by Simon Brett
“So you didn’t get any idea of how Tadek spent his time?”
“The landlord does not live near the house with the rooms in. It is just for money. He might as well be taking profits from slot machines.”
“Did you go to the house?”
“Yes.”
“And did you manage to speak to any of the other residents?”
“Not many are in. Two I speak to. They also only remember Tadek because the police have been round asking questions. How can people live so close and not know each other?” the girl asked plaintively.
“They can do it because they’re English,” Jude replied. “I’m afraid there’s a strong tradition in this country of keeping oneself to oneself. Have you heard the expression: ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’?”
“No. And certainly where Tadek was living was not a castle. It was very bare, not a nice place.”
“So what you’re saying, Zosia, is that you’ve drawn a blank? You haven’t met anyone who knew your brother?”
“I meet the woman at the pub he work. Cat and Fiddle. But she no use. She did not seem to know him at all.”
“Shona Nuttall. A friend and I met her too, and that was the impression we got. I think your brother was just cheap labour to her. She seemed to be a bit of a slave-driver.”
“She not even know Tadek was interested in music. That means she did not know him at all.”
“No.”
“It is strange, Jude. Tadek is a warm person, he always have friends. But no one in the house at Littlehampton know him. And that woman in the pub, she not interested in him.”
“I don’t think Shona Nuttall’s interested in anyone but herself.”
“No. But, Tadek…how can he come somewhere and make no friends?”
“He may not have made friends where he lived, but perhaps he had some somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“At college?”
“Tadek was at university in Warsaw. I tell you. He finish there last year.”
“Yes, I know. But we’ve got a lead that he might have had some connection with a college near here. Clincham College. Now called the University of Clincham.” Jude briefly outlined the information they had got from Harold Peskett. “Tadek didn’t say anything to you about going to college here?”
“No.”
“I mean, he was in touch with you, was he?”
“Tadek was never very good at keeping in touch. Oh, he always meant to, but other things would take his attention. He was a dreamer. So, since he leave for England, maybe he send one letter to our mother.”
“Was he close to her?”
“No. Like me, he did not get on with her.”
“But was he in touch with you?”
“More. But not a lot. A few texts on the mobile phone.”
“When was the last one you had from him?”
“I do not remember. Not since Christmas perhaps.”
“Well,” said Jude, “I’m planning to make contact with Clincham College. Just see if anyone there knows anything about your brother.”
“Yes. You will tell me, please, if you find out something.”
“Of course.”
“You will keep in touch, Jude?” The appeal in Zofia’s voice was naked. She sounded much younger than the nineteen or twenty that she must be. Jude felt a sudden rush of pity for the girl. Already shaken by bereavement, she had rushed to a country where she had no contacts, and had just experienced encounters with the English at their most aloof. She must have been feeling very alone.
“Zosia, have you got somewhere to stay while you’re here?” Jude asked gently. “Where did you spend last night?”
“Last night I was fine.” She clearly didn’t want to give details. Jude wondered if the girl had slept rough. Not very pleasant when the weather was cold.
“And what about tonight?”
“I will find somewhere.” The girl dismissed the question as if it wasn’t a problem. “Somewhere cheap. A pension, a…what is it called in England? A Bed and Breakfast?”
“That’s what it’s called, yes. But if you’d like to, Zosia, you could stay here with me.”
“Oh; but I couldn’t. No, I don’t want to be trouble to anyone. I can do on my own.”
It took a bit of cajoling; not much, though. The girl’s pride obliged her to put up some resistance, but Jude’s arguments soon blew it away. There was a spare bedroom in Woodside Cottage; it made sense that it should be used. Jude didn’t mention money, but she couldn’t imagine that Zofia had much with her. The cost of living in Poland was a lot lower than in England, and even in the off-season B and Bs along the South Coast eould be quite pricey. She was pleased when the girl gratefully accepted her offer, and suggested she should come straight from Littlehampton to Woodside Cottage.
By the time she arrived, the spare room would be made up for her.
As she put the phone down, Jude felt a double glow of satisfaction. Part came from the altruism of doing something that would be of help to someone in need. The other part was more selfish. Having the victim’s sister on the premises might well prove very useful in the murder enquiry on which she and Carole had embarked.
Her recapitulation of what Harold Peskett had said about Clincham College prompted a new question. Had the old boy told the police what he had overheard Tadek say in the betting shop? Were they aware of the Clincham College connection?
She rang through to Harold. No, he hadn’t been contacted by the police. Why should he have been, Jude reflected. He hadn’t been in the betting shop on the relevant afternoon.
Jude was now faced with a moral dilemma. She had information which the police might not have. And her sense of duty told her that she should immediately share it with them. She felt certain that was the course Carole, with her Home Office background, would have recommended. An immediate call to the police was required, to alert them to Tadek’s connection with Clincham College.
