The Chinese Takeout (14 page)

‘Surely someone from the church would?’

‘Poor Tim. And, I suspect, the church wardens,’ Andy said, as if grudging the information.

‘Messrs Corbishley and Malins?’

‘They did know about the sack and its contents,’ I said. ‘So might it be better not to explain why you want to know names?’

‘Mrs Welford!’ She turned to me as if I were in infant school. ‘You really must permit us to get on with our task in our own way. You and Mr Thomas seem to think – where is he, by the way?’

‘Working.’

Her eyes shot up in derision: those poor wrinkles. ‘Dead cows?’

‘He’s working near London.’ I stopped, as abruptly as if Tony were pressing a hand on my shoulder.

She clicked her tongue. ‘All right for some.’

‘If picking through people’s luggage for putrefying monkeys’ heads is “all right”, I’d like to know what constitutes unpleasant.’

That silenced her.

We walked her to her car, then Andy got into his, ready to drive to the next service within Tim’s benefice. He looked altogether too grand for his
Focus. I was within an inch of throwing him the keys to my Saab, which was altogether more appropriate.

But I didn’t.

Sunday lunch passed without so much as a dropped saucer. There’s never a moment to rest, but as a team we simply intermeshed, with no cross words, let alone obscene ones. We shared a short group meal afterwards with Lucy Gay and her brothers and sisters.

‘Here we are, boys and girls: have a bit of Pix’s special turkey,’ Robin said.

‘I don’t like brown meat,’ one of them whined, to be hushed by Lucy.

‘No probs. This here was a Dolly Parton turkey – silly little legs and great big—’

‘Thanks, Pix!’ I said. ‘And some of these wonderful potatoes.’ I didn’t bother the kids with their French name.

‘How do you make them, Pix?’ Lucy asked.

‘Slice potatoes about as thick as a pound coin, and watch your fingers on the mandolin. Layer with chopped onion, chopped parsley, salt and pepper. Top with chicken stock. Little pats of butter or paint with oil – depending on whether that dairy allergy bloke is eating.’

‘And they go especially well with leeks and carrots and spring greens!’ Lucy insisted, dolling out portions all round.

At their age, I hadn’t thought anything went well with spring greens, but then, I hadn’t had Pix and Robin to cook them.

Since we never had a Sunday evening shift – just Lucy with her homework on duty in a virtually moribund snug – I had no excuse not to go for an afternoon walk. The sun was shining: it was spring, and I ought to have some in my step.

But there were springs in my bed, too. A zillion, hadn’t I claimed? And they all called, each last one.

Even as I headed upstairs, Tony smacked my head. ‘Where’s your will power, woman?’

I reached for my boots.

Today’s path took me away from the village to the richer farmlands of the valley. Here grazed the organic cattle and sheep that would find their way into my kitchen, the lambs looking like children’s toys and far too cuddly ever to eat. That way vegetarianism lay! So I ignored the frantically waggling hindquarters as the lambs demanded to suckle, and turned my attention to the hedgerows. Was this weed in fact a herb? Was that herb deadly if eaten raw?

I stopped to sniff. My feet had released the most glorious smell of garlic. Now, on my Internet rambles I’d seen a recipe for wild garlic soup: I must be stomping on its main ingredient this very moment. Yes! But I could hardly gather armfuls without permission. This might be what made my
roast lamb so delicious, not my cooking skills at all. So I carried on down to the farm shop, always stuffed with organic produce. Since I was after a favour, I greeted Abigail Tromans like a long-lost sister. She was always rather cooler to me than her husband Dan, who’d once been known, when I told him he wasn’t charging me enough for his prime beef, to swing me off my feet to celebrate the deal. He’d have difficulty swinging Abigail anywhere at the moment, since she was seven months’ pregnant with twins. Her blonde hair hung in rat’s tails, and she’d applied what little make-up she wore by touch, it seemed. Even I could see that her ankles were swollen; she’d had to remove her wedding ring, too.

‘And why aren’t you sitting down with your feet up?’ I asked, forgetting all about the garlic.

‘Sitting, standing, walking – they’re all the same,’ she said, so pale and drawn I almost believed her.

