The Food Detective Page 13

  Close too the stench was far worse, as you’d expect. But there were confident signs on its high, wire mesh gates, set twenty or so yards back from the lane on a tarmac apron, announcing it was Wetherall Industries, and plenty of hard-standing inside for lorries, with a couple of what looked like office buildings to the right. There were several huge cylindrical vats beyond these. There were also, more gruesomely, a set of skips from which protruded what looked horribly like animal limbs. Yes, even as I snapped away with my neat little camera, I acknowledged that I was operating on double standards, but then most of us do. I was happy to prepare chicken, lamb, beef, pork and any other recognisable animal that came my way, but to see the waste parts jumbled up in death like that turned my stomach. I told myself we’d all be vegetarians if we had to kill our own meat, but was soon cramming calorie laden mints into my own as fast as I could fish them out of the glove-box. So that was the sort of place Food Standards Agency officers like Nick had to deal with: far from sneering at him as a coward, I should be taking my hat off to him.

  Putting the car quickly into gear, I had one last look. If it had been inspected, it must be all right, mustn’t it? And for the first time I was pleased to acknowledge that it really was none of my business if it wasn’t.

  Or was it? As I pulled away, a tarpaulin-covered lorry bore down on me, trapping me. Two dogs the size of donkeys leapt from the cab as the driver scrambled down. I covered the camera with the OS map, plonking my index finger on what I hoped would be a local beauty spot.

  Winding down the window only about three inches – I didn’t like the look of any of the party, four or two-legged – I smiled vacuously. ‘Took a wrong turning,’ I said to the man, who might well not have heard about the throaty growls of his colleagues.

  He kicked the dogs aside and leaned both forearms on the top of my car, peering down at me.

  ‘Ah. And where might you be heading for?’

  ‘They says there’s a nice church in Treborough.’

  ‘Do they indeed? Well, you won’t find it here, will you?’ Halitosis and sweat. A far from heady mix. Thank God for the mints.

  ‘Quite. I took a wrong turn about five miles back, I reckon.’

  ‘Ah.’

  He stood back far enough for me to embark on a three point turn, but so close that what with his feet and his lorry it seemed more like ninety-nine. The dogs provided more mobile hazards. At last I squeezed between the hedge and the side of his lorry, close enough for the matter oozing from the sides to drip on my paintwork. If I stopped to clean it off I’d either be eaten alive or be sick. Someone had told me that if the gap was wide enough you could get through it at sixty as easily as six miles an hour. I didn’t make sixty, but I didn’t hang about. I might have had the guts to stop and write down the lorry’s number – might – but somehow a flap of tarpaulin had managed to cover it. Pity there was nothing to cover mine.

  Maybe I’d make the other special for tonight something wholesomely vegetarian.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Because Sue had to officiate at so many other churches, the times of the services were rotated. If we had eight o’clock communion one week, next week it would be an eleven o’clock service, the following one evensong. Normally I had to skip eleven o’clock services, time being of the essence when you had lunches to cook and serve. But today I felt I had to support Sue in the presence of the new dean and was up before seven to prepare vegetables and everything else. Thank goodness roasts – pork, beef and a couple of huge free-range local chickens - looked after themselves nicely. I’d made the veggie option a stir-fry I’d prepare to order. Puddings? Well, no problem, thanks to microwaves and an interesting cheese board that was already gaining a reputation across the district. All the same, my mind was more on logistics than on Sue’s not very inspired sermon. The flowers looked good, even though I says it as shouldn’t, in Tony’s phrase. I had hard stares from Mrs Coyne and a rather haughty, amused one from Mrs Greville, but since I was out of that church like a greyhound out of a trap, no one had a chance to say anything. Lucy came panting along five minutes later, not, as she knew, to peel spuds, but to meet and greet and take orders. I felt like a puppet, dancing back between the kitchen and the bar, cursing the law that prevented Lucy pulling a pint.

  And people kept on coming. It was nearly five before I could wave the last guest away, locking the door behind them and leaning on it wondering how I’d done it.

  ‘The bugger of it is,’ I said to Lucy, who’d just kicked off her shoes, and was unloading the dishwasher, ‘that there’s hardly anything worth giving you for your tea.’

