‘I’m not coming to Newmarket,’ she said. ‘I’m not giving you another bloody chance to poison me.’
‘You choose the venue and I’ll pay for the dinner. Anywhere vou like.’
There was a short pause as she thought.
‘Gordon Ramsay,’ she said.
‘At Claridge’s?’ I asked.
‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘The Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Royal Hospital Road. I’m free every night this week until Friday.’
The Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, quite apart from being one of the most expensive restaurants in the world, was notoriously difficult to get into. Bookings were taken from 9 a.m., two calendar months in advance, and were often completely filled each day by ten thirty. I would have to try to pull strings with a fellow professional if I was to have any chance of getting a table in the coming week.
‘I’ll call you,’ I said.
‘Right, you do that.’ Was it me, or did her tone imply that I wouldn’t be able to fix it?
‘Why aren’t you in New York?’ I asked, somewhat foolishly.
‘Your bloody dinner did for that,’ she said angrily. ‘I couldn’t make it to the airport last Saturday and was replaced.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Oh indeed. I’d been looking forward to the New York trip for months and you bloody ruined it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Is that an admission of guilt?’
I could imagine Bernard Sims going crazy with me. ‘No, of course not,’ I said.
‘My agent says I should take you to the bloody cleaners,’ she said. ‘He says that I should get ten thousand at least.’
I thought back to Mark’s advice and reckoned that it might need more than a hundred quid to buy her off. ‘I think that your agent is exaggerating,’ I said.
‘You think so?’ she said. ‘I’ve not just lost out on my pay for the tour, you know. There’s no guarantee that I will be invited back into the orchestra when they get home. The directors can be very fickle. I’ve only just been promoted to principal viola and now this bloody happens.’ She clearly liked to say ‘bloody’ a lot.
‘Tell me,’ I asked, trying to change the subject, ‘what’s the difference between a violin and a viola?’
‘What?’ she screamed down the phone. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I said that you might have cost me my bloody career.’
‘I’m sure that’s not really true,’ I said. ‘You should calm down. It’s not good for your blood pressure.’
There was a pause. ‘You’re very annoying,’ she said.
‘So my brother always used to say,’ I said.
‘He was absolutely right.’ She paused. ‘Well?’
‘Well what?’ I asked.
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Nothing! In that case, I’ll see you in court.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘But do tell me, what is the difference?’
‘Difference?’
‘Between a violin and a viola?’ I said.
‘It’s not a viola,’ she said pronouncing it as I had done with the i as ‘eye’. ‘It’s a viola.’ She said it with the i short, as in ‘tin’ or ‘sin’.
‘So what is the difference?’
‘A viola burns longer than a violin.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she laughed. ‘It’s an old joke among musicians. We viola players tend to be the butt of all the worst orchestra jokes. We get used to it and we don’t really care. I think everyone else is jealous.’
‘So what is the difference between them?’
‘They’re different instruments.’
‘I know that,’ I said. ‘But they look the same.’
‘No, they don’t,’ she said. ‘A viola is much bigger than a violin. That’s like saying a guitar looks like a cello.’
‘No, it’s not. That’s silly,’ I retorted. ‘A cello is played upright and a guitar is played horizontally for a start.’
‘Ha!’ she said smugly. ‘Jimi Hendrix played his guitar upright most of the time.’
‘Don’t be pedantic,’ I said, laughing. ‘You know what 1 mean. Violins and violas are both played with a bow under the chin.’
‘Or with the fingers,’ she said. ‘Pizzicato. And it’s not so much under the chin as on the shoulder.’
‘Does that mean you have your chin in the air?’
‘It might,’ she said. I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was smiling. I decided that it might be a good time to get out of this call before she started asking again how I knew her home telephone number and her occupation.
‘I’ll call you about dinner,’ I said. ‘It will probably be Tuesday.’ It tended to be one of our least busy nights at the Hay Net, and often the night I would be away, either cooking elsewhere or at some other event.
‘You really think you can get a table?’ she said.
‘Of course I can,’ I replied. ‘No problem.’
I hoped I was right. It might just save me ten grand.
CHAPTER 9
We were seated at a table for two against the wall near the door. Let’s face it, it wasn’t the best table in the place, but Caroline was impressed nevertheless.
‘I never thought you would manage to get a table,’ she said when she arrived. ‘To be honest, if I had thought you actually could, I wouldn’t have suggested it in the first place. I’m not at all certain that I really want to be here.’ And she had a scowl on her face to prove it.
I wasn’t sure how to take that comment, but she had come and that was all that was important to me at the time. Over the past couple of days I had tried hard to recall the string quartet at the gala dinner. I knew that they had all worn long black dresses with their hair tied back in pony tails, but, try as I might, I couldn’t remember their faces. However, when Caroline had walked through the front door of the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, I had known her straight away.
Securing a table had been hard, and many favours had been cashed and more still promised. ‘Sorry,’ they had said on the telephone, with a degree of amusement at my folly, ‘tables are usually booked two months in advance.’ They hadn’t needed to add that less than two days was in ‘absolutely no chance’ territory.
