CHAPTER ONE

       Thursday, 7 January

      I had first met Slattery one week earlier: the day I had my very low-key opening. I’d bought the restaurant and officially exchanged on the thirty-first of December. I guess that I wanted my new venture, which was essentially my new life, to begin on a New Year. It felt right, and there is always that optimistic sensation that everyone has at the beginning of January: this will be my year! This is my time. I was no exception. Or in my case, this will be a year of no regrets, of positivity, of expunging the past.

      I’d been in the village, Hampden Green in the Chiltern Hills, a week. Just one week. It felt an awful lot longer. In the past few days, I had brought in painters and decorators to give a more contemporary feel to the restaurant than the chintz and cream décor favoured by the former owner. I had not expected my first customers at the Old Forge Café to be two uniformed policemen and a Detective Inspector. It most certainly wasn’t the demographic that I had in mind when I bought the place.

      And, as omens go, inauspicious. The arrival of policemen on my doorstep brought back aspects of my past I had hoped to put behind me.

      The café had previously been owned by a Mrs Cope, an archetypal fluffy-white-haired lady in her late sixties who smelled of face-powder and rosewater and had eyes like a cobra. I had looked over the books and the operating costs. The Old Forge Café turned a reasonable profit but I could see big room for improvement. It also fitted all the personal criteria that I was looking for: location, accommodation and tranquillity. Additionally, it had a very well-equipped kitchen with a state-of-the-art oven and gas range.

      For the poet T.S. Eliot, April might have been the cruellest month; for the hospitality industry that’s not the case. It’s the beginning of the year. I had officially opened the place on a Friday in January, the hardest month to make money in catering. Everyone’s broke after Christmas, everyone’s depressed, and the weather’s usually awful. It’s not weather for going out. Out here in the South Bucks countryside was no exception. Mind you, my staff bills were low, I didn’t have any.

      It didn’t take me long to realise that Mrs Cope not only had the eyes of a snake, but the morals of one. Buy in haste, repent at leisure. The kitchen equipment, now I came to actually use it, instead of being hurried around by an estate agent, was in a terrible state. For example, the door fell off one of the fridges on about the third use and I had to wedge it shut with a sack of potatoes. A lot of the restaurant furniture was quite literally falling apart and the less said about the structure of the building, the better. The painters and decorators had had a field day pointing out more and more horrors revealed by their work.

      But despite these setbacks, I was happy. Start off small and grow with the business, that was my short-term plan. I figured that as profits grew I could rebuild the place around me. I wasn’t even too concerned about the potential lack of customers – it’s always a problem in January.

      I put together a simple menu with a few clever touches. It was a café menu; I had no liquor licence. Things had to be made from low-cost ingredients so I could make a decent profit margin as I couldn’t get away with high prices and there was no buffer of profit on alcoholic drinks.

      Not being too busy suited me. I felt that I would rather take a low footfall and turnover on the chin and work through the bad times of January and February, growing organically, than start out when things traditionally went well. Battling adversity, well, I was kind of used to that. And it was undeniably pleasant to wake up in the flat above the restaurant and savour the silence.

      For the last two years I had been living in noisy central London kitchens, eighteen-hour days, cramming as much experience as I could in with kids who were twenty years my junior. It was a steep learning curve. My one-bedroomed flat in Kentish Town had been equally noisy. And prior to that, my rock-bottom, my time spent banged up at Her Majesty’s pleasure, had been far from relaxed.

      I also didn’t mind the fact that I had hardly any personal effects in the flat that came with the restaurant. Not now that Mrs Cope’s stuff had gone. It wasn’t just the furniture that she had removed. She had taken not only the lampshades, but the lightbulbs too. That seemed a bit excessive, but, I reflected, Mrs Cope was a thoroughly vindictive woman.

      Still, I was enjoying the space. Just as well since I had so much of it. Uncluttered by things I couldn’t afford, I pretended I was enjoying the minimalist life. Who needs tables and chairs and a sideboard? Who needs a bed and a chest of drawers? Who needs a wardrobe, I wasn’t going to Narnia.

      I led the police into the restaurant area, gave them a table, asked them what they wanted to drink – two cappuccinos for the PCs and a double espresso for the DI – and busied myself behind the counter.

      The two uniforms were festooned like paramilitary Christmas trees with the tools of their trade, batons, Tasers, radios, other bits and bobs of equipment. They clashed horribly with the chintzy furniture of the restaurant which I couldn’t yet afford to replace.

      I brought them their coffees. They looked me over in a markedly hostile way. Perhaps they missed Mrs Cope. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t from round here. Or maybe they just didn’t like my face.

      Outside the windows of the tearooms the village of Hampden Green carried on its peaceful, unremarkable existence. The winter rain beat down unceasingly.

      Through the glass I could see: the green itself (or the common as it was sometimes called); the children’s play area; the fitness/arts studio; twenty or so houses and the village pond. There was also a pub, the Three Bells, a rough kind of place with a pool table. It was one of two pubs in the village. Houses of various shapes and sizes fronted on to the green. The road bent around to the left out of sight, leading to the King’s Head, the other village pub.

      The two pubs were indicative of the social divide of the place: BMWs and Mercedes at the King’s Head, pick-up trucks and vans at the Three Bells.

      In short, a typical Chilterns village. But carrying on the good old country traditions of surly hostility to incomers.

      ‘What brings you gentlemen to Hampden Green?’ I asked. The uniforms glanced expectantly at the DI, their spokesman. He had a tough, good-humoured face, slightly battered and quite tanned. He also had a powerful physique under his suit, running slightly to middle-aged fat, and a very obvious ‘don’t mess with me’ attitude. He looked hard as nails.

      He stood up and pointed out of the window.

      ‘You see that house, the one with the blue door?’

      I could, and I did. I nodded.

      ‘That’s my place.’

      It was said more in the tone of a warning than anything else. That’s my house, this is my turf, this is my patch. Like a dog cocking its leg, the DI was marking his territory. He looked at me in an intimidating way to underline the message. Satisfied, he carried on.

      ‘I’m DI Michael Slattery, by the way. Now, I am here to investigate a burglary that occurred down at Andy Simmonds’ place last night. Do you know Andy?’

      ‘No,’ I said.

      ‘Well, he’s a pig farmer and butcher and he has a farm shop where he sells his meat. Last night someone forced the lock on his walk-in fridge and nicked about two grands’ worth of sausages. I’m investigating the crime.’

      Blimey, I thought. What did he expect to find here? If I was the sausage thief, how would I get rid of them? A menu composed of nothing but sausage dishes? January is sausage month?

       May I recommend our special: sausage parfait with a chipolata garnish?

       Sausage slaw?