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 s.h.i.t!
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 cooker. It further claimed that one person had died and fifteen others had been 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" wording beneath.
Oh s.h.i.t, I thought again. That really won"t be great for business.
CHAPTER 5.
True 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 gla.s.ses, arrived at about a quarter to five and stood in the car park putting on a white coat and a white mesh trilby hat.
"h.e.l.lo," 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 sc.r.a.p 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 Sat.u.r.day said the inspector, when he came, would have the keys."
"Sorry," he said. "No one told me."
I bet my non-friends, 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 tyre lever 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 extractor 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 is the kitchen 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 pa.s.s inspections. There was a note printed on every menu that invited my clients to visit the kitchen if they so wished. Many did. All my regulars had been in there at some time or another and one particular individual 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.
I thanked James Ward and saw him to his car and off the premises. Even though he was pleasant and helpful, there is something about health inspectors that gives all chefs the w.i.l.l.i.e.s, so I was glad to see him depart.
Carl and I spent the next hour removing all the "CLOSED FOR DECONTAMINATION" stickers, which seemed to De stuck on with Superglue. Then we tried our best to remove the remaining padlocks without causing too much damage to the fabric of the building. At last it was done and we sat together in the bar and pulled ourselves a pint each.
"We reopen tomorrow then?" Carl asked.
"If we have any customers left," I said.
I showed him the newspaper.
"That"s all right," he said. "No one who comes here reads that."
"They will have done so today," I said. "Like me, they"ll have bought it to read about those killed on Sat.u.r.day. They"re all bound to have seen it."
"Nah, don"t you worry, our regulars will trust us more than a newspaper." But he didn"t sound very convincing.
"Most of our regulars were at the dinner on Friday and will know it"s true," I said, "because they were throwing up all night."
"Ahh, I"d forgotten that."
"How about those you phoned earlier?" I asked him. "You know, to say we would be closed tonight."
"Well, most said they weren"t going to be coming anyway."
"Did they give a reason?" I asked.
"If you mean, did they say they weren"t coming because we were akin to a poison factory, then no, they didn"t. Only one person mentioned it and she said that she and her husband wouldn"t have come only because they hadn"t fully recovered from a bout of food poisoning. Most simply said it would be inappropriate for them to enjoy an evening out while the bodies of those killed had hardly gone cold, or words to that effect."
We sat in silence and finished our beers. The thought of the bodies getting colder in the commandeered refrigerated truck had been drifting around the periphery of my consciousness for most of the day.
I called Mark Winsome. I thought it was time my silent business partner knew that we might have a spot of bother ahead. He listened carefully as I told him the whole story about Friday night and also about the bombing on Sat.u.r.day. He knew, of course, about the bombing but hadn"t realized how close his investment had been to biting the dust.
"I"m so sorry about your waitress," he said.
"Thank you," I said. "It"s been very distressing for the other staff. I sent them all home this morning."
"But you say the restaurant will reopen again tomorrow?"
"Yes," I said. "But I don"t expect there to be much business, and not only because of the food poisoning incident but because the whole area is in shock and I don"t think people will be eating out much."
"So you might have a bit of time this week?" he asked.
"Well, I think I should be here for those who do come," I said. "Why?"
"I just thought it"s time you came to London."
"What, to see you?"
"No. Well, yes, of course I would love to see you. But what I really meant was that it"s time for you to come to London permanently."
"What about the restaurant?"
"That"s what I mean," he said. "I think it"s time you opened a restaurant in London. I"ve been waiting six years for you to be ready, and now I think you are."
I sat in my office and stared at the wall. I had called Mark with considerable trepidation as I feared he might be angry that I had seemingly poisoned a sizable chunk of Newmarket society and damaged his investment. Instead, he was offering me ... what? Fame and fortune, or maybe it would be humiliation and disaster. At the very least, Mark was offering me the chance to find out.
"Are you still there?" he said at length.
"Mmm," I replied.
"Good, then come and see me sometime later this week." He paused. "How about Friday? Lunch? At the Goring."
"Fine," I said.
"Good," he said again. "One o"clock in the bar."
"Fine," I repeated, and he hung up.
