Murder on the Green: A gripping crime mystery full of cooking and murder
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Andrea shook my proffered hand with little enthusiasm. He was tall and thin with a downturned mouth like a shark, which made him look both bad-tempered and dangerous at the same time. He was very pallid in an unhealthy way, like he had never seen the light of day. Mind you, we all were.
I was then introduced to Tom, his development chef, a quiet, tough-looking guy in his mid-thirties with a hipster beard.
‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Likewise.’
Tom’s grip was vice-like, powerful, as we shook hands. He was wearing an Iron Man hoody to proclaim how fit he was. I was suitably impressed. I couldn’t swim three miles, cycle a hundred-odd kilometres and then run a marathon, much less one after another. He ran his eyes over me in a considered, evaluating way.
‘This is Gregor, my pastry chef.’ I didn’t think Gregor was Iron Man material. He was medium height, slightly overweight, as befits a pastry chef, and worried-looking, with an incipient double chin and a lot of black stubble. He was one of those men who I guessed had to shave twice a day. He nodded at me, unimpressed.
I had two more chefs to meet, two more chief suspects. I quickly added adjectives to the faces to help me remember them: Andrea was Grumpy; Tom, Thoughtful; Gregor, Unhappy.
There was Octavia, who wasn’t Italian but, judging by her voice, simply very, very upper-class. She was the intern. She was tall, blonde, and I’d guess in her early twenties. She smiled at me with glacial contempt.
She went on my mental list as Arrogant.
And lastly there was Murdo, a young Scottish chef, also tall but gangly as opposed to the willowy Octavia. He had a mop of curly ginger hair, some of it skywards-pointing in a poorly assembled top-knot – he reminded me of an overgrown schoolboy. He was the only one who showed any enthusiasm at all to be introduced to me.
His jacket was partially unbuttoned. There was a black T-shirt with red lettering – ‘Cannibal Corpse,’ it said. I hoped that was the name of some rock band, and not the name of a restaurant he had worked in.
Well, if it was a band, it probably wouldn’t get much airplay on Beech Tree FM. Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ had been playing on my journey over. I guessed that Cannibal Corpse probably would not be covering it.
‘Hi,’ he said and blushed furiously.
Bashful.
Well, those were the prime suspects, and bringing up the rear were the two others in the McCleish entourage. There was his agent/manager, Charlotte, a short, buxom woman with thick glasses and unruly brown hair tied back in a bun. Wisps of it stuck out here and there in an untidy way. She smiled politely and gave a nervous laugh as she shook my hand. She looked kind, intelligent and motherly.
‘And this is my assistant, Douglas,’ Charlotte said.
By way of contrast, Douglas was skinny and angular with horn-rimmed glasses, a bald spot clearly visible under thinning hair, and a prominent Adam’s apple. He was one of those people whose looks never seem to change throughout their lives. He was probably in his early twenties but looked about forty in a paradoxically ageless way. He had probably looked forty when he was at school and he would probably look forty when he was drawing his pension.
He appeared nervous, like a skittish horse. He practically twitched as she introduced him to me. I smiled sympathetically, as I reflected that it must have been tough for him to deal with Justin’s kitchen team. Chefs are poorly paid, grossly overworked and, in general, have an awful life. But what they do have, and this has evolved like a protective carapace, is an aggressive sense of their own importance.
Douglas, the non-chef, would have been viewed with borderline contempt. He was certainly unhappy with his lot.
I filed the two non-chefs in my mind as Motherly and Twitchy.
The chefs were all wearing whites. Douglas wore an ill-judged short-sleeved shirt that accentuated his thin arms, and unfortunate blue polyester slacks. He looked like his mum had dressed him.
Andrea, as if he had been reading my thoughts, turned his head to look at Douglas and gave him a hostile stare. Douglas caught his glance and twitched uncomfortably. I saw his knuckles whiten as they tightened around a clipboard he was holding. There was obviously little love lost between the two of them.
The chefs looked at me with suspicion. Whether or not they liked each other, they were used to working as a unit. It would take a while before they accepted me and relaxed long enough to talk freely. Alcohol would probably help in the euphoria after service had finished.
But he was right. They wouldn’t suspect me of anything. And crucially, neither would the blackmailer. All I had to do was pretend to be thick. I could imagine Jess saying that it was a role I had been born to play.
