Dead Heat

by Dick Francis

  Gary was my sous-chef, my underchef. My apprentice.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “At the Net,” he said. He always referred to the restaurant as “the Net.” “But I can’t get into the kitchen.”

  “I know,” I said. I looked at my watch: ten-fifteen. Our normal start time was ten. “Who else is there?”

  “Ray, Julie and Jean are here, and the kitchen porters are somewhere around,” he said. “Oh, and Martin’s here too,” he added.

  Martin, my barman, must have recovered, I thought. It was he who had gone to the hospital on Friday night.

  “How about Richard and Carl?” I asked.

  “No sign of them,” he said. “Nor of Robert and Louisa.”

  He obviously hadn’t heard about Louisa.

  “Tell everyone to go into the dining room and wait for me,” I said. “Tell Martin to make some coffee using the bar machine.” He could do that without going into the kitchen.

  “How about milk?” he asked. It was in the cold-room.

  “Drink it black. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  IT ACTUALLY TOOK me twenty minutes to reach the restaurant, not least because my car was still at the racetrack and I had to phone for a taxi. By the time I arrived, Richard had made it there as well, and he had brought with him the bad news about Louisa. Julie and Jean were in tears and consoling each other, and Ray, Martin and Gary just sat in silence with their heads bowed. Louisa had been a very popular member of the team and was loved by us all. Martin asked me about Robert, and I was able to assure them that he was all right. But it did little to lighten the mood. Richard was expressing his anger at the “bastards” who had done this. He kept banging his fist on the table, and, in the end, I suggested it might be best if he went outside to cool off. I could see him through the window kicking a tree near the parking lot. He was in his mid-forties, and was my maître d’, meeting and greeting the customers and taking their dinner orders as they enjoyed a drink in the bar. Louisa had been his own teenage daughter’s best friend at school, and I knew that he thought of her as an extension of his family. It had been because of Richard that Louisa had come to work at Hay Net, and he now probably felt in some way responsible. His anger was directed not just at the bastards who did this but at the whole situation that had led to her death.

  Carl arrived to join this happy throng.

  “Hi,” he said to me. “How’s the knee?”

  “I’ll survive.”

  “Pity.” He forced a smile. I knew he slightly resented having a boss who was ten years his junior, especially one who took all the credit when Carl thought he had done the lion’s share of the work. But I paid him well, so he stayed.

  I convened a meeting in the dining room. Richard came in from the parking lot with red and tearful eyes, Julie and Jean still clung to each other, with Martin fussing over them both, and Ray and Gary sat close together facing me. I suddenly wondered if they were, in fact, a couple. Our two kitchen porters had wandered off somewhere, but I wasn’t so concerned about them.

  “It is absolutely dreadful news about Louisa, and I know that we are all angry and disturbed by her death.” Richard nodded furiously. “This has been an appalling weekend for everyone in Newmarket, and especially for us who were involved with the event on Saturday.”

  “I feel so guilty,” said Richard, interrupting.

  “Why guilty?” I asked.

  “Because I was meant to be there on Saturday,” he said, “but I didn’t go because I was so unwell on Friday night. Maybe I could have saved her if I’d been there.” He started crying again.

  “Richard,” I said, “you mustn’t blame yourself. If you were there, you might have been killed too.”

  He looked at me in a manner that suggested he knew that and still would have preferred to have been there just the same.

  “Martin and I were ill on Friday night as well,” said Jean. “I called an ambulance because he was so bad.”

  “I was also meant to be at the racetrack on Saturday,” said Martin, “but they didn’t let me out of the hospital until about one and it was too late by then.” He looked at me for reassurance.

  “It’s fine, Martin,” I said. “I wouldn’t have expected anyone to come to work after being so ill.” He looked relieved.

  “I was ill as well,” added Julie in her high-pitched manner.

  “And us,” said Gary, indicating him and Ray. Perhaps I was right about them. Gary went on. “I should also have been there on Saturday, but I was too sick to make it. Sorry, Chef.”

  “It’s all right.” I said, looking at him. “I think we were all food poisoned on Friday evening, along with most of the guests who attended the function at the racetrack.”

  The enormity of what I had said slowly sank in.

  “Is that why the kitchen is padlocked?” said Gary.

  “Yes.” I explained to them all I knew about the situation. I told them that someone had apparently died from food poisoning but that I didn’t yet know who it was. I told them that I would try to get the kitchen inspected quickly and that we would try to be back in business as soon as possible. “Louisa would have wanted that,” I said. I thought it was true, and they all nodded in agreement.

  “So,” I said, “you can all go home now and come in again at ten tomorrow. I can’t promise that we will be back in business by then, but I will try. When we find out when Louisa’s funeral is, we will close so we can all attend. How about if we offer the restaurant to her parents and ask them if they want to invite everyone back here after the funeral?”

  They all nodded again.

  “I’ll do that if you like,” said Richard.

  “Yes, please,” I said. “Tell them it’s also fine if they don’t want to have it here, but we will do the catering for them wherever, free of charge.”

  Richard smiled. “Thanks, I will.”

