A Taste of Death Page 7

  He had a beard, neatly trimmed; not a hipster lumberjack beard, his was conventional, reddish brown that matched his thinning hair, and a bit of a paunch under the check shirt. His cheeks were finely cross-hatched with broken veins. Had I met him before? He seemed familiar, or was it just the type of person he represented?

  ‘Luke Montfort.’ I shook the proffered hand. ‘I live near the village,’ he explained.

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘Anything in here about mousses,’ he slurred, picking up my copy of Saulnier, unasked. He leafed through it, squinting at the text. I felt a stab of anger at the way Montfort loomed irritatingly over my table. I fought down a desire to snatch the book back off him. His smile seemed unbearably smug, patronising.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said, weighing the slender, yellow-jacketed book in his hand, ‘but nothing about mousses. I tell you what, show me a good mousse and I’ll show you a good cook. Do you agree?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. He was starting to make me extraordinarily cross. Part of it was the presumption on his part that I should want to share time and space with him. Part of it was the overwhelming waves of self-worth that billowed from him, like dry ice haloing a performer on-stage. Part of it was that I am quite a short-tempered man. I work on it, but it’s always there. Like a super car I can go from zero to sixty in a couple of seconds. Other people have the luxury of losing their temper, I don’t. It’s destroyed relationships, lost me a couple of jobs and, of course, sent me to prison.

  I took a deep breath into my core, three finger widths below the navel; practitioners of Tai Chi call it the Dan Tian. It is supposed to help induce calm.

  I checked myself. No. No, it wasn’t inducing calm, I still wanted to hit him. Jab, jab, straight right, that would do.

  The silence prolonged itself. I looked at him in what I hoped was a neutral way.

  ‘To the good I act with goodness; To the bad I also act with goodness.’

  The line from the Tao Te Ching came to me. Sound advice, I suppose: turn the other cheek. I leaned forward and took my book back. He looked at me, slightly less sure of himself. I like silence, people talk too much.

  ‘Do you want to join us for a drink?’ he asked.

  He indicated the rear of the restaurant. I looked the way he was pointing and in the reflection of a conveniently angled mirror I saw Dave Whitfield and DI Slattery. What on earth were they doing together? I took a mouthful of Diet Coke. What a depressing thought.

  It was quite tempting to tell the truth: ‘No, I can’t think of anything worse.’

  ‘No, I’m fine, thanks’ is what I actually said. Dave Whitfield hung around with some interesting people, I thought, criminals one day, the Old Bill the next.

  Despite my instructions to myself not to analyse the situation, Whitfield’s words came back to me: ‘I’m in a bit of trouble at the moment, I could do with some back-up …’

  Whitfield was obviously involved with some heavy people. They had set fire to his property and wrecked his car. On the surface the acts seemed petty, almost calculated to provoke amusement. If you were on the receiving end they were not in the least bit amusing.

  Arson isn’t funny, people can die.

  Property destruction isn’t funny, people get hurt.

  I’d spent time banged up with criminals. As a rule of thumb, I don’t find their company enlightening or amusing.

  I wondered idly if Slattery knew who had done it. He must have his suspicions. Come to think of it, what was he doing here with Whitfield, Mr Shifty himself, cowboy builder, almost certainly VAT fraudster, associate of criminals?

  Montfort, unaware of my mental debate, looked down at me and smiled again.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you to your cogitations. Put mousse on the menu, I’ll come.’

  Everyone’s an expert, aren’t they?

  ‘Indeed,’ I said, ‘I’ll make a note.’ I made a mental note, No mousse on menu, do not encourage Montfort at all costs.

  He rejoined his companions. I called for the bill and got up to leave. As I walked out of the Raj, I glanced back. Whitfield was slumped in his chair holding a pint of Kingfisher at a perilous angle. He was looking at Montfort in an unfocused way, Slattery was looking at Whitfield with an expression of pure hatred.

  What, I wondered had brought these three together? The thuggish builder, the oily, smooth Montfort and the DI.

  I thought of the expression on Slattery’s face. Whitfield was a neighbour. Surely it couldn’t have been the DI who had been behind the vandalism? Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself.

