Ignoring the closed sign, Kincaid and Booth let themselves into the pub by the main door. In a small dining room off the lounge they found Gemma, Viv Holland, and two people Kincaid hadn’t met, a thin man with a forbidding expression, and a slightly stocky, pink-cheeked woman. Kincaid put both in their midthirties, and from what he’d heard from Gemma and Melody, he guessed they were the other cooks, although they were still in street clothes. From the expressions of all three he could tell that they were shocked and upset, but Gemma’s slight shake of the head indicated that she had not told them the worst news.
Gemma stood to greet them. “Inspector Booth. Duncan, you’ve met Viv. This is Ibby, and Angelica. They work in the kitchen.” She touched Kincaid’s arm. “This is my husband, Duncan Kincaid.” Angelica stood to shake his hand, while Ibby gave him only the barest of nods.
Taking a chair, Booth said, “Miss Holland. I think you’ve all heard that Jack Doyle died last night, struck by a vehicle as he walked home.”
Nodding, Viv pressed her lips together tightly in an obvious effort to contain their trembling. “I can’t believe—”
“Some bastard,” broke in Ibby. “Some bastard just knocked him down and drove on? How could anyone do that? How could—” He stopped, blinking.
“Miss Holland,” said Booth, “is the rest of your staff not in yet?”
“No,” she whispered, then cleared her throat and said more strongly, “No. Most of them come from Moreton or Stow by the back road. I suspect they’re held up by—by—” She couldn’t finish.
Kincaid had not sat when Booth did, but had instead stepped back a pace. He stood where he could see them all, cradling his injured hand with the good one. Although the day had been warming nicely, it was cold inside the pub, and he suspected Viv had forgotten to switch on the central heating. From his vantage point, he could glimpse the hearth in the lounge bar’s great fireplace, cold, and still clogged with yesterday’s ash. He could see, though, that under other circumstances the pub would be a cheerful and welcoming place.
“And Bea,” Viv went on, “Bea goes to church in Cheltenham. I haven’t told her yet . . .”
“Yes, I can understand that,” Booth told her, with a gentleness Kincaid hadn’t seen before. “But I’m afraid that when she does arrive, you’re going to have even worse news for her. We believe that Mr. Doyle was run down deliberately.”
“What?” Viv just stared at him, her face blank.
Ibby sat forward in his chair, his fists clenched. “What do you mean, ‘Run down deliberately’? That’s bollocks.”
“I mean that the scene of the accident and Mr. Doyle’s injuries are consistent with a deliberate assault by a vehicle.” Booth left out, Kincaid noted, the blow to the head.
“But you must be mistaken,” whispered Angelica. “No one would want to hurt Jack.”
“It’s highly unlikely that a deliberate hit-and-run was random, I’m afraid, Miss Lockhart. Do any of you know why someone would have reason to harm Jack Doyle?”
All three chefs shook their heads, but Kincaid thought he saw a slight hesitation in Viv’s face.
“He was working here at the pub last night?” Booth asked.
Viv found her voice. “Yes. Yes, it must have been close to midnight when he finished up in the bar. I told Gemma, I offered to drive him home but he insisted on walking even though it was coming on to rain. He always walked.”
“Did he say or do anything unusual before that?”
Glancing at Gemma again, Viv said, “He was—he was drinking, which wasn’t like him. But he didn’t say anything. I just assumed he was upset about Nell Greene.”
“Were they friends?” Kincaid asked, wondering if they had missed something here. The bartender and Nell Greene would have been about the same age, both single, both apparently divorced.
Frowning, Viv said, “Well, not outside the bar, I don’t think. But he always made a special effort to chat with her when she came in. Maybe he would have liked . . .” She trailed off, as if processing the idea that Jack’s attention to Nell might have been more than professional. “Bea would know better than me, since she’s front of house.”
“Who would have known that Jack walked home after closing?” Booth asked.
“Everyone who came in regularly,” Viv answered. “He liked to tell people that it stretched out the kinks from standing all day.”
“Were you the last to see him, Miss Holland?”
Viv nodded, tearing up again. “We closed up together.” Gemma, who was sitting beside her, gave her arm a comforting squeeze.
Booth took a notebook out of his jacket pocket and Kincaid sensed the atmosphere in the room change. Everyone sat up a little straighter, their eyes fixed on Booth.
“I’m going to have to ask you all where you were last night,” Booth said, pen now poised over an open page.
Viv answered first. “I was here. After Jack left, I checked on Grace—that’s my daughter—then I went to bed.”
“You live on the premises?”
“In the cottage across the courtyard.”
Booth made a note, then looked up at the other two.