  ‘Friday’s pie,’ she said. ‘Yesterday I gave them that cheese and potato pie you taught me how to make. But all that carbohydrate, Mrs Welford: and they wanted it with chips!’

  ‘And you gave them –?’

  ‘Big bags of carrots going cheap at Jem and Molly’s,’ she grinned, though her face was as pale and drawn as I’d seen it.

  Without speaking I pushed the last portion of damson tart towards her. ‘Sit! Go on: I don’t want you fainting.’ Sinking opposite her, I helped myself to a nibble of cheese and a stick of celery. My shoes joined hers. At least I could have a slop of wine. Thank goodness I didn’t do Sunday evening meals. With luck, the locals would continue with their cold shoulder treatment and I could have a night off. A night off and a very early night.

  Sure I was simply going through the motions, I went to open the snug door and switch on the porch light. As I did so, this huge four by four pulled up.

  ‘Nick!’ I began, only to have to add ‘Ola!’ as the TV reporter almost fell into my arms.

  ‘Josie darling,’ she said, ‘I told them you wouldn’t let us down.’ The silver monster disgorged another four young people. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t have a table for five?’ She must have read my face. ‘But we’ve come all the way from Exeter – go on, I’m sure you can rustle something up for us?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ I beamed, working out permutations as I shook hands – yes, it seemed we were on that sort of terms – with her mates. ‘But it’ll have to be table d’hôte, not à la carte.’ And this time they’d bloody well pay for their wine. At any price I chose.

  We were all best buddies by the time the meal was cooked, Nicola insisting, when she realised I was on my own again, on my sitting at the table and eating with them. Starters had been defrostables. For the main course I had to scurry round a bit. At one point I thought I heard someone knock at the back door, but I was too busy to do more than check the back window – no, no sign of anyone, in a car or out of one. So I turned my attention back to the stove. I reheated the lamb curry, then knocked together a variety of other rapid curries – one for green beans, another for kidney beans, and a creamy, possibly inauthentic but nonetheless delicious chicken, all courtesy of my Indian and Pakistani friends from Brum. A huge bowl of plain Basmati rice and there we were. And they all drank easy-to-top-up-lager, bless them.

  Sweet: my own private rumtopf, summer fruits macerated in rum and sugar for the last three months, with Devon cream ice cream. My famous cheese board appeared next, though it was scarcely touched, then coffee. Since Nicola had been making a big thing about not drinking and driving, I didn’t mention liqueurs. I’d like to add I didn’t mention a bill, but I’m afraid I did. I knew what such a meal would have cost in Ladypool Road, the heart of Brum’s curry district, and doubled it. Even then it seemed cheap – after all, I was using top class ingredients. So I added a bit more, and then shoved on the drinks bill. To my embarrassment, they then insisted on paying for my share, too. One of them was going to design me a website as soon as the restaurant was up and running; another had a mate who’d do a feature for Somerset Life. There was talk of a spot on one of the local news magazine programmes. If I’d known about all that, I would have fed them for free.

  Or doubled the bill again, on the grounds they could afford it.

  As they left, I touched my finger to my lips – the village
was already asleep. And they tiptoed out like lambs, each one hugging and kissing me as they left.

  What a night. One of the very best ever.

  I’d even brazen out the accusations of the heaps of dirty plates. OK, I loaded the dishwasher, but wash up I couldn’t. Twenty years ago, I’d have managed the extra effort. Not now. I forced myself to pad barefoot to the back door, just to make sure it was locked.

  And found a puddle of blood, with more steadily oozing underneath.

  If I opened that door, whatever was the other side would fall on top of me. I might have been paralysed.

  The blood continued to trickle. The pool got larger.

  Staring fascinated wasn’t going to do any good. Someone might be lying there dying.

  I couldn’t bear the thought of warm blood on my bare feet. Couldn’t. What if I just dialled 999 and hoped rescue would come in time?

  I could look if it didn’t fall into my hallway. I could. Of course I could. And if it didn’t get on my shoes, which I crammed on willy-nilly.

  And it couldn’t get on my shoes, couldn’t fall on top of me if I went out through the front door and all the way round the pub. So that’s what I did. Clutching my mobile in one hand, my heaviest torch in the other.

