short, was wearing an expensive-looking jacket and an above the knee skirt and heels. She had a couple of jade bracelets on her wrists and pearls at her throat. If I’d been asked to guess her job I’d have gone for something like investment banking.

  Fortune telling must be well-paid; perhaps the spirits gave her hints about the stock exchange.

  I was sitting on the sofa, she was in a chair opposite and between us was the solid oak coffee table that Whitfield had fallen on to when I’d hit him. I wondered if there was some psychic lingering phenomena there from the dead builder.

  ‘I have a spirit here who would like the recipe for the celeriac remoulade …’

  On the table was a pack of old Tarot cards.

  ‘You look dreadful,’ she said, her eyes were piercing, which made me feel uncomfortable. ‘Do you know who did it?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. I touched my face gingerly. I was going to be panda-eyed in the morning.

  ‘Do you know why they did it?’

  Again I answered, ‘No.’

  For some reason these questions seemed eminently reasonable. Anna was one of those people with an effortless ability to command your attention.

  She nodded as if I had confirmed what she already knew.

  ‘I’ll do a reading for you,’ she said.

  I groaned mentally. I’m not keen on mumbo-jumbo like that. Naomi came in at that moment with my tea.

  ‘Valerian and peppermint,’ she announced, ‘I’ve sweetened it with honey. That’ll help you get over your shock.’

  It sounded dreadful.

  She looked at me closely.‘Shouldn’t you go and see a doctor? I’m happy to drive you to A&E.’

  Stoke Mandeville was the closest. Despite what I’d told Francis, I was tempted but the thought of being there for God-knows-how-long put me off.

  ‘No, it’s just cuts and bruises, I’m fine.’

  ‘As you like,’ she said, ‘here’s your tea.’ She handed me a mug of murky, steaming liquid. It was certainly pungent.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said politely. I like tea, I drink a lot of it, but I like PG Tips, occasionally a more sophisticated tea like Darjeeling or Earl Grey, but generally it’s PG Tips all the way. What I do not like is herbal tea. Or honey for that matter. I was beginning to regret accepting tea. I should have asked for Scotch.

  The tea smelled horrible.

  Anna caught my eye and smiled conspiratorially. It was as if she knew what was going on in my mind, but as a medium, so she should.

  Naomi said, ‘Look, I’m going upstairs to run you a bath and make a bed up in the spare room for you. You can stay here tonight.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘I really appreciate that.’

  Naomi turned to Anna. ‘Can you look after Ben while I’m upstairs, I don’t think he should be on his own.’

  ‘I’d be delighted,’ said Anna. Naomi turned and disappeared through the living room doorway, I heard her footsteps light on the staircase as she ran up it.

  Anna looked at me sympathetically.

  ‘I’m not a medium,’ she said. I sort of jumped uncomfortably. How did she know what I’d been thinking? ‘And I’m not telepathic and I don’t know how the cards work.’ She looked me in the eye. ‘But when I see someone in need of guidance, I know that I should try to help them. And you look like a man in need of guidance.’

  ‘Do I?’ I asked.

  She laughed. ‘Have you looked in a mirror lately!’

  I smiled sheepishly. ‘Touché!’

  ‘Naomi tells me that you are trying to
find out the truth behind her ex-husband’s death.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Maybe the cards will help,’ said Anna. ‘I can see you’re a sceptic – no, don’t apologise, they work better for non-believers for some reason, and don’t say “no”. Naomi’s already paid me for a reading and she’s just cancelled, so you’re in luck.’

  ‘Am I?’ I said.

  ‘Well, maybe not,’ she conceded, ‘you might not hear what you want to hear … but we may as well do something while we wait for Naomi to finish upstairs.’

  I shifted in my seat.

  ‘You could always reimburse her,’ I suggested.

