Gary had been good enough to make some enquiries using his contacts – easy when you are a serving senior officer – so they knew the identity of the murdered man. His name was Jordan Banks, a twenty-eight-year-old man from Wetherby, a town due east of York on the A1(M) motorway. The police were able to lift a set of prints from the ladder, which revealed a misdemeanour record for shoplifting that was a decade old. There was nothing since. He was employed in Wetherby in a fast food franchise and had no link to the Yorkshire pudding competition, to anyone in the competition or appearing at the event, and no link to the museum, Alan Crystal, or anyone else. No one could provide any reason for him to be in York, let alone at the venue.
Why or how Jordan Banks came to be in the field behind the marquee was yet to be determined. Equally, the motive for his murder remained unknown. Gary had a picture of the man on his phone, but he was not someone Albert recognised despite hoping he might have seen him at some point the previous day.
Arriving at the venue, they found the museum entrance open and a crowd queuing to get in. ‘Perhaps we should have gone around the side again,’ commented Gary, wondering how long it would take them to get inside.
As it turned out, the queue moved swiftly, taking them up to the ticket booth where they flashed their VIP lanyards again. Inside the booth was the same man as yesterday, looking just as bored as before as he handed out tickets and took the visitors’ money. Albert and Gary got a nod as they went by, the man’s attention already on the next person in line.
Alan’s idea that the museum might attract a lot more interest was proving to be true as the corridors and rooms they passed were packed with people reading the information on the walls and looking at the pictures and exhibits as they transitioned through the old house to the marquee at the back. Big signs were hung everywhere to ensure no one would have any trouble finding their way to the competition, but Albert made his way through all of it, remembering the route from yesterday.
Caused to pause briefly by a bottleneck of people ahead to them, Albert turned his head to look at a picture on the wall beside him when it caught his eye. ‘Look, Gary,’ he drew his son’s attention with a nudged elbow. ‘It’s a picture of the current record holders.’ The picture, a little fuzzy because it was thirty years old and taken with a lower quality camera than one gets today, showed a giant Yorkshire pudding so large it didn’t fit into the frame. Standing before it was the bakers, all wearing their Uncle Bert’s uniform and smiling proudly.
The queue moved forward, and the picture was forgotten in favour of getting to the venue.
The marquee was warmer today than it had been previously, the heat coming from the people now filling the large tent as they perused the stalls and spent their money on all manner of fine wares.
Rex lifted his nose into the air and drew in as much air as he could hold. It was filled with the scent of fine cheeses, pastry treats, meats being cooked, and all manner of conflicting odours, all of which carried the promise of a full belly if he could just get within biting range.
Looking about made Albert wonder if Alan had gotten better or worse in the night. He talked about the world record attempt and this year’s Yorkshire Pudding Competition as if it were his magnum opus and it seemed cruelly ironic that he wasn’t here to see how successful he had made it. Nor was Brian, of course, the person who had been usurped as the organiser by Alan. There had been a lot of bad blood between the pair, but Alan hadn’t been around to shove Brian in the mixer and it certainly wasn’t Brian who attacked Alan in the alleyway because that person was at least a foot taller.
Albert paused for a moment as yet again, he caught a glimpse of the truth hidden behind the mystery. There had to be something to the pair’s intense dislike and what had befallen the event in the last day.
He was still pondering their rivalry when he made his way through the marquee to arrive at the tee section. To his right was mostly taken up by the world record attempt, to his left still the competition itself which was attracting a lot of interest. Dead ahead was the stage, which now had displays erected like scenery and at the front, holding the microphone was a man in a suit. He had the bearing and demeanour of a stand-up comedian and might well have been for all Albert knew. The man was in his thirties and what some might describe as a jolly fat man. He certainly had the smile for the first part and was cracking Yorkshire pudding related jokes that made his ample belly jiggle each time he laughed.
Albert listened to him for a moment but had no time for silly jokes. He turned his attention back to the competition hall. The competition was under way despite the early hour. There were ten tables with ten ovens set up in two rows of five. They were all on a raised plinth roughly a foot off the floor of the marquee which, together with a rope barrier around the outside, gave the competitors some separation from the crowds passing around them. The visitors could all watch the various teams prepare and bake their puddings which had to be made from scratch. There were to be ten heats, each with a winner advancing to a final where the panel of judges, including Ethan Bentley,
