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

by Simon Brett

  “Can you be sure of that?”

  “Can’t be sure of much in our business,” said Yelland.

  Jude now understood the explanation for their relaxed demeanour. Neither Baines nor Yelland was particularly interested in the case. They were underlings who did as they were told. They had been told to interview her and they were following their instructions. But they had no expectations that anything she might say would be useful to the investigation. They regarded the murder as a foreign case, which just happened to have taken place on their patch.

  Jude decided to test the limits of their goodwill and persist in her questioning. “I just wondered…whether it might be more local…?” Remembering Ewan Urquhart’s pontificating in the Crown and Anchor the previous week, she went on, “There does seem to be quite a lot of resentment of immigrants round here.”

  “Not that much,” said Baines. “In some of the inner city areas, yes, there are problems. But down here, it’s not as if they’re taking people’s jobs or anything like that. Maybe a bit of trouble in the bigger cities…Brighton, Portsmouth, Southampton. Get a bit of racial conflict at chucking-out time, you know, the odd fight. But not somewhere as small as Fethering. We don’t get called out much on disputes with immigrants, do we?”

  Yelland agreed that they didn’t.

  “I would just have thought – ”

  “I can assure you that they are investigating every possibility.” Again Baines’s tell-tale use of ‘they’. “And if there is someone local involved, I’m sure they’ll find out about it. But the initial enquiries will be focusing on the Polish community.”

  “Right.”

  “So…” asked Yelland ironically, “is there anything else you want to ask us?”

  “Not at the moment. But if there are any further questions, I’ll be in touch.”

  Yelland grinned at his colleague. “Stealing all our lines, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” said Baines. “And if you remember anything else you might think is relevant, you be in touch too.”

  “Will do.”

  “Or if there’s anything you want to add to the statement you made on Thursday…?”

  “I can’t think of anything at the moment.”

  “Fine. Well, if there’s an arrest, you’ll hear about it on the telly.”

  But Detective Sergeant Baines didn’t sound optimistic. Jude got the firm impression that neither he nor Yelland expected an early solution to the case. And that they weren’t that bothered.

  ∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧

  Five

  After the murder the betting shop had been closed while the police made their forensic examination of the premises, but it was allowed to reopen on the Monday. Which, Jude extrapolated, meant that they had been expecting to receive little information there. It wasn’t exactly a crime scene; the crime had happened elsewhere. Apparently detectives had made enquiries at other premises along the parade, but did not seem to have identified where the stabbing had taken place. Or if they had, they were keeping quiet about it.

  No unsuspecting punter entering the betting shop on the Monday would have been aware that anything untoward had taken place there. But when she arrived that afternoon, Jude noticed that new, brighter blue carpet tiles had replaced the ones on to which the dying man’s blood had dripped. The originals were presumably under scrutiny in a police laboratory.

  She had come in again to place Harold Peskett’s bets. The old man’s flu seemed to be hanging on. He felt lousy, but he still wanted to keep up with what he insisted on calling his ‘investments’. This had obviously been a problem over the weekend, with the betting shop closed, but Jude had found a solution. Using a laptop which she had inherited from a deceased lover, Laurence Hawker, she had opened up an online account.

  The process had been so seductively easy that it gave her something of a shock. She had discovered that in a matter of moments anyone, armed only with an internet connection and a credit card, could have the capacity to lose money at will in the privacy of their own home. Jude was glad she didn’t have an addictive personality. Bankruptcy had never been so readily available.

  But she only used her new account to put on Harold Peskett’s bets that weekend. Once the betting shop reopened, she thought it quite possible that she’d never log on again. She felt comforted to have the account, though. It was a convenience. If she fancied the name of a horse she saw in the paper or suddenly wanted to have a punt on the Grand National…well, the facility was there.

  The regulars were in their allotted places when she arrived that Monday afternoon shortly before one. And they greeted her as one of their own. Nor was there any tasteful reticence about bringing up the subject uppermost in all their minds.

  “So, who’re you going to murder this afternoon, Jude?” asked Wes.

  “Surprised they’ve allowed you out,” said Vic. “On bail, are you?”

  Sonny Frank came to her rescue. “Leave the lady alone. She might still be in a state of shock.”

  “I’m not, actually. But thanks for the thought, Sonny.”

  “Well, from what I see on telly, with all those Poirots and Morses and what-have-you,” Wes went on, “the one the police always go for is the one who found the body.”

  “So I’m supposed to have stabbed the poor bloke outside, am I? Before I came in here?”

  “You could have done,” said Vie wisely. “You’re the only one of us who’s a suspect, Jude. You found the body.”

  “All right.” Jude held up her arms in mock-surrender. “I did it. What are you going to do – call the cops again?”

  “No, we’ll let you get away with this one,” Wes conceded generously. “But you murder someone else and you’re in trouble.”

  All of this dialogue was lightly conducted, humour as ever diluting the awkwardness of an unpleasant situation. None of them was unaffected by the stranger’s death; they were just finding ways of coping with it.

  “Have any of you had follow-up calls from the police?”

  None of them had. “Thank goodness,” said Pauline. “My old man always told me to keep clear of the police. If you don’t talk to them, they can’t twist your words in court, he always said.”

