The Chinese Takeout (13 page)

Leaving him still immobile, I heaved myself upstairs and into the bathroom. He’d finished the floor apart from one corner. Try as I might, I couldn’t kneel, so I hoicked the bucket on to the closed loo and fished out the cloth – a pair of Tim’s underpants, it transpired – and wringing it out, dropped it. My footwork might not have got me into Manchester United but it did the trick. All I had to do then was scoop the cloth up again – for which the loo brush came in handy – and I was done.

The only indication that Andy had moved was that the coffee mug was empty. I took it from him and rinsed it.

‘How can you be so calm?’ he screamed, almost making me drop it. ‘Washing up as if nothing had happened?’

I stared.

‘Don’t you feel anything? You don’t react when the church burns down. You don’t react when Corbishley insults you. You don’t react when you’re run over. You don’t react when you hear murder’s been committed. What in God’s name does it take to crack that carapace of yours?’

If there was a sensible reply to Andy’s question, I couldn’t think of it. Not without going into a long explanation I didn’t want to give – and he probably didn’t want to hear – about how I coped with Tony’s long jail terms. In my head I tried words to describe myself like
stoic
or
phlegmatic
, thinking a touch of quasi-academic vocabulary might appeal. In the end, I gave a stiff shrug: he could make of it and indeed of me what he liked. I said flatly, ‘I’m knackered. And the White Hart needs me.’ As an afterthought, I added, ‘Can I offer you some lunch?’ Perhaps it was an apology for my brusqueness.

He opened his mouth, flushed and dropped his eyes. Then he looked vaguely about, as if assessing whether we’d done enough. ‘The washing. On the line and in the machine.’

‘Not to mention the load I shoved into the hall.’ My bloody voice cracked. It must have been the pain and fatigue – so perhaps that was the answer to his question. But I didn’t share it with
him. ‘Tell you what, I’ll bundle those dirty towels together and take them back to the White Hart. I’ll take the load in the machine to dry too. As for the stuff on the line, I suppose we could fold it loosely and put it on a clothes horse, if he’s got one.’

‘The airing cupboard,’ he said. ‘The tank’s so poorly insulated it’s like a little dryer. Even after we’ve switched off the immersion heater, it should do the job.’

‘Great.’

I felt his eyes on me. ‘Tell you what, I put it out so I’ll get it in. If you wouldn’t mind washing the mugs and finishing in here.’

I nodded – I was too weary to argue. And he’d tried to be tactful without sounding sorry for me. Unfortunately his plan backfired. Whereas gathering the clothes from the line would have meant just stretching, the job he’d given me, picking up the soiled towels, meant bending. I managed. And emptied the machine too.

‘I’ll set off now,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you in a few minutes.’

‘If you just hang on while I shut all the windows, we could drive in convoy.’

‘You won’t get lost,’ I said crisply. ‘See you back at the pub.’ No point in telling him it might be better if we weren’t seen arriving together. No, I wasn’t worried about his reputation, or mine, this time. Or even about Corbishley and Malins.
Just about the person who’d run me down. There was no point in offering him another potential target.

As I fell through the back door, Pix greeted me with a yell from the kitchen. ‘Thank God you’re back. Robin’s got one of his migraines. He couldn’t see to slice an onion so I packed him off to bed.’

‘Well done.’

‘And we’ve got twelve heavy-duty walkers wanting mega-meals.’

‘Give me three minutes and I’ll be with you.’

Shame about the
tête-à-tête
lunch with Andy – but maybe I wasn’t sorry at all. For a variety of reasons. Not least of which was that a long stint under pressure in the kitchen would force me to keep moving and forget I couldn’t.

‘I quite understand,’ Andy said, not even in the huffy tone of someone who didn’t. ‘I take it you’ll be tied up all evening, too?’

What else did he have in mind? ‘I’m afraid it looks like it. Poor Robin doesn’t often get migraines but when he does they blast him. Anyway, can I take your order? If you’re in a hurry I’ll slip you to the top of the pile.’

After the rush, while the day-time minion was scrubbing down the kitchen, I gave myself a couple of minutes to check my emails and incoming phone messages. Nothing on the chicken front from any of
my contacts. No Nick and no Nick’s list, of course. I’d have to do a spot of investigating another way. But not today: I was too stiff and Pix needed me. But the next fine day. OK, if my body persisted in being a nuisance, the one after that.

And to my horror I found myself popping a couple of painkillers and lying down on my bed, just for five minutes. Or until a panicking Pix banged so hard on my door it sounded as if he was coming through it: it was after five, and it was time for the evening shift.

