by Simon Brett
“Your daughter met Tadeusz Jankowski at a music festival in Leipzig last summer,” Carole announced. “While she was InterRailing in Europe.”
He did look shaken by this revelation, but they couldn’t tell why. It could have been new information to him, or he could have been surprised by how much detail they knew of his daughter’s life.
“They had an affair out in Germany,” Carole went on, “and then Tadeusz Jankowski came over to England to look for her.”
For the first time Ewan Urquhart began to lose his cool. “My daughter would not have a relationship with a foreigner!”
“What you mean, Ewan,” said Jude, “is that you wouldn’t like your daughter to have a relationship with a foreigner. I don’t have children, but I’ve seen often enough that they do not always turn out as their parents Want them to.”
“Sophia is an intelligent girl. She wouldn’t mix with people who’re unworthy of her.”
“And what makes you think Tadeusz Jankowski was unworthy of her?”
“His nationality, apart from anything else. All right, I know we have reason to thank some Polish airmen for the help they gave us against Hitler, but as a race they’re not to be trusted. Sophia has been brought up to keep foreigners at a healthy distance.”
“Didn’t it occur to you,” asked Carole, “that if she went InterRailing round Europe, she might meet some foreigners?”
“Yes. I wasn’t keen on the whole idea of a gap year, but Sophia managed to persuade me. She went against my better judgement. But I can assure you you’ve got the wrong end of the stick if you think she’s been having affairs with foreigners. When Sophia does get to the point of having affairs, I’m sure she will be very selective in her choice of men.”
“‘When she gets to the point of having affairs’?” Jude echoed. “How old is your daughter, Ewan?”
“Nineteen, nearly twenty.”
“Well, surely you know from the media that these days most young women of nearly twenty have been sexually active for some years.”
“Most young women, maybe,” he snapped. “Not Sophia!”
For the first time they realized the depth of his obsession with his daughter, and his obsession with her purity. In her father’s eyes, no man would ever be good enough for Sophia Urquhart. He had built up an image of her as untouchable, and what he might do to anyone who threatened that image was terrifying.
“If you claim not to know about her affair with Tadeusz Jankowski, then presumably the same goes for her relationship with Andy Constant.”
“Andy Constant?”
“You know the name?”
“Of course. I’ve met the man. He’s Sophia’s Drama tutor at the university.” He was now very angry. “Look, what is this? What are you two up to? I don’t have to listen to malicious slander of my daughter from smalltown gossips.”
“It is not malicious slander. It is the truth. Andy Constant was, until recently, your daughter’s lover.”
“No! He couldn’t…Sophia wouldn’t…Not with a man of that age…She’s not like her mother. Her mother was little better than a tart, who’d open her legs for any man who offered her a smile and a kind word.” Gifts of which, both women imagined, she hadn’t received many at home. “Sophia’s not like that. She wouldn’t…She hasn’t been brought up like that!” Now he was really losing control. His face was growing red and congested. “God, if I thought a man like that Andy Constant had touched my daughter, I’d kill him!”
He seemed then to realize what he’d said, and opened and closed his mouth, as if trying to take the words back.
“Which,” said Carole calmly, “is what you failed to do last night.”
“What?”
“You stabbed Andy Constant,” said Jude, “but you didn’t kill him.”
“I’m sorry? Where is this supposed to have happened?”
“In the Drama Studio at Clincham College. You waited for Andy Constant in the lighting box. When he came in, you stabbed him. You would have stabbed him more than once, but you heard someone arriving. It was me, actually. You passed me in the lobby, I think, when you made your escape.”
“You’re saying I stabbed Andy Constant?” His eyes were wild now, darting about from one of the women to the other.
“Yes. For some reason – maybe to disguise yourself – you wore your daughter’s Barbour when you committed the crime. You couldn’t stand the thought of anyone touching Sophia, so you tried to kill Andy Constant – just as you had killed Tadeusz Jankowski.”
