Dead Heat - Страница 3

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As a rule, I didn’t do “outside catering,” but Guineas weekend was different. For the past six years, it had been my major marketing opportunity of the year.

The clientele of my restaurant were predominantly people involved in the racing business. It was a world I knew well and thought I understood. My father had been a moderately successful steeplechase jockey, and then a much more successful racehorse trainer, until he was killed in a collision with a truck carrying bricks on his way to Liverpool for the Grand National when I was eighteen. I would have been with him if my mother hadn’t insisted that I stay at home and study for my A level exams. My elder half brother, Toby, ten years my senior, had literally taken over the reins of the training business, and was still making a living from it, albeit a meager one.

I had spent my childhood riding ponies and surrounded by horses, but I was never struck with Toby’s love of all things equine. As far as I was concerned, both ends of a horse were dangerous and the middle was uncomfortable. One end kicks and the other end bites. And I had never been able to understand why riding had to be done at such an early hour on cold, wet mornings, when most sane people would be fast asleep in a nice warm bed.

More than thirteen years now had passed since the fateful day when a policeman appeared at the front door of our house to inform my mother that what was left of my father’s Jaguar, with him still inside it, had been identified as belonging to a Mr. George Moreton, late of the parish of East Hendred.

I had worked hard for my A levels to please my mother and was accepted at Surrey University to study chemistry. But my life was changed forever, not only by the death of my father but by what should have been my gap year and turned out to be my gap life.

I never went to Surrey or to any other university. The plan had been that I would work for six months to earn enough to go traveling in the Far East for the next six months. So I went to work as a pots-and-pans washer-upper, beer-crate carrier and general dogsbody at a country pub/restaurant/hotel overlooking the river Thames in Oxfordshire that belonged to a widowed distant cousin of my mother’s. The normal designation for such an employee is kitchen porter, but this is such a derogatory term in catering circles that my mother’s cousin referred to me as the temporary assistant undermanager, which was more of a mouthful and less accurate. The word manager implies a level of responsibility. The only responsibility I was given was to rouse the chambermaid each morning to serve the early-morning teas to the guests in the seven double bedrooms. At first, I did this by banging on her bedroom door for five minutes until she reluctantly opened it. But after a couple of weeks the task became much easier, since I simply had to push her out of the single bed that we had started sharing.

However, working in a restaurant kitchen, even at the kitchen sink, sparked in me a passion for food and its presentation. Soon, I had left the washing up to others and I started an apprenticeship under the watchful eye of Marguerite, the fiery, foulmouthed head cook. She didn’t like the term chef. She had declared that she cooked and was therefore a cook.

When my six-month stint was up, I just stayed. By then, I had been installed as Marguerite’s assistant, and was making everything from the starters to the desserts. In the afternoons, while the other staff caught up on their sleep, I would experiment with flavors, spending most of my earnings on ingredients at Witney farmers’ market.

In the late spring, I wrote to Surrey University, politely asking if my enrollment could be deferred for yet another year. Fine, they said, but I think I already knew I wasn’t going back to life in laboratories and lecture halls. When, in late October of the following year, Marguerite swore once too often at my mother’s distant cousin and was fired, my course in life was set. Just four days short of my twenty-first birthday, I took over the kitchen, with relish, and set about the task of becoming the youngest chef ever to win a Michelin star.

For the next four years, the establishment thrived, my confidence growing at the same spectacular rate as the restaurant’s reputation. However, I was becoming acutely aware that my mother’s cousin’s bank balance was expanding rather more rapidly than my own. When I broached the subject, she accused me of being disloyal, and that was the beginning of the end. Shortly after, she sold out to a national small-hotel chain without telling me and I suddenly found I had a new boss who wanted to make changes in my kitchen. My mother’s cousin had also failed to tell the buyers that she had no contract with me, so I packed my bags and left.

While I decided what to do next, I went home and cooked dinner parties for my mother, who seemed somewhat surprised that I could, in spite of reading about my Michelin success in the newspapers. “But, darling,” she’d said, “I never believe what I read in the papers.”

