As she ended the call, Jude asked herself about one of the great mysteries of the catering business. What do chefs do in the afternoon? Her own experience couldn’t really provide an answer. When she had run a cafe, it had been a very ad hoc affair, with her doing most of the work and her various helpers mucking in as and when. Her life had not followed the rhythms of a proper restaurant chef. Given the fact that many of them worked late hours and were in early in the mornings to check the day’s orders and start their preparations, she assumed a lot of chefs dedicated their afternoons to sleeping. Maybe some used the time to conduct elaborate love lives, to pursue academic study, or to go fishing. Perhaps, considering how little all but the top celebrity chefs were paid, some of them spent their afternoons as minicab drivers. It was a question to which Jude had never before directed her attention.
She had arranged to meet Max in the same coffee shop where she had talked to Wendy Fullerton. As she waited, she wondered what was going on in the mind of the girl who was presumably at work in the building society opposite. Was Wendy managing to maintain her detachment from Nigel Ackford’s death, or were tears constantly threatening to break through the veneer of her make-up?
Jude had a feeling she probably needed to talk to Wendy Fullerton again. There were other questions to which Wendy might provide useful answers, answers which might provide direction for Jude’s investigation. At the moment it felt rudderless, drifting in a sea which contained too many suspects and too little information.
When Max Townley arrived, Jude realized how little she actually knew him. She had met him a few times in the hotel kitchen; she had seen him posturing and bitching, presenting his persona of the temperamental culinary genius; but she had no idea what he was like beneath the surface. If he hadn’t said that throw-away line about liking women, she would even have had doubts about his sexual orientation. A certain high campness was an essential ingredient of the image he presented to the world.
What became obvious as soon as he spoke that afternoon was how incredibly self-centred he was. Jude had wondered why he had so readily agreed to meet her, but it instantly became clear he thought her interest was in him rather than in Nigel Ackford, or indeed anything else in the world.
‘I assume you know why I was upset, why I hit the vodka that night.’
‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘I thought that was what you wanted to talk about.’ Jude looked at him curiously, as he explained. ‘The bad news I’d had that afternoon.’
‘I remember you mentioning bad news, but you didn’t tell me exactly what it was.’
‘Oh.’ Max looked flummoxed and slightly petulant. He was wearing grey jeans and a black Ted Baker T-shirt. He looked the smart off-duty professional who wouldn’t need to change if filming was suddenly required. ‘I’d heard that afternoon about the television pilot,’ he went on, as though Jude should be familiar with all the details.
‘The pilot you did as a TV chef?’ she pieced together.
‘Yes.’ His lower lip jutted in childish petulance, as he continued, ‘It was all set up. The producers told me it’d be a shoo-in. I’ll show you the video one day. The format’s a great idea – not just me cooking, but bringing in, like, these other unknown chefs, just people I’ve met at restaurants or pubs I’ve been to. So it’s different from what anyone else is doing . . . though of course it’s still me at the centre of the whole thing. No, you must see the video. I mean, it wasn’t done with full production values, but, you know, it gives a very good idea of how the format would work. I’m bloody good in it – got a bloody sight more personality than Gary Rhodes or Jamie Oliver.’ He sneered at the names. ‘And I’m a bloody sight better cook. Oh, no, I wasn’t the reason why the BBC turned the idea down.’
‘Then what was the reason?’
‘Went with the wrong production company, didn’t I? Should have taken my talents direct to the BBC, rather than going through an independent. OK, the company I went with have got a good track record of getting programmes made, but it’s all been with ITV.’
‘Ah. Of course,’ said Jude, as though this made everything clear.
‘So the Beeb’s going to be pretty resistant to anything they offer, isn’t it?’
‘I thought these days independent production companies sold across the channels.’
‘No way. Well, some of the big ones do. I’m sure, if your production company’s got a big hit and is flavour of the month, you can sell anything to anyone, but that’s not the general rule.’ Max had justified the reasons for his rejection, and he wasn’t going to let mere details like facts get in the way. ‘Some are always selling to ITV, some to the BBC. I should have realized, but I’m a bit naive when it comes to that kind of stuff. I mean, I haven’t got a media background like you.’
Like me? She let it pass.
‘But the trouble is, I’m really buggered now. Because I’ve been offered to the BBC, and been rejected – for the wrong reasons, but nobody’s going to know that – it’s like I can’t be offered there again.’
‘Couldn’t you be offered to ITV?’
He grimaced. ‘Not such a track record there with cookery programmes. They haven’t really developed their own line in celebrity chefs. I suppose Channel 4’s a possibility . . . unless you’ve got any other ideas?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. Presumably that’s why you wanted to meet.’
Jude couldn’t quite believe the direction the conversation was taking. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You said you’d been putting two and two together.’
‘Yes.’
‘And there were a couple of ideas you wanted to run by me.’
‘But I said ideas about the night Nigel Ackford died,’ Jude pointed out.
‘Yes. And that was the day I’d heard about being rejected by the BBC. I thought you had some ideas about my future as a celebrity chef.’
His self-centredness was quite astonishing. He seemed unaware of any world outside his own. At that moment Jude knew rumours of Suzy having an affair with Max must be nonsense. Suzy would never link herself to such a blinkered egotist.
‘Max,’ Jude said gently, ‘I didn’t ask to see you to talk about your career.’
‘Oh.’ The disappointment was undisguised. ‘But I thought you, with your media background . . .’
‘Let’s get this straight. I don’t have a media background.’
‘You said you and Suzy—’
‘I met Suzy in my late teens when we were both models. We stayed friends, but I very quickly gave up the catwalk and went into theatre.’
‘And television?’
‘I did a little bit of television, yes.’
‘Then you must still have useful contacts who could help me . . .’
She was surprised at the desperation of his naivety. She’d have expected him to be more streetwise. He’d rubbed shoulders with celebrities; he should have known better how the media world worked, and how short memories were there.
‘Max, I ceased to have any contact with the world of television in the early seventies. Any people I knew who might have had any influence in the medium are long retired, probably dead. I’m afraid I can’t help you at all in that way.’
His desolation was almost comical, and Jude realized once again how potent was the dream of television fame. Max nursed the fantasy of being taken up as a media darling, of having his face spread across the nation’s screens and magazines, of lucrative deals for supermarket ads, of recipe books piling up at the top of the best-sellers’ lists. That was his escape route, his way out of the daily grind of preparing unappreciated food for the guests at Hopwicke House. Television fame could get him out of his flat in Worthing, and into the glamorous metropolitan world which he reckoned was his rightful milieu. He could buy an even more expensive motorbike.