The Food Detective

by Judith Cutler

  For some reason the group round Reg fell silent as I approached, so I started a conversational hare myself.

  ‘What’s this new bloke doing out at your campsite then, Reg? Not the weather for the open air life, I’d have thought.’ Though the pub walls were nearly two feet thick, and the windows in deep recesses, you could still hear the rain sluicing down, as if someone had forgotten to turn off a celestial tap. It was a good job I’d already started my improvements: I’d just had the gutters cleared and the drains rodded.

  ‘Oh, ah. He’s a funny one all right,’ Reg guffawed, slapping his leg. ‘You know what I found him doing this morning? Trying to bury a cat, for God’s sake.’

  ‘A cat? Did he bring it down with him?’

  There was a tiny shuffle from the others, which took me straight back to my long-forgotten schooldays when someone was trying not to snitch.

  ‘Found it, he says. Dead. I told him to shove it in that there council paper bin, but seems that was too easy. He wouldn’t even put his cardboard boxes in there. Said it’d mess up the recycling or summat. “Come on, man,” I says, “who’s going to tell? Not me, that’s for sure.” But no, he squashes everything into the back of that car of his and off he goes. Said something about the recycling centre.’

  ‘He took a dead cat to the recycling centre!’

  ‘Well, no. Reckon he must have left that back at his caravan. Said he’d dispose of it tonight. With a bit of luck, I says, it’ll wash away and spare you the trouble.’

  ‘Dispose of it? How can he dispose of it? I mean, it isn’t likely he’d have brought a spade down here with him, is it? No garden,’ I explained, as Reg and his mates looked as if they couldn’t conceive of a life that didn’t involve a spade.

  ‘Ah. Suppose not. Anyway, he said he’d put the poor bugger under his caravan and deal with it this evening. If it isn’t washed away by then.’ Reg repeated. He hawked and spat. ‘We might be needing Noah’s Ark, but there’s only room for live moggies, that’s what I told him.’

  I joined in the general mild laughter before disappearing back to the bar. Lindi finally registered there were glasses to be washed, and I withdrew to the kitchen to await developments – like Reg huffing and puffing round to find out why there was no meat on the menu and why I hadn’t pressed a repeat order into his hand as soon as he’d appeared.

  By now the whole village must have heard I’d tipped all that meat into the big kitchen waste bin, which had been emptied this morning. With luck, there must have been as many theories as villagers. I wasn’t sure what to tell him. There was no point in falsely accusing people of selling unlicensed meat. Not until I knew. After all, it had seemed to be good quality. But the receipt business bothered me. Any legitimate supplier would surely provide the paperwork another business needed. Meanwhile, I had to source some more meat, and if my prices went up to match, tough. When the restaurant was open serving high quality food, customers would expect to pay accordingly. What if I went one step further and made it a completely organic restaurant? Would that be possible? Not just Reg but all the locals would huff and puff, but their days in the snug were limited anyway.

  Upstairs in my quarters the phone rang. I decided to take the call. It wouldn’t do Reg any harm at all to wait. And I’d always wanted to try my hand at vegetarian cooking.

  ‘Beans on toast? I’d rather been hoping for one of your steaks,’ Nick said that evening as I poured him an extra-long G and T.

  ‘Do steaks and gastric ulcers mix?’

  ‘I saw the Boots pharmacist. She’s given me some wonder drug, the best you can get without prescription. I thought I’d test it out.’

  ‘Unless you want to risk the pickled onions in a ploughman’s, it’s beans on toast or a salad,’ I said. ‘Problems with my freezer,’ I added innocently

  He held my gaze. I looked over his shoulder. If I started talking food supplies it might blow his cover. I assumed he’d had the sense he’d been born with and was taking my advice.

  ‘So how was work? Tough being a new boy, I should think.’

  He nodded. ‘Not just the new boy. Pretty well the only boy. There are only five of us in the whole country.’

  ‘So you’re the cat that walks –’

  ‘Cat?’

  Ah.

  ‘You know, that cat that walks by itself. Or were you thinking of another cat?’

  He nodded. Fred Tregothnan erupted into the snug with a great swagger.

