The Food Detective Read Free Page A

like that shouldn’t get so aerated. I changed gear a bit. ‘Do you remember that politician – the Minister of Agriculture or whatever – trying to force his kid to eat a burger. And the kid had more sense than he did and shoved it away? Oh, Nick, they’re such fools, aren’t they! Thinking we’ll buy that crap.’
    ‘But people do. More to the point, people sell it to them,’ he added. ‘People sell over-age cattle, complete with spinal cord material —’
    ‘That’s coming in from Europe —’
    ‘And some farmers are doing it here. Why not? They get good prices for beef that’s less than thirty months old —’
    ‘Pitiful prices, more like!’
    ‘But virtually nothing for stock that’s over that magic thirty months,’ he overrode me. ‘Wouldn’t you be tempted? To take it along to a mate’s place, way out the back of beyond, and set up a little abattoir? If I were a farmer down on my uppers, I’d betempted.’
    ‘But I don’t suppose you’d succumb.’ I stared at him. ‘You reckon this meat – this thirty-month-old meat – wouldn’t be kosher?’
    ‘Neither kosher nor halal!’
    ‘Eh? Oh, I get you.’
    ‘Not the sort of thing I’d want to eat,’ he added, ‘with or without my ulcer.’
    I found myself grinning. ‘I don’t half miss the food, Nick. A good curry. Down Ladypool Road. All that halal meat being made into wonderful curries and baltis. Tell you what, I’ve found a good place in Exeter: you can stand me a meal one night. When your stomach’s better.’
    I flapped a hand and picked my way through all his boxes to the door. He flapped one back. Lindi had been right about the plasters on his hands, too.
    ‘You want to look after yourself, you know. Especially with this job of yours. Tell you what, you just tell folk you’re a civil servant. Altogether safer, if you ask me.’

Chapter Two
    The one person I didn’t want to meet on my way back to the village was Sue Clayton, our curate. She always insisted on giving you a lift, even if you’d rather be on your own thinking, or, in my case, exercising off another calorie. She looked so hurt, almost resentful, if you tried to refuse that I’d given up trying, accepting each time as graciously as I could.
    ‘I thought I was an early bird,’ I said, cramming myself into the passenger seat of her Fiesta, ‘but you’ve obviously been working already.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, ignoring the implied question and grinding a gear.
    How anyone could do that to a modern synchromesh gearbox always defeated me, as did the idea that anyone could see through her windscreen. She’d never mastered the controls that directed hot air on to it, and dealt with condensation by polishing with the palm of her hand. So she had not just a runny screen, but also a greasy one.
    ‘I hear our newcomer has stigmata,’ I said.
    ‘Not really.’
    So she’d met him already.
    ‘But I’ve seen them – with my own eyes.’
    ‘Scratches,’ she said.
    ‘Where did he get them from, I wonder?’
    She shrank further from me, but then had to crane forward to see through a clearish patch the size of a postcard.
    ‘Someone put plasters on his hands at least,’ I prompted.
    ‘Yes. I hate this corner.’
    So did everyone with any sense. I always slowed to walking pace so I could get into first. Sue tried it in third. To be fair, she tried most things in third. The poor little car would probably die never having got into fifth. I glanced at Sue. She probably wouldn ’t either. The dream of my life was to get her to go on the town with me. You know the sort of thing: shop for England, nice lunch, another shop. Maybe a hairdo and a facial. She certainly needed the hairdo. Ponytails are fine and dandy when you’reyoung with thick, shiny hair; when you’re in your forties and your hair’s not just fine but thinning and very dull, it’s a pretty unforgiving style. Especially if you use rubber bands to confine it. If only she’d have it all lopped off