Dead Heat Part 12

'You are surely not saying it was done on purpose,' she said.

'That is my inescapable conclusion,' I said.

'Sounds a bit fanciful to me,' said George.

'Maybe to you,' I said, 'but what else can I think? Just suppose, George, that you had a horse that ran like the wind on the gallops and then was more like a carthorse when you sent it out to run in a race, and it subsequently tested positive for dope. If you absolutely knew you hadn't personally given it any substance to slow it down, then you would conclude that someone else must have done so. The same here. I absolutely know I didn't put anything in that dinner to make people ill but tests have shown that there was a food-poisoning agent present, so someone else must have put it there. And that, I believe, could only have been done on purpose. And, I can a.s.sure you, I intend to find out who was responsible.'

I thought that I probably shouldn't be telling them quite so much, but they were supporting me when others were deserting, so maybe I owed them.

'Well, it did us a big favour anyway,' said Emma.

'How so?' I asked.

'We were invited to that lunch where the bomb went off,' she said. 'We didn't go only because we had both had such a bad night. How lucky was that! Although I must admit that on the Sat.u.r.day morning I was b.l.o.o.d.y angry with you.' She poked me in the chest with her finger. 'I had been so looking forward to that day at the Guineas. Anyway, it turned out to be a blessing in the end.' She smiled at me. 'So I forgive you.'

I smiled back, and put a hand on her arm. 'That's all right then,' I said. I always responded positively when flirted with by female customers who were old enough to be my mother. It was good for business.

'Come on, Emma,' said George impatiently. 'We must go. Peter and Tanya are waiting.' He waved his hand towards their guests who were standing patiently by the front door.

'All right, George,' she replied, irritated. 'I'm coming.' She stretched up her five-foot-three frame to my six feet for a kiss and, leaning forward, I duly obliged. 'Night, night,' she said. 'It's been a lovely evening.'

'Thank you for coming,' I said, meaning it.

'And you can poison us any time you like if it saves our lives.' She smiled.

'Thanks,' I said, trying to think of an appropriate response.

George was hopping from one foot to the other. 'Come on, my darling,' he said with exasperation. Emma duly obliged with a sigh. I watched through the window as the four of them got into and drove away in a new top-of-the-range Mercedes.

That was three people that I now knew of who should have been in the bombed box but weren't there because they had been made ill by the dinner. Poor old Neil Jennings had wished he had been there with Elizabeth but the Kealys certainly didn't. They were perversely grateful for having been poisoned. Perhaps this particular dark cloud had a silver lining after all.

The smaller number in the restaurant had tended to make the service somewhat quicker than usual and the last few diners departed just before eleven. On some Sat.u.r.day nights we could still be pouring ports and brandies after midnight and, once or twice, it had been after one in the morning before I had cajoled the stragglers out through the front door and into the night.

I sat at my desk in the office and silently hoped that the worst was over. If I could nip the lawsuit in the bud, and plead ignorance and forgiveness over the poisonous kidney beans, then maybe normality would return to the Hay Net, at least: for a few months until I was ready to announce a move to the big city. How wrong I could be.

I looked at my watch. Eleven fifteen. Time to go home, I thought. A nice early night for a change.

The telephone rang at my elbow.

'h.e.l.lo,' I said into the receiver. 'Hay Net restaurant.'

There was just silence at the other end.

'h.e.l.lo,' I said again. 'The Hay Net restaurant. Can I help you?'

'Why did you tell me you were selling double glazing?'

'Er.' I sat there, not knowing quite what to say.

'Well?' she said. 'I'm waiting.'

'I don't know why,' I mumbled.

'Are you a b.l.o.o.d.y idiot or something?'

Yes, I probably was. 'No,' I said. 'Can I please explain?'

'I'm waiting,' she said again.

'Not here, not now, not on the telephone,' I said. 'Perhaps we could meet?'

'How did you get my number?' she demanded.

'Directory enquiries,' I said.

'I'm ex-directory.'

'Oh. I don't remember,' I said. 'Maybe it was through the orchestra.'

'They only have my mobile number.'

I was getting into deeper water and quickly.

'Look,' I said, 'if we meet I will be able to explain everything. Perhaps I can give you dinner?'

'I'm not coming to Newmarket,' she said. 'I'm not giving you another b.l.o.o.d.y chance to poison me.'

'You choose the venue and I'll pay for the dinner. Anywhere vou like.'

There was a short pause as she thought.

'Gordon Ramsay,' she said.

'At Claridge's?' I asked.

'No, of course not,' she said. 'The Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Royal Hospital Road. I'm free every night this week until Friday.'

The Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, quite apart from being one of the most expensive restaurants in the world, was notoriously difficult to get into. Bookings were taken from 9 a.m., two calendar months in advance, and were often completely filled each day by ten thirty. I would have to try to pull strings with a fellow professional if I was to have any chance of getting a table in the coming week.

'I'll call you,' I said.

'Right, you do that.' Was it me, or did her tone imply that I wouldn't be able to fix it?

'Why aren't you in New York?' I asked, somewhat foolishly.