  ‘Tell you what, Nick,’ I muttered, real side of the mouth stuff, ‘come up to my flat and have a coffee before you go. Now, Fred, what can I get you on this foul evening?’

  ‘You know what I want,’ he said, loud enough to draw everyone’s attention to his pelvic thrusting movements. ‘What I always want, of course.’

  ‘Didn’t your mother teach you anything?’ I asked tartly. ‘I want doesn’t get, remember.’ But I had to sound as if I were joking: landladies aren’t supposed to tell their customers to go and take a running jump. I waited till Nick was preoccupied counting out change, and dropped my voice. ‘Mind you don’t try anything on with Lindi or young Lucy, Fred.’

  ‘Oh, they don’t worry about that!’

  ‘But I do. In Lucy’s case I’m in loco parentis and I owe them both an employer’s duty of care. A joke’s a joke, but you touch up either of them and you’ll answer to me. Your usual?’ I added, back at normal volume. ‘Now, I don’t think you’ve met our newcomer, Mr Thomas. He’s down here working in Taunton as a civil servant – but you mustn’t hold that against him!’

  There: cue for a lot of jokes about things in triplicate and the rest of the rubbish. And a chance for me to back out gracefully. ‘Beans, was it, Mr Thomas, or that salad?’

  ‘So Reg Bulcombe didn’t offer you a lift back, then?’

  Nick looked round my living room as if he’d arrived in heaven, as well he might, after that tip of a mobile home. I followed his eyes. The genuine beams, the colour-washed walls hung with small but good paintings, the oak furniture polished to a glow with elbow-grease and wax. The floorboards were wide, with cracks between them that would swallow pound coins without noticing, and mostly covered with the best rugs I could afford. Yes, it looked good. What was the point of having money if you didn’t use it? Only I knew how much money was left – but I had a lot of receipts, all giving proper provenance. If the receipts showed a good deal less than I’d actually paid, that suited me and the dealers, who’d never objected yet to a little cash in hand.

  ‘No.’ He looked at me seriously. ‘Did you expect him to?’

  ‘Don’t see why not. You could take it turn and turn about, drinking and driving.’

  ‘Makes sense. But I didn’t come from the campsite.’ He was about to add something but seemed to think better of it. After a false start, he continued, ‘They’re not exactly night howlers, are they? Pooping their party at nine-thirty!’

  ‘Their cows prefer to be milked at five-thirty,’ I said.

  ‘Of course. Not a lot of working farmers in Brum. You’ve got this looking lovely. Will you be doing the same with the downstairs?’

  ‘If I have my way I will. And I’ve got planning permission.’

  ‘From the authorities, but not the locals.’ He wasn’t going to hand out advice to me the way he had to Sue Clayton, was he?

  ‘I didn’t ask the locals. The amount they bring in wouldn’t keep a mouse in cheese for a week. They’ll be all right anyway. Provided a bit of fresh paint doesn’t kill them. You’ve not been out back yet?’

  He snorted. ‘I’d rather —’

  ‘— piss in a hedge than use the privy. I don’t blame you. I hose it and I bleach it and I hose it some more, but it still stinks. Ordure of ages. So it’s coming down. The temporary replacement’s out there. See.’ I pulled back the curtain and pointed at a couple of Portaloos. ‘My bathroom’s across the corridor if you want it. I’ll make the coffee.’

  ‘Would you mind,’ he said awkward as a kid, ‘if I passed on the
coffee. Water. I’d love a glass of water.’

  ‘Whisky in it?’

  ‘When the tablets have worked properly. But if you –’

  ‘I’ll stick to coffee, thanks.’ But on reflection I joined him in water. Ty Nant. I’d bought it for its sexy bottles. The glasses were elegant, too – I was buying different styles here and there to consider for the restaurant.

  Goodness knows why I was going to so much trouble for the man who’d sent down my Tony. To prove I could, I suppose. No, it wasn’t a matter of gracious forgiveness. It was to prove I wasn’t just the widow of an ex-con who preferred to live on the cheap on a council estate in Brum’s Bartley Green. We could have afforded somewhere nice – we had a lovely apartment in Spain – but Tony was obsessive about what he called his roots. Though why he could have for one moment thought his roots were in Bartley Green when in real life his folk came from Milan to run a chippie, no one, not even himself, could have said. It was a mistake, of course. If we’d bought the sort of house I’d wanted, just down the road in an altogether nicer suburb called Harborne, the way property values had risen I could have been a millionaire by now.

