Murder on the Green

‘There’s a lot going on in a Bakewell tart,’ I said to Andrea as we stood in the kitchen of the Old Forge Café, while he bit dubiously into a slice. I looked at his sour, pallid face, and wished that Justin had employed a more amenable sous-chef. I could quite understand him lending me the most competent of his brigade but on reflection I think I would have preferred just about anyone to Andrea. He chewed, swallowed and said, ‘Non è male. Not too bad.’

It wasn’t as if I’d given him a piece of dung to eat, but the look on his face was far from ecstatic. Well, I thought huffily, what did Italy have in the way of desserts apart from tiramisu and ice cream?

To be honest, I didn’t really know the answer to my own rhetorical question. I am not an expert on ‘la dolce vita’. Panna cotta, I thought suddenly. I loved panna cotta, and that was Italian. But to be indifferent to my rather wonderful sweet pastry, the almond-y heaven of the frangipane and the raspberry jam, home-made by Esther Bartlett, one of my most enthusiastic customers, and a white witch to boot, well … perhaps she would curse him.

Andrea looked around my kitchen with grudging respect. It was a very pleasant kitchen to work in. Airy, large, pride of place given to my double Hobart combi oven, which had been more than just ruinously financially expensive, it had nearly cost me my life.

Andrea performed well. No surprise there, given his pedigree. He was remorselessly efficient, but without any joy in his work, like some sort of savage machine. We’d had a busy lunch, and I let him get on with cooking all the mains while I hovered by the pass, helping Francis with the starters and plating things up for the various dishes, taking pictures so Andrea would be able to replicate layout, with Francis doing the vegetables.

With three people, the job was euphorically easy – normally it was just the two of us. We had chatted whilst we worked.

Well, I had chatted.

‘So, what’s Justin like to work with?’

Silence. Banter, the oil that makes the engine of the kitchen bearable, was conspicuous by its absence.

‘Here’s the lamb …’ Slam. Andrea’s movements by the stove were jerky, and rather odd. I had worked with Strickland once and he had not only been poetry in motion, but he obviously revelled in his skill – the sheer joy that is to be had in having achieved mastery of whatever it is that you can do.

Andrea, on the other hand, was like a life-sized marionette moved by invisible strings. His thin face, with its dark five-o’clock shadow, expressed a sour hatred of life in general and me in particular.

Maybe he thought that having to work here, in the hell-hole of the Old Forge Café, was an insult, a cruel punishment visited upon him by Justin.

I quickly sliced up the lamb fillet, placed it on its bed of wilted rocket and drizzled some rosemary-infused jus over it, then added a little spoon of cranberry and port jelly. Andrea had cooked it to perfection.

‘Service, please!’ I called, asking for it to be taken away.

Jessica came in to the kitchen and I said, ‘Table 12 please, Jessica.’

She looked over my shoulder at Andrea. I turned and looked at him closely. I had been studiously avoiding looking at him. By that, I don’t mean so much physically as character-wise. I had hoped that he was a rough diamond, that when you got to know him you’d think he was actually quite nice. But Jess was a good judge of character, and when I saw the expression on her face, I knew that I had been deluding myself. The scales fell from my eyes. He was a bloody good chef but I suddenly realised the truth. He was horrible.

We both saw a tall, pasty man in chef’s whites and an old-fashioned toque – a high, old-fashioned chef’s hat, which you hardly ever see nowadays. Its effect on Andrea was to make him look even taller and thinner, and with his white jacket and white linen apron he looked weirdly like an animated tube of toothpaste. He was ignoring me, but staring at Jessica.

Jess was my very own personal hero, saving me from many a close call. She had dark hair, large brown eyes, a look of extreme intelligence and was always demurely dressed for work. Jess was not someone given to displays of cleavage.

Andrea came over to the pass to introduce himself to Jess, a horribly sickly smile on his face.

‘Allo, my name is Andrea, I work for Justin McCleish—’ in case there were any chance of mistaking the fact that he was too good to work for me ‘—but I will be ’ere for the next few weeks … and you are?’

This speech would maybe have gone down a little better if he had been talking to Jess’s face rather than where it said ‘Old Forge Café’ on her apron.