  I thought again of Naomi, her large eyes, her smile, at times broad, at times nervous and hesitant. She seemed so far, with the exception of Jess, the only nice person in Hampden Green.

  Village life, I thought to myself, village life.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Thursday, 14 January

  The following day was a Thursday. It was to be Dave Whitfield’s last day on earth and it didn’t start very well for him from the word go.

  As for me, it was a typical morning. I began work in the kitchen at eight. I’d already been up for two hours, running through the South Bucks countryside in the cold drizzle for forty-five minutes, followed by twenty minutes of shadow boxing interspersed with press-ups and sit-ups, some Tai Chi and then a tepid shower courtesy of the dreadful plumbing in my bathroom. One day, I promised myself, when I got rich, I would have a power shower.

  Then downstairs, yawning and tired, another huge mise en place list to complete before service.

  Jess arrived half an hour early and we shared coffee while I told her about bumping into Whitfield and the others the previous night.

  ‘God, that slime ball Luke Montfort!’ Jess was scathing.

  ‘So you know him then?’ I asked.

  ‘I was at school with his daughter; she’s a stuck-up bitch, by the way.’ She paused to accurately cut the coffee and walnut cake that I had made into quarters, prior to cutting each quarter into thirds. She took a step back to admire her handiwork.

  ‘Yes, I know him, he’s just really creepy. Not the kind of man you would want to sit next to if you’re a girl. He tried it on with a couple of my friends – and me come to that, when I was fifteen. Mr Wandering Hands …’

  She put two fingers in her mouth and mimed throwing up, rolling her eyes at the horrible thought of the aged pervert Montfort.

  ‘Jesus, he’s old enough to be my dad! And he’s not as good-looking. Come to think of it, Dad had a run-in with him once in some insurance related thing at the county council. Dad can’t stand him. I didn’t know Whitfield knew him, but that must be how he got his permission to put up that tower thing in his garden. Montfort’s head of the council planning permission department …’

  Is he now, I thought. My mind filed that away in my folder marked ‘Whitfield’. A folder whose existence I strenuously did not want to exist.

  By association maybe, my mind drifted to the ex-Mrs Whitfield. Naomi hadn’t called, but I wanted her to. I found it surprisingly hard not to think about her long dark hair, her smile, the graceful way that she moved. Perhaps I should start going to her yoga class. I could see a lot more of her then.

  ‘Moving on, Jess,’ I said, briskly. ‘Let’s think about work.’ We moved over to the kitchen work-surface.

  ‘OK, talk me through today’s specials.’ She put on a serious face.

  ‘This is the pan-fried venison.’

  I quickly seared off some slices of venison for her in a small frying pan and while it rested made a speedy sauce from the juices in the pan deglazed with balsamic vinegar, Madeira, reduced stock, juniper berries and cranberry sauce, served topped with blackberries. It came on a bed of kale with a fondant potato.

  Jess ate it with relish, then the specials dessert which was pear and blueberry pudding with Chantilly cream. She had a surprisingly hearty appetite. Jess wasn’t slim the way that Naomi was, she was short and buxom, but her stomach seemed ironing-board flat despite the astonishing amount
she ate. Mine is too, but the amount of effort I need to keep it that way is immense.

  I have to think before I eat.

  I have to think before I act.

  I just wish I was better at thinking.

  ‘That is bloody good,’ she said, ‘that meat melts in the mouth. How do you get it so tender?’

  ‘I don’t overcook it.’ No great mystery.

  ‘It’s delicious.’ She ate another mouthful. ‘Mummy’s a dreadful cook.’

  Thank God for people like your mother, I thought. I don’t need home-grown competition.

  ‘Well, if you could push it, I’d be grateful. Tell people it comes pink, it’ll be tough if I cook it any longer. They can’t have it medium or well-done.’ I thought back to the question that I didn’t want to ask but needed to, ‘When do you go back to uni?’

  ‘End of Jan,’ she said. I sighed, what would I do without her?