He shook his head wordlessly, a pathetic figure now. His urbanity had deserted him, leaving a shell of a man, a husk wearing an Old Carthusian tie.
“Maybe you stabbed the young man here in this office,” said Carole. “It was somewhere near the betting shop, somewhere along this parade probably. Or maybe the attack took place in your car. You’d managed to get him into it on some pretext.”
“I can’t stand this,” Ewan Urquhart moaned feebly. “What on earth is going on?”
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll deal with it.”
They hadn’t heard the door from the outer office open. Carole and Jude both looked round at the same time to the source of the new voice.
And saw Hamish Urquhart standing in the doorway. With a long kitchen knife in his hand.
∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧
Thirty-Eight
“Hamish, call the police,” said Ewan Urquhart. “These two women are mad and dangerous.”
“They’re certainly dangerous,” his son agreed, “but I don’t think the police are the right people to deal with them.”
“I don’t understand. I’ve hardly understood anything that’s happened for the last half-hour.”
“Don’t worry about it, Dad. I’m in control of the situation.” And, for the first time in Jude’s dealings with him, Hamish Urquhart did seem to be in control. There was now a dignity about him which she had not seen before. She was aware of the power in his stocky body and the cold menace in his eyes.
Both women made as if to stand up, but were stilled by a wave of the knife.
“I’ll sort this out, Dad,” said Hamish. “Just as I sorted out your other problems.”
“What other problems?”
“I know how you feel about Soph, Dad. I know how you’d feel about her getting into the wrong company. Particularly the wrong male company. So I sorted things out for you.”
“What do you mean, Hamish? I don’t know what you’ve been doing.”
“No, I know you don’t.” There was a quiet smile of pride on the young man’s face. “You didn’t need to know. I did things the way you’ve always said they should be done. The British way. No fuss. No showing off. Not standing up and saying ‘Aren’t I wonderful?’ But that quiet British pride of doing the right thing without crowing about it.”
It was chilling to hear the young man echoing his father’s words. Ewan Urquhart cleared his throat uneasily and said, “What do you mean by doing the right thing, Hamish?”
“Getting rid of the wrong sort of people. People who threaten us Urquharts. I knew what you’d think about Soph going around with a foreigner, so I…dealt with the problem. Never wanted you to know anything about it, but these two busybodies have told you, so you may as well have the details. Soph told me about this chap she was seeing, this Pole, and I knew you’d disapprove. So I thought, ‘No need to get the old man worried about this. Time for me to show a bit of Urquhart initiative and sort the problem out for him.’
“So I got his address from Soph and went round to see him. He wasn’t in, but the door to his room was open. Inside I found…He had written songs about her, songs about Soph. There were tapes, CDs, a guitar. I took them all. I didn’t want any connection ever to be made between my sister and…that foreigner!”
“Sophia implied that she’d taken the guitar and things,” said Carole.
“Did she? No, I got them, then I gave them to her to dispose of as she thought fit.”
“So y
our sister knew what you had done?” asked Jude. “She knew it was you who stabbed Tadek?”
Hamish Urquhart smiled a patronizing smile. “I didn’t tell her. There was no need for her to be involved in anything distasteful. I’ve always tried to protect Sophia from the nasty things in life.”
Just as your father has, thought Jude. She looked across at Ewan Urquhart, whose face registered growing shock and disbelief as Hamish continued to describe his actions.
“Anyway I had just started driving back here, when I saw the Pole walking back to his room. I stopped the car, told him that I was Sophia’s brother and that she was back at the office and wanted to see him. He was over the moon about that and got into the car without a hint of suspicion. So I drove him back here. Knew you’d be off for a couple of hours doing a valuation, Dad, knew it was unlikely there’d be much trade on a Thursday afternoon.
“Anyway, soon as we get back here, his first question is: where’s Sophia? I tell him she must have just slipped out for a minute. Said she was probably shopping along the parade.”
