The Food Detective Page 10

  Yes – another trap. This one wasn’t anchored as well as the one that had noosed me, and responded quickly to a good yank, sending me reeling and staggering, landing this time on my bum. Still no bones broken. All the same, this time I was glad to use the wire fencing as a support. It wasn’t much fun letting go of it to stumble back to where I hoped the four by four still waited.

  It did, and Nick with it. I waved and called, but he didn’t respond. He was staring deep into something that wasn’t anywhere except in his head. This time I was too much in need of TLC myself to worry about wounding his psyche or whatever. I shook his arm roughly. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ I demanded.

  Chapter Eleven

  I bundled him back inside the car, shoving him across into the passenger seat. ‘Is it some sort of epilepsy attack or what?’ I demanded.

  ‘I don’t know. No, I do know it’s not epilepsy. I got it checked out – some Well Man clinic,’ he gabbled, ‘you know, where they check everything from cirrhosis to in-growing toenails.’

  I was meant to get so absorbed by detail I lost sight of the problem. I didn’t. ‘So did you tell the clinic exactly what happens? For Christ’s sake, man, you drive a lot of miles in a lethal machine – you can’t just lose it like this when you’re driving.’

  ‘Funnily enough I don’t.’

  ‘D’you see me laughing? Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t ever. Why does it happen at all? Yes, I’ve seen you like this before – in Comet or wherever the other day, for a start. Is that why you left the police – ill health?’

  He shook his head emphatically. ‘I did my full thirty years. Nice plump pension and a new job I could do in my sleep. That was the idea.’

  ‘So have these … blackouts… just started?’

  The headshake was less emphatic. ‘I’ve had them on and off for a while. They’ve got worse recently. Since I left work.’

  ‘What’s Dr Cole say?’

  ‘I haven’t had time to register, yet.’

  I threw my hands in the air in exasperation.

  ‘What have you done to your face?’ he asked. ‘And what’s that you’re holding?’

  A peer in the mirror told me I looked like Dracula’s mother, blood trickling from a lot of scratches I hoped were superficial. Now I was back in the warm they were starting to sting. I waved the gin traps. ‘The latest variation on the trip wire that caught me the other day. Or illegal animal traps. How do you push this seat back? Ah.’ I pulled my jeans up and my sock down. There was a thin red weal all round, but a fine black bruise already forming where I’d taken most of the force, where the shin just becomes the top of the ankle. ‘The thing is, the harder you struggle the tighter this noose pulls,’ I said, demonstrating in the gear lever. ‘It’s really designed to catch rabbits or foxes, whatever the landowner considers vermin.’

  ‘In this case, you. You’re lucky not to have broken your wrists when you fell, a wom –’ He bit back what he was saying, blushing furiously.

  ‘A woman my age, eh? These days women of my age know all about preventing osteoporosis, Copper, thank goodness. But you’re right. And I’m lucky the thorns missed my eyes, too. I think these might be evidence, don’t you?’

  Suddenly he lunged for me, pulling some lever that tipped the seat right back, and swarming all over me like a demented lover.

  ‘What the hell?’ And then I heard the lorry, and returned his embrace with interest.

  At last we straightened. ‘I never knew undercover work could be so interesting,’ he said, rather spoiling the effect with an embarrassed laugh.

  ‘D’you think they clocked us?’

  ‘What, with the windows all steamed up, as if we’ve been snogging for hours? Doubt it.’

  ‘You’re going to have to acquire a girlfriend, fast. The whole village knows you’ve got a new set of wheels. I don’t want it to be known that it was me in here.’

  ‘Hang on – if I’d have been going to snog you I’d have done it in the comfort of the White Hart. So I should think your reputation will remain lily white. Now what are you doing?’

  ‘Going to take a few photographs, of course. A bit more of the big E. Evidence, Nick.’ Despite my ankle, I was out of the car and running in that crouched way that film cowboys or soldiers use when they mean Business. What I’d thought was a lorry turned out to be no more than a horsebox towing a trailer. But horses didn’t low.

