The Chinese Takeout (9 page)

There were times when the honest truth sounded like an excuse. ‘The dean needed to collect his car: I brought him over. When we were told we could
look into the church, we decided to do so.’ As I spoke I heard Tony’s exasperated words about stupid cons always returning to the scene of the crime and thus giving themselves away.

‘Really?’

Oh, in years to come, she’d regret that carefully practised cynical eyebrow lift, too.

‘Really.’ Flat as a pancake. ‘It’s a pity your budget couldn’t have run to round the clock protection.’

‘It’s a pity you didn’t make him turn himself in!’

I hadn’t the heart for any more jousting. ‘You’re right. It is. Tell me,’ I added, dropping my voice, ‘what’s your theory about the fire? Calorgas? Or something altogether more sinister?’

‘My theories are no more than that, and as such are police business, not yours. Sorry,’ she added perfunctorily. ‘Now, until the forensic teams have come up with evidence of what happened, I really would appreciate being allowed to get on with my work.’

There seemed to be something of a
non sequitur
there, but Tony had taught me never to expect logic from a police officer under pressure.

‘Of course,’ I smiled sweetly. ‘And hearing my theory would be a waste of your time.’

I have to hand it to her, she looked me straight in the eye as she said it. ‘Frankly, Mrs Welford, yes. It would.’

My first move was, on the face of it, silly. An extravagant waste of something I had so little of: time. OK, I wanted to be on the move, to hunt for unsafe chicken, but why I should take it into my head to drive all the way to a restaurant in Starcross, a village on the Exe estuary, when I had colleagues reporting dodgy dealing nearer to home, I don’t know. Well, I wanted to get out of the village, with all its gossip and sympathetic glances. And I justified going to Starcross by telling myself that Burnham-on- Sea, where I had another contact, was hardly next-door, and that the views across the Exe were nicer than those across the Severn, especially when the tide was out. In any case, Starcross has a residual charm that Burnham indisputably lacks.

I lunched at Michael Rousdon’s new restaurant, busily building its reputation on the freshest of local fish simply served. Which suited me: I didn’t fancy consuming any chicken that – though I hated even thinking ill of the dead – hands as filthy as Tang’s
when he’d tumbled into St Jude’s might have handled at some point in its progress from life to my plate.

‘Samphire!’ I echoed the roly-poly waitress offering the day’s special. ‘That doesn’t sound very local!’ Or, since I’d only met it on the pages of
King Lear
, where someone collected it on the cliffs of Dover, was I betraying appalling gastronomic ignorance?

‘Local,’ she insisted.

‘Cliffs?’ That would take me a few miles westward, to Dawlish and Teignmouth and beyond, all much beloved of railway photographers. I didn’t see Railtrack taking kindly to people abseiling on their property.

‘From the marshes.’

Ah, just along the road, then. ‘So it’s out there now? What does it look like, before it’s cooked?’

‘We don’t cook it. We pickle it. Like shallots or gherkins.’

‘So is it in season now?’

‘Pickled this lot last July. You put it in vinegar and that and then have to leave it.’

I nodded slowly, as if hesitating. Nothing would have stopped me trying it. ‘And with those prawns – you really ought to try it.’

I did. The combination was glorious. As to the source, there was no way that Michael Rousdon was going to let on.

‘You go and pick your own,’ he said, joining me
for a coffee. There was no trace of amusement in his face. ‘Make sure you don’t get cut off by the tide.’

‘Like those Morecambe cockle gatherers.’ Poor Chinese kids brought in by profit-seeking gangmasters. They might have been from the same village as Tang.

‘As to chicken, now, that’s an open book,’ he said.

I smiled the sort of smile I always smile for attractive young men with information I need. Perhaps some ghost of my former self replaces what’s really before them. Actually no: the thin former self that at Tony’s insistence always had to lurk inside the fat one. At least they always respond as if they see someone sexy, and who am I to correct them?

Michael leaned intimately forward, allowing his knee to touch mine. ‘I buy them from my cousin, up Seaton way. So when this guy came charging in offering me free-range chicken at mass-production price, I almost told him where to go. But then I thought, you know, for casseroles and pies, why not?’

I could have told him why not. If you were advertising organic or free-range produce, that was exactly what you should be selling. But I nodded understandingly and left my knee where it was. After all, it wasn’t every day that a
thirty-year
-old schmoozed up to me, especially one with as nice a body as Michael’s, which, despite his
hours in the kitchen, carried not an ounce of flab and a reassuring amount of muscle. He’d shaved his head and grown a neat beard, so he was on to a loser: I didn’t do beards, on account of the soreness afterwards. But he had a skull that looked good, and there was no need to buy everything in the shop window, not even when it was in the sale.