I sat there for a while thinking about what the future might bring. There was no doubt that the Hay Net was becoming very well known in the area and, at least until Friday night, had been generally well respected. Indeed, so popular had we become that securing a table for dinner was a challenge that needed considerable forward planning, especially at the weekends. In the past year I had been featured in a few magazines and the previous autumn we had entertained a TV crew from the BBC. The Hay Net was busy, comfortable and fun. Maybe it had become rather too easy, but I loved being part of the world of racing, the world in which I had been brought up. I liked racing people and they seemed to like me. I was enjoying life.
Was I ready to give up this provincial cosiness to move to the cut-throat world of restaurants in the metropolis? Could I afford to walk away from this success and pit myself against the very best chefs in London? Could I afford not to?
The night was slightly less disturbed than the previous one, and with a few new variations of the dream. It was mostly MaryLou pushing the trolley and occasionally she became a legless skeleton as she pushed. More than once it was Louisa doing the pushing and she still had her legs. Thankfully, on these occasions the dream faded away peacefully rather than with the endless fall and racing heart. Overall, I slept for more hours than I was awake, and I was reasonably refreshed by the time my alarm clock noisily roused me at a quarter to eight.
I lay in bed for a while thinking about what Mark had said the previous afternoon. The prospect of joining the restaurant big boys was, at once, hugely exciting and incredibly frightening. But what an opportunity!
I was brought back to earth by the ringing of my telephone on the bedside table.
"h.e.l.lo," I said.
"Max, is that you?" asked a female voice. "It"s Suzanne Miller here."
Suzanne Miller, the managing director of the racecourse catering company.
"Hi, Suzanne," I said. "What can I do for you so early?" I looked at my clock. It was twenty-five to nine.
"Yes, sorry to call you at home," she said, "but I think we might have a problem."
"How so?"
"It"s to do with last Friday," she said. I wasn"t surprised. "It seems that some people who were at the gala dinner were ill afterwards."
"Were they?" I said in a surprised tone. "How about you and Tony?" Tony was her husband and they had both been at the event.
"No, we were fine," she said. "It was a lovely evening. But I always find these big evenings nerve-racking. I get so wound up in case anything goes wrong."
And it wasn"t even her firm doing the cooking, I thought, although they had been responsible for the guest list and all the other arrangements.
"So what"s the problem?" I asked innocently.
"I"ve had a letter this morning. It says..." I heard paper being rustled. "Dear Madam, This letter is to give you advance warning of legal proceedings that will be initiated by our client against your company to recover damages for distress and loss of earnings as a result of the poisoning of our client at a dinner organized by your company at Newmarket racecourse on Friday 4 May."
"And who is their client?" I asked.
"It says "Ref: Miss Caroline Aston" at the top."
"Was she a guest on Friday?" I asked.
"She"s not on the guest list but so many of them weren"t named. You know what it"s like, Mr So-and-so and guest. Could be anyone."
"You said people. Who else?"
"Apparently quite a few," she said. "I mentioned this to my secretary just now when I opened it and she says that lots of people were ill on Friday night. Her husband is a doctor and she says he had to see quite a few of his patients. And she said there was an article in the newspaper about it yesterday. What shall we do?"
"Nothing," I said. "At least, nothing yet. If anyone asks, tell them you"re looking into it." I paused. "Out of interest, what did you and Tony have to eat on Friday night?"
"I can"t remember," said Suzanne. "What with all this bomb business I can"t think."
"It is dreadful, isn"t it?" I said.
"Dreadful," she agreed. "And I am so sorry to hear about your waitress."
"Thank you. Yes, it has been an awful blow to my staff. Louisa was much loved by them all."
"Seems that a bit of food poisoning is irrelevant really," she said.
I agreed and silently hoped that the episode would soon be forgotten. Who was it who tried to hide bad news behind a much bigger story? It had cost them their job.
"So what shall I do about this letter?" Suzanne asked.
"Could you make a copy and send it to me," I said. "Then, if I were you, I"d just wait to hear from them again. Maybe they"re just fishing for a reaction and will forget about it when they don"t get one." Or maybe that was just my wishful thinking.
"I think I ought to consult higher," she said. The local racecourse catering company was part of a national group and I suspected that Suzanne was not sure enough of her position to simply sit on the letter. She would want the parent company"s lawyers to see it. I couldn"t blame her. I"d have done the same in her position.
"OK," I said, "but could you send me a copy of it first."
"I will," she said slowly, as if thinking, "but I will send it to you with a covering note officially informing you of the letter, as the chef at the event. And I will also send a copy of that covering note to my head office."