Fethering 09 (2008) - Blood at the Bookies (13 page)

The portico through which Carole and Jude made their way to the Reception area was elaborate and imposing, though it presented that quality of tired shabbiness which infects all educational establishments. The modern lettering of the various signs attached to the tall pillars was at odds with the period of their design.

Inside, more students were draped around the central hall, talking in groups or on their mobile phones. Their manner was loud and over-dramatic, trying to assert their personalities in their new supposed maturity.

Carole and Jude followed the signs to Reception, a glassed-off area with a counter, at which sat a daunting woman in a black business suit. Behind her in the office area stood a tall man reading through a stapled set of spreadsheets.

“Good morning,” said the woman, following some script that had been imposed on her. “Welcome to Clincham College.”

“Hello, my name’s Carole Seddon, and I wonder whether you could help me?”

“That’s what I’m here to do,” said the woman, though her manner belied the welcome in her words.

“We’re trying to make contact with someone who we believe may have been a student here.”

The woman’s face shut down immediately. “I’m afraid I’m not allowed to give out information about the students at the university.”

Jude thought she’d see whether charm might succeed where Carole’s confrontational approach had failed. “No, I’m sure that’s the rule, but all we wanted to know—”

“I’m sorry,” the woman interrupted. “I cannot let you have any information about the students.”

“Is there someone else we could speak to?” asked Carole frostily.

“You could write to the Principal with your enquiry, and it’s possible that he might reply to you.” The woman didn’t make that sound a very likely scenario.

“Look,” Jude persisted, “all we want to know is the answer to one very simple question.” There was no point in pretence. Everyone in the locality knew the name of the recent murder victim. “We want to know whether Tadeusz Jankowski, the man who was stabbed in Fethering last week, was ever actually enrolled in the college here.”

The woman went into automaton mode. “I am not allowed to give out any information about any of the students in—”

“Ah, so you’re admitting he was a student here?”

“I am not doing—”

She was interrupted by a voice from behind her.

Tadek’s name had distracted the man from his spreadsheets. “It’s all right, Isobel, I’ll deal with this.”

Leaving his papers, he emerged through the door from Reception and approached the two women. “My name’s Andy Constant. Lecturer in Drama Studies. Also Admissions Tutor.” Carole and Jude gave their names. “Would you like to come and have a cup of coffee?”

They agreed that they would and, without further words, he led them to an adjacent snack bar. “Don’t worry, the coffee’s all right.” He gestured to a well-known logo over the door. “Outside franchise. Like everything else in this place. The academic life has ceased to be about learning. It’s now all about raising funds and doing deals. I’ll get the coffees. What would you like?”

As he went to the counter, Carole and Jude found a table and studied him. Long and gangly, Andy Constant moved with a laid-back swagger. His face receded from a beak of a nose and surprisingly full lips. His grey hair was worn long, rather in the style of Charles I. He had on black jeans, Timberland boots and a grey denim blouson over a white T·shirt. His voice was as languid as his manner.

He brought over the coffees, a cappuccino for Jude, the ‘ordinary black’ Carole had ordered, a tiny cup of espresso for himself, and sat down opposite them.

“Bit of excitement in a little place like Fethering, a murder, isn’t it?” His tone was joshing, sending up the intensity of their interest. But he was at the same time alert, apparently trying to deduce the agenda that had brought them to the college.

“Bound to be,” said Jude easily.

For the first time he seemed to take her in, and he liked what he saw. “Yes. And everyone’s got their own theory about what happened.”

“The students too?”

“And how. Big excitement for them. Also rather frightening. A young man killed, possibly murdered, only a few miles away in Fethering. Comes a bit near home for them. Current crop of students have been brought up to be afraid of everything. The Health and Safety Generation, I call the poor saps. All afraid of being attacked, the girls afraid of being raped…Whatever happened to the innocence of youth?”

“Did it ever exist?” asked Carole.

“Maybe not, but I think when I was their age I did at least have the illusion of innocence. I kind of trusted the world, was prepared to give it a chance. I wasn’t afraid of everything.”

