A Taste of Death Read online

  ‘Could I have a coffee, please, Americano?’

  ‘Sure.’ I busied myself behind the machine.

  Whitfield looked at me. ‘I just called in to apologise,’ he said.

  ‘That’s OK.’ I was extremely surprised, to say the least. Whitfield was not the kind of man who looked remotely like he was given to apologies.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head, the red and blue ink of his tattoos was very visible on his neck. ‘No, it’s far from OK. I was bang out of order. I was a bit pissed last night. But I’ve been under a lot of pressure. First of all someone sets my house, well, my obelisk, on fire …’

  It was probably the only time I had ever heard the word obelisk used in conversation. I was strangely impressed.

  ‘Then the next thing is, just as I’m going to bed, some c—’

  ‘Language!’ I warned him. ‘There’s a lady present.’ Jess had appeared behind the counter, hoping I rather suspect for Round Two of the Whitfield/Hunter match. She looked disappointed that no blows had been traded. She retreated to the kitchen.

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Well, some – muppet – throws paint over my Ferrari.’ He shook his head. ‘How can you do that to such a beautiful car? I mean, Jesus.’

  I nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Well, I ran after them, but they disappeared through Naomi’s gate. To be honest I thought it might be her. Or someone she’d put up to it.’

  ‘Why would you think that?’ I asked.

  Naomi didn’t look like the kind of woman to chuck paint over a car. Whitfield looked shifty. ‘Well, I do owe her a bit of alimony … I’ve had cash flow problems. We had a well – words were exchanged. So when I saw you there, I put two and two together and made five.’

  He sounded remarkably defensive, even though I hadn’t made any comment.

  ‘Anyway, I’m sorry I tried to hit you.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ I said, again.

  ‘I just wanted to say …’

  ‘No, it’s fine. Really.’ I carried on reassuring him. ‘Lots of people have tried to hit me over the years, it’s not that uncommon. I’m not sure why, I’ll work it out one day. Maybe I’ve got an annoying face.’

  DI Slattery certainly thought so.

  He shook his head, ‘Look, I know this sounds weird but I was well impressed with how you handled me, it was very, umm—’ he grasped for a word ‘—professional.’

  Everyone seemed more impressed with my ability with my fists than my ability to cook. It was kind of depressing. I’m a chef, not a bare-knuckle fighter.

  ‘Thing is,’ he adopted that kind of wheedling tone that people use when they are about to ask you for a favour that they know you don’t want to do, ‘I’m in a bit of trouble at the moment and I could do with some back-up …’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘if it’s not cooking, I’m not interested.’

  ‘I’d pay.’ He paused. ‘Top dollar.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ I said, ‘and I’d have to pay too. Violence can have a very high cost.’ That sounded a bit sententious, hoity toity as Whitfield would probably put it. But it was true.

  I should know. It had cost me two years of my life and the destruction of all I held dear. I didn’t want to be Whitfield’s minder, I didn’t want to be anybody’s minder.

  Then another two customers walked in and our conversation ended.

  Jess and I watched through the Old Forge Café’s window as Whitfield walked back across the village green to his house which was beginning to look like a home counties war zone, the charred plastic pillar like a melted blue popsicle in his front garden, the car on his tarmacked drive now streaked with red. Some of it had splashed across the outside of the windows of his house. It looked quite sinister, the colour of blood. He moved slowly, stiffly, head bowed.

  ‘I feel a bit sorry for him.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Jess, her eyes narrowing. ‘Prick.’

  He must have really cocked up that conservatory of her uncle’s.

  I went back to the beef and getting other things ready. I thought about Whitfield and wondered what sort of trouble he might be in that he required professional muscle to back him up. It must have been serious. I didn’t think he was the kind of man who would need help in that department. I was determined to keep out of any trouble.

  The morning started slowly – some teas, coffees and cakes – then about twelve o’clock we started to get busy. It was shaping up to be a pleasant, if uneventful lunch, may be twenty to thirty covers, all fairly straightforward.

  At half one, Jess came in to the kitchen, deposited some used crockery in the pot-wash area and leaned across the pass. She looked quite excited.

