Free The Food Detective by Judith Cutler Page A

– if the razor wire was back, I’d go and yell at the council in person.
    No – I wouldn’t have to! I’d triumphed over it. It was still where I’d left it. Brilliant. Like a conqueror, I set out on my victory march. Nearly. If I hadn’t gone flying I would. I never thought I’d be grateful for a bank of brambles and nettles, but I was this time, once I’d gathered myself up and sorted myself out. So why had I fallen? A quick swish with my stick told me. Someone had stretched at shin height a piece of green wire, the slightly roughened sort I use to train my clematis up, between a couple of clumps of gorse. It actually cut a little notch in the walking stick. And then I went flying again. Yes. Another tripwire , a couple of feet from the first. Had they been there all the time, just as back up? Or had someone found the mess and set them up in revenge? Maybe they hadn’t bargained on the bramble cushion. Maybe they’d hoped for a broken ankle to keep the trespasser out in the cold and wet till they were found. No. For ‘they’ read ‘she’. Or ‘I’.
    This was beginning to feel personal.
     
    ‘Hello, stranger,’ I greeted Nick Thomas that evening. He looked pale and drawn, but managed a smile of sorts. The sort he’d probably once used as he sat down to interview suspects. So where had he spent his weekend? ‘You should have been in yesterday – lovely roasts for lunch, there were.’
    ‘I supposed there wouldn’t be a slice or two left to make a sandwich?’ He looked like a Bisto kid sniffing in vain.
    ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’ If I had to sacrifice that nice slice of roast turkey breast I’d been keeping for my supper, I might as well ask outright. ‘Where have you been all weekend?’
    ‘I had a case in Hampshire –’
    ‘Hampshire?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘So you work weekends?’ When he didn’t respond, I said, ‘I suppose you’re used to working weird hours –’ I bit off what I’d been going to say. It was I who’d started this idea that he was a civil servant – no need to blow his cover.
    He nodded absently.
    ‘I’ll get that sandwich, then.’
    He was still nursing his drink, the backs of the other boozers firmly against him, when I carried it through to him. Not a bad sandwich, either. Occasionally I went really wild and baked my own bread, freezing batches of loaves or rolls. Sometimes, at three in the morning, when I really did panic over the future of this place, I’d sneak down and fish out a roll, microwave it and smother it in butter fresh from the Taunton farmers’ market. Bliss. Even if I could almost see calories massing. I hadn’t given Nick one of these special small rolls. But he had a couple of chunky slices of organic loaf, thickly carved turkey with home-made mayonnaise and a neat little side salad in case he was the sort of man who usually ignored the five portions of vegetables rule.
    ‘If you work in Hampshire, why did you come to live here?’ I asked, setting it in front of him. He could hitch himself up on a bar stool or take it to a patio table.
    ‘It seemed a good idea at the time.’
    ‘But you’d do better somewhere nearer Exeter and the M5.’
    ‘It’s not so very far from the M5 here, is it?’
    I wasn’t going to spend the whole evening discussing road communication, so I smiled and turned my attention to bar stock. He withdrew to a table.
    When he’d finished, I drifted over to collect the plate. ‘Tell me, why should rain make a stream turn pink?’
    He shrugged.
    ‘The sort of pink Sue’s water must have been when she bathed your scratches.’
    He flushed deeply. ‘She was kind. A good sort. I suppose I should have gone to church yesterday.’
    ‘It never hurts to swell the numbers,’ I agreed.
    ‘I wouldn’t have put you down as a devout Christian.’
    ‘My beliefs are my own affair. But if you don’t support the ancient institutions that keep the village together how will they survive? And they’ll be missed when