A Taste of Death Read online

  This was nothing to do with a break-in. This was DI Slattery showing me who was boss, who ran Hampden Green. Satisfied with himself, he took his wallet out and handed me his card.

  ‘I’ll see you around,’ he said, as he stood up to leave

  It was a threat rather than a promise.

  I wondered what I’d done to upset him.

  I guess I wasn’t local.

  CHAPTER TWO

  My next visitor was altogether more charming than the forces of law and order. It was only by chance that I actually heard her. I was making a coffee and walnut cake and had to go back into the restaurant to make an espresso that I was going to use for flavouring. It was then that I saw her through the glass of the front door. She waved at me to get my attention. I went over and let her in.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘can I help you?’

  I was talking to a girl who I guessed was in her late teens, early twenties, who had been trying without success to ring the bell by the restaurant door. I say ‘guessed’ because she was mainly concealed by a large umbrella that the heavy rain was bouncing off. It was ten o’clock in the morning but almost dark under the cloudy, black sky.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’ve been ringing the bell …’

  Another thing that didn’t work, thank you, Mrs Cope, I thought. I’ll add it to the list.

  ‘It’s temperamental,’ I lied, which sounded better somehow than ‘broken’. ‘Broken’ was unprofessional, defeatist.

  ‘I’ve come about the job.’

  ‘Do come in,’ I said, ushering her inside. I took the umbrella from her and her coat, sodden and heavy from the hideous weather.

  ‘Have a seat …’

  We both sat down and weighed each other up. I had put an A board outside saying that I needed waiting staff. I was amazed that the writing hadn’t been washed away. The marker pen for A boards was supposed to be weatherproof to a degree but it must have been undergoing a pretty severe test out there. I hadn’t been too confident that I would get any takers. There was not a lot of footfall in the village and the rain made people concentrate on the road rather than signs outside restaurants.

  ‘I’m Jessica, by the way, Jessica Turner, but people call me Jess.’

  ‘I’m Ben Hunter, chef proprietor.’ I smiled at how pompous that sounded. It was true, it was an accurate description of my job, but it sounded quite grandiose. You could be chef proprietor of a burger van when you think about it.

  Jessica Turner was about five feet five with dark curly hair, large brown eyes and an attractive, lively face. She was well spoken and was dressed down in a baggy jumper, jeans and Cuban-heeled boots. She looked intelligent and good-humoured.

  I explained my plans for the restaurant, she listened attentively and asked a couple of sensible questions.

  I asked Jess about herself. She was a second-year student at Warwick University studying Computer Science. I nodded. I was impressed. I could use Windows and e-mail but that was about it. She’d be able to help me with Excel in between serving customers. And maybe a website. That’d come in handy. I could write a menu, but I couldn’t write HTML. Did she have waitressing experience? Yes, she did.

  ‘What kind of food are you going to do?’ she asked.

  I made her a coffee and explained not only the menu, but its rationale. I had put together a simple menu with a few clever touches. It was a café menu, nothing too fancy or too expensive.

  So, on the menu as well as restaurant dishes there were old warhorses like caramelised red onion and steak baguette. There was the inescapable ploughman’s (we were in the country, there were fields), but made with good cheese, home-made pickled red cabbage and piccalilli. I had added plenty of things that would not go off – I couldn’t afford the luxury of waste – so there were quite a few cutesy preserves and frozen desserts, parfaits, semifreddo and sorbets that would last and not have to get binned if unsold. Occasionally I’d add mysterious touches, compressed pineapple, a potato foam on the soup, that kind of thing. Stuff like that was old hat in London but still novel out here. I was a one-man band, so it couldn’t be too adventurous; I didn’t have the luxury of time, but it was good, it was honest and it represented reasonable value for money.

  It was more like I was pitching for a job than she was, but I guess she was about the first person I’d had a chance to talk to about it.

  ‘That all sounds very interesting,’ she said. And the strange thing was, she sounded like she meant it.

