by Simon Brett
“That’s how it works, yes. But if one didn’t have some compensatory system of that kind, the same horses would win all the time.”
“Well, that’d be fairer.”
“It might be fairer, but it would remove the excitement from the racing. The thrill of the unpredictable.”
“Generally speaking, I don’t find unpredictability thrilling.”
“Oh, Carole, I’m sure you do.”
“I don’t. So, anyway, this poor Conjuror’s Rabbit is now carrying too much weight to have a chance of winning?”
“No, no, it has a very good chance of winning. That’s why it’s favourite. And the ground’s in its favour.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Back to what I was saying about the going. The overnight frost has made the ground hard, so it’s easier for a heavy horse to move over it. If it were muddy, the weight would make a bigger difference.”
“Oh. I see what you mean about variables. Having to think not just about the horse’s recent form, but also the weight it’s carrying, not to mention the weather.”
Gerald Hume chuckled. “And that’s just the start of it. There’s also to be considered the horse’s breeding, the length of the race, which jockey’s up on him, the horse’s state of health, how well the trainer’s yard is currently doing…I could go on.”
“I think I get the point. But I’m not sure that your crossword analogy is quite valid. There the only real variables are the number of words in the English language.”
“Yes, but you narrow those down in the same way. No, it can’t be this word because the second letter’s got to be an ‘m’. No, it can’t be that one, because the seventh letter isn’t a ‘j’. And so you go on till you reach the one, inevitable solution.”
Carole smiled at her new friend. “I can see why it appeals to you, Gerald. And I can see why photography appeals too.”
“Ah, do you want me to start on the variables that have to be considered when taking the perfect photograph? There’s the shutter speed, the light, the – ”
She held her hand up to stem the anticipated deluge. “No need. I’ll take your word for it.”
“So, after all that exegesis of the form book, it is now two eight and fifty-three seconds. Are you going to make an investment on the two-ten at Towcester?”
“Well, I’m sure Conjuror’s Rabbit is going to win.”
“And are you going to put your money where your mouth is?”
“Why not?” She opened her handbag, took out her purse and held up a two-pound piece.
“Last of the big spenders,” said Gerald Hume.
“Would you mind putting it on for me when you put your bet on?”
“Very well.” He went to the counter. Carole tried not to look self-conscious. She needn’t have worried. Nobody was interested in what she looked like.
“So,” she asked, as Gerald returned, “have you done the favourite too?”
“No.”
“So what have you done?”
“Ssh. They’re under orders. I’ll tell you when the race is over.”
They watched, along with the rest of the crowd, including Pauline, the Chinese waiters and Wes and Vie. The decorators were noisy with ‘Go on, my son!’ Conjuror’s Rabbit showed his class from the start, easing himself into third early on and holding that position until they turned into the straight with two fences to jump. Finding another gear, he moved smoothly forward to overtake the two ahead of him and sailed over the penultimate obstacle. Then, six lengths ahead, with the race at his mercy, he approached the last. Carole began to get a distant inkling of what the attraction of gambling might be about.
But the calculation of her modest winnings was interrupted. Suddenly Conjuror’s Rabbit seemed to break his stride. He crashed into the top of the last fence, stumbled on landing and neatly deposited his jockey on to the ground. The second horse, a twenty-to-one outsider called Draggle Tail, clumsily crossed the last fence and had enough momentum to reach the winning post first.
“Well, that’s stupid,” said Carole. “You can’t apply any logic to something like that. What a very unsatisfactory exercise – two pounds straight down the drain.”
“Not unsatisfactory for everyone,” said Gerald slyly.
“What do you mean?”
“I had a fiver on Draggle Tail.”
“What? But why? What possible logic could there be in that? No, I’m afraid your analogy with crosswords is completely destroyed by what’s just happened.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“How so?”
“I backed Draggle Tail because ‘Draggle’ is, all but for one letter, an anagram of ‘Gerald’.”
“And you call that logic? So much for all your talk of ‘mathematical probabilities’.”
Carole was still fuming when Gerald Hume returned from the counter with his winnings. “Having dragged me down here,” she said sniffily, “to squander my hard-earned pension, you will now perhaps have the goodness to give me the information that you have about the betting shop’s mystery woman.”
“Oh yes,” he said, with a twinkle. “That would only be fair, wouldn’t it?” He sat down on a blue plastic seat beside her. “The woman you refer to is Melanie Newton, who has an address in Fedborough.”
“Yes, except that she has moved from that address, and has apparently split up with her husband and could be anywhere.”
“So you’ve no other means of contacting her?”
“I got a mobile number for her, but she doesn’t answer it.”
“Have you left a message?”
“No. I don’t want to put her off. If she thinks we’re on the trail, that might be a prompt for her to make herself scarce.”
“Yes. Assuming she has something to hide. Which is rather a big assumption. You have no real reason to think Melanie Newton is involved with wrong-doing of any kind.”
“No,” Carole agreed. Though in her mind the scale of Melanie Newton’s wrong-doing had been increasing disproportionately. “The trouble is, with only a mobile number as a means of contact, she could be anywhere in the world.”
