“OK, I’ll see you in a bit, then, but I’m going home first.”
“Right,” he said again. I closed the car door and he drove off.
I stood there and looked over the hedge towards the grandstand. All was quiet, save for a policeman standing guard and the flapping of some blue-and-white tape stretched across behind the grandstands, presumably to prevent people straying in and contaminating what had to be seen as a crime scene. I suspected there was more activity taking place, out of sight, around the front, and also inside the building, where the forensic teams would probably be still searching for bomb fragments.
I limped my way over to the policeman and told him about the car in the parking lot and that it had belonged to one of the victims, Louisa Whitworth. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and promised to tell the appropriate person to get it returned to her family. I suspected it was the last thing on their minds at the moment.
I thought of asking him if there was any more news about what had happened, but he wouldn’t have known, and, even if he had, he wouldn’t have told me. So I waved a good-bye to him, went back to my car and drove away, leaving the sad little green Mini alone on the grass.
I WENT HOME and swallowed a couple of the painkillers to dull the ache in my knee. I had been walking and standing on it for too long and it was protesting. I lay on the sofa for a while, to give the painkillers time to work, then I drove to the local garage to fill the car with gas and to buy the local newspaper. The roads were very quiet, and Barbara, the middle-aged woman in the garage who processed my credit card, assured me that the whole town was in shock. She told me at considerable length that she had been to the town supermarket and never seen it so empty. And those people who were there, she said, were talking in hushed tones, as if talking loudly would disturb the dead.
I entered my PIN in her machine and escaped back to my car, where I sat and read the reports of the bombing in the Cambridge Evening News, whose front page carried a photo of the blue tarpaulin-covered grandstand under the headline MURDER AT THE RACES. Even though the police had named only fourteen of the eighteen dead, the paper listed them all, and also gave the names of many of those seriously injured. The paper obviously had good contacts at the local hospitals and with the police.
I looked through the lists. Eight of the dead were Americans from Delafield Industries, including MaryLou Fordham. Elizabeth Jennings was there among the local residents known to have died, along with Louisa and four others, including another couple who were regular customers at the Hay Net. The remaining four victims included three I knew. There was a racehorse trainer and his wife who had lived in Lambourn, as well as a successful Irish businessman who had invested much of his wealth in high-speed Thoroughbreds. The seriously injured but alive list included Rolf Schumann, the Delafield chairman, as well as half a dozen or so others I recognized from the racing world. Along with their names, the paper had printed photographs of some of the non-American dead and injured, especially those with local racing connections.
What a dreadful waste, I thought. These were nice people who worked hard and didn’t deserve to be mutilated and killed by some unseen bomber who, it seemed, may have been motivated by political fervor far removed from and alien to the close-knit community involved in the Sport of Kings. Sure, there was rivalry in racing. Sometimes that rivalry, and the will to win, may spill over into skulduggery and a bending of the rules, and the law, but murder and maiming of innocents was what happened elsewhere in the world, not in our cozy Suffolk town on its biggest racing day of the year. Would it, I wondered, ever be the same again?
I glanced through the rest of the paper to see if there was any more information that I had missed. On page five, in inch-high bold type, another headline ran: RACING FOLK POISONED BY THE HAY NET-ONE DEAD.
Oh shit!
The story beneath was not totally accurate and had probably been pulled together with a considerable amount of guesswork, but it was close enough to the truth to be damaging. It claimed that two hundred and fifty racing guests at a dinner had been poisoned by the Hay Net kitchen, with celebrity chef Max Moreton at the controls. It further claimed that one person had died and fifteen others hospitalized. The Hay Net, it stated, had been closed for decontamination. The tone of the piece was distinctly unpleasant.
Alongside the article was a photograph of my roadside restaurant sign with its large KEEP OUT-CLOSED FOR DECONTAMINATION sticker prominently displayed at an angle across the all too clearly recognizable THE HAY NET RESTAURANT beneath.
Oh shit! I thought again. That really won’t be great for business.
5
T rue to her word, Angela Milne moved mountains to get an inspection of my kitchen done late on Monday afternoon. The inspector, a small man in a suit with dark-rimmed glasses, arrived at about a quarter to five and stood in the parking lot, putting on a white coat and a white mesh trilby hat.
“Hello,” he said as I went out to meet him, “my name is Ward. James Ward.” He held out his hand and I shook it. I half expected him to inspect his palm to see if I had left some dirty scrap behind, but he didn’t.
“Max Moreton,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “I know. I’ve seen you on the telly.”
He smiled. Things might be looking up.
“Now,” he said, “where’s this kitchen?”
I waved a hand, and we crunched across the gravel towards the back door.
“Have you got the keys?” I asked.
“What keys?” he said.
Things were not looking up that much.
“The keys for the padlocks,” I said. “The two men who came and put this lot on last Saturday said the inspector, when he came, would have the keys.”
“Sorry,” he said. “No one told me.”
I bet my nonfriends, the bailiffs, didn’t bother to tell anyone. They probably tossed the keys into the river Cam.
“What do you suggest we do?” asked Mr. Ward.
“Do you have a crowbar?” I asked.
“No, but I have a tire iron in the car.”
It took several attempts, but the clasp finally parted from the doorframe with a splintering crack. No doubt it would be me that would have to pay for the damage as well as for the keyless lock.
The inspection was very thorough, with James Ward literally looking into every nook and cranny. He ran his fingers along the top of the exhaust hoods, looked for residue in the industrial dishwasher drains, and even poked a Q-Tip swab into the tiny gap between the built-in fryer and the worktop. It was clean. I knew it was clean. I left that gap there on purpose specifically for health inspectors to find and test. I had it cleaned out every day in case there was an unannounced visit.
“Fine,” he said at length. “Nice and clean all round. Of course, I will have these swabs tested tomorrow for bacteria.” He indicated the swabs he had placed in small plastic bags not just from the gap by the fryer, but also those wiped on the worktops, the chopping boards, the sinks and anywhere else he thought appropriate.
“But the kitchen is now open?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” he said. “I spoke with Angela Milne, and she was happy that you be reopened as long as I was happy with the kitchen, and I am, provided I don’t get any surprises from these.” He held up the swabs. “And I don’t think there will be. I’ve inspected lots of kitchens and this is one of the cleanest I’ve seen.”
I was glad. I had always been insistent on having a clean kitchen and not just to pass inspections. There was a note printed on every menu that invited my clients to visit the kitchen, if they so wished. Many did, and all my regulars had been in there at some time or another, and one individual in particular always made a point of taking his guests in to see me, or Carl, and Gary. I had toyed with the idea of putting a chef’s table in a corner of the kitchen to allow diners to watch us at work. But as my limited star had risen over the years, I did tend to be elsewhere for an increasing number of the service periods in any given week. Also, I knew that even now the customers were apt to complain and be disappointed if I wasn’t actually there in the flesh, so I decided it was probably less troublesome overall to keep the clientele eating in the dining room only.