  The job was hers.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s only minimum wage, but you get tips, which you share with the kitchen staff.’

  She nodded. ‘How many kitchen staff are there?’ she asked.

  ‘None, other than me. But I don’t get tips, since I’m the owner, so currently they’re all yours. But you will have to help with the washing up.’

  She smiled. ‘I can wash up, Ben.’

  She had a great smile. I think she was amused by the shoestring nature of the business. We agreed that she could start the following day.

  ‘So I guess I’d better take my sign down then,’ I said.

  She looked puzzled.

  ‘What sign?’

  ‘The A board.’

  ‘I didn’t see the A board sign.’ She looked confused, as did I.

  ‘Then how did you know I needed a waitress?’

  Her face cleared. ‘Oh, that. Well, someone told me last night.’

  ‘But I hadn’t put a sign up last night.’

  She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Oh, Ben, you’re not from here. This is a village, everybody knows everything about everyone else’s business. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it in the end.’

  We shook hands and I watched her back disappearing across the green as she trudged home through the rain.

  I thought about what she had said. I suppose I thought it was quite sweet that everyone knew what everyone else was doing without Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter or other social media.

  After all, it was a pleasant, friendly little village. What could go wrong?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Friday, 8 January

  The following day, twenty-four hours after DI Slattery’s visit and Jess’s hiring, there was the arson attack.

  Coincidentally fire, in the form of smoke, had gone into what I was cooking at the time. I had just made and served a customer called Dave Whitfield, local builder/property developer, a smoked venison sandwich on rye with a small garnish of curly endive, beetroot and cornichons.

  It would be fair to say that Whitfield was not shaping up to be one of my favourite customers.

  Jess walked in as Whitfield started being Whitfield. I had met him briefly a couple of days ago in the local pub. I hadn’t been overly impressed with his personality then, and my opinion of him was getting progressively lower. Jess gave me a sympathetic glance as she passed by, heading for the kitchen to change into her apron.

  ‘What’s that?’ He pointed aggressively at the garnish. Most things about Whitfield were aggressive, his mannerisms, his bald (aggressively so) shaved head, his tattoos, visible on his arms and flowing up his neck, lots of red and blue and green (bright, vivid colours, no pastels for Dave), his general demeanour.

  I explained. How it would enhance his eating experience, how the flavours were cunningly paired, how the vinegar that the small cucumber (which is what a cornichon is) was pickled in would cut through the richness of the meat. And didn’t it look good! He was having none of it.

  ‘Bollocks to that,’ he remarked judiciously. ‘No offence, mate, but when I want crap on my plate I’ll ask for it, OK?’

  Idiot, I thought. I gritted my teeth, shrugged and fetched a plate, and deftly scraped off the offending items with the blade of a knife. For a mad moment I would willingly have plunged it into him.

  Actually, I’d have changed instruments first.

  I was using the back of my long, broad-bladed chef’s knife to clean the plate. For stabbing Whitfield to death I’d have gone
for a long, thin but sturdy boning knife. It would have slid in much more easily.

  As my old head chef used to say, ‘Always choose the right tool for the right job.’

  The question of what is right and not right, a perennial problem. They say that the customer is always right. Not in the world of good food. There, the customer doesn’t know best, the customer is entitled to their opinion, but that’s all they’re entitled to. Not to demand changes to the menu. I’m quoting a chef I once knew; well, it was OK for him, he had the luxury of fame and money. I had neither. I did what I was told. I felt belittled, sad and dirty, complicit in Whitfield’s vandalism of my food.

  The sandwich sat forlornly on the plate, uncomfortably naked like a middle-aged man on a nudist beach. Like a nude Dave Whitfield in a non-functioning jacuzzi.

  He switched his baleful attention from me and the food to jabbing messages into the keyboard of his phone.

  Tranquillity, I thought to myself, that’s what is needed.

