And so, a couple of days later, I found myself being introduced to Justin’s team.
‘Hello, everybody.’ Justin McCleish was all smiles as he introduced me to the assembled group. ‘This is Ben Hunter, the chef I’ve told you about, who’ll be joining our team as of today …’ He turned to me, waving a proprietorial arm. ‘There are other people on the books but these are my key players …’
We were in the dining room of the Old Vicarage where Justin had just finished a briefing to his kitchen team. There would be other agency chefs working alongside them, but this was the core group and therefore they made up my main suspects.
The ‘key players’ looked far from overjoyed at the news that I was joining them. Perhaps they hadn’t read the Bucks Free Press when it had described the Old Forge Café as a welcome addition to eating in the Chilterns.
Never mind, I’d e-mail them the link. I’m sure they could hardly wait.
Introductions were made.
‘This is Andrea, my sous.’ Justin pointed out the gloomy chef to me. ‘He’ll be the one looking after your kitchen …’
As I studied his face, I hoped for my kitchen’s sake that he was nicer than he looked.
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