‘Here: give me those,’ I said, seizing a cardboard box of Easter eggs – Green and Black’s organic and deeply wonderful. ‘Stacked or sort of popped in artistically between other things? A couple here, maybe. And a few – have you got a spare display basket behind the counter? Yes, excellent. No, I’ll get it. How’s your blood pressure?’

She made a so-so gesture.

‘Able to relax at all?’

She snorted. ‘Cream teas just picking up nicely and I’m not supposed to bake and that.’

I loaded the basket with a jumble of eggs. ‘You give me the ingredients and I’ll look after scones for you: how many do you need a day?’

She opened her mouth to argue, but a yawn came out instead. Shrugging, she worked it out and I jotted. If they were Robin’s scones, not mine, she needn’t know.

‘But Josie—’

‘Abigail: I simply couldn’t manage without your farm and your organic produce. Helping out’s the least I can do. So long as you promise me one thing: this is absolutely our secret.’

‘It’s going to be even worse when the twins arrive.’ Her face puckered, and sobs, painful to listen to let alone make, racked her bulk. ‘We need every penny, Josie: we’re this close to the edge.’

I’d seen Dan’s books so I couldn’t argue. The only thing to do was to abandon the Easter eggs and hold her.

‘The bank won’t give us any more. One baby would have been bad enough but two!’

‘As a matter of fact,’ I said slowly, remembering that garlic, ‘maybe I can help.’

‘We don’t want charity!’ But her head still rested against my shoulder.

‘Of course you don’t. But you’ve got something extremely valuable growing on your farm, apart from those lovely beasts of yours. It’d bring in—’ I clawed desperately at figures that would sound just
on the upper side of sensible, ‘—about £10 a kilo. Cash, of course.’

‘£10 a kilo!’

‘And I’d need a kilo a day. Weekends, two. Why don’t we go and have a cuppa and talk about it?’

She was looking well enough by the time I took my leave, the remaining Easter eggs in a pyramid by the till, for me to mention the topic currently nearest my heart – chicken.

‘Have you heard anything on the grapevine about cheap chooks?’ I asked.

‘I thought you stuck to organic.’ She was prepared to be affronted.

‘I do. But you know me,’ I said ambiguously.

‘For yourself, would this be?’ she asked doubtingly.

‘A friend,’ I said. ‘Look, if I start asking, people might start doubting my quality. This – it’s a different market altogether. Organic’s getting fashionable, but producing the best quality birds can never be cheap. So if someone comes along offering them at a couple of quid less a kilo, there must be people whose noses have been put out of joint—’

‘Beaks, rather,’ she put in, with a still wettish smile, which took some ten years off her and returned her to the doll-like prettiness that might have attracted Dan to her in the first place.

‘Exactly. If you get genuine producers with
minimal profit margins getting viciously undercut people must talk about it. Next time you go to a market, better still a farmers’ market, you couldn’t sniff around a bit for me? You or Dan?’

‘For ten pounds for a kilo of old weeds, I’m sure he’d sniff anything,’ she said. ‘Even a slaughterman’s armpit.’

I don’t do loneliness. Never have. All those years Tony and I were apart, I didn’t do loneliness. So why should I start tonight? I’d better stop, PDQ.

The obvious thing was to be busy. I replaced Lucy behind the bar in the snug. In the privacy of her room she could work uninterrupted. Or watch TV if the spirit moved her, since even she didn’t demand the little ones do homework on Sunday evenings. While I was waiting for the action – any action – I phoned Nick.

‘Hell, Josie, the stuff some people try to bring in. I’ve had rotting zebra and dried impala. You wouldn’t believe – Ah, there’s a plane just landing: I’d better go.’

‘When will you be back?’ I heard myself asking – me, who never asked such personal questions.

‘I thought I might come via Brum. Elly’s got some tickets for a midweeker.’

‘Great. Enjoy yourself. And take care.’ I cut the call.

Enjoy indeed: trotting round the countryside
watching bloody soccer while I was trying to sort out the wrongs of the world. And then I remembered the rotting zebra and hoped the match produced a lot of compensatory goals.

As for Andy, presumably his busiest working day was drawing to a close. He’d conducted four services to Tim’s five, St Jude’s being out of action, but he must be reasonably tired, and I didn’t know him well enough to phone just for a natter. I wondered idly who had taken the services in his own church; presumably he was grand enough to warrant a curate for just such an event.