Angelica spoke first. “Ibby and me went to Moreton. Usually on Saturday nights, Ibby stays with my partner and me in town. We go out, have a few drinks. We must have left right before Jack—he was just finishing up in the bar. If we’d given him a lift—”
“What kind of car do you drive, Miss Lockhart?” Booth asked.
“A VW Golf.”
Booth looked at Ibby. “Do you confirm this, Mr. Azoulay?”
“Yeah. I don’t drink-drive. That’s really messed up. Me and Angie had a few beers with one of the chefs there in Moreton, then I kipped on Angie’s sofa.”
Spots of color had appeared in Viv Holland’s cheeks. “You can’t think that Angie or Ibby had anything to do with what happened to Jack. That’s ridiculous—”
“We just have to eliminate them—and you—from our inquiries, Miss Holland,” said Booth. “I take it the van in the courtyard belongs to you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you own another vehicle?”
“No,” Viv said, her voice still clipped with anger.
Booth made a notation, then slipped his notebook back into his pocket. “Thank you. I will need to speak to all of your staff when they come in. You must realize this is a very serious mat—”
A car door slammed loudly and a moment later the pub door flew open and Bea Abbott came in. “Viv! What is going on? We should be serving morning coffee—” She stopped, taking in the group huddled in the otherwise empty dining room. Then, as she fixed her gaze on Booth, she paled. “Oh my God. What’s happened now?”
Booth persuaded Bea to sit down while he told her what had happened. She simply stared at him and shook her head. Dressed in a dark skirt and a floral blouse, her hair loose, she looked softer, more vulnerable. Finally, she said, her voice raspy, “You must be mistaken. Everyone loved Jack. I can’t believe someone wanted to hurt him.” When her eyes filled with tears, Gemma went to the kitchen to make yet another pot of tea.
When she returned with the pot and more cups, Booth had his notebook out again.
“A Fiat,” Bea was saying. “I drive a little Fiat runabout.”
“And where were you last night?” Booth asked.
“Home. Jack was still finishing up in the bar, so I left Viv to lock up. If only I’d—”
Whatever she’d meant to say was cut off by loud voices and the excited yipping of a dog coming from the car park.
Grace burst through the door, hair disheveled, glasses askew. Right behind her was Kit, with the collie, Bella, beside him.
“Why are you trying to keep me away?” Grace shouted at her mother. “What have you done now?”
Viv rocked back in her chair as if she’d been slapped, then stood and went towards her daughter with her hands outstretched. “Grace, love, I didn’t want you to be upset. There’s been an accident.”
Grace stepped backwards, away from Viv, almost treading on Kit, who was trying to quiet the panting dog. Catching Gemma’s eye, Kit mouthed, “Sorry.”
“What do you mean, an accident?” Grace seemed to take in the presence of the others, and of Booth, in his official-looking dark suit, and she suddenly looked more frightened than angry.
“It’s Jack, love,” said Viv. “He was hit by a car last night. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to tell you.”
“You mean he’s . . . dead?” Grace must have seen the answer in all their expressions. Her face crumpled and she began to cry, little hiccupping sobs. “It’s your fault,” she managed to gasp at Viv, then the sobs grew to a keening wail.
Gemma was on her feet, but Bea was quicker. She reached the girl in two strides, wrapping her arms round her and turning her towards the door. “Let’s get you home,” she murmured to Grace. “You’ll be all right, love.” Kit, who’d managed to calm the dog, stepped out of their way as they went out.
Viv sank back into her chair, looking utterly defeated.
July 2007
“Irish?” Fergus had said when she’d put it to him. “You have got to be taking the mickey. No decent chef does Irish. It’s all pubs with Guinness and bloody leprechauns.”
“So, we can do Irish fine dining. Call it British-Irish if that helps. You can’t tell me there’s not cooking being done in Ireland at that level,” Viv insisted. They were sitting in Fergus’s tiny office, having been the last to finish scrubbing down the kitchen after that night’s service. She’d been doing her homework the last few weeks, studying recipes, checking sourcing, wanting to have all her ducks in a row before she suggested this.
“Well, no, but . . .” He stretched his long legs out under the two-top from the dining room that passed for his desk, seemingly unaware that his feet were touching hers.
Sensing him wavering, she’d gone on, trying to keep her excitement in check. “We can get wild Irish venison. I’ve checked. We can get Irish beef, Irish fish and scallops. And we could source the very best veg locally, but add an Irish twist to the recipe. Why couldn’t we make the most divine potato and leek soup that anyone’s ever tasted? Why not make soda bread the house bread? We could make lamb sausages, smoke Irish trout. All with gorgeous presentation.”
“Mmm.” Fergus still hadn’t been convinced. “But why should we do this? The kitchen is clicking. We’ve got a reputation to maintain now. Why should we take that sort of risk?”
