The Food Detective

by Judith Cutler

  ‘It’s a close knit community,’ she began.

  My ears pricked. So they hadn’t dismissed the disappearance out of hand.

  ‘Would anyone else have been offended on her account? A father? A brother? A boyfriend?’

  ‘You’d have to ask them,’ I said as blandly as I could.

  ‘We will, Mrs Welford,’ she smiled ominously, ‘we will.’

  OK, the interview wasn’t going quite the way I’d intended – that was an exit line if ever I’d heard one – but maybe I could capitalise on my mistake. ‘People are saying the police are taking this case unusually seriously.’

  ‘I hope we take all our cases seriously, Mrs Welford.’ She was shuffling some papers and any moment would close the folder and pick it up to show the interview was over. She did better. She got up, just managing not to yawn.

  This was the moment to tell her about the bloodstained stream and the blocked path. That would bring her up short. But a series of intelligent observations wouldn’t accord with my earlier ditzy persona, would it? Maybe I’d keep them to myself for a while longer. Until my photographs had been developed at least. First stop Boots, then, and their one-hour developing service.

  I was just going back to collect my photos, having spent a miserable hour dodging low pointing brollies and those huge pushchairs with plastic covers looking like mobile intensive care units, when my phone rang.

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘I know it’s an awful cheek, Josie, and I wouldn’t ask if you weren’t a wet weather walker, but would you mind showing me exactly where the path was blocked?’

  ‘Not at all. Provided you’ve got the right walking gear, that is. Have you?’

  ‘Er …’

  ‘I’m in Taunton myself as a matter of fact. I’ll meet you at your office and then we can sally forth together to get you everything you need. How do I get there? I’m just outside Brazz.’

  ‘I could meet you there –’

  ‘And expose me to all those tempting calories? Not bloody likely. OK, fire away –’

  Nick’s office was as soulless a place as it had ever been my misfortune to see. I stared at the blank walls and minimal furniture.

  ‘I’d offer you a chair, but I think the Defra folk down the corridor may have borrowed it.’

  They seemed to have borrowed his kettle, too – the one I’d seen him buy the other day, when he went into one of his brown studies. Should I remark on it or keep mum? ‘I thought they were supposed to be improving farming and the environment, not nicking furniture. Shouldn’t they get their own? Or are they too busy having rural affairs?’

  To my amazement, the feeble joke made him put back his head and laugh, the sound echoing round the office as if it hadn’t heard such irreverence before. ‘Not with me, I’m afraid. Yes, it’s a hole, isn’t it? It’s only when you look at it through someone else’s eyes you see how bleak it is. Never mind, I’m sure I shall find a few posters about Colorado Beetle to brighten up the place,’ he added, with an encouragingly sardonic grin. Perhaps there was still some life in him.

  ‘A few pot plants, some nice bright mugs – you’ll soon make it home. Not that you’re here much, are you? On the road most of the time?’

  ‘Apparently work comes in waves. The farm near Southampton I should have gone to today’s been cut off by floods. My predecessor was a good boy and finished all his paperwork before he left, so I’m at a loose end.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to your insurance company?’

  ‘As soon as I arrived. They’d love to send an assessor but don’t know when it’ll be: I’m not the only one to have suffered.’

  ‘I bet they’d love a few photos of the site.’

  ‘My camera was one of the things washed away.’

  ‘Mine wasn’t. I’ve just bought a new film. Come on – what are you waiting for?’

  The razor and barbed wire tangle was just where I’d left it, but no new tripwires had been set up. None that I could see, anyway. I photographed everything again, from a different angle, and then led the way up the path that would eventually take us to Nick’s campsite. We didn’t talk much. For all he must have been five, maybe seven, years younger than me, he was distinctly out of condition, puffing and blowing and ready to stop at every convenient vantage point.

  ‘What happens if we go up there?’ With his walking stick – yes, I’d insisted he bought one of those, to go with his new weatherproof gear – he pointed to his left.

  ‘We get lost. Funny, I’d never even realised there was a stream there. I thought it was just a sheep track that was always a bit wet.’

  ‘It’s a bit more than a bit wet now.’

