Dead Heat

5

T rue to her word, Angela Milne moved mountains to get an inspection of my kitchen done late on Monday afternoon. The inspector, a small man in a suit with dark-rimmed glasses, arrived at about a quarter to five and stood in the parking lot, putting on a white coat and a white mesh trilby hat.

“Hello,” he said as I went out to meet him, “my name is Ward. James Ward.” He held out his hand and I shook it. I half expected him to inspect his palm to see if I had left some dirty scrap behind, but he didn’t.

“Max Moreton,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, “I know. I’ve seen you on the telly.”

He smiled. Things might be looking up.

“Now,” he said, “where’s this kitchen?”

I waved a hand, and we crunched across the gravel towards the back door.

“Have you got the keys?” I asked.

“What keys?” he said.

Things were not looking up that much.

“The keys for the padlocks,” I said. “The two men who came and put this lot on last Saturday said the inspector, when he came, would have the keys.”

“Sorry,” he said. “No one told me.”

I bet my nonfriends, the bailiffs, didn’t bother to tell anyone. They probably tossed the keys into the river Cam.

“What do you suggest we do?” asked Mr. Ward.

“Do you have a crowbar?” I asked.

“No, but I have a tire iron in the car.”

It took several attempts, but the clasp finally parted from the doorframe with a splintering crack. No doubt it would be me that would have to pay for the damage as well as for the keyless lock.

The inspection was very thorough, with James Ward literally looking into every nook and cranny. He ran his fingers along the top of the exhaust hoods, looked for residue in the industrial dishwasher drains, and even poked a Q-Tip swab into the tiny gap between the built-in fryer and the worktop. It was clean. I knew it was clean. I left that gap there on purpose specifically for health inspectors to find and test. I had it cleaned out every day in case there was an unannounced visit.

“Fine,” he said at length. “Nice and clean all round. Of course, I will have these swabs tested tomorrow for bacteria.” He indicated the swabs he had placed in small plastic bags not just from the gap by the fryer, but also those wiped on the worktops, the chopping boards, the sinks and anywhere else he thought appropriate.

“But the kitchen is now open?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” he said. “I spoke with Angela Milne, and she was happy that you be reopened as long as I was happy with the kitchen, and I am, provided I don’t get any surprises from these.” He held up the swabs. “And I don’t think there will be. I’ve inspected lots of kitchens and this is one of the cleanest I’ve seen.”

I was glad. I had always been insistent on having a clean kitchen and not just to pass inspections. There was a note printed on every menu that invited my clients to visit the kitchen, if they so wished. Many did, and all my regulars had been in there at some time or another, and one individual in particular always made a point of taking his guests in to see me, or Carl, and Gary. I had toyed with the idea of putting a chef’s table in a corner of the kitchen to allow diners to watch us at work. But as my limited star had risen over the years, I did tend to be elsewhere for an increasing number of the service periods in any given week. Also, I knew that even now the customers were apt to complain and be disappointed if I wasn’t actually there in the flesh, so I decided it was probably less troublesome overall to keep the clientele eating in the dining room only.

I thanked James Ward, and saw him to his car and off the premises. Even though he was pleasant and helpful, there is something about health inspectors that gives all chefs the willies, so I was glad to see him depart.

Carl and I spent the next hour removing all the CLOSED FOR DECONTAMINATION stickers, which seemed to be stuck on with Super Glue. Then we tried our best to remove the remaining padlocks without causing too much damage to the structure of the building. At last, it was done, and we sat together in the bar and pulled ourselves a pint each.

“We reopen tomorrow, then?” Carl asked.

“If we have any customers left,” I said.

I showed him the newspaper.

“That’s all right,” he said. “No one who comes here reads that.”

“They will have done so today,” I said. “Like me, they’ll have bought it to read about those killed on Saturday. They’re all bound to have seen it.”

“Nah, don’t you worry, our regulars will trust us more than a newspaper.” But he didn’t sound very convincing.

“Most of our regulars were at the dinner on Friday and will know it’s true,” I said, “because they were throwing up all night.”

“Ahh, I’d forgotten that.”

“How about those you phoned earlier?” I asked him. “You know, to say we would be closed tonight.”

“Well, most said they weren’t going to be coming anyway.”

“Did they give a reason?” I asked.

