Joel swallowed nervously. Whoever he named would be their next victim. Who should he pick? The answer to the madman’s question was Victor Harris. He was easily the best chef. He made the clangers more neatly and more swiftly than anyone else. When Victor started eight years ago, he reorganised the entire kitchen, making it streamlined and efficient, which allowed Joel to naturally waste off two staff from the kitchen, saving him a packet. Victor also brought his sister along to work in the shop and it hadn’t taken Joel long to fall for her alluring looks and long legs. No, he couldn’t give them Victor’s name, Kate would never forgive him. How about April? She was his oldest member of staff and could be a vicious-tongued cow when she wanted to be.
‘I do not like to be made to wait,’ growled Earl Bacon, prompting Joel to spit out a name.
‘Maddie Hayes!’ he blurted, wondering where he got the name from at the last moment. It was completely made up, the idea to lie and give them a false name coming to him only when the words were forming on his lips.
‘Maddie Hayes,’ repeated Hubert slowly.
‘Yes. She’s easily my best,’ Joel nodded enthusiastically, selling the false name so he could finish this insane experience and escape.
‘Very well …’ The earl had been about to address the café owner by name but realised he hadn’t bothered to learn it. Other people held no interest for him. Unless they were one of the greats who had produced a food worthy of his attention, they were little more than ants scurrying about on the pavement beneath his feet. Not that he could see the pavement or his feet. Years of overindulgence had seen to that. Waist size was another trifling insignificance though; he lived to be well-fed, and only ate the finest foods, or those treats he felt worthy of his attention. The clanger was one such treat. He’d savoured his first one on an excursion with his father many years before. Back when his father was Earl Bacon, he would travel the country on hunting and fishing trips, the father taking the son most everywhere he went. A gurgle from his belly reminded him that he needed to wrap up this business. ‘Very well, you are of no further use. Please dispose of him,’ the final request was aimed at his henchmen, Eugene and Francis.
The order jolted Joel. ‘Dispose? What do you mean dispose? You said I could go!’
Eugene frowned in surprise. ‘Did I? Well, I suppose you can go, in a way. I can’t return you home though. You cannot bake therefore you have no purpose.’
Joel could see the two men to his rear moving forward. The one in army dress had a short piece of rope in his hands! ‘Who are you?’ he squealed at the earl.
It was a question he’d been asked before by the people he chose to save. He relished being asked it because it gave him a chance to deliver his favourite line. ‘Me? Why, I’m the bad guy.’
The Clanger Café
Albert was beginning to get the impression something was wrong. He couldn’t work out what it was, but the people working in the shop, the man who taught the class he attended, and the chefs working in the kitchen behind the counter, were all acting as if there was a massive elephant in the room. He could see them verbally stepping around it.
His class, the first of his trip to pass without incident, had been a revelation. He didn’t even know you could make puff pastry; he thought a person had to buy it in blocks from the supermarket and that it was made in a giant machine somewhere. He’d rolled out, filled, closed, crimped, and baked his wonderful clanger and then sat down in the café to eat the whole thing. At almost eighteen inches long, it was more food than he needed but he wasn’t going to let a crumb go to waste.
Customers in the class got to select their filling from the full range the shop offered. He chose pork with sage and cider for his savoury end and rhubarb with custard for the sweet end. Both halves were sublime but, truth be told, he preferred the savoury fillings, only making two-courses-in-one in the class because tradition demanded it.
As he finished off the last few crumbs, Albert lifted the empty plate to show his dog, Rex Harrison. Rex, a former police dog, fired for his terrible attitude towards his human handlers and their malfunctioning noses, narrowed his eyes disapprovingly at the plate.
Albert rolled his eyes. ‘You already ate yours,’ he pointed out. ‘You didn’t need mine as well.’
Rex had been waiting patiently for his human to offer him whatever was left on his plate. Cleaning plates was one of his specialities and a service he provided regularly because his human’s appetite rarely extended to encompass everything he’d been served. His own clanger barely touched the sides on its way down.
To show his thoughts on the matter, since his human was terrible at understanding what Rex had to say, he flopped heavily to the cool floor tile with a grumpy harrumph. That was until a sniggering sound drew his attention. From a gap beneath a waist-high swing door in the counter, a nose protruded.
Rex had caught the scent of the other dog the moment they entered the establishment, but this was the first time he’d seen him. It was a dachshund, an odd-shaped dog in Rex’s opinion. He was indifferent to it, much as he was most dogs, but his neutral opinion shifted gear because it seemed to be taking pleasure in seeing Rex denied his human’s meal.
‘What’s your problem?’ he growled
