Dead Heat Part 14

'Can't you ask them?' she said.

'I did ask one of them yesterday,' I said. I had called George Kealy. 'But, as he said, it is difficult to know who else was invited to a party that you didn't go to.'

'That's true, I suppose,' she said. 'How about the injured people from the sponsor company? One of them might know who was meant to be there.'

'I've thought of that too,' I said. 'According to yesterday's local newspaper, two of them are still in intensive care and the others have already been flown home to America.'

I asked a pa.s.sing waiter for the bill and winced only a little when it arrived. The same amount would have fed a good-sized family at the Hay Net, and a small army at a burger bar, but neither would have given as much pleasure as that dinner with Caroline had given me.

When I suggested that I should see her home to Fulham, she insisted that she would be fine if I simply put her in a taxi. Reluctantly, I hailed a black cab and she climbed in alone.

'Can I see you again?' I asked through the open door.

'Sure,' she replied. 'You'll see me in court.'

'That's not exactly what I meant,' I said.

'Well, what do you mean, then?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'Another dinner? A trip to the races?' I felt like asking her to make a trip to my bed.

'What are you doing two weeks on Thursday?' she asked.

'Nothing,' I replied. Nothing, that is, except cooking sixty lunches and a hundred dinners at the Hay Net.

'I'm due to play a viola concerto with the orchestra at the Cadogan Hall. Come and listen.'

'I'd love to,' I said. 'Dinner after?'

'Lovely,' she said. She gave me a full-toothed smile with her broad mouth as the door closed and the taxi moved away. Suddenly she was gone, and I was left on the pavement feeling somewhat wretched and alone. Was I that desperate, I asked myself, that I would jump at the first girl that came along? Caroline was suing me for ten thousand pounds in damages and maybe I should have been more careful not to have told her so much. Perhaps she would use what I told her against me. But there had been a certain rapport between us, of that I was certain. Even on Friday evening, on the telephone, I was pretty sure that we would get on, and I think we had. I wasn't being desperate, I told myself, I was being sensible. But why., then, did I feel such an ache from not still being with her?

I hailed another taxi and reluctantly told the driver to take me to King's Cross station rather than to Tamworth Street in Fulham.

I caught the last train to Cambridge with less than a minute to spare. I sat and pondered what I had discussed with Caroline as the train pulled out of the station on the hour-and-ten-minute journey north-eastwards.

Somehow, putting my thoughts into words had made them sound rather more plausible. However, I still felt that the authorities would dismiss my theories as highly fanciful. But were they any more fanciful, I wondered, than thinking that a Middle East terror group had attempted an a.s.sa.s.sination of a foreign royal prince on Newmarket Heath?

I didn't really believe it but, if I was right in thinking that the dinner had been poisoned to prevent someone being blown up, then I could safely a.s.sume that the bomb had, in fact, hit its intended target. So what made Delafield Industries so special that someone wanted to blow them up on their big day out in England? Who would want to kill or maim Elizabeth Jennings or Brian and June Walters, and why? Or was it the likes of Rolf Schumann and MaryLou Fordham who were the real targets?

I knew Delafield Industries made tractors and combine harvesters, but what else did they do? I resolved to look them up on the Internet in the morning, along with Mr Schumann.

I lay back against the headrest and thought about more pleasant things like the evening two weeks on Thursday at the Cadogan Hall. In truth, I wasn't a great lover of cla.s.sical music, but I would listen to anything with huge pleasure if I was able to have dinner with Caroline afterwards. Even the thought of it made me smile, although it was more than fifteen whole days away and that seemed a very long time to have to wait to see her again. Maybe I could entice her to Newmarket somewhat sooner than that, like tomorrow.

The train pulled into Cambridge station at twenty-five minutes past one in the morning. As always on the late-night stopping service, I had to force myself to stay awake so that I didn't end up on the train at King's Lynn or wherever.

I had left my car in the Cambridge station car park, as was usual when I went to London for the evening. At five in the afternoon nearly all the s.p.a.ces had been full with commuters' cars, but now my little Golf stood alone at the far end of the car park awaiting my return. I had drunk no more than half a bottle of wine throughout the evening as well as having had a full meal with coffee. It had been nearly three hours since Caroline and I had finished the wine, and I reckoned that I was fine to drive and well under the limit.

