Free The Food Detective by Judith Cutler

been a crack between the floorboards, he’d have tried to disappear down it. ‘This bloke. You don’t know him.’
    ‘Did he want you to work for him or just to stop working for me?’ I didn’t need to wait for an answer. ‘Did he threaten you? What’ll he do to you if you don’t do as he says?’
    ‘He says he’ll stop me seeing my Sharon.’
    ‘Come on, he can’t play Montagues and Capulets in the twenty-first century! And you’re a bit old for Romeo and Juliet,’ I added, in case he hadn’t followed me. He still didn’t, of course.
    ‘Thing is, she still lives at home. And – I’m going to be a father, Josie.’
    I hugged him. ‘That’s wonderful!’ If bringing a child into the world without a roof of your own was wonderful. ‘When?’
    ‘In February. Thing is, he knocks her about when he’s had a few – I –’
    ‘Then the first thing to do is get her out of there. Now. Today.’
    Even as his eyes lit up, reality hit him. I fancied it had hit him quite a lot in his short lifetime. ‘But where –?’
    ‘Here, of course. You’ll have to rough it in the B and B roomsfor a bit. But I always did plan to turn the old stable block into accommodation for the chef – we discussed the plans, remember.’
    There was a bit in Shakespeare,
Hamlet
, as I recall, about one auspicious and one dropping eye. That was Tom to a T.
    ‘Go and talk it over with her. It’s not the Ritz, and everything’s pretty tatty. But it’s better than being beaten up and putting a baby’s life at risk.’ Even as I said it, I wondered how much more they might be at risk if they accepted my offer. If a violent father didn’t want his daughter’s young man even working for me, how much more of a provocation would it be if his daughter sought refuge under my roof?

Chapter Seven
    My Monday morning walk established that Nick Thomas had either left for work extremely early or that he’d spent at least the night, and possibly the whole weekend, elsewhere. An old flame? He hadn’t looked like a man with a current flame: anyone with less ardour it would be hard to imagine. Even his hair and skin resembled long-cooled ashes.
    The ground near his mobile home was wet enough to suck off my wellingtons, which I’d bought in Wellington, the nearby market town, in an emporium called – wait for it – the Wellington Boot Shop. The deep footprints I left – I could have done without the strains of ‘Good King Wenceslas’ running not quite inexplicably through my head – simply filled with water. In fact, it was so hard to walk through what was now a quagmire that I cut across to the lane, preferring to take my chance with any traffic to the ignominious loss of a boot - especially as there’d be no one to rescue it for me but myself. As I passed the paper skip in which Reg had wanted Nick to bury the cat, Reg himself emerged from his bungalow, which, like the rest of the administration buildings, was on a rise. I suspected he wanted to meet me as little as I him. As he shoved a spade and waders in the back of his utility truck, he glowered at me, logging my visit; any protests I made that I was just having a walk and certainly not visiting Nick would only make matters worse.
    So I took the fire to his line. ‘Any chance of a lift, Reg? It’s no fun, swimming in wellies.’
    ‘Not going your way, am I?’ He wasn’t as good as the game as I was. ‘Got to look at that stream. Making sure it flows OK.’
    Was he, now? And what colour would it flow when he’d seen to it? I’d make a point of checking later.
     
    It was hardly flowing at all. My afternoon walk would have to be a bit longer, wouldn’t it, to find out exactly what Bulcombe had been up to. No good, if I knew him. The shortest way was along the footpath I’d cleared the previous day. It’d be good to check if my activities had been noted. It was going to be slippery enough under foot for me to take my stick, certainly, but I didn’t lug theother gear around