In Vino Veritas Read online

  As if responding to a cue, Jack and Luke made a robust entry at this point, sounding as usual like a regiment descending the stairs. ‘It’s all right for you to read that!’ said Eleanor, as her elder son seized on the letter, which had drifted to the floor.

  ‘Open University Graduation Ceremony, May the thirteenth,’ Jack announced to his brother.

  ‘Oh, great, Dad!’ said Luke enthusiastically. ‘Will we be able to photograph you wearing one of those daft hats?’

  ‘If you’re thinking of that comedian receiving an honorary doctorate at the University of Northampton,’ said his father testily, ‘I’m afraid I don’t qualify for anything so lofty or so freakish. I’m merely a Bachelor of Arts, not a doctor.’

  ‘A distinction which you have thoroughly earned, rather than one awarded for no academic achievement whatsoever,’ said Eleanor stoutly.

  ‘No daft hat?’ said Luke in undisguised disappointment.

  ‘No daft hat,’ said his father firmly.

  ‘Most of the graduates I’ve seen in pictures seem to have mortar boards,’ said Jack thoughtfully. ‘I think a mortar board on you might look quite daft enough for us.’

  ‘Not as good as bright green with a big tassel, though.’ Luke refused to be consoled. ‘Any chance of you going on to become a doctor, do you think, Dad?’

  ‘None whatsoever. The next graduates in this family will be you and Jack.’

  ‘Don’t rely on it, Dad. I fancy being an interesting drop-out,’ said Jack provocatively. ‘Stripped to the waist with a guitar, I should think. Driven to new heights of performance by banned substances.’ He eyed his mother surreptitiously, but for once she refused to be drawn by his lurid provocation.

  ‘If you want any breakfast, you’d better cease these ridiculous imaginings and get on with real life,’ Eleanor said firmly.

  ‘The local press will be interested in this,’ said young Luke with relish. ‘Sort of “Dull copper reveals hidden depths of scholarship” line.’

  Jack’s eyes lit up. ‘You’re right, Luke. “Sherlock lurks within the village bobby” stuff. I’m sure you and I will get together some interesting copy for the media if we give our minds to it tonight. You got any plans to retire to the south coast and keep bees, Dad?’

  ‘None whatsoever. I’m going in to the station now to continue the task of keeping crime off our streets. Of making them safe for cheeky young scoundrels like you two!’

  Jack nodded his fifteen-year-old approval. ‘Good on yer, Dad! You’d better think what you’re going to say to local radio, though. They’re sure to want an interview, after Luke and I have finished as your PR men. I should think television and the national press will be on to it pretty quickly, after we’ve made our first releases.’

  ‘If I hear that you’ve said a word to anyone, there’ll be trouble!’ said Bert, with as much menace as he could muster.

  Eleanor followed him out to his car. ‘You’ve got to go to the graduation ceremony,’ she said firmly. ‘I know they like ribbing you, but those two lads will be as proud as Punch to see you get your degree.’

  Gerry Davies was happy to see the Abbey Vineyards shop crowded with people on a Saturday morning. Weekends were usually their busiest time, as you would expect, but it was good to see that there was as yet little sign that the recession was affecting either the number of visitors or their rate of spending.

  There had been almost from the start a pleasing mutual support between the shop and the restaurant, which now carried two AA Rosettes. People who bought wines and other offerings in the shop became aware of the restaurant, with its pleasantly spacious rooms and its splendid outlook over the slopes of vines and the wilder and more dramatic outlines of the Malvern Hills in the distance. It was difficult to imagine dining anywhere in the area with a better view, a point emphasized by the colour postcards they displayed and sold in the shop.

  Equally, there was now substantial evidence that those who enjoyed their meal and its accompanying wines in the restaurant often returned to the shop in the weeks which followed, keen to buy the wines they had sampled and enjoyed with their excellent food. Gerry Davies had no culinary skills himself, but that made him only more appreciative of those of Jason Knight. They were two very different men, but they had worked well together from the outset. And, to Gerry’s secret surprise, they not only respected each other but enjoyed each other’s company.

