A Taste of Death: The gripping new murder mystery that will keep you guessing

The job was hers.

‘I’m afraid it’s only minimum wage, but you get tips, which you share with the kitchen staff.’

She nodded. ‘How many kitchen staff are there?’ she asked.

‘None, other than me. But I don’t get tips, since I’m the owner, so currently they’re all yours. But you will have to help with the washing up.’

She smiled. ‘I can wash up, Ben.’

She had a great smile. I think she was amused by the shoestring nature of the business. We agreed that she could start the following day.

‘So I guess I’d better take my sign down then,’ I said.

She looked puzzled.

‘What sign?’

‘The A board.’

‘I didn’t see the A board sign.’ She looked confused, as did I.

‘Then how did you know I needed a waitress?’

Her face cleared. ‘Oh, that. Well, someone told me last night.’

‘But I hadn’t put a sign up last night.’

She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Oh, Ben, you’re not from here. This is a village, everybody knows everything about everyone else’s business. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it in the end.’

We shook hands and I watched her back disappearing across the green as she trudged home through the rain.

I thought about what she had said. I suppose I thought it was quite sweet that everyone knew what everyone else was doing without Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter or other social media.

After all, it was a pleasant, friendly little village. What could go wrong?

CHAPTER THREE

Friday, 8 January

The following day, twenty-four hours after DI Slattery’s visit and Jess’s hiring, there was the arson attack.

Coincidentally fire, in the form of smoke, had gone into what I was cooking at the time. I had just made and served a customer called Dave Whitfield, local builder/property developer, a smoked venison sandwich on rye with a small garnish of curly endive, beetroot and cornichons.

It would be fair to say that Whitfield was not shaping up to be one of my favourite customers.

Jess walked in as Whitfield started being Whitfield. I had met him briefly a couple of days ago in the local pub. I hadn’t been overly impressed with his personality then, and my opinion of him was getting progressively lower. Jess gave me a sympathetic glance as she passed by, heading for the kitchen to change into her apron.

‘What’s that?’ He pointed aggressively at the garnish. Most things about Whitfield were aggressive, his mannerisms, his bald (aggressively so) shaved head, his tattoos, visible on his arms and flowing up his neck, lots of red and blue and green (bright, vivid colours, no pastels for Dave), his general demeanour.

I explained. How it would enhance his eating experience, how the flavours were cunningly paired, how the vinegar that the small cucumber (which is what a cornichon is) was pickled in would cut through the richness of the meat. And didn’t it look good! He was having none of it.

‘Bollocks to that,’ he remarked judiciously. ‘No offence, mate, but when I want crap on my plate I’ll ask for it, OK?’

Idiot, I thought. I gritted my teeth, shrugged and fetched a plate, and deftly scraped off the offending items with the blade of a knife. For a mad moment I would willingly have plunged it into him.

Actually, I’d have changed instruments first.

I was using the back of my long, broad-bladed chef’s knife to clean the plate. For stabbing Whitfield to death I’d have gone for a long, thin but sturdy boning knife. It would have slid in much more easily.

As my old head chef used to say, ‘Always choose the right tool for the right job.’

The question of what is right and not right, a perennial problem. They say that the customer is always right. Not in the world of good food. There, the customer doesn’t know best, the customer is entitled to their opinion, but that’s all they’re entitled to. Not to demand changes to the menu. I’m quoting a chef I once knew; well, it was OK for him, he had the luxury of fame and money. I had neither. I did what I was told. I felt belittled, sad and dirty, complicit in Whitfield’s vandalism of my food.

The sandwich sat forlornly on the plate, uncomfortably naked like a middle-aged man on a nudist beach. Like a nude Dave Whitfield in a non-functioning jacuzzi.

He switched his baleful attention from me and the food to jabbing messages into the keyboard of his phone.

Tranquillity, I thought to myself, that’s what is needed.

I went back to the kitchen and did some Qi Gong breathing exercises and felt calmer. In and out, breathe in the energy of the universe. Zhan Zhuangs they’re called, there are five of them in all, well, five that I know about. Each one has a specific arm movement to maximise Chi. In and out, breathe in the energy of the universe, feel the Tao.

Jess walked in with an order in her hand while I was doing Number Five, standing in horse-riding stance, my arms bent at the elbows at forty-five degrees, my hands forming a kind of triangle.

‘Cheque on … are you OK?’ she asked nervously. I suppose I must have looked very odd, possibly slightly insane. I was facing the stove and my fingers were framing the stainless steel of the extractor fan hood, as though I were worshipping it.

‘Yes, Jess,’ I explained, ‘I’m just channelling the energy of the universe, please carry on …’

‘Well, that’s all right then … Just so long as you’re OK. Cheque on, one steak baguette, one minestrone soup with parmesan and rosemary focaccia … Are you sure you’re OK?’

