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The overall effect of meeting Aurora was like being hit by a truckload of sensuality.
‘It’s Ben, isn’t it?’
There was certainly no danger of me forgetting her name.
‘It certainly is, Aurora,’ I said warmly. She smiled warmly back at me and kissed me on the cheek. It was a gesture designed to put me at my ease. I remember thinking what a kind person she was.
On her Instagram account she came across as overtly sexual, flirting with the camera, provocative poses, artfully disarranged clothing. The reality was mitigated by a very heartfelt welcome and a feeling that she was a very pleasant person.
Our meeting before at my restaurant had been brief, as I’d spent most of the time with Justin.
‘And how is Jess?’ she asked.
How sweet of her to remember, I thought. ‘She’s fine,’ I said.
‘You are a lucky man to have such a talented girl to work for you, as lovely as she is intelligent.’ She smiled brightly at me.
‘Thank you.’ I turned my attention away from her and looked around the study. The Old Vicarage had been extensively renovated twenty years ago and it still bore the hallmarks of its previous owner, the shady businessman. I was pleased to see that the study was furnished in true old-fashioned gangster style from the Seventies. In the fire sale of the house, Justin had obviously bought everything, contents included, and hadn’t got round to changing anything.
I inventoried a white shag carpet, a large black desk with those clicky metallic balls that bang into each other in an annoying, metronomic way, black leather sofas and a glass-and-chrome coffee table. There were even a couple of enormous nude portraits of women done in coloured pastels on a black background. I know very little about art, but they were awful. At least, I assumed this kitsch tat wasn’t Justin’s doing – it would have been retro gone mad.
As it was, in his ripped jeans, shoulder-length hair and ornate jewellery, he clashed horribly with his own furniture. He had a latte in front of him and had pulled a Diet Coke for me from a small fridge under the desk.
Justin leaned forward and lifted one of the silver metal balls and released it. The two of us watched in fascination as it banged into the others and they swayed metronomically back and forth.
‘Tasteful, eh,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘I’ve got an intercom too.’ He pointed at a teak box with a silver mesh speaker and three switches. He clicked one and spoke into it, ‘Send him in, Miss Jones.’
Another grin.
He said, ‘There’s a speaker on the desk out there in the hall so a secretary can sit there and do whatever you tell her to do. It’s weird how things used to work.’
I nodded, as we both contemplated the past. The days of secretaries and intercoms. The last time I had seen an intercom was when I was a kid at school outside the headmaster’s office. Longer ago than I cared to think about.
I caught a sudden glimpse of myself in an enormous mirror (with a chrome frame). With my shaved head, glasses (I didn’t need them particularly, but I’d got them with a two-for-one offer when I’d bought some expensive reading glasses, which I do need – the tortoiseshell frames make me look more intelligent, which is easier than becoming more intelligent), over-tight shirt and hipster-style trousers and shoes, I fitted in uncomfortably well with the décor.
I looked like a gangster pimp from the Sixties.
Back to the present.
‘What do you make of Justin’s team, Ben?’ asked Aurora taking a seat next to Justin behind the big desk.
She leaned over and kissed him affectionately. Justin ruffled her hair. I felt a pang of envy – I had nobody’s hair to ruffle. The best I could muster was to pat Francis on the back. I shifted in my chair. It was a leather Chesterfield and fiendishly uncomfortable.
‘One big, happy family,’ I said.
Aurora laughed, scornfully, and sat upright. She pushed her hair back imperiously. ‘Wait until you get to know them,’ she said. ‘Gregor’s a moody depressive, Murdo’s heavily into drugs, Octavia’s man-mad, Tom’s violent and Andrea harasses the waitresses.’
She had my attention with the last comment. ‘What does Andrea do?’
‘Nothing really,’ said Justin quickly.
‘He pesters waitresses,’ said Aurora. ‘We’ve had to warn him about it, now Jean-Claude, well, come si dice …’
Justin was looking at me imploringly. He made an equivocal gesture with his hand.
‘I’ve told him to be on his best behaviour at your place, Ben. There won’t be any trouble.’
I sat upright and narrowed my eyes. ‘I hope not, Justin, for his sake. No one harasses my staff,’ I warned. I was thinking of Jess.
