The Food Detective

by Judith Cutler

  ‘That’ll clean up the superficial cuts. Then we’ll see if either of us needs A and E,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave a pot of tea in your room. My sitting room in half an hour. OK?’

  Because if he needed a cuppa and a hot bath, I did too. I’d added salt to the bathwater in the hope that it would act as a general antiseptic, but sloshed in lavender oil too, not just for the smell but also for its healing properties. Of course, I should have dashed off and sprinkled some in Nick’s too, but that was one sort of room service I drew the line at. Until I could move again, at least. I now had a new crop of bruises, and running had taxed muscles that even the fiercest walking didn’t trouble. But at least I only had one dog nip, one requiring a pretty small plaster, and my tetanus was bang up to date.

  Nick would be in far worse state, I told myself as I hauled myself out, patting rather than rubbing myself dry. It was very tempting simply to sling on my dressing gown, but that might complicate matters and I compromised by digging out an old baggy velour tracksuit that added a stone to my appearance but chaffed nowhere. Moccasins completed the domesticated ensemble. Nick had clearly had the same reservations, denying any sexiness by wearing maroon socks with his dressing gown. Or perhaps he didn’t realise how deeply unseductive socks were with a dressing-gown.

  I sank to his feet with a first aid box in my hands. ‘Are you up to date on your jabs?’

  ‘For this job? Everything going a week before I started. What do you make of the cuts?’

  ‘You bled like a stuck pig, but they’re all superficial. I wouldn’t have thought any of them needed stitches. I’ve got plenty of those butterfly things.’

  ‘Flutter away!’

  I bathed away blood still sluggishly oozing from a couple of cuts from his forehead. The pink water reminded me of the stream.

  He must have noticed too. ‘I’ll get on to the water company tomorrow – pull a bit of rank,’ he said, without my saying anything. ‘See what Mrs Greville has to say about that.’

  I put down the dressing strip I’d been about to apply. ‘Mr Chic. He must be Mrs Greville’s son. I knew he reminded me of someone. That’s who! Luke Greville, MEP, no less.’ No reason not to apply the strip. I got on with it. ‘The one who got the order of the boot to Europe for doubtful scams. The family’s involved with all this, Nick, you mark my words. I wonder why he didn’t eat with the rest of them last night.’

  Before he could say anything, there was a terrific banging on the front door. Nick was still fit enough to take the stairs two at a time. I followed more decorously, body resenting every step.

  ‘Robin! What’s the matter?’ For he was too wild-eyed simply to have forgotten his key.

  ‘It’s Lindi! She’s gone!’ He almost fell into the hall.

  Nick bent to gather him up. He was wearing passion killer knickers.

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘I don’t know! One minute we were walking along the road, you know, getting acquainted. Next she’s not there. Literally disappeared from the pavement beside me. No idea where!’

  Raising an ironic eyebrow, I caught Nick’s eye. ‘Just how were you getting acquainted?’

  Robin had the grace to flush. ‘How do you think?

  ‘Was she enjoying the process as much as you were?’ I asked. ‘Or did she decide to do a bunk?’

  ‘As it happens,’ he said, sounding genuinely huffy, ‘she was asking about videos we should get when I next had an evening off. And I was explaining I wasn’t an evenings-off person and didn’t she have to work too and we’d have to think of another time and turned – and there she was, gone.’

  Neither of us laughed at the cliché. ‘Come and show me where she disappeared,’ I said, grabbing a jacket from by the back door. Oh, and a torch. Six o’clock and it was pitch dark. ‘We won’t have any drinkers,’ I flung at Nick over my shoulder, ‘but in case we do maybe you ought to be dressed.’

  The clear sunny day had given way to an clear icy night. Because we had so few streetlights, the stars always seemed larger and brighter than they did in Brum. Light pollution, wasn’t that what they called it? Huddled into my jacket, head down, I set the briskest pace I could manage, Robin making little dashes forward and then back again to my side, like an excited puppy.

