The Chinese Takeout (7 page)

I liked a man who wandered into the kitchen to natter while I made tea. I also liked one who looked askance at the cake I reached out, and shook his head with obvious regret.

‘The thing is, with all the goodies the parishioners have donated – and, despite the dratted birds, there’s been a steady stream of visitors – it’s hard not to eat just to keep out the cold.’

‘And boredom. Tim and Tang are strips of wind who can feed their faces all day long and not put on an ounce,’ I observed, with something of a sigh. The fruit cake was calling me, but I knew to a gram how much harm a single slice might do. ‘You’re sure?’ The lid hovered.

‘Unless you—?’

‘Andy, I had to shed six stone when my husband died. Six and then some, actually. I never wanted to be fat, but he liked his wife to be plump.’ I snapped the lid on firmly, and led the way back to my living room.

‘Was your husband in the hospitality trade, too?’

What a wonderful mealy-mouthed euphemism! Tony would have loved it. Sitting in the armchair opposite his, I smiled innocuously. ‘For three or four years Tony was Britain’s most wanted man. He spent most of our married life in the nick. Died there.’

To his credit he hardly missed a beat. ‘He must have been older than you?’

‘Old enough to be my father. At very least. But he was the love of my life. And it was he who got me on to books and poetry, so we always had something to talk about during visits, and could fill our letters with our views. And when I lost him I – yes, I was lost too. So I started to get the education I’d never had and make something of my life.’

‘Hence the helicopter licence?’

Eyes full, I could do no more than nod.

‘I’m sure he’d have approved.’

Sanctimonious git! I was liking him less by the minute, him and his stock-in-trade sympathy. ‘He’d have hated it! Tony’s idea was that I should sit back like a lady and enjoy all the money he’d made. A bit of reading, that was fine, and going to the theatre and such. But turning to and studying properly: that would have been anathema to him. Flying lessons! But even he would have seen,’ I added, swallowing hard, ‘that I couldn’t sit on my arse all day playing Patience.’

‘So he wouldn’t have liked your part in the Tang campaign.’

‘I don’t know. I’ve been worrying about that. He believed in the rule of law, you see – I won’t say he enjoyed doing bird, but he accepted it as the price he had to pay for doing wrong. So he’d take DI Whatshername’s part—’

‘Lawton.’

‘Right. He’d want to know what Tang had done before he supported him. And he’d be worried about Tim getting emotionally involved with a case that can only end in tears.’

After a long silence, he grinned. ‘Do you want to come to the meeting with the archdeacon tonight? As a token parishioner? Though it’ll no doubt go on forever, as these things do.’

‘A very junior parishioner. If they didn’t like me arranging the wrong flowers last year, how would my fellow churchgoers cope with my presuming to represent them at a top level meeting?’

‘Oh, it’s nowhere near the top yet. The bishop will be involved before I’m much older, and no doubt a very senior police officer too. And probably the Home Secretary will shove in his unwelcome mite.’

‘And the Archbishop of Canterbury?’ I asked hopefully. ‘I’ve always been a bit of a fan.’

‘That beard of his, no doubt. Let’s deal with things at this level first, however. Provided your prophet of doom is wrong, and we don’t have Chinese gangs descending on the place, how long can Tang be supported in St Jude’s, would you say? Another week?’

‘So long as the police don’t take it into their heads to lay a proper siege. If they stopped us bringing in food and other supplies, getting water and emptying bathwater… Not to mention if they turned off the heat.’

‘And prevented your emptying – in the fullness of time – the Elsan.’

Men and their schoolboy jokes! But I couldn’t help a cackle of laughter. ‘It has to be finite. And the way Nick is talking, an extended stay is inviting retribution. This evening I’ll do something more useful than gate-crashing your meeting. I’ll move heaven and earth to get hold of my Chinese friend,’ I explained, hoping I wouldn’t disgrace myself by blushing.

‘Thanks. Will you be going back tonight?’

‘Not to stay, thanks very much! What about you?’

‘Nick?’

‘He has a day job: Food Standards Inspector. He was only here today because of the snow on the M3. Plus I think he’ll be the one best placed to check on any dodgy food processing plants, and to do that he needs the adjuncts of the twenty-first century.’

‘Looks like me, doesn’t it?’

‘It makes a cast iron excuse for cutting short your meeting. Tell you what, I’ll come and cook breakfast for you all tomorrow. Provided you do something for me.’

He looked as suspicious as our neighbourhood bobby had.

‘Just keep your ear to the ground for information about the church wardens. Something I said touched a nerve today, I’ll swear. Something
about their consciences and wrong-doing.’

