Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,2
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 marquee at Newmarket racecourse,’ I said. ‘The marquee will be used as a bar during the race meeting today. The tent we used for a kitchen last night will be a beer store by now.’
‘How about the equipment?’
‘Everything was hired from a catering supplies company from Ipswich. Tables, chairs, tablecloths, plates, cutlery, glasses, pots, pans, ovens, hot serveries, the lot. My staff helped load it all back on their 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 racecourse 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 from the one I am using today,’ I said. ‘All the ingredients of last night’s menu came direct from a catering wholesaler and were prepared at the racecourse. Today’s were ordered through my restaurant and have 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 as 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 Edmunds, 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 their details in 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 racecourse to see you in about an hour or so.’
‘The racecourse is in Suffolk. Is that still your territory?’ Actually there were two racecourses at Newmarket: one is in Cambridgeshire and the other in Suffolk, with the county boundary 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 having 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 left-over 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 which 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 pre-ordered 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.’