Fethering 09 (2008) - Blood at the Bookies (29 page)

It was the nearest she was likely to get to an admission that he had been having an affair with the girl, so Jude pressed home her advantage. “No, they haven’t asked me about that, but what do you want me to say if they do?”

“Do you think that’s likely?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know which way the police investigation is going, do I?”

“Oh, God.” He looked really bad.

“So you’re not denying that you were having an affair with her?”

“Look, these things happen.” He was trying to sound disingenuous, but it wasn’t cutting any ice with Jude. “Two attractive people who’re attracted to each other, sometimes the emotion can just get too strong to cope with. Even with the difference in ages. I think in fact the difference in ages made it even more powerful. We could learn so much from each other. Come on, haven’t you ever been in a situation like that, Jude?”

She had, but she wasn’t about to tell him so. “How long had it been going on?”

“I suppose the attraction was there since the beginning of the academic year, when we first met…”

That made sense. Sophia had met Tadek in Leipzig in the summer, he had followed her to England in late September. Maybe they had begun or continued an affair. But round the same time Sophia had started her university career, and found the archetypal lecherous lecturer coming on to her. As Jude had deduced before, it was a classic love triangle.

“And when did you become lovers?” she asked implacably.

“I suppose it must have been in the run-up to Christmas. You know, there were lots of parties and things on the campus. And I was working closely with Sophia on some one-to-one role-playing exercises.” Yes, I bet you were, thought Jude. He shrugged helplessly, as he went on, “And, you know, one thing led to another. We both admitted how much we fancied each other and…”

Jude suppressed her fury. Andy Constant had shamelessly abused his position of responsibility and was now trying to get sympathy for himself as a plaything of the gods, a man incapable of resisting the surging power of a
grand amour
. All she said, though, was, “And are you and Joan still love’s young dream?”

“Joan? How do you know about—?”

“I know it was Sophia’s nickname. One given to her by her other boyfriend.”

“Other boyfriend?”

“Didn’t she mention that she had another boyfriend?”

“Oh, yes,” he recalled. “There had been someone, apparently. But she implied that that had been over for a long time.”

Taking a leaf out of your book then, thought Jude. “No more details?”

“No, she said she’d got rid of him.”

“Hm.” Jude took in the implications of this for a moment, then said, “I actually asked whether your affair with Sophia was still going on.”

“Well, no.” He screwed up his face wryly. “We had had a bit of a falling-out, during the last week, really. I mean, often the really powerful loves have only a limited duration. ‘So quick bright things come to confusion’, and all that. I had to tell her that it wasn’t working. And, you know, I was beginning to feel guilty about Esther.”

Oh yes, very handy—the married man’s time-honoured way of getting out of an extramarital entanglement: he’s worried about his wife.

“How did Sophia take the news?”

He grimaced. “Not very well, I’m afraid. She was terribly upset, talk of suicide, all kinds of things.” He smiled a put-upon smile. “Clearly, the whole thing meant much more to her than it did to me.”

Once again Jude was struck by Andy’s arrogance. He saw himself doomed to go through life as a babe-magnet, powerless against the devastating strength of his own attractiveness.

“So thoughts of Esther were the only reason you said your affair with Sophia must end?”

“Well…” He smiled winningly. “There was another reason.”

“What was that?”

“I thought maybe things were going to work out with you.”

This time Jude had great difficulty containing her anger. Even from his hospital bed the sleaze-bag was coming on to her. One moment he was talking of breaking off one relationship out of consideration for his wife, the next he was proposing to start a new one. She calmed herself, and said, “Going back to what happened to you last night, you didn’t get any sight of your attacker, did you?”

He shook his head. “It was pitch dark. And it happened so quickly. The whole thing was over in a matter of seconds.”

“So nothing? No glimpse of a face? No touch of a body?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, as I tried to defend myself, I got hold of his or her coat. And it felt like waxed fabric.”

“A Barbour?”

“That kind of thing, yes.”

Jude nodded thoughtfully. “Oh, well, no doubt the police will catch the culprit.”

“I doubt it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it was probably a drifter, who just broke into the Drama Studio in hope of finding some equipment he could sell to buy drugs.”