‘Nobody will; now, if we can move on …?’
I tore my mind away from potential unpleasant scenarios involving Andrea.
‘And what are you being blackmailed about?’ I asked, settling back in my leather seat.
He looked uncomfortable, shifting his weight in his Charles and Ray Eames-style executive chair.
‘I’d rather not say.’
‘You can tell him, Justin,’ said Aurora. ‘I think Ben is very trustworthy.’ She beamed at me and tugged his hair playfully. ‘Justin is naturally very suspicious. I think it’s his Scottish blood coming out.’
Justin examined his fingertips.
‘It’s very delicate.’
I’m sure it is, I thought to myself. It would be, if blackmail was involved.
‘Well, I think you should tell me,’ I said.
‘Why should I do that?’ Justin still looked uncomfortable, and he folded his arms across his body defensively. ‘What difference does it make? I just want you to find out who’s doing it, so we can make them stop.’
I sighed. ‘Because I need to know the hold he or she has over you, so I can better neutralise the risk.’
‘OK,’ he said, sulkily, ‘they’ve got evidence of plagiarism.’
‘Tell me more about it.’ I tried on an encouraging smile like Oprah Winfrey when she wants someone famous to explain whatever crime or indiscretion they’ve been up to. Plagiarism? What was he on about?
‘OK,’ he sighed. ‘Here’s what happened then.’ He looked at Aurora.
‘Bravissimo!’ she said, standing up and clapping her hands. ‘Mio caro, Ben needs to know.’
‘Fine, but it’s against my better judgement.’
And Justin began to tell me his life story.
Chapter Eight (#ulink_559b5ab7-2167-512f-bec9-32ef92e4d38f)
‘I’m thirty-eight,’ Justin said, and pulled a face. ‘Terrible isn’t it! And I started working in a kitchen when I was fourteen – that’s twenty-four years, my God, nearly a quarter of a century.’
He stood up and walked restlessly around the large study. He gazed up at one of the lurid nudes, and continued speaking.
‘My mama was from Le Marche, by way of Scotland, but I was born in England, where I lived, so my Italian was quite poor as a child.’
I nodded. That explained his slightly odd pronunciation, mainly Italian but with certain definitive London vowel sounds.
‘We moved back to Italy where her family were originally from, back in the day. I was twelve. My parents were looking after holiday homes for British owners. I got a part-time job when I was at school as a pot-washer, my first kitchen job – you don’t really need much language. And then I got promoted. You can understand that.’
‘Indeed I can,’ I said. That’s more or less how Francis had ended up being a chef for me. The big difference being that he had no talent and Justin was a genius.
‘Now,’ said Justin, tearing his gaze away from the painting and looking at me, ‘the thing was, the restaurant that I was working in was amazingly good, though I didn’t know it at the time. Who knows anything when they’re a teenager? Besides, I had other things to worry about …’
He rested a hand on Aurora’s shoulder and she patted it then kissed it.
‘And I rose through the ranks. Well, it was a small place, thirty covers max, and great regional cooking. Fifteen years later when I got my place in London, I re-created her menu. She was dead by then and I stole all her recipes.’
He paused and stared into space. ‘I mean all of them,’ he confessed. ‘That first TV series, that was all her stuff, and I passed it off as my own. My signature dishes, the zabaglione, the saltimbocca with a twist, they’re hers. And my first cookery book …’ He shook his head sadly, got up, went to the safe in the corner, (of course, there had to be a safe, here in the lair) and spun the dial this way and that. It clicked open and he reached inside and returned with a paperback book.
I examined it. Mia Cucina by Alessandra Bonini. Its spine was cracked, the pages were yellowed, the typeface looked ridiculously old-fashioned and the cover was faded. It was hard to believe that behind all the glossy footage on TV of Justin making gnocchi, twirling the crank handle of the pasta machine as he turned pasta dough into lasagne, chopping onions with amazing speed (he was incredible with a knife and I should know; I was good but he was awesome), lay this long-forgotten book.
I flipped through the pages, which were heavily annotated in biro and pencil. There was hardly any white margin left.