  “But I heard you speaking to them on Thursday,” said Jude.

  “Hadn’t got much choice; had I? They come in here and asked us all to stay. If I’d legged it right then, they’d have thought I was well dodgy.”

  “Suppose so. Well, I must do these bets for old Harold.” Jude moved across to the counter. Nikki was seated at a table checking through sheaves of betting slips. Ryan came to serve her. “Presumably they asked you if you recognized the dead man?”

  “Yes,” the manager replied.

  Characteristically, he didn’t volunteer any other information, so Jude prompted him. “And you said you’d never seen him?”

  “That’s right.”

  He turned away, wanting the conversation to end there, but Jude persisted. “But you do normally check out everyone who comes through the door?”

  “Yes. Part of the job. There are some villains about. Head Office sends us photos of the ones we got to watch out for. So I look at everyone.”

  “And you didn’t recognize him either, did you, Nikki?”

  The girl looked up at Jude from her betting slips, her beautiful eyes blank. “Wossat?”

  “I was asking if you’d ever seen the dead man before?”

  “Nah,” she replied. “I never.”

  “But do you normally check who conies in and out of the betting shop?”

  Jude received one of those curious looks that the young reserve for the old and mad. “Nah. Not my job, is it? Ryan does that. I just do what I have to do. Take the punters’ bets. I don’t have to notice who they are.”

  Jude was inclined to believe her. She noticed the girl sported an engagement ring. And no doubt she made some young man very happy…so long as his demands didn’t stretch to the intellectual.

  “Know anything?”
asked Sonny Frank, as Jude returned from the counter.

  “About the murder or the horses?”

  “Let’s stick with the horses. A murder’s a nine-day wonder, but horse racing is forever.”

  “Well, I’d give you the same answer if you were talking about the murder or the horses. No, I don’t know anything. How about you? And I am talking about horses. Know anything?”

  He screwed up his round face into an expression of dubiety. “Dunno.”

  “Come on, Sonny, you won me a hundred quid on Thursday. You’ve got a reputation to keep up. Give me another tip.”

  “All right. Here’s a good ‘un.” He beckoned her forward and whispered into her ear. “‘A successful gambler’ doesn’t bet more than he bets.’”

  “Meaning?”

  “The successful ones know when to stop. When they have a big win, they leave it for a while, wait to see how things go, ignore all the nearly-good ones, wait for the really-good one. They don’t bet on every race.”

  Jude shook her head ruefully. “Then I’m afraid I’ll never make a successful gambler. In spite of what happened afterwards, I’m still flushed with the thought of that hundred quid I won last week. I’m sure my luck’s on a roll.”

  “That’s another thing you’ll never hear a successful gambler say. No such thing as luck. Graft, application, weighing up the variables – that’s how you make money.”

  “I’m never going to make much then.”

  “No, darling, I’m afraid you’re not. And I’m not going to make any today either.”

  “What do you mean, Sonny?”

  “I been through all the cards. There isn’t a single nag I fancy.”

  “So you won’t have a bet?” He shook his head. “Then why are you here?”

  “Because I like racing, Jude. Can’t get round to the courses like I used to do these days, but I can sit in here and see the lot. Coo, what my old man would have thought of a place like this, where you can sit in comfort and have all the racing come to you. He spent his entire life dragging from one racecourse to another, lugging his boards and boxes about. Setting up in the rain, standing there all afternoon, shouting the odds. He’d have thought he was in heaven in a place like this.”

  Jude didn’t think she could do what Sonny did, just watch the races. So far as she was concerned, take away the gambling and the whole exercise became a bit dull.

  She looked up at the screen displaying the runners and prices for the next race, the 1.20 at Fontwell Park, the nearest racecourse to Fethering. She had been there once or twice, so that already gave her a sense of special interest. And then she saw there was a horse in the race called Carol’s Duty. “I’m going to do that,” she said to Sonny.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got a friend called Carole – spelt differently but near enough, and she’s got an overdeveloped sense of duty, so it was clearly meant.”

  “What was clearly meant?”

  “That the horse is going to win the race.”

  Sonny Frank shook his head in exasperated pity. “That is no way to pick a horse. You could make up some kind of personal reference to any one of those names, if you put your mind to it.”

  “I’ve just got a feeling it’s going to win.”

  “Oh dear.” The ex-bookmaker’s expression clearly demonstrated his views on ‘feelings’.

  The odds on Carol’s Duty were eight to one. Jude was going to put on a fiver but then, remembering that you have to speculate to accumulate, she wrote out a new slip and gave Nikki ten pounds. Horse was still at eight to one – she asked to take the price. The girl scribbled on the slip, ran it through the till and handed over the copy.

  By the time Jude had sat down, the price of Carol’s Duty had gone out to ten to one. Damn, thought Jude, that means I’ll win less.

  “Nothing’s going to touch this favourite,” said Wes.

  “Though eight to thirteen on is a stinking price,” said Vie.

  “Not if you compare it to other investments. You don’t get that kind of return from the building society.”

