The Food Detective (9 page)

‘Right. Which would be –’ he put a hand on the back of my chair and peered – ‘there.’

‘But there’s nothing there.’

‘Officially. So let’s change programmes and look from the air. Do you know about grid references? Because that’s what you need to type in.’

His turn for the chair.

‘Explain as you go: I’d rather learn to fish than be given one.’

‘If you can read a map you’re halfway there,’ he said. ‘This is how it works…’

Apt pupil I may have been, but I soon reached out the Laphroaig and a couple of crystal glasses. ‘So we’re no nearer knowing what’s there.’

‘Only because these aerial photos may have been taken before the whatever it is was built.’

‘I thought you said it was constantly updated by satellite or something.’

‘Or because your path leads to another path that intersects with the road. No whisky, thanks.’

‘Water? Plenty of that, after all.’

‘Not even that, thanks.’ He oozed embarrassment. ‘Do you want to do another scan?’

‘Not tonight, thanks. I need my beauty sleep. I don’t yet run to a residents’ lounge, but you’re welcome to sit in the bar as long as you want. Or here, of course,’ I added, not wishing to sound too offensive.

‘All that swimming’s left me weary, thanks very much.’

The lights flickered and died.

I lit two of the dining table candles from the dying fire, giving him one and keeping the other for myself. ‘Did Lucy leave you plenty of blankets? What kind of landlady am I? I should have checked!’

‘She left enough for an army. I suspect the towels she found were yours, by the way – they rather stood out against the utility tiling. And she’d found a kettle and tea bags from somewhere, even some little pots of milk.’

‘She’s got her head screwed on, that kid. Right: do you want a morning call or was your alarm clock amongst the things you
rescued
?’

Chapter Nine

I didn’t exactly spring out of bed – my joints didn’t go in for springing these days – but I got up more quickly than usual to check the power, which was mercifully back on, and the weather. It was no longer raining, even if it looked as if it might start again any moment. Though there were plenty of huge puddles, the roads no longer ran with floodwater. Good. It wouldn’t suit me to be marooned. I was showered and dressed and just thinking about breakfast when Nick tapped on my door, shaved and
wearing
what I took to be his work clothes. He looked more on the point of leaving than demanding a full English.

‘I was just wondering about the things in your boiler room,’ he said.

‘I doubt if they’ll be dry enough to wear yet. In any case, you’re surely not going into the office – you’ll be needing to make insurance claims and generally sorting out your life.’

‘Where better than the office? And I can buy some new clothes in Taunton.’

‘Where you can also get some breakfast, no doubt. Don’t be a fool, Nick – with a stomach like yours, you ought to eat before you do anything. I’m not much of a breakfast woman myself, but there’s what the supermarket insists is freshly-squeezed orange juice, fresh fruit and organic bread with that marg that’s
supposed
to reduce your cholesterol. Tea or coffee? Oh, and I eat in the kitchen, if that’s all right by you.’

He nodded, looking more daunted than grateful, and followed me, sitting down like an obedient child.

‘What you also ought to be doing,’ I said, slicing bread and slotting it into the toaster, ‘is finding out whether Bulcombe really did alter the course of the stream – it might be an insurance scam, and I’d hate to see him getting away with it.’

‘You mean I might not be the target?’ He sounded doubtful.

I turned sharply. ‘What other threats did you have apart from the dead cats? Come on, Nick: what are you hiding?’

‘A couple of headless rats. And I’m not sure the damage to the caravan was accidental.’ He mumbled as if was all his fault.

‘Damage? You didn’t say anything about damage.’ I plonked the toast rack on the table as if checkmating him.

‘It could always have been a log, I suppose – there was a lot of debris floating around. The current was pretty strong.’

I reached across to tap his skull. ‘Hello? It there anyone at home in there? Something stove in your caravan and you think it’s an accident? On top of all those other things? For God’s sake, Nick you used to be a cop. For how many years? Thirty? When we crossed swords, you were a bright young man, destined to go far. You wouldn’t make it to parking warden on today’s showing!’

He disappeared, like that cat in
Alice
. Not physically, of course. Just like he had in the superstore. Something switched off inside. I stared, almost as freaked out as he obviously was. I knew you shouldn’t wake sleepwalkers, should stop people in epileptic fits swallowing their tongues. But what about men holding a piece of toast in one hand, a cup in the other, staring at something
horrible
I couldn’t see?

At last he put down the cup, and swallowed. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

Though I couldn’t see what bit of my diatribe he was agreeing with, I nodded. ‘So are you going to get in touch with the village bobby, or am I?’

He blinked. ‘Village bobby? Is there one?’

‘Of course not. Not in these days of improved service to the community. But there’s a decent sized cop shop in Taunton. There’d be someone there you could talk to, surely to goodness.’

‘Not the most popular people, retired officers trying to tell those still serving what to do,’ he mused, sinking into officialese as if it were a pair of comfy slippers.

‘Not even when you come with evidence?’

‘I have no evidence. Not unless you want me to exhume a dead cat from Sue Clayton’s back garden.’ He changed direction with an almost audible crunching of gears worthy of Sue herself. ‘Isn’t there someone from the church who could help her with that? Dig it over, plant a few low-maintenance shrubs? It’s clear she can’t manage it on her own.’

‘Maybe you should lead the way by offering her driving
lessons
,’
I said, hoping he’d spot the glint in my eye.