She looked at Andrea with as much enthusiasm as he had me earlier, and he returned to his position at the stove. Jess shook her head. ‘What a plonker,’ she said dismissively to me.

The rest of the service passed by in a pleasantly hectic blur.

For me, it was a delight having a competent grill cook. All I had to do was plate up and help Francis whenever he stumbled, which was often, with a starter or a vegetable accompaniment.

The downside was the contempt that Andrea obviously held me in, his irritation obvious at being expelled from Justin’s side and forced into the hell of mediocrity that was the Old Forge Café.

I tried once or twice to get him to talk about life with Justin, to try and get some feel of their relationship, but it was useless. Any idea of getting useful clues from Andrea rapidly disappeared.

The last dessert cheque was done at about two-thirty and we started cleaning down the kitchen. Andrea disappeared outside to have a cigarette, and I took the opportunity to explain to Jess that she would have to put up with him for a bit.

‘But he’s so creepy,’ she grumbled, ‘and he keeps staring at me.’

‘It won’t be for long,’ I promised her.

‘How long?’

I decided to be honest with Jess as to why Justin had employed me.

‘Well, the situation is this …’ I scratched my head. ‘Justin is being blackmailed and he wants me to find out who it is and frighten him or her off. That won’t take too long.’

I briefly sketched in the background, and Jess’s expression became one of tender concern.

‘So he doesn’t want you for your cooking ability?’ Jess patted me sorrowfully on the shoulder.

I shook my head. Her large eyes regarded me sympathetically, which was nice on one level but added to my sense of inadequacy. My waitress seemed to have made it her duty to try and protect me from life and its hardships, which was great but a little demeaning.

‘That won’t take too long? Are you sure?’ asked Jess. ‘I mean, your last out-of-the-kitchen activity was hardly a resounding success, was it?’

She had that look that she habitually wore around me that told me she was certain that she was right and I was wrong. Unless it was a question of food. Her eyes held mine with the natural superiority that parents have over small children.

‘Anyway, the only good thing to come out of that was your getting to see Claudia again,’ she said, referring to my ex.

‘I dare say, but she’s engaged, and not to me.’

‘She gave you her phone number …’

‘Justin has every faith in me. I’m sure he knows what he is doing,’ I said, emphatically, shutting down the Claudia conversation.

‘You’re an idiot.’ Jess shook her head, but in a nice way.

Any resentment that I may have felt at being put in my place by a girl half my age (twenty-two to forty-five) was tempered by the fact that she was indisputably brighter than me, and the fact that I am very often wrong about things. For example, the time she had just alluded to, when I had fallen in love with a murderer (not that I had known at the time – I’m not that stupid) and had nearly died because of it.

So, no, it hadn’t been an unqualified success at all.

This, I reflected, was the man that Justin McCleish had hired to save his bacon. I consoled myself with the fact that surely he knew what he was doing.

‘Anyway,’ I tried to cheer her up, ‘you’re in charge of the kitchen while I’m away. Remember, Andrea is working for you, not vice versa. You’re on tonight, aren’t you?’

‘Sure am,’ said Jess. She didn’t look very excited by the thought.

‘Well, I’m off to see Esther. I’ll be back by close of service, when you can let me know what the Godfather out there is like when he’s on his own.’

‘I just can’t wait,’ said Jess sarcastically and went through into the dining room. You can’t bang a swing door behind you but, somehow, she managed to give the impression of doing just that.

Chapter Ten

I guess all villages have their movers and shakers and Esther Bartlett was prominent in Hampden Green. She was a Parish Councillor, she led the village litter clean-up days and she sang in the local church choir. Despite this, she was also the local white witch, High Priestess of the local coven and the Chair of SoBuNPag (South Bucks Neo Pagans). The witches were quite big on acronyms. She liked her food – she was a regular customer of mine and used me for catering for her parties, both secular and religious.

I was at Esther’s house to discuss a catering project with an associate of hers. Historically I had done quite well out of witches parties. They liked their food.

‘More tea?’ asked Esther. She had kind, blunt features resting on top of her several chins and a pair of very shrewd blue eyes. She was a big lady, who tended to favour voluminous flowing caftans. She was wearing one today, a riot of crimson paisley.

I nodded. ‘Please.’

She poured and smiled at me.

