Fethering 09 (2008) - Blood at the Bookies (7 page)

Carole had to think about her response. Every fibre of her being revolted against the idea of ever ‘making a fuss’, but then again she didn’t want anyone to underestimate how ghastly she had felt for the previous few days. So she contented herself with a brave, “Getting better, but it’s been a really nasty bug.”

“Tell me about it. Everyone in the pub seems to have had it. Can’t hear yourself speak in here for all the coughing and spluttering. And my latest barmaid’s using it as an excuse for not turning up.”

“Poor kid,” said Jude.

“I’m not so sure about that. Quite capable of ‘taking a sickie’. She’s a right little skiver, that one. Most of them seem to be these days, certainly the youngsters. Whatever happened to the concept of ‘taking pride in your work’? This lot all seem to want to get paid for doing the absolute minimum. Bloody work ethic’s gone out the window in this country, you know.”

Jude was once again struck by how right-wing Ted was becoming. Ironic how almost all of those who had derided the establishment in their youth came round later in life to endorsing its continued existence.

“The younger generation are all hopeless,” he went on. “But round here older people are too well-heeled to bother with bar work. Hey, you wouldn’t like to be a barmaid, would you, Jude? You’d bring lots of custom in, someone like you.”

She grinned. “I have a sneaking feeling the word ‘buxom’ is about to be mentioned.”

“I wasn’t going to say it.”

“But you were thinking it, Ted.”

“Well, maybe.”

“I’ll consider your offer. If I run out of clients for my healing services. It’s not as if I haven’t done it before.”

Carole, reminded of this detail from her neighbour’s past, shuddered to the core of her middle·class heart.

Ted Crisp grinned at her discomfiture. “Anyway, I’m the one in charge of the bar for the time being. So, what are you ladies drinking? Is it the old Chilean Chards again?”

“I should probably have something soft,” said Carole. “You know, I’m not a hundred per cent yet.”

“All the more reason why you need a proper drink,” Jude assured her. “You should probably be having a quadruple brandy.”

“Oh, I think that would be excessive. But all right, a small Chilean Chardonnay, if you insist.”

“I insist,” said Ted Crisp, “that it should be a large one.”

“But—”

“You pay for a small one. I’ll top it up to a large one. Landlord’s privilege.” Carole didn’t argue. “And I assume a large one for you, Jude…?”

“Please. And what’s good to eat? Healthy nutritious fare to help restore Carole to her old self?”

“You won’t go wrong with the Local Game Pie. Served with Special Gravy.”

“Two of those then, please.”

“Though I don’t actually think I’ve got much of an appetite,” said Carole. “I probably won’t be able to eat it all, given the size of your usual portions.”

“You’ll manage,” said Ted, writing down the order.

“By the way,” Carole asked, “what is the Local Game today?”

Deliberately misunderstanding, led replied, “The Local Game in Fethering is still trying to work out who killed that poor Polish bloke. Tell you, I’ve heard more theories in this pub than you’ve had hot lunches here.”

“Any that sound convincing?”

The landlord shook his shaggy head. “Not unless you’re a big fan of Cold War spy fiction, no. I think the trouble is, nobody knows what the poor bloke was doing in this country, anyway.”

“Bar work, I gather.”

“Yes, Jude, that’s what he was doing, but surely that wasn’t why he was here. As I know all too well, it’s a crap job, bar work. That’s why I can’t get any decent staff. The pay’s not good enough.”

“No, but for him it was still probably more than he’d get paid in Poland,” said Carole.

“He was living in Littlehampton,” said Jude. “You know most of the pubs and bars around, led. You haven’t heard where he was working, have you?”

“No. I could ask around, though.”

“Be grateful if you did.”

“All right,” said the landlord. “But we’re rather starved of information, aren’t we? Nobody really knows anything about the bloke, what he was like, what he wanted from life. Those are the kind of things you want to know if you’re going to find out why someone was murdered.”

Carole and Jude were already far too aware of the truth in Ted’s words. After a little more desultory banter, they adjourned to one of the pub’s alcoves with their drinks.

“What about the girl?” Carole asked suddenly.

“What girl?”

“You said there’s also a girl who works regularly in the betting shop.”