  However fast asleep I’d been, even that first deep sleep from which you can never rouse anyone, whatever their nightmare, screams like mine would have woken me. I’m sure they would. Because I hollered and hollered, till at last it penetrated even my hysterical brain that no one was taking the blindest bit of notice. I might have been an on-heat vixen calling for a mate for all the windows that shot open, all the lights clicked on. So I staggered back and locked myself back in. God in heaven, all the meat I’d cut up, why had I had to go all girly? Time for deep breaths, a deep drink and the application of some common sense.

  One hand clutching a stiff whisky, the other thumbed 999. ‘Police. Police, please.’

  It seemed aeons before a man with a Devon burr thicker than this evening’s cream answered. ‘Officer,’ I gabbled. ‘I need help now. Someone – someone’s tipped a load of offal all over my doorstep. Intestines. Lungs. Liver. The lot. And a gallon or two of blood.’

  ‘Is the person alive or dead?’

  ‘It’s not a person. It’s animal remains.’

  ‘And is the animal in need of immediate veterinary assistance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So there’s no one in danger, and no animal in danger. Now, if you think that’s an emergency, madam, I can get a vehicle to you. But I don’t think it’ll be in the half hour we try to reach rural emergencies in, because there’s been a major incident elsewhere in the county. All our mobiles are involved with that.’

  Mobiles. I had a sweet vision of those airblown things people string over babies’ cots. Any moment I’d start laughing and might not be able to stop. ‘All right,’ I said quickly. ‘Why don’t you put me down for a morning visit. I’ll leave the evidence where it is.’

  Which is what I did. OK, I rolled newspaper into a sausage I shoved up against the door. That reduced the blood flow.

  And then, not even bothering to sink the rest of that malt, I literally crawled upstairs and fell into my bed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I might have been flippant in my request for police help first thing next morning, but someone was taking it seriously. I’d hardly finished what would have to pass for breakfast – all last night’s calories were already congregating round my belly – when someone applied a remorseless digit to my doorbell. The front one. I flung it open to greet a silver four by four as monstrous as Nick’s and a couple of miserable looking men who could only have been plain clothes policemen. Two of them, one round Nick Thomas’s age, the other a lad looking scarcely older than Lucy, showed their IDs as one.

  ‘DCI Mike Evans,’ said the older one, a Cornish burr to his voice. He might once have been a carrot head, but the colour had faded to rust. With his pale skin, he was weathered rather than tanned, and you could have passed him in a supermarket without giving him a second glance. For my money, that dozy stolidity was a front. His eyes, blue, if you had a romantic tendency, as a summer sky, narrowed as the smell of the guts wafted along the dogleg of corridor, but he didn’t remark on it. ‘And this is Detective Sergeant Scott Short.’

  Scott Short. Whatever had his parents been thinking if? He was dressed so sharply he’d have to be careful not to cut himself when he pulled his trousers on, and his hair was fashionably spiked. Was it coming from the Smoke that gave him his swagger, a metropolitan amongst all us bumpkins? Whatever it was, I didn’t take to him, especially when I showed them into my lovely living room and he appraised it with a pronounced sneer. A man for Habitat beech and beiges, no doubt. And a weekly manicure. Interesting.

  I was very impressed that they’d taken my incident so seriously, and was about to tell them so.

  But Evans coughed portentously, and began, ‘You may be aware that Mr Fred Tregothnan has been reported missing.’

  I swear I felt Tony’s hand on my shoulder, pressing me down, warning me not to say anything yet about my incident. I almost patted it reassuringly. ‘There’s still no sign of him?’ I asked, pouring both of them some of my excellent coffee and adding more fuel to an already bright and warming fire. ‘This must be very worrying for his family.’ I was as well aware as they that he didn’t have any, but I was hardly going to let on I knew him so well.

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Evans.

  It was clear they were waiting for me to say something. The question was, what? And how? I wasn’t going to go all weepy on this pair: I didn’t think Evans would buy it, anyway. What about wrong-footing them altogether with news of the red stream and the shed so illicitly fenced off? I could keep Nick out of the story, but that might backfire if it later came out that we’d explored it together. Blast the man for pushing off precisely when he was needed here. But that might be why he’d gone. After all, he had had a row with Fred – perhaps he had actually had something to do with his disappearance.

  No: Nick was a victim if ever I saw one, not a murderer.