I carried on with my expert detective evaluation of possible extortionists. Someone here was blackmailing Justin.
I looked at Justin’s team and said winningly, ‘I’m sure it’ll be an education working with all of you.’ I took my phone out. ‘Can I have a picture, to savour the moment I met a star of the present—’ I nodded at Justin ‘—and stars of the future!’
How glib was that, I thought. I’m Mister Suave. Nobody looked impressed or flattered but they all obligingly shuffled into position, as I held the phone up and checked all of my suspects were in the frame.
Click.
I put my phone away.
The door opened and a tall figure stood framed in it – another one of Justin’s team?
‘Justin! I heard you were all here …’ He looked like he had been auditioning for a part in The Three Musketeers, and sounded like it too. His accent was very French and he had shoulder-length hair, a large nose and a Van Dyke-style combination of moustache and goatee.
‘Jean-Claude!’ Justin put his arms around him and they kissed on both cheeks. Andrea’s face brightened. He walked up to Jean-Claude (d’Artagnan, I thought to myself) and kissed him as well. I managed to restrain myself. They started speaking to each other in French.
‘Ben,’ said Justin eventually, ‘this is Jean-Claude Touraine. He used to work for us at the old restaurant in Marylebone before … well, before he moved on.’
We shook hands. Jean-Claude smiled politely, while Justin grinned around at his team.
‘And now if you will excuse me, I need to speak to Ben. You’ll all get the chance to get to know him better once we start work in the pop-up kitchen over at the Earl’s. I’m very excited and I know you are too.’
They were so well disciplined they managed to conceal their excitement well. Andrea even managed a yawn.
As Justin took me by the arm and led me away to his study, I took a last look back at his brigade and my new workmates. I wondered which one of them, d’Artagnan, Arrogant, Thoughtful, Grumpy, Bashful, Unhappy, Motherly or Twitchy, was the Judas figure who was blackmailing Justin.
They all looked plausible as suspects to me.
Chapter Seven
‘Ma dai! But who is this … Justin, you should have told me that the new man was coming this morning …’
It was Aurora who came into the study just after us.
‘Carissima,’ said Justin. They kissed each other’s cheeks and they briefly spoke together in machine-gun-like Italian that I couldn’t begin to understand. Aurora moved over to me and shook my hand.
She was wearing a strappy white cropped T-shirt that showed off her body, and tight low-cut hipster jeans to reveal her infamous tattoo of the swan rising from the very dark blue fabric, its head and beak coiling around her pierced navel. The T-shirt had the word Liar emblazoned on it.
The overall effect of meeting Aurora was like being hit by a truckload of sensuality.
‘It’s Ben, isn’t it?’
There was certainly no danger of me forgetting her name.
‘It certainly is, Aurora,’ I said warmly. She smiled warmly back at me and kissed me on the cheek. It was a gesture designed to put me at my ease. I remember thinking what a kind person she was.
On her Instagram account she came across as overtly sexual, flirting with the camera, provocative poses, artfully disarranged clothing. The reality was mitigated by a very heartfelt welcome and a feeling that she was a very pleasant person.
Our meeting before at my restaurant had been brief, as I’d spent most of the time with Justin.
‘And how is Jess?’ she asked.
How sweet of her to remember, I thought. ‘She’s fine,’ I said.
‘You are a lucky man to have such a talented girl to work for you, as lovely as she is intelligent.’ She smiled brightly at me.
‘Thank you.’ I turned my attention away from her and looked around the study. The Old Vicarage had been extensively renovated twenty years ago and it still bore the hallmarks of its previous owner, the shady businessman. I was pleased to see that the study was furnished in true old-fashioned gangster style from the Seventies. In the fire sale of the house, Justin had obviously bought everything, contents included, and hadn’t got round to changing anything.
I inventoried a white shag carpet, a large black desk with those clicky metallic balls that bang into each other in an annoying, metronomic way, black leather sofas and a glass-and-chrome coffee table. There were even a couple of enormous nude portraits of women done in coloured pastels on a black background. I know very little about art, but they were awful. At least, I assumed this kitsch tat wasn’t Justin’s doing – it would have been retro gone mad.