“If you mean did they say they weren’t coming because we were akin to a poison factory, then, no, they didn’t. Only one person mentioned it, and she said that she and her husband wouldn’t have come only because they hadn’t fully recovered from a bout of food poisoning. Most simply said it would be inappropriate for them to enjoy an evening out while the bodies of those killed had hardly gone cold, or words to that effect.”

We sat in silence and finished our beers. The thought of the bodies getting colder in the commandeered refrigerated truck had been drifting around the periphery of my consciousness for most of the day.

I CALLED MARK WINSOME. I thought it was time my silent business partner knew that we might have a spot of bother ahead. He listened carefully as I told him the whole story about Friday night and also about the bombing on Saturday. He knew, of course, about the bombing but hadn’t realized how close his investment had been to biting the dust.

“I’m so sorry about your waitress,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. “It’s been very distressing for the other staff. I sent them all home this morning.”

“But you say the restaurant will reopen again tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t expect there to be much business, and not only because of the food-poisoning incident but because the whole area is in shock and I don’t think people will be eating out much.”

“So you might have a bit of time this week?” he said.

“Well, I think I should be here for those who do come,” I said. “Why?”

“I just thought it’s time you came to London.”

“What, to see you?”

“No. Well, yes, of course I would love to see you. But what I really meant was that it’s time for you to come to London permanently.”

“What about the restaurant?”

“That’s what I mean,” he said. “I think it’s time you opened a restaurant in London. I’ve been waiting six years for you to be ready and now I think you are.”

I sat in my office and stared at the wall. I had called Mark with considerable trepidation since I feared he might be angry that I had seemingly poisoned a sizable chunk of Newmarket society and damaged his investment. Instead, he was offering me…what? Fame and fortune, or maybe it would be humiliation and disaster. At the very least, Mark was offering me the chance to find out.

“Are you still there?” he said at length.

“Mmm,” I replied.

“Good. Then come see me sometime later this week.” He paused. “How about Friday? Lunch? At the Goring.”

“Fine,” I said.

“Good,” he said again. “One o’clock, in the bar.”

“Fine,” I repeated, and he hung up.

I sat there for a while, thinking about what the future might bring. There was no doubt that the Hay Net was becoming very well known in the area and, at least until Friday night, had been generally well respected. Indeed, so popular had we become that securing a table for dinner was a challenge and needed considerable forward planning, especially weekends. In the past year, I had been featured in a few magazines, and the previous autumn we had entertained a TV crew from the BBC. The Hay Net was busy, comfortable and fun. Maybe it had become rather too easy, but I loved being part of the world of racing, the world in which I had been brought up. I liked racing people and they seemed to like me. I was enjoying life.

Was I ready to give up this provincial coziness to move to the cutthroat world of restaurants in the metropolis? Could I afford to walk away from this success and pit myself against the very best chefs in London? Could I afford not to?

THE NIGHT WAS slightly less disturbed than the previous one, and with a few new variations of the dream. It was mostly MaryLou pushing the gurney, and occasionally she became a legless skeleton as she pushed. More than once, it was Louisa doing the pushing, and she still had her legs. Thankfully, on these occasions the dream ended peacefully rather than with the endless fall and racing heart. Overall, I slept for more hours than I was awake, and I was reasonably refreshed by the time my alarm clock noisily roused me at a quarter to eight.

I lay in bed for a while, thinking about what Mark had said the previous afternoon. The prospect of joining the restaurant big boys was, at once, hugely exciting and incredibly frightening. But what an opportunity!

I was brought back to earth by the ringing of my telephone on the bedside table.

“Hello,” I said.

“Max, is that you?” said a female voice. “It’s Suzanne Miller here.”

Suzanne Miller, the managing director of the racetrack catering company.

“Hi, Suzanne,” I said. “What can I do for you so early?” I looked at my clock. It was twenty-five to nine.

“Yes, sorry to call you at home,” she said, “but I think we might have a problem.”

“How so?”

“It’s to do with last Friday,” she said. I wasn’t surprised. “It seems that some people who were at the gala dinner were ill afterwards.”

“Were they?” I said in a surprised tone. “How about you and Tony?” Tony was her husband, and they had both been at the event.

“No, we were fine,” she said. “It was a lovely evening. But I always find these big evenings nerve-racking. I get so wound up, in case anything goes wrong.”

And it wasn’t even her firm doing the cooking, I thought, although they had been responsible for the guest list and all the other arrangements.

“So what’s the problem?” I asked innocently.

