'Would anyone else from your firm,' I asked, 'have gone to Peter's house, asking on your behalf for the tapes he was working on?'
'What tapes were those?'
'Cassettes with programs for evaluating racehorses.'
'He was working on no such project.'
'But in his spare time?' I suggested.
Mason Miles shrugged and sat down again with the relief of a traveller after a wearisome journey. 'Perhaps. What he did in his spare time was his own affair.'
'And do you have a grey-haired middle-aged man on your staff?'
He gave me a considering stare and then said merely, 'We employ no such person. If such a person has visited Mrs Keithley purporting to come from here, it is disturbing.'
I looked at his totally undisturbed demeanour and agreed.
'Peter was writing the programs for someone called Chris Norwood,' I said. 'I don't suppose you've ever heard of him?' I made it a question but without much hope, and he shook his head and suggested I ask his Associates in the outer office. The Associates also showed nil reactions to the name of Chris Norwood, but the young man paused from his juggling of microchips long enough to say that he had put everything Peter had left concerning his work in a shoe-box in a cupboard, and he supposed it would do no harm if I wanted to look.
I found the box, took it out, and began to sift through the handwritten scraps of notes which it contained. Nearly all of them concerned his work and took the form of mysterious memos to himself. 'Remember to tell RT of modification to PET.' 'Pick up floppy discs for LMP.' Tell ISCO about L's software package.' The bug in R's program must be a syntax error in the subroutine.' Much more of the same, and none of it of any use.
There was a sudden noise and flurry at the outer door, and a wild-eyed breathless heavily flushed youth appeared, along with a suitcase, a hold-all, an overcoat and a tennis racket.
'Sorry,' he panted. 'The train was late.'
'Robinson?' the girl said calmly. 'D. F?'
'What? Oh. Yes. Is the job still open?'
I looked down at another note, the writing as neat as all the others: 'Borrow Grantley Basic tape from GF'. Turned the piece of paper over. On the back he'd written, 'C. Norwood, Angel Kitchens, Newmarket.'
I persevered to the bottom of the box, but there was nothing else that I understood. I put all the scrappy notes back again, and thanked the Associates for their trouble. They hardly listened. The attention of the whole firm was intently fixed on D.F. Robinson, who was wilting under their probing questions. Miles, who had beckoned them all into the inner office, was saying, 'How would you handle a client who made persistently stupid mistakes but blamed you for not explaining his system thoroughly?'
I sketched a farewell which nobody noticed, and left.
Newmarket lay fifty miles to the south of Norwich, and I drove there through the sunny afternoon thinking that the fog lay about me as thick as ever. Radar, perhaps, would be useful. Or a gale. Or some good clarifying information. Press on, I thought: press on.
Angel Kitchens, as listed in the telephone directory in the post office, were to be found in Angel Lane, to which various natives directed me with accuracy varying from vague to absent, and which proved to be a dead-end tarmac tributary to the east of the town, far from the mainstream of High Street.
The Kitchens were just what they said: the kitchens of a mass food-production business, making frozen gourmet dinners in single-portion foil pans for the upper end of the market. 'Posh nosh' one of my route-directors had said. 'Fancy muck,' said another. 'You can buy that stuff in the town, but give me a hamburger any day' from another, and 'Real tasty' from the last. They'd all known the product, if not the location.
At a guess the Kitchens had been developed from the back half and outhouses of a defunct country mansion; they had that slightly haphazard air, and were surrounded by mature trees and the remnants of a landscaped garden. I parked in the large but well-occupied expanse of concrete outside a new-looking white single-storey construction marked Office, and pushed my way through its plate-glass double-door entrance.
Inside, in the open-plan expanse, the contrast to Mason Miles Associates was complete. Life was taken at a run, if not a stampede. The work in hand, it seemed, would overwhelm the inmates if they relaxed for a second.
My tentative enquiry for someone who had been a friend of Chris Norwood reaped me a violently unexpected reply.
'That creep? If he had any friends, they'd be down in Veg Preparation, where he worked.'
'Er, Veg Preparation?'
'Two-storey grey stone building past the freezer sheds.'
I went out to the car park, wandered around and asked again.
'Where them carrots is being unloaded.'
Them carrots were entering a two-storey grey stone building by the sack-load on a fork-lift truck, the driver of which mutely pointed me to a less cavernous entrance round a corner.
Through there one passed through a small lobby beside a large changing-room where rows of outdoor clothing hung on pegs. Next came a white-tiled scrub-up room smelling like a hospital, followed by a swing door into a long narrow room lit blindingly by electricity and filled with gleaming stainless steel, noisily whirring machines and people dressed in white.
At the sight of me standing there in street clothes a large man wearing what looked like a cotton undervest over a swelling paunch advanced with waving arms and shooed me out.
'Cripes, mate, you'll get me sacked,' he said, as the swing-door swung behind us.
'I was directed here,' I said mildly.
'What do you want?'
With less confidence than before I enquired for any friend of Chris Norwood.
The shrewd eyes above the beer-stomach appraised me. The mouth pursed. The chef's hat sat comfortably over strong dark eyebrows.
'He's been murdered,' he said. 'You from the press?'
I shook my head. 'He knew a friend of mine, and he got both of us into a bit of trouble.'
'Sounds just like him.' He pulled a large white handkerchief out of his white trousers and wiped his nose. 'What exactly do you want?'
'I think just to talk to someone who knew him. I want to know what he was like. Who he knew. Anything. I want to know why and how he got us into trouble.'
'I knew him,' he said. He paused, considering. 'What's it worth?'
I sighed. 'I'm a schoolmaster. It's worth what I can afford. And it depends what you know.'
'All right then,' he said judiciously. 'I finish here at six. I'll meet you in the Purple Dragon, right? Up the lane, turn left, quarter of a mile. You buy me a couple of pints and we'll take it from there. OK?'
'Yes,' I said. 'My name is Jonathan Derry.'
'Akkerton.' He gave a short nod, as if sealing a bargain. 'Vince,' he added as an afterthought. He gave me a last unpromising inspection and barged back through the swing doors. I heard the first of the words he sprayed into the long busy room, 'You, Reg, you get back to work. I've only to take my eyes off you
The door closed, discreetly behind him.
I waited for him at a table in the Purple Dragon, a pub a good deal less colourful than its name, and at six- fifteen he appeared, dressed now in grey trousers and a blue and white shirt straining at its buttons. Elliptical views of hairy chest appeared when he sat down, which he did with a wheeze and a licking of lips. The first pint I bought him disappeared at a single draught, closely followed by half of the second.
'Thirsty work, chopping up veg,' he said.
'Do you do it by hand?' I was surprised, and sounded it.
'Course not. Washed, peeled, chopped, all done by machines. But nothing hops into a machine by itself. Or out, come to that.'
'What, er… veg?' I said.
'Depends what they want. Today, mostly carrots, celery, onions, mushrooms. Regular every day, that lot. Needed for Burgundy Beef. Our best seller, Burgundy Beef. Chablis Chicken, Pork and Port, next best. You ever had any?'