As it was, in his ripped jeans, shoulder-length hair and ornate jewellery, he clashed horribly with his own furniture. He had a latte in front of him and had pulled a Diet Coke for me from a small fridge under the desk.
Justin leaned forward and lifted one of the silver metal balls and released it. The two of us watched in fascination as it banged into the others and they swayed metronomically back and forth.
‘Tasteful, eh,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘I’ve got an intercom too.’ He pointed at a teak box with a silver mesh speaker and three switches. He clicked one and spoke into it, ‘Send him in, Miss Jones.’
Another grin.
He said, ‘There’s a speaker on the desk out there in the hall so a secretary can sit there and do whatever you tell her to do. It’s weird how things used to work.’
I nodded, as we both contemplated the past. The days of secretaries and intercoms. The last time I had seen an intercom was when I was a kid at school outside the headmaster’s office. Longer ago than I cared to think about.
I caught a sudden glimpse of myself in an enormous mirror (with a chrome frame). With my shaved head, glasses (I didn’t need them particularly, but I’d got them with a two-for-one offer when I’d bought some expensive reading glasses, which I do need – the tortoiseshell frames make me look more intelligent, which is easier than becoming more intelligent), over-tight shirt and hipster-style trousers and shoes, I fitted in uncomfortably well with the décor.
I looked like a gangster pimp from the Sixties.
Back to the present.
‘What do you make of Justin’s team, Ben?’ asked Aurora taking a seat next to Justin behind the big desk.
She leaned over and kissed him affectionately. Justin ruffled her hair. I felt a pang of envy – I had nobody’s hair to ruffle. The best I could muster was to pat Francis on the back. I shifted in my chair. It was a leather Chesterfield and fiendishly uncomfortable.
‘One big, happy family,’ I said.
Aurora laughed, scornfully, and sat upright. She pushed her hair back imperiously. ‘Wait until you get to know them,’ she said. ‘Gregor’s a moody depressive, Murdo’s heavily into drugs, Octavia’s man-mad, Tom’s violent and Andrea harasses the waitresses.’
She had my attention with the last comment. ‘What does Andrea do?’
‘Nothing really,’ said Justin quickly.
‘He pesters waitresses,’ said Aurora. ‘We’ve had to warn him about it, now Jean-Claude, well, come si dice …’
Justin was looking at me imploringly. He made an equivocal gesture with his hand.
‘I’ve told him to be on his best behaviour at your place, Ben. There won’t be any trouble.’
I sat upright and narrowed my eyes. ‘I hope not, Justin, for his sake. No one harasses my staff,’ I warned. I was thinking of Jess.
‘Nobody will; now, if we can move on …?’
I tore my mind away from potential unpleasant scenarios involving Andrea.
‘And what are you being blackmailed about?’ I asked, settling back in my leather seat.
He looked uncomfortable, shifting his weight in his Charles and Ray Eames-style executive chair.
‘I’d rather not say.’
‘You can tell him, Justin,’ said Aurora. ‘I think Ben is very trustworthy.’ She beamed at me and tugged his hair playfully. ‘Justin is naturally very suspicious. I think it’s his Scottish blood coming out.’
Justin examined his fingertips.
‘It’s very delicate.’
I’m sure it is, I thought to myself. It would be, if blackmail was involved.
‘Well, I think you should tell me,’ I said.
‘Why should I do that?’ Justin still looked uncomfortable, and he folded his arms across his body defensively. ‘What difference does it make? I just want you to find out who’s doing it, so we can make them stop.’
I sighed. ‘Because I need to know the hold he or she has over you, so I can better neutralise the risk.’
‘OK,’ he said, sulkily, ‘they’ve got evidence of plagiarism.’
‘Tell me more about it.’ I tried on an encouraging smile like Oprah Winfrey when she wants someone famous to explain whatever crime or indiscretion they’ve been up to. Plagiarism? What was he on about?
‘OK,’ he sighed. ‘Here’s what happened then.’ He looked at Aurora.
‘Bravissimo!’ she said, standing up and clapping her hands. ‘Mio caro, Ben needs to know.’
‘Fine, but it’s against my better judgement.’
And Justin began to tell me his life story.
Chapter Eight
‘I’m thirty-eight,’ Justin said, and pulled a face. ‘Terrible isn’t it! And I started working in a kitchen when I was fourteen – that’s twenty-four years, my God, nearly a quarter of a century.’