“Oh yes, Nikki.”

“Well, maybe she’s seen the mysterious woman Tadeusz Jankowski spoke to. Maybe she knows who it is.”

“Possible. Nikki doesn’t come across as the most observant of people—or indeed the most intelligent—but I suppose it’s worth asking her. She can’t be as dim as she appears.”

The Local Game Pie lived up to Ted Crisp’s recommendation. And the Special Gravy was delicious. In spite of her prognostications, Carole finished every last morsel, but the food—and a second glass of wine—left her feeling very sleepy. “But I can’t sleep during the daytime,” she told Jude. Sleeping in the daytime—like watching daytime television—was a slippery slope for retired people, so far as Carole was concerned. Go too far down that route and you’ll stop bothering to get up or get dressed in the morning. Then you’ll start to smell and ‘become a burden’. Carole’s mind was full of imagined slippery slopes to cause her anxiety.

“You go straight back to bed,” said Jude, “and have a nice long sleep. You’re still washed out. Sleep’s nature’s way of making you better.”

Carole didn’t argue any more. Sleeping during the day for health reasons was quite acceptable. But such indulgence must stop the minute she was fully fit again.

Before she took to her bed, she felt sufficiently buoyed up by the Chilean Chardonnay to ring Gaby. And, to her delight, her daughter-in-law suggested coming down to Fethering that Friday. Just her and Lily. The perfect configuration, and no mention of David. Exactly what Carole would have wished for. Heartened by the conversation, she was quickly nestled under her duvet and asleep.

Jude felt restless when she returned from the pub. Although she had a presence that spread serenity, inside her mind all was not always serene. She had had a varied life in many different places. Sometimes the quietness of Fethering soothed her, but at others it rankled and she felt a surge of wanderlust. There was so much world out there, so much yet to be seen. Maybe it was time that her wings were once again spread.

Normally she would ease such moods by yoga. The familiarity of the movements, the relinquishing of her thoughts to a stronger imperative, could usually be relied on to settle her. But that afternoon she’d had two large glasses of wine and she knew her concentration would not be adequate to the demands of yoga.

So she lit a fire and then sat down to read the manuscript of a book written by one of her healer friends. It was about control, not controlling others, but taking control of one’s own life, developing one’s own potentialities. Jude, who had read and been disappointed by more than her fair share of self-help books, thought this one was rather good.

But her mind kept straying. The pale image of the dying Tadeusz Jankowski recurred like an old reproach. What had happened to him? Why did he have to die? She hoped she would soon have answers to those questions.

The phone rang. Jude answered it.

“Hello. Is this, Jude, please?” The voice was female, young, heavily accented.

“Yes, it is.”

“It was you who found the body of Tadeusz Jankowski?”

“Yes.”

“Please, I like to meet you.”

“I’m sorry, who am I talking to?”

“My name is Zofia Jankowska. I am the sister of Tadeusz.”

T
he girl was in her early twenties, with hazel eyes and blonded hair divided into two pigtails. She wore jeans and a blue waterproof jacket. There were silver rings on her fingers and in her pierced ears. She had a feeling of energy about her, as if all inactive time was wasted, as if she couldn’t wait to be getting on with something.

Zofia had come straight from the police, having rung Jude from the Major Crime Centre at Hollingbury near Brighton. And Jude had invited her straight over.

“They were helpful to me, the police, but not very helpful, if you understand.”

“Yes, I think I do,” said Jude. “Can I get you something to drink? Or have you eaten?”

“I have a sort of plastic breakfast on the plane.”

“And how long ago was that?”

“The flight left at 6.20 from Warsaw.”

“You must be starving. Come through to the kitchen and I’ll get you something.”

Bacon and eggs were the most obvious emergency rations and while Jude rustled them up, the two women continued their conversation. “When you say the police were helpful and unhelpful, what exactly did you mean?”

“They were helpful in the way how they were polite to me and answering my questions, but they did not give me a lot information.”

“They gave you my number, though.”

“They give me your name. I find your number in phonebook. I don’t think the police were keeping information from me. I think they just don’t have a lot information to give.”