  I went back to the kitchen and did some Qi Gong breathing exercises and felt calmer. In and out, breathe in the energy of the universe. Zhan Zhuangs they’re called, there are five of them in all, well, five that I know about. Each one has a specific arm movement to maximise Chi. In and out, breathe in the energy of the universe, feel the Tao.

  Jess walked in with an order in her hand while I was doing Number Five, standing in horse-riding stance, my arms bent at the elbows at forty-five degrees, my hands forming a kind of triangle.

  ‘Cheque on … are you OK?’ she asked nervously. I suppose I must have looked very odd, possibly slightly insane. I was facing the stove and my fingers were framing the stainless steel of the extractor fan hood, as though I were worshipping it.

  ‘Yes, Jess,’ I explained, ‘I’m just channelling the energy of the universe, please carry on …’

  ‘Well, that’s all right then … Just so long as you’re OK. Cheque on, one steak baguette, one minestrone soup with parmesan and rosemary focaccia … Are you sure you’re OK?’

  I finished what I was doing, I felt a lot better for it. I put a frying pan on the stove and took a rump steak from my fridge and a tub of pre-cooked caramelised red onion. As I seasoned the meat I said, ‘Nothing like breathing into your Dan-Tian, Jess, all that Chi energy.’

  ‘Yes, oh wise one,’ she said in a mocking voice. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘That would be nice, thank you.’ I watched as she disappeared back into the restaurant. She was a damn good waitress.

  In general, I had reason to be happy. Business was picking up. I had just finished dealing with a couple of tables of elderly people, contentedly munching their way through quiche, soup, sandwiches and assorted cakes. I had also served five well-heeled ladies who lunch. They are the kind of customer that I liked: tough, confident women in their mid-fifties to whom I, a sprightly forty-five, was a kind of babe. One of them had been shamelessly flirting with me, a situation I was happy to accept.

  At twenty to thirty covers a day, as we refer in the trade to the number of meals ordered, I could break even and then I could eject Whitfield who I had learned, it was hardly a surprise, was pretty much universally locally detested.

  In the kitchen I had asked Jess about him. ‘Who is that awful man Dave Whitfield?’

  She rolled her eyes at the mention of his name. ‘Dave Whitfield, he’s local, he’s a pain in the arse.’ She was local too, but otherwise the polar opposite of Whitfield.

  She obviously couldn’t stand Whitfield. Then she explained something that had puzzled me about the village green.

  ‘You know the houses on the other side of the green, opposite here?’

  I nodded. There were several houses there (including DI Slattery’s, of course) overlooking the common. (The green was alive with notices: No parking anywhere on the common! Dog owners, Pick it up! No littering! Hampden Green was big on signage.)

  She continued, ‘You know the one with the kind of blue Perspex tower that’s illuminated?’

  Again I nodded. It was like a miniature version of the Shard in London in someone’s front garden. It must have been nearly three metres tall. This house cast an eerie blue light over the green at night. It was quite disconcerting, the way it glowed.

  ‘That’s Whitfield’s house,’ she said.

  It all made sense. I had been wondering what kind of man would have a monstrosity like that in his garden. Well, here was the answer – it was Whitfield’s plastic tower, his turquoise aura. His own personal advert for his construction business. The letters D.W. were etched into it for all to see. Now I knew what they stood for.

  ‘How on earth did he get planning permission?’ I asked. Planning was a sore point. My window frames were rotten (thank you Mrs Cope!) and needed replacing. They were listed, though, and this added insanely to the cost. The point was any form of deviation from the established was fraught with difficulty and had to be ‘in keeping with the village’. You couldn’t just put any old window in, it had to be identical. And not just looking the same, the material had to be an exact match. God alone knows how Whitfield had managed to get his huge, glowing pillar through the council planning department. It certainly was not ‘in keeping with the village’ in any way, shape or form.

  Jessica said darkly, ‘That’s the question everyone here asked. Let’s just say, money talks.’

