Dead Heat Part 11

'But wouldn't you see red kidney beans in anything?' said Gary.

'I thought that myself,' I said. 'But you wouldn't if they were chopped up very finely.'

'How many beans would you need to poison over two hundred people?' said Carl. 'Surely there would be so many it would affect the taste?'

'I looked it up on the US Food and Drug Administration website on the Internet,' I said. 'It says there that four or five raw beans are enough to make people quite ill. It also says that if the beans are heated to not more than eighty degrees centigrade, they are five times as poisonous as the raw ones. That means just a single bean per person could be enough. And it also says that the attack rate is 100 per cent that means everyone who ate the beans would be ill.'

'But where were they?' said Gary.

'I think they must have been put in the sauce,' I said. No one, I thought, would taste a single partially cooked kidney bean, especially if it was finely chopped up and mixed with the chanterelle mushrooms, the truffles and the shallots, not to mention the white wine, the brandy, the garlic and the cream.

'But you have to reduce the wine in that sauce,' said Carl. What he meant by reduce was that the sauce was boiled to remove some of the excess liquid by evaporation. 'Surely that would render the beans harmless even if they were in there?'

'They had to have been added after the reduction,' I said. 'That sauce had cream in it to add richness. It wasn't boiled after the cream was added.' To prevent it curdling in the acidity of the wine.

I remembered back to the dinner. In order to produce enough I had used four large aluminium cooking pots to make the sauce, similar to domestic kitchen saucepans only bigger with handles on each side. The ones that Stress-Free Catering had provided would each hold about six litres of liquid if full. I had estimated that we would require 50 millilitres of sauce per person. So for two hundred and fifty servings I needed twelve and a half litres of sauce. I had made it in four separate batches, just in case a batch curdled. In the end, all four batches had been fine and there had been plenty left over. I remembered it well, as I loved the sauce and had poured extra on my own dinner. Just my bad luck.

The four half-full pots had stood in the serving area where we had made up the dinners on the plates with the sliced stuffed chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the roasted new potatoes, the snow peas and the sauce, with a sprig of parsley on the potatoes to garnish. The pots hadn't been directly heated on a range for some minutes, as I had judged that they were hot enough and would maintain their temperature throughout the serving if simply placed on top of the hot stainless steel servery. I had told one of the temporary kitchen staff to stir the sauce to prevent it from separating. He had been little use for anything else, and I remembered him because it had taken me some time to explain what was required because he didn't understand English very well. I had a.s.sumed at the time that he was Polish or Czech, or from some other Eastern European country, as so many staff in the catering business seem to be these days.

I reckoned there had been about a ten-minute window when the beans could have been added to the sauce between being moved from the kitchen and serving. At that time I had mostly been round the corner in the kitchen or out in the dining area. Either way, I had been out of sight of the pots during the vital time. Due to their positions between the kitchen and the dining room, almost any of the staff that night could have had the chance to add something to the pots. But it had to have been someone who knew what they were about, and surely my stirrer or someone else would have seen them. It still made httle sense to me.

'So what do you suggest we do?' said Gary.

'Nothing we can do,' I said, 'except carry on as before. We have sixty-five booked for dinner and, so far, no one has called today to cancel.'

The telephone on my desk rang. Why didn't I keep my stupid mouth shut, I thought, as I lifted the receiver.

'h.e.l.lo,' I said. 'Hay Net restaurant.'

'Max? Is that you?' said a female voice.

'Certainly is,' I said.

'Good. This is Emma Kealy. I understand you saw George at Elizabeth's funeral yesterday.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I did. I'm so sorry about Elizabeth.'

'Yes,' she said. 'Thank you. A dreadful thing, especially for poor Neil.' She paused for a moment. 'But life has to go on for the rest of us.'

'How can I help?' I asked her.

'Well, George tells me that he cancelled our booking for tonight.'

'Yes, he did. He said to leave it for a while.'

'Stupid old fool,' she said. 'We still have people staying tonight and there's no food in the house. What does he think I'm going to do? Go to the Raj of India?' The Raj of India was a seedy take-away curry place in Palace Street. It would never have crossed my mind that Emma Kealy would have even known about it, let alone thought of going there. 'Can you fit four of us in for tonight at eight thirty?' she asked imploringly. 'I will perfectly understand if we can't have our usual table.'

'Of course we can fit you in,' I said. 'Look forward to seeing you.'

'Great. See you later then.' I could hear the relief in her voice. I wondered how much of a row had gone on between her and George.

I put the phone down and looked at Gary and Carl. 'Four more bookings for tonight,' I said, smiling. Thank goodness for the Kealys.

The other two went into the kitchen to start preparing for dinner while I sat at my desk to complete some paperwork. I shuffled the stack of already tidy papers checking that there were no outstanding bills that had to be paid immediately. I came across the delivery note from Leigh Foods, the supplier I had used for the gala dinner. I looked through the ingredients again, as if I could have missed the kidney beans before. They weren't there. Of course they weren't there. I would swear on my father's grave that I had not put any d.a.m.n kidney beans in that dinner.