However, I was not a celebrity chef, albeit a very minor one, for nothing. The world of cordon bleu cookery may be as competitive as any, with chefs happily dreaming of using their cooks’ knives on the throats of their rivals, but, deep down, we knew that we needed them alive and well, not only to maintain the public interest in all things kitchen, but also to be the guests on each other’s television shows.
Having sold my soul, if not exactly to the devil then to the keeper of his kitchen, and having made promises that may be difficult, if not impossible, to honour, I was rewarded with an offer of ‘a small extra table fitted in to the already full dining room at nine o’clock. But it might be close to the door.’
‘That’s great,’ I had said. On the pavement outside would have been fine by me.
‘You must know Gordon Ramsay very well to have got this,’ Caroline said.
‘Professional courtesy,’ I said, smiling. ‘We chefs stick together.’ What a load of rubbish, but better than telling her that I had needed to beg for this table. Perhaps the ten-grand lawsuit would have been cheaper in the long run.
‘Is he nice?’ she asked. ‘He always seems so rude on his TV programmes.’
‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘He just puts on an act for the television.’ In truth, I had never actually met Gordon Ramsay but I wasn’t going to tell Caroline that, not yet anyway.
‘So,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘tell me about what you do.’
‘I make music,’ she replied. ‘And you make food. So you sustain, and I entertain.’ She smiled at her joke. It transformed her face. It was like opening the curtains in the morning and allowing in the sunlight.
‘Isn’t music described as food for
the soul?’ I said.
‘The quote is actually about passion,’ she said. ‘There’s sure no passion in the human soul, but finds its food in music. I can’t remember who said it, or even what it means, but it was carved on a wooden plaque in the hallway at my music school.’
‘Which school?’ I asked.
‘RCM,’ she said. ‘Royal College of Music.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And why the viola?’
‘That stems from when I was at junior school. The music teacher was a viola player and I wanted to be like her. She was great.’ Caroline smiled again. ‘She taught me to enjoy performance. It was a gift I will always be grateful for. So many of my colleagues in the orchestra love music but they con’t really enjoy the performance of it. It seems such a shame. For me, music is the performance. It’s why I say that I make music, not play it.’
I sat and watched her. My memory had not been wrong. She was tall and elegant, not dressed tonight in black but in a cream skirt below a shiny silver wraparound blouse that raised my heart-rate each time she leaned forward. Her hair was very light brown, not quite blonde, and was tied, as before, in a pony tail.
A waiter came over and asked if we had decided. We looked at the menus.
‘What is pied de cochon?’ Caroline asked.
‘Literally,’ I said, ‘it means foot of pig. Pig’s trotter. It’s very tasty.’
She turned up her lovely nose. ‘I’ll have the lobster ravioli and then the lamb, I think. What’s a morel?’
‘A morel,’ I said, ‘is an edible fungus, like a mushroom.’
‘Fine, I’ll have the lamb with the morel sauce.’ I was reminded of that previous mushroom sauce, the one that had probably made her ill. I decided not to mention it.
‘And I’ll have the pied de cochon and the sea bass.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the waiter.
‘What would you like to drink?’ I asked.
‘I’d prefer red,’ she said, ‘but you’re having fish.’
‘Red is fine by me.’ I ordered a moderately priced Médoc, at least, it was moderate for this wine list but, at this price, would have been by far the most expensive bottle available at the Hay Net. I would have to get used to London prices.
‘So what made me ill?’ she asked, getting sharply to the point. ‘And how did you get my phone number? And how come you know so much about me?’
‘Tell me,’ I said, ignoring her questions. ‘How come you were playing in a string quartet at Newmarket racecourse when you normally play for the RPO?’
‘I play with the RPO, not for them,’ she corrected swiftly. ‘It’s a very important distinction.’
It reminded me of my father, who always hated people saying that he had fallen off when he maintained that the horse had fallen and he had simply gone down with it. That distinction had been very important to him too.
‘So why the string quartet?’
‘Friends from college,’ she said. ‘The four of us paid for our tuition by playing together in the evenings and at weekends. We did all sorts of functions from weddings to funerals. It was good training. Two of us are now pros, while one of the others teaches. Jane, that’s the fourth, is now a full-time mum in Newmarket. It was her idea to get us all together last week. We still do it when we can but, sadly, it’s less and less these days as we all have other commitments. But it’s fun. Except last week, of course. That wasn’t fun – not afterwards anyway.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m really sorry about that. But, if it makes you feel any better, I was dreadfully ill as well.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Serves you right.’
‘That’s not very sympathetic.’
She laughed. ‘Why should I be sympathetic to the infamous Newmarket poisoner?’
‘Ah, but I’m not,’ I said.
‘Then who is?’
‘That,’ I said seriously, ‘is the million-dollar question.’
I am sure that Bernard Sims would not have approved, but I told her everything I knew about the poisoning, which, after all, wasn’t that much.
Our starters arrived halfway through my description of the dire effects of phytohaemagglutinin on the human digestive system, and I was sure that Caroline looked closely at her ravioli as if to spot any misplaced kidney beans.
