Cooking the Books (4 page)

‘I need a shower and some food,’ he announced, and went into the bathroom forthwith. I exchanged a glance with Horatio. Both of us were feeling a tad put-upon.

However, we got out the eggs and sliced some bacon and soon the scent of a proper cooked breakfast tempted a clean, damp, famished spectre out of the bathroom and into the kitchen.

‘Food!’ he exclaimed. ‘Corinna, I don’t deserve you.’

I refrained from murmuring agreement. I supplied him with eggs, bacon, grilled tomatoes and fresh sourdough. He ate it all. He must not have pinched a sandwich from the Soup Run or eaten at all for the whole night. I made myself coffee and tried one of my muffins. All right, though not a patch on Jason’s. I wondered how my wandering apprentice was getting on and hoped he wasn’t sunburnt. Before he had dragged himself off heroin, he didn’t go out much in the daytime.

Daniel sipped his coffee, looked at the muffins and shook his head, and spoke at last.

‘That was a long night,’ he said. ‘I must have covered miles and miles. All for nothing.’

‘Didn’t find a thing?’ I asked sympathetically.

‘Nothing but rumours,’ he told me. ‘Everyone is talking about a great treasure being in the possession of a group of drunks. I heard it at several places. But it happened on the other side of the city, wherever I was. That is the hallmark of an urban legend.’

‘The German shepherd choking on the burglar’s fingers?’ I offered.

‘The car thief with Granny on the roof rack,’ he agreed. ‘Always happened to a friend’s aunt. In another city. I’m chasing phantoms,’ he said sadly.

‘Never mind. Perhaps we can do some psychical research and nail them down to a place and time.’

‘And a reason for haunting. I’m almost at the stage when I’m ready to try it. I might ask Meroe. She’s probably on first-name terms with every spook in the city.’

‘She’s been here already, with premonitions of doom,’ I told him. I related the gist of Meroe’s tarot reading.

‘And what did you reply?’ he asked, smiling at last. Ah, the healing influence of food.

‘That I’d think about it.’

‘And?’

‘I’ve thought about it and I’m not going to do it. I can’t see a way of smuggling myself onto the set and, in any case, what could I do about the danger? She was very unspecific about the threat. It could be anything.’

‘Threats are usually people,’ he pointed out.

‘Even so,’ I said firmly. I wasn’t going to burden the girls with my presence. They didn’t need a bodyguard. And on the off-chance that they did, I wasn’t one. The only thing I am good at subduing is yeast. That takes all my energies. Having made my stand, I kissed a freshly shaven cheek. Mmm. Salty goodness, as Xander would say. ‘I can think of a way to take our minds off our problems,’ I hinted.

‘Oh, I do so need distraction,’ he said, and kissed me in turn.

It was an afternoon full of kisses. If we are talking about deserts, I do not deserve Daniel.

Answering the phone. Never a good idea. It is sure to be 1) a Mumbai call centre selling free mobile phones; 2) some lunatic doing a survey; or 3) someone who wants something. Usually money.

I unwisely picked up the phone while I was preparing dinner. This had the effect of ruining my temper and getting onion juice on the handset, both bad things. On the line was my school acquaintance Tommy. She was in a state. The voice was as tense as a cat trespassing in the yard of a big fierce Rottweiler.

‘Corinna? Is that you?’

I suppressed the retort that I was the only one likely to be answering my phone at this number and told her that I was, indeed, Corinna.

‘I need a favour,’ she quavered.

‘I thought you might,’ I agreed.

‘I need you to come in with the bread tomorrow. Just for a few days. My pastry chef has broken a leg. Why the silly bitch wanted to go rollerblading at her age I’ll never know.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You owe me!’ The cat had now sighted the Rottweiler and it was off its chain.

‘How?’ I asked, reasonably.

‘At school. I never told who tripped Susie into that mud puddle when she was wearing her new white pleated skirt. Not even under torture! I knew it was you! I saw you!’

‘Oh,’ I said. One of the few warming memories I had of my school days was the memory of watching Susie, in her new skirt, tumble into the puddle. And I had, actually, tripped her. I hadn’t thought anyone had been a witness to my crime and I felt a pang of not-unpleasurable guilt. Susie had been one of my chief tormentors. She had had that mud puddle coming. ‘Right.’

‘So you’ll come?’ The cat was within a pace of the fence.

I felt what Meroe calls the tides of fate turning. I succumbed gracefully. As gracefully as possible.

‘You’ll have to pay me,’ I said.

‘Full wages,’ she said. The cat was on top of the fence, out of range of the teeth. ‘As well as the fee for the bread. Just hop a lift with the carrier. It’s only Docklands. Not far.’

I put down the phone. Damn, damn, damn. I went back to chopping onions, grumbling.

‘It might be interesting,’ Daniel offered, tasting my tomato sauce with capers and anchovies and approving.

‘It’s only for a few days,’ I conceded. ‘And I might be able to keep an eye on the girls. As Meroe asked. It is always wise to accede to the requests of a powerful witch. Do you think this needs more salt?’

‘A touch more,’ said Daniel, and there we left the matter.

It was a very good sauce, anyway.

After its consumption Daniel went out to pursue his lost papers and I watched
Dollhouse
series 2, about which I am still ambivalent, before putting myself and Horatio to bed for an early start. I had prepared my bag: good apron, spare socks in case the freezer failed and I got soaked (this had happened before), one good knife and my favourite Venetian-glass rolling pin. If I was going to make pastry, it would be good pastry.

I fell asleep full of forebodings. I didn’t like being manipulated, even by fate. Manipulated to what end?

Presumably fate knew . . .