I called Suzanne Miller on her mobile.

'Hi, Suzanne,' I said, 'Max Moreton here. Sorry to disturb you on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Do you have a minute?'

'Fire away,' she said. 'I' in my office anyway. We've had a wedding here today so I'm still working.'

'I didn't know you had weddings at the racecourse,' I said.

'Oh yes,' she said. 'Most Sat.u.r.days during the summer, when there's no racing, of course. We use the Hong Kong Suite for the ceremony and then often the Champions' Gallery restaurant for the reception. It works quite well.'

'You live and learn,' I said.

'How can I help you?' she asked.

'I wonder if I could have a copy of the guest list from last Friday night?'

'Sure,' she said. 'No problem. I have it on my computer. I'll e-mail it to you now.'

'Thanks,' I said. 'There is another thing. Do you have a list of the names of all the temporary staff that you found through the agency?'

'Not their names,' she said. 'The agency just gave me the number that would be there, not their names.'

'But, you remember, some of them failed to turn up and we had to draft in a few of your own staff at the last minute,' I said. 'Do you, by chance, have the names of those that didn't come and also the names of your staff that we drafted in?'

'I'll e-mail the agency's phone number and you can ask them direct,' she said. 'Why do you need to know the names of my staff?'

How much should I tell her? She had been quick to hang me out to dry when the letter from Caroline Aston had first appeared on her desk. Would she now simply think I was looking for a scapegoat?

'I have reason to believe that something may have been put into the dinner that shouldn't have been there,' I said, 'and I am trying to determine the names of everyone who was there and had access to the food, so I can find out who was responsible.'

There was a long pause at the other end of the line.

'Are you saying that you think my staff are to blame for making people ill?' Suzanne said rather frostily.

'No,' I replied hastily. 'I'm not saying that and I don't think it. Your staff were all last-minute replacements so it is impossible for them to be the ones.' I thought it most unlikely that anyone could buy and prepare a large number of kidney beans at such short notice. 'I would just like their names so that I can eliminate them from my enquiry.' I was beginning to sound like a policeman.

'I will look it up,' she said. 'But I will have to ask them first if they are happy for you to have their names.'

'That's fine by me,' I said.

'Do you really think that the food was poisoned on purpose?'

'Suzanne,' I said, 'I know it sounds crazy but I have absolutely no other explanation. Hospital tests have shown beyond doubt that there was stuff in that dinner that I didn't put in, so what am I to think?'

'What stuff?' she asked.

'I'd rather not say,' I said. I don't know why I thought it might be useful to keep some of the facts secret. Perhaps I had hopes of catching out the culprit by him saying 'kidney beans' when I hadn't mentioned it. I was sure that I had once read a detective novel when that sort of thing had happened and the policeman had instantly solved the case.

'All sounds very cloak-and-dagger to me,' she said. 'And a bit far-fetched as well, if you ask me. Why would anyone want to poison so many people anyway?'

'I don't know why,' I said. 'Why do so many people have the urge to break things? Perhaps it was just done for kicks. There's no logic to many things.'

'Are the police looking for whoever did it?' she asked.

'Not that I'm aware of,' I said. 'I think the police are preoccupied looking for last Sat.u.r.day's bomber.'

'You're probably right,' she said. 'They're certainly still here at the racecourse and we nearly had to cancel today's wedding because of them, but thankfully we don't use the Head-On Grandstand. That's now going to be closed for months. But surely you should inform the police if you have suspicions about the dinner?'

'Maybe I will,' I said, although privately I thought they would believe the same as Angela Milne, that I had simply served undercooked kidney beans and was not prepared to admit it.

'What else do you intend to do?' she asked.

'Probably nothing,' I said. 'A bit of food poisoning that didn't do any permanent harm to anyone is not really important compared to the bombing.' And, I thought, it might be better for my reputation and for the restaurant if I were to let the incident slowly fade from people's memory rather than keep stirring it up.

'Let me know if I can be of any help,' said Suzanne.

'Thanks, I will,' I said. 'And don't forget the guest list and the agency details.'

'On their way to you right now.' I could hear her tapping away on a keyboard. 'Gone,' she said. 'Should be with you any moment.'

'Brilliant. Thanks.' We hung up and I turned to my computer.

'You have new mail,' it told me, and, sure enough, with a couple of clicks, the guest list from the gala dinner appeared before my eyes. How did we function before e-mail?

I scanned through the list of names but I didn't actually know what I was looking for, or why, so I printed it out and left it lying on my pile of stuff to be dealt with. I logged on to the Internet instead.

I made a search for RPO and soon I was delving into the details of concerts and operas of the Royal Philharmonic. Sure enough, the concert programme at the Royal Festival Hall was widely advertised and, if I wished, I could purchase a ticket with just a couple of clicks of my computer mouse. I noticed that tonight, and for most of the next week, the orchestra was performing the works of Sibelius and Elgar at the Carnegie Hall in New York City. Lucky Caroline Aston, I thought. I had been to New York in the springtime the previous year and had loved every moment.

