A Taste of Death Page 8

  Soon, though, Whitfield would be beyond embarrassment.

  Twenty-four hours later he was dead.

  PART TWO

  ‘Gastronomy governs the whole life of man ; for the tears of the new-born child are for its nurse’s breast, and the dying man derives pleasure from the final portion, which alas, he will never digest.’

  Brillat-Savarin – The Philosopher in the Kitchen

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Friday, 15 January, 9.30 a.m.

  ‘And where were you this morning?’ asked DI Slattery.

  I looked him in the face while I considered my answer.

  Having had experience of being arrested stood me in good stead. I wasn’t going to be easily intimidated and I have to say that I was far from convinced of the integrity of Slattery. I knew that Whitfield was worried about something, worried enough to want to hire me for protection or, possibly, to go and threaten someone for him. I also knew, who didn’t, that Whitfield had enemies. I also suspected that Whitfield was in the habit of bribing officialdom, e.g., Luke Montfort.

  And if you’re prepared to bribe one public servant …

  So, I was not convinced that DI Slattery was entirely on the side of the angels.

  ‘I’m waiting …’ said the DI.

  I had read in the Tao Te Ching earlier in the day, He who pursues learning will increase every day.

  Well, who could disagree with that? Possibly DI Slattery felt he was pursuing learning, interviewing me about Whitfield’s death. From where I was standing it looked more like harassment.

  The village itself could have done with a bit of Tao. It was like a pool, calm on the surface but with God alone knows what going on underneath.

  I reflected that it’s odd how certain people impinge on our lives. A couple of weeks previously I hadn’t got a clue who Dave Whitfield was. Now I was a suspect in his death.

  ‘I said, where were you this morning?’

  DI Slattery finished the coffee I had given him.

  ‘Here.’ I tried my smile again. Slattery was impervious to its charms.

  ‘Any witnesses?’

  ‘I lead a lonely life, Detective Inspector, just me and my book.’ I pointed at the Tao Te Ching that was lying by the pass.

  ‘So, no alibi.’ He shook his head in irritation. ‘You don’t seem very concerned about any of this?’ His tone was accusatory, his glance disapproving.

  I’m not, I thought. I’m trying to devote my life to not being concerned about anything. I yawned, I was tired. I suppose that I should have cared more than I did but Whitfield had struck me as a loud-mouthed idiot. He did sloppy work (Jess’s uncle’s conservatory), he was aggressive towards women (Naomi), he attacked relative strangers (me), he hung around with dodgy people (Craig Scott), he was involved in crime (trying to hire me as a minder he had to be, else why bother?), why should I be concerned? Whitfield’s sticky end was very probably Whitfield’s fault.

  ‘Do you know Five Acre Field?’ demanded Slattery.

  I shook my head. Every other day I would go for a three to five mile run, timing myself on a Strava app on my phone. It was hard work, not the distance, but the conditions, slippery muddy paths, brambles that would loop around your feet like trip wires, the seemingly endless rain, harder than running in London. The country mud and the country rain.

  ‘I don’t know, I know some of the paths by sight, from when I go jogging, but I don’t know what they’re called.’

  How on earth could I know what the fields were called? They didn’t have signs.

  He looked at me with his hard, shrewd eyes. Slattery was not the kind of man it would be wise to cross, I thought. He pushed a muscular hand through his thick black hair streaked with grey here and there.

  ‘He was found by a stile, his shotgun had gone off, there was very little left of his head.’

  ‘Poor old Whitfield,’ I said. As incompetent with a gun as a trowel so it would seem. At least his plentiful tattoos would have made recognition easy.

  I didn’t want to think about Whitfield’s head. I tried displacement therapy.

  I looked at my MEP list I had pinned to my cheque grabber. I wished DI Slattery would go away. Today mine comprised about twenty items, ranging from the simple, sliced cucumber, to the more complex, profiteroles. I had reached:

  Yorkshire batter, cook off sausages, onion gravy.

  I didn’t want to think about Whitfield, I really didn’t.