“Well, Carole, I am glad to be able to say that I can narrow the focus down a bit from the whole world.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Melanie Newton is in Fethering – or at least was in Fethering yesterday.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw her.”
“Not in here? Is the betting shop open on Sundays?”
“It is, but it wasn’t in here that I saw her. As I believe I mentioned at our first meeting, I live in River Road. And I am fortunate in that I live in one of the houses with a sea view. For this reason, to maximize that view, my sitting room is upstairs, and I was sitting there yesterday afternoon setting up some shots with my camera. I never tire of taking pictures of the view from my window at different times of year. While I was engaged in this activity, I noticed hurrying towards me from the direction of the river a woman whom I thought I recognized as Melanie Newton. She looked somewhat unkempt, and I could not be sure that it was her until she was virtually opposite my house. But when I saw her that close, there was no doubt. Thinking of your eagerness to identify her, I regretted that I had not had the presence of mind to take a picture of her. But still, the chance was gone, so I returned to my own photography.”
He paused, relishing the hold he had over her attention. Carole had to use great control not to ask what happened next.
“Well,” Gerald Hume continued in his own time, “luck was on my side…as I must say it appears to have been this afternoon with the triumph of Draggle Tail…” Carole could have done without such excursions in his narrative, but again kept her calm and her silence. “Because a mere quarter of an hour later, I saw Melanie Newton returning the way she had come, this time bearing two loaded carrier bags from Allinstore, which I’m sure you know to be the – ”
This time Carole cracked. “I know what Allinstore is!”
&n
bsp; She spoke with such vehemence that Gerald Hume picked up speed. “Anyway, I saw her coming towards me, I had time, and the outcome is: that I took a photograph of her.”
“Do you…?” she asked tentatively.
“Of course I do.” Gerald Hume reached down for his briefcase, lifted it up on to the table and opened it. He took out an envelope containing a colour print.
Carole had not seen the woman before. But at least she now knew what Melanie Newton looked like.
∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧
Twenty-Four
“But surely, Jude, it suggests that she lives down by the river.”
“It could do.”
Carole found herself infuriated by her neighbour’s reaction. “It must do. Look, she walks up River Road to the High Street, does her shopping in Allinstore, then walks back down towards the river. She must live down there.”
“I agree, she might do, but we don’t know that for certain. She could have just parked her car down by the river.”
“Why would she do that? She could have parked a lot nearer to Allinstore. And Gerald said she was weighed down by two quite heavy bags. She wouldn’t have done that, unless she lived down by the river. If you’ve got heavy bags, you take the shortest route between where you’ve been shopping and where you want to get to.”
“Yes, usually.”
“Jude, why are you being like this? Normally I’m the one who’s the wet blanket on everything.”
“I just thought I’d see what it felt like.”
“Oh, now you’re being tiresome.”
“No, I’m not. I’m playing devil’s advocate.”
“Well, it isn’t a role that suits you,” said Carole grumpily and flopped back on one of Jude’s draped sofas. She felt something hard through the bedspread that covered it, and pulled out a plastic potato masher.
“Oh, I wondered where that had got to,” said Jude.
Which didn’t improve Carole’s mood. As she looked round the soft curves of the Woodside Cottage sitting room, she longed for the antiseptic right angles of High Tor. But even as she had the thought, she knew that Jude’s home had a warmth and welcome hers would never achieve.
“I think you’re feeling grumpy because you’re still not over that flu.”
“I am quite over that flu, thank you very much. And I am not feeling grumpy,” said Carole grumpily.
“Look, I agree with you that it is most likely that Melanie Newton lives somewhere down by the river.”
“She must do, because if she lived further along, you know, near Marine Villas, that area, then her quickest route to Allinstore wouldn’t be along River Road.”
“Carole, I’ve said I agree with you. The question is how we find out exactly where she lives.”
Carole looked shame-faced, “I did sort of…lurk about a bit down there this afternoon, just to see if there was any sign of her.”
“‘Lurk about’?” Jude was intrigued and amused by the image. “Were you in disguise?”
“Don’t be silly, of course I wasn’t. I just…well, I took Gulliver down by the river for his walk. And I…made the walk rather longer and slower than I normally would. You know, I let Gulliver sniff at anything along the towpath that he wanted to. And then later…”
“What did you do later, Carole?” asked Jude, trying to keep the smile off her face.
“I drove down in the Renault and…parked there for a while.”
“You mean you did a ‘stake-out’?”
“I don’t think there’s any need to call it that, but I did kind of…well, look out to see who was coming and going.”
“How long did you stay there?”
“Till it got dark. Then I came back home.”
“Good. Because I wouldn’t like to think of you being arrested for kerb-crawling.”
“Jude, I don’t know why you’re being so childish this evening.”
“No, nor do I. Sorry.”
“You may have lost interest in this murder investigation, but I haven’t.”
“Nor have I. I promise, I promise.”
“Good.” Carole sighed. “Oh, it’s so frustrating! We’ve got this woman’s name, we’ve got her mobile number, we know what she looks like, we have strong reason to believe she lives in Fethering, but we can’t find her.”
