Poisoning in the Pub, The. Simon Brett

you should chuck them. Which is what I always do. But that lot on Monday came in fresh from the suppliers. I signed for the delivery myself, put them straight in the marinade and into the fridge. Before I did that, I cleared out some that’d been delivered on Saturday. Now if it had been that lot the customers had been served with, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised at what happened.’

      Ted Crisp joined them silently at the table and slid a glass of Coca-Cola across to the chef, as Carole asked, ‘If the new scallops had been substituted by old ones, would you be able to tell?’

      ‘I certainly would before they were in the marinade. They’d smell “off”. Once they’d been marinaded, I’m not so sure. Soy sauce can be pretty pungent, it might mask the bad smell. So I suppose under those circumstances it would be possible to make a mistake.’

      ‘Except,’ Ted asserted peevishly, ‘that couldn’t be what happened on Monday, because you took the fresh delivery yourself.’

      ‘I was just asking hypothetically,’ said Carole. ‘I mean, in the event that someone had actually switched the tray of fresh scallops in the fridge for a tray of past-their-sell-by ones, it would have been possible that you’d have cooked them, Ed, without noticing anything was wrong?’

      ‘It is just possible, yes.’

      ‘But it could never have happened,’ Ted repeated.

      ‘As I say, I’m just working out possible scenarios. And, Ed, you didn’t leave the kitchen for any length of time on Monday morning after the scallops had been delivered?’

      ‘I nipped out for the odd fag. Just as I’m going to do now.’

      He looked down at his cigarette packet, as if about to leave for the car park, but Carole pressed on, ‘But there wasn’t a longer time when you left the kitchen unattended?’

      ‘Zosia and I were in and out, anyway,’ said Ted, and continued as if he wanted to forestall any further argument, ‘The kitchen wasn’t left unattended for any length of time after the scallops had been delivered.’

      Carole caught the quick look exchanged between Ed Pollack and Zosia at the bar. There was something that hadn’t been told. She wondered how she was going to be able to winkle it out, but fortunately the chef saved her the trouble.

      ‘Ted, we might as well tell her.’

      The landlord looked truculent. ‘I don’t see any reason why we need to.’

      ‘Well, I need to. As a professional chef, I want some explanation for what might have happened.’

      Ted Crisp looked away towards the bar, as if hoping for support. But Zosia’s expression of defiance showed that he wasn’t going to get any from her. ‘All right,’ he mumbled.

      Ed Pollack took up his cue. ‘There was another delivery on Monday morning. Beer. The delivery man sends the barrels down to the cellar from a chute outside. On Monday a couple of the barrels rolled on the floor and got jammed against a table down there. Ted couldn’t shift them, so he asked Zosia and me to give him a hand.’

      ‘We weren’t down there that long,’ the landlord argued.

      ‘Twenty minutes at least,’ said Ed implacably. ‘I know, because I’d had time to put the scallops in their marinade before we started, and when we finished there was still time for me to have a fag in the car park before we opened up at eleven.’

      ‘So the kitchen was unattended for twenty minutes?’ Receiving a nod from the chef, Carole turned the full beam of her pale blue eyes onto Ted Crisp. ‘Did you tell that to the Health and Safety inspectors?’

      He shook his shaggy head.

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘Yes, you do,’ said Zosia’s voice from the bar. The regulars had left; she had no anxiety about speaking out loud. ‘You do it because you don’t want there to be any trouble for Ray. That’s why you don’t tell the inspectors he was here Monday morning.’

      Carole’s pale blue eyes focused back on the wretched landlord. ‘Is that true, Ted?’

      He sighed. ‘Look, poor bloke, he hasn’t exactly been dealt the best hand in life, has he? Ray never made it at school, he’s never been able to hold down a proper job. Everywhere he’s gone, people’ve made fun of him, all because of a disability he was born with. Made fun of him or bullied him. It’s not his fault he’s like he is. And there’s no way he could have done anything to the scallops, anyway.’

      ‘If that’s so, why didn’t you tell the Health and Safety people he could have been in the kitchen?’

      ‘Because they’d have given him hassle, and he can’t stand it when people try to get at him. I wanted to spare him that.’

      ‘But you also want to keep your business going, and lying to the Health and Safety inspectors is not the best way of—’

      ‘Listen, Carole!’ said Ted, suddenly angry. ‘Ray trusts me, and I pay him for doing odd jobs.’

      ‘Which is, I’m sure, very charitable of you, but when your livelihood—’

      ‘I said “Listen!” If I tell the Health and Safety people about him, they’re going to ask questions about his terms of employment here. They’re going to ask about contracts, minimum wage, whether he’s registered with the tax authorities, all kinds of stuff. Then they’ll no doubt report their findings to some other bloody bureaucrats and a directive will come down from on high to say that I can’t continue to use Ray’s services. And the poor bugger will lose the one thing that gives him any sense of self-esteem – not to mention a little bit of pocket money – and I’ll feel even more bloody useless than I usually do!’

      Even during their brief relationship, Carole had never heard such an impassioned speech from Ted Crisp. There was a shocked silence after he’d finished. Then she said, ‘Look, that’s very admirable, Ted, but you must see that it’s going against your own interests. You’ve been in trouble with the Health and Safety authorities. Lying to them can only get you into more trouble with them.’

      ‘That would only be true, Carole, if there was any chance Ray had had any hand in what happened. He couldn’t have. He has the mental age of … I don’t know … a five-year-old, maybe. He certainly hasn’t got the intellectual capacity to plot the poisoning of my customers.’

      ‘But he could have made a mistake … put the old scallops in the fridge in place of the others.’

      ‘That, Carole, would assume that there were any old scallops around.’

      She turned gleefully to Ed Pollack. ‘You said you’d just cleared out the old scallops from the weekend.’

      ‘Yes, but I put them in a plastic bag which I sealed before putting it in the bin. And the bag was still sealed when the Health and Safety people checked it out yesterday.’

      ‘Ah.’ Carole was crestfallen to have her moment of triumph taken away. ‘So we’re still no nearer finding an explanation for what happened on Monday.’

      ‘No,’ agreed Ted, with something like finality.

      ‘I don’t suppose …’ said Carole tentatively, ‘that you’d tell me Ray’s address?’

      ‘You don’t suppose correctly.’

      ‘But I would like to talk to him about—’

      Ted Crisp was about to bawl her out again, but was distracted by the opening of the pub door and the entrance of a sharp-featured woman in a skimpy red top and white jeans.

      ‘Oh God,’ he groaned. ‘More trouble. Talk about hitting a man when he’s down.’

      SIX

      Introductions were