“I’ve had a letter this morning. It says”-I heard paper being rustled-“‘Dear Madam, This letter is to give you advance warning of legal proceedings that will be initiated by our client against your company to recover damages for distress and loss of earnings as a result of the poisoning of our client at a dinner organized by your company at Newmarket racetrack on Friday, May 4.’ ”

“And who is their client?” I asked.

“It says ‘Ref: Miss Caroline Aston,’ at the top.”

“Was she a guest on Friday?” I asked.

“She’s not on the guest list, but so many of them weren’t named. You know what it’s like, Mr. So-and-So and guest. Could be anyone.”

“You said people. Who else?”

“Apparently, quite a few,” she said. “I mentioned this to my secretary just now when I opened it and she says that lots of people were ill on Friday night. Her husband is a doctor, and she says he had to see quite a few of his patients. And she said there was an article in the newspaper about it yesterday. What shall we do?”

“Nothing,” I said. “At least, nothing yet. If anyone asks, tell them you’re looking into it.” I paused. “Out of interest, what did you and Tony have to eat on Friday night?”

“I can’t remember,” said Suzanne. “What with all this bomb business, I can’t think.”

“It is dreadful, isn’t it?” I said.

“Dreadful,” she agreed. “And I am so sorry to hear about your waitress.”

“Thank you. Yes, it has been an awful blow to my staff. Louisa was much loved by them all.”

“Seems that a bit of food poisoning is irrelevant, really,” she said.

I agreed, and silently hoped that the episode would be soon forgotten. Who was it who tried to hide bad news behind a much bigger story? It had cost them their job.

“So what shall I do about this letter?” Suzanne asked.

“Could you make a copy and send it to me?” I said. “Then, if I were you, I’d just wait to hear from them again. Maybe they’re just fishing for a reaction and will forget about it when they don’t get one.” Or maybe that was just my wishful thinking.

“I think I ought to consult higher,” she said. The local racetrack catering company was just part of a national group, and I suspected that Suzanne was not sure enough of her position to simply sit on the letter. She would want the parent company’s lawyers to see it. I couldn’t blame her. I’d have done the same in her position.

“OK,” I said, “but could you send me a copy of it first.”

“I will,” she said slowly, as if thinking, “but I will send it to you with a covering note officially informing you of the letter, as the chef at the event. And I will also send a copy of that covering note to my head office.”

Why did I suddenly get the feeling that I was being distanced here by Suzanne? Was I the one that the catering company was preparing to hang out to dry? Probably. After all, business is business.

“Fine,” I said. “And if you can remember what you ate on Friday, let me know that too, will you?”

“Tony is a vegetarian,” she said, “so he would have eaten whatever you had for them.”

“And you?” I asked. “Would you have eaten the vegetarian dish?”

“What was it?” she asked.

“Broccoli, cheese and pasta bake.”

“I can’t stand broccoli, so I doubt it. Let me think.” There was a short pause. “I think I had chicken. But I was so nervous about the evening, I hardly ate anything at all. In fact, I remember being so hungry when I got home I had to make myself a cheese sandwich before I went to bed.”

Not really very helpful.

“Why do you want to know?” she asked.

“Just in case it was some of the food at the dinner that made people ill,” I said. “Helps to eliminate things, that’s all.” Time, I thought, to change the subject. “Were all your staff all right on Saturday?”

“Oh yes, thank you,” she said. “Some of them were pretty shocked, though, and one of my elderly ladies was admitted to the hospital with chest pains after having been told by a fireman to run down four flights of stairs. But she was all right after a while. How about you? How did you get out?”

We spent some time telling our respective war stories. Suzanne had been in her office on the far side of the weighing room and she hadn’t even realized there had been a bomb until she heard the fire engines arrive with their sirens, but it didn’t seem to stop her from having a lengthy account of her actions thereafter.

“I’m sorry, Suzanne,” I said during a pause in the flow, “I must get on.”

“Oh sorry,” she said. “Once I start, I never stop, do I?”

No, I thought. But at least we had moved away from talking about food poisoning.

“Speak with you soon,” I said. “Bye, now.” I hung up.

I laid my head back on the pillow and wondered who Miss Caroline Aston was, and where she was. I could wring her bloody neck. Distress and loss of earnings indeed. How about me? I’d suffered distress and loss of earnings too. Who should I sue?

THERE WAS ANOTHER letter from Miss Aston’s lawyers waiting for me when I arrived at the Hay Net. It confirmed that she was suing me personally as well as the racetrack catering company. Great. I could wring her neck twice, if only I knew who and where she was. What did she think? That I had poisoned people on purpose?