  I was putting individual toad in the hole on the menu. I was a bit uncertain about them. They could well be one of those foods fantastic in a home setting that don’t work so well, or at all, in a restaurant.

  ‘So where were you this morning?’ Slattery was persistent, I had to give him that.

  ‘Here,’ I said again, and started whisking the batter mix for the toad: equal parts flour, egg and milk. It’s a great recipe, the same whether you’re making one Yorkshire or ten thousand, whether you are using a ramekin as a measure, or a container the size of a dustbin.

  It does not discriminate. It does not boast. It’s very Zen.

  ‘This recipe is very Zen,’ I said to Slattery, sharing my insights.

  ‘Are you on drugs?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘I’m high on life, Detective Inspector.’ I carried on whisking. ‘Is foul play suspected?’

  ‘That’s a police matter,’ he said, sharply, ‘our investigations are not complete. But, I value your input, Ben—’ his voice was sarcastic now ‘—perhaps you’d like to give me your thoughts on the matter? Give me the benefit of your Oriental wisdom.’

  I felt a flash of anger at Slattery, a sudden desire to smack him in the face, to put one on him, as people say.

  I was under a lot of stress. And Slattery was not helping.

  I stopped what I was doing and jabbed my finger at him, my voice brittle with rage. I had the satisfaction of seeing him recoil slightly.

  ‘OK, then, Detective Inspector, this is what I think. I think shotguns are dangerous things. If anyone was going to have an accident with one, Whitfield would seem a likely candidate. Then again, he did have a lot of enemies. But if every cowboy builder in Britain were killed by irate customers then the crematoria would be working overtime.’

  I fell silent. Slattery stared at me with interest. I switched the mixer off and stared inside at the batter. I picked up a long spoon, about the length of my forearm and slammed it into the side of the mixing bowl. I told myself it was to dislodge any flour stuck to the sides but it was more because I wanted to hit something. Ideally Slattery.

  ‘Temper, temper,’ he said. Then, ‘You were inside for GBH, weren’t you?’ he said to me, his tone was a mixture of threatening and a kind of jocular: We’re both men of the world.

  ‘It’s very easy to deviate from the great way. The people prefer by-paths,’ I quoted.

  The DI was glaring at me again, he didn’t seem to like Taoist philosophy.

  Good.

  ‘I learned that in prison, DI Slattery. It means I’ve given up violence.’ I continued, ‘I’m a reformed character, incarceration worked wonders, I’m a changed man.’

  I certainly wasn’t proud of my time in prison, I had deviated from the great way of non-violence to the thorny by-path of grievous bodily harm, but neither was I about to let him use it as a weapon against me. If that meant annoying DI Slattery with quotations from Lao Tsu, so be it. I have a retentive memory, I can keep that sort of thing up all day. Besides, I hadn’t killed Whitfield. Either Whitfield had done it himself or someone else had.

  The universe moved on. I switched the Hobart mixer back on. There was a small dent in the bowl now from where I’d hit it.

  ‘Don’t want any lumps,’ I said to Slattery.

  ‘Talking of lumps, and giving up violence,’ he said, ‘I hear you beat Whitfield up the other night, the night his Ferrari got trashed. Was that deviating from the Great Way, eh, Ben?’ His voice was sarcastic. Sarcastic and suspicious.

  ‘Far from it, it’s an
example of humility triumphing over adversity. I was defending myself.’ I added, ‘Defending myself without hurting him too much.’

  ‘You’re good at hurting people, aren’t you?’ he stated flatly. ‘I phoned Kentish Town nick about you, I gather you’ve graced the cells on more than one occasion. All for violence in one form or another.’

  ‘I was never charged,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not exactly true, Ben.’ He moved closer to me, his voice was quiet, threatening: ‘And that’s not the point I was making.’ We looked into each other’s eyes. I could see he was itching to arrest me.

  ‘And I hear you’ve been sniffing around Whitfield’s ex? Getting to know Naomi West well are you, Ben?’

  I carried on whisking my batter mix, but what I really wanted to do was hit Slattery, very hard. Bang, bang, bang. I looked at him, looked at a little half smile on his lips. That was just what he would have loved. Assaulting a police officer.

