Dave 2 snorted, a small escape of air from his nose: he’d been spoken down to like that before. ‘Well, Mr Crystal, it’s not just Beefy we are missing, several of the team didn’t come back this morning. I think word of the second murder put them off. We could do with some extra hands, but that’s not really the issue.’
Alan’s tone turned impatient. ‘What is then?’
‘The oven,’ Dave 2 replied, making air quotes around the word oven. It’s lit, but it’s all guess work now.’
‘Guess work?’ asked Alan, concern creeping into his voice and his face.
Dave 2 looked around as if checking to see who might be here to back him up and found himself very alone. ‘Well, yes, Mr Crystal. Did no one explain this?’
Alan’s hands clung to each other like friends about to receive bad news and looking to each other for support. ‘Explain what?’ he begged in a terrified voice.
Dave 2 now looked worried himself. ‘There’s no experience to draw on, Mr Crystal. We make Yorkshire puddings in a nice clean factory. The temperature in the factory is controlled, the temperature in the oven is controlled and inside the oven the temperature is the same all over. We are going to attempt to bake this giant Yorkshire pudding in an open pan, heated from the bottom only and with the outside temperature in single figure degrees centigrade. One stiff breeze at the wrong time and we might get no rise at all. To get a good rise, the trick is to get the oil really hot so it flash-fries the batter when it hits the pan. We cannot do that.’
‘Why not,’ demanded Alan, still sounding horrified. It was clear none of this had been even suggested to him before.
Dave 2’s brow furrowed. ‘Think about it, Mr Crystal. It’s one giant open pan. We can heat it and get the oil inside hot, but we cannot pour four tons of batter into the pan in one go. It will take us ten minutes or more to get all the batter in and the moment we start adding it, the temperature of the oil will drop.’
Alan stared at the man, his mouth flapping as he tried to form his next question. ‘What … what are you telling me?’ he asked quietly, biting the fingers of his left hand as he waited for the answer.
Albert eyed Alan critically. He was far too invested in the outcome of the record attempt. The colour had drained from the man’s face and his legs were twitching as if they were having trouble supporting him. Was he about to faint? Albert couldn’t help but question what Alan had riding on the event.
Dave looked back at Alan with an open expression. ‘I’m not telling you anything, Mr Crystal. I’m just saying I don’t know how this is going to go. It’s not like we got to do ten practice runs beforehand.’
‘Oh, my goodness,’ Alan was now bent at the waist and looking for something to grab to keep himself upright. As he stumbled, the something he grabbed was Dave 2 who looked shocked to be now supporting the smartly-dressed man’s weight.
Gary, equally surprised to see Alan struggling, stepped forward to help take his weight. ‘Can we get a hand here?’ he called aloud.
The event organiser was hyperventilating, so as another of the chefs ran over with a plastic chair, Gary folded him into it and shoved his head down to get it below his heart. Holding a hand to the back of Alan’s head, Gary flared his eyes at his father and whispered, ‘What the heck?’
Albert didn’t know the answer to that question.
‘Mr Smith?’ asked a voice from behind his right shoulder.
Albert swung his head to find a woman in her thirties looking up at him. She was an attractive red head, wearing designer red-rimmed glasses and a bright red designer label raincoat. Albert guessed instantly that she was one of the plain clothes officers Chief Inspector Doyle deployed to the event.
‘Hello,’ he replied, stepping away from the crazy drama going on with Alan Crystal. ‘You were told to find me, were you?’ he asked to confirm his guess.
The woman glanced down to her hands, in which she held her police identification. Albert got a second to look at it, no more, before she slipped it back into the matching red handbag hanging over her shoulder.
‘My instructions were to identify myself to you and point out my colleagues.’ She turned her eyes to where, at the nearest stall, one selling freshly cooked roast beef sandwiches using a Yorkshire pudding as the bread, three men stood. ‘That’s constables Washington, Wilshaw, and Jones,’ she pointed out, identifying each in the line.
They looked to have been carved from the same mould with their matching haircuts and matching plain clothes outfits. All three made brief eye contact and turned away again, pretending to peruse the stallholder’s wares.
There were four police officers here, maybe more, Albert considered as the detectives might decide to show up anyway. Like a flash of lightning, inspiration hit. ‘Can you cook?’ he asked.
The female police officer’s head tilted to the right in question. ‘Cook?’
Cracking Eggs
Ninety minutes later, they were in the food preparation area of the world record attempt.
‘This is not what I expected to be doing today,’ complained Police Constable Wilson Wilshaw as he cracked what he guessed to be his thousandth egg.
In contrast, his colleague, the red-headed constable, Sophie Hendrix, was rather enjoying herself. ‘I dunno, Wilson, I think this is kind of fun. The other two are just wandering around outside. What if these guys break the record for the biggest Yorkshire pudding? We’ll have been part of that.’
‘I
