Fethering 09 (2008) - Blood at the Bookies (5 page)

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.

F
ethering 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.

It was of course all an exercise in retro marketing. The beams had been affixed to the bare nineteen-thirties walls in the late nineteen-nineties, and the ‘homemade’ delicacies were delivered daily from a specialist manufacturer in Brighton. Those who liked to use pretentious terms could have described Polly’s Cake Shop as a post-modernist gloss on the traditional cake shop. But the residents of Fethering were not bothered about such niceties, and the older ones relaxed into the environment as if it had been unchanged since their childhoods. The only difference was in the prices. Nostalgia never did come cheap.

Pauline wasn’t a regular customer at Polly’s Cake Shop, but, offered the chance of a free meal, wasn’t going to waste it. From the variety of teas proposed she asked for ‘ordinary tea’, then added a toasted teacake and the ‘selection of cakes’ to her order. Jude went for the same tea, together with a huge (and hugely sinful) eclair.

“Nice place,” said Pauline, looking around. “I used to be called Polly, you know.”

“Oh yes?”

“That’s what my old man used to call me. Kind of pet name, I suppose.”

“How long ago did he…?”

“Twelve years now. Women live longer, don’t they?”