I sat in my office reading and rereading the letter. I suppose I ought to find a lawyer to give it to. Instead, I called Mark again.

“Send it to me,” he said. “My lawyers will look at it for you and they will give you a call.”

“Thanks.”

I faxed it to the number he gave me, and his lawyer called me back within fifteen minutes. I explained the problem to him.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “we’ll deal with this.”

“Thanks,” I replied. “But please let me know who this woman is so I can make a voodoo doll of her and stick pins in it.”

The lawyer laughed. “Why don’t you just poison her?”

“Not funny,” I said.

“No. Sorry,” he said. “I’ll be able to do a search and find her within the day. I’ll get back to you.”

“I could wring her neck,” I said.

“I wouldn’t advise it,” said the lawyer, laughing. “Suing is done in civil court and you can only lose your money, not your liberty.”

“Thanks, I’ll try and remember that when you find her.”

He laughed again and hung up.

I wondered what I would do if he did find her. Probably nothing. It just annoyed me that she wanted to claim damages from me for a minor bit of accidental food poisoning when the lovely Louisa had lost her life due to some deranged madman bringing his grudges two thousand miles from the Middle East to Newmarket.

Carl arrived and I shared the good news with him.

“Will they lock you up?” he asked hopefully.

“Sod off,” I said.

“Charming,” he said, smiling. “So the boss has returned in both body and mind. Shall we get this show on the road?”

“Indeed, we shall,” I replied, returning the smile.

There is a lot more to running a restaurant than cooking a few meals. For a start, the customers want a choice of dishes, and they want them without having to wait too long. At the Hay Net, we usually offered between eight and ten starters and about the same number of main courses. Some of the starters were hot and some were cold, but everything was prepared fresh to order, and our aim was to have a dish ready for the table within fifteen minutes of the order being taken. Ideally, main courses should be ready ten minutes after the starters have been cleared from the table, or, if no starters are ordered, within twenty-eight minutes of the order arriving in the kitchen. I knew all too well that if a customer was kept waiting for longer than he or she thought reasonable, it didn’t matter how good the food tasted when it arrived, only the wait would be remembered and not the flavors.

There were three of us who worked in the heat of the kitchen, Carl, Gary and me, while Julie dealt with the cold dishes, including the salads and desserts. It was not a big operation compared to the large London restaurants, but, at the height of the service, it was an energetic kitchen, with everyone working hard. The plan was that the bookings were taken to stagger our busy dinner period over at least a couple of hours, but our customers were notorious for not being on time for their reservations so sometimes we were madly rushed to get everything out on time.

Food is fickle stuff. The difference between vegetables that are just right and vegetables that are overcooked can be a matter of a minute or two. For a steak, or a tuna fillet, it can be much less time than that. Our clients, understandably, want their food delivered to the table when it is perfect. They also want all the servings for the table delivered at once-who wouldn’t? They expect their food to be attractive, to be hot and to have an appetizing aroma. And, in particular, they want the food delivered in the same sequence as the orders were taken. Nothing, I had learned, upsets the customers more than to see a party that ordered after they did being served ahead of them.

To the casual observer, the kitchen might appear as a chaotic scramble, but, in reality, it was only as chaotic as a juggler’s hands keeping four balls in the air at once. Appearances, in either case, are deceptive.

Needless to say, we didn’t always get everything right, but, overall, the number of compliments far exceeded the few complaints, and that was good enough for me. Occasionally, someone would say that they weren’t coming back, but, usually, it would be someone I didn’t want back anyway. I would just smile and politely show them the way to the parking lot. Thankfully, those were few and far between. Most of my customers were friends, and it was just like having them to my house for dinner except, of course, they paid.

My thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a delivery from my butcher. I used a man from Bury St. Edmonds who slaughtered all his own meat. He had told me that he knew all his farm suppliers personally, and he claimed that he could vouch for the well-being and comfortable life of every one of the animals. That is, of course, until he killed and butchered them. I had no reason to doubt his claims, since his meat and poultry were excellent. A fine restaurant obviously needs a good chef, but even the best chefs need good ingredients to work with and so the choice of supplier is paramount.