He stood up and walked restlessly around the large study. He gazed up at one of the lurid nudes, and continued speaking.
‘My mama was from Le Marche, by way of Scotland, but I was born in England, where I lived, so my Italian was quite poor as a child.’
I nodded. That explained his slightly odd pronunciation, mainly Italian but with certain definitive London vowel sounds.
‘We moved back to Italy where her family were originally from, back in the day. I was twelve. My parents were looking after holiday homes for British owners. I got a part-time job when I was at school as a pot-washer, my first kitchen job – you don’t really need much language. And then I got promoted. You can understand that.’
‘Indeed I can,’ I said. That’s more or less how Francis had ended up being a chef for me. The big difference being that he had no talent and Justin was a genius.
‘Now,’ said Justin, tearing his gaze away from the painting and looking at me, ‘the thing was, the restaurant that I was working in was amazingly good, though I didn’t know it at the time. Who knows anything when they’re a teenager? Besides, I had other things to worry about …’
He rested a hand on Aurora’s shoulder and she patted it then kissed it.
‘And I rose through the ranks. Well, it was a small place, thirty covers max, and great regional cooking. Fifteen years later when I got my place in London, I re-created her menu. She was dead by then and I stole all her recipes.’
He paused and stared into space. ‘I mean all of them,’ he confessed. ‘That first TV series, that was all her stuff, and I passed it off as my own. My signature dishes, the zabaglione, the saltimbocca with a twist, they’re hers. And my first cookery book …’ He shook his head sadly, got up, went to the safe in the corner, (of course, there had to be a safe, here in the lair) and spun the dial this way and that. It clicked open and he reached inside and returned with a paperback book.
I examined it. Mia Cucina by Alessandra Bonini. Its spine was cracked, the pages were yellowed, the typeface looked ridiculously old-fashioned and the cover was faded. It was hard to believe that behind all the glossy footage on TV of Justin making gnocchi, twirling the crank handle of the pasta machine as he turned pasta dough into lasagne, chopping onions with amazing speed (he was incredible with a knife and I should know; I was good but he was awesome), lay this long-forgotten book.
I flipped through the pages, which were heavily annotated in biro and pencil. There was hardly any white margin left.
‘That’s her book. Long since out of print, the publisher no longer exists.’ He pulled a face. ‘If you look at Justin does Italy, it’s pretty much the same book. I just translated it. More or less the same recipes in the same order.’
‘So that’s it? You nicked a load of recipes? It’s hardly the crime of the century.’
It didn’t seem a blackmailable offence. Not in cooking. Everything is based on everything else. Even molecular gastronomy techniques, foams, gels et cetera are not exactly copyright. Nothing is new under the sun.
‘It is when your name is Justin McCleish … and, just for your information, stealing published recipes is a very big deal indeed.’ It was Charlotte, his agent, who had slipped into the room unnoticed by me. ‘For one thing, aside from being sued, no reputable publisher would ever touch him again with a bargepole.’
‘Oh,’ I said, suitably chastened. I felt I had not made a very good impression on her. I made a mental note to work harder on my intellectual side. Next time I would bring a book, show her that I could read. A difficult book. Jacques Derrida, he’d do. He was a dead French intellectual. God knows what theories or philosophy he had propounded. Jess would doubtless fill in the blanks.
‘Justin isn’t just a chef …’ she said.
‘Isn’t he?’ I was confused momentarily.
‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘he’s also a brand. And the brand is integrity.’
I looked across at Justin who seemed a lot more relaxed now he had Charlotte to do his speaking for him.
‘Most of the people who watch Justin are never going to cook what he’s showing them.’
‘They’re not?’ I felt somehow disappointed.
‘No, they like what it represents. These are people who haven’t got the time or the inclination to cook, but they do like Justin – he’s Mr Nice Guy.’ Charlotte warmed to her theme, her eyes flashing behind the thick lenses of her glasses.
‘If they thought he had stolen some old woman’s heritage, it would be terrible for Justin, a real game changer and not in a good way.’
I began to see what she meant, and it complicated things a lot. I frowned.
‘So, discretion is in order?’
‘Absolutely. I, we, do not want the police involved, nor the media.’
