by Fiona Leitch
‘You look like you need a cup of tea,’ I said, holding out a mug. He turned around in surprise.
‘Thank you,’ he said, taking it from me. He took a sip and sighed.
‘Better?’ I asked, and he gave a small smile. ‘It must be hard, having a film crew traipsing all over your lovely house.’
‘It is,’ he said, with feeling.
‘Especially when they go places they shouldn’t…’ I thought for a moment, and then smiled at him and stuck my hand out. ‘I’m Jodie, by the way. We briefly met on casting day.’
‘Oh yes, I remember. The lady who’d been here in my predecessor’s day.’ He looked at my jeans and pinny. ‘You’re the one who’s taken over from the poor man in the food truck?’
‘Yes. Between you and me, I’m relieved.’ He looked slightly horrified so I quickly clarified what I meant. ‘Not about Gino, the poor bloke. I just meant I’m actually a chef by trade, and I’m much happier cooking than acting. I heard you mention your kitchen garden? How lovely. I’d love to have a proper kitchen garden. You can’t beat using really fresh produce.’
The poor man didn’t have a chance. I turned my charm on full blast, and before he knew it he was giving me a tour of his passion project. To be fair, I would love a kitchen garden at home, but as I believe I’ve already mentioned, I have the opposite of green fingers. I am the Angel of Death when it comes to house plants. Grapes wither and die upon the vine, potatoes get weevils, and courgettes succumb to mildew when I gaze upon them. And don’t even get me started on carrots.
But I was with the home-owner, so luckily the shadow of death was averted by the bright light of his horticultural knowledge, which was gentle and soothing after the somewhat self-important busyness of everyone else connected with the shoot. David proudly showed me his perfectly straight rows of pumpkins, which were almost ready to be harvested, and his herb borders. He was very informative, and very, very thorough as I had made the mistake of saying I needed a few pointers. I was relieved when his mobile phone rang. He apologised and took the call, then apologised again as he hung up, saying duty called and he had to pop into Penstowan but that he trusted me enough to leave me to look round (which was exactly what I’d been hoping for).
‘Also, my wife and I are thinking about using the house as a wedding venue,’ he said carefully, ‘and if we do go down that route, we’ll be looking for a reliable caterer. Have a think and let me know if you’re interested.’ And with that he left. I almost shouted, Of course I’m bloomin’ interested! after him, but decided to use a little decorum and email him later.
I wandered through the garden towards the house, trying to work out where the old kitchen was. It wasn’t hard to spot; I could see large movie lights – the tungstens – set up through the window, which was quite high up from the ground. I approached carefully; I didn’t think they’d started filming yet, but if they had I didn’t want the top of my ugly mug appearing in shot. There was no noise from within, though, so I grabbed the window ledge and pulled myself up, just enough to peer into the room. It was set up as a Regency-style kitchen – very authentic, but pretty useless for actually cooking in. I let go as my arm muscles began to scream at me.
I looked down at the soft earth beneath my feet. There was a confusion of footprints in the soil, and a couple of rows of sad, trodden-down seedlings, although I had no idea what they were. There were a lot of footprints, but it looked to me like they’d all been made by the same pair of feet. The footprints led from the edge of the building, under the window, and out onto the path, meaning—
‘They jumped out of the window…’ I said to myself. But why? I planted my feet in the spot that seemed to be the most likely landing place, and looked up at the window. No one had mentioned the window being open, so if someone had climbed through, they must have reached up and closed it behind them. Maybe they’d been in the kitchen, tampering with the lights, and had heard someone coming down the corridor towards them. If there was no way out of the room without the person approaching seeing them – and from my previous visit all those years ago, I vaguely remembered that it led out onto a narrow corridor – then the window was the only possible exit.
So that meant that the person tampering with the lights should not have been there in the first place; they couldn’t allow themselves to be seen, or they could have styled it out and said they’d found the lights in that state. I reached up to the window, as if to grasp the frame. It also meant that the person who had stood in this spot had been considerably taller than me, because the window, which was an old wooden sash, would have to have been open a fair way for a body to climb through, and I certainly would not have been able to reach up and pull it down again.
