A Taste of Death: The gripping new murder mystery that will keep you guessing

In all truth there probably wasn’t an enormous difference, no unbridgeable gulf between me and Whitfield. I think that most bald men in middle-age generally look quite similar. Rather like babies tend to look the same to me. If I were a bank robber, when asked for a description, witnesses would shrug, ‘Bald bloke, forties.’ That more or less describes half of the country’s males of a certain age.

If you were charitably minded you would say that I was powerfully built and had a certain physical presence. When I was young I’d been quite good-looking, model like, and although no longer in the head-turning business, I still got offers. But looks are, by their nature, ephemeral. Where I like to think I differed from the similarly shaped Whitfield, was a trace of warm sympathy behind my eyes and a general cheeriness that was undeniably lacking in the builder. Even the staunchest of Whitfield’s supporters would have to admit he was deficient in the geniality stakes.

Jess handed Chris the cappuccino, and smiled warmly at him. Perhaps he’d repaired her uncle’s conservatory after Whitfield’s ravages.

I offered him a biscuit from a batch I had made earlier. ‘Try one of these: langues de chat, I made them this morning …’ He accepted the biscuit, ate it suspiciously. Then his face brightened.

‘That’s good,’ he conceded, ‘can I have another one?’

‘So what’s happening with Shitfield’s tower, Chris?’ asked Jess, handing him another three biscuits. I winced internally; they’d taken ages to make, they were supposed to be a treat, not wolfed down by a hungry builder. They weren’t Hobnobs.

‘Burning nicely,’ said Chris. He smiled maliciously.

‘So did it happen by accident?’ asked Jess.

‘I doubt it.’ Chris sounded quite satisfied by that. He added, ‘Chinese Andy did the electrics, he doesn’t make mistakes. In my opinion, someone obviously doesn’t like Dave.’

‘Well, that narrows it down,’ said Jess sarcastically.

Chris stood up, unfolding himself from the stool. He was very tall.

‘So what are your plans for this place?’ he asked me.

‘I have a long and detailed business plan,’ I said. ‘I’ve got global ambitions. In the meantime, I shall be introducing a limited range of hot food as specials …’

‘To supplement the sandwiches,’ added Jess like a loyal chorus.

‘Well, I’ll tell the wife,’ he said, ‘maybe come in for lunch. Nice to have met you …’

‘Ben,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Well, Ken, I’ll go and see how the Blazing Inferno’s getting on.’

We watched him striding across the green, his long legs carrying him speedily towards the fire. I wanted to bring the subject of the langues de chat up but I didn’t want to offend Jess by telling her off. She had become invaluable.

The previous day after service, she had seen me with pen and paper, a ruler and a copy of the menu.

‘Working out costings …’ I said.

She pointed at the PC in the cubbyhole I call my office. ‘Why not use Excel?’

‘I don’t know how it works …’

She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Come on, Grandad, let’s see if we can drag ourselves into the twenty-first century. Do you know what a spreadsheet is?’ A deep sigh as I shook my head.

‘I know the word, but not what it actually means,’ I said.

‘Well, we’ll make a start today,’ said Jess. ‘Perhaps we’ll leave coding and website design for a later date, eh?’

I didn’t want to upset her. I had seen her writing up some menus for me, watching her fingers flying over the keyboard, effortlessly touch typing. If the price of Jess included staying up late to make biscuits, so be it.

‘I won’t hand out your biscuits to just anyone,’ she said, looking up at me. I nearly jumped out of my skin, had she added telepathy to her other qualifications? (Waitress experience in the Marriott, Birmingham, IT skills, local girl and former county swimming team [freestyle] and formerly Bucks junior girls eight-hundred-metre finalist.)

‘Chris eats out a lot, and he’s very influential.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘I wonder if he did it.’ She spoke thoughtfully. ‘Whitfield stitched him up a while ago, owes him thousands. You don’t mess with Chris. He’s certainly capable of burning Whitfield’s pillar to the ground.’

I shrugged. It was nothing to do with me.

