A Taste of Death: The gripping new murder mystery that will keep you guessing. H.V. Coombs

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       CHAPTER EIGHT

       Tuesday, 12 January

      Jess, needless to say, was delighted by the previous night’s events.

      ‘I told you so,’ she crowed.

      I rolled my eyes and carried on kneading sourdough, or rather I weighed the sourdough starter (a gloopy natural yeast mixture that is mixed in with the flour to produce the carbon dioxide which inflates the dough). It had taken me ages to make; even though it was mainly just flour and water, it had kept going off until I used some recipe that involved adding some rhubarb in to get things kick-started. I had wasted kilos of flour. Only mulish stubbornness had kept me going. I’m a bit like that, once I start something I feel compelled to finish it.

      I put the flour, starter, sugar and salt into the mixer, fixed the dough-hook on and started it. The battered old machine (another thing that could do with replacing) clanked and whirred into life. It was deafeningly loud.

      Jess was pressing butter into small ramekins ready for service.

      ‘Did you enter those figures on that worksheet in Excel?’ she asked.

      ‘Errrm, not as such …’ I said evasively. I didn’t really understand Excel, and I certainly couldn’t touch type like Jess. She shook her head in exasperation. I changed the subject.

      ‘So,’ I asked, ‘she’s the ex-Mrs Whitfield?’

      ‘She is indeed.’ Jess squinted at the ramekin, wiped a bit of stray butter off with a napkin. ‘It was all very beefy at the time I believe.’ She inspected her work and started on another ramekin. ‘She was a stripper/pole dancer at Caramel Rosa – that’s a strip club outside Slough – before he whisked her off in his Ferrari and she blew his brains out – well, whatever mush passes for brains in that man’s skull – with her Tantric sex.’ She looked at me meaningfully.

      ‘Tantric sex!’ I said scornfully.

      Jess shrugged. ‘You have been warned … anyway and then he put a ring on her finger,’ she paused, ‘or so people say. Well, my mother, anyway.’

      She’s an unreliable witness, I thought, judiciously, what with Mrs Turner’s suspicions about Naomi and Jess’s father.

      ‘I cannot believe that Naomi was an ex-stripper,’ I stated firmly. I haven’t met many strippers, in fact, I’ve never met a stripper or seen one in action, but I found it hard to believe that Naomi had been one. She looked, well, demure, for want of a better word. But then again, it was equally hard to believe that she was married – had been married – to Dave Whitfield.

      Mind you, life is full of unlikely pairings.

      Scallops and black pudding, for one.

      She had struck me as sweet, and somehow vulnerable. These are appealing qualities. Unlike her ex.

      I moved on to inspecting the sandwich fillings. Every day before service you need to check that you have everything you need to make what’s on the menu. It’s called the mise en place list, MEP for short. Even in an outfit as small as mine, this can run to a hundred odd items, from the simple, grated cheese for example, to the complex, langue de chat biscuits or lemon mousse. This was a problem for me; in reality it was my biggest problem. I had too much to do and I couldn’t really afford to employ anyone to help me. Not another chef anyway. So I was still working eighteen-hour days, like in London.

      I noticed that I’d need to roast off some more topside of beef and make some more horseradish. I added them to the list and groaned mentally. More work.

      ‘And you beat him up!’ Her tone was admiring.

      ‘I didn’t beat him up, I defended myself with reasonable force,’ I said. I wasn’t keen, given what had happened in my past, to get any kind of reputation for violence. Food, yes, but nothing else.

      ‘I heard you beat him up.’ She had obviously made her mind up. ‘Beefy!’ Seemingly that was good, in this context.

      ‘It was a fracas,’ I added, ‘a minor fracas.’

      ‘He’s supposed to be really hard.’ She looked me up and down, dubiously. Obviously I was not the kind of man who had impressed her with my virile physique. But maybe I was better with my fists than a keyboard and bloody Excel with its incomprehensible formulas.

      ‘It’s sooo simple,’ she had fumed. ‘Look, sum equals … How can you not get it?’

      ‘Well,’ I put a little oil in a pan, waited until it was hot, and then started searing off the beef, ‘Tao in enlightenment seems obscure …’ I commented. As does bloody Excel.

      ‘Does it indeed?’ Jess looked far from convinced. ‘Is that another pearl from the Tao Te Ching?’

      ‘Yep.’ I winced as hot fat spattered me.

      ‘Beating up Whitfield wasn’t obscure,’ she commented, ‘far from it. It’s all over the village now. You’re famous.’

      ‘Hooray.’ I was far from enthusiastic. The shouting, the car alarm, СКАЧАТЬ