On the other hand…The police might have heard about the young man’s enquiry from another of the betting shop regulars…There was a very strong temptation to leave them in ignorance…
No, she should do the right thing. Unfair though it was—because she knew there was no chance of the police reciprocating by sharing their findings with an amateur detective—she should let them know what she’d heard.
Reluctantly, Jude rang the number Detective Sergeant Baines had given her. She got his voicemail. She didn’t give details of what she knew, merely said that there was another regular of the betting shop whom it might be worth their contacting for information in connection with the case of Tadeusz Jankowski. And gave Harold Peskett’s number.
She put the phone down with mixed feelings. Her sense of virtue at having done the right thing was transient. Stronger was the hope that the police might classify her message as just the witterings of a middle-aged woman, over-excited by her proximity to a criminal investigation. That, in fact, they would ignore it.
Zofia Jankowska had very few belongings with her, and the clothes she unpacked looked pitifully cheap. But she was extremely grateful to her hostess. “Please, I pay you money…?”
“No need,” said Jude.
“But for food? Already you cook me one meal.”
“All right. If that happens more often, you can make a contribution.”
“Please. You not ask how long I stay?”
“It’s not a problem.”
“No, but I not be trouble you long. I go when I find out all I can find out. I just want to know why my brother died.”
“Which is exactly what I want to know,” said Jude.
Ryan the betting shop manager looked more nervous than ever when he appeared in the Crown and Anchor very soon after five-thirty that evening. He wore a fur-hooded anorak over his uniform, but made no attempt to remove or even unzip it when he sat down in the booth opposite Carole and Jude. The latter introduced the former. He told Carole his name was Ryan Masterson and accepted Jude’s offer o
f a drink, asking for “A double Smirnoff, please, just with some ice.”
The two women had planned the way they wanted the conversation to go. From her snatched exchange with him in the morning, Jude had concluded that Ryan thought she knew something discreditable about him. She reckoned that was probably the fact that he had denied ever seeing Tadek in the betting shop before the afternoon of his death, but it might be something else, possibly something he thought she’d witnessed that morning. So she and Carole had decided to keep the one bit of information they did have on hold, and see if the manager had anything else to reveal.
“Busy day?” asked Carole uncontroversially.
“All right. Not too frantic this time of year.” The answer was automatic; there was tension in his voice.
“Do you know,” said Carole, uncharacteristically winsome, “today was the first day I’d ever been into a betting shop.”
“Yes, I saw you come in.”
“You take note of everyone who enters the premises, do you?”
“Have to. There are a lot of villains around.”
“What, they’re likely to cause fights, are they?”
“Not that. Some shops, maybe. Not in Fethering.”
“So what kind of villains are they?”
“Crooked punters. There are some who’ve got systems going. Multiple bets on fixed races, gangs of them going into a lot of different betting shops. We have to watch out for them.”
“Ah.” There was a silence. The question about his taking note of everyone who came into the shop had brought Carole the perfect cue to ask Ryan about Tadek’s former appearance, but that was the one thing she didn’t want to raise yet. And she couldn’t think of anything else to ask him about.
Fortunately, Jude arrived at that moment with their interviewee’s large vodka. As ever, her presence relaxed the atmosphere, though Ryan remained taut and watchful.
“Have the police been back to the shop since the weekend?” He shook his head and took a swig of vodka so urgent that it might have been some life-saving medicine. “So you don’t know what their current thinking on the murder is…?”
He shrugged. “That the bloke was stabbed somewhere else and just came into the shop to sit down.”
“But he didn’t sit down.”
“No. Thank goodness for that. If he’d actually died on the premises, I’d have had even more hassle.”
“You didn’t see which direction he came from, did you?” asked Carole.
“No. The way that hailstorm was coming down, you couldn’t see anything outside. I was only aware of him when he was actually inside the door.”
“And did you think anything particular when you saw him? Was there anything odd about him?”
“Well, he was swaying about a bit. I thought he might be trouble because he’d been on the booze.”
“Do people on the booze often cause trouble in betting shops?”
Ryan looked up sharply at Jude’s question, then mumbled, “Can happen.”
“And watching out for that kind of thing is part of your job?”
“Yes, we’re trained to stop trouble before it starts.”
“Hm.” Jude twisted a tendril of hair around one of her fingers. “And do you think the same as the police do, Ryan—that the young man came into the betting shop by chance?”
“What else is there to think?”
“Well, if you listen to Fethering gossip…”
“If you listen to Fethering gossip, you waste a lot of time.”
“But you must hear a lot, being in the shop all day.”
“I manage to tune most of it out.”
“Do you like your job?” asked Jude suddenly.
“What’s that to you?” he responded aggressively.
“Just a detail that might shed light on other details.”
Jude wasn’t sure whether her answer actually meant anything, but it seemed to contain some threat to Ryan, because with commendable honesty he said, “No, I don’t like my job.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s dull and repetitive, for a start. The hours are long, particularly in the summer. And you have to spend your day smiling at people you wouldn’t normally give the time of day to. You don’t exactly choose your own company. Some of the punters are pretty rude. Then you get the down-and-outs and the Care in the Community lot. Some of them smell, too.”