  There was a small window in the kitchen that overlooked the green. I could see a dark cloud rising from somewhere. I walked up to the window and Jess followed me, curious to see what had attracted my attention. Right now, Whitfield’s tower, clearly visible, a Perspex testament to what money and no taste can do, wasn’t talking but it was certainly communicating. In smoke signals. It was emitting a huge black column of the stuff. Not just smoke, big yellow flames licked upwards. It was very dramatic, like an illustration I had in my children’s Bible when I was very young. A fiery pillar. Jessica and I stared at it in fascination. At first I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.

  ‘Is that his …’ I started to say.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jessica. She had a triumphant smile on her lips as if she had been somehow responsible and was delighted with the way that things were going.

  We both stared at each other, Jess happily, me perplexed, and then I quickly went to the door to go into the restaurant to tell him. I reached the entrance. Whitfield was sitting there with his back to the window, oblivious to the towering inferno in his front garden, scowling at his phone.

  I made a motion forward towards Whitfield, to warn him, and Jess grabbed my jacket.

  ‘Don’t tell him,’ she urged, sotto voce, ‘let it burn!’

  She dragged me back into the kitchen.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be calling 999?’ I said.

  ‘God, no. Someone will probably call them but I don’t see why it should be us. He made a really crap job of my uncle’s conservatory. Hopefully the fire will take his house with it.’ She scowled at Whitfield who was visible through the partially open door. He was still oblivious to his tower and its fiery state. ‘Payback time, that man’s got it coming,’ she added with extra venom. ‘Everyone hates him round here …’

  Jess’s brown eyes were sparkling with dislike. She, like ‘everyone’, obviously really detested the man.

  I heard the sound of sirens. Someone more charitable than Jess had obviously phoned the fire brigade. Then I heard the sound of the bell as the front door of the restaurant opened.

  ‘Oi, Dave!’ someone shouted.

  It was one of the many builders who lived in the village, a tall, good humoured, grey-haired man called Chris Edwards.

  Whitfield scowled at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Your tower’s on fire, mate.’ Chris was known for being laconic, I found out later.

  Whitfield put his phone down, his back still resolutely turned to the window.

  ‘What are you on about?’ he said angrily. The other man pointed and only then did Whitfield turn round and look out of the window. ‘JESUS!’r />
  He leaped to his feet and was out through the door, running over the green in the direction of his house, helpfully indicated by a thick plume of smoke and the fire engine.

  Jess went over to the door and closed it.

  ‘Hello, Chris!’ she said, smiling. Obviously she wasn’t against builders in general, just Whitfield in particular. ‘Can I get you anything to eat or drink?’

  ‘Hello, Jess, I’ll have a cappuccino since I’m here.’

  He leaned his rangy, muscular frame against the counter and appraised the restaurant with that calculating air that builders have when it comes to property, then he turned to me. Now it was my moment to be appraised.

  In all truth there probably wasn’t an enormous difference, no unbridgeable gulf between me and Whitfield. I think that most bald men in middle-age generally look quite similar. Rather like babies tend to look the same to me. If I were a bank robber, when asked for a description, witnesses would shrug, ‘Bald bloke, forties.’ That more or less describes half of the country’s males of a certain age.

  If you were charitably minded you would say that I was powerfully built and had a certain physical presence. When I was young I’d been quite good-looking, model like, and although no longer in the head-turning business, I still got offers. But looks are, by their nature, ephemeral. Where I like to think I differed from the similarly shaped Whitfield, was a trace of warm sympathy behind my eyes and a general cheeriness that was undeniably lacking in the builder. Even the staunchest of Whitfield’s supporters would have to admit he was deficient in the geniality stakes.

  Jess handed Chris the cappuccino, and smiled warmly at him. Perhaps he’d repaired her uncle’s conservatory after Whitfield’s ravages.

  I offered him a biscuit from a batch I had made earlier. ‘Try one of these: langues de chat, I made them this morning …’ He accepted the biscuit, ate it suspiciously. Then his face brightened.