The Chinese Takeout (18 page)

With aperitifs, a particularly strong Australian red to go through the meal, and an enchanting Beaume de Venise to accompany the rhubarb fool, I reckoned liqueurs with their coffees would pretty well have the Martins eating out of my hand.

‘But surely you have a police family liaison officer supporting you!’ I said, settling myself at their table as they told me curtly they didn’t know what progress was being made in the case. ‘He or she should practically live with you.’

‘Not if they were not invited to do so,’ she was still sober enough to riposte, looking meaningfully at me.

‘Not literally: I didn’t mean that. But they should keep you abreast of every train of enquiry, every development, no matter how small. That’s what we pay our taxes for, after all. I mean, with your background you’d be entitled to discuss the
post-mortem
findings, wouldn’t you? As medics?’

‘Our expertise doesn’t lie in that area,’ he conceded.

‘Two doctors in the house: I bet you’ve had so many phone calls saying the baby’s on its way. A friend of mine – he had a PhD in nutrition – actually helped deliver twins, would you believe? Now – I’m sorry, I don’t know your first names: I’m Josie and you’re—?’

I became the holiday nightmare. But by the end of ten minutes I’d established that they were Thomas and Celine, they lived in what I deduced by their scathing references to the footballers who’d become near neighbours in a very chic area of Surrey, that Tim had been to one of the most expensive public schools (how on earth had he shed his accent?) and to Durham University, a terrible disappointment as they’d paid sufficient fees, one would have thought, to guarantee an Oxbridge place, and that he’d caught his religious bug during a tour of Durham Cathedral.

‘We hoped he’d grow out of it, but when he didn’t, we assumed that with our background and his brains he’d rise rapidly in the hierarchy.’ She sighed with regret.

‘Becoming a rector before you’re thirty can’t be seen as failure, surely,’ I said, wishing that Andy were here.

‘It’s hardly the eye of the storm, is it? You’re never going to hit the headlines…’ He realised what he was saying.

‘Except in these most tragic of circumstances,’ I concluded for him.

‘Mired in controversy,’ she added.

‘Martyrs tend to be, I suspect. Tim was a very brave, loving, kind, honourable young man,’ I declared. I’d said more than enough, and in any case another syllable would have had me in tears.

‘And foolhardy to the point of irresponsibility, according to DI – what was the woman’s name?’

‘Lawton, Thomas,’ Celine told her husband.

‘Were there any signs – when he was a boy – that he was going to be so altruistic?’ I asked, regretting my outburst and hoping my cooler language would obliterate it.

‘He did his work experience with some charity organisation,’ he said. ‘Despite the school finding something altogether more appropriate.’

How could they still be so formal, so distant? I wanted, in the emptying dining room, to shake them into some sort of profession of love. But regular customers wanted to say goodbye, newcomers needed a proprietor’s schmooze, and it was none of my business anyway. At least I now had the name of his school to go on, and his university, of course. To go on! What did I think I was doing? As I smiled and shook hands, and diverted praise to my wonderful chefs, I cursed for being so stupid. I might have their names, but I still had no idea what they did and what made them tick, money and conventionality apart.

Many, many years ago I’d been a reasonably adept pickpocket: that was how Tony, much too fly to let me get away with it, had come into my life. Was I nippy enough to dip her bag now? It hung enticingly open on the back of her chair.

I left it a good fifteen minutes before I knocked on their door.

‘Dr Martin? Celine? Might I have a word?’

There were a few seconds’ scuffling before I was admitted.

Stepping firmly inside, I smiled. ‘One of my staff has just handed this in.’ I produced her wallet, a very slim elegant affair with a designer label. ‘I wonder if you’d mind just checking it is yours and that the contents are intact.’

They were, of course. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t searched it thoroughly – every card a platinum one, of course, and, more interestingly, an ID for Danemans, a firm supplying most of the major food manufacturers in Europe, let alone the UK. It didn’t say what post she held, but I didn’t somehow see her as a minion scraping bits off chicken bones to make them into pâté.

Their laptop computer was still on, the screen saver in place. Nothing as ordinary as blue skies and a palm tree or two. A company logo. It was one I didn’t happen to recognise, but I’d soon find out who it belonged to. Did I feel sorry for them working when they might have felt too stunned to
pick up so much as a phone, or empathise with them? I always reckoned work was the best way of dealing with disagreeable feelings.