Thankfully, my pig’s trotter didn’t actually look as if it would walk round my plate and it was absolutely delicious. I did so love my food but, because it was also my business, there was a degree of eccentricity about my appreciation of other chefs’ creations. Call it professional arrogance or whatever, but I perversely enjoyed eating food that I knew I could have prepared better myself. Conversely, I felt somewhat inferior when I tasted something that I knew was beyond me, and this meal was. The pied de cochon with its poached quail’s egg, ham knuckle and hollandaise sauce would send me back to my kitchen with increased determination to do better in the future.
‘So who do you think did it?’ asked Caroline at last, laying down her fork.
‘I think the more important question is why did they do it,’ I said.
‘And?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘That’s what I have spent most of the past week trying to figure out. At first I thought it must be someone trying to ruin me and my restaurant, but I can’t think who. There aren’t that many restaurants near Newmarket and none that seem to be going bust because of me.’
‘How about your own staff?’ she asked.
‘I’ve thought of that,’ I said. ‘But what would they hope to gain?’
‘Maybe they want your job.’
‘But I own the restaurant,’ I said. ‘If they put me out of business, there won’t be any jobs to have, mine or theirs.’
‘Maybe someone is jealous of your success,’ said Caroline.
‘I’ve thought of that too, but I can’t think who. It just doesn’t make any sense.’ I took a sip of my wine. ‘I have another wild theory but it sounds so daft.’
‘Try me,’ she said, leaning forward and giving my heart another lurch. Keep your eyes up, I told myself.
‘I have begun to wonder if the poisoning at the dinner and the bombing of the racecourse are in some way linked,’ I said. ‘I know it sounds stupid, but I am simply searching for anything that might explain why anyone would purposely poison more than two hundred and fifty people.’
‘How do you mean, they are linked?’ she asked.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘and I may be crazy, but suppose the dinner was poisoned so that someone wouldn’t be at the races on the Saturday afternoon so they wouldn’t get blown up by the bomb.’
‘Why does that make you crazy?’ she said. ‘Sounds eminently sensible to me.’
‘But it would mean that, contrary to all accepted opinion, the bomb hit the target it was meant to. It would mean it was not aimed at the Arab prince, and all the newspapers are wrong.’
‘Why does it mean that?’ she said.
‘Because if someone was prepared to poison the food the night before the bombing, they surely would know by then that the occupants of the box to be bombed had been changed several days earlier. Also, I don’t think that anyone who was at the dinner would have been scheduled to be in the prince’s box as the newspapers say that his entire entourage flew in on the morning of the race. However, seven people who were meant to be in the bombed box for lunch didn’t turn up on the day, and I know for a fact that at least three of those were missing due to being poisoned the night before.’
‘Wow!’ she said. ‘Who else have you told this to?’
‘No one,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t know who to tell. Anyway, I would be afraid they would laugh at me.’
‘But why would they?’
‘Haven’t you read the papers?’ I said. ‘The reports all week have been about the Middle East connection. Even the television reports assume that the prince was the real target.’
‘Perhaps they have some information you don’t,’ she said. ‘The security services must have somethin
g.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But according to the Sunday Times, no group has yet claimed responsibility.’
‘But would they if the attempt failed?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
Our main courses arrived and we chatted for a while about more mundane subjects such as our families, our schools and our favourite films and music. Without actually asking her outright, I deduced that she didn’t have a current boyfriend, let alone the six-foot-six body-builder I had feared would eat me for breakfast. It seemed that, just like being a chef, playing the viola every evening did not assist in the search for romance.
‘I’m sorry to say it,’ she said, ‘but most of the orchestral musicians I’ve met are pretty boring, not really my type.’
‘What is your type?’ I asked her.
‘Aha,’ she said. ‘Now, that is a good question.’
Indeed it may have been, but, as she failed to give me an answer, I changed the subject. ‘Is the lamb good?’ I asked her.
‘Delicious,’ she said. ‘Would you like a taste?’
We swapped mouthfuls on forks, her lamb and my fish. As we did, I looked closely at her face. She had bright blue eyes, high cheekbones and a longish thin nose above a broad mouth and square-shaped jaw. Maybe she wasn’t a classic beauty but she looked pretty good to me.
‘What are you staring at?’ she said. ‘Have I got morel sauce down my chin?’ She wiped her face with her napkin.
‘No,’ I said, laughing. ‘I was just taking a close look at this person who is suing me so that I will recognize her in court.’ I smiled at her but she didn’t really smile back.
‘Yes, that now seems rather a shame.’
‘You could just drop the suit,’ I suggested.
‘It’s my agent who’s insisting on suing you. He doesn’t like not getting his commission.’
‘Does he get a share of everything you earn?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘He gets 15 per cent.’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Money for old rope.’
‘Oh no, he deserves it,’ she said. ‘He negotiated my contract with the RPO for a start, and he got me much more money than many agents would have managed. Also I do solo work when I’m not playing with the orchestra, and he handles all my bookings and contracts. All I have to do is turn up and play.’