Cooking the Books (20 page)

And it all went swimmingly. By the time Ms Atkins emerged from her office to snub all and sundry, dominating the set as always, the scene had been completed and was perfect. The mood of the set changed. Everyone was smiling. Tash was mopping her brow. She said ‘Cut!’ and there was an outburst of applause.

‘Ethan?’ she asked.

Ethan collected opinions. Everyone was agreed. This scene, which would occupy perhaps three minutes and had taken all day yesterday and half of today to film, was fine with everyone.

‘Okay,’ Ethan pronounced.

It was as though they had been offered a reprieve from death. Intoxicated with joy, they rushed the refreshments.

I went back through the kitchen door into a world with which I was familiar. The ones beyond it were very, very strange. Stranger than the ones encountered by falling down a rabbit-hole or walking through a magic mirror.

Tommy was standing in the middle of the floor, clipboard in hand, ticking off people and ingredients and tasks.

‘Bernie, icing sugar?’

‘Need more,’ said Bernie. Tommy wrote that down.

‘Pete?’

‘More cream,’ said Pete. ‘Puy lentils, lemons, olive oil—extra virgin, if you please—sea salt.’

‘Got them,’ said Tommy. ‘Who’s doing salads?’

‘You want to get on to that organic greengrocer,’ said Lance the Lettuce Guy, ordinarily a laconic individual. ‘Tomatoes were overripe, only fit for sauce. Too much grit in the leeks. Pulpy oranges. Green melons.’

‘Check,’ said Tommy.

I realised that I had better get to my station, read tomorrow’s menu and check my own stores. I hurried across and consulted the list. Tommy carried on.

‘Fish?’ she asked. The fish chef was still angry.

‘The fillets today were a disgrace,’ he snarled. ‘Had to debone them myself. And messy. I wasted a lot getting them fit to serve. It would be easier to get me an assistant and buy whole fish.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Tommy promised. I knew what that meant and so did the fish chef. He scowled and put in a spiteful order for Maldon salt. Very expensive and I can’t tell the difference between it and ordinary sea salt. But my tastebuds are not very discriminating.

The list asked me for various breads—I was using my own flour, so I didn’t need to order it from Tommy—and cakes. By the time the interrogation arrived at baking I had checked the stores and had nothing to request.

The meeting went on and I diverted my mind from Jason by thinking about Pockets’ clue. ‘Old Mother Hubbard.’ I had a feeling that this was one of the nursery rhymes which actually had an author. The rhyme had a nineteenth-century feel to it. In the good old days one had all one’s foodstuffs locked up in various cupboards. The lady of the house wore the keys on a chain around her waist, which would have had the valuable side effect of warning the maids that she was coming. All they had to do was listen for the jingle. In those pre-refrigeration days I suppose one could keep a bone in a cupboard. I recalled the meat safes of colonial days and shuddered. How anyone had thrived then I could not imagine.

Tommy concluded her work and put her clipboard under her arm. I surveyed the pastry corner and saw that all the cakes were immaculately iced, filled and decorated.

‘Good job, Bernie,’ I said. When Tommy came into view I told her, ‘Have a look at this display! Wouldn’t disgrace a Parisian pastry chef’s window. Aren’t they pretty?’

‘Yes, nice work, Corinna,’ she said.

‘It was Bernie,’ I said. Bernie glowed.

‘Nice,’ said Tommy. ‘Petits fours tomorrow, better get started on them early.’

Tommy moved on. Bernie reached up to the cookbook shelf for the standard work on petits fours, and I untied my apron.

‘That was high praise, coming from Tommy,’ I told Bernie.

‘I know,’ she replied.

I took my leave. I always felt a great sense of relief on opening the street door and getting out of Harbour Studios. Maybe I should have taken that holiday when it was offered. The sun hit me and I fumbled for my sunglasses.

Daniel was there. He had a satchel and a smile.