  The phone rang, and Carl went and picked it up from the desk in the corner. He listened for a bit and then said, “Thank you for letting us know.” He hung up.

  “A cancellation,” he said. “For tonight.”

  “Just as well,” I said.

  “I’ll call around to the other bookings,” said Carl. “We should have their numbers.”

  “Good,” I said, trying to sound upbeat and businesslike. “OK, everyone, the meeting’s over. If anyone wants me, I’ll be in my office, trying to get us back up and running.”

  I called it my office, but it was used by everyone. Martin was in charge of the bar and was responsible for the ordering of all the drink, including for the restaurant, although it was me who decided which wines actually appeared on the list. Carl dealt with all the food and equipment ordering. The office had one wall with three rows of seven hooks each. On each hook was hanging a large bulldog clip. Each of the seven hooks in each row represented a day of the week, Monday to Sunday. The top row was for notes of things to be ordered. The middle row was for orders placed. And the bottom row for delivery notes of orders received.

  On Thursdays and Fridays, my part-time bookkeeper, Enid, came in to check delivery notes against orders made, and invoices received against both. Checks were then written against invoices, receipts from sales were counted and banked and salaries and other costs were paid. The system was very low-tech, but it seemed to work well, and we rarely, if ever, ran out of ingredients, or napkins and the like, and, since the first year, receipts from sales had far exceeded both checks written and the cost of salaries and the rest, so we made a profit. A handsome profit, in fact.

  I sat at my desk and shuffled the paperwork to make some space. I had been working on new menu items and there were notes and recipes strewn about. We kept basically the same menu each day, since my regular customers didn’t like it if their favorite dish was unavailable, but we generally added a special or two. I didn’t want the specials to be recited aloud by the waiters, as happens so often in American restaurants, so we printed new menus daily, with any specials highlighted in
bold type.

  I dug in my pocket and pulled out Angela Milne’s card.

  “Angela Milne,” she answered on the first ring.

  “Hello, Angela,” I said, “Max Moreton here.”

  “Oh good,” she said, “I was going to call you.”

  “Who died?” I asked.

  “What, from the poisoning?” she said. I wish she wouldn’t use that term.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Well, it appears now that the death in question may not be connected with the event on Friday.”

  “Explain,” I said.

  “As you might expect, everything is rather chaotic at the moment with the bombing at the racetrack. Dreadful, isn’t it? I understand that the local coroner’s department has been somewhat overwhelmed. There’s a backlog of postmortems to be done. A refrigerated truck has been commandeered by the hospital to act as a temporary morgue.”

  It was more information than I really wanted.

  “So,” I said, “what about the death on Friday night?”

  “It seems it may have been due to natural causes and not food poisoning.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked her rather irately, thinking about my sealed kitchen.

  “A patient presented himself at the hospital emergency room on Friday night with abdominal pain, nausea and severe vomiting, consistent with having been poisoned.” She paused. “He arrived at the hospital alone but at the same time as several other cases, and it was assumed that since he had the same symptoms he was suffering from the same problem. The patient died at seven-thirty on Saturday morning, and a young doctor from the hospital called the Food Standards Agency emergency number in London and an impetuous junior officer from there ordered the sealing of the kitchen.” She paused again.

  “Yes,” I prompted, “go on.”

  “I’m not sure I should be telling you all this,” she said.

  “Why not?” I said. “It’s my kitchen that was closed because of it.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m sorry about that.”

  “So what did he die of?” I asked.

  “The postmortem has not been done yet, but it appears he may have died from a perforated bowel.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “What it says. The bowel has a hole in it and empties itself into the abdominal cavity. It apparently causes peritonitis, and death, if not treated rapidly.”

  “So the person died of peritonitis?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “As I said, the postmortem hasn’t been done. But his family now says that he had Crohn’s disease, which is an inflammation of the bowel, and that he had been complaining of abdominal pains for several days. Crohn’s disease can lead to blockage of the bowel and then perforation.”

  “Why didn’t he go to a doctor before Friday night?” I said.

  “I don’t know, but apparently it wasn’t unusual for him to complain of abdominal pain. But I would have thought it was most unlikely that he would have gone to a dinner at the track if he was suffering from such discomfort that he needed hospital treatment.”

  “So my kitchen is in the clear?” I asked.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that,” she said. “There were definitely other cases of food poisoning, even if that death was not connected with them.”

  “But the food wasn’t cooked in my restaurant kitchen and had never been in the building.”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “Then please get someone to remove the padlocks.”

  “The kitchen will need to be inspected first,” she said.

  “Fine,” I said. “You could eat off the floor in that kitchen, it’s so clean. Get your inspectors out here today so I can get my business back on track. I hate to think how much damage has been done by having ‘Closed for Decontamination’ plastered all over the place.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” she said.

  “Good,” I said. “Otherwise, I might start making a fuss about a doctor who doesn’t know the difference between food poisoning and peritonitis.”

  “I think that fuss is already being made by his family.”

  I bet it was.

  “So when my kitchen is inspected, that will be the end of the matter?” I asked.

