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‘All of this is Charlotte’s idea,’ he said, unhappily. She shook her head sadly, in a kind of motherly way, as though Justin was a teenager going through an awkward time and she was stepping up to the plate because he couldn’t or wouldn’t.
She looked at me through her unflattering glasses, and her eyes were hard.
‘There’s a lot riding on this. As I said earlier, if word of this gets out it could be quite a big news story. Top chef steals recipes. And would the estate of Alessandra Bonini be entitled to compensation? It’s something we could well do without.’
‘And you want me to find out the identity of the blackmailer …’
‘And reason with him,’ said Charlotte. ‘Reason with him a lot, to the extent that he might need medical attention and then point out that should he persist, complain or make a pest of himself in any way, shape or form, further reasoning of a more robust nature will take place.’ She paused and tapped the table for emphasis.
‘That’s why I want you to stake out the shop, why I haven’t done it myself,’ she said.
‘To be honest,’ I said truthfully, ‘I’m not keen on the idea.’
Not only had I felt I had renounced violence, which was a moral decision, I had already done time for GBH and was not keen on a course of action that might lead to me being banged up again. Charlotte frowned – it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
‘What if it was Octavia?’ I pointed out. ‘I could hardly beat her up could I?’
Charlotte rolled her eyes. ‘Tell you what,’ she said, ‘call me when whoever it is shows up and I’ll give you further instructions. Would that help?’
‘I’m still not sure …’
Charlotte looked at me in a measured way; then she said something that made me change my mind.
‘You can have three months of blackmail payments to stop this nonsense. What do you say?’
‘Twelve thousand pounds?’ I said.
‘He’s good at maths,’ Justin contributed.
That would buy me six months of chef help. It was a deal-clincher in my view.
I stood up quickly. ‘I’ve always loved Soho,’ I said. I was suddenly very decisive. It was amazing how money could concentrate the mind. ‘And in prison I learned to be very persuasive. I’ll be in touch.’
‘I knew you were a reasonable man,’ said Charlotte. We shook hands.
‘Would you like to stay and have lunch with us?’ offered Justin.
‘I’m afraid not,’ I said, standing up. ‘I have to go and sort out things in my own restaurant, tell them the exciting news that they’ll be working with Andrea.’
From what I had seen of him it would be a hard sell.
Chapter Nine (#ulink_d66f4d40-38ad-598b-8493-fc2defaec47e)
Two days later I was selling Andrea to my unenthusiastic staff.
‘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 (#ulink_546e5d56-bece-53fc-9d2a-9009f77205ee)
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.’