‘Josie, my love! Did that terrible accident of yours deprive you of your senses? I’ve been standing here ten minutes panting for a glass of ale, and I don’t think you even knew I’d come in.’

I hoped I hadn’t visibly jumped. ‘Ten minutes my Aunt Fanny, Aidan Carr. I’d have leapt to the pumps only you’d got your nose sucked into that scandal-sheet old Archie left behind! Funny, I never had you down as a tits and bum man.’

‘My sweet, the day you do, you can sign me up for the SAS. Guilty as charged. I was peeping to see what people read these days. Only I fancy read is the wrong verb. “Look at” would be more accurate. You’d got a very long face, Josie, when you thought no one was looking.’

‘Maybe the accident knocked me about more than I realised.’

He switched on his solemn face, never easy when
the natural lines on his face tended upwards, not down. ‘The word on the street, Josie, is that it wasn’t an accident.’

‘No?’ Impassive as possible, I pulled the half of real ale he always had if he thought no one was looking. In a crowd, he took a delight in finnicking around with gin and tonic with crushed ice and the thinnest slices of lime. ‘Does the street identify the malefactor?’

He raised his glass in a toast. ‘Blessings upon your brewer and perdition to your malefactor. Such a lovely term. But not a lovely man.’

‘A man. We’re getting somewhere. Do I know him? Does his name begin with C?’

‘Good God, no!’ Aidan was genuinely shocked. Then he donned his puzzled expression. ‘Why should you think that?’

‘No matter. So does the name begin with M?’

‘Darling girl, we don’t know what letter it begins with. But they do say someone in a big blue 4x4 stopped someone in Taunton and asked his way here.’

I spread my hands. ‘And do they say whether someone took this information to the police?’

‘You know this part of the world and us grockles, sweetie. We’re fair game and there’s no closed season. And if another grockle takes arms against us – so be it.’

‘I suppose they might just talk to Ian Strand. I know he’s a cop, but cut him across and you’d
find Devon all the way through.’

‘Get Lucy on to it. And then she’d have a reason to talk to poor Ian. Come on, Josie, when are you going to set up as matchmaker?’

‘When she’s finished her exams. But I wouldn’t want to get involved. The village only forgave her for moving in here because her dad’s bomb was intended for me.’

‘A perverse form of logic, but I take your point. So I’d better have the undeniable pleasure of talking to young Ian myself.’

I could imagine the lustre of Aidan’s eyes as he approached the young man. At least he’d always said he knew looking in shop windows wasn’t the same as buying. I agreed with a twinkle. ‘What burdens life thrusts upon us!’

Aidan’s stomach rumbled. He patted it: ‘Down, boy. It’s this GI diet, Josie. I don’t seem to have the right sort of food in the house, and—’ He cocked his head winsomely. ‘I don’t suppose? For an old mate? A bit of cold roast and salad?’

‘You know my rule, Aidan. No food on Sunday evenings. Ever. But since there’s no one to see, I might just run to earth some cold beef.’

‘Josie! I adore you! Marry me, my sweet!’

‘I thought you’d never ask!’ I seized his hand and dragged him into the most smacking of kisses, only releasing him when I realised we were no longer alone. The door of the snug – beautifully oiled these days, thanks to Nick – stood ajar to reveal Andy
Braithwaite. Rather too clearly, he was not amused.

‘I do apologise,’ he said, in the huffy tone this time of someone not apologising at all.

‘Not at all, Dean,’ Aidan said, recovering much more quickly than I. ‘It’s not every day I have a proposal of marriage accepted. You must wish me well, you know. Or congratulate me. Not being versed in these matters, I’m not at all sure what etiquette requires. Are you? No? Alas, I thought I could rely on you.’ Turning back to me, he kissed my hand. ‘Josie, my love, maybe the dean would like a plate of the excellent cold beef which prompted my declaration of love. She does a wonderful salad to go with it, or the most scrumptious homemade pickles. And bread to die for.’

I let him rabbit on, at his campest, digging me out of any possible hole far quicker than
self-justification
from me. Until he paused for breath.

Time to clasp my hands to my bosom. ‘So you only wanted me for my cold meat!’ I declared. ‘Alack, sir, then I am undone.’ In my normal, twenty-first-century voice, I continued, ‘And would you like some beef, Andy? There’s plenty, so long as you promise utmost secrecy. Only my friends eat out of hours, you see.’