‘So did you do any sort of deal?’

He shrugged. ‘I bought a bit. A couple of kilos. And it was OK.’

‘Were you tempted to buy any more?’

‘I thought, better the devil you know. But other folk were: Kevin over in Exmouth. He says he’s no complaint.’

‘And, more to the point, has had no complaints?’ Lord, I was sounding like Andy Braithwaite.

‘Quite. So what’s your interest, Josie? I thought you were totally upmarket? Rich sods of Exeter paying through the nose.’

‘Like you, I always think about profit margins.’

‘I don’t buy that, Josie. Not you.’ A hand joined his knee.

‘If I told you the truth you wouldn’t believe it,’ I said. I tapped his menu. ‘Local produce: so were the chooks local?’

‘Never got an address out of him,’ he admitted.

‘The old mobile phone dodge?’

He nodded.

‘And I do like an address. And a sheaf of
paperwork. Pity. You wouldn’t have his number, would you?’

He stood up. ‘What is this?’

‘I told you, it’s a long and boring story. Which is mostly a wild theory of mine. I’ll tell you if there’s a happy ending.’

‘I’ll get you that number.’ He disappeared into his kitchen. I stood up, ready to follow.

He stepped straight in front of me, blocking the door. Shaking that elegant head, he snapped, ‘No you don’t. You’ll nick my pickled samphire.’

There were too many people guarding it, judging by the voices I could hear. ‘I don’t even know what it looks like!’ But I’d damned well find out. In its natural, not pickled state, too.

Robin and the team had finished the lunch session and were already deep into preparations for the evening sitting when I got back. Their efficiency posed a question: should I promote myself to manager pure and simple, leaving all the hard work to them and any other chef and dining room staff we might need, or continue to muck in, doing what I really enjoyed, cooking and talking to punters?

Most days I inclined to the latter; today, with a police car sneaking into the place beside mine, the former was in order. Of course I made a great show, for DI Lawton’s benefit, of being too busy to spare her more than a few minutes, but show it was, with Pix, Robin’s cousin, particularly playing a
wonderful supporting lead. Robin raised the eyebrow furthest from Lawton and got on with what he was doing.

The charade over, I led her up to my quarters, offering tea, which she accepted. When she found it was green – so much better at mopping free-radicals and thus preventing cancer, I’m told – she gave an ironic smile, but then every appearance of enjoying it.

‘Why did you side with Father Martin and not the church wardens?’ she asked, point blank.

I’d been asking myself that question, don’t think I hadn’t. But it didn’t seem to me that I need share with her the thought processes it had caused, many pretty uncomfortable, to do with Tony and underdogs and plum-in-mouth diction and all sorts of other stuff. I’d come up with one positive thing. So my smile was reasonably sincere when I said, ‘I think it might have been something to do with Father Martin’s sermon, which was about the Good Samaritan, and the concept of who was your neighbour.’ The fact that my mind had wandered was irrelevant. Let him go down as a better preacher than he was.

‘That sounds more like an answer for his bishop or whatever,’ she said, startling me. ‘In my experience, people do things like that for other reasons.’

‘OK. How about this? Once I’d disarmed him, I realised Tang was nothing but a poor thin
frightened boy, much the same as Father Martin, as it happens, and I suppose my protective instincts were aroused.’

‘It wasn’t personal animosity against the two church wardens?’

I spread my hands. ‘How could it be? I hardly know them.’ And what had who been saying?

‘But you knew Father Martin well enough to call him by his first name.’

‘We’d met at functions in Kings Duncombe. Occasionally he’d drink here. Lemonade shandy. Very rarely he’d eat in the bar. We were both grockles, which counts for something.’

‘I gather there was some hostility to him in the parish.’

‘Enough to burn him alive in his church? Hardly!’ She didn’t bite. More quietly I continued, ‘There was hostility to his predecessor, too. I suspect that if Christ himself paid a return visit people round here would find something to criticise in his sermons or his habit of leaving litter after picnics. Another incomer, you see.’

‘But Mr Malins and Mr Corbishley – why did you not know them?’

‘They weren’t part of village life. Well, check their addresses.’ Which reminded me, I’d never pursued the truth behind the village gossip, had I?

She nodded. ‘Where did you spend last night?’

‘Here.’

‘Witnesses?’

‘I live alone. My staff and my clients may have seen me buzzing around, but once my door is closed, that’s it.’

‘Mr Thomas?’

‘Occupies a room in the bed and breakfast area. The far side of my door.’

She looked almost relieved. Hello, hello, hello, as Dixon of Dock Green might have said: was she sniffing round Nick? Well, I’d certainly spruced him up, but I’d have thought him a tad old for Lawton.