  ‘Here. It was about here.’ He stopped by one of the less attractive runs of Victorian cottages, what would be called a terrace in a city, complete with entries between blocks. Why anyone should have economised like this in a village goodness knows – unless, of course, they were tied to the Greville estate, at a time landowners thought the worst was good enough for their serfs. Yes, when the hymn writer produced those lines about the Rich man in his castle, saying it was right for a poor man to be at his gate. I stared, hands on hips. Two front doors opening on to the street, separated by a gated entry. Find the lady. Just like the card game.

  ‘You tried knocking on all three?’

  ‘’Course I did.’ He tried again, hard enough, as on my door, to waken the dead.

  No response. Except from the church bells – not the full peal, with Nick hors de combat - which made us both jump like frightened dogs. Turning, I did the nearest I could to a scuttle. ‘I know who to ask!’ I said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Got to change. You and Nick cope with the bar. No food on Sundays. Ever. Or not till I come back from Evensong.’

  ‘You’re going to ask God, are you?’ he asked as sarcastic as young Short would have been.

  ‘Maybe. And certainly His representative in the village.’

  Evensong wasn’t my favourite service, because Sue simply didn’t have the voice for it. To be honest, neither did most of the choir, though they now boasted a tenor who looked suspiciously like Mr Chic. Correction, Mr Greville. I wondered if he ingratiated himself with a spot of Morris dancing as well. He was hardly Placido Domingo but did add a certain something. Lucy was singing her head off too, but while she might be a gutsy bell ringer, she’d never be another Charlotte Church. As we knelt for the first prayer, I had to bargain with the Almighty: if He wanted me down here, He’d have to make sure He could get me up again.

  Sue’s sermon reminded anyone listening that she used to be a junior-school teacher. I tried to work out why I’d come – after all, I could just as easily have hovered outside and pounced at the psychological moment. But there is, after all, something to be said for standing where feet had stood for hundreds of years – give or take a bit of Victorian prettification – expressing the same hopes and fears in more or less the same words.

  It was Lucy I grabbed first afterwards, as she emerged from the vestry still stripping off her cassock, ready to dash home.

  ‘Where’ll Lindi be?’

  She stopped dead. ‘Thought you didn’t want her tonight.’

  ‘No more I do. But she literally disappeared from the street while Robin was chatting her up. By that run of terraced houses.’

  ‘The ones with the entries? Well, she could be down any one of them. And there’s a path down the back, connecting them all. So she could be anywhere,’ She concluded helpfully. ‘But I’ve got to go, I mean, really – ‘She flashed a look at her watch and pulled a face.

  ‘See you Tuesday,’ I said, patting her arm as she fled.

  I hung around making small talk with anyone prepared to talk to a publican. Mrs Greville lingered, nodding graciously at a flower display I seemed to have done years ago and telling me how nice it still looked. But she took very good care to tuck her arm into that of her chic son and propel him lickety-split out into the night, hardly even pausing to shake Sue’s hand.

  I joined the line of other worshippers ready to do just that, holding back so that I wouldn’t be overheard murmuring that I’d love a word with her and why didn’t she pop into the White Hart as soon as she was free. She looked more alarmed than enthusiastic, but agreed. Something about the set of her shoulders told me that a glass of wine rather better than she could afford might just hit the spot. Of course, it would mean throwing
her and Nick together, and the length of time it took him to escort women home I might not see him till next weekend. But if that was what it took to worm information out of her, so be it.

  Nick had managed to calm down Robin somewhat, possibly by assuring him that I’d come back with all the answers and possibly Lindi herself. His face fell like a child’s.

  ‘But Lucy’s on to it. And I hope to enlist the services,’ I said, realising the enormity of my pun only as I said it, ‘of our vicar.’ I carefully avoided Nick’s eye – but he’d know what I expected of him. Which was not to get himself whipped up into a moral disquisition, as he had last time. ‘She should be around any minute.’

  ‘The sodding vicar! What’s he got to do with anything?’

  ‘She. And she knows more about this village than most outsiders. If anyone can help –’

  ‘What about an insider?’

  I nodded. ‘I’ve tried the only really friendly native I know – Lucy. She said Lindi could be anywhere and I believed her.’