“You say they’re afraid of everything,” said Jude, “but you’re talking about a generation who think nothing of shooting off round the world on their gap years.”

“True. Except that’s just become another form of package tourism these days. For me it takes the excitement out of far-flung places, knowing there’ll be a nice familiar Macdonald’s waiting when you get there.”

“Maybe.” He had taken over the conversation so effortlessly that Jude wanted to find out more about Andy Constant. “You said you lecture in Drama. Does that mean you used to be an actor?” A theatricality about him made this quite a possibility.

“Very early in my career. Moved into directing for a while. Since then, teaching. Mind you, that involves a certain amount of directing too. And acting, come to think of it.”

He had considerable charm, and a strong sexual magnetism. The latter got through to Jude at an instinctive, visceral level, and she wondered whether Carole was aware of it too.

“Anyway,” Andy went on, “I couldn’t help overhearing what you said to Isobel at Reception. Sorry, I’m afraid she’s not the most imaginative of women. Whatever the question, she always comes up with the party line. But I heard you mentioning the name of Tadeusz Jankowski. 1 wondered why you were interested. Are you just another pair of Fethering residents fascinated by their proximity to a murder?”

Carole and Jude exchanged a look. The true answer was probably a yes, but they needed to come up with something a bit better than that. Jude thought of a solution which certainly had elements of truth in it. “The sister of the dead man came to see me. Naturally enough, she’s trying to find out everything she can about her brother. I just thought Carole and I could possibly help her.”

He nodded, as if he accepted this justification for their presence. “But why have you come here? What reason do you have for connecting the young man with Clincham College?”

Quickly Jude recounted what she had heard from Harold Peskett, about the young Pole’s earlier visit to the betting shop.

“Ah. That would explain something else.”

“What?”

“The police have been here too.”

“Asking about Tadeusz Jankowski?”

“Yes, Carole. Maybe they got the lead from the same source as you did.”

“When were they here?” asked Jude.

“Monday.”

“Then it wasn’t the same source as mine. I only suggested they should contact Harold yesterday—and up to then he said they hadn’t had any contact with him. So they must have heard about the Clincham College connection from someone else.”

“Not necessarily,” said Andy Constant. Apparently they didn’t seem very focused when they came here, more like it was just a routine enquiry.” Yes, thought Jude, “unfocused’ is a pretty good description of the approach Baines and Yelland had used when they interviewed her.

“I mean, I suppose it makes sense,” Andy went on. “Young people tend to congregate together. The dead man was young and had been living round here, so there’s quite a reasonable chance that he would have hooked up with some of the students from the college.” Carole noticed he didn’t use the word ‘university’ and wondered whether this was because he hadn’t yet got used to the idea or whether he was as cynical about the place’s status as she was.

The lecturer took a sip of his espresso and then continued in a different tone. “Anyway, one thing the police did say was that we on the staff here should keep our eyes and ears open for anyone who came here expressing interest in the murder victim…”

“Oh.”

“I thought I should warn you.”

“Why warn us?”

“Well, I’m sure you don’t want to be questioned by the police, do you? It’s very time-consuming and can, I believe, be quite unpleasant. I mean, you’re fine now. Isobel at Reception won’t say anything—that would involve her using her initiative and she doesn’t do that. And you can rely on me to keep quiet, but I can’t guarantee that the rest of the staff here would be so accommodating.”

“So what are you actually saying?” asked Carole.

“I’m saying that we’ve been told to let the police know if anyone comes here enquiring about Tadeusz Jankowski, and so I think there might be an argument for you not taking your investigations at Clincham College much further.”

“You’re warning us off,” said Jude. He gave a relaxed laugh. “That sounds a little over-dramatic. Let’s just say I’m trying to avoid your being inconvenienced.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you. But the police have already questioned me, and I didn’t find it a particularly inconvenient experience.”