‘Is this getting us anywhere, Detective Inspector? Because I can’t really believe you’d think I was in any way responsible for torching that church.’

She pounced on the word, perhaps, rather than on the concept, which, after all, I’d floated only a few moments before. ‘How do you know it was torched?’

‘Detective Constable Dog in Boots sniffing for petrol. We kept cooking and heating equipment away from what had become the living area. We had to.’ I explained about Tang’s initial desire to embrace the Calorgas heater and the consequent stench. ‘Tell you what, we filled a black sack with all Tang’s clothes in it. I told Tim to keep it. There may be something in there that could help you place his whereabouts and even identify him.’

‘Very circumspect, Mrs Welford.’

It was best not to challenge the cynicism. ‘If someone claims sanctuary it could imply they’ve committed a crime. There might be evidence on his
clothing. I wanted to make sure…’

Her frown was inches deep. ‘You wanted to make sure the police couldn’t tamper with any evidence on it. How trusting, Mrs Welford.’

‘Life has taught me never to trust anyone, not even a good defence lawyer. Anyway, the bag of clothing disappeared, and I can only assume Tim took it.’

‘Any idea where it might be now?’ At least she was showing more interest in the bag than in me.

‘The rectory, I assume. The garage, most likely. Given the stench.’

‘Any idea who the key-holder would be?’

‘None. Apart from his neighbours? But surely, you people will be entitled to access since the guy’s dead.’

She had the decency to look down. ‘We shall need DNA to identify him. Or dental records. There’s no question of anyone identifying him, Mrs Welford.’ This time she looked me straight in the eye. ‘Or Tang.’

The moment she’d gone, I phoned Andy Braithwaite.

Damned repetition again! ‘Keys to the rectory? Not that I know of. Surely a neighbour or the St Faith and St Lawrence church wardens…’ Light dawned; his voice hardened. ‘Why?’

My voice epitomised innocence, and why not? ‘I just fancy seeing what the police are going to see. To
be honest, when they’ve finished with it, it’ll need a spring-clean. I suspect Tim wasn’t the best of housekeepers, and I’d hate his parents to see it before it’s civilised. When are they coming, by the way?’

‘When they get back from Australia. Imagine the plane journey back, in those circumstances… But as for cleaning the rectory,’ he said slowly, ‘why don’t I put just that point to the police? If you’re kind enough to put his effects together for his parents, I’m sure they’d be grateful.’ There was a pause. I presume he was making a note. He’d assumed what was no doubt his professional voice. ‘Tell me, Josie – how are you bearing up?’

I gave a conventional answer, one I’d heard so often from other inmates’ wives – and, in effect, what I actually did all the time Tony and I were apart. ‘I’m keeping myself busy.’ Less lugubriously I added, ‘I’ve got a possible lead on the dodgy chicken as it happens.’ No need to mention the industrial espionage I’d undertaken. I returned pointedly to the previous subject. ‘Just let me know precisely when Tim’s parents are coming down.’

‘Of course.’ Another pause. ‘Josie, they may be letting me back into St Jude’s later this afternoon, maybe this evening. When they’ve…removed the bodies, and finished with it as a crime scene. Would you care…?’

He wasn’t speaking in the tone to which you could respond,
You bet I would!
So I murmured a
quiet assent, and prepared to cut the call. But there was one conversational nicety I’d ignored. ‘How are you coping? And with the bishop?’

‘He’s not best pleased, Josie. With me in particular. He feels I should have exercised more authority and compelled Tang—’

‘Tell you what, you leave him to me. I presume he’ll be coming over at some point?’

He chuckled. ‘With that threat hanging over him, I’m not sure he’ll dare.’

‘He will if I hold the post-funeral wake here. The villagers will want to say goodbye. And the guy conducting the service’ll have to show.’

‘That will be me.’

‘Sorry, Andy, and nothing personal, as you know – but anyone other than the bishop and the people round here would be insulted.’

‘I take your point. And will let you loose on the bishop if necessary. I – er – I’ll see you later, then, shall I?’

We danced round another few sentences of farewell, and at last I could get to work.

If I were going to go to St Jude’s with Andy, I couldn’t afford the luxury of traipsing round the countryside talking to colleagues about chicken. I had to resort to phone or email instead. This message would be more specific than last, and addressed only to people who’d responded with positive information before. Had anyone been sold
chicken by someone giving a mobile number only? I thought of giving the number Michael had given, but if I were going to be devious enough to sell ropey meat as good, I might well want to be as elusive as possible. This would be a busy time of day for those without a staff like mine: I couldn’t expect an immediate response.