Fethering 09 (2008) - Blood at the Bookies (19 page)

“Well, that’s what I want to do, Mr Newton, but I don’t have any means of contacting her.”

“I can give you a mobile number.”

“Is it still current?”

“I’ve no idea. I’ve made no attempt to contact Melanie since last November.”

And so it was that Carole got hold of Melanie Newton’s phone number. The words ‘Home Office’ did still command a measure of authority.

She knew she should really share her discovery with Jude, but the temptation to present her neighbour with some kind of dramatic coup was too strong. Carole rang the number. It went straight on to voicemail. No identification of the phone’s owner, just a terse, “Leave a message after the tone.”

A pity, but Carole’s gratification outweighed her disappointment. She now had a name and a phone number for Melanie Newton. And she had heard the woman’s voice.

Zofia Jankowska stayed in her bedroom late on the Sunday morning, but Jude knew the girl was awake because she could hear music. At about half-past eleven she tapped on the door. “Just wondered what you’d like to do about lunch?”

The girl was dressed and sitting on her bed. She looked as though she might have been crying, her pigtails once again emphasizing her youth and frailty. After a quick look at her watch, she said, “No, I don’t think I have time for lunch. Ted wants me to do a shift at the pub starting at twelve.”

“So you must have done all right last night.” Jude had been in bed before Zofia returned from the Crown and Anchor.

“I think so. Not that you’d have known it from Ted. He watch me all evening like he thought I was about to steal from the cash register.”

“He’ll get used to you. He’s naturally distrustful.”

“Distrustful of ‘foreigners’, yes.”

“If he’s asked you to come back, he can’t be too worried.”

“He does not make it sound like he is happy. He offer me shift today only because he is very busy at Sunday lunchtime, and his other staff let him down. Still he don’t say whether there will be more work for me.”

“You’ll win him round.”

Zofia grinned. “Yes, I think I will.”

“Well, look, would you like me to rustle up something quickly for you before you go?”

“No, I’m OK. I’ll just have a cup of coffee.”

“How long’s the shift?”

“Ted wants me to work till three.”

“I’ll have something nice and hot waiting for you when you come back.”

“Please, Jude, you don’t have to do this.”

“I want to.”

“You are very kind to me.”

Jude grinned and there was a silence between them. She became aware of the music. Soft acoustic guitar and a gentle voice in a yearning song, some kind of folk-tune in a language Jude could not understand. The sound quality was not professional, as though a primitive microphone had just been placed in front of the singer in an ordinary room.

“This is your brother, Zosia?” The girl nodded and once again tears welled in her eyes. “He’s very good. Is it one of his own songs?”

The girl gave another nod, not daring to speak lest it start her weeping. Jude sat down on the bed and put her ample arms around the thin shoulders. “We will find out what happened to him. Don’t worry. I promise we will.”

“Yes.” Zofia’s hazel eyes sought Jude’s. “That will not bring Tadek back, will it?”

“No, I’m afraid it won’t. Nothing will do that.”

“But finding out who killed him, is that supposed to bring me…closure?”

“I hate the word. American psychological claptrap. But I think knowing how and why Tadek was killed may make it easier for you to live with what has happened. I’m not stupid or simplistic enough to tell you that the grief will ever go away.” Another silence. Jude could feel in the tension of the girl’s shoulders how hard she was trying not to cry. “I’m sorry, not knowing any Polish, I’ve no idea what this song is about.”

“What does it sound as if it’s about?”

Jude listened to the music for a moment. “Love. Yearning. A love that is doomed.”

“Then Tadek has written a good song, if you can understand the feeling without understanding the words. Yes, it is about a love that is doomed. He wrote songs for all of the women he loved.” She let out a wry little laugh. “And with every woman he loved, I’m afraid the relationship was doomed.”

“You said most of them were older women?”

“Yes, this song was for one of his music teachers at the university. She was married with two small children.”

“So did they have an affair?”

“No, no. A lot of his relationships were not…what do you say? Hands on?”

“He worshipped from afar?”

