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

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СКАЧАТЬ waiting staff. I was amazed that the writing hadn’t been washed away. The marker pen for A boards was supposed to be weatherproof to a degree but it must have been undergoing a pretty severe test out there. I hadn’t been too confident that I would get any takers. There was not a lot of footfall in the village and the rain made people concentrate on the road rather than signs outside restaurants.

      ‘I’m Jessica, by the way, Jessica Turner, but people call me Jess.’

      ‘I’m Ben Hunter, chef proprietor.’ I smiled at how pompous that sounded. It was true, it was an accurate description of my job, but it sounded quite grandiose. You could be chef proprietor of a burger van when you think about it.

      Jessica Turner was about five feet five with dark curly hair, large brown eyes and an attractive, lively face. She was well spoken and was dressed down in a baggy jumper, jeans and Cuban-heeled boots. She looked intelligent and good-humoured.

      I explained my plans for the restaurant, she listened attentively and asked a couple of sensible questions.

      I asked Jess about herself. She was a second-year student at Warwick University studying Computer Science. I nodded. I was impressed. I could use Windows and e-mail but that was about it. She’d be able to help me with Excel in between serving customers. And maybe a website. That’d come in handy. I could write a menu, but I couldn’t write HTML. Did she have waitressing experience? Yes, she did.

      ‘What kind of food are you going to do?’ she asked.

      I made her a coffee and explained not only the menu, but its rationale. I had put together a simple menu with a few clever touches. It was a café menu, nothing too fancy or too expensive.

      So, on the menu as well as restaurant dishes there were old warhorses like caramelised red onion and steak baguette. There was the inescapable ploughman’s (we were in the country, there were fields), but made with good cheese, home-made pickled red cabbage and piccalilli. I had added plenty of things that would not go off – I couldn’t afford the luxury of waste – so there were quite a few cutesy preserves and frozen desserts, parfaits, semifreddo and sorbets that would last and not have to get binned if unsold. Occasionally I’d add mysterious touches, compressed pineapple, a potato foam on the soup, that kind of thing. Stuff like that was old hat in London but still novel out here. I was a one-man band, so it couldn’t be too adventurous; I didn’t have the luxury of time, but it was good, it was honest and it represented reasonable value for money.

      It was more like I was pitching for a job than she was, but I guess she was about the first person I’d had a chance to talk to about it.

      ‘That all sounds very interesting,’ she said. And the strange thing was, she sounded like she meant it.

      The job was hers.

      ‘I’m afraid it’s only minimum wage, but you get tips, which you share with the kitchen staff.’

      She nodded. ‘How many kitchen staff are there?’ she asked.

      ‘None, other than me. But I don’t get tips, since I’m the owner, so currently they’re all yours. But you will have to help with the washing up.’

      She smiled. ‘I can wash up, Ben.’

      She had a great smile. I think she was amused by the shoestring nature of the business. We agreed that she could start the following day.

      ‘So I guess I’d better take my sign down then,’ I said.

      She looked puzzled.

      ‘What sign?’

      ‘The A board.’

      ‘I didn’t see the A board sign.’ She looked confused, as did I.

      ‘Then how did you know I needed a waitress?’

      Her face cleared. ‘Oh, that. Well, someone told me last night.’

      ‘But I hadn’t put a sign up last night.’

      She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Oh, Ben, you’re not from here. This is a village, everybody knows everything about everyone else’s business. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it in the end.’

      We shook hands and I watched her back disappearing across the green as she trudged home through the rain.

      I thought about what she had said. I suppose I thought it was quite sweet that everyone knew what everyone else was doing without Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter or other social media.

      After all, it was a pleasant, friendly little village. What could go wrong?

       CHAPTER THREE

       Friday, 8 January

      The following day, twenty-four hours after DI Slattery’s visit and Jess’s hiring, there was the arson attack.

      Coincidentally fire, in the form of smoke, had gone into what I was cooking at the time. I had just made and served a customer called Dave Whitfield, local builder/property developer, a smoked venison sandwich on rye with a small garnish of curly endive, beetroot and cornichons.

      It would be fair to say that Whitfield was not shaping up to be one of my favourite customers.

      Jess walked in as Whitfield started being Whitfield. I had met him briefly a couple of days ago in the local pub. I hadn’t been overly impressed with his personality then, and my opinion of him was getting progressively lower. Jess gave me a sympathetic glance as she passed by, heading for the kitchen to change into her apron.

      ‘What’s that?’ He pointed aggressively at the garnish. Most things about Whitfield were aggressive, his mannerisms, his bald (aggressively so) shaved head, his tattoos, visible on his arms and flowing up his neck, lots of red and blue and green (bright, vivid colours, no pastels for Dave), his general demeanour.

      I explained. How it would enhance his eating experience, how the flavours were cunningly paired, how the vinegar that the small cucumber (which is what a cornichon is) was pickled in would cut through the richness of the meat. And didn’t it look good! He was having none of it.

      ‘Bollocks to that,’ he remarked judiciously. ‘No offence, mate, but when I want crap on my plate I’ll ask for it, OK?’

      Idiot, I thought. I gritted my teeth, shrugged and fetched a plate, and deftly scraped off the offending items with the blade of a knife. For a mad moment I would willingly have plunged it into him.

      Actually, I’d have changed instruments first.

      I was using the back of my long, broad-bladed chef’s knife to clean the plate. For stabbing Whitfield to death I’d have gone for a long, thin but sturdy boning knife. It would have slid in much more easily.

      As my old head chef used to say, ‘Always choose the right tool for the right job.’

      The question of what is right and not right, a perennial problem. They say that the customer is always right. Not in the world of good food. There, the customer СКАЧАТЬ