The Fethering Mysteries 09; Blood at the Bookies tfm-9

by Simon Brett

  “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.

  ∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧

  Eleven

  “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.

  “The place has been around for a long time. As a college, or it may even have been a poly. Not very academic, did courses in estate management, animal husbandry, catering, that sort of thing. Most of the students there were local, and I gather they still are. I always think that’s the difference between a college and a university. A university is a place where young people go to get away from home, to spread their wings a little, start to find their own personalities, whereas a college…Anyway, in recent years, following government policy…” Distaste steeped Carole’s words as she spoke them “…Clincham College has been accorded university status. So, rather than dishing out diplomas and certificates, Clincham College is now dishing out degrees. Which, I would imagine, are about as valuable from the academic point of view as the diplomas and certificates they replaced.”

  “Does it take a lot of foreign students?”

  “That I wouldn’t know. I don’t think more than the average so-called university.”

  “Well, it’d be fairly easy to check if Tadek was enrolled there.”

  “But how could he have been, Jude? If he was, surely the police would have described him as a ‘student’, not a ‘bar worker’?”

  “He could have been doing a part-time course. Or maybe he started something and dropped out. A lot of students do.” Her neighbour didn’t seem particularly impressed by this new area of potential investigation. “Look, Carole, we do now have at least one connection for Tadek and the Fethering area. Apart from Madame Ego at the Cat and Fiddle. He was looking for Clincham College. It’s a lead.”

  “About the only one we’ve got,” said Carole frostily.

  Silence reigned between them until they reached the High Street. The cold wind off the sea stung their cheeks. Jude noticed with amusement how, the closer they got to the betting shop, the more the anxiety in Carole’s face grew. At last, when they were only yards away, she burst out, “Is there anything I ought to know? I don’t want to look a fool. I don’t want people staring at me. I don’t want to do the wrong thing.”

  “Carole,
it’s a betting shop we’re going into, not the temple of some obscure religious sect. Nobody will take any notice of you. And if you do feel self-conscious, just study the sheets from the newspapers stuck up on the walls. They’ll show all the runners and riders.”

  “And nobody will think it odd if I don’t bet?”

  “Nobody will think anything about you.”

  “Oh.” But she didn’t sound reassured.

  “Know anything?” asked Sonny Frank, the minute the two women entered the betting shop.

  “Sorry. Nothing,” Jude replied.

  “How’s about your friend?”

  “Sonny, this is Carole. Sonny Frank – Carole Seddon.”

  “Good afternoon.”

  “How do? And what about you – know anything?”

  “Well,” Carole replied, primly mystified, “I know quite a lot of things, I suppose. In which particular area were you interested?”

  “Horses,” said Sonny. “Wondered if you knew a good thing on today’s cards?”

  Carole looked to Jude for help, which was readily supplied. “Sonny was wondering if you had a tip for any of today’s races.”

  “Oh, good heavens, no. I’m afraid I don’t know anything about horses.”

  “Join the club,” said Sonny Frank, “The great international conspiracy of mug punters.”

  “Ah.” Carole still looked confused.

  “You know anything, Sonny?” asked Jude.

  “Might be something in the 3.20 at Exeter.”

  “Oh?”

  “From a yard in the north. Long way to travel if the trainer reckons it’s a no-hoper.”

  “So you’re saying it’s a cert?”

  “No such thing, darling.”

  “Are you going to tell me the name?”

  The round head shook, its plastered-down hair unstirred by the movement. “Maybe later. See what form the jockey’s in first.”

  Jude nodded acceptance of his reticence and crossed to the counter to hand in Harold Peskett’s bets. Carole felt stranded. Sonny Frank had returned to his Racing Post, three Chinese waiters chattered incomprehensibly, the gambling machines recycled their interminable jingles. She didn’t know whether to follow her neighbour or just sit down as if her presence in the betting shop had some purpose. Then she remembered Jude’s advice and drifted across to look at the newspaper sheets pinned to the wall. The lists of runners and riders from Exeter and Lingfield meant nothing to her, but she stared at them with the concentration of an aficionado.

  “The ground hasn’t really thawed out after the frost,” said a cultured voice behind her. “The going shouldn’t be too heavy.”

  “Oh. Really?” Carole turned to see a smartly suited mature man with an impeccably knotted tie. He was the former accountant whom Jude knew as a regular, but to whom she had never spoken.

  “I don’t believe I’ve seen you in here before.”

  “No, I am not an habituee.” Why on earth had she said that? Was it some form of inverted snobbery that put her gentility into overdrive in a common place like a betting shop?

  “Well, I am, I’m afraid. Gerald Hume.” He stretched out a hand and formally took hers.

  “Carole Seddon.”

  At the counter, Jude had had Harold Peskett’s bets scanned by the manager, but lingered. Ryan looked sweaty and ill at ease. Once again Jude was aware of the strong peppermint smell that was always around him. “I was wondering if my friend and I could talk to you about something…?”

  “What’s that?”

  “About Tadeusz Jankowski…you know, the person who died.”

  The young man was instantly suspicious. His dark eyes darted from side to side as he said, “I only saw him the once, that afternoon. I told you that. I’ve already told you everything I know.”

  “Yes, but we’d like to talk to you a bit more about it. Amongst other things…”

  “Why, what do you know?” There was a note of panic in his voice.