I finished what I was doing, I felt a lot better for it. I put a frying pan on the stove and took a rump steak from my fridge and a tub of pre-cooked caramelised red onion. As I seasoned the meat I said, ‘Nothing like breathing into your Dan-Tian, Jess, all that Chi energy.’

‘Yes, oh wise one,’ she said in a mocking voice. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

‘That would be nice, thank you.’ I watched as she disappeared back into the restaurant. She was a damn good waitress.

In general, I had reason to be happy. Business was picking up. I had just finished dealing with a couple of tables of elderly people, contentedly munching their way through quiche, soup, sandwiches and assorted cakes. I had also served five well-heeled ladies who lunch. They are the kind of customer that I liked: tough, confident women in their mid-fifties to whom I, a sprightly forty-five, was a kind of babe. One of them had been shamelessly flirting with me, a situation I was happy to accept.

At twenty to thirty covers a day, as we refer in the trade to the number of meals ordered, I could break even and then I could eject Whitfield who I had learned, it was hardly a surprise, was pretty much universally locally detested.

In the kitchen I had asked Jess about him. ‘Who is that awful man Dave Whitfield?’

She rolled her eyes at the mention of his name. ‘Dave Whitfield, he’s local, he’s a pain in the arse.’ She was local too, but otherwise the polar opposite of Whitfield.

She obviously couldn’t stand Whitfield. Then she explained something that had puzzled me about the village green.

‘You know the houses on the other side of the green, opposite here?’

I nodded. There were several houses there (including DI Slattery’s, of course) overlooking the common. (The green was alive with notices: No parking anywhere on the common! Dog owners, Pick it up! No littering! Hampden Green was big on signage.)

She continued, ‘You know the one with the kind of blue Perspex tower that’s illuminated?’

Again I nodded. It was like a miniature version of the Shard in London in someone’s front garden. It must have been nearly three metres tall. This house cast an eerie blue light over the green at night. It was quite disconcerting, the way it glowed.

‘That’s Whitfield’s house,’ she said.

It all made sense. I had been wondering what kind of man would have a monstrosity like that in his garden. Well, here was the answer – it was Whitfield’s plastic tower, his turquoise aura. His own personal advert for his construction business. The letters D.W. were etched into it for all to see. Now I knew what they stood for.

‘How on earth did he get planning permission?’ I asked. Planning was a sore point. My window frames were rotten (thank you Mrs Cope!) and needed replacing. They were listed, though, and this added insanely to the cost. The point was any form of deviation from the established was fraught with difficulty and had to be ‘in keeping with the village’. You couldn’t just put any old window in, it had to be identical. And not just looking the same, the material had to be an exact match. God alone knows how Whitfield had managed to get his huge, glowing pillar through the council planning department. It certainly was not ‘in keeping with the village’ in any way, shape or form.

Jessica said darkly, ‘That’s the question everyone here asked. Let’s just say, money talks.’

There was a small window in the kitchen that overlooked the green. I could see a dark cloud rising from somewhere. I walked up to the window and Jess followed me, curious to see what had attracted my attention. Right now, Whitfield’s tower, clearly visible, a Perspex testament to what money and no taste can do, wasn’t talking but it was certainly communicating. In smoke signals. It was emitting a huge black column of the stuff. Not just smoke, big yellow flames licked upwards. It was very dramatic, like an illustration I had in my children’s Bible when I was very young. A fiery pillar. Jessica and I stared at it in fascination. At first I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.

‘Is that his …’ I started to say.

‘Yes,’ said Jessica. She had a triumphant smile on her lips as if she had been somehow responsible and was delighted with the way that things were going.

We both stared at each other, Jess happily, me perplexed, and then I quickly went to the door to go into the restaurant to tell him. I reached the entrance. Whitfield was sitting there with his back to the window, oblivious to the towering inferno in his front garden, scowling at his phone.

I made a motion forward towards Whitfield, to warn him, and Jess grabbed my jacket.

‘Don’t tell him,’ she urged, sotto voce, ‘let it burn!’

She dragged me back into the kitchen.

‘Shouldn’t we be calling 999?’ I said.

‘God, no. Someone will probably call them but I don’t see why it should be us. He made a really crap job of my uncle’s conservatory. Hopefully the fire will take his house with it.’ She scowled at Whitfield who was visible through the partially open door. He was still oblivious to his tower and its fiery state. ‘Payback time, that man’s got it coming,’ she added with extra venom. ‘Everyone hates him round here …’

Jess’s brown eyes were sparkling with dislike. She, like ‘everyone’, obviously really detested the man.

I heard the sound of sirens. Someone more charitable than Jess had obviously phoned the fire brigade. Then I heard the sound of the bell as the front door of the restaurant opened.

‘Oi, Dave!’ someone shouted.

It was one of the many builders who lived in the village, a tall, good humoured, grey-haired man called Chris Edwards.