  ‘Do you know anyone who might want a job?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe …’ she began, but there was an almighty bang on the kitchen door and I looked around, startled. ‘Let’s see how you get on with Francis, first. Here he is …’

  Her cousin Francis was medium height but solidly built. He was very red-faced, with eyes that were popping out of their sockets. His hair was very blond. He had a head that seemed to be perfectly spherical, like a football. He looked like an amiable Viking, too good-natured to be of much use on the pillaging front, but a dab hand with an oar.

  I had always thought of myself as powerfully built. We shook hands and I suppressed a groan of pain. I had a rethink about my physical prowess. Francis was hugely strong. He had old-fashioned strength, not like a gym rat. He wasn’t buffed, or toned, he didn’t have gym tits, he was just built like a proper, old-fashioned navvy.

  ‘I’m Francis,’ he announced, staring around him as if terrifically pleased to be there in my kitchen. He smiled at me, he smiled at Jess, he smiled at the Hobart oven, he smiled at the mixer. He smiled at the char-grill. He reminded me irresistibly of a large, friendly, none too bright dog, a Labrador or a Golden Retriever.

  I gave him one of my chef’s jackets to wear and his arm muscles packed the white cotton fabric of the sleeves like a sausage casing does the meat. Arms like a blacksmith.

  ‘Where do you work at the moment, Francis?’ I asked.

  ‘In a garden centre and nurseries, my dad’s a gardener—’ he frowned ‘—but they’ve cut my hours so I’m looking for a new job.’

  ‘Well, no time like the present,’ I said. ‘Let’s get started.’ He beamed at me. ‘Have you worked in catering before?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ He smiled at me some more and didn’t elaborate or add anything, the smile went on and on.

  ‘Are you interested in food?’ I asked, in a slightly desperate way.

  ‘I like nuggets,’ he said, after a long while,

  ‘Oh well, that’s a start,’ I said. ‘Let’s begin with some basic vegetable preparation.’

  The morning rolled on, with decidedly mixed results.

  Francis was great, great at washing up. I tried to get him to cut vegetables for me, nothing fancy. Disastrous.

  We surveyed his attempts to cut carrots into batons. A more irregular array of orange shapes would be hard to imagine. Hacked to buggery, as my former head chef would have said.

  ‘I don’t think I’m very good at this,’ said Francis, surveying the carroty carnage.

  I scratched my head, that was true, it had to be admitted. I tried to think of a way of conveying mild disappointment with an encouraging hint that maybe there was light at the end of a fairly dark tunnel.

  ‘I’m as much use as a chocolate teapot,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘It’s a wise man who knows his limitations,’ I said, patting him on the shoulder. It was like touching the massive muscle of a carthorse.

  Francis made to tip his efforts into the bin.

  ‘Whoa, tiger,’ I said, ‘never throw anything away until you’ve cleared it with me. They’ll do for soup. Now, let’s try you on potatoes … maybe we’ll have more success with those.’

  The day wore on.

  Jess bustled in and out, efficiently serving and charming about thirty customers. We sold all the venison and I had the satisfaction of crossing out several items that were on the specials board. I converted Francis’s carrots into swede and carrot mash, and carrot and coriander soup.

  ‘When we serve this,’ I said to Jess apropos the soup, ‘remind me to sprinkle it with fresh chopped coriander. If you don’t remind me, I’ll forget.’

  She wrinkled her nose as she sniffed it. ‘I can’t say I care for it very much,’ she said.

  Francis dropped a couple of plates. ‘Sorry! I was in a bit of a pickle with the dishwasher.’

  I winced and shrugged, and carried on with the coriander conversation. ‘Coriander’s not popular on the whole in Europe, but there you go … I’m not personally a fan of carrots myself, while we’re on the subject, but it’s not all about us, is it, Jess?’

  A typical service, heads down, no nonsense gallop. I had the advantage that I was accountable to nobody other than myself and the customers. I didn’t have to placate some nutcase head chef or worry about some weak-link co-worker. I didn’t have to consult spec sheets to make sure that the plate was exactly as it should be. I also knew exactly what had and had not been done prep-wise.