  I didn’t risk getting close in, just in case they’d got any dogs with them, but hey, what’s a telephoto lens for except to protect the snapper from being snapped? The lens gave exceptionally good definition – it damned well ought to have done for the price I paid for it – and I focused on the registration letters. Then I got a couple of the poor beasts in the trailer, and one of the driver, just as he was getting out of his cab. After that, discretion overcame valour, and I scuttled back to the car, apparently doing up my flies – anyone seeing me might have thought I’d been having a quick wee.

  By now Nick had turned the car – no mean feat in such a narrow space. ‘Where next?’

  ‘Taunton. Boots. To pick up my original film and drop this one in.’

  ‘Have you taken that many photos? A whole film? Already?’

  Had he seen it, my look would have withered him. ‘I’d rather not be caught with this on me. For Christ’s sake, Copper, Tony was a criminal. Big time. He didn’t get where he did by taking risks with evidence. Would these guys, if they so much as suspected we were interested?’

  ‘Where he got was Long Lartin, for Christ’s sake,’ he snorted. ‘A stretch in a maximum security jail’s scarcely a pinnacle of achievement!’

  ‘That’s because he got careless and you people got canny. Won’t this thing go any faster?’

  He took the hint. I have to admit he drove very well in appalling conditions – wet roads, some running inches deep in water draining from the banks, mist rolling in and occasional bursts of driving rain.

  ‘Anyone would think we were being followed,’ I said as he did a particularly nifty piece of overtaking.

  ‘Are you sure we’re not? Look, Josie, in Taunton, I shall try to overtake a bus and drop you at the next stop. Catch it to Boots.’

  Splitting up made sense. I nodded. ‘And what about you?’

  ‘I shall take this to a car wash and then back to the garage to get another.’ His eyes, narrowed in concentration, relaxed into unexpected crows’ feet of amusement as my jaw dropped. ‘It’s on appro, Josie – hell, you don’t fork out the umpty-ump thousand pounds this sort of vehicle costs without trying it for size. I shall say I’m not sure and try another in the range – rather higher, so don’t worry, they won’t object. It’s either that or false plates,’ he added. ‘Which would you advise?’

  After Boots, which I reached too late for their same day-service, my next trip was to the post office: I wanted to send the negatives I already had to someone no one would think of, preferably someone I could get them back from without any problems if necessary. Piers, my flying instructor, would do. He was ex-RAF, and was still enough of an overgrown schoolboy to relish a bit of subterfuge. I photocopied the prints of the barbed wire and popped them in an envelope to Dom, my architect: he wasn’t as silly as Piers, but was rather more accessible. And as a friend, rather than a lover, he might be even more reliable. And then I drifted in and out of the shops, buying early Christmas cards and decorations and wishing I had a few more people on my presents list. Being an only child and then childless myself limited the options, especially as I was no longer on speaking terms with most of Tony’s lot, the epitome of awful in-laws.

  By now my yanked leg was complaining, and my lower back having a really vicious moan: a quick call to my osteopath established that he could slot me in after his last patient. He added that we might even have a quiet drink together if I was up to it. By which, of course, he meant excellent sherry, a brilliant bonk (he’d studied anatomy, after all) and usually a particularly nice meal.
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br />   ‘Got a pub to run tonight, Morgan: we’ll have to take a rain check on the drink. Plus I’ve had to fix a lift back,’ I told him as I arrived. ‘No, don’t ask…’

  In bed or out of it, Morgan did wonderful things with his hands, this time involving a ruler and my camera as he photographed my bruises and recorded them. ‘It probably ought to be a GP doing this,’ he said, ‘but better me than no one. Now, that lower back looks a bit lopsided…’

  I loved it when he talked technical.

  ‘Clunk click on every trip,’ I grinned at Nick, as he picked me up outside Morgan’s door. ‘I feel a hell of a lot better – I was really beginning to stiffen up.’ As was Morgan, of course, but I didn’t tell Nick that. ‘The thing is, once you pass fifty the body doesn’t bounce like it once did.’

  ‘That’s why rugby’s a young man’s game,’ he said inconsequentially. ‘Terrible thing, isn’t it, growing old.’

