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

by Simon Brett

  “Yes, it’s supposed to be a natural human instinct. Marking one’s territory. Like dogs peeing at lampposts.”

  “Really?” The young man looked puzzled. “I hadn’t heard that.”

  “So what sort of price would we be looking at?” Although she’d had an ulterior motive in asking for the valuation, Jude was still intrigued to know how much her property was worth.

  After a bit of professional hedging and prevarication, Hamish Urquhart named a figure. It was considerably in excess of what Jude had been expecting. Of course she’d read the constant newspaper reports about the inexorable rise in house prices, but was still shocked to hear the sum spelt out for Woodside Cottage. She was sitting on a little gold-mine.

  “That’s very gratifying,” she said.

  “Yes. As you say, you’re not looking to sell at right this moment, but, you know, when you do make the decision, I hope you’ll remember Urquhart & Pease. There are, of course, other estate agents around, the area’s bristling with them, but many are branches of big chains, and I think you’re guaranteed a more sympathetic experience dealing with a family firm like Urquhart & Pease.” He reached once again into his briefcase. “I do have a sheet here, spelling out the terms of our business transactions, fee structure and so on, and I think you’ll find Urquhart & Pease are competitive with…” He looked, puzzled, into the recesses of his case. “Damn, I don’t seem to have brought it with me.”

  “Never mind, Hamish. I’m sure we can take those details as read. I’ve just put the kettle on. Are you sure I can’t tempt you to a coffee?”

  “Oh, well…” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got a bit of time before my next appointment. Why not?”

  Making the coffee gave Jude a good excuse to change the subject. “Very interesting seeing that play your sister was in last week…”

  “Yes. Pretty damned odd, I found it. I mean, I don’t pretend to know much about the theatre. Like a good musical…you know, Lloyd Webber, that kind of thing. Something where you don’t have to think too much. But that thing of Soph’s…can’t say I got all of it. I mean, she was very good, but…Also, the message it seemed to be putting across…I’m not sure I went along with it.”

  “In what way, Hamish?” asked Jude as she put the coffee cup in front of him.

  “Thanks. Well, the show seemed to be saying that war is always a bad thing.”

  “And you don’t agree with that?”

  “Good God, no. I mean, I’m not recommending that countries should go around invading and bombing other countries whenever the fancy strikes them, but sometimes action has to be taken. Every country needs to have an army, and I reckon we’ve got one of the best in the world. So I don’t like it when I hear our brave boys being mocked. They do a damned fine job in extraordinarily difficult conditions. And they’re bloody necessary. Always have been. I mean, if Mr Hitler had been allowed to go his merry way in 1939 without anyone trying to stop him…well, we’d probably now be conducting this conversation in bloody German!” Again he sounded as if he was quoting his father verbatim.

  “Talking of Germany…” said Jude, snatching at the most tenuous of links, “your sister was saying she’d been there in her gap year.”

  “Yes. Lucky old Soph, actually getting a gap year. I didn’t have one. Straight out of school into the family business. None of that university nonsense for me.” Hamish made it sound as if he had made a choice in the matter, but Jude remembered Ewan Urquhart saying it was lack of academic ability that had kept his son out of university.

  “And she’s such a good singer,” Jude went on, worming her way round to what she really wanted to ask. “Do you know if Sophia did any singing while she was in Europe?”

  “I think she did, actually. I know she went to some music festivals and things. She kept sending Dad postcards.”

  “Where from?” Hamish seemed so innocent and unsuspicious in his answers that Jude didn’t worry about pressing him.

  “Berlin, certainly. I remember she was there. And Frankfurt, I think…and Leipzig. I remember that, because Dad made some comment about my sister being in the land of the Commie Krauts!” He guffawed once again at his father’s wit.

  Still, Jude had got what she wanted. Proof positive that Sophia Urquhart, in spite of her denial when asked about it, had actually been to Leipzig. So now Jude had a solid fact to underpin her conjectures.