  My silence annoyed him, although probably not nearly as much as my physical restraint. He gave it one last shot.

  ‘Cherchez la femme, Ben.’

  ‘If you say so, Detective Inspector, now—’ I stopped whisking and turned to him ‘—if you don’t mind, I’ve got things to do, as I’m sure you have. All that crime out there, it won’t solve itself, you know.’

  We looked at each other with intense dislike.

  ‘You.’ He allowed pauses between each word. ‘Are.’ Another pause. ‘Trouble.’

  Slattery finished his coffee and dropped his cup in the sink.

  ‘I don’t like smart-arses and I don’t think I like you very much.’

  You had to admire his honesty.

  ‘I’m very lovable when you get to know me, DI Slattery,’ I said, giving him what I thought was a winning smile. ‘We should meet up more, perhaps we’d bond.’

  ‘Well, I’ll see you later,’ said Slattery, darkly. ‘Of that there is no doubt.’

  He left, and the kitchen door banged to behind him.

  Through the window of the kitchen I watched him climb into his car and drive off. I sighed with relief as he disappeared.

  Virtually everything I had told Slattery had been a lie.

  It’s very easy to deviate from the great way.

  Very easy indeed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Friday, 15 January, 6 a.m.

  What had happened was this.

  I had got up at my usual time, six a.m., made some tea and pulled on my running clothes: leggings, a pair of shorts, tee and a jumper. I had done some Qi Gong breathing exercises, I had read the Tao Te Ching.

  I hadn’t lied to Slattery about Oriental wisdom.

  Anger management. Everyone gets angry. Life is stressful, life is hard, other people are annoying. But, like they say, when it becomes a problem, you have to either stop or try to learn how to deal with it. Anger had become a problem. Anger had cost me relationships: I had walked out (stormed out) of several over trivial things. It had cost me a couple of jobs. It had cost me Claudia Ferrante. And eventually it had cost me my liberty.

  Slattery was right.

  I had been arrested several times for fights in pubs. I had managed to avoid a criminal record because on the whole I didn’t start them. I provoked them. I would escalate a situation, or create one that would then lead to violence. Arrested several times, charges dropped. Mainly around Kentish Town in North London where I lived.

  Then one night, after a blazing row with Claudia, I had stormed out (what else would you do?), gone to a pub in Camden – one of the ones I hadn’t been barred from, there were three of those. A skinny kid in a hoodie, with tattoos, from one of the local estates I guess, made a derogatory comment about my educated accent. Next I’d been all over him with my fists. And my boots. I think I only realised the gravity of the situation when I was charged, given a court date, called a lawyer (my own, not the duty solicitor) told him the charge and heard a deep silence down the other end of the phone and the words ‘probable custodial sentence’.

  My own attitude – ‘I’m not a criminal. I’m a lecturer in English at NLU (the University of North London) I can’t go to prison,’ and, ‘he started it’ – cut no ice in court. I had left the kid with a broken nose, broken cheekbone, three teeth missing and three broken ribs. A two-year sentence of which I served eighteen months.

  I lost my job. I lost Claudia, I lost my old life. But it wasn’t all bad. Change or die, they say. Well, the deed was done but it was transformative and I reinvented myself. In prison I had met a man who had changed my life. I got into Taoism. I had learned to try to manage my temper. When I was released I changed career and the location of my life from London to the country and I dropped my old friends (what few I had left).

  My past was toxic. For better or for worse, I cut Claudia out of my life too.

  I wasn’t bitter about prison but it left a legacy. I had become very wary of the police. I did not want to go back to jail.

  At seven thirty that Friday morning in January, more or less two weeks to the day I had taken ownership of the Old Forge Café, with no inkling of what was about to happen, I pulled my boots on, zipped up my waterproof fleece and started running out of the village along the main road. Lights were on in several houses but no one was about. The driving rain stung my eyes as I splashed through the puddles on the tarmac.

  Just out of the village was a single-track road on the left and I ran down this, I hadn’t seen a single car, and then as I turned right I heard the flat explosion of a shotgun. That didn’t surprise me, the woods and fields around here often echoed to gunfire. It was still pheasant season and, of course, there were always wood pigeon.

