One of Us Is Dead

20 Friday 30 September 2022

Roy and Cleo Grace had a tacit agreement with each other that, whenever possible, they would take it in turns to create their evening meal. This Friday it was Roy’s turn. He loved cooking, always finding it immensely relaxing, and as he preferred to invent as he went along rather than following recipes, it was always a journey of surprises. Not all of them hit the high notes, but enough had done over the years for Cleo to have presented him with an apron emblazoned with the accolade ‘Head Chef!’

They tried to eat healthily, often following the latest fads, and right now it was a high-protein diet. Tonight he was cooking Thai-style salmon fillets with quinoa, parmesan polenta, grilled broccoli with chilli, and a tomato, onion and cottage cheese salad. He had the two fillets laid out on foil and had just finished making a series of incisions down them. He was now busy infusing them first with teriyaki sauce, then ginger and garlic cloves, followed by a dab of a sherry from a bottle he’d won in an office charity raffle at Christmas, then a couple of shakes of soy, before curling the foil over each fillet, making them into parcels and placing them into the steamer.

Then, as he turned his attention to the broccoli, he wrinkled his nose and shook his head, as a vile, dense smell struck him, almost making him gag. Humphrey, their beloved rescue Labrador-cross, had silently blown off again. It smelled like the drain at the core of the earth.

‘Yecchhhh!’ Cleo, at the kitchen table, exclaimed, pinching her nose. Then she admonished, ‘HUMPHREY!’

The dog, curled up in his wicker basket, barely lifted an eyelid.

‘I think it was something he ate yesterday,’ she said. ‘When I was walking him on the hill. The little bugger stopped and began digging, totally ignoring me. Then I saw him chewing. I tried to get him to stop but he didn’t want to know. By the time I got over to him he’d swallowed whatever it was, and looked pretty pleased with himself. I think it might have been a mole.’ She turned and looked at the dog. ‘You are soooooo gross!’

Humphrey wagged his tail.

They both grinned. They loved this damned ridiculously gangly-legged and soppy creature.

‘The thing is,’ Cleo said, looking puzzled, ‘what I don’t get is how a professional chef could mistake a death cap mushroom for an edible field mushroom. There must be distinguishing features, surely?’

‘There are, but the differences are subtle. Nick Nicholl went to see the owner of the pub where Barnie Wallace worked in the kitchen for about eighteen months. He wasn’t the senior chef there but an underling and was eventually fired for making constant mistakes, culminating in the salmonella incident. But it has happened before,’ Roy said. ‘There’s a well-documented case — in 2012 in Australia. A Chinese chef, apparently brilliant with a big future, cooked some in error for a New Year’s Eve dinner. The mushrooms killed him and another guest.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m no expert but apparently they’re very easy to mistake for one another. Luke Stanstead’s looked up the stats, and there are twelve thousand people every year around the world who die from the same error.’

She shook her head. ‘That’s putting me right off them!’

He nodded. ‘Yep, I was planning a mushroom risotto tonight, saw loads in the field when I was out running with Humphrey this morning, but I decided it probably wasn’t the best idea.’

He grinned as she gave him a very dubious look. But before he could say anything his job phone rang.

‘Roy Grace,’ he answered, waving his forever apologetic hand at Cleo, who returned her forever-wan, no-need-to-apologize smile.

‘Sorry to disturb you at home, sir. I thought I should come directly to you on this.’

He recognized DC Carruthers’ voice before he’d said his name. ‘That’s fine, Jamie. Tell me?’

‘We’ve picked up chatter on the dark web about someone looking to hire a contract killer. It appears to be a wife who wants to off her husband. It sounds like there are local connections and it could be fairly soon. We’re working on trying to get more information and when we do I’ll get back to you. I wanted you to know straight away. And I apologize again for disturbing your evening.’

‘I’m grateful for your call, Jamie,’ Grace said. ‘Do you have any more information at this stage? Anything we can act on?’

‘Not at present, but it could well be very imminent, sir.’

Ending the call, Grace continued with his meal preparation. And after Cleo had cleaned her plate, he got a sensational! accolade.

Smiling, he took Humphrey out into the darkness for his walk before bedtime. As they ambled a short distance up the hill behind their cottage, he saw mushrooms in his torchlight everywhere he looked. Field mushrooms or death cap? It seemed like they had all come out to taunt him. He thought about what Carruthers had just told him. It was a worrying development but nothing he could act on, and one he was going to keep to himself at this stage.

When he got home, after settling Humphrey in his basket with his nightly treat of a chew, he checked his email. There was a message in his inbox from DS Jackson of the Met’s Central Image Investigation Unit. Could Grace please call him in the morning?