by H. V. Coombs
But not Francis-proof.
The reality was proving a little bit tougher than I’d anticipated.
‘That’s great, Francis, now if we could just make it look a bit more like the one in the picture … No, Francis, half a tablespoon of remoulade – that’s half a teaspoon you’ve put there, it doesn’t really look very much, does it?’
‘I’m sorry, chef, it’s so confusing, teaspoon, tablespoon—’ woeful look ‘—I’m as much use as a sponge lifebelt.’
‘Never mind, Francis—’ through gritted teeth ‘—Rome wasn’t built in a day.’
Service went smoothly, Francis didn’t do too badly, although I did have to check more or less everything that he did. By the time we’d finished, he hadn’t done anything disastrous and after we had cleared up – he was great at washing floors – I took him over the road to the Three Bells to buy him a pint to celebrate.
I saw in the car park the grey Maserati that belonged to the Earl.
What was it that Kenneth the fish man had called him?
‘Ropey, a bloody good bloke …’ I remembered now. We walked in and I went up to the bar and got our drinks. The Earl was sitting at a table. He wasn’t by himself.
I studied the controversial aristocrat closely. He was tall, with a full head of grey hair, nearly white and a clipped grey moustache. He was dressed smartly, a blazer, a cravat, and two-tone Oxford brogues, which gave him a raffish look. He looked quite military, ramrod straight back, gleaming shoes, trouser creases as sharp as a knife, but the shoes gave him a slightly pimp-like air.
The pimp look was bolstered by the company he was keeping. The last time that I had seen him he had been with the Slavic call-girl. Today he was with someone closer to home. He was with Bryony, Craig’s ex. She waved blearily at me. Bryony looked stoned out of her mind. I recalled what I knew about the Earl and his penchant for drugs. That had been a long time ago, though, in his hippy heyday. Right now he looked more like he was dressed for a day in some exclusive London club than a night of drug-fuelled debauchery. It had to be said that the Earl’s cocaine and champagne lifestyle appeared to have done him the world of good. He looked very trim, enviably fit for a man of his years. I suddenly wondered how fast the Earl might be capable of running. He certainly looked no stranger to exercise.
Did he look fit enough to run away at speed from a murder scene?
Yes he did.
Bryony was wearing a micro mini-skirt, biker boots and a torn cashmere jumper under a denim jacket. She looked very punk rock. I wondered what she was doing with the alleged killer of her boyfriend. She’d obviously decided he was a bloody good bloke too.
Francis and I sat down at a table near the bar. He picked up his pint of lager, raised it to his lips and tipped it back. He put it back on the table, three-quarters empty. He turned and beamed at the pub in general. Francis was amazingly good-natured, an example to us all.
He somehow dominated the bar. He undeniably had presence. There wasn’t a lot going on between Francis’s ears but he was kind of eye-catching. His huge physique, when he bent his arm the fabric groaned, his startlingly blond hair, his slightly goggly eyes, his cheery red face; he was very noticeable.
The Earl had certainly noticed us. He stood up and came over. I rather arrogantly assumed that he would want to speak to me, but it was Francis that he addressed. My KP beamed up at him.
‘Just came over to wish you good luck on Saturday – tough game you’ve got, I believe.’ His voice was as precise and clipped as his moustache and it was as upper-class as might be guessed at from the fact that he was an earl.
Francis nodded happily. ‘Beaconsfield are a good team,’ he said, ‘particularly in the line-outs, but, well, we’re in with a chance.’
The Earl nodded. ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘How’s the leg?’
‘Better now, thanks,’ said Francis, ‘I’m faster now than I ever was. When I get the ball those Beaconsfield boys will be hard put to catch me, I can tell you that. I’ll be running like a bloody …’ He scratched his head looking for a simile. ‘Salmon!’
‘Good man,’ said the Earl. He didn’t speak to me but smiled in frosty politeness, and nodded in acknowledgement. He returned to his table. Oh well, I thought, we could always exchange prison anecdotes the next time that we saw each other. For a moment, I’d wondered what he had been talking about to Francis but then I remembered that Francis played for the local rugby team.
