Dick Francis - Dead Heat

“My name is Angela Milne,” said the voice formally. “I am the environmental health officer for Cambridgeshire.”

She suddenly had my full attention.

“We have reason to believe,” she went on, “that a mass poisoning has occurred at an event where you were the chef in charge of the kitchen. Is that correct?”

“Who are ‘we’?” I asked.

“Cambridgeshire County Council,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “I was the chef for a gala dinner last night. But I am unaware of any mass poisoning, and I would seriously question as to whether my kitchen would be responsible for one even if it existed.”

“Mr. Moreton,” she said, “I can assure you that a mass poisoning has occurred. Twenty-four persons were treated overnight at Addenbrooke’s hospital for acute food poisoning, and seven of those were admitted due to severe dehydration. They all attended the same function last evening.”

“Oh.”

“Oh indeed,” said Ms. Milne. “I require that the kitchen used to prepare the food for the event be closed immediately and that it be sealed for inspection. All kitchen equipment and all remaining foodstuffs to be made available for analysis, and all kitchen and waitstaff to be on hand to be interviewed as required.”

That might not be as easy as she thought.

“How are the seven in the hospital doing?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” she said. “But I would have been informed if there had been any fatalities.”

No news was good news.

“Now, Mr. Moreton”-she sounded like a headmistress addressing a miscreant pupil-“where exactly is the kitchen that produced the food for the event?”

“It no longer exists,” I said.

“What do you mean it no longer exists?” said Angela Milne.

“The dinner was held in the Eclipse tent at Newmarket racetrack,” I said. “The tent will be used as a bar during the race meeting today. The tent we used for the kitchen last night will be being used to store beer by now.”

“How about the equipment?”

“Everything was hired from a catering supply company from Ipswich. Tables, chairs, tablecloths, plates, cutlery, glasses, pots, pans, ovens, hot servers-the lot. My staff helped load it all back on the truck at the end of the event. I use them all the time for outside catering. They take everything back dirty and put it through their own steam cleaners.”

“Will it have been cleaned yet?” she asked.

“I’ve no idea,” I said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised. I have a fresh truck of equipment due to arrive at the racetrack today at eight o’clock.” I looked at the clock beside my bed-in precisely two minutes.

“I’m not sure I can permit you to prepare food again today,” she said rather sternly.

“Why not?” I said.

“Cross contamination.”

“The food for last night came from a different supplier than I am using today,” I said. “All the ingredients for last night’s menu came directly from a catering wholesaler and were prepared at the racetrack. Today’s ingredients were ordered through my restaurant, and it’s been in the cold-room there for the past two days.” The cold-room was a large walk-in refrigerator, kept at a constant three degrees centigrade.

“Did you get anything from the same wholesaler for the dinner?” she asked.

“No. The dry provisions would have come from the cash-and-carry near Huntingdon, the meat from my butcher in Bury St. Edmonds and the fresh fruit and vegetables from the wholesale greengrocer in Cambridge that I use regularly.”

“Who provided the food for the dinner last night?” she asked.

“Something like Leigh Foods, I think. I’ve got the details at my office. I don’t usually use them, but, then, I don’t often do a function for so many people.”

“How about the equipment company?”

“Stress-Free Catering Ltd,” I said, and gave her their telephone number. I knew it by heart.

The digits of my digital clock changed to 8:00, and I thought of the Stress-Free Catering truck arriving down the road with no one to meet it.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said, “but I have to go now and start work. If that’s all right by you?”

“I suppose so,” she said. “I will come down to the racetrack to see you in about an hour or so.”

“The track is in Suffolk. Is that still your territory?” Actually, there were two racetracks at Newmarket; one is in Cambridgeshire and the other in Suffolk, with the county line running along the Devil’s Dyke between them. The dinner, and the lunch, were in Suffolk, at the Rowley Mile course.

“The sick people are in Cambridge, that’s what matters to me.” I thought I detected the faint signs of irritation, but maybe I was mistaken. “The whole area of food hygiene and who has responsibility is a nightmare. The county councils, the district councils and the Food Standards Agency all have their own enforcement procedures. It’s a mess.” I had obviously touched a nerve. “Oh yes,” she went on, “what exactly did people have to eat last night?”

“Smoked fish, stuffed chicken breast and crème brûlée,” I said.

“Perhaps it was the chicken,” she said.

“I do know how to cook chicken, you know. Anyway, the symptoms were too quick for salmonella poisoning.”

“What happened to the leftover food?” she asked.

“I’ve no idea,” I said. “I don’t think there was much left over. My staff are like a pack of wolves when it comes to leftovers and they eat whatever remains in the kitchen. Food left on people’s plates goes into a bin that would normally be disposed of by Stress-Free.”

“Did everyone eat the same?” she asked.

“Everyone except the vegetarians.”

“What did they have?”

“Tomato and goat’s cheese salad instead of the fish starter, then a broccoli, cheese and pasta bake. There was one vegan who had preordered grilled mushrooms to start, roasted vegetables for main course and a fresh fruit salad for dessert.”

“How many vegetarians?”

“I’ve no idea,” I said. “All I know is that we had enough of the pasta bake.”

“That seems a bit cavalier.”

“We did two hundred and fifty covers. I ordered two hundred and sixty chicken breasts, just in case some of them were a bit small or damaged.”

“What do you mean by damaged?”

“Bruised or torn. I didn’t know the supplier very well, so I decided to order a few more than I normally would. In the end they were all fine and we cooked the lot. Then there was enough vegetarian for at least twenty, plus the vegan. That should be about thirty to thirty-five extra meals over and above the guests. That feeds my staff. If there are only a few vegetarians among the guests, then my staff have to eat more of that. Look, I really must go now, I’m late already.”

“OK, Mr. Moreton,” she said. “Just one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Were you ill in the night?”

“As a matter of fact, I was.” Horribly.

BY THE TIME I finally arrived at the racetrack, the man from Stress-Free Catering was well advanced with the unloading of the truck.

“Beginning to think I’d got the wrong day,” he said sarcastically by way of welcome. He rolled a large wire cage full of crockery out onto the hydraulic tailgate and lowered it to the ground with a clatter. Perhaps he could use the tailgate to lower me onto a bed. I worked out that I had been awake for more than twenty-six hours, and remembered that the KGB had used sleep deprivation as their primary form of torture.

“Was it you that collected the stuff from last night?” I asked.

“No chance,” he replied. “I had to leave Ipswich at seven and had to load everything before that. I’ve been at work since five-thirty.” He said it in an accusing manner, which was fair enough, I suppose. He wasn’t to know that I’d been up all night.