Dead Heat Part 8

'But, won't it be you?' I asked.

'No, I doubt it,' she said. 'I'll send one of the reporting staff.'

'I do think that Mr Moreton would only be interested in speaking with the news editor,' I said. 'In fact, I'm pretty sure that he would only speak to the most important person in the newsroom.'

'Oh,' she said again. 'Do you think so? Well, I might just be able to do this one myself.' Flattery, I thought, could get you everywhere. 'OK,' she said, decisively. 'Tell Mr Moreton I will be there myself at ten thirty.'

I promised her that I would do just that, and hung up, smiling.

Next I called Mark. I knew he was always at his desk by seven thirty each morning, and sometimes he was still there at eleven at night. To my knowledge, he survived on a maximum of six hours' sleep a night. All his waking hours he devoted to making money and I was under no illusions that his plan to bring me to London would include him getting even richer. I was not saying that I wouldn't get richer too, just that I knew that Mark wouldn't be contemplating the move out of feelings of altruism or philanthropy. He had pound and dollar signs in his eyes and he would have already calculated the potential profit in his head.

'No problem,' he said. 'Come to dinner instead. You choose where, I'll pay.'

'OK,' I said. 'How about the OXO Tower?' I had always liked their food.

'Fine. I'll make the reservation. Eight o'clock suit?'

I mentally calculated train times. 'Make it eight thirty.'

'Fine,' he said again. 'Eight thirty on Friday at the OXO.'

He hung up and I lay back on the bed thinking about what the future might bring. How ambitious was I? What did I want from my life?

I would be thirty-two in November. Seven years ago I had been the youngest chef ever to be awarded a Michelin star but, by now, there were two younger than me, each with two stars. I was no longer seen by the media as the bright young thing of whom much was expected, I was more the established chef who was now thought to be making his fortune. The truth was that I was doing all right, but the Hay Net was both too small and too provincial to be a serious cash generator. Whereas, nationally, I was only a minor celebrity chef, at the local level I was well known and admired, at least I was before last Friday, and I enjoyed it. Did I want to give that up to seek fame and fortune in London? What else in my life was important?

I had always wanted a family, to have children of my own. In that respect, so far, I had been a singular failure, literally. A few relationships with girls had come and gone. Mostly gone. Restaurant work is never very conducive to interactions of a s.e.xual nature. The hours are antisocial by their very design: having dinner out is other people's social activity. Exhausting evenings and late nights are not ideal preparations for lovemaking and I could remember more than a few occasions when I had been so tired that I had simply gone to sleep in the middle of the act, something not greatly appreciated by the other party.

However, being alone was not something that kept me awake at night worrying. I was not actively searching for a partner, I never had, but, if an opportunity arose, I would take it. If not, then I would go on living alone, working hard and keeping my eyes open so as not to miss the chance if one came along. London, I thought, might well increase the probability of such a chance.

The telephone rang on the bedside table. I reached over and picked up the receiver.

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

'Morning, Mr Moreton,' said Angela Milne. 'Lovely day.'

'Yes, lovely,' I said, sitting up sharply. My heart-rate rose a notch. 'Do you have any news for me?'

'Yes, indeed I have,' she said. 'I'm afraid I have some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?'

'The good news, I suppose,' I said.

'The swabs taken by James Ward in your kitchen are all clear.'

'Good,' I said. I hadn't expected otherwise. 'So what's the bad news?'

'You poisoned everyone with phytohaemagglutinin.'

'Phyto... what?' I said.

'Phytohaemagglutinin,' she repeated. 'And, yes, I did need to look up how to p.r.o.nounce it.'

'But what is it?' I asked.

'Kidney bean lectin.'

'And what's that when it's at home?'

'It's the stuff in red kidney beans that makes them poisonous,' she said. 'You gave your guests kidney beans that hadn't been properly cooked.'

I thought back hard to last Friday's dinner. 'But I didn't serve any kidney beans.'

'You must have,' she said. 'Maybe in a salad or something?'

'No,' I said confidently, 'there were definitely no kidney beans in that dinner. I made everything from scratch and I swear to you there were no kidney beans, red or otherwise, in any of it. The tests must be mistaken.'

'Samples were taken from sixteen different individuals at the hospital and all of them contained phyto-what's-its-name.' She didn't actually say that it was me that must be mistaken and not the tests, but the tone of her voice implied it.

'Oh.' I was confused. I knew there were no kidney beans in that dinner; at least, I hadn't knowingly put any in it. 'I'll have to check the ingredients on the suppliers' invoices.'

'Perhaps you should,' she said. She paused briefly. 'In the meantime I will have to write an official report stating that the poisoning was due to an ingestion of incorrectly prepared kidney beans. The report will be sent to the Food Standards Agency.'