“That’s nonsense, Andy. Too much of a coincidence. My view would be that your attacker was very definitely targeting you. You said as much yourself. It was someone who knew your habits very well, knew that you frequently went into the Drama Studio without switching on the working lights.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t.”

This was said with such intensity that Jude suddenly understood. Andy Constant thought he knew precisely who had attacked him. And at that moment Jude reckoned she did too.

“Andy, was it Sophia who stabbed you last night?”

“No. Of course it wasn’t.”

But he didn’t sound convincing, so Jude pressed on. “I think it was. And I think that’s why you’re going to push your theory about the perpetrator being some nameless drifter. You’re afraid that if the police get on to Sophia, Esther will find out about the affair you’ve been having with her.”

“No, Jude. I’m sure it wasn’t Sophia. It wouldn’t be in her nature to do something like that.”

“You don’t think so? ‘Hell hath no fury’…et cetera.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t her.” But now he sounded as though he were trying to convince himself.

“It could have been, though,” Jude persisted. His silence was more eloquent than an admission. “Come on, Andy, tell me what it was made you think it was Sophia?”

“Well,” he said feebly, “it’s just an impression I got, split-second thing. But there’s a very distinctive scent she wears. I thought I got a whiff of that last night.”

I
t was nearly nine o’clock when Jude left the hospital. Her route back to Clincham Station took her past the university campus. Which meant that she also passed by the Bull, from which emanated the sound of music and weak applause.

Of course. Friday night. She had witnessed the workings of synchronicity too often to be surprised by its magic. Friday night was the night the Bull hosted ‘Clincham Uni’s Number One Folk⁄Rock Band.’ Magic Dragon, the band fronted by Sophia Urquhart. Who were actually playing in the pub at that moment. Now that was magic.

She called Carole on the mobile. “Look, I haven’t got time to explain the details, but could you come to Clincham straight away? Meet me in the Bull. And could you check at Woodside Cottage to see if Zofia’s there? If so, could you bring her too?”

Magic Dragon didn’t seem to be much of a Friday night draw. Maybe the University of Clincham students went further afield for their weekend entertainment, to the clubs of Brighton or Portsmouth. Or maybe they wanted a more up-to-date musical repertoire than the band provided.

There had been so many sixties revivals, but Jude was still surprised to hear the songs that Magic Dragon had chosen. It was mostly the Joan Baez back catalogue. Given Sophia Urquhart’s voice, this made sense. The songs suited her pure soprano. But they seemed an odd choice for a student group in the early twenty-first century.

‘Farewell Angelina’, ‘Banks of the Ohio’, ‘Go ‘Way from My Window’, ‘There But for Fortune’, ‘With God on Our Side’…they all brought back Jude’s youth and she loved hearing them, but she wondered who had made the selection. Was one of the band members an enthusiastic researcher of the period? Had there been some influence from Tadek, with his love of sixties music? Or from Andy Constant, who seemed never to have left the sixties? Maybe Jude would find out when she finally spoke to Sophia. Though she had more serious things to discuss with the girl than her musical tastes.

Carole and Zofia arrived in the pub at about twenty to ten. Which was good timing—more synchronicity, thought Jude—as Magic Dragon took a break, after their first set, at nine forty-five. So she was up at the bar buying drinks when the thirsty band approached.

“Sophia!” she cried. She was aware once again of the girl’s expensive perfume, the smell that Andy Constant had detected on his attacker. “I’m Jude—remember?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Wanted to hear your band. Your father was telling me how good you were. Wonderful stuff! Can I get you a drink by way of congratulation?”

“Well, erm…”

“Go on, what would you like?”

Like most students, the girl didn’t prevaricate long over the offer of a free drink. “Pint of Stella, please. I get very thirsty singing.”

“I’m sure you do.” Jude added it to her order. “Do come and join us. I’ve got a couple of friends who’d love to meet you.”

“Well, I…” She didn’t want to, she wanted to be with her mates, but Sophia Urquhart was a well-brought-up girl and knew that accepting a drink from someone did involve certain social responsibilities. “Yes, fine. But I’d better not be long, because we don’t get much of a break before the next set.”