The driver had almost finished stacking the delivery in the cold-room by the time the rest of my staff arrived at ten o’clock. Gary was all excited that the padlocks had been removed and went around the kitchen like a little boy allowed to roam freely in a toy store. He was having one of his good days, I thought. He had the energy and the enthusiasm to be a good chef, even a great one, but I felt that he had to learn to be slightly less adventurous in his combinations of flavors. He was, like me, a great believer in using fruit with meat. Everyone was familiar with pork with apple, turkey with cranberries, duck with orange, gammon with pineapple and even venison with quince. The flavors complement one another, the fruit bringing out the best in the meat, and satisfying the palate. Gary was apt to choose exotic, strong-tasting fruits and, to my mind, serve them inappropriately with meats of a delicate flavor, such as veal or chicken. It was a matter that we had discussed at length and with passion.

Ever since he had arrived a couple of years previously, I had attempted to have at least one dish on our menu of his design, and, at the moment, it was an herb-crusted red snapper, topped with a roasted caramelized pear, over a lightly garlic mashed-potato base, with a pear reduction. It was a tasty and popular dish, and it usually kept Gary busy throughout the service.

However, the bookings for lunch on that particular Tuesday were not spectacular, and, during the morning, several calls to cancel left us looking very bare. More calls canceling dinner reservations made the day look bleak indeed.

I called a short meeting of the staff in the dining room at noon.

“It seems that a combination of the bombing on Saturday and the problems we had on Friday evening may result in a bit of a lean time this week,” I said. “But I am sure that things will pick up soon. We will continue as normal and do our best for those that do come. OK?” I tried to sound upbeat.

“How about Louisa’s job?” said Jean. “And when is Robert coming back? Ray and I can’t do the whole dining room on our own.”

“Let’s wait and see how many covers we will be doing,” I said. “Richard can help out in the dining room, as he usually does anyway when we’re busy.” I looked at him and he nodded in agreement. “I will call Robert and find out when he will be coming back. Anything else?”

“I spoke to the Whitworths,” said Richard. “They said to thank you for the offer, but they wanted to have the wake at home. And Beryl, that’s Louisa’s mum, said that she will do the food, if that’s all right.”

“Of course,” I said, and wondered if the Whitworths blamed Louisa’s death on her job. I decided that I had better go visit them. It would be the proper thing to do anyway.

“Do you know yet when her funeral will be?” I asked.

“Friday, at two-thirty, at the crematorium in Cambridge.”

Damn, I thought, I’d have to rearrange my lunch with Mark.

“OK,” I said. “We will be closed all day on Friday. You can all have the day off to go to the funeral, if you wish. I will be there.” I paused. “Is there anything else?” No one said anything. “OK, let’s get to work.”

In the end, we did just four lunches, two separate couples who stopped while passing. None of the six still booked actually turned up, and there were three more calls during lunch to cancel for the evening. That left us just twenty-four from what had been a full dining room, and I seriously doubted whether even those twenty-four would show.

I spent some time during the afternoon calling the clients who had made reservations on Friday to tell them that we would be closed and why. Most said they probably wouldn’t have come anyway, but only two said rather tactlessly that it was because they had heard that you could get poisoned at the Hay Net. At one point, I had dialed a number and it was ringing before I realized that it was the Jennings number I was calling. I was about to put the phone down when Neil answered.

“Hello,” he said slowly. “Neil Jennings here.”

“Hello, Neil,” I said. “It’s Max Moreton from the Hay Net.”

“Ah yes,” he said, “Hello, Max.”

“Neil,” I said slightly awkwardly, “I’m so very sorry about Elizabeth. Such a dreadful thing.”

“Yes,” he said.

There was an uncomfortable pause. I didn’t know quite what to say.

“I saw her at the races on Saturday,” I said, “at lunchtime.”

“Really,” he replied, seemingly rather absentmindedly.

“Yes,” I went on. “I cooked the lunch she attended.”

“Didn’t poison her, did you?” I wasn’t sure if he was making a joke or not.

“No, Neil,” I said, “I didn’t.”

“No,” he said, “I suppose not.”

“Do you have a date for the funeral?” I asked. “I would like to come and pay my respects.”

“Friday,” he said, “at eleven, at Our Lady and St. Etheldreda.”

I hadn’t realized that they were Roman Catholics, but, then, why would I.

“I’ll try and be there,” I said.

“Fine,” he said. There was another difficult little pause, and I was about to say good-bye when he said, “I suppose I should thank you for saving my life.”

“Sorry?” I said.

“If you hadn’t made me so ill on Friday night,” he went on, “I would have been in the box with my Elizabeth on Saturday.”

I couldn’t tell whether he was pleased or not.