I was slightly surprised to find my car wasn't locked. The driver's door was not fully shut, only half-latched. I couldn't actually remember leaving it like that, but, then, it wouldn't have been the first time, not by a long chalk. After so many years of misuse, the door needed a good slam to get it shut properly. The manager of my garage had often tried, at great expense, to sell me a new door seal, but I had always declined his offers on the grounds that the cost of the seal was only a fraction less than what the whole car was worth.

I had a good look around the car. I checked the tyres but they seemed all right. I got down on my hands and knees and looked underneath. Nothing. I even opened the bonnet and looked at the engine. I didn't really know what a bomb would look like so the chances of me spotting something amiss were slight, but there were no suspicious packages I could see attached to the car's electrics or anything. Perhaps I was becoming paranoid. It must be all this talk of conspiracies to poison and to bomb. However, my heart was thumping in my chest a little louder than normal when I turned the ignition key to start the engine.

It sprang to life, just as it should. I revved up for a few seconds but all sounded fine to me with no clunks or clangs. 1 wiggled the steering wheel but nothing untoward occurred. I drove forward a bit in the car park and then braked hard. The car stopped with a jolt, as was normal. I drove round in circles a couple of times in both directions pulling hard on the wheel. The vehicle behaved in exactly the manner expected. I was indeed paranoid I told myself, and I drove home, uneventfully, although I checked the brakes often and with some vigour on all the straight bits of road.

MaryLou Fordham's legs, or rather the lack of her legs, made further unwelcome visits to my subconscious during another disturbed night. Surely, I thought, my brain should be able to control these episodes. Surely it should realize as soon as the dream started was the right moment to wake me and put a stop to the misery. But, every time, the whole episode would play out and, every time, I would wake with terror in my heart and panic in my head. My dimming memory of MaryLou's face did nothing to lessen the horror evoked by her legless torso.

I tried to ignore the interruptions to my rest by simply turning over and trying to go back to sleep, telling myself to dream of happier things like cuddling up with Caroline, but I would remain annoyingly awake until the adrenalin level in my bloodstream dropped low enough to allow me to drift off, seemingly only for the dream to start again immediately. It was all very exhausting.

Wednesday, when it finally arrived, was one of those May mornings to savour, especially in the flatlands of East Anglia: cloudless blue skies and unparalleled visibility. From my bedroom window I could see the white-arched cantilevered roof of the Millennium Grandstand at the racecourse and, in the clear air and the suns.h.i.+ne, it appeared much larger and nearer than normal.

If only my life was as clear, I thought.

My mobile phone rang.

'h.e.l.lo,' I said, hoping it might be Caroline, which was stupid really as I hadn't even given her the number.

'Max. It's Suzanne Miller. I'm afraid I have some rather bad news. I've received a letter this morning from Forest Heath District Council indicating their intent to prosecute under section 7 of the Food Safety Act 1990.'

Oh b.u.g.g.e.r, I thought. If they were prosecuting the racecourse catering company, who had been only the overseer of the event, they were sure to prosecute the chef as well, i.e. me.

'Do they say exactly who they intend to prosecute?' I asked.

'Everyone,' she said, somewhat forlornly. 'There's letters for me individually and for the company. There's even a letter for you here at the racecourse, addressed to Mr Max Moreton, care of us.'

Oh double b.u.g.g.e.r. There was probably another letter at the Hay Net.

'What does your letter actually say?' I asked her.

She read it out to me. Not a single bit of good news to be found.

'My letter is probably identical to yours,' I said. 'I'll come and collect it if you like.'

'Yes, please do. Look, Max, all the food was your responsibility and I will have to say that. All I did was organize the venue. I'm not being convicted of serving food which was hazardous to health, not with my retirement coming up later this year. I'm not losing my pension over this.' She was in tears.

'Suzanne,' I said as calmingly as I could, 'I know that, you know that, Angela Milne from Cambridges.h.i.+re County Council knows that. If anyone is taking the fall for this it will be me, OK?'

'Yes, thanks,' she sniffed.

'But, Suzanne, I need more help from you. I need a fuller list of who was at the dinner and the names of as many of the staff as you can manage. I also need the names of those invited to the Delafield box on Guineas day. If you can get me all that, then I will happily say that you had nothing to do with the food at the dinner.'

'But I didn't have anything to do with it,' she wailed.

'I know that,' I said. 'And I will say so. But get me the lists.'

'I'll try,' she said.

'Try hard,' I said, and hung up.