  Gerry’s father had been a Welsh miner in the Rhondda Valley in the years before Thatcher’s government had decided that Britain no longer needed its pits. Gerry had enjoyed the mixed benefits of a comprehensive education, then left school at sixteen to work in a steel works which had closed down when he was thirty-two. The closure had proved a blessing in disguise. After six weeks of the misery of unemployment and supporting a wife and two children on social security, he had obtained employment in a supermarket.

  Initially he earned little more than he had been paid ‘on the social’. But Gerry had not only recovered his self-respect but revealed a talent for the retail trade hitherto unsuspected by himself as well as the world at large. Tesco had recognized this swiftly, and he had enjoyed three promotions before becoming manager of one of its new smaller outlets on a garage site. When thirteen years ago Martin Beaumont had been looking for a manager to expand the sales and the range of activities at the shop at Abbey Vineyards, he had shrewdly recognized in Davies a man of forty-four who had both achievement and further potential.

  The entrepreneur who was the driving force behind Abbey Vineyards and the man who felt he still had something to prove had struck up an immediate, instinctive and productive relationship. Each was anxious to prove to a sceptical world that English wine had a bright and exciting future. In their different ways, both men were proving themselves. Both were therefore prepared not to count the hours they spent in pursuit of the development of the company into a more profitable enterprise.

  There had been no destructive rivalry between them. Beaumont had been the entrepreneur content to make his savings, his working hours, his whole life dependent upon the success and prosperity of this enterprise. Davies had never aspired to be more than a trusted employee. He had devoted his loyalty and all of his newly discovered and newly recognized retail talents towards the commercial exploitation of British wine. Gerry Davies relished his confounding of a job market which had once deemed him unfit for employment. It gave him additional satisfaction to be making a successful career by steadily expanding the distribution of English wine. This was a product which more distinguished business heads than his had once dismissed as frivolous and thus unsaleable.

  In a different way from those of Detective Sergeant Bert Hook, the wife and two boys of Gerry Davies were also at once surprised and delighted by the achievements of the head of the family. Gerry’s children were much older than Bert’s. They had gone to university and were carving out careers of their own, but they became steadily more admiring of their father’s achievements.

  Gerry Davies had the ability to work productively and to mix socially with men with very different backgrounds from his own, and that too had been part of his continuing success at Abbey Vineyards. Jason Knight, the chef behind the success of the restaurant, was a very different man from Davies. Unusually among those of his calling, he had an excellent education, including a university degree. He was also well travelled and had an interest in business practice, which gave him very different thoughts about the future of Abbey Vineyards from those of Gerry Davies.

  Yet the two men had got on well from the start. They had formed an excellent working relationship, being prepared to exchange ideas quite frankly and to heed and learn from the other’s very different experiences and expertise. From this had grown a genuine friendship, a relish of each other’s company and a concern for their interests and happiness. They moved easily within each other’s areas without either feeling in any way threatened.

  Thus Gerry Davies was delighted to see Jason Knight come into the shop area, even at ele
ven thirty, the busiest time on a busy Saturday morning. The younger man waited patiently whilst Gerry helped an overworked assistant at the Dog’s Whiskers beer pump. Then he said quietly, ‘I’d like a word with you, Gerry.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll make myself free in a moment.’

  ‘A rather longer word. Want to run one or two ideas past you.’

  Gerry was pleased to hear the jargon. He still found it difficult to believe that his working ideas could be considered valuable by senior and successful people like Jason Knight. But Jason didn’t do bullshit. He must genuinely have something to discuss; he wouldn’t just go through the motions to be tactful. ‘OK. When do you suggest?’

  ‘Can you do a late lunch in my little den? Say two o’clock?’ Jason had insisted on having his own small private retreat at the end of the kitchens away from the restaurant, where he could escape to save his sanity and keep his temper in those trying times which beset every chef, and Martin Beaumont had sensibly granted it to him.

