Murder on the Green. H.V. Coombs

‘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.

      ‘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

      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,