Fethering 09 (2008) - Blood at the Bookies (10 page)

“The place has been around for a long time. As a college, or it may even have been a poly. Not very academic, did courses in estate management, animal husbandry, catering, that sort of thing. Most of the students there were local, and I gather they still are. I always think that’s the difference between a college and a university. A university is a place where young people go to get away from home, to spread their wings a little, start to find their own personalities, whereas a college…Anyway, in recent years,
following government policy…
” Distaste steeped Carole’s words as she spoke them “…Clincham College has been accorded university status. So, rather than dishing out diplomas and certificates, Clincham College is now dishing out degrees. Which, I would imagine, are about as valuable from the academic point of view as the diplomas and certificates they replaced.”

“Does it take a lot of foreign students?”

“That I wouldn’t know. I don’t think more than the average so-called university.”

“Well, it’d be fairly easy to check if Tadek was enrolled there.”

“But how could he have been, Jude? If he was, surely the police would have described him as a ‘student’, not a ‘bar worker’?”

“He could have been doing a part-time course. Or maybe he started something and dropped out. A lot of students do.” Her neighbour didn’t seem particularly impressed by this new area of potential investigation. “Look, Carole, we do now have at least one connection for Tadek and the Fethering area. Apart from Madame Ego at the Cat and Fiddle. He was looking for Clincham College. It’s a lead.”

“About the only one we’ve got,” said Carole frostily.

Silence reigned between them until they reached the High Street. The cold wind off the sea stung their cheeks. Jude noticed with amusement how, the closer they got to the betting shop, the more the anxiety in Carole’s face grew. At last, when they were only yards away, she burst out, “Is there anything I ought to know? I don’t want to look a fool. I don’t want people staring at me. I don’t want to do the wrong thing.”

“Carole, it’s a betting shop we’re going into, not the temple of some obscure religious sect. Nobody will take any notice of you. And if you do feel self-conscious, just study the sheets from the newspapers stuck up on the walls. They’ll show all the runners and riders.”

“And nobody will think it odd if I don’t bet?”

“Nobody will think anything about you.”

“Oh.” But she didn’t sound reassured.

“Know anything?” asked Sonny Frank, the minute the two women entered the betting shop.

“Sorry. Nothing,” Jude replied.

“How’s about your friend?”

“Sonny, this is Carole. Sonny Frank—Carole Seddon.”

“Good afternoon.”

“How do? And what about you—know anything?”

“Well,” Carole replied, primly mystified, “I know quite a lot of things, I suppose. In which particular area were you interested?”

“Horses,” said Sonny. “Wondered if you knew a good thing on today’s cards?”

Carole looked to Jude for help, which was readily supplied. “Sonny was wondering if you had a tip for any of today’s races.”

“Oh, good heavens, no. I’m afraid I don’t know anything about horses.”

“Join the club,” said Sonny Frank, “The great international conspiracy of mug punters.”

“Ah.” Carole still looked confused.

“You know anything, Sonny?” asked Jude.

“Might be something in the 3.20 at Exeter.”

“Oh?”

“From a yard in the north. Long way to travel if the trainer reckons it’s a no-hoper.”

“So you’re saying it’s a cert?”

“No such thing, darling.”

“Are you going to tell me the name?”

The round head shook, its plastered-down hair unstirred by the movement. “Maybe later. See what form the jockey’s in first.”

Jude nodded acceptance of his reticence and crossed to the counter to hand in Harold Peskett’s bets. Carole felt stranded. Sonny Frank had returned to his
Racing Post
, three Chinese waiters chattered incomprehensibly, the gambling machines recycled their interminable jingles. She didn’t know whether to follow her neighbour or just sit down as if her presence in the betting shop had some purpose. Then she remembered Jude’s advice and drifted across to look at the newspaper sheets pinned to the wall. The lists of runners and riders from Exeter and Lingfield meant nothing to her, but she stared at them with the concentration of an aficionado.

“The ground hasn’t really thawed out after the frost,” said a cultured voice behind her. “The going shouldn’t be too heavy.”

“Oh. Really?” Carole turned to see a smartly suited mature man with an impeccably knotted tie. He was the former accountant whom Jude knew as a regular, but to whom she had never spoken.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen you in here before.”