  ‘It sure as hell beats dying young,’ I snapped.

  Our progress in this even bigger gas-guzzler was distinctly more sedate than the journey into Taunton. Nick seemed to be disconcerted by the very size, and embarrassed (rightly, in my humble opinion) by the amount of space he took up in the heavy rush hour traffic. I felt like some very superior mortal, looking down into microcosm of lives you see in other people’s cars. Perhaps therein lay the monsters’ appeal – Peeping Tom-mobiles. I peered entranced at cars littered with fast food packaging, toys and a couple of really gross used condoms.

  Apropos of nothing in particular, I said, ‘Maybe it would be better if you dropped me just outside the village.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he agreed. ‘It’s not raining too hard. And the less we’re seen together the better.’

  ‘I hate to suggest it, but I think you ought to find somewhere else to eat –’

  ‘Already thought of that. It’s bell ringing tonight, so Sue offered me a snack at her place.’

  So she’d changed her confirmation class for him, had she?

  ‘Is that OK, ringing on a full stomach?’

  ‘Actually, it’ll be after the session – she’s busy earlier, apparently.’

  ‘In that case you should have a snack before you start,’ I said maternally. Oh, no, not Nick and Sue Clayton – what a joyless coupling they’d have.

  Where the hell was Lindi? As soon as I’d lit the fire and set up the first round on the house to apologise for keeping the fire-hoggers waiting, I checked both the pub phone and my own for messages. There were none. I phoned her home number: it rang on and on. She’d not even had the nous to organise the automatic message service. Her mobile was switched off. I left a message, hoping to sound more in sorrow than in anger.

  What did she think she was playing at? Even as I cursed, a ghastly thought struck me – she hadn’t actually gone off with Fred Tregothnan, had she? True she’d phoned Lucy yesterday evening, but she could have done that from anywhere. I’d have to ask Lucy if she knew any more as soon as I got the chance – which wouldn’t be tonight because it was bell ringing, and she was their star.

  Anyway, here I was, knackered after all my walking and stiff with a combination of my falls and Morgan’s yanking me about, and I had to turn to and pull pints. And wait up for Nick, as though he was a kid out on an unsuitable date, because he’d forgotten to take his key, and there was no way in the present situation I was going to leave the place unlocked. What a good job I had plenty of accounts to check – my very favourite occupation. I don’t think. I felt like Lucy doing her homework as I worked in front of the fire in the snug.

  It was only eleven when Nick returned, using the pub entrance, looking distinctly self-conscious. Surely they hadn’t been to bed on their first date, her being next thing to a vicar?

  He gestured with his thumb. ‘That thing’s so bloody huge it almost dwarfs the pub. But I thought I ought to stow it round the back – it’ll be less obtrusive there.’

  ‘You reckon? Hey, you look as if you could do with a drink and I know I’ve earned one – bloody VAT.’

  ‘That was one thing Tony never taught you, eh, Josie? He never paid a penny of tax all his life, did he?’

  ‘If that’s a roundabout way of asking what happened to all his worldly wealth –’

  ‘Ill-gotten gains, more like!’

  ‘Forget it. We seem to be rubbing along quite nicely, young Nick. But you’ll find we won’t any more if you persist in talking about Tony. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Abundantly. I’m sorry. But you must expect an ex-cop to be intrigued – we never found a bean, you know.’

  ‘Well, as you can see, I have to earn a living. So draw your own conclusions.’ I led the way to my quarters. The fire was low, but I didn’t intend to make this a long evening, so I slung on just a couple of logs. ‘Red wine or white? And then you can tell me what information about Lindi you extracted from Lucy. I trust you did?’

  ‘I tried,’ he conceded, ‘but Mrs Greville was all over her.’

  From the kitchen I shouted, ‘Mrs Greville?’ Yes, an estate-bottled Pouilly Fume. I grabbed a pair of glasses and the opener and headed back.

  ‘She’s one of the team – on an irregular basis, apparently. Anyway, she might have stepped back a couple of centuries, all Lady of the Manor, charming the Lower Orders.’

  ‘Really? She didn’t seem to have any side when I spoke to her the other day – the church flowers,’ I explained.