  “Are you musical too, Hamish?” she asked.

  “God, no. Can maybe join in the chorus of some filthy song down the rugby club, but that’s the extent of it. No, Soph’s the one in the family with talent.” He spoke this as an accepted fact, one that he had been told about so many times that it caused him no resentment.

  “And she’s very pretty too,” said Jude, still angling the conversation in the direction she wanted it to go. “She must be surrounded by boyfriends.”

  “She hasn’t had that many, actually.”

  “Seems strange. I’d have thought the boys’d be after her like bees round a honey-pot.”

  “Maybe some’d like to be, but they don’t get far.” He let out another hearty laugh. “You see, none of them can pass Dad’s quality control.”

  “You don’t know whether she met anyone on her gap year?”

  “No,” Hamish replied shortly. Then he clammed up. For the first time, he looked suspicious of Jude.

  “Or what about at college? Drama students traditionally are supposed to have colourful love lives.”

  “No, I don’t think…I don’t know…” He looked confused. “I don’t think she’d got anyone special, but…Why, have you heard anything?”

  Jude shrugged, in part at the incongruity of the question. So far as Hamish knew, she had nothing to do with Clincham College, and yet here he was asking her for information about his sister’s relationships there.

  “Just rumours,” she replied airily. “As you know, the main product of this entire area is gossip.”

  “Yes,” said Hamish thoughtfully.

  At that moment the doorbell rang. Jude went through to the hall to let in Ewan Urquhart, who with unctuous smoothness held her hand for slightly longer than was necessary and asked, “Sorry? Is my idiot boy still with you?”

  “Hamish is here. Through in the kitchen.”

  Ewan Urquhart marched through, brandishing a couple of stapled printed sheets. “Only forgot to bring the terms and conditions, didn’t you, Hamish?”

  His son admitted his error, looking like a guilty schoolboy. But once again he didn’t seem genuinely shamed. His incompetence was an essential part of his personality. Perhaps within the family it was what made him lovable.

  Ewan handed the sheet to Jude. “Sorry. The old adage that if you want something done, you’d better do it yourself has never been more true than when it comes to dealing with Hamish. As I have learnt, to my cost, over the years. Anyway, I hope he’s done a proper valuation for you.”

  “Yes, he’s been excellent,” said Jude, who was getting sick of hearing the young man constantly diminished.

  “What price did he give you?”

  Jude told him. The older man rubbed his chin sceptically. “I think he may have overstated it. Exuberance of youth, eh? To be on the safe side, I’d say five thousand less.”

  “Well, it’s still a huge amount more than I paid for it.”

  “I bet. Oh, you can’t go wrong with property. Just sit at home and watch the money grow around you.” He let out a guffaw, exactly like the one Hamish had copied from him. Then he turned to his son. “Come on. We’ve got a business to run. Can’t sit around drinking coffee all day.”

  The young man was on his feet before his father had finished speaking. Ewan Urquhart focused on Jude again. “Just whenever you decide you want to sell, remember Urquhart & Pease. There are, of course, other estate agents around…the area’s bristling with them, but many are branches of big chains, and I think you’re guaranteed a more sympathetic experience dealing with a family firm like Urquhart & Pease.”


  So Hamish had actually learnt the spiel word for word from his father.

  Before he left the kitchen, Ewan Urquhart paused for a moment, looking at the clutter on the table. Jude couldn’t be certain, but it looked as though he had seen the open notebook on whose page Zofia had spelt out his daughter’s love triangle. Something certainly seemed to have changed his manner. As he said goodbye, there was a new beadiness in the older estate agent’s eyes.

  ♦

  Next door at High Tor, Carole Seddon sat in a state of bleak desolation. Her lifelong instinct had been never to trust anyone, and once again it had been proved right.

  Drop your defences, allow another person inside your comfort zone, and you’re just inviting them to betray you. Only a matter of time before it happens.

  Jude was selling Woodside Cottage. She hadn’t thought it necessary to impart that decision to her neighbour. And Carole, who didn’t have many, had thought they were friends.

  ∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧

  Thirty-Three

  Jude would have gone straight round and told Carole about the confirmation of Sophia Urquhart’s presence in Leipzig, but her friend had said she was going to take Gulliver out for a walk. So Jude rang Andy Constant’s mobile.

  “I wondered if we could get together.”

  “I don’t see why not.” His voice was full of lazy self-congratulation. The parting from their last encounter had not been harmonious. When she’d seen Tadek’s guitar in the Drama Studio, Jude had broken from their kiss to question Andy about it. The interruption had destroyed the mood between them and certainly thwarted the plans he had been nursing for the rest of the evening. In his frustration he had become very childish and refused to answer her questions.

  But there was still information Jude needed that she could only get from him, so another meeting was imperative.

  Of course, Andy Constant, being the kind of man he was, interpreted her getting in touch with him as the action of a woman who had seen the error of her ways. Yes, she must have known she had behaved badly when they last met, but she obviously couldn’t stop thinking about him. He reckoned the old Andy Constant animal magnetism was once again exerting its irresistible pull.

  Jude didn’t mind what he thought her motives were, so long as he agreed to see her again. Which he readily did. “Don’t let’s bother with meeting in the pub,” he said, his voice low in a way that he knew to be sexy. “Come straight to the Drama Studio.”

  “Will I be able to get in?”

  “I’ll leave the building unlocked.”

  “I meant – will I be able to get past security on the main gate?”

  “There’s another way in. There’s a small door into the campus in Maiden Avenue. It’s meant to be locked, but some of the staff have keys and it very rarely is. A lot of the students come and go through it.” There was something unappealing about the practised ease with which he went through these details. Jude wondered how many other women had been given these instructions before an assignation with Andy Constant.

  “All right. I’ll come in that way.”

  “Good, Jude.” He sounded patronizing, as if speaking to a recalcitrant child. “Let’s say six o’clock. I’ll really enjoy seeing you.”

  I wouldn’t be so sure about that, thought Jude as she finished the call.

  She rang to see if Carole was back, but there was no reply. In the afternoon she had a couple of clients for her healing services, a man with a stomach complaint for which the doctors could find no explanation, and a woman who suffered from panic attacks. In both eases Jude felt she made some progress.

  Just before she left for Clincham, she tried ringing her neighbour again. Still no reply. Must be out.

  Inside High Tor, Carole looked at the Caller Display and did not pick up the phone.

  ♦

  The door in Maiden Avenue was, as Andy Constant had promised, unlocked. The road fringed Clincham’s main park and there was no street lighting. The February night was dark. Jude slipped into the campus, reflecting on the laxness of the security. No doubt an alternative means of access was convenient for the staff, but it would only take one incident of violence by an outsider against a student for them to realize their foolishness in leaving the door unlocked.

  Jude hadn’t yet worked out the best approach to use with Andy Constant. Her suspicion was growing that the lecturer had killed Tadeusz Jankowski. Replaying the scene she had overheard between him and Sophia Urquhart in the Bull made her more certain than ever that they were lovers. He was having an affair with ‘Joan’ and ‘Joan’ was Sophia’s nickname, at least for Tadek. Maybe she had told her Drama tutor that and he had relished the idea of using it as well.

  Andy Constant was a spoilt and petulant man, used to getting his own way. He wouldn’t have taken kindly to having a rival for his beautiful student’s affections. Quite how he’d come to be in Fethering to meet and kill the young Pole, Jude didn’t know, but she felt sure she could find out.

  As she pushed open the door into the unlit Drama Studio block, she felt a little stab of fear. If Andy was the murderer and she threatened to reveal that fact to the world, he might not think twice about killing again. Pauline’s late husband’s view that the prime motive for murder was to keep people quiet came into her mind. She needed to be very circumspect in her approach.

  There were no lights on in the lobby, but memory guided her towards the door of the studio itself. She pushed open its heavy mass. The only light inside came from an illuminated ‘Exit’ sign.