‘I’ll dare if you dare offer to put her car through a carwash first,’ he responded, colour returning to his face. ‘Thanks for the breakfast. Look, Josie, it’s clear you’re not geared up for paying guests at the moment. But if you’re right, and there is something going on round here, it’d make some sort of sense for me to stay where I am. Would it be inconvenient? It’s not as if I want five star service, bed linen and towels changed every ten minutes. And I could eat in the bar. And I’d pay in advance, if you want.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ I said. ‘Until you find your feet, at least.’ Goodness knew what the village would say, the two of us holed up together. Half of me wanted to wave a couple of fingers in the air and tell them to count them. The other half wondered if a bit of chaperonage in the form of Tom’s pregnant Sharon might not be a good idea. I’d phone Tom when he’d had time to wake up – apart from his Sundays with me, Tom worked one of the late night shifts at an M5 service station, a job he was hopelessly overqualified for. ‘And there’s no need to pay in advance. That room of yours is so… Seventies? Sixties, even?… I don’t like charging for it.’

‘You might as well – I shall be chalking it up for my insurance claim,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘And meals, too.’

‘You shall have a bill, then – all properly receipted. That’s why I stopped buying my meat from Reg Bulcombe’s crony,’ I added. ‘No paperwork. All cash in hand.’

He laughed. ‘So you did take some notice of what I was saying about BSE, then!’

‘I had a good surf round the Internet. I came to the conclusion you had to treat this thirty month regulation with respect. And if you don’t know your steak’s birthday, you can’t send it a card, can you?’

‘It’s actually quite bad news for organic farmers,’ he mused. ‘Naturally reared cattle take longer to mature than your average commercial beast. So they’re not past their prime at thirty months – they’re well short of it, in terms of meat per carcass.’

‘The stuff I’m going in for makes up in flavour what it lacks in growth. But I couldn’t get Fred Tregothnan to give an opinion
one way or another on organic food. Not in front of Reg Bulcombe, anyway.’ I paused. Had there been real needle over the vet’s bills? Enough for Fred to sit apart from his cronies?

Nick sat down again. ‘Why should you mention Tregothnan in conjunction with Bulcombe?’

‘Well, you saw them – their backs at least – round the fire.’

‘Didn’t you think it odd, a professional man hobnobbing with all those yokels?’

‘
You can tell a man who boozes, By the company he chooses
,’ I quoted.

‘So who
got up and slowly walked away
?’

‘The last meal he had here, he ate on his own. He had this
little
spat with Reg – something about not spending in the bar money he owed in vet’s bills.’

‘In public? Not very tactful.’

‘Not a man for tact, Fred Tregothnan. When I banned him, he gave as good as he got, believe me.’

‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t.’

‘Ah, you’ve been on the receiving end of my tongue when I was roused, haven’t you. Sorry, Copper, if you took any of it
seriously
. No hard feelings, I hope,’ I added lightly.

He didn’t reply. My God, he had taken my foul words to heart, hadn’t he? If not in the cold light of day, at least at three in the morning when you can only think of bad things.

I sat down again. ‘What happened to you that made you think I’d really cursed you?’

‘You see a lot of things as a police officer,’ he said in a remote voice, and left the room.

It would have been better if he’d raised his voice or slammed the door.

Fred Tregothnan wasn’t your sensitive type, not like Nick. He wouldn’t have turned a hair. Surely he wouldn’t. We’d talked once or twice about my distant ancestors after I’d told him off for
calling
someone a bastard gyppo. I’d told him I was entitled to have a foul mouth when roused – it was my only Romany legacy. But he had to watch what he called people, I said. He’d stayed away from the bar a couple of days on those occasions too.

But he hadn’t left the villagers in the lurch.

Maybe I ought to take a trip into Taunton Police Station myself – get my word in first.

It was a good job Nick wasn’t there to see me. I was playing ‘
confession
is good for the soul’ with all I could give it, complete with tears and some sodden paper hankies.

‘I was very angry, Sergeant,’ I told the bored young woman who’d been landed with listening to the rants of this hysterical old woman. The fact that she was a good five foot six and no more than a size eight, if that, didn’t make her any more likeable. Even her hair was genuinely blonde. I pleaded, ‘I had to make him realise that what he was doing was completely out of order.’ God, I hated that phrase. What did it mean, for goodness’ sake? But everyone on
The Bill
seemed to say it, so perhaps I should try it on her.

She nodded, absently, from the way she kept fingering it
apparently
more interested in a stray spot on her otherwise immaculate chin than in me. ‘Are you saying a grown man would be so upset by a few hard words that he left the village and hasn’t been seen since?’

I managed a rueful smile. ‘Put like that it doesn’t make much sense, does it? I’m sorry, I’ve obviously wasted your time.’

But she wasn’t as bored or as stupid as I’d thought her. ‘On the contrary. You’ve been very helpful. Tell me more about the
incident
that made you so angry. It wasn’t you he was assaulting, is that right? But one of your staff. Would she have –’

‘Lindi was inclined to think the whole thing was a joke, a bit of silliness. She didn’t want me to say anything.’

‘Have you discussed it with her?’

‘Only in a motherly way. I made her practise saying “No” out loud. A bit of assertiveness training,’ I grinned. There was no answering smile.

‘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.