  ‘There’s a woman out there who wants to speak to you …’

  ‘But of course,’ I said, nonchalantly, wondering who it might be, ‘when you look like I do, Jess, you get used to it …What does she want?’

  Jess said, ‘She says it’s personal.’

  ‘That sounds alarming.’ I slid a sea bream fillet on to a plate and carefully spooned over some beurre noisette and sprinkled chopped dill over it. Sometimes the simple things are best.

  ‘Table two please …’

  As Jess picked up the plate, I asked, ‘What does she look like?’

  ‘Beautiful,’ she said.

  Well, I thought, turning my attention to a dessert cheque, that was descriptive but unhelpful.

  ‘That’s a bit vague, Jess,’ I replied.

  ‘She’s very well-dressed, dark, kind of Italian looking. Great shoes.’

  Perhaps it was Grazia magazine, perhaps it was Italian Vogue come to do a piece on England’s hidden villages. I doubted it. Faint alarm bells started to ring.

  When I looked up, there was my ex-girlfriend on the other side of the pass.

  ‘Hello, Ben,’ said Claudia, ‘it’s been a while.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Wednesday, 13 January

  Later that day the butcher had called to let me know he had some good venison haunch, was I interested? Yes, I most definitely was. As I drove to the butcher’s in Byfield – my windscreen wipers on full, the car occasionally jolting badly as I hit yet another pothole in the road concealed by a puddle – I used the time to review the day.

  Inevitably, the face of Claudia and all the attendant memories kept floating into my consciousness. To say my emotions were all over the place would be pretty accurate. Regret, for my past behaviour and what I’d lost; guilt, because I’d severed all ties with her, mainly out of cowardice. I hadn’t wanted to face her, to have an adult discussion. Basically I had run away. On the plus side, I guess I was pleased that she had come to see me.

  And part of me was flattered that a woman as attractive, intelligent and successful as Claudia would even want to see me again.

  But to be honest I didn’t know what to think.

  I concentrated on what I could comprehend: food, rather than the mysteries of women.

  Lunchtime service had been busy-ish. I could feel my takings growing. It was a good feeling.

  Every night I had done my accounts with a meticulous attention to the bottom line. Not using Excel, sorry, Jess. I didn’t have much wriggle room. Money was tight. I had sold my one bed-roomed flat in Kentish Town/Tufnell Park borders in North London to finance the restaurant. It had just been enough. But I estimated that I now had enough money coming in to hire a kitchen porter, or in more normal speak, someone to wash up for me.

  Now it looked as though I might be able to afford to share the load.

  I mentioned it to Jess before she left.

  ‘So do you know anyone who might be interested?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She had another go at the question she had wanted answered all day long. ‘So are you going to tell me about her?’

  I had endured four hours of Jess’s silent curiosity which had taken the form of hints and reminiscences about former boyfriends – ‘but he was like … way too clingy … do you know what I mean?’ – in the hope I would follow s
uit. She was obviously fascinated by my ex-girlfriend.

  I put my chef’s knife down and said, ‘OK, Jess, her name is Claudia Ferrante, she’s Anglo-Italian, her dad’s from Ancona, that’s by the seaside, she’s an investment banker and we were together for four years and then we split up.’

  And then I went to prison and I haven’t seen you for about four years, until yesterday. I added mentally for my own benefit.

  Jess’s eyes were alive with excitement; all I had managed to do was to whet her appetite for more.

  ‘And what’s she doing here?’

  ‘She was in the area, Jess, and she thought she would pop in and say hello, which she did.’

  Jess made a snorting noise. ‘Nobody is ever “in this area”. Not unless you’ve got a damn good reason.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said in a tone that drew a line under the discussion. ‘Kitchen porter positions …’

  ‘No need to get aggy.’

  ‘I am not “aggy”,’ I said, in an aggy tone. ‘Kitchen porter?’

  She harrumphed irritably at the termination of our Claudia discussion, but she could see that I had no intention of taking it any further. She conceded defeat and frowned thoughtfully.