She was one of my favourite customers and her home-made jam made my Bakewell tarts all the better in my opinion. Though it still rankled that Andrea hadn’t noticed.

‘I hear that you’re working with the Justin McCleish!’ said Esther. ‘We’re all very impressed. What’s he like?’

‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘He’s doing a book on English gastro-pub food and wants my input, which is very flattering. So I’ll be with him and his team up at the Earl’s place, helping out, to get a sense of his cooking style.’

‘What’s his wife like?’ said Clare Reynolds. She was the other person at the table, another devotee of the Craft.

Clare was far more occult-looking than Esther, with wiry, jet-black, backcombed hair, hawkish features and a lot of eye make-up. In her black and purple clothes, she looked very goth-like, reminding me eerily of Robert Smith from The Cure.

She was the Chair of NoBWic, North Bucks Wiccans, a sister organisation to SoBuNPag and based in Milton Keynes. It’s not a place that has much of a mystical ring to it – Avebury, yes, Mont Saint Michel, yes, Tibet, yes, Glastonbury Tor, yes, Avalon, yes … Milton Keynes? No.

‘Aurora is very nice,’ I said.

‘I heard she was a bit of a bitch, man-mad!’ Clare said.

I shook my head. ‘I think that’s just the TV marketing people – they want her to float around looking gorgeous to attract male viewers – she’s actually not like that. She seems very sweet-natured.’

She had also made good on her promise to hire Jess to improve her computer skills. Jess was in raptures.

‘Anyway … food …’

Clare was keen on hiring me to do the catering for the NoBWic Midsummer Festival, also known as Summer Solstice or …

‘We call it Litha, the most powerful day of the year for the Sun God,’ said Clare dreamily. ‘… we shall leap sky-clad through the sacred fires …’

I looked dubiously at Esther who I found hard to imagine leaping naked through anything, much less a sacred bonfire. She caught my eye and grinned. I blushed, feeling sure she knew exactly what I had been thinking.

‘Well, let’s hear some of Ben’s ideas for the catering …’

‘Oh yes,’ said Clare, ‘I was at the feast of Imbolc that you did here for Esther. I loved the vegetarian lasagne.’

I gave a tight smile. Vegetarian lasagne is so clichéd, but it seems to dog my footsteps. People like it and I can’t get away from it. When I die, it’ll be on my gravestone.

Here Lies Ben Hunter

He cooked a mean Vegetable Lasagne

‘Well—’ I brought out my tablet ‘—the fact that you’re celebrating with fire kind of conjures up a barbecue …’ I showed them photos of mini-burgers, marinated lamb kebabs, teriyaki-style chicken and tofu brochettes. ‘I decided to go with the fire theme with the salads, beetroot and lentil, the redness mirroring the fire.’

‘Cool,’ murmured Clare. She was giving me a rather ‘come hither’ look. Her eyes, surrounded by the dramatic mascara and eyeliner, smouldered. I felt slightly nervous. She leaned over the table to get a better look at the image on the screen and I averted my eyes from her low-cut blouse.

I tried to take my mind off things by looking around me at my surroundings. I had been in Esther’s kitchen before, using it for the aforementioned Feast of Imbolc. It was a massive room, extremely well equipped. The three of us were seated on stools around the centre island with which every large kitchen these days seems to be furnished. I had already made a small stack of plates and now I unzipped the cool-bag I had with me and plated up some of the salads. ‘This is a Lebanese dish, “moussakaat batinjan”; it’s a kind of aubergine stew.’

I watched anxiously as she tasted it. I’m a huge fan of the aubergine, but it’s a divisive vegetable.

Clare frowned at first and then her face brightened. She pushed her jet-black bird’s nest of hair away from her forehead. ‘I think that’s great.’

I felt immensely relieved. The other dishes all went down well.

‘And how much will all this come to?’ she asked. I tapped the tablet, seeking shelter in the white screen with the figures in black. I hate the whole business of asking for money. I find it embarrassing, ridiculously so.

The invoice I was quoting from had actually been prepared by Jess. She had seen my original quote and said, ‘Are you crazy? No wonder you can’t afford any staff. Give it to me.’

I propped the tablet up between Clare and me, creating a kind of shield while she frowned at the numbers.

