Fethering 09 (2008) - Blood at the Bookies (9 page)

“Not really,” said Carole, suppressing a shudder.

They continued their conversation with Shona a little longer. Relishing her moment in the spotlight, she was happy to talk for as long as they wanted. But it soon became obvious that she had almost nothing to tell them. ‘Teddy’ had been employed as cheap labour in the kitchen of the Cat and Fiddle. She had had no interest in him apart from that. Though happy after his death to project the image of the big-hearted employer struck by tragedy, Shona Nuttall actually knew nothing about the young man.

And when in the course of conversation Jude revealed that she was the one who had been present at his death, the landlady could not hide her annoyance. She didn’t want anyone else muscling in on her fifteen minutes of fame.

“Y
ou want me to go into a betting shop?” said Carole, appalled.

“The betting shop is, if not the Scene of the Crime, at least the only place we know related to the crime. It’s going to be rather hard to find out anything about the case if we don’t go back there. Shona Nuttall proved to be something of a dead end—not to say a dead loss—so the betting shop must be our next port of call.”

“But, Jude, what on earth will people think I’m doing?”

“They’ll think you’re going into the betting shop, that’s all. People wander in and out all the time. Nobody’ll take any notice of you.”

“But supposing there was someone I knew in there? Or someone I knew saw me going in there?”

“So?”

“What would they think?”

“They would think that you were going into the betting shop. Full stop. It’s only a betting shop, Carole. It’s not an opium den in Limehouse.”

“No, but—”

“I’m going there right now. Picking up Harold Peskett’s bets on the way. Are you coming?”

“Yes,” Carole replied meekly. But not without misgiving.

As it turned out, Carole and Jude went to the betting shop that Wednesday morning before seeing Harold Peskett. They didn’t go inside, but to the small alley where Jude had witnessed the young man’s death. She’d had the thought as they were walking along Fethering High Street that revisiting the scene might spark some recollection, might set her mind going in a different direction.

Though the day was dry, the alley looked drab and uninviting, littered with burger wrappers and plastic bottles. A smell of urine hung in the air. It had been used as a comfort station by many beerful customers taking a short cut back from the Crown and Anchor.

Tied to a drainpipe near where Tadeusz Jankowski had died was a bunch of flowers. Though not yet wilting, they looked infinitely pathetic. Attached to the stalks was a card with words in a language that neither woman understood.

“Zofia’s tribute to her brother,” said Jude softly.

Carole was silent. Though not as sensitive to atmospheres as her neighbour, she could still feel the piercing melancholy of the location.

“So why did he come down here?” asked Jude, as if thinking out loud. “Why did he go into the betting shop? What was he looking for?”

“Maybe he was going to meet someone on the beach? Or round the back of one of the shops?” The alley led to a little service road behind the parade.

“We could look.” Jude tried unsuccessfully to banish the sadness from her face. “Maybe we’ll see something obvious that he was making for?”

But no. There was nothing obvious. Nothing unusual at all. A lorry was delivering what was undoubtedly the wrong stock to the loading bay behind Allinstore. There was no other sign of human activity. Towards the sea was an area of scrubland, rough grass snaking its way over sandy soil, too flat to be called a dune.

“Nothing springs to mind,” said Carole dispiritedly.

“No.” Jude turned away from the beach to face the overgrown back yard of the betting shop. Through wire-netting gates, she found herself looking straight at Ryan the Manager. He looked as shocked to see her as she did him.

Jude raised her hand in a little half-wave of acknowledgement, but the young man did not respond. Instead, shoving the bulky contents of a brown paper bag into his pocket, he turned on his heel and disappeared through the back door of the shop.

Harold Peskett lived in sheltered accommodation, a tiny flat in a purpose-built block with views over Fethering Beach. Though still suffering from the flu, he was up and dressed by the time Jude and Carole arrived.

A small, birdlike man, ninety-two years had whitled away at him, so that now there seemed to be only one layer of skin on his prominent bones. There was no hair on the blotched cranium, and he peered at the world through thick-lensed tortoiseshell glasses. In spite of the considerable warmth of central heating turned up high, he wore two jumpers under a tweed jacket whose elbows and cuffs had been reinforced with leather. His shoes were polished to a high gloss and he wore a thin, greasy dark tie with some insignia on it.

