Fethering 09 (2008) - Blood at the Bookies (15 page)

So at two o’clock sharp Carole was sorry to see them go, but warmed by the encounter. She felt bonded with the next two generations of women, and she looked forward to watching the development of the new person in her life.

She also knew that the visit would not have been nearly so satisfactory had her ex-husband been present.

So she was already in a good mood when the phone rang at about half-past two, and the ensuing conversation cheered her even more.

“Is that Carole Seddon?” The voice was cultivated, precise and vaguely familiar.

“Yes.”

“I found your number in the local directory.”

“Well, you would. It’s in there,” said Carole rather fatuously. She still couldn’t identify the voice, but was not left in ignorance for long.

“It’s Gerald Hume speaking. Remember, we met in the betting shop yesterday.”

“Yes, I remember. I’m surprised you’re not there now.”

“Oh, I am. As you may recall my saying, I am an habitue.” His use of the word echoed their conversation of the previous day. “Well, to be strictly accurate, I am not inside the betting shop. I’m standing outside the premises. The mobile phone signal is better here, and also I don’t like having my telephone conversations listened to by all and sundry.”

“Nor do I. That’s one of the reasons I don’t want a mobile phone.”

“I understand.” There was a brief silence. “I thought you might have come in today.”

“Good heavens, no. As I believe I told you, yesterday was the first time I’ve crossed the threshold of a betting shop.”

“I thought you might have got the taste for it.”

“Certainly not,” came the instinctive, Calvinist response.

“Well, Carole,” said Gerald Hume with a sudden change of tone, “I wondered if we could meet for a drink.”

“Meet for a drink?” she echoed stupidly. “You and me?”

“Yes. I enjoyed meeting you yesterday. I thought it would be nice to talk at further length.”

“Well…”

“I’m sorry. I hope you don’t think me forward.” Which was a comfortingly old·fashioned word for him to use. “If you don’t relish the idea, you have only to say no.”

Carole found herself saying “Well…” again. The proposition was so unexpected that she couldn’t immediately adjust to the idea.

“If you’d rather not, you needn’t be embarrassed by refusing.”

“No, I’m not embarrassed.” To her surprise, Carole realized this was true. And suddenly she could see no reason to refuse his suggestion. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. Let’s meet for a drink. When were you thinking of?”

“Would this evening be convenient?”

“This evening would be most convenient.”

Jude also had an invitation that afternoon. She had been half-expecting the call, with foreboding but an undercurrent of excitement. From the moment she’d met Andy Constant, she knew that something had connected between them.

On the phone he sounded even more languid and laid-back. The offer was made very casually, as if the manner of asking somehow took the curse off it. If she refused, his manner implied, it had never been any big deal anyway.

“Thought it’d be nice to meet again,” he said.

He was taking a risk. He knew nothing about her. She might be in a long-term relationship. But still he asked. Jude had already got the impression that Andy Constant was used to getting his own way with women.

“Well, yes, it might be,” she responded. She was taking a risk too. But she reassured herself that it wasn’t only because she was attracted to him. He still might have some information that was of relevance to the murder of Tadek. To keep in touch with him would be in the cause of pursuing their investigation, she told herself with knowing casuistry.

“Thing is, I’m doing a show at the college with some of the Drama students. Wondered if you’d like to come and see it. Then we could have a drink afterwards.”

Again, he made it sound very casual. Quite clever too, Jude thought. Not a direct request for a date. He made it sound as if the main purpose of the invitation was for her to see the show. And hopefully be impressed by it, perhaps warm to him because of his skills as a director. Then have a few drinks and maybe fix to meet again. There was something disquietingly practised about his approach.

“What is the show?” she asked.

“It’s called
Rumours of Wars
. Something the students have built up through improvisation and I’ve kind of tailored into a script. I promise you it’s less dreary than it sounds. They’re a bright lot of kids, some real talent in there.”

“When are you talking about?”