  “Not entirely,” she said. “From my point of view, as the Cambridgeshire environmental health officer, I will have no objection to your kitchen reopening once it has passed an inspection, but there will still be an investigation of what poisoned everyone on Friday evening and put people in the hospital.”

  “But the kitchen I used on Friday is no more, and also none of the food is left, so how will you do an investigation?” I asked. I decided not to tell her just yet that the only two of my regular staff who hadn’t been ill had eaten the vegetarian option. It was not that I purposely wanted to hinder an investigation. It was merely that I didn’t want to initiate one.

  “Samples were taken of vomit and feces from those admitted to the hospital,” she said. “They will be analyzed in due course.”

  What a lovely job, I thought, sifting through other people’s sick and diarrhea. Rather them than me. “And when can I expect the results?” I asked.

  “The results will be for me, not for you,” she said, using her best headmistressly voice.

  “But you will tell me, won’t you?” I said.

  “Maybe,” she said with a hint of amusement in her voice. “As long as they are not grounds for a prosecution. Then the police will tell you the results after they arrest you.”

  “Oh thanks,” I said.

  We hung up on good terms. In my line of business, I needed Angela Milne as a friend, not a foe.

  CARL DROVE ME to the racetrack to retrieve my car. My Golf wasn’t the only vehicle in the staff parking lot. There was a battered old green Mini there too. It was Louisa’s.

  “Oh God,” said Carl. “What do we do about that?”

  “I’ll inform the police,” I said. “They can deal with it.”

  “Good idea,” he said, obviously happy to leave it to me.

  We sat for a moment and stared at Louisa’s depressing little Mini. It had been her pride and joy. For some reason, it reminded me of a commuter rail crash in west London when the primary identification of some of the burned bodies was achieved by recording the registration numbers of the cars in the Reading station parking lot that remained uncollected at the end of the day.

  I climbed out of Carl’s car. “I’m going to go back to the restaurant this afternoon to continue working on the new menus,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “I might go back there too,” he said. “Nothing else to do.”

  “OK, I’ll see you in a bit, then, but I’m going home first.”

  “Right,” he said again. I closed the car door and he drove off.

  I stood there and looked over the hedge towards the grandstand. All was quiet, save for a policeman standing guard and the flapping of some blue-and-white tape stretched across behind the grandstands, presumably to prevent people straying in and contaminating what had to be seen as a crime scene. I suspected there was more activity taking place, out of sight, around the front, and also inside the building, where the forensic teams would probably be still searching for bomb fragments.

  I limped my way over to the policeman and told him about the car in the parking lot and that it had belonged to one of the victims, Louisa Whitworth. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and promised to tell the appropriate person to get it returned to her family. I suspected it was the last thing on their minds at the moment.

  I thought of asking him if there was any more news about what had happened, but he wouldn’t have known, and, even if he had, he wouldn’t have told me. So I waved a good-bye to him, went back to my car and drove away, leaving the sad little green Mini alone on the grass.

  I WENT HOME and swallowed a couple of the painkillers to dull the ache in my knee. I had been walking and standing on it for too long and it was protesting. I lay on the sofa for a while
, to give the painkillers time to work, then I drove to the local garage to fill the car with gas and to buy the local newspaper. The roads were very quiet, and Barbara, the middle-aged woman in the garage who processed my credit card, assured me that the whole town was in shock. She told me at considerable length that she had been to the town supermarket and never seen it so empty. And those people who were there, she said, were talking in hushed tones, as if talking loudly would disturb the dead.

  I entered my PIN in her machine and escaped back to my car, where I sat and read the reports of the bombing in the Cambridge Evening News, whose front page carried a photo of the blue tarpaulin-covered grandstand under the headline MURDER AT THE RACES. Even though the police had named only fourteen of the eighteen dead, the paper listed them all, and also gave the names of many of those seriously injured. The paper obviously had good contacts at the local hospitals and with the police.

  I looked through the lists. Eight of the dead were Americans from Delafield Industries, including MaryLou Fordham. Elizabeth Jennings was there among the local residents known to have died, along with Louisa and four others, including another couple who were regular customers at the Hay Net. The remaining four victims included three I knew. There was a racehorse trainer and his wife who had lived in Lambourn, as well as a successful Irish businessman who had invested much of his wealth in high-speed Thoroughbreds. The seriously injured but alive list included Rolf Schumann, the Delafield chairman, as well as half a dozen or so others I recognized from the racing world. Along with their names, the paper had printed photographs of some of the non-American dead and injured, especially those with local racing connections.

  What a dreadful waste, I thought. These were nice people who worked hard and didn’t deserve to be mutilated and killed by some unseen bomber who, it seemed, may have been motivated by political fervor far removed from and alien to the close-knit community involved in the Sport of Kings. Sure, there was rivalry in racing. Sometimes that rivalry, and the will to win, may spill over into skulduggery and a bending of the rules, and the law, but murder and maiming of innocents was what happened elsewhere in the world, not in our cozy Suffolk town on its biggest racing day of the year. Would it, I wondered, ever be the same again?