Fethering 09 (2008) - Blood at the Bookies (23 page)

“Well, she let me in.”

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Carole Seddon.”

“And which one of them do you come from? Who do you represent?”

Carole couldn’t really supply an answer to that rather strange question, so she just said, “I want to talk to you about Tadeusz Jankowski.”

The woman’s reaction was mixed. Her face still showed fear and suspicion, but there was also something in it that looked like relief.

Andy Constant wasn’t there when Jude arrived in the Bull. It was loud with University of Clincham students, taking advantage of the ‘Happy Hour’ offers and, in the time-honoured student fashion, converting their grants into alcohol. They looked very young, and completely harmless.

She was annoyed with herself for ordering a pint of Stella for Andy along with her glass of Chardonnay, but given the scrum at the bar it was once again the sensible thing to do. Sitting down at a table for two, she wondered again why the hell she was there. She had no illusions about the kind of man Andy Constant was, and she ought to be too old to go deliberately looking for trouble. And yet there she was.

Jude didn’t recognize any of the students, but she saw again the poster for Magic Dragon with the blurred photograph of Sophia Urquhart. It reminded her that she wanted to ask the girl about Joan, the other Drama Studies student, and Joan’s relationship with Andy Constant.

When he came in, though, sweeping back his long grey hair, she couldn’t curb a little kick of excitement. It wasn’t just his similarity to Laurence Hawker that got to her; Andy Constant affected her viscerally in a way that few men had. And the men who did trigger that response had always been bad news. Jude made a pact with herself to be extremely sensible that evening. No joining him in a guided tour of the Drama Studio.

He brushed his lips against her cheek, and slumped down into the chair opposite. He reached for the pint of Stella and took a long swig. “God, that’s good,” he said as he put the glass down. No thanks for the drink, just ‘God, that’s good.’

“Ooh, am I knackered?” he continued. He was one of those men, Jude felt sure, who were always more tired than anyone else, the implication being that they put so much more energy into their creative lives than mere mortals could even contemplate.

“What have you been doing—lecturing?”

“Why should I be doing that?”

“I thought that was your job description. When you first introduced yourself, you said you were a lecturer.”

“Yes, but in my discipline that doesn’t mean giving many lectures. In Drama it’s more role-playing, work-shopping, you know the kind of thing.”

“Which is what you’ve been doing today?”

“Kind of.” He said it in a way that implied she wasn’t bright enough to understand a fuller explanation. “The trouble is,” he went on, “these kids are full of ideas, but their ideas are all so derivative. Based on the latest movies, based on what they’ve seen on television. It’s a real effort trying to get them to think outside the box.”

“And that’s what you’ve been doing with them today?”

“Sure.” He took another long draught of lager. “Tough, tough, tough.”

“Was Joan one of your group?”

“Who?” he asked. But she felt sure he knew who she meant.

Jude spelt it out for him. “The Joan whom Sophia Urquhart mentioned on Friday.”

“Ah, that Joan.” The idea seemed to amuse him. “Yes, Joan was in the group.”

“But had to go home?”

“What do you mean?”

“When we were in here last Friday, Sophia Urquhart apologized that Joan couldn’t go back with you, she had to get a lift back with her father.”

Andy Constant’s brow wrinkled with aggrieved innocence. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I am suggesting that there is some kind of relationship between you and this Joan.”

“Hey, whoa, whoa,” he said sardonically. “Aren’t we getting a bit ahead of ourselves here? We’re meeting for a drink for only the second time, and already you’re telling me who I should and shouldn’t see.”

“I’m not doing that, Andy. I’m just trying to clarify your personal situation. You told me about your defunct marriage…I assume that still is defunct?”

“Dead as a dodo. Has been for years.”

“Right, so that’s the marriage dealt with. I was wondering if you were going to tell me about Joan too.”

“Nothing to tell.” He shrugged ingenuously. “You have just got the wrong end of the stick in a very major way, Jude. Apart from anything else, it would be totally inappropriate for someone in my position to be messing about with one of my students. Maybe it’s a long time since you’ve been in an educational establishment, but let me tell you, these days they’re very hot on what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate behaviour. And me having anything to do with a student would be a very big no-no.”