  The older man grinned. ‘Sure I can. I’ll let my staff have their breaks at civilized times. They’ll think I’m being unselfish, waiting until two.’

  Gerry spent the next part of his morning persuading a hesitant lady in late middle age that she really would enjoy a bottle of their cheapest rosé. It took him slightly fewer minutes to organize the delivery of a dozen cases of their best current dry white to a fashionable restaurant in the Cotswolds. Only then did he have a moment to speculate about what it could be that was important enough to Jason for him to arrange such a meeting. Only the closest of friends or associates were ever invited into the den. Only something which was really engaging Jason’s attention would dictate an exchange there in the middle of a busy day.

  Sometimes Bert Hook quite liked being at the station on Saturday mornings. He couldn’t admit to it at home, of course – he maintained the conventional attitude of the overworked and exploited public servant there – but he rather enjoyed being in Oldford nick with few people around, as was usual at a weekend, unless there was a major case to justify the overtime.

  You could tidy up your paperwork without interruptions or, as he was doing on this occasion, utilize your developing computer knowledge to explore the Internet. He was consulting the Open University website, with particular reference to graduation ceremonies, when he found John Lambert looking over his shoulder.

  Bert started a little guiltily and said grumpily, ‘I’m going to have to waste a day’s leave in May. Eleanor and the boys are insisting on attending the OU graduation ceremony, to see me parading in fancy dress.’

  ‘Quite right, too. I’ll need to take a day of my leave, too. I’ll have to confirm for myself that it’s really happened and old Bert’s made it at last.’

  ‘“Old Bert” can give you ten years, John Lambert. “Old Bert” isn’t operating on a special Home Office extension to his normal service.’

  ‘And “Old Bert” has been energetic enough and determined enough to study for six years in his own limited spare time and get himself a degree. Quite a distinguished degree, in my opinion. So much so that I absolutely insist on being present at the official recognition of your labour of Hercules.’

  ‘Bloody hell, John!’ A very mild expletive by police standards, but strong words for Bert Hook, who had eschewed all intemperate language since the birth of his first son. ‘This is getting out of hand.’ A happy escape suddenly presented itself to him. ‘I probably won’t be able to get tickets for everyone. They said in the letter that there was normally heavy demand and the supply was almost certain to be restricted.’

  ‘And it advises you here to make the earliest possible application for any extra tickets you might require.’ Lambert indicated a line towards the bottom of the screen. ‘Better get on with it, I’d say, Bert. Two extra tickets for Christine and myself. Try telling them an unbelieving chief superintendent needs to see the official confirmation of a copper’s achievement with his own eyes.’ He gazed into the middle distance. ‘I suppose I could always offer to take charge of security if there were real difficulties about getting in.’

  Gerry Davies was thoroughly intrigued by Jason Knight’s mysterious summons. At two o’clock he proceeded cautiously to the chef’s den at the far side of his kitchen.

  The lunchtime rush was almost over and Knight’s staff were winding down and preparing to close the restaurant and enjoy their own lunches. Jason had removed his chef’s hat and combed his dark-blond hair, but was still wearing his white overalls as he came into the small room which was his private domain. ‘Thanks for coming, Gerry. I know you’ll keep this to yourself – it’s not the sort of discussion either of us would want bandied about.’

  ‘This gets more intriguing by the minute. What is it that we need to be so cloak and dagger about?’

  Jason grinned in that beguiling, almost schoolboyish way which was so engaging. ‘I take myself too seriously sometimes, don’t I? But I still think this is important to both of us.’

  ‘Then I’ve no doubt it is. I hope it’s nothing too difficult for a simple thick Welsh boy from the Rhondda.’

  ‘Don’t undersell yourself, Gerry. You’ve nothing left to prove. The company is doing well. Agreed?’

  ‘You’re better equipped to judge that than I am, Jason. But I think so, yes. Martin said it was at last month’s meeting, and from what I can see in the shop since then, we’re going from strength to strength.’