Finally Carole and Jude had the explanation for Tadek’s appearance in the betting shop on the afternoon of his death. He had been looking for Sophia. His last moments of life had been spent looking for the woman he loved. Though whether they would ever be able to pass the information on to anyone else looked, at that moment, unlikely.
Hamish smiled in self-congratulation. “I thought that was rather clever. Thinking she was nearby and would be back in a minute, he relaxed. I asked him to take his coat off, and then revealed the real purpose of his visit. I told the sneaky bastard we took a pretty dim view of his interest in Soph and…” He made an eloquent gesture with his knife.
Ewan Urquhart was having difficulty in believing what he was hearing. “You stabbed him?”
“Yes. In the chest.” Hamish grinned with self-satisfaction. “Worked out rather well, really. I hadn’t decided what I was going to do with the body, but then he put his coat on and went out. Luck was on my side, of course – it always is for people who dare to be bold. The weather suddenly turned, and that hailstorm meant nobody saw him leaving the office. Then he went to the betting shop and…” He spread his hands wide. They all knew what had happened next. “I think I can be said to have used the Urquhart initiative.”
“And Sophia’s lecturer?” asked Ewan Urquhart, his eyes wide with terror.
“Yes. Andy Constant,” said Hamish in a self-congratulatory tone. “Soph had mentioned him to me, but I didn’t know until recently that he’d been coming on to her.” He grinned triumphantly at Jude. “In fact I had my suspicions confirmed when I was doing the valuation of your cottage. There was some writing in a notebook on your kitchen table which linked Andy Constant’s name to Soph’s.
“Well, I knew what your views would be about that, Dad – the idea of someone nearly your own age messing around with your daughter. And I was right, because I just heard you telling these ladies what you thought about that. So again I thought, no need to bother you about it. I took things into my own hands. Soph had told me a bit about Andy Constant’s habits, and I worked out that the Drama Studio would be the best place to get him. I borrowed Soph’s Barbour because I thought it’d make me look more like one of the students, you know, pass unnoticed on the campus. And I told Soph, if anyone asked, she should say I was at home with her yesterday evening. Oh, I thought the whole thing through. And I would have killed the lecturer too, if I hadn’t been disturbed. By you, I gather,” he said, turning with sudden vindictiveness towards Jude.
She said nothing. The knife was dangerously close, and Hamish Urquhart’s eyes showed that he was way beyond responding to logical argument.
“So what are you going to do now?” asked his father, very quietly.
Hamish gestured with the knife. “Deal with these two,” he said airily. “I’ll put their bodies in the van and dispose of them after dark.”
“Where?”
“I don’t need to bother you with the details, Dad. Trust me, it’s all in hand.” He still sounded like a parody of Ewan Urquhart. Hamish was relishing the reversal. For once, he was patronizing his father, he was the one making the decisions. “We need never talk about it again. And don’t you worry. If I find any more unsuitable men sniffing round Soph, trust me to deal with them.”
“Are you telling me, Hamish, that you killed Tadeusz Jankowski and nearly killed Andy Constant because you didn’t think they were suitable men to mix with your sister?”
“Yes, Dad. Of course. Come on, you’re not usually so slow on the uptake.” The boy guffawed. “Usually I’m the one in that role.”
“But, Hamish, don’t you realize, killing someone because they’re having a relationship you disapprove of, well…that’s no different from an ‘honour killing’, the kind of thing Asian immigrants get involved in?”
“Nonsense. Totally different. I’m just upholding the honour of the Urquharts, that’s all.” He looked around the room, then turned to his father and said compassionately, “Look, I’ll sort this out, Dad. No need for you to be involved. Why don’t you nip out to Polly’s for a coffee and a teacake? Come back in half an hour and the whole thing’ll be sorted.”
He spoke so airily that Carole and Jude had to remind themselves that what he was proposing to ‘sort’ was their deaths. To their dismay, Ewan Urquhart rose, zombie-like, from behind his desk and said, “Yes, Hamish. Maybe that’s a good idea.”