His room was meticulously tidy, the bed neatly squared off and lots of box files regimented on shelves. Only on the table in the window facing the sea was there disarray, an untidy spread of the day’s racing papers, from which he had been working out his latest foolproof fortune-bringing strategy.

He was very glad to see Carole. Any friend of Jude’s was a friend of his. And he was sick of the wretched flu. “I still wake up every morning as weak as a kitten. Mind you, even when I’m a hundred per cent, I’m not much stronger than a kitten these days.” He chuckled, and through the lenses there was a sparkle in his clouded eyes.

“Carole’s just recovered from the flu too.”

“Oh, have you, love?” Carole didn’t really like being called ‘love’, but the ninety-two-year-old’s charm enabled him to get away with it. “Then you have my sympathy. Rotten one, this is. Hangs on like the smell of damp in an empty house. Nasty.”

“Yes, it certainly took it out of me.”

“Well, I’m glad to see you’re on the mend. Hope I will be soon. Then you won’t have to come collecting my bets every day, Jude.”

“It’s no hardship. I really don’t mind.”

“That’s very kind of you to say so, but I hope it won’t be for much longer. Anyway, I like putting the bets on myself. Then I can say my own special little prayer to Lady Luck. “Come on, love, today you’re going to give me the big win, aren’t you?””

“And does she usually oblige?” asked Carole.

“Oh, no. Never. Well, I’ll get the odd little double, but never the big one I’m really after. Still…” He chuckled again “…at ninety-two, what would I do with all the money if I did have a big win? No, no, it’s not the money that’s really the attraction for me. It’s pitting myself against the system, against the whole random universe, trying to impose order on total chaos.”

“You’re a bit of a philosopher in your quiet way, aren’t you?” said Jude.

“Guilty as charged.” The little man placed his frail hands on his chest in a gesture of submission. “Now, can I offer you ladies a cup of tea or something?”

“No, really, we’ve just had some coffee. Anyway, Harold, you’re not fit enough to be doing that sort of thing. Can I get you a cup of tea?”

“Well, Jude, if you don’t mind…” This exchange had become a part of their morning ritual. Harold would make the offer of tea, Jude would refuse and offer to make some for him, and he’d accept.

While she busied herself in the tiny kitchen, Carole said to the old man, “So you’re normally a regular at the betting shop?”

“Never miss a day. Been doing the horses all my life. Back when I started the bookie’s were on the street corners with their clock bags.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Clock bags. They had to be closed at a certain time before the race started, so’s no one could cheat by knowing the result. While now…well, very plush all the stuff they got in those betting shops these days. Comfy chairs, get a cup of tea, everything.”

“But over the years, Harold…you know, the years you’ve been betting, do you think you’re up or down?”

“In financial terms?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, down. Definitely down.”

An expression of puzzlement settled on Carole’s face. But rather than actually vocalizing the thought, “Then why on earth do you do it?” she moved the subject on. “So, if you’re in the betting shop every day, Harold, maybe you saw the poor man who was killed?”

“No. Didn’t Jude say? I was ill last week.”

“I know that. I just thought you might have seen him before.”

“No idea. I don’t know what he looks like.”

“Haven’t you seen the pictures on the news?”

He gestured around the room. “Don’t have a telly, do I? There’s one downstairs in what they call one of the ‘communal rooms’. But I’m not going to spend my time sitting with those old biddies. They never put the racing on, anyway. Just watch these endless soaps and chat shows with everyone spilling their guts about everything. No one’s got any shame any more. I don’t need the television.”

“And you don’t get a local paper?”

“No, nothing much happens in Fethering, and what there does I usually hear along the grapevine.”

At that moment Jude reappeared with a steaming cup of tea.

“I was just asking Harold whether he’d seen Tadeusz Jankowski in the betting shop…you know, before last Thursday. But Harold doesn’t know what he looked like. Fortunately, though…” Carole reached triumphantly into her handbag “…I’ve brought along all the cuttings I’ve collected about the murder.”

Harold Peskett was shown a photograph of the dead man and immediately responded, “Oh yes, I seen him all right.”