Francis leaned across the table.
‘He’s a bloody good bloke,’ he said. Everyone seemed to like the Earl, including Bryony. She obviously liked him a lot. I was getting good at being a detective, I had noticed that she was stroking his thigh.
‘Is he?’ I said.
‘Yeah, the rugby club pavilion was badly damaged in a fire last year and the Earl stumped up about ten thousand himself in a donation to improve the shower facilities, ’cos the insurance were really dragging their feet.’ He frowned at the memory. ‘They were as much use as an underwater fishtank.’
So, the Earl was involved in good works in the local community. Maybe his taste for young women was just as innocent, part of an outreach programme. But I remained suspicious. There was his visit to the Greyhound that I had witnessed the other night. I couldn’t see any reason for his being there other than to meet up with Farson. And Farson was, in my mind anyway, a potential killer. Not of Whitfield maybe, but of Paul Harding. If not that, a killer working on someone’s instructions.
I doubted Farson could think his way out of a wet paper bag.
The Earl and Bryony stood up to go and she stumbled slightly as she stood up and clutched at the table for support.
As they left the bar and the Earl started to open the door, Bryony, who was now supporting herself with an arm around his shoulders, leaned up and planted a passionate kiss on the dapper aristocrat, her tongue disappearing into his mouth.
It obviously wasn’t an outreach programme.
Maybe he was just consoling her after her tragic loss.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
That was enough excitement for one evening. I walked back across the green to the Old Forge Café. It was bitterly cold but I was quite glad of that. It helped to focus my thinking. Tonight, mercifully, it had stopped raining and I could even see stars through the scudding clouds. The ground under my feet was squelchy, treacherous. The weather until recently had been so wet and windy it was, according to Beech Tree FM –‘aaahnd now, here’s the Weather Girls, hope it’s not doing this over the Vale of Aylesbury … “It’s Raining Men”’ – setting new records. It was playing havoc with the trains. Trees’ root systems were now anchored in wet ground and the high winds had blown several over and on to the track. At times, it seemed like South Bucks was predominantly made of mud.
Hampden Green only had about two streetlights and so there was virtually no light pollution. For someone used to London, and time spent in a prison where obviously at night everything outside was dazzlingly illuminated, the darkness had come as a bit of a shock.
It still had the capacity to surprise me.
We are so used to streetlights. The darkness of Hampden Green was, for me, a city boy, a peculiar sensation. It was a combination at first of a feeling that you’d either gone back in time or there had been some kind of nuclear apocalypse and civilisation had been destroyed. It was eerie.
I looked up again at the stars and the constellations. I recognised the Plough and Orion’s Belt. That was it, I was depressingly ignorant of the night sky.
My eyes might have been able to detect objects God-knows-how-many light years away but I didn’t notice that I was being followed until I was nearly home. I turned around, for some reason, I think it was simply that I wanted to see the effect of the village by starlight. Despite its inhabitants, it was a very pretty place.
There was the dark shape of Whitfield’s house and the pillar that would never shine again. And there was DI Slattery’s house. The lights were off downstairs but there was a
light burning in the upstairs window. Again I had the fanciful notion that he was up there, surveying the village through night-vision binoculars. Like some dreadful vampire bat. Like Nosferatu.
I could see the lights of Naomi’s house and the others that lined the green on the far side from my restaurant. At first I didn’t see the two men walking towards me as remotely threatening. Why should I?
They were both wearing hoodies and when they noticed I had turned around and must have seen them, they quickened their pace. I still thought nothing of it. I just thought they were probably anxious to get home out of the cold.
I crossed the road to the pavement and opened the gate to the left of the frontage of the Old Forge Café that leads into the yard beside the kitchen.
It was at this moment that the two started running towards me. It suddenly dawned on me that they were probably going to attack me. I was now inside my yard and I started to push the gate shut when I felt a massive blow in the small of my back.