He was right about the kitchen, Viv knew. They’d found their rhythm over the last couple of months. They were turning out better food, and doing it consistently. But all that made her more determined. Sweating a little because she was still in her whites and it was stifling in the little room, she said, “So how many restaurants in London are doing a menu like ours and doing it well?” When Fergus frowned, she went on, encouraged. “A dozen, at least. If we want to stand out, we’ve got to be just that bit different.”
The frown was still there—it still surprised her that frowning made his dimples deeper. “Not sure I want to be reminded of Ireland every day of my life,” he said. “It wasn’t exactly fun and games, you know, in those days.” He seldom talked about his boyhood in Belfast.
“You must have some good memories of food, though, growing up,” Viv ventured, hoping to bring him back from whatever he was seeing.
“Baked beans on toast for tea every night?” Fergus countered, focusing on her, but there was a hint of laughter in his voice now.
“What about Belfast? There must have been something good in the restaurant there. It held a Michelin star for years.” She knew he’d started as a kitchen boy in the best restaurant in Belfast, before he moved to London.
“Family meal,” Fergus said, grinning now. “I didn’t care what it was as long as there was plenty of it. Growing boy.” He studied her. “You’re not going to give this up, are you, darlin’?”
Viv shrugged, pressing her lips down on a smile and suspecting that just made her look prissy.
“I can see it now. You’ll give me no peace, woman. We’ll start with one thing, and we’ll see where that takes us. Deal?”
“Deal.” Viv did her best to sound casual, then ran into the staff toilet and did a fist pump. It was going to be brilliant. She knew it.
The weeks flew by. They tested recipes at night, after service, staggering into work hollow-eyed in the mornings. They worked all day in the kitchen on Sundays, when the restaurant was closed.
They made Caesar salad with Cashel Blue cheese. They made Irish lobster confit in Kerrygold butter. They made black pudding the way Fergus remembered it from his childhood, and lamb sausages so delicate they almost melted in your mouth. Everything they put on the menu got raves.
The leggy models grew few and far between, as Fergus had no time to accommodate them. Viv would never have admitted to jealousy, although she did allow herself to think that in spite of the workload, Fergus seemed healthier. There’d been no more episodes like the night he’d walked out in the middle of service, although she suspected he was still doing coke on the nights he managed to go out with the boys.
When they’d refined a new recipe enough to put it on the menu, they’d repair to the little flat Fergus was renting off Old Church Street, not far from the restaurant. There, they pored over cookery books and scribbled endless notes on scraps of paper.
It was a Sunday night, and after working all day in the kitchen, trying to perfect a foie gras and apple stuffed chicken, they’d walked up to the King’s Road in the warm summer evening and bought fish and chips to carry back to the flat. Fergus filled her kitchen tumbler with a second glass of expensive white Burgundy and raised his own glass in a toast.
“Have I told you lately that you’re brilliant?” he said, plopping down on the tattered sofa beside her as he crumpled his empty chips paper. Fergus might like his designer clothes and handmade shoes, but he cared nothing about decor and the flat looked as if it had been furnished from a charity shop. Which it had. The thought made Viv giggle. “That’s funny?” Fergus asked, giving her a look of mock offense.
“No,” Viv said hastily, eating a last chip. “I was just thinking we should do pork belly. Maybe with parsnips.”
“Peasant food. Poor Irish peasant food,” Fergus said, but without heat.
“Uh-huh,” she agreed. “Good peasant food, though. And cheap is good for the balance sheet.”
They sat, tired feet propped on the onion-crate coffee table, sipping their wine in companionable silence, both in the Sunday jeans and T-shirts they’d worn under their whites. Viv felt her breathing take on the rhythm of his. They’d worked side by side for months, touching, bumping, synchronized in the intimate dance of the kitchen. He had never flirted with her, other than his occasional lapse into broad Irish teasing when something was going particularly well. Although there were times she’d caught him looking at her intently, his brow furrowed, as if something about her puzzled him.
Her eyes drifted closed. “Citrus-smoked salmon,” she murmured. “With avocado crème fraîche.”
“They don’t have avocados in Ireland, darlin’.”
“I never meant we should put ourselves in a box,” Viv said, trying to blink herself awake. “No need to be rigid about the Irish thing.”
“No?” Fergus took the tilting wineglass from her hand and set it on the crate. “Woman, do you never think about anything but food?”
“Sometimes.” She was suddenly aware of the warmth of his thigh against hers, but she felt as if she were mired in treacle, powerless to move.
“Good.” Fergus reached over and touched her chin, tilting her face up so that he could meet her eyes. “Come to bed,” he said, and there was no hint of Irish brogue, and no laughter now in his voice.
She went, as if her life had never held any other possibility, and when she kissed his scarred fingers, they tasted of vinegar and salt.