  But rats turned vicious if cornered – what about mice?

  Clearly the less I said about Nick and our activities the better.

  Time to be the dumb blonde, then. Dumb as in silent. I put on my listening landlady face, a half smile and slightly tilted head, as if I was interested, just like a kindly counsellor. And waited.

  Yes! It was Scott who broke first. ‘You had a disagreement with Mr Tregothnan.’

  ‘I did. He goosed one of my employees. Lindi Taylor. Sexual assault, in other words. I told one of your colleagues in Taunton.’

  ‘Ms Taylor denies all knowledge of the incident. So do all the other people in the bar at the time. And she says that when you spoke to Mr Tregothnan, you threatened to kill him.’

  All the years I’d practised, I’d never been able to stop myself going pale when I was accused of anything. In the discreet lighting of my living room, the change might not be detectable; if I flushed afterwards, they might have thought it was my age and my hormones. Certainly my voice would give nothing away: Tony had coached me for far too many long hours. ‘No, of course I didn’t. Nothing like as tame. I cursed his soul to eternal perdition and one or two variants of that. Although in general I don’t swear, when I curse, constable, I curse good and proper. I wouldn’t bother with a mere death threat, believe me.’ Was that why I’d been cold-shouldered in the shop on Friday morning? Because they genuinely thought I’d done him in?

  Or because they felt guilty for shoving the blame on to me?

  Evans managed a wry smile; Scott blinked.

  ‘Is there anyone else he might have argued with?’ Evans asked.

  ‘Being a landlady’s rather like being a priest,’ I said. ‘You hear and see things you can’t repeat.’

  ‘Is that a yes or a no?’ Scott demanded.

  ‘I know he had disputes with a number of people, but I never heard a death threat. I thi
nk he was owed money – but I gather that’s the usual scenario for vets in these hard days for farmers. His paperwork would show that.’

  ‘And where would that be?’

  I allowed myself a raised brows blink. ‘Why ask me? I have enough trouble with my own paperwork, let alone anyone else’s.’

  ‘You were seen leaving his house, Mrs Welford.’

  Hell’s bells! Was there anywhere this village that didn’t conceal eyes?

  I smiled smoothly. ‘Yes. With the Reverend Sue Clayton. I’m sure she’s told you. When we heard Fred hadn’t turned up for surgery we thought someone ought to check he wasn’t lying ill in his house. So we used his spare key to gain access. We didn’t find him. And – I’m also sure she’s told you – she hunted for his address book and so on but couldn’t find them. So we gave up. I presume she contacted you?’

  ‘Were you with Ms Clayton all the time?’

  ‘I left her downstairs while I went to check upstairs.’

  ‘So she could have removed items without your knowing.’

  ‘Or I without her knowing. But I didn’t. And Sue’s not that sort of woman –’

  ‘What sort, Mrs Welford?’

  ‘The sort to be anything less than a hundred per cent honest. If she’d taken anything, it would have been for safekeeping. She’d probably even have asked me whether she should. And she’d certainly have told you.’

  ‘So we can’t impugn her honesty. What about yours, Mrs Welford?’

  I took a calculated risk. If they wanted to check up on me they’d find out soon enough, so I produced an embarrassed smile. ‘This won’t go any further, will it? I mean, I have a reputation in the village –’

  Short gave a crack of laughter. Evans frowned him down.

  ‘You’re implying I have a reputation for something I don’t know about, Mr Short?’ I opened indignant eyes wide. ‘Whatever that may be – and I trust you’ll enlighten me – I’m sure it’s not for what I am. I’m the widow of a man who at one point was the most wanted man in England. I was his child bride, and he was in prison for some twenty-five of the thirty years I was married to him. Tony Welford. Ended his days in Long Lartin for a heist that went wrong. Maximum security prison,’ I added, as if Short were a kindergarten kid who needed things spelling out. ‘Suffice to say my own record is immaculate, or I’d hardly have got an alcohol licence, would I? And yes, the authorities do know about Tony.’ Had someone’s sister or cousin or aunt seen the confidential documentation and split? May they rot if they had. It was only then it occurred to me who could easily have dropped it out – so why hadn’t I immediately suspected Nick Thomas? ‘So what do they say about me in the village?’