There were more of them.
I whirled around and saw the two men who had been waiting for me in my yard. I saw a hand raised with something in it, a pickaxe handle or a baseball bat, I guessed.
I had no time to think. I drove a fist into the face of one of them. He retreated, clutching his head. His sleeve rode up and I caught a glimpse of his wrist as he did so. They were wearing balaclavas so I couldn’t see their features. Then the pickaxe handle that the other guy had, came down on my head and I pitched forward. I can remember feeling a tremendous second blow – I almost heard it as a bang, rather than felt it – and then I was on the ground. I didn’t feel any pain, that would come later, but I was very dazed.
Before I lost consciousness I heard one of them hiss as he pulled me off the ground by my collar, ‘Stay away from Chandler’s Ford!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I awoke to find Francis bending over me, my body was on fire with pain.
‘Jesus, are you OK, what happened?’ His large face was full of concern; it looked enormous, like a full moon, looming over me.
He helped me to stand and we went into the kitchen. He supported me as we walked upstairs. My legs felt like rubber, and I sat down heavily on the mattress in my bedroom. I studied myself in the mirror on the wall.
I looked a real mess. The beanie had limited some of the damage, but not all. I touched my face gently. I could feel one eye swelling up, my jaw felt swollen and bruised, but my teeth appeared to be intact. Thank God for small mercies. I touched my nose, that was swollen too and was very painful, but all in all I had come off surprisingly lightly. I could breathe without pain so I guessed my ribs had survived the attack. I was lucky in that it was a freezing cold January night and I had a thick jumper and coat on which had absorbed a good deal of the punishment I had doubtless received. My hands were OK, nobody had stamped vindictively on them.
I remembered what they had said, ‘Stay away from Chandler’s Ford.’
This had been a warning. I thought of Whitfield. He’d had three warnings: three strikes and you’re out. I could guess who the messengers were, Farson and his merry men, but who lay behind them?
Francis appeared with a wet towel and a basin of warm water. He crouched down beside me and started cleaning up my face.
‘Shall I call an ambulance?’ he asked.
‘No, I think I’ll be OK,’ I said.
‘What if you’ve got some sort of brain injury?’ he said, looking really concerned.
‘I think I’d be feeling a bit worse than this,’ I suggested, wondering if that was true.
‘How about the police?’
‘I just can’t be bothered with all the hassle, Francis. The police—’ by that I really meant DI Slattery ‘—closed me down thinking I’d poisoned Craig Scott. I’ve only just reopened, I don’t want the general public thinking I’m involved in something I shouldn’t be.’
I meant what I said. Police involvement is anathema to trade for a restaurant. If people see the police hanging around you, even if you’re the victim, they associate you with bad things, crime, fraud, all of these negatives will come into play, consciously or unconsciously, when it comes to choosing somewhere to eat out. If the police keep turning up at your establishment, you’re going to lose trust and custom. Besides that, I also suspected that Slattery would not only be less than sympathetic, he’d end up arresting me on some spurious charge. Or maybe he’d just indulge in a surreptitious gloat.
I looked at Francis who was still cleaning me up. ‘What brought you back here?’ I asked.
‘I left my wallet in my work trousers,’ he said, ‘you’d only been gone a bit. The Earl bought me a pint and then he and Bryony left and so I got another drink and put my hand in my coat and then I realised it wasn’t there, so I came back here. There was someone hanging around outside the gate and I thought it was you, so I shouted out to him and the next thing the gate bursts open and there’s the four of them legging it off down the road – two went across the common, two down Weston Lane.’ That was the name of the road that led to Frampton End, the next village to us. ‘So I ran in here, and there you were.’
God, I thought, they’d only just started. If Francis hadn’t forgotten his wallet…well, I didn’t like to think what could have happened.
‘Thank God you did, I could have been dead by now. You saved my life, Francis. Thank you very much.’
He beamed at me delightedly. A thought struck me. ‘Francis, was the kitchen door open? I mean, unlocked.’