  It was a full-blown torrent. How come I’d never registered it? I double-checked with the map: no, nothing. Weird.

  Nick peered over my shoulder, tracing its probable route with his finger. ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Some sort of building. Look, there’s a track leading to it. From your lane.’ I turned. ‘Do you suppose the track’s wide enough for one of your unlit lorries?’

  ‘I’ll bet it is. But I’d rather check it by car than on foot.’

  ‘Yep. The scenic route would be nice on a fine day. OK. Right here, then.’

  I snapped away at the campsite, no longer flooded but clearly awash, from a variety of angles. Then we dropped down to the level of the reception area. I was relieved to see that there was no sign of Reg Bulcombe. Nick’s staying at the White Hart was one thing; his walking out in the rain with his landlady was another.

  Nick quite understood. While I hung back, he peered ostentatiously. ‘Maybe he’s busy contacting the owners of the late, lamented country retreats.’

  ‘“Retreats”? More like last stands!’

  ‘There’ll be some corner of an English field that is forever matchwood!’ he offered.

  Cackling with silly laughter, we headed through the oozing field. I took some record shots, including some of a suspicious gash in the front of Nick’s desirable residence, stacked up out of reach on top of other victims, so we couldn’t rescue anything more. Then I took some weird ones too. Not quite Man Ray, but pleasingly abstract.

  At last, the rain, no more than occasional if vicious spots while we were walking, returned in good earnest. I stowed the camera under my waterproof, patting the pregnant looking bulge.

  As we trudged back, Reg’s car pulled up.

  ‘Leave him to me,’ I muttered, wondering, all the same, what I could say. ‘Just smile like a daft grockle.’

  But no subterfuge was needed. Head down, Reg kicked the cab door shut and strode head down into his house. If he saw us through gaps in the greying net curtains, he gave no sign.

  Chapter Ten

  Since there were a couple of the regulars in the snug, Nick had his lunch in there, his face deep in my Guardian, though their backs presented such an impregnable barrier that they probably didn’t even register his presence. I gambled on their not noticing that his sandwich wasn’t exactly standard, and that he drank mineral water from an elegant blue bottle unavailable at the bar.

  As soon as the last one had grunted his farewells, Nick retired to his room. What he was planning there I don’t know: all he was doing when I tapped on his door and went in was sitting on the bed, hands clasped between his spread knees, apparently deep in the study of the carpet.

  Hands on hips, I surveyed the place. ‘I ought to be paying you to stay here, not the other way round. I reckon that’s a post-war utility mattress. And as for the wallpaper – you don’t suffer from migraine, do you? Ugh.’

  ‘It is a bit lively, isn’t it? But I won’t notice it for the next hour or so. I’m just off to check where the stream and the path meet.’

  ‘On your own.’

  He looked around. ‘I don’t see the Fifth Cavalry anywhere, do you?’

  ‘No, Kimo Sabe. But I see your faithful Tonto. And I reckon that vehicle of yours might just class as Silver.’ When he didn’t reply, I said, ‘Come on, Copper, you’ve
seen enough of this area to know never to go anywhere on your own if you don’t have to.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘Oh, ah.’ Those were a peculiarly Midlands couple of syllables. They could mean absolute agreement to complete cynicism, and pretty well everything in between. ‘Sure I do,’ I agreed. ‘But only because in this weather I only ever walk routes I know every inch of from my summer walks. Even then I’d never set out in rain like this, not with the clouds likely to roll down the valley and blank out all your landmarks.’

  ‘I’ll be going by car.’

  ‘And I suppose you’ll have your mobile to hand to summon back up should you need it.’

  He looked huffy. ‘And is there a problem with that?’

  I put my head back and roared with laughter. ‘No, no problem at all. Not if you install a couple of radio masts as you go. Haven’t you noticed, Copper, that this area’s got as many mobile black spots as a Dalmatian?’

  His grimace turned into a grudging smile. ‘Don’t you have a pub to run?’

  I clapped my hand to my head. ‘Hell, I’ve got a phone call to make! Just give me five minutes and then you can whisk me away in your shiny new transport of delight.’