  ‘I’ve got a cousin, Francis. He’s not the brightest though …’

  ‘That’s fine, I mean it would suit someone who …’ Who what? Who wasn’t over-burdened with brains, was what I was going to say, but that seemed a bit cruel. It did have the advantage of being true though. Being a kitchen porter is not a particularly wonderful job. It’s not something you aspire to. If, at school, you were to say, ‘When I grow up I want to wash dishes for a living,’ then your horizons would have been considered disappointingly narrow.

  ‘I’ll get him to come tomorrow, he’s a nice guy. You can see what you think.’

  I finished doing my prep for the next day and cleaned down the kitchen. Soon I’d have someone to help me do that. Unless he had the brains of a snail, the job was his.

  As I swept up, cleaned down and mopped the floor I remembered with a wry smile the first night that I’d worked in a busy restaurant and being surprised that we, the chefs, had to clean up after service. Every other place that I had worked in – pubs, schools and, for most of my life, further education colleges – we’d had cleaners. Not in catering.

  ‘Do we have to do that?’ I’d asked.

  The sous-chef had looked at me like I was insane. ‘Well, who else did you think would clean the kitchen, the elves?’

  ‘Cleaners,’ I had said.

  ‘Idiot,’ he’d said, shaking his head. It had been a steep learning curve.

  I put the mop away and looked with pleasure at the gleaming kitchen, its shining steel work-surfaces, its neatness, the pleasing sense of order and efficiency. I have reached that stage in life where I find I can take a huge amount of pleasure in the small things that are on offer. Probably, given my hand to mouth existence, it was just as well.

  After the butcher’s I was eating an early meal in a restaurant in Byfield, the nearest large town. As you drove into it there was a sign that said it was an historic market town. This makes it sound attractive. The reality is that any trace of historicity was long since erased. It’s large, brutal, long and sprawling. Its centre is dominated by a roundabout surrounded by lots of mini roundabouts in a Mandala-like pattern. It would be confusing but the roundabout is surrounded by landmark buildings of an unmissable size, an ugly Sixties-style hospital, a huge concrete fire station and Byfield University (formerly Byfield Technical College), another gigantic, hideous building.

  The Raj was a fairly typical Indian, the menu could have been predicted by more or less anyone who regularly ate curries anywhere: all the usual suspects were there, but what it lacked in originality it made up for in quality.

  I know it’s not really Indian food at all, more a weird hybrid concocted for the British palate. And Bangladeshi more than Indian, come to that. I don’t care. I love the sub-continental food. I’m also intrigued by the fact that there are four different ways that you can cook spices for it: toasting seeds, e.g., fenugreek, on a hot pan; frying mixed powdered spices in oil; slow frying a paste of whole and dried spices and quick frying spices in ghee and adding them at the end. Food for thought.

  It had been strange seeing Claudia. She looked great as ever, sleek and expensive like the car she was driving. An Alfa Romeo, which was parked outside. Her hair used to be long, now it was cut in a stylish bob, her eyebrows were still as beautiful as ever. I remembered how, in bed, I used to run my finger over her Roman nose which she always thought was too big for her face. When Jess had described her as beautiful she wasn’t wrong.

  Claudia had said she wanted to see how I was doing, what I was up to. Our conversation, my part of it anyway, had been stilted and awkward. Claudia was, as always, coolly amused. As ever, she was very self-possessed, very self-contained. She always had been a woman of few words. I had noticed she was wearing a sapphire and diamond engagement ring. It was a truly stunning piece of jewellery. Far more than I could have afforded but Claudia would have said that it wasn’t the expense I was unable to make, it was the commitment.

  She had a point. I was weak on commitment, strong on storming out. Well, I guessed it was now all too late. Too late for regrets. Perhaps she’d invite me to the wedding.

  Maybe I’d win the catering contract.

  I turned my mind away from the past to the present, back to what I was doing. Away from the ‘might have beens’ and ‘if onlys’.

  I ate my way slowly through my onion bhaji and lamb vindaloo. It was nice, eating things I had no intention of replicating. Whenever I eat out I inevitably find myself, assuming I’m enjoying it, assessing whether or not to copy it for my own menu. All chefs do it, that’s why certain dishes or styles of cooking resemble the spread of illnesses. You can trace it like an epidemic.