To my amazement, having indeed checked the wallet, she flipped out a twenty-pound note. ‘For whoever handed it in.’

I wasn’t about to make any confessions, was I?

‘Thank you. It’s unnecessary, but I’ll see she gets it.’ And with that I decided to embrace discretion and said my goodnights.

‘I’m just waiting to meet the bishop,’ Andy said, his phone voice as discreet as if he were running a betting syndicate in the baptistry. ‘But I thought you’d want to hear the latest news. Apparently the coroner doesn’t want to release the bodies for burial yet, and I’ve promised to be there when the police break the news to the parents.’

‘Tim’s
parents,’ I corrected him. ‘Some poor couple back in China will never know what happened to their son…’ I pushed away the pile of invoices I was working on to the far side of my desk.

‘Perhaps for the best? They’ll think he’s too busy enjoying himself to think of them?’

‘Or wonder why the snakeheads are beating up their other kids because Tang’s defaulted on his payments?’ I asked, as grim as Nick on a bad day. It was, after all, well before nine in the morning.

‘I’m afraid you could be right.’ There was a moment’s hesitation before he continued, ‘Anyway, we’re all meeting for lunch –
chez vous
if that’s OK.’

‘Which you want served where?’

‘The restaurant, I think. Because they’re not going to like Lawton’s news, and I think being with other people may protect her from their acid tongues.’

‘Protect? She strikes me as having a thick enough hide.’

‘I don’t think the devil himself has a hide so thick he’d risk the Martins’ ire. Cold, penetrating ire.’

‘Executive ire,’ I agreed, ‘honed on myriad minions. I Googled them,’ I explained. ‘She worked in the food processing industry – she’s a major player – and he’s in an international biochemistry firm. Which once belonged to his family, but then got floated on the stock market, resulting in a personal profit of millions. And he’s still in place as a director.’

‘So – ah, here’s Bishop Jonathan.’ He cut the call immediately.

I returned to the real world of paying bills. The sun shone so brightly into my office I had half a mind simply to take the map and drive round looking for the sites Andy had marked. Then I imagined the disappointment on his face if I deprived him of what he seemed to consider as a treat. And the anger on Nick’s if I did anything foolhardy. So I adjusted the blinds and got on with the day job.

Any plans I had to listen in to the Martins’ reaction to Lawton’s news were thwarted by an inrush of friendly but vocal elderly walkers and the Martins’ consequent decision to demand room service. Fuming that I only had myself to blame for offering such privacy when they’d first arrived, I ferried through to their quarters plates of ploughman’s and chilled water. But I returned the instant I could to my rightful role of making money rather than squandering it on people who neither needed nor deserved it.

And enjoyed myself, as usual, by being able to surprise folk. Two men were chuntering about their gluten-free diets, and I was able to provide them with wheat-free pizzas (OK, I’d bought the bases, but the toppings were my own, and the delight very much shared); then I reassured a woman that today’s soup was dairy-free.

‘Someday someone ought to set up a funny diet restaurant,’ I joked as I took her order. ‘They have vegetarian ones: why not lactose-free or
gluten-free
?’

‘So long as they’re
fun
,’ she responded. ‘Have you seen some of the recipe books? You don’t want to be done good to all the time. You just want to enjoy the wonderful food you once ate. What I want more than anything else is a cheese sandwich! And try getting that dairy-free.’

‘I will,’ I declared. And meant it.

‘What do you mean, they’ve left?’ I demanded, putting down the tray of coffee with extreme care.

‘Exactly what I said,’ DI Lawton said, her face an interesting mixture of amusement and embarrassment. ‘They were so furious that they couldn’t make arrangements for the funeral they simply packed their bags and went.’

It takes a lot to stun me. At very least, I was taken aback. I sat heavily on the sofa to catch my breath.

‘Without – without paying,’ she added, as if braced for my reaction.

Andy returned from the bathroom, eyes widening when he saw me. ‘Er—’

‘My fault,’ I sighed. ‘I did offer a freebie.’

Time for Lawton to stare. ‘Them? A freebie? But they’re loaded! Stinking!’

Suddenly I warmed to her.

‘Tim had them on record as school teachers,’ Andy explained. ‘So Josie most charitably—’

‘And stupidly!’ I inserted.

‘—offered them accommodation here. I don’t suppose they paid for last night’s meal either, did they?’