  ‘Sit yourself down, copper, and tell me about this cat,’ I said, curling up in my favourite chair.

  ‘Cat?’

  ‘The one you wouldn’t let Reg Bulcombe pop in a bin.’

  ‘It was a paper bin! A clinical waste bin, I’d have shoved it in there without blinking. But I don’t know that I’d want bits of dead moggie in my morning paper. Seriously, it could have contaminated a whole batch.’

  ‘So what did you do with it? I take it all your garden tools are in store somewhere. Unless you planned to go prospecting in them thar hills.’

  He got up and pulled the curtain again. It had stopped raining. The village doesn’t run to streetlights, so even though just a few stars shone between the hurtling clouds, you could see the loom of Exmoor in the middle distance.

  ‘Another reason for going home early,’ I said. ‘You’re only a couple of miles out of the village. Some of these men have front drives that long. And a five mile drive to get to them. They’ve got their own private worlds. Some of them are literally monarchs of all they can survey from their front step. Tough lives they lead, some of them. Most of them. And they can’t afford more than the pint they nurse all night.’

  ‘But you’re not prepared to subsidise them.’ Question or accusation?

  ‘Hang on. They’ll get a better snug than the one they’ve got now. You’re not telling me there’s any comfort in those settles or in those awful patio chairs! And just before you say anything about it, I’ve made sure they’ll have another authentic snug. I’ve bought the contents of another pub further up the valley. Bought up as a grockle’s holiday home, if you’re interested. Chic restaurant I may be opening, but I’ll make damned sure the locals have somewhere to swill.’

  ‘All right, all right. Sorry. I was out of order there. Right out of order.’

  ‘Yes. You were trying not to talk about the dead cat.’

  He stared at his glass and took a swig. His face convulsed. And he started to hiccup. I’d have laughed, but they were great, racking hiccups, and the way he grabbed his stomach suggested he was in a great deal of pain.

  ‘Stand up. Stand up and walk around!’

  Gradually the hiccups subsided.

  I whisked away the Ty Nant. ‘You’d do better with still than sparkling, maybe. I bet champagne’s a killer, too.’

  He nodded. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And the dead cat?’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake –’

  ‘No swearing in my pub, Mr Thomas, thank you,’ I said, prim as I could. But meaning it, too. And determined to get to the bottom of his story. ‘You might as well tell me your version: there’ll be at least eight swirling round the village tomorrow.’

  He’d have won an Oscar for his sigh. ‘I found a dead cat by my caravan. I had to dispose of it.’

  ‘You didn’t feel like shoving it under a hedge and letting Mother Nature dispose of it.’

  He pulled a face, almost as if he was ashamed of his sensitivity. ‘Someone’s pet. The least I could do.’

  ‘Might equally have been feral.’

  ‘That’s what Sue Clayton said.’

  ‘Sue? How did she get involved?’

  ‘She happened to drive past as I was dealing with it.’

  Happened, eh? Like hell she happened. The waste bins were near the road, sure, but you had to pull on to the camp reception car park to see them.

  ‘She had a spade and we buried it. End of story.’

  Except it wasn’t. I could see he was holding something back. ‘I’m surprised it didn’t get dragged away by foxes during the day. They wouldn’t know you were planning a full-scale funeral for it.’

  ‘I think they might, you know. After all, second time round, someone had chained it to my front step.’

  Chapter Four

  I made it my business to be at the village shop immediately after nine, the time I knew Sue Clayton would be there to buy her paper. In my mature student days, I’d taken up some offer that meant that if I bought a regular Guardian I got it at discount and I’d stuck with it ever since. It was one of two put aside for regular customers; the other was for Sue. So we had something in common, including, this morning, a shared interest in dead cats. But I wouldn’t point that out straight away.

