The Neck grew a little slimmer every year, but only a little. The gravel road’s parallel universes of seaweed and stones and sand and box thorn diminished proportionally, but unobserved. And the gravel road itself was being suffocated by weeds that lived in very little danger of being flattened by cars. The most frequent traffic these days was a solitary child running off at night with an empty rucksack, only to return home with a full one.
Roald scratched his head as he studied the contents of the fridge. He was pretty sure there had been two foil trays of Dauphinoise potatoes rather than just one. He was also fairly sure that he had put a bottle of fizzy lemon pop near the front of the shelf before going to bed. He looked about him. There were no other signs to indicate that someone had been in the pub kitchen.
His initial conclusion was that one of the guests must have sneaked down to the kitchen and helped himself to a late-night snack. But it still didn’t add up. This had become a regular occurrence, every few days at times, and in between he would notice that things other than food had gone missing. Odd things. One morning he had searched in vain for a deck of cards he was certain he had left on the kitchen table the night before; another time, the chef discovered that a saucepan was missing. By now there had been countless incidents, all of which defied explanation.
Now, the chef himself might be the culprit, but it seemed highly unlikely. He simply wasn’t like that. Roald couldn’t think of a more trustworthy man than his culinary-skilled distant cousin, and he refused to believe that the man would jeopardize his trusted position through impulsive and insignificant petty thefts.
Besides, the chef reacted with total composure whenever he discovered that something was missing. He simply laughed it off. He laughed everything off. Then again, to claim that he was in complete control of his kitchen and the items in the stock room would be something of an exaggeration. In fact, the chef probably suspected Roald of sneaking down at night to scoff the leftovers. When he hinted at this with a glint in his eye, Roald would protest vociferously, but he couldn’t help laughing too, and that was always the end of that.
But then who could it be? Who on earth would want to help themselves to leftovers and decks of cards and ballpoint pens and fizzy pop and tinned tuna from the stock room? And how did they do it?
That night there had been no guests staying over at the pub so the possibility that the thief might be a guest was now completely eliminated.
Roald left the kitchen and walked down the short back stairs to the small corridor that led to the stock room. It took him some time to realize that some rolls of kitchen towel, a few packets of crispbread and crackers, several tins of tomatoes, some sausages, possibly a jar of honey and definitely a large bag of biscuits… and some bubble wrap were missing. Yes, there had definitely been a lot of bubble wrap in the big cardboard box in which the new trouser press had been delivered. And now it was gone.
Bubble wrap? Who would nick that? The gloves that Roald wore whenever he handled frozen goods were also gone.
As he walked back through the corridor he stopped for a moment and looked up at the small, rectangular basement window, which as usual was ajar, because fresh air was good for you. But surely no one could get in through that window. It was impossible.
The kitchen was closed for the next fortnight because, for the first time in twenty years, the chef had decided to take a proper holiday. He and his wife were taking a trip to the mainland but might return sooner than planned if they didn’t enjoy being away.
Given that the public bar and several of the first-floor guest rooms were in need of painting and various minor repairs, Roald decided to deal with that at the same time and pretty much close the pub in the meantime. He could carry out the work himself, thank God, which would bring the cost down. If he did find himself in need of help after all, he knew who to ask: the regulars were keen to return to their watering hole and were willing to don a boiler suit, if that was what it took. Especially if it also involved beer. Roald, however, had initially turned them down because he wanted some time to himself.
He made a quick decision. He took out a bag of flour and left it in the kitchen. Before he went to bed that night he would sprinkle a very fine layer across the floor. He could always sweep it up the next day. He intended to do this for the next few nights now that he knew that he was the only one going into the kitchen. Never mind the hassle of sweeping it up, Roald needed to know what was going on.
To add to the fun, he left a broken pencil, six liquorice pastilles and a deck of cards on the table. And he put exactly twenty-five slices of salami on a plate in the fridge, as well as ten slices of ham and five rings of red pepper.
The first five mornings he inspected the kitchen there were no signs of anything amiss. The sixth morning the pencil was gone, as were three of the pastilles, seven slices of salami, two slices of ham and one ring of red pepper. And there were footprints in the flour between the fridge and the kitchen table and the door to the basement corridor. Roald squatted down on his haunches and stared, baffled, at the clearest of the prints. It was very small. It had to be a child.
When he followed the footprints out into the corridor and below the window, the penny dropped. With a little bit of ingenuity, a child might be able to get in and out that way.
But a child? At night?
And why steal bubble wrap?
While Roald was repairing a strip of flooring in a first-floor guest room, his thoughts circled around the night-time visits. He wished more than anything that he could dismiss them as an innocent childish prank, but it was impossible. A child who regularly stole food and flour and saucepans and kitchen towels must be a child in need.
However, there were no children in need in Korsted. Judging by the size of the shoeprint, it was a young child. A boy, he imagined, without questioning why he thought so.
Roald wouldn’t claim to know every child in town, yet he knew quite a few and thought he had a fair idea of who they were and where they lived. Not one of them fitted the narrative playing out in the pub kitchen in any way. The baker’s three boys were fond of making mischief, but they couldn’t possibly be behind the break-ins. Roald’s reasoning was partly that he didn’t think any of them would be able to squeeze through the narrow window but, more importantly, he was convinced that they would have woken up everyone in the pub before they even reached the back of the house. The boys were much noisier than other people’s children. Even when they played sleeping lions, you had to press your hands over your ears. Whenever Roald encountered the three boys and the volume of the noise they made, he was overcome by spontaneous gratitude at being childless. He pitied the sixth-form teacher who would one day do battle with their hormones.
On the other hand, Roald’s heart nearly exploded with joy whenever he saw the police officer’s daughter. She was the loveliest, tiniest human being he knew. Always wore a dress and had her hair in plaits, as if she lived in a Little House on the Prairie, rather than a large, yellow-brick house in the middle of the high street. And her name was Laura; it was almost too good to be true. But apart from Roald’s heart, little Laura was unlikely ever to have stolen anything.
So who could it be? He went through the children one by one, and he couldn’t imagine any one of them sneaking out at night to go scavenging for food. Everyone had what they needed, as far as he was aware. And if they brought home stolen goods, surely their parents would start noticing eventually, for goodness’ sake.
Roald had always been very careful not to spread rumours in the public bar, and for that reason he had kept his knowledge of the thefts to himself. On one occasion he had asked some of the regulars in a roundabout way if there were people on the island suffering actual hardship, people who found it difficult to make ends meet.