‘Friends and fiancés,’ Aidan amended smugly. ‘Ooh, I never thought I’d get engaged! Not to a woman!’

So why, I asked myself as I sliced beef, had it mattered so much to Andy to see me locked in someone’s embrace? He’d laughed heartily enough at Aidan’s subsequent posturings, but only after a time lag, as it were. Hell! That might have been a finger gone. That would have taught me to let my mind wander with a knife like that in my hand. I slapped on a blue plaster and got on with my job. With absolutely no more speculating.

‘You see,’ Aidan crowed as I carried their plates through, ‘the woman’s an arrant temptress. There’s me on the latest song in diets, and she offers me bread. I ask you! But what’s a boy to do?’

‘Leave the bread for Andy of course. There wasn’t much salad left, so here are some pickles and chutneys if you want them.’

By now Andy’s grin seemed genuinely relaxed. ‘There’s only one thing I can’t resist,’ he said, with as much panache as if the idea were original, ‘and that’s temptation.’

But when Aidan, replete and relaxed, announced he needed his beauty sleep, Andy made a similar discovery, and they left together.

No one else joined me in the snug, either for food or for a quiet pint, so I had plenty of time to ponder the question that was vexing me: was Andy shocked to see Aidan kissing me, or to see me kissing Aidan?

There was something enormously satisfying about getting up early to make the scones I’d promised Abigail Tromans, turning the incredibly sticky mixture into proudly lopsided moist cakes, good enough in my book to eat without cream and jam. In fact that was how I ate the only taster I permitted myself. Yes, it was fine. The dried fruit Abigail’s recipe demanded had plumped up nicely. What else could you use scone mixture for? I’d seen both savoury and dessert recipes and now I remembered how easy it was to get excellent results, I was dying to try again.

Dying! I’d have to stop using the word so loosely. Especially when Tim’s parents appeared. I’d scarcely had time to speculate what they might be like. Tim had said I reminded him of his godmother. Abrasive, aggressive, domineering, then. But what about his parents? And what about Tim’s refusal to have them contacted?

Andy should be calling to let me know when to expect them. Perhaps he’d accompany them to ease their path.

Meanwhile, unobtrusively, I had to get the scones down to Abigail. It was highly unlikely that anyone would be miffed by our arrangement, but one thing I’d learned living in Kings Duncombe was that you couldn’t predict how country people might react.

The problem was solved at our morning meeting. On Mondays these were perfunctory, to say the least, as I wanted to make sure the lads could maximise their free time. Pix turned up in an
embarrassing Lycra cycling outfit, which showed precisely why he needed more exercise.

‘No probs. But,’ he added, filching at least another ten miles’ worth of calories, ‘just why are we taking coals to Newcastle?’

‘Hush-hush coals, moreover,’ Robin added, still in the cut off tracksuit bottoms that constituted his jimmies.

‘I’m worried about Abigail. Blood pressure.’ I mimed her bulge.

‘Yuck: women’s talk.’

‘Quite. No one needs to know why the scones aren’t up to her usual standard. Not that anyone’ll know anything about them at all if you keep on pigging, young Pix.’

For answer he passed the plastic box across to Robin.

He assumed a blissful expression. ‘Not bad, gaffer. So you do this every morning and one of us bikes them down?’

‘Not exactly. Whoever’s duty pastry cook can do them, if that’s OK with you two? Some mornings Dan’ll be able to collect them when he drops off our wild garlic. Executive decision time, lads. We’re going native.’

I was laying up for lunch – only rolls and salads, remember – thinking about Abigail and her problems, when something she said struck me so smartly I nearly dropped the cutlery box. She said
that in exchange for the wild garlic business, Dan wouldn’t mind sniffing a slaughterman’s armpit. As if that was the worst smell in the world. Tang’s smell: could he have been a slaughterman somewhere? Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I’d had an intimate acquaintance with a slaughterhouse only a few months back, after all. Or had my memory done as Nick’s had done – shut down on the experience. But it wasn’t meat he’d reacted to, but chicken. No. I must be right. If only Nick hadn’t lost his files. If only he hadn’t been called away. And if only he were making a speedy return to get at the information.

Perhaps that was deliberate. He didn’t want me flying solo on this, did he?

Tough.

Because that was exactly what I was going to do.