  ‘I would agree with that from what I see in the restaurant. But I think it’s Martin’s policy to keep us all a little in the dark about the success of the total enterprise. We each have a pretty good idea about what’s going on in our own section of the empire, but only the haziest notion of the overall progress of Abbey Vineyards.’

  ‘That’s inevitable, surely. It’s the nature of the beast.’

  ‘It seems to be, at present. I think it’s also policy on Martin’s part.’

  ‘But even if you’re right, there isn’t much we can do about it, is there? We could ask for a rise, I suppose, but if I’m honest I have to say that I think I’m already pretty well paid for what I do.’

  ‘You’re too modest for your own good, Gerry. I told you, you shouldn’t underestimate yourself, or what you’ve achieved here.’

  Gerry Davies wasn’t sure whether he was pleased or disturbed by this. Bewildered was more the word, he decided: he couldn’t see where the conversation was going. ‘Jason, we know each other too well to piss about. What is it you’re getting at?’

  ‘I want to sound you out about an idea. In confidence, as I said at the outset. I haven’t spoken to anyone else about this, except to take informal legal advice on the situation.’ Jason supposed that a ten-minute discussion over a pint with an industrial lawyer in Ross-on-Wye Golf Club just about constituted that.

  ‘Hadn’t you better tell me straight out what’s bothering you? I’m not much good at guessing games.’

  ‘Sorry. Well, to put it at its simplest, I feel we should have a greater say than we have at present in company policy, and a greater share of the profits the company is going to make in the years to come.’

  ‘And how do we get that? Perhaps it should be obvious, but I’m out of my depth here.’

  ‘We should have shares in the company.’

  ‘But it’s a one-man band. Martin Beaumont set it up and took all the early risks.’

  ‘No. Not quite. Vanda North is a junior partner. I don’t know how junior, but she put money into the business in the early days.’

  ‘When they were living together.’

  ‘I presume so. I get the impression that she’s very much a junior partner, without any real say in policy.’

  ‘Perhaps she prefers it that way, whilst the company goes from strength to strength.’

  ‘Perhaps. I didn’t get that impression at last month’s meeting, or on one or two other occasions. But as I say, apart from taking a little professional advice, you’re the first person I’ve spoken to about this.’

 
; ‘So what are you suggesting we do?’

  ‘That’s what I want to discuss. The first thing to establish was whether you felt the same about the situation as I did.’

  Gerry paused for several seconds. ‘My first reaction is that I enjoy my work and like things the way they are. I feel that I’m doing a good job but that in return I am well paid for it.’

  ‘I thought you might feel like that.’ Jason Knight couldn’t quite keep the disappointment out of his voice. ‘I knew you’d be absolutely straight with me. But in turn I think I should urge you not to underestimate yourself. Martin Beaumont’s success probably owes more to you than you imagine.’

  ‘We all contribute to it. But that’s what we’re paid for. Martin took a chance on me when he gave me this job. I work hard partly because I love my job and partly because I want to repay him for his faith in me.’

  ‘You’re wrong about one thing in that. He didn’t take a chance when he picked you, Gerry. You’d proved yourself with Tesco. They promote talent, but they’re efficient and hard-headed about it. How many times did they promote you?’

  ‘Three. From very humble beginnings.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was three. But that proves my point. Martin wasn’t taking a chance when he chose you to run his shop and retail sales here: it was a hard-headed business decision. You were in charge of one of Tesco’s new small stores and no doubt making a success of it. He chose the best candidate of those he interviewed to come here. He’s a good picker – I’ll give him that!’

  ‘I think he was taking a chance. But even if you’re right, he put me into a job I enjoy and he’s paid me handsomely for doing it well. I don’t see that he owes me any more than that.’

  ‘Maybe not in the last industrial generation. The one where unions fought employers for whatever they could get and as often as not destroyed each other. But employee involvement is one of the modern trends. Even big companies are seeking to involve their workers in share schemes, to give them an ongoing interest in the prosperity of the company and reward them for good service. It’s the modern way.’