That narrows it down, all five foot four of me, I thought sardonically. Zack was probably the shortest male member of the cast I’d seen so far, and he was at least six foot. But of course, it could be a crew member. It could be anyone…
I stepped back and frowned as there was a crunching sound under my trainers. I looked down. There at my feet, twinkling in the autumn sunlight, was a small patch of broken, very thin glass. The sort of glass you make lightbulbs out of.
I strolled thoughtfully back to the food truck. So the shoot saboteur had made their way into the old kitchen, smashed the bulbs to make it look like they’d blown – again, it was a bit of a pointless act, an annoying prank designed to hold things up temporarily, except it hadn’t because the lighting guy had gone in and checked before they started shooting – and then climbed out of the window to escape detection, obviously with a few shards of glass on their clothing, which had then ended up in the flowerbed.
But why? Apart from Gino breaking his arm, all these pranks (or whatever they were) were trivial, minor inconveniences. They’d held up shooting, but not for any significant length of time. No major damage or harm had been done (again, apart from poor Gino). It was almost like they’d just been designed to annoy everyone.
Or freak them out… The crew member I’d heard today had mentioned the shoot being cursed, and Tony had said that Faith considered him her ‘lucky charm’. Everyone knew how superstitious actors were, but the crew were in danger of succumbing to it as well. People were on edge. Was that what the saboteur was trying to achieve? Which brought me back to where I’d started: but why?
Chapter Nine
I couldn’t carry on wondering why, though, because while I’d been in the kitchen garden, the area around the food truck had become a hive of activity. The actors, who I realised must have been there all along, had finished in Hair and Make-Up and were heading over for breakfast. Gino had reluctantly accepted that he wasn’t likely to be back for a while yet, so had emailed Lucy a long list of instructions for me; I found them on the truck’s counter weighted down with the ketchup bottle to stop them blowing away.
Zack liked to start the day with a protein shake and a banana. At about 10 a.m. he’d be ready for a low-carb, high-protein muesli bar, to keep him going until lunch. He was happy to eat carbs at lunch, as long as they came with a lot of protein, so pasta with a meaty sauce and lots of vegetables was a good option, and that sort of dish was also popular with the crew.
Kimi was a vegetarian, but she would occasionally eat fish, so it was a good idea to keep some in the fridge in case she sprang it on you. She was lactose intolerant and only drank almond milk, but Gino had seen her polish off a massive bowl of ice-cream and chocolate sauce when she was stressed (which was a regular occurrence, apparently), and the dairy hadn’t affected her then, so… She also had a mild rice allergy, which meant she could only eat brown rice. For breakfast she enjoyed a smoothie made from almond milk, kale, fresh mango (because of course that was in season in Cornwall in October), apple juice, and carrot. Maybe ‘enjoyed’ was the wrong word for that sort of smoothie.
Faith was on a special diet for ladies of a certain age. Breakfast was porridge made with soya milk, dried cranberries, fresh blueberries, and a sprinkling of flax and sunflower seeds. For lu
nch, a nice piece of salmon or chicken, with salad and avocado. The occasional bowl of pasta, if it was going to be a long day.
Jeremy liked bacon, curry, and chips. Possibly all on the same plate. He would eat whatever you put in front of him. You know how pious health freaks always tell you their body is a temple? Well, Jeremy’s body really was a temple, but it was one of those ancient abandoned ones in India, surrounded by jungle and full of wild monkeys, screeching and swinging from the ruins. I decided I rather liked Jeremy after all.
I made Zack’s protein shake and Kimi’s smoothie and stuck them in the fridge, so I could serve them the minute they reached the canteen (or their trailer, in Kimi’s case; her sister, Aiko, would come and pick up her breakfast so she could eat/drink it in solitary splendour. What Aiko would eat, nobody had bothered to find out). I measured out Faith’s porridge oats and left them soaking in the soya milk; they would only take a minute in the microwave. I cooked a load more bacon and put it on the hot buffet, along with buttered rolls and ketchup; Jeremy could help himself, along with the bit-part actors and extras.