  ‘Tom’s left! What do you mean, left?’ My screech down the phone must have been painful.

  Tom’s landlady meant exactly what left usually meant. Gone. Vamoosed. Quitted. And no, Tom hadn’t left a forwarding address. He’d paid up in full and disappeared.

  The work number he’d given me – for use in only the most extreme of emergencies, he’d always stressed – was answered by a ratty Welshman who told me that personal calls were forbidden. I assumed my sweetest phone persona, telling him I was chasing a reference and that I wasn’t paid enough for him to be so unpleasant to me.

  ‘In that case you can tell your boss that Dearborn cooks like an angel and left here giving ten minutes’ notice so you can imagine whether I can recommend him or not.’

  If I’d been my own PA I couldn’t have thanked him any more politely. But my scalp was creeping. Why had Tom done a runner? Was it simply because of Sharon’s brutal father? If so, why hadn’t he come to me?

  ‘You know what these kids are,’ Nick said, as if such a platitude might reassure me.

  ‘I know what Tom is – the most wonderful chef who was aiming to work for me full-time as soon as the renovations were finished. Staff accommodation for him and his girlfriend and baby, too.’

  He raised a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘That’d be in the pub itself?’

  I cackled. ‘A wailing brat on the premises? No, thank you! No, the old stables and garage are doomed. And very chic accommodation they’ll make, too. The planners passed the alterations without a murmur. I even got a pat on the back for developing the local economy.’

  ‘But Tom Dearborn no longer fancies living there.’ He looked serious.

  ‘He’d have started in one of the bedrooms like yours,’ I admitted. ‘But not even the thought of that should have made him bolt without telling me.’

  ‘What about his mobile?’

  ‘First thing I thought of. Zilch.’

  ‘But he’ll call back in response to your message.’

  I looked him straight in the eye. ‘I have a nasty feeling he won’t.’

  The track we’d decided to follow hadn’t been asphalted, but thickly enough covered in hardcore to give a decent surface, at least to Nick’s four by four. Some heavy vehicle with a wider wheelbase had dug ruts in it, and the branches of the hedges had been broken off as if a giant had tried out a new hedge cutter.

  I pointed. ‘Your unlit lorry?’

  ‘Could be.’ There was glimpse of a low roof a couple of hundred yards away. ‘Our building, I presume.’ He pulled the car as far into the hedge as he could without risking its shiny metallic paint and got out, shutting the door without a slam. I followed, by dint of hitching myself over the gear lever and handbrake and sliding across the driver’s seat.

  ‘It’s a bit small – not even a barn,’ I observed, dropping down beside him and closing the door equally quietly.

  He sighed. ‘I’d rather you’d stayed put.’

  ‘I know. I never take hints, though.’

  ‘I gathered.’

  We retrieved our boots from the back, the carpet of which he’d protected with heavy-grade polythene sheeting. Boots, not wellies – we were obviously to be a pair of walkers out for a stroll in a temporary lull, just happening on the place. Walking sticks, map holder round my neck – we looked the part as we donned hats and pulled on gloves. My camera disappeared into the waterproof’s front pouch.

  A hundred and fifty yards we trudged in silence as some walkers do. Simultaneously we stopped. Nick snorted quietly. ‘If the planning people object to your wire, they won’t like that,’ he said.

  They wouldn’t. Although the wire mesh fence he pointed at wasn’t more than four foot high, it was topped with razor wire. It certainly prevented legitimate access to our right of way. The wind gusted our way a mixture of smells, none of them pleasant and some of them all too identifiable.

  ‘Enough to make you turn vegetarian,’ Nick muttered, shoving a mint into his mouth and offering me one.

  Hang the calories: peppermint over cowpats and blood any day.

  ‘It’d take a lot to make me turn vegetarian,’ I muttered. ‘Is this where they slaughter them or rend them?’

  ‘Oh, there’s a perfectly legitimate rending plant up the road,’ Nick said blithely. ‘Not a lot of people know about it, and I should imagine even fewer talk about it, but it’s all above board.’

  ‘What! So why are we farting about here?’

