On the way to Chapel-en-le-Frith, Cooper drove through Sparrowpit, and turned up a lane by the Wanted Inn that would take him towards the A6, where it bypassed the town. He saw a board by the roadside advertising ‘Livery vacancies’. Now, that was a sign of hard times.
He crossed the national park boundary just before he reached the A6, and followed the road that ran through Chapel. He passed the turning for the high school and the railway station on Long Lane. Since he was early and had time to spare, he decided to call at the local police station.
Chapel police station was a little way out of the old part of town, on Manchester Road. It had originally been a couple of old police houses, and was also the base for a traffic policing unit for the north of the county. There was a dog unit parked in the yard outside, and a mobile police office. It had one of the best views of any police station in Derbyshire, with an outlook at the back over rolling farmland towards the National Trust site at Eccles Pike.
Half an hour later, Cooper met Niall Maclennan in the little cobbled marketplace in the oldest part of Chapel-en-le-Frith. Maclennan was sitting on a bench between the corner of the NatWest Bank and the old market cross, under a horse chestnut tree, watching the world going by on the high street below.
Although it was tiny, like all the best marketplaces it seemed to be surrounded by pubs. One of them, he noticed, had a sign outside.
Niall Maclennan had dark eyes, prominent cheekbones and designer stubble. He was trying very hard to ooze the impression of a TV celebrity chef. At one time his image might have been spoiled by the fact that he was working in Chapel-en-le-Frith, this old market town on the edge of the High Peak. But these days Chapel was claiming to be the gourmet centre of the Peak, thanks to the number of restaurants, cafés and pubs, and a reputation for locally sourced produce.
Less was said about the fifteen hundred Scottish soldiers who had been imprisoned in St Thomas Becket church and starved to death during the Civil War. That ought to be worthy of some kind of commemoration.
‘There are good jobs here,’ said Maclennan. ‘And in Buxton, too. I was just marking time at the Light House, getting a bit of experience.’
‘So you left the Whartons for a better job?’
Maclennan hesitated. ‘Not exactly. It took me a few weeks to find another position.’
‘What made you leave, then?’
Thoughtfully, Maclennan took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘The atmosphere, I suppose. Things were getting bad. Everyone knew that.’
‘Bad financially?’
‘Yes, business was down. It’s heartbreaking to put all your effort and creativity into producing an exciting menu, and then have no one turn up to get the benefit. Everybody was tetchy, especially Nancy and Maurice. I could see it would only get worse. Once you’re on that slippery slope, it takes new management to turn it round.’
‘Reputation being so important.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But it wasn’t just that, was it?’ asked Cooper.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you mentioned Nancy and Maurice getting tetchy. Running a kitchen can be quite stressful anyway. If the Whartons became difficult to work with, I can see why you might have walked out on them.’
Maclennan laughed. ‘I’m not some kind of prima donna, you know. I don’t storm out in a hissy fit every five minutes. It was a fully thought-out decision, made in the best interests of my own career.’
‘So who took over the kitchen when you left?’
‘Nancy, so far as I know. She had a couple of staff to help her, but they weren’t exactly qualified chefs, if you know what I mean. It’s hardly a surprise that the quality of the menu nosedived. I tried to be a bit adventurous, and produce quality. They went for pub grub. What a phrase. Pub grub.’
He said it with such venom and contempt that Cooper could imagine the conflicts there might have been at the Light House while Maclennan was working there. Maurice Wharton was famously irascible — in fact, he’d made it his trademark. And Nancy was no soft touch, either.
‘Do you remember the time the couple from Surrey went missing?’
‘Sure,’ said Maclennan. ‘It was on all the news programmes.’
‘You were still working at the Light House then, weren’t you?’
‘Yes — but you appreciate I was in the kitchens all the time? I didn’t see any of the customers. At least, not until we’d finished serving and cleaning down, then I might go out into the bar for a drink to wind down.’
‘Just staff in the bar by then?’
‘Well, unless Maurice had let a few regulars stay for a bit of a lock-in. You know it happens.’
‘Yes, everyone knows it happens,’ said Cooper.
‘But then it was just a few of the same old faces. I never stayed long on those nights. Not my idea of congenial company.’