Moore paused, shoulders down, voice dark and bitter. ‘Takes after his mother, that one.’
Roberta patted him on the back. ‘You must be so proud.’
After the honeymoon suite, ‘STRATHISLA’ was a bit of a disappointment. Mind you, the décor in here was less likely to induce cluster headaches, vertigo, and nausea, so swings and roundabouts.
Mr Norton and his wife were in matching tweed. Which was quite something, given that it was absolutelyboilingin their hotel room. What’s worse, she was wearing a cardigan under her jacket too. A nasty thick yellow one.
They clung to each other like drowning, love-struck teenagers, albeit drowning love-struck teenagers with dangly wattle necks, liverspots, a bumper-selection-box of wrinkles, and yellowy-grey hair.
Mr Norton shook his head, setting his turkey neck wobbling. ‘Oh, it was justghastly, wasn’t it, Catherine? Simplyghastly.’
Mrs Norton nodded, tears sparkling in her boiled-egg eyes. ‘He was such a card, he really was. We’ll miss him terribly.’
Roberta sagged against the balcony handrail, scowling down at the tartan carpet and that stupid massive stag statue. Supposed to be a romantic surprise break, and now look at it – blood-crusted antlers and a hotel full of angry Tory scumbags, whinging becauseapparentlybeing confined to your room was worse than having to investigate a murder.
Sergeant Moore settled in next to her. ‘Well, it’s early days, right?’
That familiar gurgling growl rumbled away inside her, like distant hungry thunder. Ending with a couple of pops and a wheezing sound. ‘Time is it?’
He checked. ‘Just gone five.’
And nothing to eat since brunchtime. ‘No wonder I’m starving.’
‘Seventeen interviews down, twenty-nine to go.’
‘Gah... Told you we’d be here all weekend.’
Six hours of interrogating smug Tory bastards, and not a single clue to show for it. Oh, he was such a lovely man, so good with children, a great chap, did so much work for charity, salt of the earth. Blowing smoke up a corpse’s arse was second nature to these people.
But that’s what an expensive private education got you, wasn’t it? None of the buggers could think for themselves. It was all stock phrases and platitudes. Or maybe it was secret Tory code for something – like with dating profiles, where ‘great sense of humour’, meant ‘fat’, and ‘bubbly personality’, meant ‘enormouslyfat’. So, in Toryspeak, ‘Oh, he’s a real character’ probably meant ‘he’s a bit of a dick’; ‘such a card’ meant ‘tosser’; and ‘salt of the earth’ was ‘complete and utter total wankspasm’.
Would make life a lot easier if they’d just come out and say it.
Sergeant Moore sniffed. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘Gin. Tonic. And enough chips to choke a goat. With cheese and gravy...’ Her stomach growled again. ‘Come on. Can’t catch killers on an empty stomach.’
12
Apparently, the ‘swanky tartan’ budget didn’t extend to the staff quarters. There weren’t even any stuffed animal heads on the walls, just lots of magnolia paint, with a poopy shade of brown below a rubber dado rail. Grey carpet tiles, a bit curly at the edges, and patched in places with silver duct tape. The kind of motivational posters that should get middle-management-types done for crimes against humanity. ‘EVERYDAYYOUDOYOURBESTISA GREATDAY!’, ‘GETOUTTHEREANDSHOWTHEWORLDWHATYOU CANDO!’, and Roberta’s personal favourite: ‘A SMILEMAKESEVERYONE’SDAY– BESOMEONE’SREASONTOSMILETODAY!’ Which, for some unfathomable reason, came with a photo of a piglet in a propeller beanie.
Roberta raised a fist and gave the door marked ‘HOTELCHEF’ three knocks, loud and hard. Opened it without waiting for an answer and stuck her head in. ‘Hoy, Raymond Blanc, you’re up.’
It was an OK room, as rooms went. Nowhere near as large as the guests’ ones, and without any of the fancy fixtures and fittings. The six-foot fat man pacing up and down the carpet tiles, smoking up a storm, didn’t help it feel any bigger. His chef’s checked trousers looked about ready to burst, held up by a pair of red-white-and-blue braces. A sweaty red T-shirt and jaunty white neckerchief. A cliché of French postersgraced the walls: the Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Toulouse-Lautrec’s can-can girls, blocks of cheese, and big bottles of wine... But the end wall was solid bookshelves, overflowing with cookery books.
The hotel chef didn’t stop pacing as he glared at her on the way past, a Gauloise sticking out the corner of his rubbery-lipped mouth – the strong distinctive white smoke curling up around the waxed handlebars of his little moustache. As if Hercule Poirot had swallowed a minibus. ‘Ow am I supposed to prepare dinner if I am cooped up in ’ere?’ He waved his cigarette at her as he turned and paced past again. ‘I ’ave no fresh delivery, I ’ave people to feed that should not be ’ere, but nothing to feed themweeth, there is dirty-big padlock on my fridge,’ he paused just long enough to stamp his foot, ‘and I am stuck in this son-of-bitch room!’
Roberta smiled at him. ‘Oh, I’m sure we can work something out.’
For an overstuffed fat man, he was surprisingly light on his feet, pirouetting from fridge to stove to worktop and back again in a strange mesmerising wobbly ballet. His white chef’s jacket stretched tight across that massive belly.
He battered a net of carrots down on the stainless steel in front of him. ‘Zees is intolerable! It eezimpossibleto create ze culinary masterpiece for forty guests from nothing!’
Sergeant Moore flipped the page in his notebook. ‘Can we just get back to the subject in hand, please? Did you see anyone arguing or fighting with Sir Reginald?’
‘Carrots! All I have is carrots and what you Scottish call, “neeeeps”.Sacrebleu!’
‘Did you see anyone arguing or fighting with—’