‘It’s not cheap I’m afraid,’ I apologised (I could almost hear Jess’s exasperated voice: ‘FFS, man up, you’re not a charity’).

‘That’s not a problem,’ said Esther cheerfully. ‘Clare’s husband’s job is as a treasurer – he’s got loads of money.’

Clare rolled her eyes, then looked closely at the figures in front of her and nodded in agreement. ‘That looks fine,’ she said.

I was pathetically grateful. God knows why. When you compared my invoice to a lot of things – the work being done on my old Volvo, plumbing, that kind of stuff – it was perfectly reasonable. And they would certainly get their money’s worth. The witches of Milton Keynes were going to be very well fed; it would be a NoBWic do to remember.

‘Where’s the Feast being held?’ I asked. I wondered if it would be in her house and garden like Esther had done previously. Clare sounded wealthy. I knew vaguely that only large companies had treasury departments and treasurers so I was guessing that her house would be sizeable. Particularly in North Bucks where property was a lot cheaper than round here.

‘It’s going to be at the local cricket club.’ Clare smiled. ‘I thought we’d need space to do our rituals if the weather is bad. We can always use the pavilion. It might be the Summer Solstice but that’s no guarantee of anything. I’ll text you my address and postcode and you can come round a few days before – shall we say the thirtieth of May?’

I checked my calendar on my phone. ‘That’d be great.’

‘We’ll talk things over at my place …’ She pushed a hand through her hair. ‘Then we’ll go down … down to the cricket club …’ Clare batted her eyelashes at me, and I smiled nervously. She had managed to imbue the words ‘cricket club’ with a kind of lascivious air, as if a cricket club were some kind of orgiastic hot-house.

I stood up. ‘Ladies,’ I said, ‘it’s been a pleasure.’

As I left, I thought with relief of my impending stakeout of the porn shop on Monday. It would be a lot less scary than a meeting at Clare’s house.

Chapter Eleven

I got up early the next day and drove to Byfield, the nearest big town, about half an hour by car from my place. I was at the station by seven-thirty. It was more or less an hour to Marylebone although there were faster trains that did it in forty minutes. The platform was already thronging with bleary-looking commuters, less than thrilled by the prospect of a day’s work in London.

I was feeling a mixture of emotions: the thrill of the chase (which one of Justin’s team would turn up to collect the money?), apprehension (there was obviously going to be a confrontation, possibly violent, certainly abusive) and a certain sense of worry (that the whole thing might be absolutely futile and nobody would show up).

On balance, I suspected that someone would come to collect the money. The fact that the payment was made on a Monday, a day that everyone in the team had off, was a strong indicator that he or she would come to pick up the cash. And it was a lot of money. What successful blackmailer would be able to resist going straightaway to grab that money-stuffed envelope?

The alley – it was called a mews, but it wasn’t – off Greek Street in Soho in the centre of London was a place that I knew relatively well. Not because I used to buy porn there, but because I used to work round the corner in an airless basement kitchen of a forty-cover restaurant that did steak and very little else.

I would stand, hunched over a chargrill in the tiny room, while the ticket machine spooled out infinite requests for fillet, ribeye and sirloin and the commis endlessly fried thin chips, or ‘pommes allumettes’ as they were rather pretentiously described on the menu, and plated up garnishes for me. After a week in there, no matter how much I showered and scrubbed myself raw, a faint, pervasive odour of charred meat clung to me wherever I went. My girlfriend at the time didn’t like it, but if I went anywhere that had cats or dogs, be it friends’ flats, parks or pubs, I attracted an interested animal audience.

Swings and roundabouts, I guess.

The shop front was whited out, the legend ‘EROS SHOP ADULT BOOKS, DVDS AND MAGS’ emblazoned in blue across the top. I wondered how it was surviving in this age of downloadable porn. I guessed it must have a predominantly elderly clientele. It was nine-thirty a.m. and the place had only just opened. There was a small independent café opposite with a window overlooking the porn emporium. I sat there with a good view of the door and ordered a cup of tea.

At ten o’clock I saw Justin enter the alley and stride into the shop. He was wearing a hoody to hide his long hair and sunglasses to help disguise his face. I waited and a few minutes later Justin exited the shop.