  I thought nothing of it.

  I turned right off the road, through a small gate, over a stile and then on to a footpath that ran diagonally across the huge grass field where about a dozen horses lived. I could see them through the rain over to my right, huddled together. The sky was a deep grey overhead, there was enough light to see the path, a squelchy brown strip of mud ahead of me. In about an hour’s time you might see a dog walker, but right now, the field was deserted.

  I started running across the field and I heard a second bang, this time much closer. I remember thinking at the time how loud shotguns were. I jogged on, my feet slipping and sliding on the wet mud and, as I approached the boundary hedge that marked the end of the field, I saw a shape lying on the grass near the stile that was let into the hedge on that side.

  I slowed to a walk and then came to a horrified standstill.

  I had never seen a dead body before. I was looking at one now. He would have been face down in the mud, but there was little left of his head. One hand still held the shotgun.

  It must have gone off while he was climbing over the stile, one Neoprene booted foot was hooked over the wooden lower step, so his leg was in the air at a forty-five degree angle, the rest of him lying sprawled in the mud. The sleeve of his Barbour jacket had ridden up as he had pitched forward into the mud. I recognised the garish tattoos immediately.

  Over the other side of the hedge was a private road, a tarmacked drive, which led to the Earl’s estate. On the other side of that drive was another stile and another field where the footpath continued. I was in time to see a figure running away. I could make out no details other than the fact it was a person, it could have been a man or a woman.

  I stood staring at the body. I remembered Slattery’s words:

  ‘If you step a millimetre out of line … ’

  I wanted nothing to do with this. I didn’t want Slattery to put two and two together to make five.

  I also didn’t want whoever was running away from the scene of crime to know I’d been a witness, even though I couldn’t see who they were, just a shape in an anorak with the hood up, running fast.

  Whitfield had let me know he was involved with some pretty violent people, he had only himself to blame. I hadn’t wanted to be involved in his life. I didn’t want to be involved in his death.


  Hear no evil. See no evil.

  I turned on my heel and ran back to the Old Forge Café the way that I had come.

  I wasn’t going to get involved.

  No way. It wasn’t my fight.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Monday, 18 January

  Slattery had left me and I carried on with my day. Over the weekend, mercifully busy, predictably the talk, both in the kitchen from Jess and Francis and in the restaurant from the customers, was of nothing but Whitfield. I texted Naomi to see if she was OK. Thank heavens for modern technology, it was so much easier writing than speaking to her. She replied that she was OK and we’d see each other later in the week.

  That was more or less all the thought I gave the matter. The dogs bark but the caravan moves on, as the old Arab proverb says. I was frantically busy. As soon as service ended I was working until midnight to do the prep for the following day and on Sunday I went to bed at six in the evening and slept solidly until seven a.m. on Monday.

  And it wasn’t just the volume of food prep that was getting me down. Mrs Cope’s legacy of duff machinery was getting to me. Most people tend to think that professional kitchens are marvellously equipped with state-of-the-art machinery and gadgets. I have seen kitchens where this is true, but in general the money gets spent on what the customers see, the restaurant itself, leaving the chefs to struggle back stage. I so needed new equipment. At night I went online and drooled at industry equipment like it was hard-core porn.

  I turned on the radio in the kitchen. Beech Tree FM news was on.

  ‘The mysterious death of a well-known local builder in the Byfield area is being treated as suicide by the local police. A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said that nobody was being sought in connection with the incident. Meanwhile, flood alerts have been issued along the Thames, particularly in Marlow and Cookham as water levels continue to rise … And now, here’s the Carpenters …’

  I sighed and turned off the radio. So that was that. I was in the clear, although Whitfield still seemed an unlikely suicide victim, unless suicides in a field with a gun usually have an accomplice. But it wasn’t my problem. My mind moved on to another mystery. I make my own stock for my own jus. It’s time-consuming and costly and a fair bit of work, but the results – a dark, rich, flavoursome demi-glace, as the reduced stock is called – is well worth it.