But there was bread to bake the next morning, so I baked it. The Mouse Police performed their morning rituals—display hunting trophies, eat breakfast, scamper off for tuna scraps—and curled up to snooze the day away on their flour sacks. I took in an order of flour, made muffins, drank coffee, sifted sugar over my not-as-good-as-Jason’s muffins (strawberry) and awaited the carrier. I hadn’t worked in a kitchen for years, not since I started Earthly Delights and abandoned paid employment.

Commercial kitchens are fraught places. Ordinary kitchens can get intense, especially when two people are trying to do things and they get in each other’s way. Domestic murders happen in kitchens, where there are a suitable array of objects both sharp and blunt with which to commit them. I had worked in places which were more like war zones than places of culinary refinement. I was, therefore, a little anxious when I hopped, as instructed, into the anonymous white van for the short trip to Docklands.

All drivers of anonymous white vans have a hidden flaw. In some it is that they channel Ayrton Senna and one arrives at a destination—if one arrives—feeling like one has fallen from space without a parachute. Some smoke like chimneys. Some avoid washing and laundry, presumably for the mortification of the flesh. It is as though they know they are multifold, and need to stand out from the pack.

This one whistled. Quite tunefully, I admit, though it was getting on my nerves by the time we arrived. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ has never been my favourite song. Strange selection for a young man, who must have got his driver’s licence a scant six months ago. By mail.

Docklands is huge. We trolled along the avenue of palm trees to a large building, painted in a cheerful grey colour. It looked like a wartime Nissen hut. There were probably reasons for this. Over the front door was emblazoned harbour studios with a logo which vaguely resembled a boat with sails, or possibly a seagull after collision with a helicopter. We zoomed around to the back entrance, where the kitchen was, and found ourselves in a grimy paved car park spotted with a few discouraged trees (palms) and a huge stain where someone had spilled something like red wine. Or blood, of course. My driver chuckled.

‘Beef burgundy, and didn’t she go mad!’ he explained.

I expect she did. Beef burgundy takes ages to make and the ingredients are expensive. That must have been enough beef stew to feed a whole crew—utterly wasted. I felt sad.

The driver waved me towards a kitchen door—you can tell by the smell, the rubbish bins, and the butts of those slipping out for a smoke between courses. Because smoking is disapproved of, no one provides receptacles for the butts. I suppose there is logic in there somewhere. But it makes all places of tobacco resort insanitary.

The kitchen was large, full of people, steamy from various pots and noisy. As expected. Tommy sighted me and dived through the ruck.

‘There you are!’ she exclaimed, as though I had kept her waiting. ‘Pies today, pies, fillings are over there, staff toilets and lockers over there, coffee over there.’ As she was brandishing a large knife, I did not protest at my welcome. I stashed my basket, washed my hands, put on my apron and took possession of my pastry corner.

You need a light hand—and a light heart, so the saying goes—to make pastry. Mine was all right. The secret is to keep all the ingredients cold. Pastry was invented in cold countries where you could only get things warm by sticking them in an oven. You could keep things cold by merely leaving them on the bench, or, as in the old days in Wales, making your Welshcakes with snow. This may have led to excellent scones but it also led to incurable chilblains. I preferred the Australian climate and reliable refrigeration. I checked my list, which was posted next to the working surface. Ingredients. I found flour, salt and butter, granulated and powdered sugar, milk and a row of large plastic containers marked
Chicken pie
,
Apple puree
,
Beef pie
and
Berry pie
. There were also a goodly array of tins and a commodious oven.

So I made pastry. The list demanded ten of each pie. I made Grandma’s shortcrust for the sweet pies and my own buttery puff for the savoury and soon I had a collection of lumps of dough chilling down for rolling. Then I had time to draw breath.

The kitchen smelt gorgeous. There seemed to be a table laid out against the far wall and I wandered over to it, hoping for a cup of coffee at least. I found that it was the Salon des Refusés of any kitchen: stuff which hadn’t quite worked which the staff were enjoined, sometimes at gunpoint, to eat. Instead of food which might be profitably sold to the starving public, of course. There were wrapped rolls and sandwiches and muffins—mine—a pot of something which smelt like minestrone and a tray of hors d’ouevres. I wasn’t really hungry, but I could certainly pick a bit after all that kneading.

Two people were already standing at the table; a young man and a young woman. By the tattoos and piercings I guessed they weren’t actors. They both smiled at me and moved aside.

‘Go ahead,’ one invited. ‘It’ll only go to the poor if we don’t eat it. I haven’t seen you before. You the new pastry Nazi?’

‘That’s me,’ I agreed. ‘Corinna Chapman. I’m actually a baker, but don’t tell anyone.’

‘Promise,’ said the young woman. Her hair, I couldn’t help noticing, was tortured into a thousand dreadlocks. I wondered if they hurt. I wondered how she slept in them. ‘I’m Gordon and this is Kendall. We’re the writers. Try the little pastry boats. Poor old Em made them just before she went off on those rollerblades and fell.’

I bit into a
petit bateau
. Flaky pastry, creamy asparagus filling. Poor old Em was a good pastry chef. I hoped she would be back very soon.

‘Writers? Isn’t the program already written?’ I asked, trying a little pie which proved to be filled with chicken and sweet corn.

‘TV doesn’t work like that,’ Kendall said. Tattoos, dreadlocks, piercings, to match his co-writer. He had a strange, rasping voice. Had he been yelling a lot lately? ‘TV gets written then rewritten. Especially with Madame Superbitch Molly Atkins dictating terms,’ he added, gloomily crunching up a piece of cucumber as though he personally disliked it.