“No, I am not an habituee.” Why on earth had she said that? Was it some form of inverted snobbery that put her gentility into overdrive in a common place like a betting shop?

“Well, I am, I’m afraid. Gerald Hume.” He stretched out a hand and formally took hers.

“Carole Seddon.”

At the counter, Jude had had Harold Peskett’s bets scanned by the manager, but lingered. Ryan looked sweaty and ill at ease. Once again Jude was aware of the strong peppermint smell that was always around him. “I was wondering if my friend and I could talk to you about something…?”

“What’s that?”

“About Tadeusz Jankowski…you know, the person who died.”

The young man was instantly suspicious. His dark eyes darted from side to side as he said, “I only saw him the once, that afternoon. I told you that. I’ve already told you everything I know.”

“Yes, but we’d like to talk to you a bit more about it. Amongst other things…”

“Why, what do you know?” There was a note of panic in his voice.

“Oh, this and that,” Jude replied, casually—and mendaciously. “We thought it’d be nice to have a chat and bring you up to date on what we do know. And you’re the person who knows everything that goes on in this betting shop. You, as it were, know where the bodies are buried.”

His pupils flickered like trapped tadpoles. “I can’t talk now,” he said.

“What time do you finish?”

“Five-thirty this time of year.”

“Meet in the Crown and Anchor?”

“OK,” he grunted reluctantly.

Someone’s got a guilty secret, thought Jude. She wondered if Ryan’s manner towards her had something to do with their encounter earlier that morning. Had he been doing something he shouldn’t have been in the betting shop’s back yard? And did he think she was a witness to his wrong-doing? Had her random talk of knowing ‘where the bodies are buried’ triggered some guilt in the manager?

These were her thoughts as she crossed back towards her neighbour, who she was surprised to see was in earnest conversation with the man whom Sonny Frank had once identified as a retired accountant. Animated by talking, he didn’t look quite as old as he had before. Probably only early sixties, steel-grey hair and a lean face with unexpectedly blue eyes. When he smiled, he was almost good-looking.

“Oh, Gerald, this is my friend Jude,” said Carole in a manner which was, by her standards, fulsome.

The introductions were duly made. “Yes, I’ve seen you in here before, but never known your name,” said Gerald.

“Same for me with you. And indeed with a lot of other Fethering residents.”

“You’re certainly right there. Isn’t that typical of England—everyone knows who everyone else is, but they never speak to each other?” He seemed slightly embarrassed by his own seriousness. “Carole was just giving me her views on the first race at Lingfield.”

“Was she?” asked Jude, with some surprise.

“She fancies Deirdre’s Cup, and I can see the way her mind’s working, but I just wonder whether he can produce his turf form on the all-weather.”

“That’s obviously the big question,” said Carole, trying to avoid her friend’s eye. Out of Gerald Hume’s sightline, Jude let her jaw drop in a parody of stunned surprise.

“Well, I might be swayed by your opinion,” said the retired accountant. “I’ll wait till just before the off, see how the market rates Deirdre’s Cup.”

“Good idea,” said Carole.

“We can actually go now,” said Jude. “Our meeting’s going to be later in the day.”

“Oh,” said Carole. “Well, may as well just stay and see this first race at Exeter.”

“Yes, wait and see if Deirdre’s Cup floweth over,” said Gerald Hume, rather pleased with this verbal felicity.

“Very well,” said Jude, still bemused.

In the few minutes before the race, the odds on Deirdre’s Cup grew shorter and shorter till he was seesawing for favouritism with the horse which had started the day odds-on.

“Someone knows something,” observed Gerald Hume. “Where do you get your information from, Carole?”

“Oh, here and there,” she replied airily. “One keeps one’s ear to the ground.” Again she looked studiously away from Jude, on whose face was a pop-eyed expression of disbelief.

“Right, I’m going to grab that eleven to four while stocks last,” said Gerald Hume and hurried up to the counter with open wallet.

“Are you not betting?”

“No.” Carole still avoided Jude’s eye.

“Well, I’m going to do something. I can’t watch a race without having a financial interest in it.”

Jude went each way on a wild outsider called Lumsreek, which she got at thirty-three to one. Already planning how she’d spend her winnings, she rejoined Carole and Gerald, who seemed as relaxed as if they’d known each other since schooldays.