I called the newsroom of the Cambridge Evening News Cambridge Evening News and asked for Ms Harding. and asked for Ms Harding.

'h.e.l.lo,' she said. 'Are you checking to see if I'll still be coming to dinner at your restaurant?'

'Partly,' I said. 'But also to tell you some news before you near it from somewhere else.'

'What news?' she said, her journalistic instincts coming firmly to the fore.

'I am to be prosecuted by the local authority for serving rood likely to be hazardous to health,' I said in as deadpan I manner as I could manage.

'Are you indeed?' she said. 'And do you have a quote for me?'

'Not one you could print without including a warning for young children,' I replied.

'Why are you telling me this?' she asked.

'I a.s.sumed that you would find out eventually and I thought it better to come clean,' I said.

'Like your kitchen,' she said.

'Thank you,' I said. 'I'll take that as a compliment, and put you down as on my side.'

'I wouldn't necessarily say that. My business is selling newspapers and I don't know whose side I am on until I see the way the wind is blowing.'

'That's outrageous,' I said. 'Don't you have any morals?'

'Personally? Yes,' she said. 'In my job? Maybe, but not at the expense of circulation. I can't afford that luxury.'

'I'll do a deal with you,' I said.

'What deal?' she replied quickly. 'I don't do deals.'

'I will keep you up-to-date with all the news I have about the poisoning prosecution, and you give me the right of reply to anything anyone says or does to me or the restaurant, including you.'

'That's not much of a deal for me,' she said.

'I'll throw in a guaranteed exclusive interview at the end of the proceedings,' I said. 'Take it or leave it.'

'OK,' she said, 'I'll take it.'

I told her about the letters that had arrived at the racecourse catering company offices. I also told her that I intended to mount a determined defence to the allegation.

'But people were made ill,' she said. 'You can't deny that.'

'No,' I said, 'I don't deny that people were ill. I was one of them. But I vehemently deny that I was responsible for making them ill.'

'Then who was?' she asked.

'I don't know,' I said. 'But it wasn't me.' I decided not to mention the kidney bean lectin. Not yet. Was that breaking my deal? No, I thought. It was just bending it a little. 'If I do find out who was responsible, I promise you I'll definitely tell you who it was.' I'd tell everyone.

'What am I meant to write in the meantime?' she pleaded.

'I would prefer it if you wrote nothing,' I said. 'But if you must, then write what you like. But I get the chance to reply.'

'OK,' she said, sounding a little unsure. Time, I thought, to change direction.

'Do you have any further news about the people injured in the bombing?' I asked. 'I read in your paper that most of the Americans have gone home but two of them are still here in intensive care.'

'Only one now,' she said. 'The other one died yesterday. From her burns.'

'Oh,' I said. 'How many is that now?'

'Nineteen,' she said.

'You don't happen to know what became of a Mr Rolf Schumann, do you? He's the chairman of Delafield Industries.'

'Hold on a minute,' she said. I could hear her asking someone else. 'Apparently, he was air-ambulanced home to America over the weekend, out of Stansted.' And I hadn't yet been paid for the Guineas lunch.

'Do you know what his injuries were?' I asked.

I could hear her again relaying the question. 'Head injuries,' she said. 'Seems he's lost his marbles.'

'I hope you don't write that in your paper,' I said.

'Good G.o.d no,' she said. 'He's suffering from mental distress.'

'How about the others who were injured, the non-Americans?' I asked.

She relayed the question again. 'There's a couple from the north who are still in hospital with spinal injuries or something. The others have all been discharged from Adden-brooke's, but we know of at least one who has been transferred to Roehampton.'

'Roehampton?' I said.

'Rehab centre,' she said. 'Artificial limbs.'

'Oh.' The images of missing arms and legs made another unwelcome visit to my consciousness.

'Look, I must go now,' said Ms Harding. 'I've got work to do.'

She hung up and I sat on the end of my bed wis.h.i.+ng that she hadn't stirred my memories of the carnage, memories that had started to fade, but which all too easily rose to the surface like a cork in a bucket of water.

I decided to cheer myself up by calling Caroline.

'h.e.l.lo,' she said. 'You've still got my number then.'

'You bet,' I said with a smile. 'I called to thank you for last night.'

'It should be me thanking you,' she said. 'I had a great time. '

'So did I. Any chance I could entice you up to Newmarket for dinner tonight or tomorrow?'