‘I didn’t ask them,’ I confessed. ‘Having made the offer, I felt honour bound to stick to it, even when I saw the car and the clothes. And even when I was on the receiving end of their attitude. All that good food, all that wonderful wine!’ I lamented. Then I perked up: I’d had an idea. ‘Tell you what, if they
go round behaving like that in their business as well as their private lives, they must have made a lot of enemies. I wonder if it was one of them who killed the boys. And if that was why the Martins were so deadpan. Damn it, they made Tang look positively effusive!’

‘I don’t follow,’ Lawton protested.

‘Nor me.’ Andy seated himself beside me.

‘Sorry. I’ll try to slow down. I wondered if someone had threatened them or Tim if they dealt badly again. Or to stop them dealing badly. I don’t know. It’s not so much left-brain as off the wall. I did print some stuff off about their companies,’ I admitted to Lawton. ‘Would you be interested?’

‘Might save one of my team a moment… I suppose,’ she continued, more slowly, ‘that they were who they said they were? Not just con artists?’

‘Just to check out the rectory and to blag a free stay on a country pub? I’m not knocking the idea
per se,
Inspector, but they’d want a good reason.’

She looked agreeably surprised by my venture into Latin. I didn’t tell her getting Latin GCSE was another of the ways Tony had passed his time. ‘I’ll risk life and career by getting them checked out,’ she said. ‘A car number would be a good start.’

‘In my register. It’s on the reception desk. I’ll nip and get it.’ I had a sudden vision of the page torn out, with Boy Scoutery needed to lift the details left on the page beneath, but no, it was all intact. I
fetched the printouts at the same time, passing them over with a sunny smile.

She phoned, waited and produced a rueful, wrinkle-full grin. ‘Unless they nicked the Martins’ car, they are who they say they are. But I will double check. What a pair! You know,’ she continued, ‘this coffee is wonderful.’

‘That isn’t what you were going to say,’ Andy observed.

She had the grace to blush. ‘I was going to say, how nice it is to have you cooperating with us, Mrs Welford. You seemed very hands off before.’

‘On the contrary, I wanted to take over the investigation myself. If I had, I might have got someone round with mug shots before now! My assault: remember? Not to mention the two little runts in the black BMW that tailed me.’

She muttered and made an irate note.

My facial expression certainly said something about getting a move on. I added, ‘And also I’d know everything you’ve done and everything you’ve found out.’

In the circumstances, it wasn’t surprising she sighed, ‘Shall we swap information, then? What have you got so far?’

‘Uh, uh. You talk while I drink this coffee. I give free lunches – no, I can’t possibly charge just you – you give free updates. Only what you’d have told the Martins had they stayed.’

She shrugged. ‘What we have is very little. The
throats of the geese were cut by a sharp implement we’ve not found yet, possibly a kitchen knife – I don’t suppose any have gone missing from here recently?’

‘If they had, I’d be on the phone before you could say – well, knife. Dangerous weapons: I keep them locked up.’

‘OK. The wounds suggest their assailant was
left-handed
. Pathologist stuff – don’t ask. The same is true of the two victims. They were definitely dead before the fire. We have reason to believe that this was caused deliberately: the fire service forensic team—’

‘In other words, that dog with the bootees?’

‘Exactly. But dogs’ noses are supposed to be good enough to sniff out cancer, aren’t they? They found traces of an accelerant. Petrol to you and me. We have no reason to believe that anyone wanted Father Martin killed, though we have not officially ruled this out.’ She cast a sideways glance at Andy.

‘I’m sure it was Inspector Lawton’s questions on this subject that offended the Martins and led to their unseemly departure,’ he said.

She nodded in acknowledgement. ‘But we are fairly sure, as I think you are, that it was Tang who was the target. The only question is, whose?’

‘Hang on.’ I raised a hand. ‘You’ve just said talking about Tim made the Martins bolt. Does this mean you’ve come round to my weird theory?’

She put down her cup and stared. ‘No. But I’ll
tell you what: I’m going to check. Just on the off chance. Now.’ She got to her feet.

‘I suppose you couldn’t somehow
impose
a family liaison officer on them? To see what he or she can pick up on them?’

‘That’s absolutely not why we offer a liaison officer!’

‘Of course not,’ I said, meek as if I absolutely believed her.