‘Corinna! I was just coming to see Ms Atkins,’ he said.

‘Oh Lord,’ I groaned. ‘Back inside, then.’

‘Is this a bad time?’

‘I don’t think that TV studios have a good time,’ I replied. ‘Tash wants you to find out who is playing all these tricks. Someone hacked into the website last night and recaptioned all the pictures. It’s getting beyond a joke. This is sabotage.’

‘And a cast of hundreds for suspects,’ said Daniel. ‘I was coming to see Ms Atkins about this baby.’

‘So there really was a baby?’

‘Indeed there was. Born August the eighth, 1988. A boy named Zephaniah.’

‘Well, that’s one thing about him that will have changed,’ I commented as I opened the doors again.

‘What?’ asked Daniel.

‘His name,’ I said confidently.

But I was not confident as I led the way through the kitchen. This was too large a group of people for anyone to analyse. As Dylan would have said, too much confusion.

Ethan caught sight of Daniel and beckoned him over to the refreshments table. Daniel did that male thing which excludes speech. He jerked his chin in the direction of Tash and kept walking. I assume that it meant ‘hello, mate, nice to see you, but can’t talk just now’. It’s a sort of shorthand. Women have to use words. I suppose it’s evolutionary. One cannot pause for social niceties while tracking the megafauna across the Pliestocene plains. I followed. I was interested.

Tash was talking to the writers, Gordon and Kendall (today’s dreads were dyed orange). She sighted me and made some excuse.

The writers moved a little distance away, ears flapping, and Tash took Daniel’s hands. I introduced him. Then I joined the writers. I, too, wanted to hear what was said.

Tash gave Daniel a fast, accurate run-down of everything that had happened. It included some things which I had not known—dry mustard in the face powder, for example—and all the incidents of which I was already aware. Then she said, ‘It’s a very volatile situation. I don’t want to call in the police. They wouldn’t take it seriously—no one’s been hurt—and the backers would have to hear about it then. I need to find this joker and shut him or her down. Can you do it?’

‘Well, gang, it looks like we’ve got another mystery on our hands,’ said Daniel, quoting
Scooby-Doo
, a series that he watches whenever he can. ‘I can try,’ he said to Tash, who had recog- nised the reference and grinned. ‘No point in trying to put me in undercover. What say I just wander around and talk to everyone? Knowing that I am here might suppress the joker, even if I can’t locate him. Or her. Or them. None of these tricks needed great physical strength to carry out. Could be anyone.’

‘I am not asking for guarantees,’ said Tash. Her milkmaid complexion had paled and she looked like someone had just reported mastitis in her herd. ‘You’re my only hope,’ she told Daniel. And, as Princess Leia had found before her, this is an appeal which never fails. Daniel shook hands on the deal.

‘Wow,’ breathed Kendall. ‘He’s gorgeous! Is he in the business?’

‘No,’ I said firmly.

‘Pity,’ he said. ‘I can see him as a lone avenger, can’t you, Gord? A solitary hunter? Vampires, maybe?’

‘Vampires are a bit, you know, old,’ said Gordon. Her expression conveyed outmoded, old-fashioned, positively archaic. ‘Modern police drama? Or he’d make a great PI.’

‘He
is
a PI.’ I told her. ‘Shush, I want to hear . . .’

‘Oh, so do we,’ said Kendall. ‘This’ll make a wonderful script.’

Writers. Worse, almost, than actors. What was Daniel about to do now, and could I help? I wondered, because there was a burning pain in my middle which was called Jason and I wanted to divert my mind. I raised an eyebrow to him, he nodded in the direction of the kitchen, and then went towards Ethan and his collective. I sighed. I had nothing further to do in the food department, but perhaps I could help someone, and do a little light snooping.

