A Taste of Death
Page 24
He grinned and shuffled his feet. ‘Thank you.’
Jess looked at me and shook her head. ‘I told you that woman was bad news,’ she said, and flung her arms around me.
‘Thank God you’re alive!’ she said.
Francis looked down at the cellar: no water was flowing into it now, its level had equalled that of the flooded beer garden.
‘Crikey, that was close,’ he said, mildly.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Monday, 1 February
I was putting out a row of brandy glasses that I was going to use for a dessert and listening to the radio playing in the background. Soon I’d be able to use them for what they were intended – brandy. Slattery had been by a couple of days before to tell me he’d greenlighted my liquor licence application. I think it was his way of saying sorry. He had also told me that a search of Naomi’s garage had revealed not just my bloodstained T-shirt but the car that had killed Paul Harding. Slattery had arrested Musgrave, Farson, Hat Man and, of course, Naomi West. As far as I could gather they were all busy blaming each other.
It was five days after my watery resurrection or baptism, maybe. I felt like I had been officially born again.
There was a pounding on my kitchen door. Slattery, I thought. The heavy hand of the law.
I opened it. ‘Good morning, Detective Inspector, do come in.’
He did so and stood in the kitchen looking at me with his old expression of disfavour. I wondered what I had done now. He didn’t beat about the bush, his voice was cold:
‘Two of the accused have told me an interesting story about you – one that they say came from Naomi West.’
‘Oh yes? And what might that be?’ I asked.
‘… and now here on Beech Tree FM it’s Leo Sayer and “When I Feel Love”…’ I turned the radio off. Whatever DI Slattery was feeling, I didn’t think it was love.
The DI folded his arms and looked at me. In his green Barbour jacket and cords, a flat tweed cap on his head, he looked like one of the local shoot who had wandered into the kitchen. The expression in his eyes was the kind with which a hunter looks at his prey.
‘Both of them, independently, say that Naomi told them she saw you shortly after she killed Whitfield with his shotgun. That you discovered the body. It was partly why she seduced you, she was pretty sure you hadn’t recognised her, but she wanted to be sure.’ He smiled mirthlessly at me. ‘As well as to be able to frame you, of course. We found the gloves she was wearing when she pulled the trigger, men’s gloves. I have no doubt we’d have found them at your place together with that T-shirt.’
I felt my heart beating fast: he wasn’t going to arrest me, was he? I studied his face, I think he knew what I was thinking.
‘Well, they’re lying. If I’d discovered the body, I’d have told you,’ I said.
‘Would you?’ asked Slattery. He looked me hard in the eye. ‘I don’t think they were lying, and I see no reason to change my mind about my original opinion of you, Mr Hunter. No reason at all.’
He turned on his heel, walked to the kitchen door and opened it.
‘I just thought you’d like to know.’
The door closed behind him.
Well, I thought, back to square one.
My second visitor could not have been more different. For a start, unlike Slattery, he was invited. He was a man, also unlike Slattery, that I was able to bare my soul to. My own chosen father confessor.
I stirred the lemon zest and juice into the simmering double cream and sugar that was on the stove. I was making a lemon posset that I was going to serve with finely diced stem ginger, some raspberries, toasted flaked almonds and accompanied with almond shortbread.
‘Well,’ my spiritual adviser said, ‘he’s only got himself to blame. If he comes on all heavy-handed at the beginning, it’s his fault if you felt a little bashful about coming forward. Prat!’
The lemon juice worked its magic on the cream, it thickened almost as soon as the juice hit it. I had made the shortbread earlier and cut it up using a two-inch pastry cutter while it was still warm, before it hardened up. Cliff Hinds was eating the lattice work of shortbread that was left after I’d been at work with the cutter.
‘Anyway, he didn’t nick you, that’s the main thing. This is bloody good,’ he said.
‘You should watch your waistline, Cliff,’ I warned. ‘That stuff is equal weight sugar and butter, with more sugar on top. I shudder to think of the calories …’
‘Yeah, but it’s got nuts in it, and they’re good for you,’ he countered. ‘Besides, I chucked two kids out of the club on Tuesday night and they said they’d come back and shoot me.’ He shrugged. ‘I’d rather die of shortbread than a shotgun.’
‘Fair enough.’ I started ladling the posset into large brandy glasses, in ten portions.
Cliff had come out to the country for the day to see me in my new environment. I showed him my restaurant, and pointed out the significant parts of the village. That didn’t take long.
‘You can meet my staff,’ I said. ‘The ones who saved my life.’
‘How did they know you were there,’ he asked, ‘stuck in that cellar?’
I laughed. ‘Jess had hacked Naomi’s phone. She got into it via my iPhone. My phone’s backed up to my PC and she’s got the password.’
‘You gave your waitress your personal password?’ he sounded shocked.
‘No, she just knows it, God knows how.’ I shrugged. I knew very well how she knew. I could remember her exact words from a few days ago: ‘Password1’ is not a password, it’s not secure … it’s like leaving your front door wide open, with the keys in the lock, be a bit more innovative …’
‘She got into Naomi’s messages. She had texted Farson to come and collect me and take me to the Greyhound. So Jess and Francis followed along. When they saw what was happening, they called the Old Bill.’
‘How does she know how to hack into a phone?’ said Cliff, admiringly.
‘She does Ethical Hacking as part of her IT course at uni.’
‘Good job she didn’t study catering,’ said Cliff, ‘or you’d be brown bread, mate.’
‘I know,’ I agreed, ‘and thank God it was Francis with her, able to lift that door up by himself.’
A few moments later there was a knock on the kitchen door. I knew it wasn’t Slattery this time, it was too polite. Slattery’s door knock was Gestapo/Stasi/FSB. I opened it to find a UPS delivery man with a small parcel. I signed for it and carried it inside.
‘What is it?’ asked Cliff.
I shrugged. ‘I’ve got no idea.’
I undid the packaging, a bottle of Veuve Cliquot ’95 and a card with a mobile number on one side. I turned it over, ‘In bocca al lupo’ It was signed, CF.
Cliff picked the bottle up admiringly. ‘I like fizz, I wouldn’t mind some of this right now!’
I looked at him and said, ‘Cliff, much as I love you, I’m not giving you £200 vintage champagne. You can make do with PG Tips and lager when the Three Bells opens.’
‘Fair enough, mate.’
Cliff stood up and stretched. ‘What does the card say?’
‘It says, In the mouth of the wolf, it means, “Good luck”.’
I looked at the elegant, strong calligraphy on the card and I thought of Claudia. I thought of the expression she would have had as she wrote: the way her dark, shapely eyebrows would furrow gently as she concentrated on something; her well-defined, intelligent Italian face. Should I call her? Did it just mean good luck or did it mean something else?
I decided to think about it later. Right now I would enjoy my day with Cliff – simple, uncomplicated friendship.
Cliff Hinds, unreconstructed, unrepentant Londoner and hardened sinner, looked through the door to the restaurant and beyond through the windows to the green and the houses opposite. For once it had stopped raining, and in the distance you could see the treeline that marked the edge of the cricket ground and a horse paddock.
‘Al
l these fields, gives me the creeps,’ Cliff said.
‘Now, now, it’s my manor you’re talking about,’ I chided him.
He snorted in derision.
‘Are you going to stay here?’ he asked. ‘After all this …’ He searched for a word to describe several murders, the violence, the deceit, false imprisonment and a near fatal attempt on my life. He found one. ‘Malarkey?’
‘Why not?’ I said. ‘I like it here.’ I patted the Hobart, by God, the price I’d ended up paying for it! I smiled. ‘And besides, I’m local now.’
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