She snorted. ‘And, more to the point, I think they’ve turned one down once. However, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have another go. Right. I’ll be off. Mrs Welford—’

‘Josie,’ I corrected her expansively.

‘If you want to bill me for their lunches, I can run them through expenses.’

‘You’re on. I suppose you wouldn’t want to pick up the tab for the rest of their jolly? No? Well, it was worth a try,’ I said amicably. ‘While I write out the bill, you may want to look at some photos Andy and I took the other day. They’re meant for Nick, as part of his job, you understand, but you never know if they’ll ring any bells.’

Andy looked at me in disbelief. But he burrowed in his briefcase, at first with confidence, and then with increasing desperation. ‘They’ve gone! I know I put them there this morning. I know I did. I checked. Like you check the front door – twice, three times.’

‘Did you check while the Martins were there?’

‘Surely not. I can’t even remember their being on their own.’

I chimed in. ‘Where did you put the case when you left the bishop?’

‘In the back of my car. You know, never leave anything in the passenger seat, in case you get “taxed”. Years of working in an inner city,’ he explained.

The more the conversation circled, the more obvious it became that the Martins must have seized an opportunity to rifle it.

‘It’s something you might want your family liaison officer to talk about,’ I said. ‘Not an accusation, of course. After all, the briefcase could have tipped over, the bishop might have picked them up – there might be all sorts of innocent explanations. Anyway, why should they want aerial views of food-processing plants?’ As a Parthian shot I added, ‘And get your minion to fix a time for me to check those mug shots, eh?’

It wasn’t until she’d gone that I ‘found’ the packet of photos – down the side of the sofa on which I’d been sitting.

Andy goggled. ‘How on earth did that get there?’

I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Who knows?’ And then I felt Tony’s hand on my shoulder, telling me not to press my luck. And congratulating me on not losing my unpractised skills.

Andy gathered coffee cups, not meeting my eye. Then he started on the ploughman’s plates. ‘All this
food wasted. My mother told me to eat every scrap, but no one except me seems to do that, these days.’

I nodded. ‘Didn’t I read that we throw about forty per cent of our food away? That we’ve got the best fed rats in Europe?’ Had he twigged what I’d done? There was a real tension between us.

I waited while he opened the kitchen door. ‘Thanks.’

The kitchen was pristine, as if no one had ever so much as peeled an apple in it. Excellent. I could hardly let my standards slip below those of my staff, so I attended to all the scraps, and, the dishwashers already in action, washed up by hand. All the time Andy was mooning round, looking at lists and first aid notices and fire blankets without feigning a satisfactory interest in any of them.

‘I thought,’ he said at last, in the tone of a little boy late for his trip to the park, ‘we were going on a hunting expedition.’

‘So we are. But being meticulous in a restaurant kitchen isn’t a matter of choice, Andy, or responding to a psychological compulsion or whatever. It’s obeying the law. Heavens, I can’t believe I said that! Put it another way, it’s preventing people contracting all sorts of nasty food-poisoning bugs. I’ll be with you in five minutes. And I mean five. Promise.’

It was probably seven, but he didn’t complain. He’d used the interval while I changed to appropriate one of the round tables in the
restaurant and lay the photos of the possible sites on the map. ‘We’d have done better with pins and coloured string,’ he greeted me. ‘But this isn’t bad, considering the Martins are supposed to have nicked the photos. What’s going on, Josie? All that business when you’d put them down the sofa yourself?’

‘You didn’t see, did you? Must have lost my touch.’
Never apologise, never explain,
as the man said.

‘No, of course I didn’t. Or I’d have said something there and then. No, probably I wouldn’t. At least it galvanised Lawton into action. And she’d been very remiss not to follow up the ID business. But it – let’s say, it totally disconcerted me.’

‘And is that a good or a bad thing?’

He sighed heavily. ‘I really don’t know.’ And then he did surprise me. He looked me straight in the eye. ‘Do you?’

Are phones primed to ring at the wrong moment? Mine at least? I grimaced. ‘Sorry. But it says here it’s Bernie Downs. The galvanisation seems to have worked.’ I took the call. ‘Half an hour would be fine,’ I confirmed without thinking. ‘And by the way, tell your DI we’ve found the photos.’ I turned to Andy. ‘All the same, I’d rather we didn’t have this lot lying around in full view. Hey, what are you doing?’

‘Just putting the map reference on the back of each photo. See? Using the coordinates?’