It had been at one of the dinner parties that I was introduced to Mark Winsome. Mark was an entrepreneur in his thirties who had made a fortune in the cell phone business. I had joined the guests for coffee, and he was explaining that his problem was finding good opportunities to invest his money. I had jokingly said that he could invest in me, if he liked, by setting me up in my own restaurant. He didn’t laugh or even smile. “OK,” he’d said. “I’ll finance everything, and you have total control. We split the proceeds fifty-fifty.”

I had sat there with my mouth open. Only much later did I find out that he had badgered my mother for ages to organize the meeting between us so that he could make that offer, and I had fallen into the trap.

And so six years ago now, with Mark’s money, I had set up the Hay Net, a racing-themed restaurant on the outskirts of Newmarket. It hadn’t especially been my plan to go to Newmarket, but it was where I found the first appropriate property, and the closeness to racing’s headquarters was simply a bonus.

At first, business had been slow, but, with the attendees of the special dinners and lunches around the race meetings spreading the word, the restaurant was soon pretty full every night, with a need to book more than a week in advance for midweek and at least a month ahead for a Saturday night. The wife of one major trainer in the town even started paying me a retainer to have a table for six booked every Saturday of the year, except when they were away in Barbados in January. “Much easier to cancel than to book,” she’d said. But she rarely canceled, and often needed the table expanded to eight or ten.

My phone rang in my pocket.

“Hello,” I said.

“Max, you had better come down to the restaurant.” It was Carl. “Public Health has turned up.”

“She said she’d meet me at the racetrack,” I said.

“These two are men,” he replied.

“Tell them to come down here,” I said.

“I don’t think they will,” he said. “Apparently, someone has died, and these two are sealing the kitchen.”

2

S ealing the kitchen literally was what they were doing. By the time I arrived, there was tape over every window, and two men were fitting large hasps and padlocks to all the doors.

“You can’t do that,” I said.

“Just watch,” one of them replied while clipping a large brass padlock in place. “I’ve instructions to ensure that no one enters these premises until they have been examined and decontaminated.”

“Decontaminated?” I said. “From what?”

“No idea,” he said. “Just doing what I’m told.”

“When will this examination take place?” I asked him with a sinking feeling.

“Monday or Tuesday maybe,” he said. “Or Wednesday. Depends on how busy they are.”

“But this is a business,” I said. “How can I run a restaurant with the kitchen closed? I’ve got reservations for this evening.”

“Sorry, mate.” He didn’t sound very sorry. “Your business is now closed. You shouldn’t have killed someone.”

“Who died?” I asked him.

“No idea,” he said, clipping another padlock in place. “Right, that’s finished. Sign here, will you.” He held out a clipboard with some papers on it.

“What does it say?” I asked.

“It says that you agree to the closing of your kitchen, that you won’t attempt to gain entry-which, by the way, would be a criminal offense-that you agree to pay for my services and for the equipment used and that you will be responsible if anyone else gains entry or tries to do so without due authority from the county council or the Food Standards Agency.”

“And what if I refuse to sign?” I asked.

“Then I have to get an enforcement order and have a policeman on-site at all times, and, in the end, you will have to pay for that too. Either way, your kitchen remains closed. If you sign, then the inspection might be tomorrow, or on Monday. If you don’t, it won’t.”

“That’s blackmail.”

“Yup,” he said. “Usually works.” He smiled and offered me the clipboard again.

“Bastard,” I said. “Enjoy your work, do you?”

“Makes a change from the usual.”

“What is the usual?” I asked.

“Debt collecting,” he said.

He was a big man, both tall and broad. He wore black trousers, a white shirt with a thin black tie and white running shoes. His accomplice was dressed in the same manner-uniform for the job. It crossed my mind that all that was missing was a baseball bat to back up his threats. I could tell that I wasn’t going to be able appeal to his better nature. He clearly didn’t have one.

I signed the paper.