  ‘Plenty of side tonight. Snubbed me to kingdom come, she did. Anyway, it seems she’s got some sort of function coming up and she wants Lucy to do some waitressing.’

  ‘So you didn’t get a chance. Damn and blast.’

  ‘No. But I did ask Ron Snow where Lindi was – you know, I made it sound like a laddish nudge nudge, wink wink.’

  I didn’t want a discussion of histrionics. ‘And…?’

  ‘And it seems she’s around in the village – but for some reason she’s not coming to work here any more.’

  ‘Hell! Did you get any idea why not?’

  ‘As soon as I started asking questions he clammed.’

  ‘Guiltily?’

  ‘Clammily.’ He swirled the glass, sniffing appreciatively. ‘This is very good.’

  It was outstanding, wonderfully flinty but with plenty of other aromas and flavours. ‘I only drink very good wine. I don’t want to get hung over. Anything else to report? Come on, what did you pick up at the vicarage?’

  He sat down carefully and took a couple of appreciative sips before looking up at me. ‘I’m not your junior officer, Josie. I went to ring the bells because that’s what I do; I had a bite with Sue because she’s a decent woman and she asked me. I wasn’t there to spy.’

  It was too good a wine to throw over him. In any case, I wasn’t one to give up at the first hitch. ‘But…?’ I prompted.

  ‘But nothing.’ He sipped again. ‘I think Lindi may be going to work for Mrs Greville, too, though I’m not sure on what basis. You’ll have to ask Lucy.’

  ‘Assuming, of course, she reappears. Copper, why should two of my staff disappear without a word in the space of one week?’

  He looked at me as if I were a recalcitrant sergeant. ‘Are you a good employer?’

  ‘I’m fair. I work them hard and expect the highest standards. But I also pay well over the odds. Very well over.’

  ‘Rumour has it you bullied Lindi.’

  ‘Me!’ I didn’t know which to disbelieve more, the accusation or the sudden flood of tears to my eyes. Me, tears?

  ‘Over the Fred Tregothnan business.’

  ‘I only tried to teach her how to tell a groper to push off – politely. Duty of care, Copper – I’ve got a duty of care to my employees!’

  ‘You don’t have to justify yourself to me. But if they think you bullied Lindi, how d’you think they feel about your treatment of Tregothnan?’

  ‘Proud, I should hope – the women, at least.’

  ‘Not all women like their assertive sisters.’ He emptied his glass in one g
ulp – a sin with such a classy wine. Maybe it would irritate his ulcer as much as it irritated me. ‘Anyway, tomorrow I really do have to spend a day at work, and I ought to be in early. So if you’ll excuse me –’

  I got to my feet. ‘What time do you want breakfast?’

  He was within an inch of saying he didn’t have time to eat, or that he’d catch something on the way. But he quailed before my eye like a kid before its head teacher. ‘Is seven-thirty too early?’ he asked humbly.

  Chapter Twelve

  Friday started badly and got worse. First there was a phone call from Piers, saying he’d gone down with a throat infection, which had given him absolutely solid ears and that he’d have to cancel our lesson. He didn’t even sound up to what we referred to as theory lessons, our nickname for our other activities, so I wished him well and resigned myself to a dreadfully mundane day, kicking pebbles as I headed for the shop and my paper like a sulky schoolgirl.

  And at the shop I might well have been back at school. Oh, any of the schools I’d been inflicted on. Back then, as soon as the kids twigged I had Romany blood in me they’d start on me – hurling abuse (though not as much as I hurled back at them), jostling me, pulling my hair. Others, less brave, just gave me the silent treatment.

  There was no hair-pulling at the shop. But plenty of silent treatment. Jem and Molly were nowhere to be seen, but that was nothing unusual – the hours they kept the shop open they couldn’t be there all the time. They employed on the till a rota of school and college kids, a couple of hours here, three there, just scraping together the national minimum wage to pay them. Usually, if I didn’t have to buy anything else, I’d just catch the kid’s eye and they’d hand my Guardian over the heads of those with full baskets – they all knew I was on that prepayment scheme.