A Sprinkle of Sabotage by Fiona Leitch (bill gates book recommendations TXT) 📗

I haven’t rung the hospital yet,’ he said. ‘I wanted to check on you first.’ I felt my heart swell; I’d been the first person he’d thought of. It was lucky I was already sitting on my bed or I might’ve swooned. ‘And of course they’d have rung me if anyone had died.’ Well yes, there was that, of course…

‘So anyway, I’ve been thinking…’ I said, and he groaned.

‘Here we go,’ he said, but it was good-natured.

‘How long until we get the lab results back about cause of death?’ I asked. He laughed.

‘You mean how long ’til I get the results back. I’m the police, remember?’

‘Sorry, Detective Chief Inspector, I know my place.’

He laughed again at that. He had a nice laugh. ‘Yeah, right. I think a pig just flew over my head… It helps that the lab knows what they’re looking for, so with any luck we’ll hear back by the end of the day if there was tetrodotoxin – pufferfish toxin – in the victim’s bloodstream. They’ll do a full screening, but that’ll probably take longer.’

‘Okay, so until then we shouldn’t assume anything, should we? We shouldn’t rule out other causes.’

He sighed. ‘Here we really do go again. Are you telling me you don’t think Zack did it? Because you were the one who mentioned pufferfish in the first place.’

‘I know, and I still think that was the cause of death.’

‘But…?’

‘Oh, I don’t know…’ I lay back on the bed, momentarily wishing Nathan and I were having this conversation in person, right there on my duvet. Or preferably under it. ‘I hate the thought of Zack being responsible. He’s a nice bloke and the guilt will do his head in.’

‘I didn’t speak to him much last night, but yeah, he seems like a nice fella. It was an accident, though.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, but for some reason that made me feel uneasy. I shook my head. ‘Anyway, all I was really going to say is, I’ve made a list of everything that was in the meal last night, every single ingredient we used, and I think we should get everyone who was there to make their own list of everything they ate. Just to see what correlation there is between who was sick, if any of them were, and exactly what they ate. I mean, I’ve never seen pufferfish poisoning before – I’ve never seen any neurotoxin at work, apart from on my training course – so I could be totally wrong.’

‘Hmm…’ Nathan sounded thoughtful. ‘Fair enough. Even if it was the fish, it’s still weird that Jeremy Mayhew died so quickly, while the rest of them were fine. They were, last I heard, anyway. I should probably go and check…’

We made arrangements to meet at Polvarrow House later on; Nathan had to go back to the death scene and I needed to check on the food truck – I’d left it in a bit of a hurry the night before and I was very aware of the fact that it wasn’t mine.

I could hear Daisy getting up, and then Mum moving around in the spare room (which was really her bedroom, but we still called it the spare room to maintain the illusion that she was a strong, independent woman with her own home and she was only staying over as a favour to me). It was a school morning, and the madness was about to begin.

I flopped back onto my pillow, trying to ignore the fact that I needed to get up and be a responsible adult. I shut my eyes and hoped with all my heart that this wouldn’t be the last case I got to investigate with Nathan.

Chapter Sixteen

I managed to get Daisy to school without telling her too much about the night before. She wanted to hear all about Zack, and I’d half-forgotten she was signed up as an extra too so she’d also got a text message about the shoot being cancelled. I told her it was probably just some technical hold-up and that she hadn’t lost her chance at stardom, then Germaine and I dropped her off at the gates and were about to drive away when Debbie leapt in front of the car.

‘Oh no you don’t, missus!’ she said, blocking my way. ‘There is so much you’re not telling me…’ I had to admit defeat and go for a coffee with her.

We sat in Rowe’s – where the scent of freshly baked pasties and sausage rolls was enough to make a true Cornishman (or woman) weep with longing and Germaine, who had tucked herself under the table, salivate all over my trainers – waiting for the waitress to bring our drinks over.

‘Thank you.’ I smiled up at the woman who, like at least three-quarters of this town’s inhabitants I vaguely recognised (possibly from school, although it was just as likely to be from coming into the bakery all the bloomin’ time), and stirred my cappuccino as I waited for Debbie to start grilling me.

She took a deep breath (oh, this was going to be one heck of a grilling, I could feel it) and opened her mouth. But before she could speak, the thing that had really been on my mind since I’d learnt about it yesterday – even more than Jeremy’s death – burst out of my mouth before I could stop it.

‘Nathan’s leaving,’ I blurted. She stopped mid-mouth-opening with such a look of surprise on her face that I almost laughed. But then I remembered what I’d just said and didn’t feel like laughing after all.

‘What?’ she said, looking stunned. ‘When? Why? What are you talking about?’

‘His old boss back in Liverpool has offered him a job. And his parents are getting on and his dad’s ill, and his ex still lives there and—’

‘Bloody hell!’ she said, still looking gobsmacked. ‘I can’t believe it. When’s he going?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I felt sick. I fiddled with a sachet of sugar, my fingers turning it over and