I would have preferred to have been given a criminal record.

'I'm sorry, Max,' she went on, 'but I have to warn you that the Forest Heath District Council, that's the district council for Newmarket racecourse, may choose to send the report to the Crown Prosecution Service for them to consider whether proceedings should be mounted against you under section 7 of the Food Safety Act.' She paused as if thinking. 'I don't suppose I should really be calling you at all.'

Perhaps I was going to get the criminal record as well.

'Well, thank you for warning me,' I said. 'What are the penalties?'

'Maximum penalty is an unlimited fine and two years' imprisonment but it won't come to that. That would be for a deliberate act. At worst, you would get an official caution.'

Even an official caution counted as a criminal record. Maybe enough to put an end to any London aspirations. It might also be the death knell of the Hay Net.

'I'll write just the facts,' she said. 'I will emphasize that no one was really seriously ill, not life threatening or anything. All those who went to hospital were either discharged immediately or went home the following day. Maybe they will just give you a written warning for the future.'

'Thanks,' I said.

She hung up and I sat and stared at the telephone in my hand.

Kidney beans! Every chef, every cook, every housewife, even every schoolboy knows that kidney beans have to be boiled to make them safe to eat. It was inconceivable that I would have included kidney beans in any recipe without boiling them vigorously first to destroy the poisons in them. It just didn't make sense. But there was no escaping the fact that I had been ill and so had nearly everyone else, and that tests on sixteen people had shown that kidney bean lectin was present in them. The situation was crazy. There had to be another explanation. And I intended to find it.

I sat in my office at the restaurant and searched the Internet for information on kidney beans. Sure enough, phytohaemagglutinin was the stuff in them that made people ill. I discovered that it was a protein that was broken down and rendered harmless by boiling. Interestingly, or not, I also found out that the same stuff was used to stimulate mitotic division of lymphocytes maintained in a cell culture and facilitate cytogenetic studies of chromosomes, whatever that all meant.

I dug around on my paper-strewn desk to find the delivery note and invoice from Leigh Foods Ltd, the supplier I had used for all of last Friday's ingredients. Everything I had used was listed: the Norwegian cold smoked salmon; the smoked trout and the mackerel fillets; the herbs, wine, cream, olive oil, shallots, garlic cloves, lemon juice and mustard I had used in the dill sauce; the chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s, cherries and pancetta; and fresh truffles, wild chanterelle mushrooms, shallots, wine and the cream I had used to make the sauce; all the b.u.t.ter, eggs, sugar, vanilla pods and so on for the brulees, everything, including the salt and pepper and not a hint of a kidney bean to be seen. The only ingredient I could think of that I had used and which wasn't listed was some brandy I had added to the truffle and chanterelle sauce to give it a bit of zing, and I was d.a.m.n sure there were no kidney beans floating in that.

So where did the toxin come from? I had bought in bread rolls for the occasion but surely they weren't stuffed full of beans? The wine? But wouldn't it affect the taste? And how would it get in the bottles?

I was completely baffled. I called Angela Milne. She didn't answer and so I left a message on her voicemail.

'Angela, it's Max Moreton,' I said. 'I have checked the ingredients list for last Friday's dinner and there are no kidney beans anywhere. Everything, other than the bread rolls, was made by me from basic ingredients. I cannot see how any kidney bean toxin could have been present. Are you sure the test results are accurate? Could you please ask whoever did them to have another look? They simply cannot be right.'

I put the phone down and it rang immediately before I had even removed my hand.

'Angela?' I answered.

'No,' said a male voice. 'Bernard.'

'Bernard?' I said.

'Yes, Bernard Sims,' said the voice. 'She's a musician. Plays the viola.'

'Sorry,' I said. 'I'm afraid you've lost me.'

'The lady is a musician.'

'Who, Bernard Sims?'

'No, Caroline Aston,' he said. 'I'm Bernard Sims, Mr Winsome's lawyer.'

The penny dropped at last.

'Oh, I see,' I said. 'Sorry about that, I was thinking about something else.' I sorted my thoughts. 'So whose guest was Miss Aston at the dinner?'

'No one's. She was a member of the string quartet that played during the evening,' said Bernard. 'She obviously had the same dinner as all the others who were ill.'

I remembered the players, four tall elegant black-dressed girls in their twenties. I also remembered being slightly fed up on the night that I was working so hard that I hadn't had a chance to chat them up between their rehearsal and the start of the reception. Odd, I thought, how emotions worked. Far from still wanting to wring her neck, I was sorry now that she had been ill in the first place. I told myself to stop being such a softie, that I was probably perfectly justified in sticking pins in the voodoo doll, and that, anyway, she would almost certainly have a six-foot-six body-building boyfriend who would eat me for breakfast if I went near her.

