The Food Detective by Judith Cutler

Author:Judith Cutler [Judith Cutler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749016692
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2014-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

I might have been flippant in my request for police help first thing next morning, but someone was taking it seriously. I’d hardly finished what would have to pass for breakfast – all last night’s calories were already congregating round my belly – when someone applied a remorseless digit to my doorbell. The front one. I flung it open to greet a silver four by four as monstrous as Nick’s and a couple of miserable looking men who could only have been plain clothes policemen. Two of them, one round Nick Thomas’s age, the other a lad looking scarcely older than Lucy, showed their IDs as one.

‘DCI Mike Evans,’ said the older one, a Cornish burr to his voice. He might once have been a carrot head, but the colour had faded to rust. With his pale skin, he was weathered rather than tanned, and you could have passed him in a supermarket without giving him a second glance. For my money, that dozy stolidity was a front. His eyes, blue, if you had a romantic tendency, as a summer sky, narrowed as the smell of the guts wafted along the dogleg of corridor, but he didn’t remark on it. ‘And this is Detective Sergeant Scott Short.’

Scott Short. Whatever had his parents been thinking if? He was dressed so sharply he’d have to be careful not to cut himself when he pulled his trousers on, and his hair was fashionably spiked. Was it coming from the Smoke that gave him his swagger, a metropolitan amongst all us bumpkins? Whatever it was, I didn’t take to him, especially when I showed them into my lovely living room and he appraised it with a pronounced sneer. A man for Habitat beech and beiges, no doubt. And a weekly manicure. Interesting.

I was very impressed that they’d taken my incident so seriously, and was about to tell them so.

But Evans coughed portentously, and began, ‘You may be aware that Mr Fred Tregothnan has been reported missing.’

I swear I felt Tony’s hand on my shoulder, pressing me down, warning me not to say anything yet about my incident. I almost patted it reassuringly. ‘There’s still no sign of him?’ I asked, pouring both of them some of my excellent coffee and adding more fuel to an already bright and warming fire. ‘This must be very worrying for his family.’ I was as well aware as they that he didn’t have any, but I was hardly going to let on I knew him so well.

‘Indeed,’ agreed Evans.

It was clear they were waiting for me to say something. The question was, what? And how? I wasn’t going to go all weepy on this pair: I didn’t think Evans would buy it, anyway. What about wrong-footing them altogether with news of the red stream and the shed so illicitly fenced off? I could keep Nick out of the story, but that might backfire if it later came out that we’d explored it together. Blast the man for pushing off precisely when he was needed here.

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