  “Oh, this and that,” Jude replied, casually – and mendaciously. “We thought it’d be nice to have a chat and bring you up to date on what we do know. And you’re the person who knows everything that goes on in this betting shop. You, as it were, know where the bodies are buried.”

  His pupils flickered like trapped tadpoles. “I can’t talk now,” he said.

  “What time do you finish?”

  “Five-thirty this time of year.”

  “Meet in the Crown and Anchor?”

  “OK,” he grunted reluctantly.

  Someone’s got a guilty secret, thought Jude. She wondered if Ryan’s manner towards her had something to do with their encounter earlier that morning. Had he been doing something he shouldn’t have been in the betting shop’s back yard? And did he think she was a witness to his wrong-doing? Had her random talk of knowing ‘where the bodies are buried’ triggered some guilt in the manager?

  These were her thoughts as she crossed back towards her neighbour, who she was surprised to see was in earnest conversation with the man whom Sonny Frank had once identified as a retired accountant. Animated by talking, he didn’t look quite as old as he had before. Probably only early sixties, steel-grey hair and a lean face with unexpectedly blue eyes. When he smiled, he was almost good-looking.

  “Oh, Gerald, this is my friend Jude,” said Carole in a manner which was, by her standards, fulsome.

  The introductions were duly made. “Yes, I’ve seen you in here before, but never known your name,” said Gerald.

  “Same for me with you. And indeed with a lot of other Fethering residents.”

  “You’re certainly right there. Isn’t that typical of England – everyone knows who everyone else is, but they never speak to each other?” He seemed slightly embarrassed by his own seriousness. “Carole was just giving me her views on the first race at Lingfield.”

  “Was she?” asked Jude, with some surprise.

  “She fancies Deirdre’s Cup, and I can see the way her mind’s working, but I just wonder whether he can produce his turf form on the all-weather.”

  “That’s obviously the big question,” said Carole, trying to avoid her friend’s eye. Out of Gerald Hume’s sightline, Jude let her jaw drop in a parody of stunned surprise.

  “Well, I might be swayed by your opinion,” said the retired accountant. “I’ll wait till just before the off, see how the market rates Deirdre’s Cup.”

  “Good idea,” said Carole.

  “We can actually go now,” said Jude. “Our meeting’s going to be later in the day.”

  “Oh,” said Carole. “Well, may as well just stay and see this first race at Exeter.”

  “Yes, wait and see if Deirdre’s Cup floweth over,” said Gerald Hume, rather pleased with this verbal felicity.

  “Very well,” said Jude, still bemused.

  In the few minutes before the race, the odds on Deirdre’s Cup grew shorter and shorter till he was seesawing for favouritism with the horse which had started the day odds-on.

  “Someone knows something,” observed Gerald Hume. “Where do you get your information from, Carole?”

  “Oh, here and there,” she replied airily. “One keeps one’s ear to the ground.” Again she looked studiously away from Jude, on whose face was a pop-eyed expression of disbelief.

  “Right, I’m going to grab that eleven to four while stocks last,” said Gerald Hume and hurried up to the counter with open wallet.

  “Are you not betting?”

  “No.” Carole still avoided Jude’s eye.

  “Well, I’m going to do something. I can’t watch a race without having a financial interest in it.”

  Jude went each way on a wild outsider called Lumsreek, which she got at thirty-three to one. Already planning how she’d spend her winnings, she rejoined Carole and Gerald, who seemed as relaxed as if they’d known each other since schooldays.

  Before the race started, Wes and Vie rushed in from some other abandoned decorating job and just managed to get their bets on in ti
me, so the actual running was accompanied by their raucous shouts of encouragement.

  Not that they did much good. In both cases, the horses whose praises they had been singing before the ‘off’ were condemned at the end as hopeless nags. Deirdre’s Cup did better, though. Never out of the first four, he put in a big challenge in the last furlong, actually leading for a few strides before the favourite reasserted its class and got home by a short head.

  “Worth watching, that horse,” said Gerald Hume. “Going to win a race soon.”

  “Yes,” Carole agreed sagely.

  “So how much did you lose?” he asked.

  “Oh, I didn’t bet on it.”

  “Canny. You fancied it, but you knew something…?”

  “Well…”

  “Thought he needed the race?”

  Carole wasn’t quite sure what the question meant, but it seemed to invite agreement, so, ignoring the flabbergasted look on Jude’s face, she agreed.

  “Yes, I should have thought it through,” said Gerald Hume. “Are you going to do something on the next?”

  “Oh no, I think Jude and I had better be off. Things to do, haven’t we?”

  Jude, still mystified by Carole’s behaviour, agreed that they did indeed have things to do. “Also,” she said, “if the way my luck’s going is characterized by the running of Lumsreek…” Her fancy had come a very distant last “…I think I should keep out of betting shops for the next few days.”

  “Still, maybe I’ll see you in here again?” asked Gerald Hume, directing the enquiry very firmly towards Carole rather than Jude.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. As I said, I’m not an habituee.” This time she didn’t feel so stupid saying the word. In fact, she felt rather classy. Confident even.

  “Well, I hope we will meet again somewhere,” said Gerald.

  “I’m sure we will. Fethering’s a very small place, and I only live in the High Street.”

  “Good heavens, I’m in River Road.”

  “Very close then.”

  “I’m sure we’ll meet up.”