CHAPTER FOUR

       Friday, 8 January, early afternoon

      I thought of the burning pillar on the other side of the green. It was oddly disquieting. The contrast between the chocolate box, olde English village green and the heat, the smoke, the flames, the surprising noise that fire produces (a malignant crackling), had been unpleasantly intimidating. I put it out of my mind. Whitfield’s troubles were nothing to do with me.

      Nothing to do with me at all.

      I moved my mind back to work.

      Jess had gone and I closed the café for the day. I was cleaning down the kitchen, the radio, tuned to the local station, Beech Tree FM, ‘the station for the Chilterns’, playing cheesy old pop songs. As I mopped the floor, I thought about how things were going.

      ‘… ooops up side your head, oops up side your head …’ I sang along, I felt very carefree for once.

      The end of day two of trading, day two of my new life as chef/proprietor of the Old Forge Café. All in all I was not dissatisfied with the start of my business. As well as the pleasing footfall through the front door, I had also received a couple of enquiries from women who had eaten there and were interested in my outside catering services. If I could get that side of things working it would help tide me over when things were quiet mid-week and during the rest of the winter. When spring came, I reasoned, I’d start to get the walkers, people who would actually want to venture into the countryside.

      ‘… aaaand now it’s Kajagoogoo …’ announced Beech Tree FM, the station where the clock was perpetually frozen between 1970 and the mid-Eighties. It drove Jess mad. No Beyoncé, no Kanye, no Drake, no Ed Sheeran, no R & B, just really old pop. In fairness to Jess, it would drive most people beserk.

      I hummed along with ‘Too Shy’ whilst reflecting that outside catering is a pain. You have to work out of someone else’s kitchen, you’re out of your comfort zone, you have to bring everything with you, you lack the amenities of a professional kitchen, such as large ovens, hot-plate cupboards, space to work.

      Another problem that would only be recognised by professionals, is that for a chef your kitchen is your kingdom. You are in charge, nobody can set foot in it without your say so. In someone else’s house a kitchen is a public space, people wander in and out, jostle you, run taps, open fridge doors, poke around, move things; behaviour that would not be tolerated for a second in a professional kitchen. You have to keep biting your lip, trying not to scream, ‘WILL YOU GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN!’

      When, of course, it isn’t actually your kitchen.

      The plus side is, if you get it right, it’s easy money and you get to show your wares, your ability, to a wide audience. It’s a great advert if it all works well.

      I turned the radio off – bye Limahl – put my mop away, looked over the gleaming floor and work surfaces. I took my apron off and headed up the staircase that was in the corner of the kitchen between the small partitioned area (about the size of a broom cupboard) that was my office and the swing door that led into the restaurant.

      Upstairs was the staff accommodation, a bathroom, two bedrooms and a living room. I pulled off my chef’s whites and did some basic yoga exercises, down dog, sun salutation and a bit of Tai Chi to relax my tired muscles. I like yoga, so long as it’s done slowly and thoughtfully. I can’t stand the idea of Hot Yoga, I get hot enough in a kitchen without wanting to do it for fun.

      I rarely lift weights these days. There was a time, when I was younger, that I wanted to pile on muscle mass. Luckily, basic laziness stopped me: by now it would be turning to flab, and it has to be said that the biggest guys at my gym were unfeasibly big and, surprise, surprise, suspiciously prone to the alleged side effects of steroids. They had terrible skin and often gave vent to hysterical bad tempers. ’Roid rage. Maybe it was just that having bad skin had left them naturally tetchy and the weird over-sized muscles were a displacement therapy for their spots, but I doubt it.

      The biggest and most aggressive, a South African, got a job as an instructor. He gave me a review once of my workout programme. I say review, abuse was nearer the mark. He was particularly unimpressed with my bench-press.

      He stood there, looming above me, the Colossus of Cape Town, anger etched on to his face. ‘That’s pathetic,’ (‘pithitic’ is how he pronounced it) he practically screamed at me, radiating contempt and anger, as I pushed the barbell up and down. I don’t think he fully understood that part of his job lay in encouraging customers, rather than insulting them and glaring at them with red-eyed hatred. He should have got a job as a pub landlord if that’s what he wanted to do.

      His pectoral muscles were massive. In retrospect I should have said, ‘I wish your brains were as big as your tits,’ but it’s easy to be wise after the event.

      Now I go for a leaner, more natural look. More Tao.

      Mrs Cope had left me a full-length mirror in the room that had been her bedroom and was now mine. I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor, my few clothes in a built-in wardrobe.

      I tried to kid myself that I liked this minimalist look, but, in truth, it was rather depressing and the carpet that Mrs Cope had bequeathed me – well, threadbare would be a euphemism. It was stained and moth-eaten. Frankly, it was nasty.

      Well, I could always take my mind off the carpet by looking out of the window. I had a view across the common and in the daylight I could see Dave Whitfield’s house with the charred mess of his obelisk and behind it, trees and fields.

      I finished my yoga, squared up in front of the mirror and did some shadow boxing. I had been quite good at boxing when I was young, as an amateur, and had come back to it in my late thirties, obviously just for fun. Far too old to compete. I did some basic simple combinations, left jab, straight right, left hook etc., using the timer on my phone for three-minute rounds. Then the front doorbell sounded. I rolled my eyes, pulled a tracksuit on and went downstairs to investigate.

      ‘Do come in, DI Slattery,’ I said, as I opened the door.

      ‘Thank you.’ He didn’t sound terribly thankful. I had forgotten his intimidating bulk, he filled the door frame.

      Slattery was a big man. He looked at me coldly. His eyes were brown and hard. With his glossy black hair and slightly swarthy colouring he did look a bit like an over the hill romantic lead from a soap-opera. A modern-day ageing Heathcliff.

      Perhaps I ought to hum a bit of Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’, as played a lot on Beech Tree FM ‘home of local radio, coming at you through the trees …!’

       Heathcliff …

      Perhaps it would relax him. I looked at his unfriendly face. Perhaps not.

      There was no back room at the restaurant. Just the eating area, toilets and kitchen. We could have gone upstairs but there were no chairs and while I couldn’t speak for DI Slattery, I personally had no great wish to sit next to him on my mattress.

      For a moment I envisioned the idea: it would be worth it, just to see the look on his face. ‘Do take a seat …’

      Or, sinking sexily down on to the mattress and patting it suggestively, maybe undoing a button or two on my chef’s