There was a fair bit of moaning in the queue, but it was relatively good-natured, and within half an hour the warming dishes on the hot buffet counter had started to fill with food.
The food wasn’t the only thing that was hot. The food truck quickly got steamy with the heat from the oven and the pans on the hob, and having another body in there with me only added to it. Add to that the fact that body was Nathan, and I was in serious danger of melting – or at the very least, succumbing to a swoon and passing out like a Victorian lady suffering from an attack of the vapours. There wasn’t a lot of room in the truck, and we were constantly squeezing past each other to get to something. I am going to explode with the sexual tension in a minute, I thought.
But before I could explode, Nathan’s phone rang. He grinned at me.
‘Sorry, boss,’ he said, and took it out. I half expected it to be his superintendent back in Liverpool, but it wasn’t.
‘Sergeant Adams! Have you run out of jelly babies?’ He looked at me and winked, and I felt myself get even hotter. ‘Oh, he does, does he? I’m at the food truck. Send him over… No, he can come here.’ He hung up. ‘It seems my favourite New Yorker is on the war path…’
I didn’t want it to be too obvious that I was being nosey (hey, there’s always a first time), so I stayed in the truck but loitered by the counter, pretending to check up on the amount of food in the warming dishes. Mike Mancuso had stormed over to the canteen area, obviously not pleased that he’d had to come to Nathan and not the other way around. I dolloped some cheesy pasta on an extra’s plate and shoved them out of the way.
‘Mr Mancuso,’ said Nathan pleasantly. The producer almost growled at him.
‘Can we talk somewhere quieter?’ he asked. Nathan looked around, almost in surprise.
‘I think here’s as good a place as any,’ he said. ‘Please, take a seat.’
Dammit, I thought, as they sat down. Nathan had chosen a table as close to the food truck as possible, but it was too far away for me to hear. I grabbed a tray and went outside, pretending to clear empty plates from the tables. Germaine helped me, gobbling up any bits of food on the floor. She was better than a vacuum cleaner.
‘You got some beef with me?’ hissed Mancuso. Nathan smiled politely.
‘No thanks, I’m not hungry. I had a late breakfast.’ At the next table, I hid a snigger.
‘What? No, I mean, you got a problem with me? I thought this case was all wrapped up. I thought you said it was the pufferfish, an accident…’
‘The cause of death was poisoning by tetrodotoxin, yes.’ Nathan looked the picture of innocence. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘The insurance company contacted you guys and they seem to think there’s a problem, so yeah. They seem to think this was no accident.’
‘Let me guess, they’re refusing to pay out? I said, didn’t I, that insurance companies will do anything to get out of paying off a claim.’
‘So it was an accident?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ Nathan was infuriatingly calm. Mancuso, who was going slightly purple in the face, looked like he wanted to hit something – probably Nathan. He took a deep breath and I could see he was forcing himself to chill.
‘Look,’ said the producer. ‘I’ll level with you: it don’t feel right, carrying on with the shoot with one of my cast members the wrong side of the grass, you get me?’
Nathan looked genuinely confused. ‘The wrong side of the…?’
‘Jeremy. It feels wrong to keep filming after he bought it.’ Mancuso looked at Nathan’s polite incomprehension and sighed, enunciating his words clearly, as though my favourite DCI was an idiot. ‘After he ate the pufferfish and died.’
‘Oh, right, yes. Not heard that expression before. So what would happen if you just closed down until it did feel right?’
‘You fall behind schedule, you pay for stuff you ain’t gonna need, crew you ain’t gonna use, the budget goes way over, the release date gets pushed back further and further, the investors want their money back… You want me to go on?’
‘No, you’ve made yourself quite clear.’ Nathan looked sympathetic, but I knew it was about as genuine as Faith’s hair colour. ‘So you really need the insurance people to pay out, don’t you? Does your policy cover murder?’
Mancuso went pale. ‘But it was an accident.’
‘I told you, I didn’t say that. We think it was meant to look like one. As though all the other little accidents that have been happening on this shoot were really just leading up to this big one.’ Nathan smiled. ‘What do you think?’
Mancuso stood up. He looked suddenly furious. ‘What I think is that the police need to get their heads outta their asses and do their job!’
‘What a pleasant image that conjures up,’ said Nathan. I snorted. Mancuso looked over at me, then back to Nathan.
‘I think you need to spend less time cooking up theories with your little girlfriend here and either find the evidence that says this was a murder or admit that it was an accident. I think that if you don’t get your ass in gear I’ll be reporting you to the authorities!’ He suddenly turned to me again. ‘Can you hear me there okay? Did you get all that?’
‘I’m just doing my job…’ I said, holding up my hands in defence. Germaine growled at him.
‘Can it!’ he growled back, and stormed off. Nathan