  Anna looked at me. ‘I’m not a charity, Ben. The service on my BMW is due, and as a psychic I predict it’s going to cost an arm and a leg and I need the money. Now, let’s begin.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  She handed me the pack and, as I took them, the cards felt strangely warm. ‘Shuffle, please.’ Automatically I did so. ‘But if you did ask me how the cards work,’ she continued, ‘I’d say that they act more as a guide to what you should be thinking about. They don’t predict the future directly – they won’t say, for example, you’ll be run over by a bus tomorrow but they will say, pay attention when crossing the road, be careful of red objects.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I took a sip of tea and grimaced. It tasted much worse than it smelled, which was quite an achievement.

  I laid out the cards as Anna instructed, face down, three rows of three. I was beginning to get interested despite my scepticism. The sofa was comfortable, the room was soothing in its semi-darkness and I felt warm and protected by these two female presences, Anna down here, Naomi upstairs, like they were guardian angels. The fire was burning low and glowing in the grate.

  ‘Past, present and future,’ she said, cheerfully, ‘now, let’s have a look at the past, turn the first three over.’

  I did so and I looked at my cards – the ancient, evocative pictures calling down the ages: a youth, walking towards a canyon; a woman judge holding a scales and a sword; another woman, seated. In the warm darkness of the room, the cards almost seemed to come alive, their colours burned with mystery. I felt a sense of dizziness, of falling, but that could have been from the beating I’d just suffered.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Anna, looking at the images, ‘well, here—’ she tapped the card with a fingernail ‘—we have the Blind Fool, walking to his doom, then—’ me presumably, I thought ‘—this here is Justice.’ She looked at me, her gaze was disconcertingly shrewd.

  ‘So, we’ve all done dumb things in our past but you’ve done something spectacularly stupid and paid a high price for it. Justifiably so, according to the cards, although you may think differently.’

  I immediately thought of the fight in London. The fight that had landed me in prison.

  ‘He …’ I was going to say, ‘started it’ but that wasn’t the point. ‘An hysterically violent overreaction’ was the Judge’s summing up, ‘you are a menace to the public.’ I was going to bite my tongue but I didn’t need to, she did it for me.

  ‘I don’t need to know, this isn’t for my benefit,’ she added, shutting down any attempt at self-justification.

  I nodded, that was fair enough. Despite my initial scepticism I was beginning to get drawn in to Anna’s narrative, it was all ringing true.

  She tapped the third card. ‘This is interesting. The High Priestess. She can mean many things, but she guards the Door to the Hidden Sanctuary—’ she looked at me ‘—in the past. I don’t care how many or how few women there were in your life—’ A kind of beauty parade of former lovers flickered through my mind. The ones from my teenage years would be my age now, some older, but to me they were still preserved for ever unchanged in my memory, frozen in time, untouched by the passing years. I wasn’t one for Facebook or keeping in touch with people.

  Anna carried on. ‘There is still one, a past love, a woman you were deeply involved with, who reaches to you now, or will somehow affect your destiny. Her face, her identity, is hidden to you at present, but you may come to know her in the fullness of time.’

  I thought of Claudia. Her unannounced visit to the Old Forge Café. Was it her that the card referenced? She had certainly reached out to me but what on earth could it mean that she was going to affect my destiny?

  ‘Now, moving on to today, the present, next three cards …’

  I repeated the performance, Anna touched them gently, one by one.

  ‘The Emperor, or the Stone Cube – well, this means the realisation of a dream in solid form.’

  I nodded. It probably meant the Old Forge Café.

  Anna moved on. ‘This one—’ she indicated the middle card ‘— the Hierophant or Master of the Secrets. Just as the woman who you don’t know has the key to your future, so this man, powerful, probably rich since that’s how we define power these days, more’s the pity, he controls your present.’

  I nodded, but I couldn’t think of anyone. None of my friends are rich, none of my enemies either, come to that.

  Then the last card of the present, the Hanged Man. He was hanging by one foot, suspended from a wooden frame made of leafy tree branches. The free leg had its knee bent and the foot rested on the other knee to form an inverted figure four. It was a deeply sinister card, I thought, it’s bound to be allegorical or deceiving – though it’s probably not as bad as it looks.

