In the Kitchen Read Free Page A

It wasn't about being one of the boys, not necessarily – they could flirt like hell too – but it showed that they knew the rules. The professional kitchen was not the same as the domestic kitchen. The two were worlds apart. Only Oona – who by staying on the spot for the best or worst part of two decades had risen to the rank of executive sous-chef – seemed unaware of the distinction.
    He reached in his desk drawer for the staff rota, noticing yet again the way the Formica was beginning to split and the notches carved in the plywood base, put there it was said by the previous chef who was counting the days spent sober on the job (a total of nine), and when he turned back to Oona he sat very straight and correct as if that might dissuade her from melting all over his desk.
    'There's a lot of different religions in here, Oona. You want to watch out you don't offend someone.'
    'Hoo-ee,' said Oona, showing her gold tooth. 'The good Lord don' mind 'bout the words. As long as he hear the prayer.'
    'It wasn't him I was thinking about,' said Gabe, wondering, not for the first time, if he should get rid of her or if it would be more trouble than it was worth.
    'Well, darlin',' said Oona, 'that is the problem right there.'
    Give me strength, thought Gabe. 'Right,' he said briskly, 'difficult day today. Can you call the agency and get some cover for Yuri? For Benny too.
    He's at home, getting over the ... the shock.' Benny, in fact, had not wanted to take a day off but Gabe had ordered it, knowing HR would otherwise look askance.
    'Poor, poor ting,' said Oona. The words formed little explosions on her lips so it seemed they had been forced from her body by a series of blows to the chest. She rolled her eyes up to heaven.
    'Yes,' said Gabe, though why Benny had been roaming the subterranean corridors – 'the catacombs' as they were known – way past the dry-goods and freezer rooms, way past where any stores were kept, had yet to be explained. It occurred to Gabriel that, but for Benny, Yuri might not have been found, not for a long time at least. Stupid, how stupid, he thought, without knowing quite what he meant.
    'My day off,' said Oona. 'Of course it all happen on my day off.'
    Gabe considered this for a moment. If she had not been off, Oona seemed to be saying, everything would have been OK. Or perhaps she was simply regretting missing out on the drama. 'We have to keep our minds on the job,' he said.
    'Yes, Chef,' said Oona. She smiled, crinkling her almond-shaped eyes. Her face was much younger than her fifty-five years, smooth-skinned and plump with a scattering of girlish freckles across the bridge of her nose. There was no trace of grey in her hair which she wore cropped high above her little ears.
    She kept diamanté hairclips fastened to her chef 's coat and, presumably, fixed them either side of her head after work. She was fat but somehow the fat added to her youthfulness, as though it was something she would outgrow.
    'Yuri,' she said, 'that poor ting, living down there like a little old rat.
    How long you tink he been down there, mmm?'
    'Oona,' said Gabe, searching for a way to keep the conversation on the straight and narrow, 'the police are looking into all that.'
    Oona slipped off a shoe and reached down to massage her instep. Her feet, it seemed, belonged to her age. They were so broad they were practically square, and the black flats she wore to work strained at the seams. 'They going to interview me this afternoon. Mr Maddox say so this mornin'. Lord,' she said, cramming her foot back into the shoe, 'Lord only know what happen.'
    'It's pretty clear, actually,' said Gabe. Parks looked like a pen-pusher but he clearly knew his job. The 'crime scene' forensics had borne out his theory, and there'd be no rush with the post mortem. 'Yuri was living in the basement.
    He had a mattress down there and everything, the other side of the rubbish chutes, in what used to be the old facilities office. He took a shower in the