“No, that was the impression I got.” Jude sat the girl down at her kitchen table and dished up the bacon and eggs. “What would you like to drink? Tea—or something stronger?”

“You have coffee?”

Jude had coffee. While she made it, Zofia wolfed down the food as if she hadn’t eaten for months. Whatever her reaction had been to the news of her brother’s death, it hadn’t affected her appetite.

Jude sat down and waited till the plate was empty. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, I…You are very kind. You give me much.”

“I bought a rather self-indulgent ginger cake yesterday. Let’s have some of that by the fire, and you can tell me everything you know.”

“I prefer you tell me what you know. You are the one who find Tadek.”

“Tadek?”

“I’m sorry—Tadeusz. Tadek is short name for him. In family and friends, we all say Tadek.”

“Right.”

They sat down in a heavily draped sofa. Jude hadn’t put any lights on yet, though the February evening was encroaching and soon they would be needed. The flickering of the fire illuminated the clutter of Woodside Cottage’s sitting room, its shrouded furniture, its every surface crowded with memorabilia from the varied lives of its owner.

“Were you close to your brother?” asked Jude.

“When we live together as children with my mother, very close. Then he go to university, we do not see so much of each other. Still we stay close…from a distance, can you say?”

“Yes. You said your mother…are your parents not together?”

“My father he died when Tadek and I are small children. There is just my mother.”

“She must have been devastated when she heard the news about your brother.”

“Yes, I suppose. We do not get on, she and I. But, in her way, she is upset. She do not understand. I do not understand. That is why I know I must come here. I stop everything, get a flight, come here.”

“How much did you have to stop? Do you have a job?”

“I do not. Not yet. Not permanent job. I was student. At university in Warsaw.”

“Studying English? You speak it very well.”

“No, not English. Not major in English, though I try to get it better, because it is important. But I studied journalism. I wanted to be reporter.”

“‘Studied’? ‘Wanted’? Why the past tense? What went wrong?”

“I did not like the course, not good. I drop out. Wait tables, work in bars till I decide what I really want to do.”

“Maybe you’ve got enough reporter’s skills to get to the bottom of what happened to your brother.”

“This I hope. This is why I come.” She pulled a small notebook out of the back pocket of her jeans. “In this I write down my notes, everything I find out. I have to know something, have to know why Tadek was killed.”

“It must be terrible for you.”

“I think it will be. Now I am too full of…unbelieving…and angriness. Now I just want to know what happened. When I have found this out, then I think there will be time for sadness.”

“I’m sure there will.”

“So I must know everything that is known. This is why I need see you. Please, tell me about how you saw Tadek…my brother.”

As simply and sympathetically as she could, Jude re-created the events of the previous Thursday afternoon. It didn’t take long. She could only say what happened. She had no explanations, nothing that might assuage Zofia’s thirst for detail. Meanwhile the girl scribbled down notes in her little blue book.

When Jude had finished her narration, there was a long silence. Then Zofia spoke slowly. “It is terrible. That you should see Tadek like that. That I did not see him. That I will not see him again. That is the thing that is hard to understand. That he is not there any more, not anywhere any more.”

“When did you last see him, Zofia?”

“Please do not call me ‘Zofia’. That is very formal. My friends have a special name for me.”

A sudden thought came to Jude. “It isn’t ‘Fifi’, is it?”

The girl looked at her in bewilderment. “No. ‘Fifi’ I think is a name for a dog.”

Jude didn’t think the time was right to elaborate the reasoning behind her question. “I just thought…‘Zofia’…it might be shortened to—”

“No, ‘Zosia’. That is the name everyone calls me. Please, you call me ‘Zosia’.”

“Very well. Zosia,” said Jude.

“Why you think I am ‘Fifi’?”

Jude explained about her brother’s dying word, hoping that now she might get some explanation for it. But Zofia was as puzzled as she was. So far as the girl knew, Tadek had not known a ‘Fifi’. He’d certainly never mentioned one. And no Polish word that he might have been trying to get out seemed to have any relevance.

“You ask me when I last see Tadek…Of course I did not know it was the last time I would see him, but it was in Warsaw in September. Just before he come to England.”

“Why did he come to England?”

“I do not know. He would not tell me.”