  Nick had bowed himself out almost immediately last night, furiously refusing to discuss the matter of his chained corpse, though I thought his anger was directed at himself for having mentioned it, not at me. I hadn’t argued, partly because he really didn’t look at all well and mostly because I really couldn’t understand why I’d invited him up in the first place. He certainly wasn’t the sort of man I’d have checked out from a personal ad. Mind you, he was better than some I’d actually agreed to meet. A couple you’d have expected to see beaming out at you from the Sex Offenders’ Register. Others were still labouring under the illusion that a gay man needed a woman to be respectable, and I wasn’t going to be any man’s ‘beard’. Or the other woman, of course. For all an erring man claimed his wife didn’t understand him, I always had a strong suspicion she understood him only too well. No, my Holy Grail was a nicely set-up man who could offer all that Tony had offered. Actually, rather more. Being married to someone doing a great long stretch forty miles from home isn’t my ideal of conjugal satisfaction. While he was banged up, I’d had plenty of offers, don’t doubt it, but I’d never fancied anyone enough to want to divorce Tony – always assuming his family and friends would have let me. Oh, they didn’t seem to mind the odd fling, so long as I was totally discreet, and word never seemed to get back to Tony. Except once, when – more in sorrow than in anger, he assured me – he told me he’d have my lover’s balls cut off and shoved down his throat if I didn’t give him up.

  Sue was fingering a couple of overripe bananas in the special offer basket Jem and Molly Hawk used to dispose of outdated fruit and vegetables. They might have made a good banana cake, but otherwise they’d have been inedible even disguised in a dish of muesli. Still, there was no accounting for taste, especially if you’re on the lowest of incomes. I wouldn’t have touched the young onions she bought, either. Young? Suffering from senile dementia, more like.

  I waited till we were both outside the shop, busy with brollies and hoods, to say, ‘I heard that you’d seen Mrs Greville and refused to attend the next meet to bless the hounds. I tell you, Sue, that was downright brave of you.’

  She snapped her fingers. ‘I don’t give that much for the Grevilles of this world. It isn’t as if they’ve ever worked for all those acres of hers. And I’ll bet all their titled ancestors were descended from some yob who picked up his estates as blood money when he’d slaughtered a few innocent Anglo-Saxons to please William the Bastard.’ All good Guardian-reading stuff. From Sue, however, it sounded more personal than theoretical. I opened my mouth to ask why.

  But Sue was t
racing a line in the mud, just like a naughty toddler. ‘On the other hand, it won’t have done me a lot of good with the Powers That Be. Especially my hunting and shooting bishop.’

  ‘Moral stands are exactly what a curate should be making,’ I beamed. ‘And the Powers That Be should be pleased with you. Especially at the Highest Level. Bother bishops,’ I added more loudly, as the rain bombarded our brollies. ‘They’re no more than middle management!’

  ‘It’s those in middle management that hand out jobs,’ she reminded me.

  ‘Heavens, Sue, you’ve been vicar here in all but name ever since Mr Ellis had his stroke. Surely they won’t deny you the promotion.’

  ‘It’s wheels within wheels,’ she said, as gloomy as the weather.

  ‘I thought they were supposed to grind very small.’

  ‘That’s the mills of God. At least, thanks to you I have another bell ringer. Mr Thomas. It’d have been better if you’d come along too.’

  So the ground had been more fertile than I’d realised. I awarded myself a Brownie point – and, had she not suddenly carped, one to Sue. But I hated being put on the defensive. ‘I couldn’t leave Lindi on her own. And I’m more use behind the bar than Lucy Gay, who’s not allowed to sell booze for another eighteen months yet. In any case, she’s one of your stalwarts, isn’t she?’

  ‘Apparently. I’m always over in Duncombe Parva the night they practise. I suppose it does mean she comes to church.’

  Why did she sound so grudging? I said as quietly as I could against the gusting wind, which made the umbrellas more of a liability than an asset, ‘It’s amazing she finds time. But bell ringing’s the one night in the week she regards as her own. She runs that home, you know. Well, her father’s about as much use as a chocolate lavatory. Five of those children to feed and clean and wash for. Five lots of homework to check plus her own to do. A couple of evenings working for me. And she still seems to be doing well at school.’