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

normally kept him on desk duty but occasionally they let him out for a change of scenery.

‘Yeah. Dunno what I done to deserve that,’ he grinned, taking a small paper bag from his pocket and offering it to me. ‘Jelly baby?’

‘I can never say no to a jelly baby,’ I said, selecting a red one and popping it into my mouth.

‘If you’re looking for the DCI, he’s on his way,’ said Sergeant Adams, shuffling about in his seat. ‘And not a moment too soon, either. I needs relieving for a pi— For a bit.’

‘I can take over, if you want?’ I said, but he shook his head.

‘He’d have my guts for garters if I deserted my post,’ he said. ‘I just ’ope he comes soon, otherwise…’

‘Cavalry’s here,’ said Nathan from behind me. I turned round and he gave me that smile of his, full beam. Don’t swoon, woman! I told myself sternly, but my self-chastising didn’t have much effect. ‘Sergeant Adams, whatever dire thing was going to happen doesn’t need to happen now, does it? Off you go. We’ll be inside.’ He stood back and gestured for me to go up the stairs in front of him, as Sergeant Adams leapt up in a far sprightlier manner than I would have given him credit for and dashed off towards the Portaloos. I tied Germaine to the steps (she gave me a look of hurt resignation as I did so) and led the way up.

Inside Zack’s trailer, the scene was pretty much how we’d left it. The Scene of Crime team had been over it the morning after Mayhew’s death, but at that point we’d been pretty certain it was the fish, so they had been there more to prove that theory than find another cause of death.

We stood at the table and looked at what was left of the food. It was starting to smell, and I thanked my lucky stars that we were in this draughty caravan in October and not in July, when it would have been a sweltering metal box.

‘So…’ said Nathan, looking at me.

‘So…’ I said, looking at him.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked. I was actually thinking about him swiping everything off the table and onto the floor, then flinging me onto it to make mad passionate love to me, but I could hardly admit that.

‘I’m thinking,’ I said, playing for time as I desperately tried to think of something that didn’t sound like the final scene in a Mills-and-Boon bodice ripper, ‘I’m thinking, you didn’t tell Zack that it wasn’t the fish yet. You don’t seem to have told anyone.’

He smiled. ‘You’re right, I haven’t. But I’m assuming that you have told him?’

I nodded. ‘Yes. The poor bloke was falling apart from the guilt, not just of killing Jeremy but of poisoning his new girlfriend as well. I did tell him to keep it to himself, though. Said we didn’t want to prejudice any lines of enquiry.’

‘‘Prejudice lines of enquiry’? Oh that sounds good; that sounds really legit.’ Nathan grinned. ‘No, really, that’s a good one. Do you think he will tell anyone else?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe Aiko. Why don’t you want anyone to know?’

‘Well, one, I was waiting for the lab results to come back on the fish – they have now; negative of course – and two, I just wanted to see how everyone would react, to see if anyone gave themselves away.’

‘How would they do that?’

‘Well, look at all this. There’s not much food left here, but there is a bit. If I’d slipped the toxin into something, I’d stay quiet until it looked like the pufferfish was going to get the blame for it – which as far as they all know, it has – and then I’d be the first person to suggest that we send the cleaners in to get rid of all the mess, so Zack can have his caravan back.’

‘And you think that’ll work?’

‘No idea. The other thing is to find what was actually poisoned, and see if we can narrow down who had access to it and was therefore most likely to have done it.’

‘Or, like I suggested ages ago, we find out what it was that everyone apart from Kimi and Faith, who didn’t get sick, ate. Neither of them had the pufferfish, but they also didn’t have—’

‘The cupcakes,’ he said.

‘I was suspicious of them all along,’ I said. ‘No one knows where they came from.’

‘Who have you asked?’

‘Well, only Zack, Kimi, and Faith, but they were delivered in a weird, secretive way, just dumped on the counter of the food truck when I wasn’t looking.’ I spotted the box on the table. ‘So I reckon we should be testing whatever’s in that box.’

Nathan pulled on latex gloves and lifted the lid of the box carefully. We both took a deep breath as he peered inside…

‘There’s none left,’ he said.

‘Really?’ I was surprised. ‘That’s odd. There were a lot of them – ten I reckon, or maybe even a dozen. There were seven people for dinner and two of them didn’t eat them, so that means they all had at least two cakes each.’

Nathan looked at me and grinned. ‘You telling me you couldn’t eat two cupcakes?’

I looked at him indignantly. ‘No, I couldn’t! Well, not big cupcakes like these, with a ton of frosting on, not straight after a meal.’

‘So where are the others?’

We stared at each other. Maybe the poisoner had beaten us to it; maybe they’d already somehow sneaked into the caravan and taken the incriminating cupcakes…

‘There’s been a uniform on the door twenty-four hours a day since the death,’ said Nathan. ‘There’s no way anyone could have got in.’

‘Through the window?’ I suggested, remembering how I’d badgered Tony into climbing in through the big one at the back of Faith’s caravan. Nathan went over and checked it, then shook his head.

‘It’s locked from the inside,’ he said. ‘Even if they’d left it unlocked on the night of the murder, so