He nodded.
God, the day’s takings! I thought. Farson had come here to beat me up but I bet he would have taken my money too. I did have an old safe but I’d put the till drawer out of sight in the old oven. I hadn’t got round to cashing up yet.
Francis helped me and we made our way downstairs, me gripping the bannister like an eighty year old. I checked the oven, it was still there, I looked in the office, the safe was intact.
I was puzzled. I suspected that they’d been inside but why? If beating me up was the sole purpose, what had they been doing?
Francis’s large, honest, red face looked at me in concern.
‘So what are you going to do?’
I stood up. I actually felt not too bad, although my legs were still shaky. My face looked awful but I’d be hidden away in the kitchen so it wouldn’t frighten any of the customers. I’d still be able to work tomorrow. Thank God, I couldn’t take much more financially of being closed.
‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ I said.
‘Not here.’ Francis looked alarmed. ‘What if they come back. I mean, if I hadn’t turned up they might have killed you.’
He did have a point.
‘I’ll go and stay at a friend’s,’ I said, if she’ll let me, I thought.
I can remember thinking when Naomi was washing my clothes for me how nice it would be to stay there, but this wasn’t the way that I really wanted to be invited. Badly beaten up, certainly not looking my best.
Be careful what you wish for.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
By angling a hand mirror and using the one in the bathroom I could examine the cut on my head where I’d been hit with whatever it was – pickaxe handle, baseball bat or piece of wood. The skin had split but the bleeding had stopped and Francis criss-crossed it with sticking plaster so I looked a bit like Humpty Dumpty.
I felt quite ill, shaky, but worst of all, I found it very hard to think straight. I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything. I felt very jittery. My mind was leaping around like a frenzied cat, jumping from thought to thought with no logical sequence. I also was puzzled by the kitchen door. I always lock doors behind me when I go out. I would no more have left it unlocked than gone out without my shoes. I always check it as well afterwards, just to make sure it is locked. Several times, if I’m honest. I think it’s an age thing.
Someone had been inside the Old Forge Café and there had to be a reason. What could they have been looking for?
I told
Francis that I would be all right and that he was to go home.
‘Are you sure you’ll be OK? You look terrible …’
‘I’ll be fine, Francis,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
He had reluctantly gone home. He lived with his parents in a small cottage just on the outskirts of the village that coincidentally belonged to the Earl. Most places around here did, it seemed.
After he left, I prowled around the restaurant and the kitchen looking for anything that was missing or anything out of the ordinary. I couldn’t see anything out of place. I went outside into the yard and checked my two storerooms. I’m not sure if I knew what I was searching for there either.
Everything looked normal except that the washing machine door was ajar. I’d done a whites’ wash earlier, my chef’s jackets, some aprons, and some old chef’s jackets that I’d accumulated that I let Francis use, T-shirts and tea towels. I couldn’t remember opening it. There was a basket sitting on the floor waiting for the damp laundry to transfer it to the dryer, surely if I had opened the door I’d have finished the job. But I simply couldn’t remember.
This was getting futile.
Upstairs seemed pristine too. In truth, there was very little to look through.
I went back into the kitchen and got my phone. I had forgotten it when I’d gone out, luckily. That would have been smashed up for sure in the mêlée.
It had sat unscathed next to my PC. That reminded me I still hadn’t got round to changing the password on the PC – well, I certainly wasn’t going to do it now.
It was still only eight o’clock in the evening. I was going to text Naomi to ask if it was OK to come round but called her instead. It seemed easier to explain than type out the state I was in. She picked up immediately. Her voice sounded slightly guarded, wary, like she didn’t want to talk.
‘I’ve got someone round,’ she said. Momentarily I felt a sense of angry jealousy. Was ‘someone’ another man?
Then I pulled myself together. It wasn’t like she was my girlfriend or anything. Only in my dreams. A friend, maybe technically an employer. The idea that she might have a boyfriend had never crossed my mind, but why wouldn’t she?