  Anna regarded me. It was more or less the same look that my solicitor had had before my trial when he warned me I was probably going to be sent to prison.

  ‘I’m afraid you are facing a considerable personal danger – from whom I can’t say, but you are.’ She continued, ‘What you experienced tonight is just a foretaste. You really will have to be very careful, Ben Hunter. I don’t want to be attending your funeral.’

  I grimaced. I had forgotten by now that I didn’t believe in Tarot readings, all of this made total sense and was extremely compelling. I didn’t want to be attending my funeral either. I wanted to move on.

  ‘And the future?’

  Anna looked at me. ‘Ready?’

  I took a deep breath and turned the card over.

  ‘Ready,’ I said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I was lying in Naomi’s bath while she massaged my neck gently. She had run the water for me and then told me to strip off and get in. I had been taken aback, surprised, excited, hopeful (maybe she’d join me!), all sorts of things had run through my mind. In my defence, I think I was still shaken up after my beating.

  ‘Don’t get excited,’ she said, smiling. ‘I want to see the damage and I’ll give you a massage to help the swelling and the tension.’

  I must have looked doubtful.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘But I’ll be naked …’ I was a bit confused by the whole bath thing. What did it mean?

  ‘Well, yes,’ she frowned, ‘you can’t get in a bath with your clothes on.’

  ‘I might be embarrassed,’ I said. My God, I thought, I’m so prudish.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘I’ve seen it all before, Ben.’

  So, here I was naked with Naomi at last, but not in the way I had envisaged.

  I had taken my clothes off and both of us examined my body with interest. There were angry red marks up and down the length of my body that would soon turn into bruises.

  ‘So who were they?’ she asked as I leaned forward in the hot, soapy water while her fingers worked my trapezius muscles.

  ‘I assume it was Eamonn Farson, Hat Man, the pub landlord and Mr AN Other,’ I said, ‘warning me off looking at Arcadia Developments.’

  ‘But surely it’s all above board? I mean, the Arcadia deal.’ Her strong fingers dug deep into the muscle groups. It was painful, maybe it was doing me good? ‘The council wouldn’t let them go through with it otherwise, this is Buckinghamshire, South Bucks at that, not …’ She searched for an example of somewhere famously corrupt
. ‘Not Sicily.’

  ‘Is it?’ I said, I was dubious. ‘They say prison is a good school and I learned a few surprising things in there. There are a lot of corrupt public officials, police, customs officials, screws, lawyers and the same will apply in the council planning department. The other thing I learned is that a lot of crime is not some super-duper Machiavellian, fiendishly clever plot – it’s usually quite straightforward, you just have to have the balls to do it, and the optimism that you’ll get away with it. A lot of criminals I met are really thick. Perhaps I went to a crappy prison.’

  Her strong fingers continued to work my muscles.

  ‘Maybe if I’d gone to a better prison I’d have met a better class of criminal.’

  I slid down in the water.

  ‘Don’t put your head under, you’ll open that cut,’ warned Naomi. I did as she suggested.

  ‘I think,’ I continued, ‘that when I get that land report back, we’ll find out that it was owned by a consortium including my friends from Chandler’s Ford. We’ll discover that they’ve got some dodgy financial backing and that your ex was part and parcel of it. I think too that Luke Montfort was bribed to grant them planning permission.’

  ‘Will you be able to prove any of this?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Can you pass the exfoliating mango body rub? I’ve developed a taste for it.’

  She smiled and did so.

  I carried on. ‘I think Montfort is the weakest link. I bet Farson’s been inside and knows the ropes, Hat Man will clam up and the pub landlord will phone a lawyer. But Montfort has got too much to lose and he doesn’t look very brave. I shall lean on him.’

  ‘So you think they killed Dave?’ Naomi had moved to the end of the bath (it was free standing! I’d only ever seen that sort of thing in TV adverts or in the style section of magazines) and was massaging my feet.

  ‘Stop it,’ I said, ‘that tickles!’