“I know what I heard on Friday,” Jude insisted.

“No. You know what you think you heard on Friday. Different matter altogether.”

He sounded so convincing that for a moment Jude almost believed him. Perhaps she had misheard, or misinterpreted what she heard. She was aware of his hooded eyes lazily watching her, appraising, wondering what she’d do next. And she was aware of the power those eyes could exert over her.

But she resisted them. “I think you’re lying,” she said.

He spread his hands wide in a gesture of harmless self-depreciation. “Do I look like a liar?”

“Oh yes. And if you’re prepared to lie to me about this Joan, then it’s quite possible you lied to me about Tadeusz Jankowski.”

“About who? Ah, the Pole. The one you came enquiring about. The one without whose existence we wouldn’t have met.”

“Yes. Can I ask you again whether you know of any connection between him and Clincham College?”

“You can, my sweet Jude,” he said, “but I’m afraid you’ll get the same answer you got before.” A new idea seemed to come to him. “Though just a minute…I have thought of some other admission files we can check…then we’ll know if he ever did make any application to the college.”

“Where are the files?”

“Over there.” He jerked his head towards the university campus. “Do you want to come with me and look through them, Jude?”

She should at least have thought about her answer, but immediately, instinctively, she said “Yes.”

T
he room into which Carole was ushered was indeed a loft conversion. One wall was a large gable window, which must have provided a wonderful view over the River Fether to the English Channel beyond. But the glass was covered by thick curtains and the stuffiness in the room suggested they had been closed for most of the day.

There was very little light, only what spilled from an Anglepoise whose shade had been pushed down low to a table on which stood an open laptop, its screen idle. But Carole could see enough to recognize that the room was in a mess. As was the woman who faced her. If the descriptions the betting shop regulars had given on how well dressed Melanie Newton was were anything like true, then she’d certainly let herself go.

She was wearing jogging bottoms and a shapeless grey cardigan. There was no make·up; on her haggard face and white showed at the centre of her roughly parted hair where the roots were growing out.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, half defiant, half frightened.

Carole reminded herself that she must be cautious.

She had succeeded in her primary objective, of finding Melanie Newton. Now she mustn’t scare the woman off by clumsy interrogation.

But fortunately, before she could make a gaffe, the woman asked her another question: “Are you from one, of the agencies?”

“Agencies?”

“Debt collectors. Because I can pay it all back and—”

“No, no. Good heavens, no. I’m not a debt collector.” Carole Seddon’s middle·class soul was shaken by the very suggestion.

“Really?” There was anguished pleading in Melanie Newton’s voice.

“Really. I’m a retired civil servant from the Home Office.”

“Home Office?” The idea of contact with any authority seemed to upset the woman.

“Retired, I said. Retired. I don’t mean you any harm at all, Mrs Newton. As I said, all I’m interested in is what you can tell me about Tadeusz Jankowski.”

“You mean the young Polish boy who was killed?”

“Yes.”

She looked puzzled. “Well, I don’t think I can tell you anything about him. Please sit down.” Now her anxieties about debt collection had been allayed, Melanie Newton remembered her manners. But she didn’t make any move to put more lights on in the gloom. Carole noticed one of the Allinstore carrier bags on the table. A sandwich had been torn from its packet and half-eaten, as though its consumer needed fuel rather than food.

She sat on an armchair whose covers felt threadbare under her hands. “But you’re not denying that you met him?” she asked.

“No, I’m not denying that. He came to see me.”

“Here in England?”

“Yes.”

“When you were living in your house in Fedborough?”

Melanie Newton looked suspicious again. “You seem to know rather a lot about me. Are you sure it’s nothing to do with the debts?”

“I can absolutely assure you of that. I didn’t know that you had any debts. The only thing I do know about you is that you used to be a regular in the betting shop here in Fethering and that early last October you were seen to speak to Tadeusz Jankowski in there.”

“Then how did you find me here?”

This was a potentially difficult question to answer. For Carole to describe her surveillance techniques might raise the woman’s paranoia once again. So all she said was, “Somebody told me you lived in Fedborough. I consulted the telephone directory and spoke to the new owner of your house.”