He looked at me shrewdly. ‘Know thine enemy, eh?’ And it was his turn to blush.

‘I’m just interested to know why they so desperately want to get rid of Tang.’

‘Smuggled goods in the crypt? A bit Daphne du Maurier!’

‘And not really the right part of the world. All the same.’

‘All the same it shall be.’

Which was the nearest I got to finding which part of my brains he wanted to pick.

As I waved him goodbye, it occurred to me that now the media had located St Jude’s, it wouldn’t take them long to discover it was within spitting distance of what had become their favourite out-
of-town
watering hole. And that their favourite restaurateur (their term) was deeply involved. I’d have to nip any enquiries firmly in the bud.

A few weeks back I’d had to confiscate the car keys of the head of the local BBC news, and put him to bed on my sofa, thus saving him his licence, since Ian Strand would undoubtedly have booked him. If that didn’t merit a favour I didn’t know what did. A phone call, in which I promised an exclusive when all was sorted out, established that he quickly agreed with me. Since he’d not been alone on the sofa, he undertook to silence his opposite number at the independent TV news. There. Job done.
There was the press to deal with, but Robin was dating one of their number, and would no doubt promise a similar deal to mine. Somehow or other we’d deal with the rest. Don’t think I didn’t have my ways.

There was no better place for me to garner information about Malins and Corbishley than the village shop – which could, of course, provide the press with plenty of titbits about me. But at least I was now an honorary local, which might give me some protection. I wasn’t unfortunately their most popular customer, despite trying to buy as much locally as I could and giving restaurant contracts to relatives of the proprietors. All incomers were regarded with suspicion, be they as meek and unobtrusive as a mouse. People like Aidan Carr and I attracted something like hostility, him because of his male partner and jazzy clothes, me – well, as I’d told Andy, changes to the White Hart apart, I had been promoted as flower-arranger rather too quickly, and also made a habit of sticking my nose in where it wasn’t wanted. When I’d helped send one of the landed gentry down for a nice long stretch (though I’ll swear nothing like as long as one of us plebs would have got), opinion had divided. Some remembered how much prosperity I’d tried to
bring to the village. Forelock tuggers still thought the sun shone out of aristos’ ears, to use the polite variant Tony would have preferred, although the usual one alliterated better. They considered what I’d done nothing short of
lèse- majesté
.

I didn’t need to ask any questions yet, just drift into one of the little shoals of gossipers crowding the tiny aisles. There was hardly room for a bulky customer, let alone groups like this. But who could blame them?

‘All this telly business – but then, you’re used to that, aren’t you, Mrs Welford?’ a woman said waspishly.

‘I’m used to serving telly folk food and waiting on them hand and foot,’ I agreed, mild as milk. ‘You wonder how they manage to stay so thin, those girls, don’t you?’

‘Perhaps it’s running away from they old geese!’ an old codger put in. It was Joe Damerel, an occasional, but not regular patron of the White Hart. ‘Nippin’ ’em on they little bums!’ he chuckled, evilly.

‘They’d find more to nip on mine,’ I agreed. ‘But I’ve got a secret: I fed them some of my cakes. That quietened them down.’

‘They say you’re feeding that lad, too.’ This was Mrs Damerel.

‘No pub in Abbot’s Duncombe to do it,’ I said. ‘And Father Martin always looks in need of a good meal, poor kid.’

‘Ah, only just started shaving by the looks of him,’ Joe chuckled. ‘Well, still wet behind the ears, any road.’

‘And now he’s in the middle of this mess,’ I sighed. If there was a hope of Tim being able to return to normal duties it might be better if people thought he’d been thrust unwilling into controversy. ‘One moment he’s giving the sermon, next there’s all this kafuffle. Not everyone likes it, but I can’t see what else he could have done – apart from turning a starving boy out into the snow.’ No one seemed to notice that I’d compressed the timescale, knocked ten years off Tang’s age and eliminated possible police involvement.

‘Ah, the moor can be cruel in the cold,’ another old chap said.

I pressed on. ‘Goodness knows where he came from, poor thing – he doesn’t speak a word of English.’

Mrs Lane, Lucy Gay’s aunt, joined us. Obscurely she blamed me for her brother’s death, but since I’d taken in his children, hospitality she might have felt she ought to offer, she accepted an armed truce. ‘Not everyone’s as sorry for him as you are,’ she countered. ‘There’s some as say the church is no place for him, smelling it out as he does.’

‘The Abbot’s Duncombe folk have sorted that out with an old-fashioned zinc bath. In fact, they’ve all been so generous it takes your breath away. Clothes and bedding and everything.’ I might as
well exploit the ancient rivalry between the villages. ‘But you can see why people think it’s the wrong place,’ I conceded.

