Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,8

placed the emphasis on the ‘market’ while almost swallowing the ‘new’. To my ears it sounded strange.

She turned abruptly and marched off towards the lifts, giving me another sight of the lovely legs. The mass of black curls bounced on her shoulders as she walked. I watched her go and wondered if she slept in curlers.

‘Sorry about that,’ I said to Ms Milne.

‘Not your fault,’ she said

I hoped nothing was my fault.

She gave me her card. I read it: Angela Milne, Environmental Health Officer, Cambridgeshire County Council. Just as she had said.

‘Why have you sealed my kitchen and closed my restaurant?’ I asked her.

‘I didn’t know we had,’ she said. ‘Where exactly is this restaurant?’

‘On the Ashley Road near the Cheveley crossroads,’ I said. ‘It’s called the Hay Net.’ She nodded slightly, obviously recognizing the name. ‘It is in Cambridgeshire, I assure you. I’ve just come from there. The kitchen has been padlocked and I have been told that I would be breaking the law to go in.’

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘Two men said they were acting for the Food Standards Agency.’

‘How odd,’ she said. ‘Enforcement is normally the responsibility of the local authority. That’s me. Unless, of course, the incident is termed serious.’

‘How serious is serious?’ I asked.

‘If it involves E. coli or salmonella,’ she paused slightly, ‘or botulism, or typhus, that sort of thing. Or if someone dies as a result.’

‘The men said that someone has died,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘I haven’t heard. Perhaps the police, or the hospital, contacted the Food Standards Agency direct. I’m surprised they managed to get through on a Saturday. The decision must have been made somewhere. Sorry about that.’

‘Not your fault,’ I echoed.

She pursed her lips together in a smile. ‘I had better go and find out what’s happening. My mobile phone battery is flat and it’s amazing how much we all now rely on the damn things. I’m lost without it.’

She turned to go, but then turned back.

‘I asked in the racecourse office about your kitchen tent of last night,’ she said. ‘You were right. It’s now full of beer crates. Are you still planning to do a lunch service for Miss America up there?’ She nodded her head towards the grandstand.

‘Is that an official enquiry?’ I asked.

‘Umm,’ she pursed her lips again. ‘Perhaps I don’t want to know. Forget I asked.’

I smiled. ‘Asked what?’

‘I’ll get back to you later if and when I find out what’s going on.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Can you let me know who it is that’s died as soon as you find out?’ I gave her my mobile number. ‘I’ll be here until about six thirty. After that I’ll be asleep.’

Two of my regular staff had arrived to help Carl and me with the lunch, and neither of them had been ill overnight. Both had eaten the vegetarian pasta bake on the previous evening so, by a process of elimination, the chicken became the prime suspect.

For more than an hour they worked in the glass-fronted boxes while Carl and I set to work in the tiny kitchen across the passageway preparing the pies for the oven. Carl rolled out the pastry while I filled and covered the individual pie dishes. Our Cambridge trade greengrocer had successfully replaced the asparagus and the new potatoes, both of which were held captive in the restaurant cold-room. The potatoes now sat ready in saucepans on the stove and I began to relax, but tiredness creeps up on those who relax.

I left Carl to finish the pies while I went to check on the others.

They had successfully retracted the divider wall between the two boxes making a single room about twenty feet square. Four five-foot-diameter tables and forty gold ladder-backed chairs had been waiting for us in the boxes, delivered by a hire company organized by the racecourse, and these had been arranged to allow easy access around them for the service.

I had originally planned for five staff other than me and Carl to work the event, one waiter for each pair of tables, two to provide the drink and wine service and one to help out in the kitchen, but the other three had failed to show. The idea was for one of the waiters to provide drinks or coffee to the guests as they arrived while the other helped Carl and me with steaming the asparagus and heating the bread rolls. In the end, the rolls had been caught by the padlocks so we had bought some French loaves at