'Where does she work?' I asked.

'Not entirely sure of all the details just yet, I'm still working on it,' he said. 'She seems to play for the RPO but I can't work out why she was in Newmarket in a string quartet last Friday.'

'RPO?'I asked.

'Sorry. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Real professional stuff. She must be good.' I remembered that, to my untrained ear, they had all sounded good, as well as being pleasing on the eye. 'Do you want her address?'

'Sure,' I said, not knowing quite what I would do with it.

'She lives in Fulham,' he said, 'in Tamworth Street.' He gave me the full address, and her telephone number too. I wrote them down.

'How did you get it?' I asked.

He laughed. 'Trade secret.'

I a.s.sumed that what he had done to get the information wasn't entirely legal so I didn't push it.

'What should I do?' I asked.

'Don't ask me,' he said. 'And don't tell me either. I don't want to know.' He laughed again. I'd never come across a lawyer like him before. All the others I had met had been so serious. 'Perhaps you should ask her out to dinner, but taste all her food before she eats it.' He guffawed at his little joke. He was clearly enjoying himself hugely and was still chuckling as he hung up the phone.

I wish I felt like laughing with him.

Gary came into the office. 'There's a bird here to see you. Says you would be expecting her.'

'Did this bird give you her name?' I asked.

'Harding, I think she said. From some newspaper.'

The news editor of the Cambridge Evening News Cambridge Evening News. Since having received the information from Angela Milne, I was not sure if this was now such a good idea. Perhaps a low profile would have been the best approach. If I made too much of how clean and hygienic my kitchen was, would I be setting myself up for an even bigger fall if and when the papers reported that I had been cautioned, fined or imprisoned for 'rendering food injurious to health' as section 7 of the Food Safety Act 1990 so concisely defined it. Well, it was too late now. If I didn't see her after making the arrangements, then she would probably write something nasty about me or the restaurant and even more damage would have been done.

She was waiting for me in the bar, thirtyish, with shoulder-length dark hair tied back in a ponytail. She was seriously dressed in a dark skirt down to her knees with a white blouse above, and she carried a black, businesslike briefcase. I bet she would just love to be referred to by Gary as 'a bird'.

'Ms Harding,' I said, holding out my hand. 'I'm Max Moreton.'

She looked at my hand for a moment, then shook it gingerly. Clearly she believed that her health was in danger anywhere near me or my restaurant.

'Would you care for a cup of coffee?' I asked.

'Oh no, no thank you,' she said, with just a touch of panic in her voice.

'Ms Harding,' I said, with a smile, 'my coffee is quite safe, I a.s.sure you. Perhaps you would like to see the kitchen to satisfy yourself that it's clean. I a.s.sure you it is, but don't take my word for it. Ask the local authority, they inspected it on Monday and the inspector told me it was the cleanest and most hygienic kitchen he had ever visited.' It was a little bit of an exaggeration, but so what?

She didn't seem totally rea.s.sured, but she did reluctantly agree to come with me into the kitchen.

'Did you bring a photographer?' I said over my shoulder as 1 led her through the swing door from the dining room.

'No,' she said. 'There wasn't one available at such short notice, but I brought a camera. These days all our reporters carry their own digital cameras. If they take enough shots, then one of them usually turns out to be good enough to print.' She looked from side to side as we went past the servery, where the plated meals were kept under infra-red lamps to keep warm before being collected by the waiters and waitresses and taken out into the dining room. She walked with her free hand up near her face as if she might touch something and be contaminated if she let it down.

Oh dear, I thought, this is going to take more persuasion than I had imagined.

'This is the point at which the kitchen and dining room meet,' I said, 'kitchen staff on one side, waiters on the other.'

She nodded.

'Perhaps you might want to take a picture,' I prompted.

'No,' she said. 'It's fine. But what I really want to do is talk to you about the bombing.'

'OK,' I said, 'we will, but I want that coffee first.' I could have made the coffee in the bar but I was determined to take her through to my kitchen, even if she wouldn't take a picture.

We went on right to the back where I had purposely placed the coffee machine that usually sat on the sideboard in the dining room. 'Are you sure you won't have a cup,' I said. 'It's freshly brewed.'

She spent a moment or two looking around her at all the shining stainless steel. The work surfaces were so bright she could have fixed her makeup in them, and the cooker tops around the gas rings positively gleamed. I noticed her relax a fraction.

I held out a mug of steaming coffee. 'Would you like milk and sugar?' I asked.

'Just a little milk,' she said. 'Thank you.' I smiled. Round one to Moreton.

'Is all this stuff new?' she asked, putting her briefcase on the floor and taking the mug of coffee.