“In the betting shop?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“While back. Late summer, I think.”

“End of September, early October?”

“Could have been.”

“Did you see him speak to a woman?”

The parchment-like skin wrinkled around the old man’s eyes. “Hard to remember that far back. Maybe he did…”

“The woman we’re talking about,” Jude said gently, “was a regular in the betting shop…”

“Do you mean old Pauline?”

“No. Another one. Apparently used to be a regular and then suddenly stopped coming.”

Again the thin skin was stretched with the strain of recollection. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”

“Younger woman…smartly dressed…”

“Ooh, just a minute. Yes, there was this lady used to come in, now you come to mention it. Yeah, looked like she had a few bob. Nice clothes, like you say.”

“Did you ever talk to her?” asked Carole.

“Well, only to, like, pass the time of day. You know, say ‘bad luck’ when she had a loser, that kind of thing.”

“Did she have a lot of losers?”

He shrugged. “All punters have a lot of losers.”

“Yes, but I mean—did she bet a lot?”

“Mm, think she did. Put something on every race, she would.”

“Big stakes?”

“Dunno. You never really know what other punters are putting on, unless they draw attention to themselves. And she was a quiet one, that woman. That’s why I had trouble remembering her.”

“Do you know her name?”

He shook his head. “Like I say, she was quiet. Almost, like, a bit secretive. And people who come in on their own, well, you never hear their names. Different with those decorators, Wes and Vie, a right double act they are. And Sonny ‘Perfectly’ Frank, everyone knows him. But that woman…haven’t a clue.”

“Did you see her talking to Tadek…to the man in the photograph?” asked Jude.

The wizened old man shook his head. “Don’t recall. She might have done, but, you know, there’s a lot of comings and goings in a betting shop. You don’t notice all of them.”

“Of course not.” Jude looked at Carole, as if to indicate that they weren’t going to get much more information from this source, and said, “Have you got all your bets done, Harold?”

“Been ready for an hour,” the old man replied, producing a pile of closely scribbled betting slips from the table. “Ooh, and could you bring me some more of these, Jude love? I’m running out. I mean, hope I’ll be better tomorrow and be able to go down there under my own steam, but just in case…”

“Yes, of course. I’ll pick them up and drop them in tomorrow morning.”

“That’s very good of you.” He looked at his watch. “The first bet’s on a twelve-thirty race.”

“Don’t worry, we’re on our way.”

“Well, good to see you. And nice to meet you, Carole love. You going down to sort out your day’s investments, are you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You going down the betting shop to have a bit of a punt, are you?”

“Good heavens, no,” said Carole.

Jude smiled. “Don’t bother to get up, Harold.”

But he was on his feet before she had finished the words. “No, no, I may be old and decrepit and full of flu, but I’m still capable of seeing ladies to the door of my own home.”

Harold Peskett moved stiffly across to the door and opened it for them. “And that poor geezer with the funny name got stabbed, did he?”

“So it seems, yes.”

“Rotten luck. He didn’t seem the sort to get on the wrong side of anybody.”

Carole stopped in her tracks. “You speak as if you know him.”

“Well, don’t know, but I chatted to him a bit when he come into the betting shop in the autumn.”

“When he spoke to the mystery woman?” asked Jude.

“Maybe. Come to think of it, yes, I did only see him in bookie’s just the once.”

“And when you spoke to him, what did you talk about?”

“Oh, nothing important. Just like passed the time of day.” He screwed up his face with the effort of squeezing out more detail. “Ooh, and I remember…I did give him some directions.”

“Where to?”

“Well, as I recollect it, that’s why he come in the betting shop, to ask the way. That’s probably why he talked to the woman…you know, the one you were asking about.”

“Where did he want to go to?” Carole insisted.

“He was looking for Clincham College,” replied Harold Peskett.

“I
’ve heard of Clincham College, but I don’t know much about it,” said Jude, as they walked briskly along the front towards Fethering High Street. “Presumably it’s in Clincham?”

Carole affirmed that it was. Clincham was a largish coastal town some ten miles west of Fethering. It had a well-heeled retired community, and a matching set of boutiques and knick-knack shops to cater for them. It also had a growing population of students, a lot of them foreigners studying at the town’s many language schools.