  It wasn’t a lot, but sufficient for her to see the body of a man lying on the double mattress. And sufficient to be reflected in the glistening of wet redness on his chest.

  Jude heard a sound behind her in the lobby. She reached for her mobile and pressed the buttons to dial Carole’s number.

  In High Tor, as soon as the caller was identified, the phone remained untouched.

  ∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧

  Thirty-Four

  There was a call that Carole did take later that evening, and selfishly she almost wished she hadn’t. It was from Gaby, at her wit’s end because Lily had developed a high temperature and would not be comforted. The doctor had been called and was going to come again in the morning. If the little mite wasn’t better then, she’d be taken into hospital for observation.

  For Carole, already desolated by Jude’s betrayal, that was all she needed. She knew she wouldn’t sleep a wink that night, expecting every minute a phone call with terrible news from Stephen or Gaby.

  She had forgotten that awful panic that can be instantly summoned up by the sickness of a child. Lily was so perfect, but so tiny. The lightest puff of illness could blow her away, it seemed to Carole as she faced the long agony of the night. Everything in her life felt suddenly threatened and fragile.

  ♦

  Jude heard only the clattering of the external door of the Drama block. She shivered as she realized she must have passed within inches of whoever it was in the lobby. She must have been within touching distance of someone who was probably the murderer of Tadeusz Jankowski.

  But her first priority was the man lying on the bed. She felt along the walls for light switches, but in vain. She remembered that Andy Constant had achieved his lighting effects from the box, but she didn’t know how to get in there.

  Still, if she- concentrated…Her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. The light from the ‘Exit’ sign seemed to grow stronger.

  Soon she could see clearly enough to recognize that the man on the bed was Andy Constant himself. Blood was pouring from his chest, but he was still breathing.

  Jude rang the police.

  ♦

  They were much tougher with her this time than they had been after Tadek’s death. To discover one stabbing victim might be considered bad luck; discover two and the authorities are bound to get suspicious. It took Jude most of the evening to convince the detectives that she had no responsibility for either crime. Their questioning remained p
olite, but they were very persistent.

  Andy Constant, she was told, had been taken to hospital and was in intensive care. They promised to let her know when they heard anything about his condition. And meanwhile they kept going over the same ground, asking about her relationship with the lecturer, on and wearily on. She was suitably cagey on the subject, admitting that they had met for a drink a couple of times, but denying things had gone any further than that. Which was pretty much the truth.

  In fact, Jude answered all the detectives’ questions as honestly as she could, but she didn’t volunteer any information they didn’t ask her about. Above all, she didn’t mention that she and Carole had been trying to solve the murder mystery themselves. She knew the derision with which professional policemen would greet that news.

  To her surprise, in what the detectives said to her they did not seem to be linking the two attacks. Or maybe they were, but did not want her speculations going down that route. As an amateur, she had the usual difficulty in knowing how far the official investigation had proceeded. And she wasn’t about to be enlightened on the subject. Jude was a witness and a possible suspect. The police weren’t about to tell her their secrets.

  Finally, around ten-thirty, the detectives seemed to decide that there really was nothing more she could tell them. They said that they were trying to keep what had happened secret for as long as possible and firmly forbade Jude to have any contact with the media about the stabbing. It was their hope to make some headway with their investigation before they had to deal with the intrusions of press and television. Then they thanked her politely for her cooperation and asked if she wanted a lift home, an offer of which she took grateful advantage.

  It was an unmarked police car that dropped her outside Woodside Cottage. She looked up at High Tor, but the curtains of Carole’s bedroom were closed. Oh well, she could bring her neighbour up to date in the morning.

  Inside, she found that Zofia Jankowska was not yet back from the Crown and Anchor (where, though Ted Crisp would never admit it, she seemed to be becoming an essential member of staff). Jude didn’t wait up for her. She was totally exhausted by the events of the day, so got to bed as quickly as she could and passed out.