“Fine.” He shrugged. “Only trying to save you hassle.” Jude felt his grey eyes seeking out her brown ones and saw the half-insolent smile on his face. Andy Constant knew he was attractive and he knew that she was responding to him. He couldn’t know that part of the attraction came from his similarity to Laurence Hawker, another tall academic with whom she had spent time until his premature death a few years before. While she couldn’t deny the pull that Andy Constant exerted, Jude resented feeling it. In spite of the superficial likeness to Laurence, there was something about him that struck warning chords within her, something dangerous. Which of course only served to add to his appeal.

Carole, who seemed unaware of the subtext between them, took up the conversation. “You said you were Admissions Tutor.”

“I did, yes.”

“Then maybe you can at least answer the question we came here to ask.”

“Try me.”

“Was Tadeusz Jankowski ever enrolled here as a student?”

Andy Constant was silent for a moment, as if deliberating over his reply. He took another sip of his espresso, then put the tiny cup down on its tiny saucer. “I can’t actually see what harm my giving you that information can cause. Well, the answer’s no. Tadeusz Jankowski was never enrolled in any course at this university.” It was the first time he had used the word.

“And had he ever made enquiries about the courses he might have enrolled in?” asked Carole, pushing her luck.

“Not so far as I know. I suppose he might have made an approach by letter or email, but none of my colleagues has mentioned anything about his doing so. And, needless to say, given the amount of media coverage, people have been talking a lot about him. I think if anyone had had an approach from someone called Tadeusz Jankowski, they’d have said so. It’s not the kind of name you’d forget, is it?”

Jude joined in. “So you can’t think of any connection he might have had with Clincham College?”

“No.”

“Do you know if he’d ever even been on the premises?”

“Not to my knowledge,” replied Andy Constant, and then he gave Jude another of his lazy, but undeniably sexy smiles. “Still, if I hear from anyone that he has been seen here, I’ll let you know.” He smiled again. “Maybe you’d like to give me your number, Jude…?”

As she was scribbling it out on a scrap of paper, a girl came into the canteen. She was dark and pretty in a Hispanic way, dressed in the typical student uniform of jeans and layers of sweatshirts. Long black hair curtained her face. “Andy,” she said as she approached their table. Her voice sounded slightly Spanish.

He looked up and seemed pleased with what he saw. “Yes?”

“Andy, I thought you said we’d meet up in the Drama Studio at eleven.”

He looked at his watch. “Oh, sorry. Hadn’t noticed the time.” He turned the full power of his smile on to Carole and Jude. “Ladies, you will excuse me?”

And, pausing only to snatch up the piece of paper with Jude’s number on it, he walked with long strides out of the café. The dark-haired girl followed, her eyes glowing with puppy love.

Jude was too old for puppy love, but she couldn’t deny that Andy Constant was a very attractive man.

J
ude heard the sound of crying as soon as she came through the door of Woodside Cottage. Zofia was hunched up on one of the sitting room’s heavily draped sofas, her shoulders shaken by the sobs that ran through her body. On the floor beside her were a battered suitcase and a scruffy backpack. Immediately Jude’s arms were round the girl and her lips were murmuring soothing words.

“I am sorry,” was the first thing that Zofia managed to say. “I hear from the police this morning that I can come and collect Tadek’s things, his possessions, and seeing them…” She indicated the bags “…it makes me realize that he is really gone from me.”

“Do you want me to put them away somewhere, until you are ready to deal with them?”

“No, Jude, thank you.” Zofia wiped the back of her hand against her face to dismiss the tears. “No, I am ready to deal with them now. Maybe there is something in here that tells me what has happened to Tadek. I must not be emotional. I must try to piece together from his possessions what he was doing here in England, and perhaps the reason why someone want to kill him.”

“All right,” said Jude. “I’ll help you. But first let’s have a drink of something. What would you like, Zosia?”

“Coffee, please. Black, that would be good.”

“Don’t start opening the bags until I’m there.” Jude didn’t fool herself that her words were spoken from pure altruism. She was being offered a unique chance to further her investigation into Tadek’s death.

“Did the police say anything,” she called through from the kitchen, “about why they were letting you have his belongings so soon?”

“They just said they’d finished what they needed to do with them, and the landlord wants to rent out the room again as soon as possible so the stuff can’t go back to Littlehampton. Would I like to take it, please?”