Sophia helped Jude carry the drinks across to her table, where she was introduced to Carole and Zofia. By first names only.

“Excellent music.” Carole had only heard one number, but she knew it was the appropriate thing to say.

“Not much of a turn-out tonight, though.” Sophia Urquhart looked round the room with disappointment. Now she had a chance to study the girl, Jude could see that she looked stressed and tired. The gold-red hair didn’t quite have its usual lustre, and there was a redness around the eyes.

“Our type of music’s not very popular, I’m afraid. Most of the people at uni want stuff they can dance to. Think this could be the last gig we do here.”

“Oh?”

“Landlord said, if we didn’t pull in a bigger crowd, that’d be it.”

“Well, hopefully you’ll be able to get booked in somewhere else.”

“Maybe.” The girl sounded listless, as though the fate of Magic Dragon didn’t matter one way or the other.

Jude decided it was time to move into investigation mode. “Sophia, Zofia is the sister of Tadeusz Jankowski.”

The shock took their suspect’s breath away. She looked at the Polish girl with a mixture of incredulity and fear.

“I think you knew him,” said Jude.

“No. I…don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sophia Urquhart’s hastily scrambled-together defence didn’t sound convincing.

“You met at a music festival in Leipzig last summer.”

In the face of the facts, her resistance crumbled. “Yes,” she admitted apathetically.

Zofia took over the interrogation. “We know you play music together. Pavel has sent me recordings.”

“Pavel,” came the echo.

“I have come from Warsaw to England to find out what happened to Tadek…to my brother.”

“He was killed.”

“I know that. I want to know why he was killed. And who killed him.”

The English girl slumped like a rag doll. Her spirit was broken. “Everyone wants to know that. Everyone always asks the same questions.”

“When you say everyone,” asked Carole, “do you mean the police as well?”

Sophia looked puzzled. “Presumably the police will be asking questions, if they’re investigating Tadek’s death.” She was now making no pretence of not having known the murder victim.

“But have the police questioned you?”

“About Tadek’s death? Why should they?”

“Didn’t they know about him being in love with you?”

“I don’t think so. Nobody knew.”

“We managed to find out about it,” said Carole. “It’s pretty difficult to keep a love affair a complete secret. The participants may think nobody knows, but that’s very rarely true.”

“Where did you meet after he came to England?” asked Jude more gently.

“We went to his room in Littlehampton. First he found me at the college. He had been texting and calling me and sending me songs ever since we met in Leipzig. He kept saying that he would come to England, and I didn’t believe him. Then one day, early in the term, there he was on the campus. And he’s telling me he loves me.”

“Were you pleased?”

“Yes. But it was difficult. I didn’t want people to know about him.”

Zofia was offended by this apparent slight on her brother. “Why you not want people to know about him?”

“Because…” The English girl looked confused. “Because things were more complicated than he thought. Tadek thought if we loved each other, everything would be fine. That was all that mattered. We wouldn’t have to think about practical things. He wanted me to drop out of uni, travel Europe with him, play music. I told him life could not be as simple as that. You have to get qualifications, make a living, get on with things. You can’t just drift.”

As her brother had, Sophia Urquhart sounded as though she were parroting her father’s sentiments. No relationship between the idealistic Pole and this conventional product of the Home Counties could ever have had a long-term future. But would Sophia have regarded the young man as enough of an inconvenience to murder him?

“Tadek thought that was possible,” responded Zofia sadly. “All he wanted to do was just drift. Write his songs, play music and drift.”

“Well, that’s no way to go through life.” Sophia Urquhart was once again her father’s daughter.

“Did you love him?” asked Jude.

“Maybe for a while. I liked him, certainly. In Leipzig it was very romantic. Yes, I think I was in love with him then. It was a kind of unreal time, I was away from home and…yes. But that was an exotic dream, and it’s difficult to recapture that kind of dream in somewhere like Fethering or Clincham. So the relationship had to end.”

“But he still loved you?”

“Probably.” She spoke as though the boy’s continuing adoration had been a minor irritant. “He kept phoning and texting me, and writing the songs. I got sick of it. Every time I heard his voice, saying, ‘Fee this, Fee that’.”