  ‘Where does she live? So I can go and talk to her.’

  He was well smitten, wasn’t he? I only wished the object of his passion was more deserving.

  ‘I don’t think that’d be a good idea, Robin,’ Nick chipped in. ‘Her dad doesn’t like her having anything to do with us grockles. When I walk her home, I have to stop thirty yards away. Don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes. But this is an emergency! Surely he’d –’

  ‘Lindi might have just not wanted to go out with you – have you considered that? Might prefer your room to your company and just be too shy to say it.’

  I chortled derisively. ‘Too shy! Our Lindi! I don’t think so!’

  Nick raised a warning finger. ‘Hang on, Josie – Lindi would rather put up with Tregothnan’s attentions than tell him off. Perhaps she just thought discretion was the better part of valour. Now what are you up to, young man?’

  ‘I’m phoning the police!’

  ‘And telling them what? That a lass who’s not even your girlfriend ran away from you? Know what they’d do? Laugh their socks off. You wait to hear what Sue thinks – she’s got a wise head on those shoulders of hers.’

  Unforgivably I caught his eye and mouthed, ‘Apart from when she’s driving!’

  We both sniggered, which did nothing for Robin. Fortunately there was soon a tap at the back door, Sue letting herself in, country-fashion, as I’d not yet had the privilege of doing anywhere in the village.

  She flushed an unlovely shade of brick when she saw Nick and me together, but pulled herself together with commendable speed to address a still sulky Robin.

  ‘Had you two had a row? Or had you come on too strong too quickly? You’re sure? Well, when I get home I’ll make a few phone calls.’

  ‘Home? Why don’t you join us here for a bite of supper? Use the phone in my living room while I cook.’

  The poor woman seemed to have one layer of skin too few, the way her colour flooded and ebbed as she no doubt weighed up the merits of eating with Nick and sharing him with two others.

  ‘I was going to stir-fry some very nice odds and ends of beef fillet,’ I said, ‘with mange tout and tamarind and …’

  ‘I’ll show you where the phone is,’ Nick interrupted me, risking a complicitous wink over his shoulder as he led her out.

  ‘What’s all that about?’ Robin demanded.

  ‘Private joke,’ I said. ‘Tell you what, if she comes up with the goods and you want to express your gratitude in the most appropriate way, you could valet her car, inside and out. She’s always so busy doing things for others,’ I embroidered, ‘that she never has time for herself. Tell you what, why don’t you lay up in my flat? It’ll be nice and warm and less like work.’

  Supper was a sadly flat affair, nothing, I suspect, to do with ambience or with the food, which was well up to standard, but perhaps because of our different hopes and fears. Sue confessed to having drawn several blanks, but – surprise, surprise – agreed with Nick that calling the police wouldn’t be helpful.

  ‘There’s no point in exposing yourself to ridicule,’ she said flatly. ‘And it might do more harm than good if they did take you seriously and come sniffing round the village. No, no more wine, thanks. I’ve got to drive, remember.’

  ‘Why not leave your car here overnight? It’s only a step – OK, a longish stride! – to the rectory.’ I let the bottle hover enticingly over her glass.

  ‘I’ll walk you back,’ Robin said, unhelpfully. ‘You never know, we might just see something. Someone. Whatever.’

  The poor woman’s eyes had flicked to Nick before she replied. ‘No. Honestly. I’ve had enough,’ she concluded ambiguously.

  ‘Come on, you’re over the limit already,’ I said. ‘How often do you let your hair down, Sue?’

  I’m not sure what my motivation was. Nine-tenths of me really wanted her to enjoy life a bit more, and in my terms there was no better way of doing that than eating, drinking and enjoying good company. OK, in my terms the company might well have been solo, and the location private. But with luck I could keep Robin back to help wash up, and Nick could do the honours. After that it was up to them.