Friday had seen me tied to the day (and evening) job. Then the weekend was upon us. And weekends involved work.

However, there was just one thing – and I suppose it showed just how badly I’d been shaken – that someone else ought to do something about. I’d clean forgotten the wreath kindly left where I’d fallen (I was already revising the word
accident
). What was that police constable’s name? Hell, did I really need to find the card she’d given me to remember?

I did. Bernie Downs.

A man took the call, though it was to her direct line. ‘I phoned PC Downs the other day,’ I said, not wishing to suggest I thought she’d been lax in not getting back to me, but letting him think she might have been. ‘About a wreath. I was wondering if she’d found anything.’

‘She’s off sick,’ he told me.

‘In that case…’ I regaled him with an edited version of the accident and the subsequent floral tribute.

‘Could be a joke?’ he said.

‘Of course it could. But not a nice one. Just in case it might help you people, I kept it in one of my outhouses.’

He promised to come round as soon as he had a moment, which I took to mean it was hardly a priority. I drifted back downstairs. There were dozens of more important jobs to do but only one I felt capable of. It was my comfort task: filling the pepper mills. Whether it was the simple folding of a paper cone to funnel the corns into the mills or the soft warm smell of the peppercorns I don’t know. But I always felt better when I did it, which was a good thing.

We were fully booked for Saturday evening: we could have filled the room twice over. I was deep into preparation work at about eleven on Saturday morning when PC Downs turned up, apologising for her cold. If I expected a bright red nose and a rasping voice, I was disappointed.

‘You mentioned other flowers?’ she muttered, through a mug of steaming blackcurrant juice made from my own frozen blackcurrants. If she claimed a cold, a cold I’d treat her for.

‘All of them had little notes from people I knew hoping I’d soon be on my feet.’ All? Three. ‘None
of them was anonymous; none wished me to rest, in peace or anywhere else. Which was a good job really. Now, it’s getting awfully close to lunch time…’ She took my hint and left.

Why it should have taken ten hours and the Saturday evening special starter of hot smoked salmon on crushed baby potatoes, garnished with French beans and homemade basil mayonnaise to remind me, I prefer not to ask. But just as I was serving a particularly picky customer with this delectable warm salad I remembered I hadn’t checked with Downs if the police had found the sack of Tang’s clothes. If Tim had tucked it in his garage, it was just the sort of thing to be overlooked. It didn’t strike me that DI Lawton would welcome a call from me, however, nor even from Nick – especially from Nick, not if he was implying a criticism – had he happened to be around. If anyone would make her eat out of his hand it would be Andy. I risked a glance at my watch. Nine-thirty on a Saturday evening might not be the best time to phone him, however, if he was sweating over whatever sermon he had to deliver tomorrow. As for our benefice, the first scheduled service was eight o’clock communion at St Faith and St Lawrence. Presumably the church wardens would manage to find a locum to take it. There should also be some sort of announcement about the rest of the temporary arrangements until a new
incumbent could be installed. I might just get up and go.

Meanwhile, should I disturb Andy or not?

Why not? It was quiet enough here for me to take a break, Robin insisting he was now as fit as the proverbial flea and doing wondrous public things with crêpes – a bit seventies, perhaps, but he was such a dramatic genius with the flambé pan no one could complain, and indeed his display could be guaranteed to entertain the whole dining room. So I slid upstairs – OK, hauled myself slowly upstairs – and dialled Andy’s number. He answered, third ring, his voice brusque enough to suggest he hadn’t enjoyed being interrupted in whatever deans did at that time. But when I announced my name, I could hear a smile arrive.

‘Josie! I thought you’d be chained to the stove or the sink.’

‘Pix and Robin are at the former, and I’ve got a work experience sixth-former at the latter. I think he’ll prefer psychiatric nursing to catering. And you: are you toiling with a quill pen or a word processor?’

‘Tomorrow’s sermon? Neither. Done and dusted. I was tossing up between a Macallan or a Bushmills.’

Was he indeed? ‘What a tough call. Now, something with a much less lovely nose. Tang’s clothes. Remember we had a bin liner full of them? I told Tim not to burn them in case they might
provide some evidence of where Tang came from. His job, not China! But I never asked Tim what he’d done with the bin liner. I did mention it to DI Lawton, but she wasn’t very pleased with me at the time. So if anyone was going to ask if the clothes had been found… You’re entitled to ask, after all,’ I wheedled.