Whitfield scowled at him. ‘What?’

‘Your tower’s on fire, mate.’ Chris was known for being laconic, I found out later.

Whitfield put his phone down, his back still resolutely turned to the window.

‘What are you on about?’ he said angrily. The other man pointed and only then did Whitfield turn round and look out of the window. ‘JESUS!’

He leaped to his feet and was out through the door, running over the green in the direction of his house, helpfully indicated by a thick plume of smoke and the fire engine.

Jess went over to the door and closed it.

‘Hello, Chris!’ she said, smiling. Obviously she wasn’t against builders in general, just Whitfield in particular. ‘Can I get you anything to eat or drink?’

‘Hello, Jess, I’ll have a cappuccino since I’m here.’

He leaned his rangy, muscular frame against the counter and appraised the restaurant with that calculating air that builders have when it comes to property, then he turned to me. Now it was my moment to be appraised.

In all truth there probably wasn’t an enormous difference, no unbridgeable gulf between me and Whitfield. I think that most bald men in middle-age generally look quite similar. Rather like babies tend to look the same to me. If I were a bank robber, when asked for a description, witnesses would shrug, ‘Bald bloke, forties.’ That more or less describes half of the country’s males of a certain age.

If you were charitably minded you would say that I was powerfully built and had a certain physical presence. When I was young I’d been quite good-looking, model like, and although no longer in the head-turning business, I still got offers. But looks are, by their nature, ephemeral. Where I like to think I differed from the similarly shaped Whitfield, was a trace of warm sympathy behind my eyes and a general cheeriness that was undeniably lacking in the builder. Even the staunchest of Whitfield’s supporters would have to admit he was deficient in the geniality stakes.

Jess handed Chris the cappuccino, and smiled warmly at him. Perhaps he’d repaired her uncle’s conservatory after Whitfield’s ravages.

I offered him a biscuit from a batch I had made earlier. ‘Try one of these: langues de chat, I made them this morning …’ He accepted the biscuit, ate it suspiciously. Then his face brightened.

‘That’s good,’ he conceded, ‘can I have another one?’

‘So what’s happening with Shitfield’s tower, Chris?’ asked Jess, handing him another three biscuits. I winced internally; they’d taken ages to make, they were supposed to be a treat, not wolfed down by a hungry builder. They weren’t Hobnobs.

‘Burning nicely,’ said Chris. He smiled maliciously.

‘So did it happen by accident?’ asked Jess.

‘I doubt it.’ Chris sounded quite satisfied by that. He added, ‘Chinese Andy did the electrics, he doesn’t make mistakes. In my opinion, someone obviously doesn’t like Dave.’

‘Well, that narrows it down,’ said Jess sarcastically.

Chris stood up, unfolding himself from the stool. He was very tall.

‘So what are your plans for this place?’ he asked me.

‘I have a long and detailed business plan,’ I said. ‘I’ve got global ambitions. In the meantime, I shall be introducing a limited range of hot food as specials …’

‘To supplement the sandwiches,’ added Jess like a loyal chorus.

‘Well, I’ll tell the wife,’ he said, ‘maybe come in for lunch. Nice to have met you …’

‘Ben,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Well, Ken, I’ll go and see how the Blazing Inferno’s getting on.’

We watched him striding across the green, his long legs carrying him speedily towards the fire. I wanted to bring the subject of the langues de chat up but I didn’t want to offend Jess by telling her off. She had become invaluable.

The previous day after service, she had seen me with pen and paper, a ruler and a copy of the menu.

‘Working out costings …’ I said.

She pointed at the PC in the cubbyhole I call my office. ‘Why not use Excel?’

‘I don’t know how it works …’

She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Come on, Grandad, let’s see if we can drag ourselves into the twenty-first century. Do you know what a spreadsheet is?’ A deep sigh as I shook my head.

‘I know the word, but not what it actually means,’ I said.

‘Well, we’ll make a start today,’ said Jess. ‘Perhaps we’ll leave coding and website design for a later date, eh?’

I didn’t want to upset her. I had seen her writing up some menus for me, watching her fingers flying over the keyboard, effortlessly touch typing. If the price of Jess included staying up late to make biscuits, so be it.

‘I won’t hand out your biscuits to just anyone,’ she said, looking up at me. I nearly jumped out of my skin, had she added telepathy to her other qualifications? (Waitress experience in the Marriott, Birmingham, IT skills, local girl and former county swimming team [freestyle] and formerly Bucks junior girls eight-hundred-metre finalist.)

‘Chris eats out a lot, and he’s very influential.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘I wonder if he did it.’ She spoke thoughtfully. ‘Whitfield stitched him up a while ago, owes him thousands. You don’t mess with Chris. He’s certainly capable of burning Whitfield’s pillar to the ground.’

I shrugged. It was nothing to do with me.

Famous last words.

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