  The other tenth was less laudable. I wanted to see if she’d give anything away about her activities in Tregothnan’s house. The more I ran the picture over in my mind, the more I was convinced she was carrying something. If she’d had the keys to the surgery – perhaps they’d been in the bureau, even – she’d had time to let herself in and retrieve whatever it was while I was checking his mail. And then she’d hidden – whatever – under her coat and scuttled out. Did that mean it was she who’d planted his accounts in my shed? She might simply have wanted them to be found, not intending to incriminate me at all.

  In the end I was hoist by my own alcohol. She drank it as if it were water and then simply fell asleep.

  ‘Well,’ Nick asked quietly, as her head sank on to her arms, ‘this is going to take two of you. All right, two of us. Which car do you reckon, Josie? Hers and walk back, or mine and make her walk the walk tomorrow?’

  ‘Whichever it’d be easiest to get her into and out of,’ I sighed. ‘Trouble is, neither of us is exactly legal.’

  ‘OK,’ he sighed, ‘we’d better get enough coffee into her to wake her up and Robin and I can walk her home.’

  ‘Why me? Can’t you manage on your own?’

  ‘I could but I’d rather not. Use your imagination, man!’ Nick added roughly.

  I’d just given everything a final wipe down when they returned, in mid-argument by the sound of things. But it turned out only to be about football. The three of us stood awkwardly in the kitchen, all of us ready for sleep but all of us edgy. The way Robin looked from Nick to me, he’d obviously deduced that the reason Nick hadn’t wanted to be on his own with a drunken Sue was that he was afraid she’d jump him. OK, in her present state, crawl him. And perhaps he didn’t want to be jumped by Sue because he wanted to jump me. As for me, both Piers and Morgan were great in the sack, and had either turned up offering what he did best, I’d still have wanted nothing more than a solitary duvet. So I yawned, very ostentatiously, looked at my watch and produced a genuine gasp. Tomorrow would, as always, be another day – but it had arrived already. And after a day as long as mine, any woman my age was entitled to be knackered.

  Not that I’d ever admit to age or to being knackered. Ever. So I blew kisses impartially to both men and ran as lightly as I could up the stairs.

  It was only after locking my door firmly that I collapsed ignominiously on the bed. And even then I had the bathos of having to lever myself up and take off the slap.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  My internal clock still hadn’t settled back into Greenwich Mean Time. So when my bruises and aches and pains nagged me awake, despite the painkillers, I stayed that way. The stretches were no more fun than I expected, but the results might have been a bit better. The shower definitely helped. OK. Face the day time. I told myself, f
orcing my walking pace into brisk mode and persuading my face into less of a grimace, more of a cheery grin, I’d be first in the queue for the shop.

  Not today I wouldn’t. Not by a long chalk. There was quite a knot of people half way along the street, and a babble of talk rising from them. Jeering? That was definitely jeering.

  Well, if I could walk briskly, I could run. And run I did as soon as I got a hint of what was going on.

  Almost before I knew it I was jostling and pushing through the other onlookers. And stripping off my coat and wrapping it round Lindi. Lindi, tied to one of the few lampposts with which the village was blessed, stripped to her undies and tarred and feathered. She was absolutely silent.

  I don’t know exactly what I yelled, but I yelled loud and long and pretty potently. By the time I’d finished, everyone had slunk away, all except one of Lucy’s younger brothers, who shyly and awkwardly produced a knife. He was right: it was quicker to slice through the binder twine than to wrestle with knots. Then he legged it.

  No, not cowardice – he’d got even more sense than I’d realised. Within seconds, before I could even start mopping Lindi clean, Lucy was running up with a sheet, which she wrapped round the still silent girl. ‘Leave this to me. Get back home. Make sure that bloody Robin doesn’t come poking his nose in.’

  ‘But the tar –’

  ‘Treacle. Just push off, Mrs W. Please.’

  For once in my life I didn’t argue, except a token bleat about school.

  ‘Half term, isn’t it? Please, Mrs W! If you go now, I’ll phone you. OK?’ She passed me my coat.

  As I turned, aching with reluctance, she added, ‘And don’t you go calling the police either!’

  ‘So do I have to obey?’ I asked Nick, having decided not to wake the still sleeping Robin.

  ‘Have you told the police everything about the abattoir and the rending plant?’