I paused in the middle of the floor to locate the area of greatest angst. Bernie was creating icing. Tommy was typing into her laptop. The salad makers were chopping furiously. Fish appeared to be sulking while Meat was turning out a terrine and did not need to be interrupted. I stood beside Tommy and said, ‘Daniel’s been employed to find out who is playing tricks,’ and she jumped a foot at the sound of my voice and nearly dropped the laptop.

‘Corinna? That’s good. That’s very good.’

‘What are you doing and can I help?’ I asked.

‘I’m designing a wedding feast for the writers,’ she said. ‘They need to do an episode with a caterer and they want some expert advice.’

‘And you are certainly an expert,’ I said. ‘You must have done a lot of weddings.’

‘Some,’ she conceded. ‘Mostly big society ones—you know: “The bride wore a fifteen-thousand-dollar gown designed by Dior.” I can’t imagine paying that much for a dress, can you?’

‘No,’ I seconded. ‘If I had fifteen thousand dollars there’s a lot of other things I would buy. I could really do with a new mixer and a few renovations to Earthly Delights. And there are always books. You?’

‘Need a new oven,’ she grunted. ‘But Jules loves clothes. Not to that extent, however. She’s more Scally and Trombone than Chanel. Boutique, you know. Would you serve a prawn roulade with spinach?’

‘Certainly. A salad of baby spinach, or a bed of wilted spinach dressed with lemon and oil. And herbs. Or perhaps throw in a few bean shoots and dress it with lime juice, soy, Vietnamese mint and sesame seeds, Asian style.’

‘Nice,’ she said, and typed busily. ‘I usually offer a main of duck breast, alternatively sea perch, and the vegetarian option would be eggplant with tomato and pine nut stuffing. The Greeks call them “little shoes”. They’re really tasty. Poor veggies have trouble getting enough to eat. Or there’s the salad of Puy lentils. That’s very nice, too. And ice creams, sorbets and pannacotta for dessert. You have to cater for all appetites at a wedding, and there are always children. And I refuse,’ she drew herself up, balancing the laptop perilously on her knee, ‘to serve chips, frites, or anything similar. Let the parents take them to the junk food maker of their choice on the way home if they must.’

‘As you say,’ I said, sidling away. Fanaticism comes in many forms.

Luckily, Lance the Lettuce chose that moment to call for volunteers to chop carrots and I was able to find myself a job.

Root vegetables are not fun to slice, because they are irregular in shape (someone, somewhere, is probably working on a GM square carrot). I equipped myself with my nice knife and joined the choppers at their long table.

‘Corinna,’ I introduced myself. The large man in an overall stained with the blood of a thousand vegetables thrust a bag of carrots in my direction and grunted, ‘Slices half a centimetre thick, peel them carefully.’

‘Don’t be annoyed,’ whispered Kate, next to me. ‘He’s had a bad day. Sub-standard veg all round, from depressed lettuce to wormy apples. Here’s your peeler.’

I started on the carrots. Kate was in the mood to chat.

‘They say that Tash has brought in a detective,’ she said. ‘To find the joker.’

‘That’s right,’ I affirmed.

‘I hope he finds him quick. The atmosphere is getting on my nerves.’ She dropped a handful of peel into the compost bin.

‘Mine too,’ I said. ‘And I’m just a contractor. It must be worse if you’re crew.’

‘Oh, it is. We’ve mostly been with Tommy since she started out. She’s a good thing. Good wages, good conditions, interesting work—always different. It was a bit of a coup that she got this contract. But you’ve noticed that this bastard uses our things for his jokes. Our wasabi, our mustard, chilli oil—condiments. We have them all in this kitchen.’

‘I noticed,’ I said, peeling carefully. Lance did not strike me as a chef who would be lenient with error. If he said half a centimetre he would mean half a centimetre, and might even measure it. ‘But anyone could walk in here. Who do you think it might be?’

‘Could be anyone,’ she shrugged, which did not impede her chopping at all. ‘Actors are all mad. I never met such people.’

‘So you think that someone is out to get Tommy?’ I asked. I had not thought of this before.