  Currently one thing spreading like chlamydia is the mania for fractions on a menu when it comes to pricing, e.g., 5 for £5.50. Infuriating. A couple of years ago it was a kind of list of a dish’s constituent parts – loin of pork, duchesse potatoes, rosemary, caramelised apple. That kind of thing. Or pork belly, decades in the wilderness, then it’s everywhere. Or painting every gastro-pub grey inside.

  The Raj, as its unrepentant, unmade-over, politically incorrect name suggested, was totally free of modern trends. They wouldn’t be blow-torching lettuce here. With its flock wallpaper, plastic bamboo and palm trees, ‘Indian’ lager (brewed in Romford) it could hardly be more reassuringly clichéd.

  I could enjoy it without too much analysis. Like I’d decided not to analyse my evening with Naomi.

  If I could …

  Had she really been a stripper?

  What was wrong with being a stripper?

  Would I have been a stripper if anyone had offered me money and the opportunity?

  She looked so, well, demure. And she had a lovely smile, and she seemed so sweet but she could obviously act decisively when necessary: the way she’d handled her drunk ex proved that.

  And it was hard to believe she’d been married to the loutish Whitfield. (What kind of man has a glowing blue totem pole in his front garden with his name all over it?)

  There was also my own behaviour to think about. Would I get a reputation as some sort of London thug?

  I was determined not to overthink any of these questions.

  Not thinking about Naomi was evidently not going so well. It’s hard to not think of something, but you can replace it with thinking about something else. Food. I had my venison sitting in the back of my car. It was three degrees outside in the car park, about the temperature of my fridge. Rain was still beating down. All in all, a cold, miserable evening.

  I quite enjoy eating alone, which is just as well really. I had got kind of used to it. I didn’t mind, I’m a solitary person anyway and catering had given me plenty of colleagues that I enjoyed hanging out with. I was alone, but not lonely. There is a difference.

 
; Prison had been a watershed in my life. It had marked the end of the relationship with Claudia; our mutual friends had left when she did. I couldn’t complain, they were essentially her friends not mine, and what few friendships I had didn’t survive my time locked up.

  But now I had moved to the village I felt I should maybe connect again with people. I think that’s why Naomi was occupying so much of my attention. She had known bad times like I had. I felt I could trust her and that she would understand me. We would be able to connect in a way that had been impossible with Claudia. We were on the same level. We had both glimpsed hell.

  I had a book to read, Saulnier’s Repertoire, which was a cookbook (of sorts, you have to know what you are doing – it is more a helpful list of ingredients). The Repertoire features Escoffier’s recipes; he was a nineteenth-century French chef who really created what we now know as fine dining. There aren’t many culinary geniuses around, but he was one of them.

  French cooking is still the benchmark for me, modern French is my preferred style.

  Anyway, I looked up ‘deer’ which appeared to be ‘chevreuil’ in French – the book is mostly in English but the headings and sub-headings are in French – and made a note that chestnuts and cranberry were a good idea.

  I would have been a stripper. Deep down, like many chefs, I’m an exhibitionist. I’d have jiggled my wares with gusto.

  I had the haunch of venison, roe deer, and I was going to cut medallions from it (what was left I would use for stock) and pan-fry it, serving it with fondant potato. I was toying with how to work chestnuts into the dish.

  Nothing wrong with stripping. Who are you to judge, like you’ve got a blameless past. Naomi doesn’t have a history of violence like you, Ben Hunter …

  I had my book propped up on the cruet set when I was distracted by someone leaning over my table.

  ‘Fan of Escoffier, eh! You must be Ben Hunter!’

  I looked up. The voice was loud, confident, expensive and its owner – tweed jacket, tie, cords and brogues – belonged with it. Countrified, moneyed, assured. The kind of man who makes English people dislike the English. He belonged to that cross-section of UK citizenry that covers the ‘annoying’ part of the spectrum. From the loud, drunk, football fan and the shouty British tourist you hear abroad – ‘What, don’t you understand English?’ – to the braying, upper-class fool.