Time passed. I ordered more tea and watched several men enter the shop opposite. They fell into two groups: either furtive, looking around guiltily before going in, or feigning nonchalance. Nobody really wants to be seen to be going into a porn shop – it’s not something to feel proud about. I pondered this too. I was getting to do a lot of thinking today.

Once again, I wondered who the Judas figure would be. It was all too easy to imagine, the resentment building up inside as you worked your butt off in Justin’s successful restaurant while he got all the plaudits, the money, the beautiful wife, all the gifts the world could throw at him, and you were there slaving away for a comparative pittance. But now you could think, as you watched him, I’ve cut you down to size; I’ve got my revenge.

Was it Tom, the development chef? He was my favourite choice. But perhaps it was a wild card like Octavia?

I drank another three cups of tea and played with my phone. The girl behind the counter must have wondered what I was doing in there. A few more guilty-looking men entered the shop, each leaving shortly afterwards with a plain blue plastic bag in hand.

I ordered another tea; my bladder was uncomfortably full but I worried that the moment I used the café’s loo would be the moment my quarry walked into the shop.

I shifted uncomfortably on my stool then took my phone out and scrolled through the photo album to look again at the selfie I had taken of myself and Justin’s brigade.

There they all were, the suspects.

Andrea, face thunderous with disapproval, if not naked hatred. Tall, sinewy, disappointment and resentment etched into the lines on his face. I had worked with sous-chefs like him before, those who would never be quite good enough to make it as a head chef. I guessed he had tried and failed a couple of times, let down by lack of imagination or an inability to inspire his team. I knew him to be competent but I guessed that his main attraction for Justin was that he would be able to keep order in his kitchen, the way that a kindly officer in the army might use a terrifying Sergeant Major to keep the troops in order.

Next to him was Tom, Justin’s development chef. He would be the one to help Justin turn theory into reality and also help come up with new ideas for Justin’s TV shows. I had googled him and found his LinkedIn profile. He had come a long way in a short time. I counted two Michelin-starred restaurants he had worked in. But that’s often the way with being a chef – it’s a pretty steep learning curve. He had a tough, competent face and a powerful physique, with bull-like shoulders. He was heavily tattooed and had a hipster beard.

I guessed that of all of the brigade he looked the most likely blackmailer. He had the kind of face that spoke of self-love, the kind of man that I suspected would have no qualms about trampling someone underfoot to get ahead. And bodybuilders are famously narcissistic. There was also an air of violence about him. Maybe it’s because I have spent time in prison where you inevitably become attuned to that kind of thing, but I can sense it in a person and I’m rarely wrong.

Then Murdo, tall and gangly with his man bun adding another couple of inches to his height. I felt that I could disregard him. He was the youngest of the brigade. Surely blackmail was not a young person’s activity?

My attention shifted to the women in the photo. Octavia, the posh intern. Because of TV showing the more glamorous side of things, the privately educated, or the university-educated come to that, were dipping their toes into the catering sea, but they were still an unusual occurrence in the kitchen. It was no surprise to find one with Justin, who had his employees working essentially civilised hours. Charlotte had described their days.

Right now, they were engaged in the run-up to the Earl’s opera fortnight, which actually ran to nearly three weeks. The pop-up restaurant would keep them busy for the last week of June, which would be the setting-up time, and then the first three weeks of July. The Marylebone restaurant was still very much going but that coasted along, its wheels oiled by Justin’s growing fame.

I had asked Charlotte how they spent their time when there wasn’t such a gig available. Their usual work was in the development kitchen for a forthcoming TV series. That was the bulk of it. I gathered that there were public cookery displays at gastro-fairs and exhibitions, and TV appearances, mainly on daytime shows. Even a five-minute Justin slot involved quite a few hours’ prep to make sure that everything was seamless and there were no glitches.

Charlotte ran everything behind the scenes while Douglas, her timid sidekick, did all the humdrum but time-consuming work, mainly involving numbers. I gathered he was indispensable. He worked out not only staff costings, expenses and the like, but also liaised with Tom on dish costs. When a dish appeared in a magazine, it was Douglas who would tot up how many calories and how much it would cost, down to the last spurt of balsamic vinegar. I had to do this for the restaurant and knew what a chore it could be.