‘That Mr Corbishley’s worshipped at St Jude’s for the last thirty years,’ Mrs Lane said. ‘Poured money in there left, right and centre, he has.’

‘And it shows,’ I said, fervently. ‘And Mr Malins, no doubt.’

‘Bless you, no. He’s like you, a Johnny-
come-lately
,’ Joe said. ‘And like you, to be fair, he’s done his best. Though not as much as you, like,’ he added, in a tone that didn’t make it entirely clear whether he approved of such hyperactivity. ‘White Hart doing OK, I take it?’

‘I shan’t starve,’ I agreed. ‘But what about Mr Corbishley? His wallet deep enough to carry on?’

‘Deeper than mine. You bet it is, isn’t it, Em? Fingers in every pie going, that one.’

‘And not all his own,’ she said. ‘They do say,’ she added as a swift afterthought.

‘But he’s a respectable churchwarden!’ I cried, eyes wide open.

‘Ah, Mrs Welford, you’re not telling me as you can judge a sheep by its winter fleece,’ Joe said. ‘There was something about a takeover a while back – no, I can’t recall… As for that Malins—’

‘He’s as decent a man as you can find,’ Em corrected him quickly. ‘Civil servant, very respectable. Retired down here, him and his wife. Live right out Duncombe Minimus way. Keep
themselves to themselves, they do. As they’re entitled,’ she concluded challengingly. She pushed her way through to the till.

I’d learned something, if nothing like enough. Thirty years’ input into any establishment gave you something like squatters’ rights, at least in your own opinion. No wonder Corbishley was so resentful of the incursions into his kingdom. Which made his apology all the more generous. Or interesting, depending on your point of view.

I checked my watch. Six forty-five. The shop would be open till eight, but I thought I’d pretty well exhausted its possibilities. Had the owners been around, I might have questioned them, but they’d left a couple of school kids in charge, as they had to, to keep the place open the hours they did.

I thought I’d check my emails, before one last foray to St Jude’s. Nick, who was depending on me for wheels, could stick it out a few more minutes. He might, with his dogged patience, have got Tang to reveal information, rather than simply react to his little sketches. He might have persuaded him to give himself up.

There was a good crop of incoming mail. Most simply said hello, and that their chicken was fine, thank you very much. A couple moaned about the hike in prices from a Devon organic supplier, who thought he could milk a niche market for all it was worth. Nearly £18 a kilo? Where did he think we
were, London? I sent them all a standard note of thanks. But what about these two? They were well out of the area but both complained about the quality of some chicken they’d acquired, pappy in texture and indeterminate in taste.

They got an immediate response from me. Was it from their usual supplier? Had they complained? What was the outcome?

Then there was another one. She’d changed supplier but would be changing back immediately: within three weeks of the change, four of her regular customers had gone down with food poisoning. It was only because they were so loyal that they hadn’t gone to the public health inspectors.

Now, food poisoning isn’t unusual if the chicken is inadequately cooked: check out the FSA website for the gruesome details. But I wouldn’t have thought that in a completely hygienic kitchen, with thoroughly cooked meat, there should be that much of a problem. Alarm bells ringing in my head, I asked for details of the new supplier. I would get on to it tomorrow morning, feigning an interest and asking for details of sources, as well as prices.

Where the hell was Nigel Ho? I left yet another message.

Eight o’clock. Andy should be well into his meeting by now, so with luck I wouldn’t have to hang around St Jude’s too long.

I was taking with me the ingredients for a Thai style salmon dish, in which I poached the salmon in coconut milk flavoured with red chilli, garlic, galang galang, shallots, lemon grass, homemade red curry paste (Robin’s speciality) and a little fish sauce. I added some slivers of mange tout and a few slices of courgettes with an eye less to authenticity than to getting a few vegetables inside male systems. A few noodles and a flurry of finely torn coriander and basil and we would have a feast.

I was just leaving when the phone rang. I grabbed it. It must be Nigel. ‘At last!’

It was a good job I didn’t add the few helpful expletives I wanted, because after all that it was quite a different voice that responded. Flirtatiously?

‘If I’d realised you were poised by the phone of course I’d have phoned earlier.’ Andy! ‘But I’m still at my meeting. Josie, I have a tremendous favour to ask,’ he said, now in what sounded a very official voice.

Not my sleeping at St Jude’s, please! ‘Ask away.’

Against a background of voices, he continued, ‘Bishop Jonathan wants tomorrow’s meeting to be held at St Jude’s. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind coming along to organise coffee and so on.’ He was so formal we might never have talked about deep lanes and incised crosses. So who else was in the room?