‘You look busy.’
I looked up and smiled at Nathan, who was standing at the counter. ‘Never too busy for local law enforcement,’ I said. ‘Are you here to check up on our saboteur, or to see me?’
Nathan gave me that smile of his, the one that started out small and ended up taking over most of his face. I always liked being on the business end of one of those smiles.
‘A bit of both,’ he said. He sniffed and I laughed.
‘You had breakfast?’
‘I was going to have some at the station,’ he said, eyeing the big tray of bacon I’d just set out. I picked up a roll and piled several rashers into it.
‘Sauce?’ I asked, raising my eyebrows.
‘I won’t say no if it’s you offering,’ he said, grinning, and I felt my cheeks get hot. I gave the plastic ketchup bottle a squeeze and it made a horrible farty noise. There went the atmosphere, again.
‘Better out than in…’ I shook the bottle and got some out this time, then handed him the roll in a serviette. ‘Sit down. I’ll come and join you.’
We sat at one of the picnic tables and I watched as Nathan nibbled far more delicately at the roll than I would have done. He seemed a bit awkward, anxious or something. I wondered what the matter was, and why he had really come to see me.
‘So…’ I said, but right at that moment he was having trouble with a stringy bit of bacon fat and couldn’t speak. ‘So, the mysterious phantom shoot saboteur has struck again, I reckon.’
He swallowed. ‘Really?’
I told him about the tungsten lights, the footprints in the flowerbed, and the shards of glass. He nodded thoughtfully.
‘Did you talk to the locksmith?’ I asked, and he nodded again.
‘Just briefly,’ he said. ‘Remember, this isn’t really an investigation, is it? So far, it’s just your copper’s instinct niggling at you. No one’s made a complaint. But I did pop in to ask about getting some keys cut, and I had a chat with him then.’ He dabbed at a spot of bacon grease on his sleeve. ‘Bugger… Anyway, I told him I’d heard about what happened, and I asked him if that sort of thing was a regular occurrence, as I was thinking of buying a caravan and wondered if there was anything I should be looking out for.’ He grinned. ‘Your mum was right.’
‘What? Really? It was superglue?’
He nodded. ‘He said it looked to him like someone had squirted something into the lock and it had set hard. He had to replace the whole thing – unscrew all the housing and take the entire unit off. He said he was about to go off and get a jigsaw so he could cut it out, when Tony climbed in and kicked the door open.’
‘So whoever the saboteur is, they did a proper job…’ I said thoughtfully. He nodded.
‘Yup. So do you have any ideas who it could be? You must have your ear to the ground here. Everyone must come and see you at some point.’
I shook my head. ‘Not really. I’ve been stuck in the truck most of the morning so far, apart from looking round the kitchen garden. Once the breakfast rush is over I’ll go walkabout, stick my nose into a few people’s business…’
He laughed. ‘That sounds like you. But be careful, okay? So far this person has been pretty harmless, but they might not stay that way, especially if they realise you’re sniffing around.’
‘I am always the soul of discretion,’ I said, and he laughed again.
‘But of course you are.’ He stood up. ‘I’d better go…’
‘Wait!’ I shot to my feet too. ‘You didn’t really come here to talk about the prankster, did you? What is it? Has something happened to your dad?’
‘No, no, nothing like that,’ he said, and he really did look awkward now. I felt a horrible lurch in my tummy. Good news was never delivered by a face wearing that expression. ‘It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just—’ He swallowed hard and I could see that he was making himself say it. ‘I’ve been offered a job back in Liverpool.’
It took a minute for his words to sink in, and then when they did, I didn’t quite believe I’d heard him right. No, no! I thought. He couldn’t go back to Liverpool, he just couldn’t.
‘What sort of job?’ I asked, stupidly. He rolled his eyes.
‘Hairdressing.’ Well, he did have good hair. ‘My old superintendent contacted me and told me about this new unit he’s heading up for Merseyside Police. Drugs and organised crime. He wants me to apply for a DCI position with him. He’s more or less said that if I want it, it’s mine.’