“Short notice, I’m afraid. Show only runs for three performances. Saturday I have to entertain a lot of college bigwigs. So I’m talking about this evening.” Jude hadn’t complained about the short notice, but he still seemed to feel the need to apologize. “Ideally, I’d have asked you further in advance, but I hadn’t met you then, had I? And I do think the show’s something you might enjoy.”

Which Jude considered was a rather bold claim, since he’d had no time to assess her theatrical interests.

“It’s in the college’s new theatre. Building’s worth seeing, apart from anything else. So tell me, do you fancy it?”

Again, he fostered the illusion of distancing himself. It was the show she’d be coming to see, not him. Jude had to acknowledge that his technique, though obviously well practised, was rather good.

“All right,” she said. “I’d like to come.”

O
n a day when she had been feeling less good about herself Carole Seddon might have balked at Gerald Hume’s suggestion that their meeting that evening should take place in the Crown and Anchor. The proposed encounter did have elements of a ‘date’ about it, and the pub’s landlord was one of the very few men in Fethering who had ever shown an emotional interest in her. In less certain moods she might have agonized about some awkward scene arising between the two men. But that Friday evening Carole had no qualms about the venue. For a start, her affair with Ted Crisp was long over and their relationship had settled down into an easy friendship. Besides, the Crown and Anchor did have certain advantages. Apart from anything else, she would be on home territory and not far from High Tor, should the meeting prove to be uncomfortable. After all, she knew nothing about Gerald Hume.

He was sitting in one of the alcoves nursing a half-pint of lager when she arrived. Dressed, as ever, in pinstriped suit and tie, his briefcase on the banquette beside him. Carole greeted Ted Crisp immediately, to establish her familiarity with the pub. Now the moment had arisen, it gave her a slight
frisson
actually to be in a pub talking to an ex-lover when she was about to meet another man.

She sat down while Gerald Hume went to the bar to buy her requested Chilean Chardonnay, and wondered what kind of man he would prove to be. She wasn’t worried about finding out, though, just intrigued.

“Perhaps,” he announced when he had supplied her drink, “I should explain why I wanted to meet up with you.”

Ib her surprise, Carole found herself saying, “I don’t think you need to especially. As you said on the phone, it’s nice for us to have a chance to talk.”

“Yes.”

He hesitated, still seeming to feel he should provide some explanation, so she moved on, “Did you have a good day on the horses?”

“A profit of three pounds fifty pence.” He spoke in a considered manner, as if carefully selecting each word with a pair of tweezers.

“And is that a good day?”

“Would you regard three pounds fifty pence as adequate recompense for five hours’ work?”

“No, I suppose not. So you do think of what you do in the betting shop as work, do you?”

“Well, it’s the only work I have now.”

“I heard a rumour that you used to be an accountant.”

“That’s a very unusual rumour to hear.”

“In what way unusual?”

“Because it’s accurate. Very few rumours in Fethering share that quality.” Carole smiled. He clearly knew the area well. “Yes,” he went on, “I was an accountant with the same company for thirty-six years. They then deemed that I was no longer fit to be an accountant.”

Carole didn’t quite like to ask for amplification, but seeing her reaction he provided it. “No, no skulduggery on my part, no embezzlement of funds. Merely a company policy of retirement at sixty. Drinks with colleagues, a hastily mugged-up speech from my new much younger boss, the presentation of an unwanted carriage clock and ‘Goodbye, Mr Hume.’ So, given the fact that I used to spend eight hours of every weekday in the office, that did leave rather a large gap in my life.”

“Surely there were other things you could have done?”

“I suppose so. I could have set up in private practice. I could have offered my Services as treasurer for various local societies. But such options did not appeal to me. My pension was adequate and I had made some prudent though not very adventurous investments over the years. So I didn’t need to do anything else to make money.”

“Isn’t retirement when people are supposed to devote themselves to their hobbies in a way that they previously never had time for?” asked Carole, reflecting that in her own case this hadn’t worked out. The only hobby she had was being an amateur detective and that was one she had developed after she retired.