  ‘Because it’s not a problem. My predecessor checked it a couple of months before he left. It’s not due for another inspection till next spring.’

  ‘All the same!’ I could have screamed. ‘A rending plant – isn’t that the likely source of my blood.’

  He shook his head firmly. ‘Not if it meets regulations.’ He pointed at what lay behind the gates. ‘That doesn’t. The planning regulations first and foremost. And probably all the other food hygiene and veterinary and disposal of waste regulations too.’

  ‘So what’ll you do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a job for the local police. Not me.’

  Arms akimbo, I turned to face him. ‘Now you listen to me, Copper, and you listen good. If I can risk ruining my pub by cancelling my meat orders because they don’t have paperwork, you can damned well get off your arse and do something to something to close an illegal abattoir. Whatever law you have to invoke.’

  ‘Evidence, Josie. We’d need evidence. And the police are the ones to get that.’

  ‘And what sort of priority do you think they’d give it?’

  ‘Depends. They might even say it’s not their job but Trading Standards’. Which it may be. The laws are very unclear – lots of loopholes.’

  I stared him in the eye. ‘OK, if you won’t get evidence, I shall. Whatever it takes, however it takes – I shall close that place down.’

  It would have made a great exit line. But here I was in the middle of nowhere dependent on this guy for a lift. A diversionary tactic was called for. Fishing the camera from my pouch, I strode up to the gates, snapping the huge padlock and chain, and then standing on tiptoe to take what was little more than a corrugated iron shed. My eye fell on something else first. Dog turds. So any nocturnal adventures on my part might be noisily revealed. Noisily and possibly viciously. I was too much a townee to love any dog simply because it had four legs and barked.

  I inched my way round the perimeter fence, taking photos from every angle. There was no separate office block, just the shed, which would only have been able to deal with a couple of beasts at a time, surely. Even so, inside there must be stun guns, chains, lifting tackle. And no paperwork, of course. If ever a business looked as if it worked with cash, this was it.

  At the furthest point from the gates
there was a loose section of mesh. With a little effort even I could ease it away from the fence posts. But what was the point of gaining access if I was about to be torn limb from limb?

  The light was fading fast, the clouds whipping like torn sheets across the sky – we were obviously in for more rain. So the second half of my circuit was a good deal speedier than the first. At least, it would have been, had I not found myself flat on my face in a knot of brambles. Somehow I’d managed to shove my hands forward, so they took the brunt. But there was nothing to lever myself up against except thorns. And I needed leverage. My left ankle wouldn’t work.

  It didn’t hurt. Not yet. It was just anchored. Somehow I’d have to roll to see what was going on. Rolling needed leverage too. As would trying to fish my mobile from my camera pouch. And it was a fair assumption that either Nick’s would be switched off or we’d be in a damned black spot.

  Would he come looking? He’d made no effort to catch up so far, and I must have covered some four hundred yards. Where the hell was he?

  I opened my mouth to yell. And shut it again. What if he was no longer alone, but trying to explain himself to some driver with a lorry load of cattle to be slaughtered? Surely I’d have heard – the one thing you took for granted in the country was silence, so the rumble of a lorry over those stones would have been obvious, even accounting for the roar and wail of the wind, which might have been auditioning for the soundtrack of Wuthering Heights.

  Damn it, I was hanged if I was going to lie here any longer. If I’d been walking on my own and had been upended like this, I couldn’t have hung round waiting to be rescued. I’d have cursed and yelled, but at myself. Which is what I did now. It wasn’t ever going to be pleasant, so I wasn’t surprised by a bit of pain. But I was shocked by the sudden agony in my ankle. I did a sort of press up, easing back till I looked like a runner in the blocks. But I wasn’t going to run anywhere, not with a gin trap for company.

  It was driven very deeply into the ground considering it was only meant to catch a small animal. But a small animal, mad with fear, could be very strong, I told myself. In any case, if I sat down, I could ease the wire noose back into shape, and extricate my foot, albeit very gingerly. Once free, I managed to yank it out, and prepared to carry my trophy home. There was nothing badly wrong with the ankle, I decided – thanks to my boots. I hobbled a few more yard, scanning every blade of grass as I went.