“Then why do you stick at it?”
“It’s secure. I’m paid just about enough to make me think that the idea of giving it up and retraining for something else is a bad one.” For a moment he looked haunted by self-doubt. “Don’t know whether I’ve got it in me to train for anything else now—don’t know if I could hack it. Anyway, I’ve got a wife and two kids—not the time to cut loose. I can’t afford to take risks.”
“Risks that might mean you’d get fired?”
Ryan evaded a direct answer to Jude’s question. He just shrugged and said, “It’s a job. Probably no better and no worse than any other job. How many people do you know who enjoy what they do?”
Jude did actually know quite a lot, but it wasn’t the moment to say so. “Why did you agree to meet me?”
Her question seemed to make him even more nervous. He swallowed and his voice was strained as he replied, “You wanted to talk. I can’t really do that while I’m in the shop.”
“I said I wanted to talk about Tadeusz Jankowski.”
“Yes.”
“Which is why you agreed so readily to meet me.”
“OK, yes. Him coming into the shop and then dying wasn’t exactly good for business. Head Office are keen that the publicity is kept to the minimum. They would approve of my meeting you if it means there’s less chat around the shop about what happened.”
It was a relatively convincing answer, but Jude reckoned he was still holding something back. And a straight question seemed as good a way as any other of finding out what that was. “Is there anything you know about the case that you’ve been keeping to yourself?”
“No,” he replied. “I’ve given the police my full cooperation.”
There was a silence. Ryan took another desperate swallow of his vodka. Jude exchanged a look with Carole which confirmed that neither of them expected to get much more out of the interview. Time to put the big question.
Carole did the honours. “I believe you told the police that you’d only seen Tadeusz Jankowski on one occasion.”
“I did, yes. The afternoon he died.”
“Well, we’ve heard from other regulars in the betting shop that he actually went in on a previous occasion.”
“Last October,” Jude supplied.
“Yes,” said Ryan. “I heard that as well.”
“Then why didn’t you tell the police you’d seen him before?”
“Because I hadn’t. I was on holiday last October.”
He answered so readily that they could not doubt the honesty of his reply. As simple as that. Ryan Masterson had not seen Tadeusz Jankowski the previous October because he had been on holiday with his family. Annual leave. It could be checked, presumably, with his employers, but neither Jude nor Carole thought the effort would be worth it. He was telling the truth.
And dealing with the question seemed to relax him. If that was all they were interested in, his manner seemed to say, then no problem. He downed the remainder of his drink—just melting ice, he’d long since finished the vodka—and said he should be on his way.
“Couple of other things we’d like to ask you…” said Jude.
The panic returned instantly to his dark eyes. He thought he had been off the hook; now it seemed he wasn’t.
“Nikki…?”
“Yes.”
“She says she never notices anything that goes on in the shop.”
“Don’t I bloody know it? Doesn’t notice anything that goes on anywhere. Walks around in a dream, planning how she’s going to decorate her sitting room when she gets married. Only thing she thinks about is her bloody w
edding, and it’s still over a year away.”
“That might be a front,” Carole suggested. “And all the time she’s really keeping her eye on everything that goes on?”
Ryan looked at her pityingly. “Tell you, with Nikki, what you see is what you get. She is seriously thick.”
“Oh.” This didn’t seem very gallant, but presumably he knew the woman he worked with.
“If that’s it, I’d better…”
“One more thing…” Jude raised a hand to detain him. “I asked you about this before. There’s a woman who’s a regular at the betting shop…”
“There are a few.”
“Well, I say she is a regular. I should have said was a regular. Stopped coming in around October last year.”
“People come and go, that’s up to them.”
“This one was well dressed, sort of middle class.”
Ryan narrowed his eyes with the effort of recollection. “I think I know the one you mean.”
“You wouldn’t know her name, would you?”
He shook his head. “Some people tell us their names, some don’t. If they don’t, we’ve no means of knowing.”
“No. And I suppose if you don’t know her name, the chances of you knowing where she lives…”
“Are about as slender as those of one of Harold Peskett’s bloody accumulators coming up.” This moment of levity showed how relaxed he now was. “Why do you want to know about her?”
“Apparently Tadeusz Jankowski spoke to her when he went into the betting shop last October.”
“Ah, well, I wouldn’t know about that,” said the manager with something approaching smugness. “I was on holiday.”
Shortly after he reiterated that he must be on his way and left.
“There goes a relieved man,” said Jude.
“How do you mean?”
“He was very relieved when he found out what we were interested in—just whether he’d seen Tadeusz Jankowski before. He had no worries about answering that enquiry. Which means…” Jude grimaced “…that there was something else he was afraid we wanted to talk to him about.”
“Any idea what?”
“Well, only conjecture…but I’m pretty sure I’m right. Seeing the way he put away that vodka…and given the fact that he’s always sucking peppermints, I would think it’s a pretty fair bet that young Ryan has a drink problem.”