‘I’ll get on to it first thing on Monday,’ he said, ‘unless you think there’ll be someone on duty now?’

‘The usual working day never seemed to prevail when they were after Tony,’ I said, ‘and he never killed anyone. Not personally,’ I conceded, in the interests of honesty.

There was a short silence. His voice was totally neutral when he replied, ‘This evening, then. Have you any idea where the sack might be? I didn’t see it yesterday.’

‘It was very noisome: if I’d been in charge of it, it would have been in a garage or shed, preferably well away from the house.’

‘Noisome…noisome,’ he repeated, for no apparent reason. Another pause. ‘Will you be in church tomorrow? St Faith and St Lawrence? Or one of the others in the benefice?’

‘It’s eight o’clock communion, isn’t it?’ The only problem with attending a communion service was that I didn’t take communion. That was reserved for people baptised and then confirmed into the church – or for visitors who were regular communicants in their own churches. But I did like
the language of this particular service, since it used the King James Prayer Book, with all its measured archaisms. While the others took communion, I would simply sit at the back and be absorbed into the stillness.

He jumped in very fast. ‘I suppose it’s very hard for you – since you have to work so late tonight.’

‘Better than the usual morning service: I start serving lunches half an hour after the closing hymn, which is a problem if the church is fifteen miles away. Any idea who’ll be taking it?’

‘Me.’ For so short a syllable it seemed to have a lot of nuances. I picked up a lot of embarrassment, a touch of pleading and a smidgen of plain fact.

‘I’d better set the alarm, then, hadn’t I?’ I nearly offered a post-service breakfast, but that seemed a bit sacrilegious.

St Faith and St Lawrence did encourage kneeling, but at least the pews were solid enough for me to be able to heave myself skywards when necessary. The service was held in the Lady Chapel, an altogether grander affair than the St Jude’s equivalent.

I’d bargained on slipping in unobtrusively and lurking at the rear. However, Andy was waiting at the chapel entrance in the south transept to greet us all – there were nine in total, plus him. He rewarded us all with a smile, and, in my case at least, a searching look when I flinched at his too-firm handshake.

He took the service at a brisk but not rattling
pace, delivering a short and moving sermon focussed on death and rebirth, all in a voice pitched slightly lower than usual. I had no idea what might constitute a dress code for clergymen, but he was in simple black, head to toe.

Taking his place at the church door, he had a private word for each of us. I should imagine, however, that I was the only one asked for an invitation for coffee.

‘When I’ve changed,’ he added.

‘You can have breakfast, if you like. I’ll leave the back door unlocked.’

‘Is that a good idea?’

‘OK.
Knock three times and ask for Josie
,’ I misquoted, badly. Should I have done? Comparing myself obliquely with a sexually generous character in
Under Milk Wood
wasn’t necessarily the wisest thing in the world. It might not put him in the best of lights, either.

‘Are you sure about this black sack?’ DI Lawton demanded, unable quite to disdain the coffee and croissant I’d pressed on her. She was here in search not of me but of Andy, in response to the call he’d made last night. Since then she’d obviously been commendably busy, her Sundays clearly being working days too.

‘I told you. I know it was left in the church porch. And I’m sure Tim said he would take it home,’ I added helplessly.

‘Dean?’ The hierarchies in her own profession almost brought her hand to the salute.

‘I saw it in the porch, I’m sure of that. And I heard people talking about it. Tim promised to deal with it. Whether he did or whether it slipped his mind…’ He shrugged elegantly. ‘I take it that it really does matter?’

‘If it can supply evidence of what Tang seems to have done… I suppose he never drew a picture for that nice woman?’

‘Annie,’ I replied. ‘She’d have told us. As you’re aware, there was a great deal of moral doubt whether we could ask him anything without knowing what to do with the information.’ Secretly I kicked myself – in the most metaphorical sense, of course. Why, why, why hadn’t I got him to draw what he’d done? Answer: because of those little communication difficulties. ‘Meanwhile, the bag has gone totally missing?’

‘I’ve checked with all my officers, with the forensic science teams and even the fire service. No trace. Yet. But we’ll naturally go on looking.’ She stopped abruptly, lips in a pucker she’d later regret.

I added as if it were just dawning on me, ‘And their killers might have come from the same place, I suppose?’

‘Is the implication then that someone didn’t want it found?’ Andy asked.

‘Or that some over-anxious parishioner thought
she ought to take it home to wash it?’ I asked, clapping my hand – foolishly – to the side of my head. ‘Those who got involved – I know most of their first names, but not their surnames or addresses, of course.’