When his father reached the door, the son stopped him with an arm on his sleeve. “One thing you haven’t said, Dad…”
“What?”
“You haven’t said you’re proud of me for what I’ve done.” The appeal in the young man’s face was naked and pathetic.
“No, I haven’t,” said his father dully.
“Well, please. Say you’re proud of me.”
The two generations looked at each other. In Hamish Urquhart’s eyes was abject pleading, asking his father at last to give him a ration of praise. The expression in Ewan Urquhart’s eyes was harder to read.
The older man moved very quickly. With his left hand he snatched the knife from his son’s grasp. His right, bunched in a fist, crashed up into the young man’s chin.
Hamish Urquhart went down like a dead weight, thumping the back of his head on a shelf as he fell. He lay immobile. As ever, his father had proved stronger than he was.
Carole and Jude breathed out, letting the accumulated tension twitch out of their bodies.
∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧
Thirty-Nine
Hamish Urquhart was taken in for questioning by the police later that Saturday morning. Their suspicions had been moving towards him for some time, and these were confirmed by their interview with Andy Constant in the hospital. He had also been identified by CCTV camera footage on the campus of the University of Clincham. Soon after, the Maiden Avenue entrance to the campus was bricked up.
In police custody Hamish Urquhart made no attempt to deny his crimes and was quickly charged with the murder of Tadeusz Jankowski and the attempted murder of Andy Constant. His defence team were in a quandary as to whether they should put in a plea of insanity. He showed no remorse about his actions, and kept telling them that he had finally done something that would make his father proud of him.
While he was on remand, his sister Sophia visited him as often as she could. Their father didn’t. In Ewan Urquhart’s view, his son had always been unsatisfactory. Now he was no longer on the scene, the older man found it easier and more convenient to forget that he had ever had a son.
And, once her brother had been sentenced to life, Sophia’s visits to him ceased.
She dropped out of the University of Clincharri before the end of that academic year and went to join her father in the offices of Urquhart & Pease. She learnt the business quickly and her good looks went down well with the male clients. There were plenty of admirers around, but none of her relationships lasted for more than a few months. All of the aspiring swains fai
led for the same reason. They couldn’t match the impossibly high standards set by Ewan Urquhart for ‘the kind of man worthy of my little Soph’.
Magic Dragon broke up even before Sophia left the university and she didn’t sing much after that. The gold of her hair faded and her face and neck thickened out, as she reconciled herself to her fate of looking after her father until he died. Which, of course, suited Ewan Urquhart perfectly. And everyone appreciated the sterling work Sophia put in making teas at Old Carthusian cricket matches. Maybe after her father’s death she might be able to carve out a life for herself, but nobody was putting bets on it.
Bets continued, however, to be put on horses at the betting shop (though most of the shop’s income continued to come from the fixed-price gaming machines). Sonny ‘Perfectly’ Frank continued to ask ‘Know anything?’ to everyone who came in. The waiters from the Golden Palace regularly abandoned serving sweet and sour pork for the quick fix of a bet and kept up their high-pitched wind-chime banter. Pauline continued to enjoy the warm, while Wes and Vie continued to neglect their decorating work. They still shouted at every race, surprised like circling goldfish every time their latest brilliant fancy turned out to be a failure.
One regular ceased to attend. After his flu Harold Peskett had resumed going to the betting shop with his elaborate scribbled permutations of doubles and trebles. Then finally one day the results worked for him, and he won over a thousand pounds. So great was the shock that he died of a heart attack right there in the betting shop. Though it was rather inconvenient for Ryan and Nikki, there was a general view that it would have been the way he wanted to go.
Melanie Newton never went back into a betting shop. She didn’t need to. Her laptop offered everything she required. She could play the virtual casinos and roulette wheels twenty-four hours a day. Which she did. And as her credit card debts grew, she kept taking up offers of new credit cards. And kept moving to ever more dingy accommodation, one step ahead of her creditors.