‘That’s her book. Long since out of print, the publisher no longer exists.’ He pulled a face. ‘If you look at Justin does Italy,it’s pretty much the same book. I just translated it. More or less the same recipes in the same order.’
‘So that’s it? You nicked a load of recipes? It’s hardly the crime of the century.’
It didn’t seem a blackmailable offence. Not in cooking. Everything is based on everything else. Even molecular gastronomy techniques, foams, gels et cetera are not exactly copyright. Nothing is new under the sun.
‘It is when your name is Justin McCleish … and, just for your information, stealing published recipes is a very big deal indeed.’ It was Charlotte, his agent, who had slipped into the room unnoticed by me. ‘For one thing, aside from being sued, no reputable publisher would ever touch him again with a bargepole.’
‘Oh,’ I said, suitably chastened. I felt I had not made a very good impression on her. I made a mental note to work harder on my intellectual side. Next time I would bring a book, show her that I could read. A difficult book. Jacques Derrida, he’d do. He was a dead French intellectual. God knows what theories or philosophy he had propounded. Jess would doubtless fill in the blanks.
‘Justin isn’t just a chef …’ she said.
‘Isn’t he?’ I was confused momentarily.
‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘he’s also a brand. And the brand is integrity.’
I looked across at Justin who seemed a lot more relaxed now he had Charlotte to do his speaking for him.
‘Most of the people who watch Justin are never going to cook what he’s showing them.’
‘They’re not?’ I felt somehow disappointed.
‘No, they like what it represents. These are people who haven’t got the time or the inclination to cook, but they do like Justin – he’s Mr Nice Guy.’ Charlotte warmed to her theme, her eyes flashing behind the thick lenses of her glasses.
‘If they thought he had stolen some old woman’s heritage, it would be terrible for Justin, a real game changer and not in a good way.’
I began to see what she meant, and it complicated things a lot. I frowned.
‘So, discretion is in order?’
‘Absolutely. I, we, do not want the police involved, nor the media.’
It seemed a bit of a tall order.
‘So tell me the mechanics of the blackmail,’ I said.
Charlotte looked at Justin and he handed me a piece of paper. ‘These are the instructions for paying the money.’
I examined it with interest. I had never seen a blackmail note before and I imagined something luridly old-fashioned, like words cut out of newspapers and magazines then stuck to a sheet of paper. How hopelessly out of date that was.
Of course, it was nothing like that at all. It was prosaically boring.
It was a piece of A4, the words printed in some nondescript font, telling Justin that he should take four thousand in cash in a plain brown envelope, go to the EROS Shop in Vantry’s Alley off Greek Street in Soho and ask to speak to Greg. He was to hand it over saying, ‘This is for Mick,’ and then leave.
‘How many times have you done this?’ I asked.
‘Three,’ said Justin. I sipped my Diet Coke and we looked at each other, evaluating.
‘In three months,’ he added.
‘That’s a thousand pounds a week,’ I said helpfully, for once managing a quick calculation. Justin was getting his money’s worth already.
‘It is indeed,’ he said before draining his latte.
‘Twelve thousand pounds!’ I marvelled.
‘You can certainly do maths,’ said Justin, drily.
Charlotte leaned forward.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘this coming Monday is payday. I want you to follow Justin to the sex shop and then you can hang around outside and find out who “Mick” is.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘But, Charlotte, that’s assuming a lot of things. What if “Mick” is a third party, a go-between? I wouldn’t recognise him. What if he doesn’t even exist and the sex shop guy takes the money home and then gives it …’
She cut me off with an impatient gesture.
‘If any of these scenarios happen, we’ll come up with an alternative plan. I’ll deal with what-ifs. You’re not being paid to think – that’s my job.’
I wasn’t being paid to think, or cook.
‘Tomorrow we try this.’ Charlotte leaned forward and tapped my knee for emphasis. ‘I think you probably saw the blackmailer this morning when you met the team. It’s almost certainly why the payment is made on a Monday, which is not a working day for Team McCleish. I want a name; it’s your job to get it.’
‘And then what?’ I asked.
‘I’m coming to that,’ she said.
I looked at Justin, who shrugged.