“She didn’t know where I lived, did she?” asked Melanie Newton, once again alarmed. Maybe some of her creditors might go in person to her old address.

“No, she didn’t. But she gave me your husband’s mobile number.”

“I didn’t know Giles knew I was here.” But it didn’t seem to worry her that much. “Not that he’s likely to come looking for me.”

“No, I gathered there had been some…estrangement between you.” Which was an odd word to use, but the one that rose to Carole’s lips at that particular moment.

Melanie Newton let out a bark of contemptuous laughter. “You could say that. I’ve come to the conclusion that for a marriage to have any hope of success a degree of proximity between the participants is required. That’s what Giles and I never had. His work takes him off on contracts for considerable lengths of time. Three months, four months, sometimes six months at a time. Not the best recipe for connubial bliss. Months of loneliness when they’re away, interrupted by weeks of disappointment when they’re home.”

She seemed to be in confessional mode, so Carole made no attempt to interrupt the flow. “I think there were probably things wrong with the marriage from the start, if we could but have recognized them. But the separations certainly didn’t make it any easier. God knows what Giles got up to while he was away. I think there may have been other women. In fact, I found proof that there was at least one other woman when he was out in Mexico. And when I did find out, do you know…it hardly worried me at all. I think that was when I realized that the marriage was dead in the water.”

Melanie Newton, who had been standing up until that point, slumped into a chair, drained by her revelations. Her movement must have jolted the laptop, because the screen came to life, displaying a highly coloured roulette wheel and board. The woman’s eyes could not help but look at it, and her hand moved involuntarily towards the keyboard.

“Your husband implied,” said Carole tentatively, “when I spoke to hirri on the phone, that you had got into financial problems.”

“That was an understatement,” came the listless reply.

“And is it the gambling?”

Melanie Newton sighed a huge sigh, which seemed to encompass a whole world of troubles. “Yes. I started…I don’t know, a couple of years ago. It was at a time when Giles was away on one of his really extended trips, and I was feeling low. I think I’d just found out about the woman in Mexico, and that hadn’t done a lot for my self-esteem. Then I went for a day’s racing at Ascot. It was a corporate freebie. I work for a PR agency, get offered lots of stuff like that. Well,” she corrected herself, “I say I work for them. What I mean is, I did work for them. Anyway, up until that point I’d never thought much about horse racing. Might put a small bet on the Derby or Grand National, join in the office sweepstake, you know…like most people, I could take it or leave it.”

“But that day at Ascot I really enjoyed myself. I had a good day, I was with nice people. There was even a man there who made me think I might not be a totally unattractive has-been as a woman. And also, when it came to backing horses that day, I couldn’t do anything wrong. First horse that won I remember was called Mel’s Melon. And I backed it for purely sentimental reasons, because my friends call me ‘Mel’…well, used to call me ‘Mel’. That romped home at twelve to one. And for the rest of that day it didn’t matter what method I used, the form book, a horse’s name that appealed to me, just sticking a pin in the paper…I was invincible. Came home more than five hundred pounds to the good.”

“I didn’t think any more about it for a few weeks, but then I had a rather upsetting phone conversation with Giles, who told me his contract had been extended by two months and he basically couldn’t be bothered to come home for a break which he could easily have arranged. A bit of a slap in the face for me, as you can imagine…and I was feeling bad again. So at lunchtime that day I went out to the betting shop near where I used to work and…well, I had some good days and some bad days and…” She seemed to run out of words.

“It became a habit?” suggested Carole.

“Yes. Very good way of putting it. It became a habit. Though I think ‘habit’ is too mild a word. ‘Obsession’ might be nearer the mark. “Obsession’ as in ‘love’. I came to love the thrill of gambling. It replaced ordinary love for me. Giles was out of my life, so far as I was concerned. Whether he was abroad or at home, he wasn’t part of me or anything to do with me. He had stopped loving me. Perhaps he never loved me. But I could close my mind to that. Gambling gave me hope, offered me the chance of making a new life for myself.”