It seemed a bit of a tall order.
‘So tell me the mechanics of the blackmail,’ I said.
Charlotte looked at Justin and he handed me a piece of paper. ‘These are the instructions for paying the money.’
I examined it with interest. I had never seen a blackmail note before and I imagined something luridly old-fashioned, like words cut out of newspapers and magazines then stuck to a sheet of paper. How hopelessly out of date that was.
Of course, it was nothing like that at all. It was prosaically boring.
It was a piece of A4, the words printed in some nondescript font, telling Justin that he should take four thousand in cash in a plain brown envelope, go to the EROS Shop in Vantry’s Alley off Greek Street in Soho and ask to speak to Greg. He was to hand it over saying, ‘This is for Mick,’ and then leave.
‘How many times have you done this?’ I asked.
‘Three,’ said Justin. I sipped my Diet Coke and we looked at each other, evaluating.
‘In three months,’ he added.
‘That’s a thousand pounds a week,’ I said helpfully, for once managing a quick calculation. Justin was getting his money’s worth already.
‘It is indeed,’ he said before draining his latte.
‘Twelve thousand pounds!’ I marvelled.
‘You can certainly do maths,’ said Justin, drily.
Charlotte leaned forward.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘this coming Monday is payday. I want you to follow Justin to the sex shop and then you can hang around outside and find out who “Mick” is.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘But, Charlotte, that’s assuming a lot of things. What if “Mick” is a third party, a go-between? I wouldn’t recognise him. What if he doesn’t even exist and the sex shop guy takes the money home and then gives it …’
She cut me off with an impatient gesture.
‘If any of these scenarios happen, we’ll come up with an alternative plan. I’ll deal with what-ifs. You’re not being paid to think – that’s my job.’
I wasn’t being paid to think, or cook.
‘Tomorrow we try this.’ Charlotte leaned forward and tapped my knee for emphasis. ‘I think you probably saw the blackmailer this morning when you met the team. It’s almost certainly why the payment is made on a Monday, which is not a working day for Team McCleish. I want a name; it’s your job to get it.’
‘And then what?’ I asked.
‘I’m coming to that,’ she said.
I looked at Justin, who shrugged.
‘All of this is Charlotte’s idea,’ he said, unhappily. She shook her head sadly, in a kind of motherly way, as though Justin was a teenager going through an awkward time and she was stepping up to the plate because he couldn’t or wouldn’t.
She looked at me through her unflattering glasses, and her eyes were hard.
‘There’s a lot riding on this. As I said earlier, if word of this gets out it could be quite a big news story. Top chef steals recipes. And would the estate of Alessandra Bonini be entitled to compensation? It’s something we could well do without.’
‘And you want me to find out the identity of the blackmailer …’
‘And reason with him,’ said Charlotte. ‘Reason with him a lot, to the extent that he might need medical attention and then point out that should he persist, complain or make a pest of himself in any way, shape or form, further reasoning of a more robust nature will take place.’ She paused and tapped the table for emphasis.
‘That’s why I want you to stake out the shop, why I haven’t done it myself,’ she said.
‘To be honest,’ I said truthfully, ‘I’m not keen on the idea.’
Not only had I felt I had renounced violence, which was a moral decision, I had already done time for GBH and was not keen on a course of action that might lead to me being banged up again. Charlotte frowned – it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
‘What if it was Octavia?’ I pointed out. ‘I could hardly beat her up could I?’
Charlotte rolled her eyes. ‘Tell you what,’ she said, ‘call me when whoever it is shows up and I’ll give you further instructions. Would that help?’
‘I’m still not sure …’
Charlotte looked at me in a measured way; then she said something that made me change my mind.
‘You can have three months of blackmail payments to stop this nonsense. What do you say?’
‘Twelve thousand pounds?’ I said.
‘He’s good at maths,’ Justin contributed.
That would buy me six months of chef help. It was a deal-clincher in my view.
I stood up quickly. ‘I’ve always loved Soho,’ I said. I was suddenly very decisive. It was amazing how money could concentrate the mind. ‘And in prison I learned to be very persuasive. I’ll be in touch.’
‘I knew you were a reasonable man,’ said Charlotte. We shook hands.
‘Would you like to stay and have lunch with us?’ offered Justin.