“That is a good way of saying it, yes. The love was mostly in his head. He put the women on…what was that word you told me…?”

“A pedestal.”

“That is correct.”

“What do the words of the song say?”

“I can’t translate exactly, but Tadek is saying that, though he and the woman can never be together, this does not stop his love from being beautiful.”

Jude nodded. “That explains it. Because, although the song is yearning, it doesn’t actually sound sad. It isn’t a miserable song.”

“No, sometimes I think Tadek likes it that his love affairs never work out. Perhaps he finds it is easier to write about an imagined woman than a real woman.”

“Typical romantic. It’s much easier to remain romantic about an imagined woman than a real one.” There was a moment of stillness as Jude listened to the song. “He was very talented.”

“I don’t know. I like his music, but he is my brother. And he writes old·fashioned songs. If he could be successful in the commercial world, that I do not know.”

“Did he write songs about all the women who he…put on a pedestal?”

“Yes, I think so. I think it is these hopeless loves that make him able to write songs. Perhaps if he had had a real love affair that really worked, he would not have felt he needed to write songs.”

“So if, and I suppose it’s possible, he came to England because of a woman…then you might have expected him to have written songs about her?”

“I am sure he would have done. I am sure Tadek could not have been in England as long as he had without writing songs.”

“And yet there was no evidence of any in the belongings you collected from the police?”

“No, not only his guitar is missing. Also there are no notebooks, no CDs, no tapes.”

“So, if we could find those…?”

“If we could find those, where we found them might be a good clue to what happened to him.”

“Yes, and if the songs were written to another older woman here in England, finding that older woman would be another very good clue.”

At that moment Carole rang, to tell Jude the good news that she’d now got a mobile number for Melanie Newton.

“T
he police could do it,” said Carole gloomily.

“Do what?”

“Track down where a person is by their mobile phone. The technology’s there. It’s just not yet available to amateurs.”

“Just as well for some.”

“Hm?”

“If you could always tell where someone was phoning from on their mobile, it would considerably slow down the activities of certain philanderers. “Oh, darling, I’m in the office,” when in fact the speaker is in a Travelodge bedroom—and not unaccompanied. Would spell the death of adultery as we know it.”

Carole couldn’t stop her face from looking disapproving at that. Though she was fully aware that adultery existed—indeed, even thrived—something in her background prompted a knee-jerk reaction of censure.

“So we’re really no further on,” she continued in gloomy vein.

“How can you say that? We’ve not only got a name for the woman Tadek spoke to in the betting shop, we’ve now also got her mobile number. That’s a huge advance.”

“Yes, but she’s not answering the phone.”

“True.”

“So how on earth are we going to track her down?”

“I could try the internet. If she’s in a phonebook, wherever she happens to be…”

“But if she only moved out of the Fedborough house in November, she isn’t likely to be in a phonebook yet.”

“Maybe not, but there are other things I could try on the laptop. Just googling her name, see if that brings anything up.”

Carole was silent. She was still a bit of a dinosaur when it came to computers. Which she knew was silly, because she had the kind of brain that would respond well to that sort of technology. And indeed, had computers played much of a part in her work at the Home Office, she would have embraced them and developed her skills. But they hadn’t, and as always when faced by something new, Carole Seddon didn’t want to expose her ignorance.

“Well, you can try,” she said, her voice full of resentful scepticism.

“I will,” Jude responded, her optimism, as ever in such circumstances, even stronger than usual.

Carole looked at her watch. “Is Zofia at the Crown and Anchor?”

“No, she’s having a lie-down. We had some lunch together. She’s exhausted. I think the reality of what’s happened to her is beginning to hit home.”

“Yes. I’m surprised to hear that Ted would take on a foreigner. He seems to be getting more right-wing with every passing day.”

“I kind of put him in a position where it was difficult for him to refuse. Give him a few days with Zosia and I bet he’ll come round.”

“Zosia? I thought her name was Zofia.”

“Her friends call her Zosia. Apparently most people in Poland have kind of pet names. Like Tadek.”

