‘Slow day at the office?’ I asked.
I’d like to say he looked at me with friendliness bordering on compassion. Instead it was a look in which dislike mingled with suspicion and more than a pinch of sarcasm. I felt that somehow I was failing to connect with DI Slattery.
I went back to my sausage musings. Mrs Cope would have shifted the sausage. That sounds like a dreadful double entendre, but what I meant was, bangers and mash, sausage casserole, sausage sandwiches, sausage and onion gravy. Or continental bockwurst mit kartoffeln salat. Home-made sausage rolls … I suddenly thought, my God, why am I mocking her? All of that sounds good, maybe not the casserole. I made a mental note.
‘Investigate sausage possibilities.’
But that was for later, right now I had the police to deal with. I waited for Slattery and his not so merry men to break the silence.
Outside the windows of the tearooms the village of Hampden Green carried on its peaceful, unremarkable existence. It continued to rain.
I looked at the trio of cops. Three pairs of eyes stared back at me with naked suspicion. I stopped looking at them and looked out of the bow-fronted window behind them instead. A kind of horrible silence ensued. Periodically one of the uniforms’ radios would squawk into life. He would ignore it.
Through the glass I could see most of the village. The green was deserted.
Slattery was the first to move. He stood up and pointed at the common.
‘Well, let’s just say that this is very much my patch—’ his gesture encompassed the whole village ‘—and I’m a tidy man and I like to keep things clean. Now, you’re new around here,’ he said, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, ‘so I would like to officially extend the hand of welcome, but if anyone should swing by offering prime pork goods at knockdown prices I’d be upset if you failed to inform me.’ He looked menacingly at me, so did his colleagues. ‘In fact, I’d be very upset.’
This was nothing to do with a break-in. This was DI Slattery showing me who was boss, who ran Hampden Green. Satisfied with himself, he took his wallet out and handed me his card.
‘I’ll see you around,’ he said, as he stood up to leave
It was a threat rather than a promise.
I wondered what I’d done to upset him.
I guess I wasn’t local.
My next visitor was altogether more charming than the forces of law and order. It was only by chance that I actually heard her. I was making a coffee and walnut cake and had to go back into the restaurant to make an espresso that I was going to use for flavouring. It was then that I saw her through the glass of the front door. She waved at me to get my attention. I went over and let her in.
‘Hello,’ I said, ‘can I help you?’
I was talking to a girl who I guessed was in her late teens, early twenties, who had been trying without success to ring the bell by the restaurant door. I say ‘guessed’ because she was mainly concealed by a large umbrella that the heavy rain was bouncing off. It was ten o’clock in the morning but almost dark under the cloudy, black sky.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’ve been ringing the bell …’
Another thing that didn’t work, thank you, Mrs Cope, I thought. I’ll add it to the list.
‘It’s temperamental,’ I lied, which sounded better somehow than ‘broken’. ‘Broken’ was unprofessional, defeatist.
‘I’ve come about the job.’
‘Do come in,’ I said, ushering her inside. I took the umbrella from her and her coat, sodden and heavy from the hideous weather.
‘Have a seat …’
We both sat down and weighed each other up. I had put an A board outside saying that I needed waiting staff. I was amazed that the writing hadn’t been washed away. The marker pen for A boards was supposed to be weatherproof to a degree but it must have been undergoing a pretty severe test out there. I hadn’t been too confident that I would get any takers. There was not a lot of footfall in the village and the rain made people concentrate on the road rather than signs outside restaurants.
‘I’m Jessica, by the way, Jessica Turner, but people call me Jess.’
‘I’m Ben Hunter, chef proprietor.’ I smiled at how pompous that sounded. It was true, it was an accurate description of my job, but it sounded quite grandiose. You could be chef proprietor of a burger van when you think about it.
Jessica Turner was about five feet five with dark curly hair, large brown eyes and an attractive, lively face. She was well spoken and was dressed down in a baggy jumper, jeans and Cuban-heeled boots. She looked intelligent and good-humoured.
I explained my plans for the restaurant, she listened attentively and asked a couple of sensible questions.
I asked Jess about herself. She was a second-year student at Warwick University studying Computer Science. I nodded. I was impressed. I could use Windows and e-mail but that was about it. She’d be able to help me with Excel in between serving customers. And maybe a website. That’d come in handy. I could write a menu, but I couldn’t write HTML. Did she have waitressing experience? Yes, she did.
‘What kind of food are you going to do?’ she asked.
I made her a coffee and explained not only the menu, but its rationale. I had put together a simple menu with a few clever touches. It was a café menu, nothing too fancy or too expensive.
So, on the menu as well as restaurant dishes there were old warhorses like caramelised red onion and steak baguette. There was the inescapable ploughman’s (we were in the country, there were fields), but made with good cheese, home-made pickled red cabbage and piccalilli. I had added plenty of things that would not go off – I couldn’t afford the luxury of waste – so there were quite a few cutesy preserves and frozen desserts, parfaits, semifreddo and sorbets that would last and not have to get binned if unsold. Occasionally I’d add mysterious touches, compressed pineapple, a potato foam on the soup, that kind of thing. Stuff like that was old hat in London but still novel out here. I was a one-man band, so it couldn’t be too adventurous; I didn’t have the luxury of time, but it was good, it was honest and it represented reasonable value for money.
It was more like I was pitching for a job than she was, but I guess she was about the first person I’d had a chance to talk to about it.
‘That all sounds very interesting,’ she said. And the strange thing was, she sounded like she meant it.
The job was hers.
‘I’m afraid it’s only minimum wage, but you get tips, which you share with the kitchen staff.’
She nodded. ‘How many kitchen staff are there?’ she asked.
‘None, other than me. But I don’t get tips, since I’m the owner, so currently they’re all yours. But you will have to help with the washing up.’
She smiled. ‘I can wash up, Ben.’
She had a great smile. I think she was amused by the shoestring nature of the business. We agreed that she could start the following day.
‘So I guess I’d better take my sign down then,’ I said.
She looked puzzled.
‘What sign?’
‘The A board.’
‘I didn’t see the A board sign.’ She looked confused, as did I.
‘Then how did you know I needed a waitress?’
Her