  “No, but then you don’t stand a chance of losing every ten minutes with the building society, do you?”

  “Anyway,” said Wes with satisfaction, “this favourite’s going to romp home like there’s no other horses in the race.”

  Jude glowed inwardly. Let them crow, they’d done the same before the race on Thursday. A fat lot of good it had done them. And the same thing would happen again. Carol’s Duty would romp home. She looked up at the screen. Annoyingly, her horse had gone out to twelve to one. Never mind, eighty quid profit was still worth having.

  The race was run to the customary barracking from Wes, Vie and Sonny. The favourite won. Carol’s Duty pulled up after three fences. Jude gave Sonny a rueful smile. He responded with an I-told-you-so pursing of his lips.

  “Most of ‘em lose,” said a voice beside her. Jude realized she had unwittingly sat herself right next to Pauline, who was at her usual post, surrounded by shreds of racing newspapers.

  “You’re right,” Jude agreed. “Did you have anything on the last race?”

  The dumpy elderly woman shook her head. “No, I don’t often bet. Just once or twice a week.”

  “But you just like horse racing?”

  “Not that bothered really.”

  “Then why…?”

  A knowing grin came across the woman’s powdered features. “Nice and warm in here, isn’t it? If I was at home, what’d I be doing? Sitting in a chair in front of the telly, paying God knows what on my central heating. Here I can do just the same, but someone else is paying.”

  “But you do like it in here?”

  “Oh yes, there’s people around. Better than just sitting on my tod.”

  “Have you been coming here a long time?”

  “Since after my old man died, yes. And that was back before the place got taken over. When Sonny used to run it.”

  The ex-bookie grinned acknowledgement of his name. Jude lowered her voice. “And nobody minds you just coming in every day?”

  “Why should they? I have a bet every now and then. I buy myself the odd cup of tea. I don’t cause trouble. And I keep my eyes open.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Pauline grinned sagely. “Neither more nor less than what I said.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea now?” asked Jude.

  “Wouldn’t say no. Four sugars, please.”

  Tea was dispensed by Nikki from behind the counter. It came in plastic cups and wasn’t very nice. Still, it might prove a useful bridge to Pauline.

  When Jude sat down again, another race was in progress. A couple of Chinese waiters had come in – Monday lunchtime business was clearly slack at the Golden Palace – and they added their incomprehensible comments to the raucous exhortations of Wes, Vie and Sonny. It was a good time for an intimate conversation.

  “So tell me…” Jude began, “Thursday afternoon, when Tadeusz Jankowski came in to the shop, you saw him?”

  “Oh yes,” said Pauline, emptying sachet after sachet of sugar into her cup.

  “Did you notice anything odd about him?”

  “I thought he looked pale. At least I think he did. But that’s the kind of thing you can think after the event. You know, since I’ve known he died, now maybe I’ve made myself remember that he looked pale. Memories are pretty unreliable things.”

  The shrewdness of the comment seemed at odds with the old woman’s vague manner. “And when he went out of here, did you notice anything about him then?”

  “No, not really. No more than I’m sure you did. He did seem to sway a bit, and it crossed my mind he might have had a few too many at lunchtime, but that was all.”

  “Yes, I thought that too.” Jude’s full lips formed a moue of frustration. “It would be nice to know more about him, wouldn’t it? But since he’d never been in the betting shop before…”

  “Oh, he’d been in.”

  “What?”

/>   “I’d seen him in here.”

  “When?”

  “Last autumn.”

  “Did you tell the police that?”

  Pauline let out a derisive laugh. “‘Course I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “My old man taught me to be very wary so far as the police are concerned. If they once start nosing into your life, you never get rid of them. “Never tell the cops anything they don’t already know, Pauline,” my old man used to say to me. And I’ve stuck to his advice on that…as well as on a lot of other things.”

  “Ah.” The latest race came to its climax. Wes and Vic’s shouts of confidence subsided into moans of disappointment. “What did your husband do?” asked Jude.

  Pauline gave her a little, mischievous smile.

  “A bit of this…a bit of that…”

  Jude looked across to the counter. Behind the glass Ryan was impassively counting through piles of banknotes. The Ryan who had assured everyone he had never seen Tadeusz Jankowski before the day of his death.

  Maybe there was more connection between the murder victim and the betting shop than everyone had so far assumed.

  ∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧

  Six

  Fethering boasted two cafes. On the beach was the Seaview, open around the year, welcoming in the summer but a rather dispiriting venue in February. Much more appealing was Polly’s Cake Shop, which was on the main parade, just a few doors away from the bookie’s. And Pauline was more than happy when Jude suggested they adjourn there for a proper pot of tea. So long as she wasn’t increasing her own heating bills, Pauline didn’t seem to mind where she went.

  Polly’s Cake Shop restored an image which at one stage had almost vanished from the British high street. It had oak beams hung with horse brasses and warming pans, red and white gingham tablecloths and little lamps with white shades over candle bulbs. The waitresses wore black dresses and white frilly aprons. And they served such delicacies as toasted teacakes, cinnamon toast, cucumber sandwiches, ‘homemade’ coconut kisses, sponge fancies, eclairs and fairy cakes.