I stared at the phone in disbelief. It slowly dawned on me that among the people listening might be the bishop himself, so I wouldn’t ask questions now. But
we’d meet up at St Jude’s when he came to relieve Nick so I would certainly ask a few then. Apart from anything else, I had the White Hart to run, and however capable and efficient my staff might be, a business was only as good as its management. Which was still me. As for Nick, he had a job to do protecting the whole country. Grandiose as that might sound, it was he and his four colleagues who had to ensure that all our food was fit to eat. Not just chasing up carcinogenic food dyes, but checking the progress of meat through the food chain. If they were neglectful, consumers – my customers and people like us everywhere – might suffer not just food poisoning but new variant CJD and other hidden diseases.

‘Andy, I’ve been thinking. Despite what I said earlier, this really can’t go on much longer,’ I said. ‘I won’t shout my mouth off at the meeting, don’t worry. But something has to be done. Soon.’

‘That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking.’

So why did neither of us have the sense to say so earlier?

‘Is the meeting with the bishop maundering on?’

‘You bet.’

‘Trouble is, what about Nick? I promised to collect him from the church.’

‘Go ahead. And would you warn Tim and Tang that if the meeting goes on any later, I may not make it out there at all?’

‘Fine. No problem.’

There wasn’t even any problem at St Jude’s. A child had gone missing down near Teignmouth, and the media had decamped. Every last one. Well, it was warmer nearer the coast, and food and drink were at hand. Not to mention loos. With luck they’d all forget to come back.

Samson and Delilah, bored perhaps, positively welcomed me – or perhaps it was the stale petit fours I carried that they wanted. Standing on the tower, I phoned Andy and in the briefest conversation – he was still in that meeting, poor man, and I was cold – I told him the situation. ‘I’m sure they can manage without you.’

‘In that case, tell them to expect me in the morning. Good night and God bless you all.’

It wasn’t my alarm clock waking me. It was the phone.

‘I’ve got you at last!’

‘At five in the bloody morning, Nigel!’

‘Is that what it is? I’m never any good at transposing time zones. Yes, I’m in New York. You should have come with me when I asked.’

‘Been a bit busy, Nigel.’

‘Which is why I phoned. And so many times.’

‘I’ve got three answering machines!’

‘I don’t do messages. Josie, do you know any more about that young man?’

‘No. His English is minimal, and he plays chess well. That’s all I really know.’

‘No idea of his contacts or family?’

‘He’s not asked to use a phone to make contact. Not even with his Embassy, come to think of it.’

‘In that case, you must turn him in. Before it’s too late.’

‘What?’ It was one thing to think it, another to hear it.

‘It’s almost certain he’s what I’ll delicately call an “economic migrant”. His family will have scraped together enough money for a downpayment on the journey from China to the UK. Until he has paid off not just the down payment but the rest of the sum involved, something in the £8000 range, he is effectively the gang’s possession. Escape can lead to one thing only – execution. And maybe the same for the people protecting him. Get him out now. Now, Josie. This instant.’ He cut the call before I could press him on the matter of the interpreter, and didn’t pick up when I tried to ring back.

I had my clothes on and had run down the corridor to bang on Nick’s door without realising I hadn’t done the stretches I need every morning to get me moving.

Nick was dressed and gunning his 4x4 before I even registered that he slept in the not unattractive nude. ‘A nod,’ he grunted as we swept on to the road, ‘is as good as a wink to a blind man.’ He put his headlights on main beam, as if to blast any oncoming vehicles out of his path.

The Midlands expression meaning one should
always take a hint sounded weird down here. I responded with another, as we took yet another blind corner at sixty. ‘Where’s the fire?’

I didn’t expect the answer I got. Nodding briefly at the hill ahead, topped by what looked like a beacon, he said, ‘At the church.’

It was far worse than we’d imagined. We’d summoned all the emergency services while we had a signal, without knowing exactly what we needed. The best scenario, I suppose, was that Tim or Tang had somehow tipped over the Calorgas stove, or that the ages old wiring, overloaded for too long, had finally given up.

The worst: that must have been what we got.

The church door was open, wide open. Inside, nothing but flames. I could see them, hear them. Smell burning.

Tim!

I know I paused to pull my coat over my hair. I knew I had to be careful. But I plunged in, head down.

And ended flat on my back, head ringing as I tried to pull myself up. Must try harder. So why couldn’t I—?

Nick, that was why.

‘Let me go!’

‘No. Come back.’

‘I’ve got to—’

‘No. And if I have to pull both arms out of your sockets I’ll stop you.’

So that was what the screaming pain in my shoulders was. ‘But—’