“I’m sure, if we worked out the right thing to say, we could leave a message on her mobile that would make her ring us back.”
“What? “Hello, we’re from the Reader’s Digest and we’re ringing to tell you you’ve won a quarter of a million pounds in our prize draw.””
“No, it’s got to be something she’ll believe. Nobody believes it when the Reader’s Digest says they’re going to win a quarter of a million pounds – they know they’re just being sold some rubbish CD. Maybe, if we just leave a message saying it’s in connection with the death of Tadeusz Jankowski…?”
“If Melanie Newton’s got anything to do with that, then there’s nothing that would frighten her off quicker.”
“No, I take your point. Well, we can ask around in Fethering, about new people who’ve just moved in.”
“Let’s be logical about it, Jude. If Melanie Newton only moved out of the Fedborough house in November and she moved into a new house of her own, surely her husband would have known about that. He’d have to, unless she’s got a lot of money of her own, which he implied she hadn’t. So that probably means she’s currently renting. We don’t have an in with any of the local estate agents, do we?”
“Well, perhaps we do. I was given a lift back here on Friday by Ewan Urquhart. Yes, I could give them a call.”
“I don’t think estate agents are meant to give out details of their clients, but I suppose he might respond to your ‘feminine wiles’.” Carole knew that Jude had these. She suspected that she herself didn’t.
“I’ll see how I go. And I think that’s probably all we can do at the moment. Are you going to continue your stake-out of the towpath of the River Fether tomorrow, Carole?”
“No, of course I’m not.”
“Well, Zosia should be able to contact Tadek’s friend Marek tomorrow. I’m pretty sure it was Tuesday he was due back. Let’s hope he knows something.”
♦
The Polish girl did indeed speak to her brother’s friend the following morning. He was working in a cafe⁄bar⁄restaurant in Hove. His shift started at twelve, but if they could be there by eleven, he could spare time for them. He wanted to talk to Zofia; he still hadn’t taken in the news of his friend’s death.
“If we leave Brighton by twelve, can we be back in Fethering by one o’clock?” she had asked Jude.
“Certainly if we go by car. I’m sure Carole would be happy to drive us. But why do you need to be back by one?”
The girl had grinned. “Ted wants me to do another shift.”
“Ah, coming round to the idea of employing foreigners, is he?”
“You would not think so, the way he speak. It is only short term, he tell me, just till he gets his proper staff back. He has not said anything yet that he is pleased with me, with how I work for him.”
“The fact that he keeps asking you back means he must be.”
“But he do not say so.”
“God, Ted can sometimes be so curmudgeonly.”
“I’m sorry? I do not know this word.”
“I’m not surprised. Well, it means…” Jude had been perplexed as to how to explain it. “It means the way it sounds, really. Think of led, think of any other grumpy old man and yes, you know what curmudgeonly means.”
“Oh, thank you.”
That morning Jude put into practice a plan that she had been nursing for a while. Remembering the circular letter she’d had from Urquhart & Pease, she rang the office and asked to have her home valued. She spoke to Hamish Urquhart, who sounded surprisingly efficient, and they made an appointment for him to come to the house on the Thursday morning at ten. Jude thought, with the young man actually on her premises, sh
e could easily question him about rentals in the area. And maybe get a lead to Melanie Newton.
Carole readily agreed to take on the role of driving to Hove, because that meant she would be part of the next stage of the investigation. And so at a quarter to ten on the Tuesday morning (Carole always left more time than was needed and she knew that parking in the Brighton conurbation was notoriously hard to find) the three women set off in her immaculate Renault. As it turned out, they found an empty meter easily and so reached their destination nearer half-past ten than eleven.
The place where Marek Wisniewski worked was in Church Road, Hove, which ran parallel to and up the hill from the sea front. Virtually every business there seemed to be a restaurant of one ethnicity or another. Hove had always had the image of being more staid and geriatric than its louche neighbour Brighton, but that was changing and its plethora of restaurants and clubs suggested that young people could thrive there too.
The ethnicity of Marek’s place of work had nothing to do with Poland. A glance at the menu suggested a more Mediterranean flavour, a mix of Italian, Greek and Turkish cuisine. But it was very much open for business at that hour in the morning – and indeed had been since seven-thirty – serving a variety of breakfasts and coffees to a predominantly youthful clientele, none of whom seemed in a great hurry to leave their conversation and newspapers to engage in the world of work. It felt a bit young to Carole, the kind of place she might have thought twice about entering on her own; she was glad to have Jude and Zofia with her.
The girl ordered for them, because she recognized the waitress also to be Polish and had a quick incomprehensible exchange with her. She would have a latte, Jude a cappuccino and Carole a ‘just ordinary coffee, black, thank you’. Zofia also established from the waitress that Marek was not in yet. Another exchange in Polish followed, which left both the girls laughing.
“She says,” Zofia explained, “it is good we fix to meet Marek at eleven. That means he will be in time for his twelve o’clock shift. He is not a good…what do you call it?”
“Time-keeper?” suggested Jude.
“Yes, that is it. So I know Marek has not changed. Always when Twarz are going to play some place, the other ones in the band are waiting for Marek.”