‘Oh … right,’ I said, my mind whirling. All I could think was no, no, no! But of course I didn’t say that. ‘Sounds like a good job.’
‘Yeah, it is.’
‘More room for career progression than sleepy Penstowan,’ I said.
‘Yeah.’
‘Near your parents,’ I said. Stop listing all the reasons why he should take it, I told myself in exasperation.
‘Yeah.’
Near your ex, I thought. Don’t say it… Don’t say it… ‘Does your ex still live there?’ Damn, I said it.
‘I don’t know,’ said Nathan, but I could tell he was lying. To his credit he realised it, and shrugged. ‘I assume she does. I haven’t heard that she’s moved or anything. But I’m not in touch with her, so I wouldn’t necessarily know if she had.’
‘So when do they want you to start?’ I asked, even though I didn’t want to think about him leaving. He gave a short laugh.
‘I haven’t even applied yet!’ he said. ‘Are you in a hurry to get rid of me or something?’
No, I don’t want you to go at all, I thought. But of course I didn’t say that either. I opened my mouth to say something – anything – but then his phone rang. As he reached into his pocket to answer it, I looked up and saw Faith and Jeremy approaching. I finally spoke up as Nathan looked at his phone in irritation and declined the call.
‘I have to get back to work,’ I said. It wasn’t what I really wanted to say, but I did need to make the stars’ breakfasts.
‘Oh, yes, so do I…’ He tucked his phone back in his pocket and looked around. There were more cast members heading over now, having finished in Hair and Make-Up and taking the opportunity to grab a quick cuppa or some breakfast before filming began. I turned towards the truck but he reached over and touched my arm, stopping me. ‘Can we talk later?’
‘Of course,’ I said, horrified to hear my voice sounding so hoarse. I swallowed hard. ‘But really, what’s to talk about? It’s a fantastic opportunity and it’s near your parents.’ And your ex…
He stared at me. ‘So you think I should apply?’
No, no, I don’t! ‘Don’t you?’
He looked at me as if he was disappointed with my reply, then took his hand off my arm. ‘I’ve got to go. See you later,’ he said flatly, then turned and walked away.
‘Hellooo?’ Behind me, Faith called out to me in a cheerful, friendly tone of voice that for some completely irrational
reason made me want to pour that bowl of cold porridge oats over her head. But I showed remarkable restraint and just smiled at her before returning to the food truck.
Chapter Ten
I heated up Faith’s porridge and helped Jeremy get a bacon roll together. I had the horrible feeling that he only wanted me to lean across the counter with a couple of baps in my hands so that he could get a quick look down my top – it was boiling inside the truck with the hot plate on, and I’d stripped down to my T-shirt, which was clingier and had a lower V-neck than I’d realised – but I was still too stunned by Nathan’s revelation to care about a has-been actor’s sexist BS. Zack came over for his protein shake and banana; he smiled charmingly at me, despite being deep in conversation with someone on his phone, but even that didn’t make much of a dent in my mood. Aiko came and picked up Kimi’s breakfast and looked astounded when I asked her what she’d like for breakfast; I got the impression not too many people even noticed her when her sister was around. I gave her one of Zack’s low-carb muesli bars and a banana (I guessed she and her sister hadn’t managed to maintain figures like theirs by eating bacon sandwiches) and told her to let me know if there was anything special I could make her for her lunch.
‘For me? Not for Kimi?’ She couldn’t seem to get her head around the concept. I smiled encouragingly at her.
‘Of course! It’s your birthday today as well, isn’t it? You should be celebrating, not fetching and carrying for your sister. Let me know, yeah?’
‘I will… Thank you…’ And she wandered away, still looking slightly bemused. I shook my head, equally bemused; movie people were weird.
I turned off the hot plate and began to clear down, making room for the lunchtime prep. There were probably still a few breakfast stragglers, but there was plenty of bacon in the heated buffet dishes and a pile of buttered rolls, so they could help themselves. There was also a random box of Coco Pops in the cupboard, so anyone who didn’t want bacon could have a bowl of that.