“Ah.” A sudden thought came to Garole. “I say, you don’t think that what you heard the boy say, that ‘Fifi’…could be a reference to his sister?
Zofia?
”

“I asked her. No. He’d only ever called her Zosia.”

“Well, maybe ‘Fifi’ means something in Polish?”

“I asked her that too. She said it could be the beginning of certain Polish words, you know, that he was trying to get out, but she couldn’t think of any that had any potential relevance.”

“Ah,” said Carole, disappointed.

Her disappointment, however, was short-lived, as Zofia came rushing down the stairs, holding her mobile phone.

“Jude! Oh, hello, Carole. Listen, I have just had a call from Mafek!”

“Is he back in Brighton?”

“No, not yet, but they did give him the message to call me when he rang the restaurant.”

“And had he seen Tadek since he’d been in England?”

“Oh yes. They were in contact, but Marek did not know about what happened to my brother.”

“How could he avoid knowing?” asked Carole. “It’s been all over the national newspapers and on television.”

“Marek has been off travelling with a girlfriend the last week. He does not see any television.”

“When did he last see Tadek?” asked Jude.

“Round Christmas they meet and drink, but—and this is the interesting part—he fix to see Tadek on the day he die.”

“But he didn’t see him?”

“No.”

“Where were they going to meet?”

“At Tadek’s room in Littlehampton. The door is left open, in case Tadek is not there when Marek arrive. They are both not good with being on time. Marek gets to the room, he waits an hour, two hours, Tadek does not come. Marek goes back to Brighton. He has a shift to be at work.”

“So he was probably in your brother’s room,” asked Carole, “at the time the murder took place?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Did he say what he did while he was waiting?”

“He sat around, being bored, he tell me. Then he find Tadek has a bottle of vodka, so he drinks some. He wants to play music, but there is nothing there.”

“No CDs, no nothing?”

Zofia shook her head so vigorously that the pigtails slapped against her face. “No. And that is not like Tadek. Wherever Tadek is, he always has his music.”

“And his guitar.”

“Yes, and his guitar. So someone must have been into the room to steal those things. And I do not know why anyone would do that.”

Jude pieced her thoughts together slowly. “You said your brother always wrote songs about the women he was in love with…?”

“Yes.”

“So his songs, if he’d recorded them, would probably have identified the woman he was in love with?” Zofia nodded. “And if that person had something to do with his murder, then she would try to remove anything in his room that might make the connection between them?”

“Certainly.”

“Then I think that must be the explanation. It becomes even more imperative that we find the woman your brother was in love with.”

“We may be closer to that than we were before,” Carole interposed with renewed pride. And she told Zofia of the advances they had made in tracking down Melanie Newton.

“This is good. There must be a way we can contact the woman.”

“I’ve tried the number a few more times. Still just get the voicemail.”

“But you will keep trying?”

“Yes, of course,” replied Carole, slightly affronted by Zofia’s question.

“Mind you,” said Jude, uncharacteristically sceptical, “we don’t know for sure that a woman was the reason why your brother came over here.”

Zofia beamed. “Yes, this we do know. This is another thing Marek tell me. When Tadek first contact him, he say that he has come to England because he has met a woman with whom he has fallen in love and she lives in England.”

“He didn’t volunteer her name?”

“No. He say no more than that he is madly in love, and that this is different from every other time he has been in love. Mind you,” Zofia concluded sadly, “that is what he say every time he meet a new woman.”

“And your brother hadn’t been to England before last summer? He couldn’t have met the woman over here?” asked Carole.

The girl shook her head firmly. “Tadek has travelled a lot in Europe. But this is the first time he come to England.”

“So we’re looking for a woman who has been to Europe relatively recently.”

“Giles Newton told me his wife had been travelling in Europe,” said Carole with some satisfaction.

“Yes, we must talk to her.” Jude had another thought. “Have the police spoken to Marek? Have they been in touch with him?”

“I ask him this and he tell me no. But the police might not know the connection between my brother and Marek. It is a long time ago they play in Twarz together.”