  I was always angsty about prep. Some chefs, and some very good ones at that, were very gung-ho in a kind of ‘it’ll be all right on the night’ way. I wasn’t.

  It is always nightmarish when you open a tub that should contain, for example, pickled aubergine, to find it empty, when the dish it goes with is sitting three-quarters assembled in front of you and you have to rack your brains to think of an adequate way out whilst more cheques arrive and the head-chef is calling for X, Y and Z to be done at the same time.

  That was the plus side. Everything that should have been done, was done.

  The minus side was that I had to do everything. I taught Francis to use the deep-fat fryer for the French fries and onion rings that went with the steak – so that was one job I didn’t need to do, although he did spark concern with his habit of staring at the frothing oil as it bubbled precariously upwards, threatening to flood the kitchen with hot fat. He seemed transfixed, unable to move.

  ‘Francis, for God’s sake, lift that basket up, that oil’s about to go everywhere!’

  He continued to stare in fascination at the 180-degree centigrade oil, frothing ever upwards, a potential geyser of boiling oil, eight litres or so, ready to explode.

  ‘FRANCIS!!!’

  ‘Oh, sorry, chef.’

  The other good thing about my menu was it was fun to cook from. I rather enjoy making sandwiches or filled rolls, which was a good proportion of the tickets that came across the pass. Then there was the hot food, the venison, for example, steak baguettes, a couple of simple pasta dishes, soup, hot chicken Caesar salad, that kind of thing. All simple, easy to cook, nothing fiddle-faddly or stuff that could go disastrously wrong.

  And it’s surprising what can go wrong or what does and doesn’t work in catering.

  Dishes that are simple at home can turn out to be problematic in a commercial kitchen. Mainly it’s down to time. For example, poached eggs on things – smoked haddock, for example. What might be a perfect poached egg with runny yolk can, if the waiter is slow and it sits under the lights for a bit, turn into a boiled egg. Spaghetti carbonara does not take kindly to hanging around as your lovely creamy, eggy sauce congeals into a claggy mess, like poorly scrambled egg, spoiling the dish.

  Jess was a dream as a waitress. She never made mistakes, she was good with the customers, she was interested in food. She also knew when not to distract me. She waited until lunch service was nearly over before she announced the latest on the Whitfield saga.

  ‘Have you seen this month’s Village News?’ she asked me, innocently.

  ‘No,’ I said, piping a swirl of
cream on to the pear cake which seemed to be flying out of the kitchen. ‘Have we got a review in it or a mention?’

  I admired my manly skill with a piping bag and a serrated nozzle. I was so macho it wasn’t true. King of the artful swirl. Move over Stallone and Statham. Look at me with whipped cream!

  ‘We do actually, but that’s not why I asked … You know the inserts in the mag?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  The Village News came with several folded flyers advertising this, that and the other. It was about six pages long, stapled in one corner. In the middle of this particular edition were three flyers. Wordlessly Jess shook them out on to the hotplate.

  One of the flyers was from the MOT place a couple of doors down from me, one was for the WI, the third, and definitely not WI endorsed, featured Dave Whitfield. Full frontal Whitfield.

  I’d already seen his balls, now I got to see the rest.

  I assumed it had been taken by someone standing outside his house, photographing through his living-room window as, oblivious, he watched TV. A blown-up colour photo.

  It wasn’t Cowboy Builders or Grand Designs he was watching, at least I hope not, given his state of priapic arousal.

  Whitfield had made an unscheduled appearance in the Village News, in a state of undress and excitement watching an X-rated DVD with an expression of bad-tempered concentration.

  ‘PERVE!!!’ it was headed.

  God alone knows how it had found its way into the Village News freebie section.

  ‘Look away, Jessica,’ I said sternly, ‘this is not for the likes of your innocent eyes.’

  ‘Too late, I’m afraid,’ she said.

  ‘Poor old Whitfield,’ I remarked, ‘whatever next?’

  ‘Just look at what he’s up to!’ Jess was scandalised.

  ‘Well, I’m sure he didn’t expect anyone to be watching.’ Who on earth would do a thing like that? I thought.