'Your b.l.o.o.d.y dinner did for that,' she said angrily. 'I couldn't make it to the airport last Sat.u.r.day and was replaced.'

'Oh,' I said.

'Oh indeed. I'd been looking forward to the New York trip for months and you b.l.o.o.d.y ruined it.'

'I'm sorry,' I said.

'Is that an admission of guilt?'

I could imagine Bernard Sims going crazy with me. 'No, of course not,' I said.

'My agent says I should take you to the b.l.o.o.d.y cleaners,' she said. 'He says that I should get ten thousand at least.'

I thought back to Mark's advice and reckoned that it might need more than a hundred quid to buy her off. 'I think that your agent is exaggerating,' I said.

'You think so?' she said. 'I've not just lost out on my pay for the tour, you know. There's no guarantee that I will be invited back into the orchestra when they get home. The directors can be very fickle. I've only just been promoted to princ.i.p.al viola and now this b.l.o.o.d.y happens.' She clearly liked to say 'b.l.o.o.d.y' a lot.

'Tell me,' I asked, trying to change the subject, 'what's the difference between a violin and a viola?'

'What?' she screamed down the phone. 'Didn't you hear me? I said that you might have cost me my b.l.o.o.d.y career.'

'I'm sure that's not really true,' I said. 'You should calm down. It's not good for your blood pressure.'

There was a pause. 'You're very annoying,' she said.

'So my brother always used to say,' I said.

'He was absolutely right.' She paused. 'Well?'

'Well what?' I asked.

'What are you going to do about it?'

'Nothing,' I said.

'Nothing! In that case, I'll see you in court.'

'OK,' I said. 'But do tell me, what is the difference?'

'Difference?'

'Between a violin and a viola?' I said.

'It's not a viola,' she said p.r.o.nouncing it as I had done with the i i as 'eye'. 'It's a viola.' She said it with the as 'eye'. 'It's a viola.' She said it with the i i short, as in 'tin' or 'sin'. short, as in 'tin' or 'sin'.

'So what is the difference?'

'A viola burns longer than a violin.'

'What?' I said.

'Oh, I'm sorry,' she laughed. 'It's an old joke among musicians. We viola players tend to be the b.u.t.t of all the worst orchestra jokes. We get used to it and we don't really care. I think everyone else is jealous.'

'So what is the difference between them?'

'They're different instruments.'

'I know that,' I said. 'But they look the same.'

'No, they don't,' she said. 'A viola is much bigger than a violin. That's like saying a guitar looks like a cello.'

'No, it's not. That's silly,' I retorted. 'A cello is played upright and a guitar is played horizontally for a start.'

'Ha!' she said smugly. 'Jimi Hendrix played his guitar upright most of the time.'

'Don't be pedantic,' I said, laughing. 'You know what 1 mean. Violins and violas are both played with a bow under the chin.'

'Or with the fingers,' she said. 'Pizzicato. And it's not so much under the chin as on the shoulder.'

'Does that mean you have your chin in the air?'

'It might,' she said. I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was smiling. I decided that it might be a good time to get out of this call before she started asking again how I knew her home telephone number and her occupation.

'I'll call you about dinner,' I said. 'It will probably be Tuesday.' It tended to be one of our least busy nights at the Hay Net, and often the night I would be away, either cooking elsewhere or at some other event.

'You really think you can get a table?' she said.

'Of course I can,' I replied. 'No problem.'

I hoped I was right. It might just save me ten grand.

CHAPTER 9.

We were seated at a table for two against the wall near the door. Let's face it, it wasn't the best table in the place, but Caroline was impressed nevertheless.

'I never thought you would manage to get a table,' she said when she arrived. 'To be honest, if I had thought you actually could, I wouldn't have suggested it in the first place. I'm not at all certain that I really want to be here.' And she had a scowl on her face to prove it.

I wasn't sure how to take that comment, but she had come and that was all that was important to me at the time. Over the past couple of days I had tried hard to recall the string quartet at the gala dinner. I knew that they had all worn long black dresses with their hair tied back in pony tails, but, try as I might, I couldn't remember their faces. However, when Caroline had walked through the front door of the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, I had known her straight away.

Securing a table had been hard, and many favours had been cashed and more still promised. 'Sorry,' they had said on the telephone, with a degree of amus.e.m.e.nt at my folly, 'tables are usually booked two months in advance.' They hadn't needed to add that less than two days was in 'absolutely no chance' territory.

However, I was not a celebrity chef, albeit a very minor one, for nothing. The world of cordon bleu cookery may be as compet.i.tive as any, with chefs happily dreaming of using their cooks' knives on the throats of their rivals, but, deep down, we knew that we needed them alive and well, not only to maintain the public interest in all things kitchen, but also to be the guests on each other's television shows.

Having sold my soul, if not exactly to the devil then to the keeper of his kitchen, and having made promises that may be difficult, if not impossible, to honour, I was rewarded with an offer of 'a small extra table fitted in to the already full dining room at nine o'clock. But it might be close to the door.'

'That's great,' I had said. On the pavement outside would have been fine by me.