“Perhaps. And I am quite a keen photographer. But I can’t do that every day. I get bored, so it remains just a hobby. Spending time in the betting shop, however, does impose some kind of structure on my life. It also enables me to study the vagaries of horse racing over a sustained period.”

“You mean you…‘study the form’? Is that the right expression? And, incidentally, Gerald, I should tell you here and now that, whatever impression I may have given to the contrary yesterday, I know absolutely nothing about horses.”

“That, Carole, was abundantly clear.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t help being disappointed. She thought the way she’d behaved the previous day had been pretty damned convincing.

“Anyway, you asked if I study the form, and yes, I do do a certain amount of that, but I am more interested in the mathematical probabilities involved in the business.”

“Do you mean you are trying to work out a foolproof system to win on the horses?”

Gerald Hume chuckled. “If I were doing that, today’s profit of three pounds fifty pence might suggest that my system is as yet far from foolproof. But you’re right in a way. I am trying to draw some conclusions from the many races that I watch every day. I analyse the results and, yes, there is the hope that such analysis might lead to a more informed pattern of investment.”

“And do you ever have big wins?”

“A few hundred pounds now and then. But such days are rare.”

“I still can’t quite understand why you do it.”

“No, it may seem inexplicable. There is a commonly held view that racing is a mug’s game, that there are too many variables for any kind of logical pattern to be discernible. But the attempt to impose order on such chaos does sometimes bring me the same kind of satisfaction that I used to derive during my working life from balancing columns of figures. Perhaps because my life has followed a relatively predictable course, I am fascinated by the random. Maybe, in my own perhaps pernickety way, I am trying to impose logic on the random.”

“I see.” And now she almost did.

“And it keeps me off the streets.” He smiled rather wanly. “I’m not sure how I would fill my time without my regular attendance at the betting shop.”

There was a moment of silence before Gerald Hume, realizing the danger of sounding pitiable, abruptly changed the direction of the conversation. “Still, enough about me. I don’t have nearly that amount of information about you yet, Carole.”

“No.”

Her retirement from the Home Office and divorce were established with the minimum of comment.

“I see,” said Gerald. “I never married.”

“Is that a cause for regret?”

“Rarely. I think I am probably not designed for connubial bliss. I tend to be rather analytical in all my dealings, which may lead to a level of detachment in my behaviour. And I have been given to understand that marriage requires engagement with the partner rather than detachment from them.”

“I think that is usually thought desirable, yes.”

Carole was touched by his quaintness, and found her own speech beginning to echo the formality of his. She had also by now realized that Gerald Hume wasn’t and never would be a ‘date’. The attraction between them was not physical, it was purely intellectual. This revelation did not bring her even the mildest flicker of disappointment. In fact it reassured her, clarified her feelings.

“May I go off on a complete tangent, Gerald…?”

“By all means.”

“…and ask whether you do crosswords?”

As Carole knew he would, he confirmed that he did. “I do the
Times
and the
Telegraph
every morning before I go to the betting shop. One might imagine, given my interest in numbers, it would be the Su Doku that monopolized my attention, but no, it’s words. Maybe because words are more resonant than numbers, because they carry with them a greater burden of semi-otic information. And do I gather you are also an aficionado of the crossword…?”

“I usually do the
Times
,” said Carole.

“I knew you would.” This confirmation of his conjecture seemed to make him particularly happy. “I am very glad that we have met, Carole. I think there are a lot of similarities in our personalities.”

Deciding that this was not a completely undiluted compliment, she moved on to another possible area of mutual interest. “Gerald, have you ever applied your analytical mind to the subject of crime?”

He smiled with relish. “I most certainly have. I enjoy the process of deduction, very similar in fact to that required in the solution of a crossword. But I’m afraid the crime writing I favour is of an older generation. The so-called Golden Age, when authors played fair with their readers in regard to plotting. Though contemporary crime fiction may have gained in psychological reality, that has always been at the expense of the puzzle element. And for me it is in the puzzle that the appeal of the genre lies.”