Famous last words.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_e171199b-2cb6-53c7-97d3-1ce19d79e99f)

Friday, 8 January, early afternoon (#ulink_e171199b-2cb6-53c7-97d3-1ce19d79e99f)

I thought of the burning pillar on the other side of the green. It was oddly disquieting. The contrast between the chocolate box, olde English village green and the heat, the smoke, the flames, the surprising noise that fire produces (a malignant crackling), had been unpleasantly intimidating. I put it out of my mind. Whitfield’s troubles were nothing to do with me.

Nothing to do with me at all.

I moved my mind back to work.

Jess had gone and I closed the café for the day. I was cleaning down the kitchen, the radio, tuned to the local station, Beech Tree FM, ‘the station for the Chilterns’, playing cheesy old pop songs. As I mopped the floor, I thought about how things were going.

‘… ooops up side your head, oops up side your head …’ I sang along, I felt very carefree for once.

The end of day two of trading, day two of my new life as chef/proprietor of the Old Forge Café. All in all I was not dissatisfied with the start of my business. As well as the pleasing footfall through the front door, I had also received a couple of enquiries from women who had eaten there and were interested in my outside catering services. If I could get that side of things working it would help tide me over when things were quiet mid-week and during the rest of the winter. When spring came, I reasoned, I’d start to get the walkers, people who would actually want to venture into the countryside.

‘… aaaand now it’s Kajagoogoo …’ announced Beech Tree FM, the station where the clock was perpetually frozen between 1970 and the mid-Eighties. It drove Jess mad. No Beyoncé, no Kanye, no Drake, no Ed Sheeran, no R & B, just really old pop. In fairness to Jess, it would drive most people beserk.

I hummed along with ‘Too Shy’ whilst reflecting that outside catering is a pain. You have to work out of someone else’s kitchen, you’re out of your comfort zone, you have to bring everything with you, you lack the amenities of a professional kitchen, such as large ovens, hot-plate cupboards, space to work.

Another problem that would only be recognised by professionals, is that for a chef your kitchen is your kingdom. You are in charge, nobody can set foot in it without your say so. In someone else’s house a kitchen is a public space, people wander in and out, jostle you, run taps, open fridge doors, poke around, move things; behaviour that would not be tolerated for a second in a professional kitchen. You have to keep biting your lip, trying not to scream, ‘WILL YOU GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN!’

When, of course, it isn’t actually your kitchen.

The plus side is, if you get it right, it’s easy money and you get to show your wares, your ability, to a wide audience. It’s a great advert if it all works well.

I turned the radio off – bye Limahl – put my mop away, looked over the gleaming floor and work surfaces. I took my apron off and headed up the staircase that was in the corner of the kitchen between the small partitioned area (about the size of a broom cupboard) that was my office and the swing door that led into the restaurant.

Upstairs was the staff accommodation, a bathroom, two bedrooms and a living room. I pulled off my chef’s whites and did some basic yoga exercises, down dog, sun salutation and a bit of Tai Chi to relax my tired muscles. I like yoga, so long as it’s done slowly and thoughtfully. I can’t stand the idea of Hot Yoga, I get hot enough in a kitchen without wanting to do it for fun.

I rarely lift weights these days. There was a time, when I was younger, that I wanted to pile on muscle mass. Luckily, basic laziness stopped me: by now it would be turning to flab, and it has to be said that the biggest guys at my gym were unfeasibly big and, surprise, surprise, suspiciously prone to the alleged side effects of steroids. They had terrible skin and often gave vent to hysterical bad tempers. ’Roid rage. Maybe it was just that having bad skin had left them naturally tetchy and the weird over-sized muscles were a displacement therapy for their spots, but I doubt it.

The biggest and most aggressive, a South African, got a job as an instructor. He gave me a review once of my workout programme. I say review, abuse was nearer the mark. He was particularly unimpressed with my bench-press.

He stood there, looming above me, the Colossus of Cape Town, anger etched on to his face. ‘That’s pathetic,’ (‘pithitic’ is how he pronounced it) he practically screamed at me, radiating contempt and anger, as I pushed the barbell up and down. I don’t think he fully understood that part of his job lay in encouraging customers, rather than insulting them and glaring at them with red-eyed hatred. He should have got a job as a pub landlord if that’s what he wanted to do.