I looked at Ms Aston's telephone number on the notepad where I had written it on Wednesday morning when Bernard Sims had called. If she was in New York she wouldn't be at home now. Three times I punched her number into my phone without actually pushing the b.u.t.ton for the final digit. I wondered if there might be a voice message so I could hear what she sounded like. The fourth time I completed the number and let it ring twice before I lost my nerve and hung up. Maybe she didn't live alone and someone would be there to answer after all.

I played with the phone for a while longer and then called the number again. Someone answered after a single ring.

'h.e.l.lo,' said a female voice.

Oops, I thought, no recorded voice message. A real live speaking person.

'Is that Caroline Aston?' I asked, confident in the knowledge that she was, in fact, three thousand miles away.

'Yes,' she replied. 'Can I help you?'

'Er,' I said, sounding like an idiot, 'would you like to buy some double glazing?'

'No, thank you,' she said. 'Goodbye!' She hung up.

Stupid, I thought, as I sat there with my heart thumping in my chest. Really stupid. I put the phone down and it rang immediately.

'h.e.l.lo,' I said.

'Would you you like to buy some double glazing?' like to buy some double glazing?'

'Excuse me?' I said.

'See. Why do you think I would want to buy double glazing from someone I don't know who rings me up out of the blue? You don't like it and neither do I.'

I didn't know what to say. 'I'm sorry.' It sounded ridiculous even to me.

'Who are you anyway?' she said. 'You're not very good at selling.'

'How did you get my number?' I asked.

'Caller ID,' she said. 'I didn't think you people would have a number that was visible. More importantly, how did you get my number?'

I could hardly tell her the truth, but whatever else I said now was going to get me into deeper trouble. I decided to retreat gracefully.

'Look, I'm sorry but I have to go now. Goodbye.' I hung up quickly. My hands were sweating. Really, really stupid!

I went out into the kitchen and found Carl trying to explain rather sarcastically to one of the kitchen porters that it was indeed necessary for him to get all the old food off the frying pans when washing up.

In spite of the name, kitchen porters rarely carry things. They mostly spend their lives up to their elbows in hot water washing up the pots and pans. We had two of them at the Hay Net. At least, that was the plan, but all too often a kitchen porter would be there one minute and gone the next. No explanation, no word of goodbye, just gone, never to return. The current inc.u.mbents of the posts included a man in his fifties whose father had come to England from Poland in 1940 to fight with the RAF against the n.a.z.is. He had unp.r.o.nounceable Polish names with lots of ps and zs but he spoke with a broad Ess.e.x accent and was always 'tinking'. 'I tink I'll go hame na,' he'd say. Or 'I tink I'll 'ave a cap o' tea.' He'd been with us for nearly a year, much longer than the norm, but he mostly kept himself to himself and communicated rarely with the other staff.

The other porter was called Jacek (p.r.o.nounced Ya-check) and he was in his fourth week, and seemingly not very good at scrubbing the frying pans. He was more typical of those now sent to us by the local job centre, in his mid- to late-twenties and from one of the newer members of the European Union. He knew very little English but he did manage to ask for my help to send money every week to his wife and baby daughter, who were still in the homeland. He seemed quite nappy with life, always smiling and singing to himself, and he lad been a positive influence on kitchen morale over the previous week. Now he stood in front of Carl and bowed his nead, as if asking for forgiveness. Jacek nodded a lot and I wondered how much of Carl's tirade he was actually understanding. I was certain that he was not appreciating the sarcasm. I felt quite sorry for him, so far from home in a strange environment, and separated from his family.

I caught Carl's attention. 'That's enough,' I mouthed to him. Jacek was hardworking and I didn't really want to lose lim at the moment, not least because the current pair appeared so get on quite well together, and neither of them was a heavy drinker, generally the bane of all kitchen porters.

Carl stopped almost in mid-sentence and dismissed the miscreant with a brief wave of his hand. Jacek pa.s.sed me on the way back to his duties at the scullery sinks and I smiled at him. He winked at me and smiled back. There was more to this kitchen porter, I thought, than meets the eye.

Sat.u.r.day night had the feel of the Hay Net being back in business. Sure, we were only serving at about two thirds capacity, but the bar and the dining room were humming with excitement and the horrors of the previous week were forgotten, if only temporarily.

George and Emma Kealy and their two guests arrived promptly at eight thirty, sat at their usual table, and seemed to enjoy themselves, albeit quietly. Nothing was mentioned about my discussion with George at the funeral but, as they were leaving, Emma turned to me and said, 'See you next week then, as usual.'

'For six?' I asked.

'Book for six,' she said. 'I'll let you know on Friday.'

'Fine,' I said, smiling at her.

'Have you found out yet what made everyone ill last week?' she asked. George looked horrified that his wife had been so tactless as to mention it.

'Not quite,' I said. 'It appears that the dinner may have been contaminated.'

'What with?' asked Emma.

'I'm not quite sure yet,' I said. I wondered if it was simply embarra.s.sment that was preventing me mentioning anything about undercooked kidney beans. 'I'm still trying to work out how something was put into the food.'