Before the race started, Wes and Vie rushed in from some other abandoned decorating job and just managed to get their bets on in time, so the actual running was accompanied by their raucous shouts of encouragement.

Not that they did much good. In both cases, the horses whose praises they had been singing before the ‘off’ were condemned at the end as hopeless nags. Deirdre’s Cup did better, though. Never out of the first four, he put in a big challenge in the last furlong, actually leading for a few strides before the favourite reasserted its class and got home by a short head.

“Worth watching, that horse,” said Gerald Hume. “Going to win a race soon.”

“Yes,” Carole agreed sagely.

“So how much did you lose?” he asked.

“Oh, I didn’t bet on it.”

“Canny. You fancied it, but you knew something…?”

“Well…”

“Thought he needed the race?”

Carole wasn’t quite sure what the question meant, but it seemed to invite agreement, so, ignoring the flabbergasted look on Jude’s face, she agreed.

“Yes, I should have thought it through,” said Gerald Hume. “Are you going to do something on the next?”

“Oh no, I think Jude and I had better be off. Things to do, haven’t we?”

Jude, still mystified by Carole’s behaviour, agreed that they did indeed have things to do. “Also,” she said, “if the way my luck’s going is characterized by the running of Lumsreek…” Her fancy had come a very distant last “…I think I should keep out of betting shops for the next few days.”

“Still, maybe I’ll see you in here again?” asked Gerald Hume, directing the enquiry very firmly towards Carole rather than Jude.

“Oh, I don’t think so. As I said, I’m not an habituee.” This time she didn’t feel so stupid saying the word. In fact, she felt rather classy. Confident even.

“Well, I hope we will meet again somewhere,” said Gerald.

“I’m sure we will. Fethering’s a very small place, and I only live in the High Street.”

“Good heavens, I’m in River Road.”

“Very close then.”

“I’m sure we’ll meet up.”

The two women were nearly back at their respective homes before Jude asked, “So what was all that about, Carole?”

Her friend looked all innocent. “What?”

“Gerald Hume. Had you met him before?”

“Never.”

“Well, you behaved as if you knew each other very well.”

“Yes. Strange, that, isn’t it…?” Carole mused.

“Any explanation…?”

“No, it’s just…there are some people one meets, with whom one just…clicks. Do you know what I mean?”

“Oh, definitely,” said Jude, suppressing a smile. “I’ve fixed to meet Ryan in the Crown and Anchor soon after five-thirty. Are you coming?”

“I certainly am,” Carole replied.

“Very well. See you then.” And Jude went into Woodside Cottage, her bewilderment by no means reduced.

Carole went into High Tor, feeling really rather good. She really had clicked with Gerald. For a moment she toyed with the unfamiliar sensation of being a bit of a femme fatale.

“I
speak to Tadek’s landlord. Nothing,” said Zofia. Her voice down the phone was cold and disappointed.

“What do you mean—nothing?” asked Jude.

“It is like he do not know who he rents his rooms to. So long as they pay, he doesn’t care who they are. Tadek was just another student for him. If the police had not questioned him, he would have forgotten my brother’s name.”

“So you didn’t get any idea of how Tadek spent his time?”

“The landlord does not live near the house with the rooms in. It is just for money. He might as well be taking profits from slot machines.”

“Did you go to the house?”

“Yes.”

“And did you manage to speak to any of the other residents?”

“Not many are in. Two I speak to. They also only remember Tadek because the police have been round asking questions. How can people live so close and not know each other?” the girl asked plaintively.

“They can do it because they’re English,” Jude replied. “I’m afraid there’s a strong tradition in this country of keeping oneself to oneself. Have you heard the expression: ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’?”

“No. And certainly where Tadek was living was not a castle. It was very bare, not a nice place.”

“So what you’re saying, Zosia, is that you’ve drawn a blank? You haven’t met anyone who knew your brother?”

“I meet the woman at the pub he work. Cat and Fiddle. But she no use. She did not seem to know him at all.”

“Shona Nuttall. A friend and I met her too, and that was the impression we got. I think your brother was just cheap labour to her. She seemed to be a bit of a slave-driver.”