Fethering 09 (2008) - Blood at the Bookies (8 page)

“What was he doing in Warsaw?”

“He finish a year ago a degree in music. He want make a career in music. He write songs, play piano, guitar. He love playing his guitar. Now he will not do that any more.” These reminders of her brother’s absence did not seem yet to cause sadness to Zofia. Her reaction was more one of bewilderment, an inability to take in the sheer scale of what had happened.

“So did Tadek have a job?”

“Small jobs. Temporary work. Like me. He wanted to buy time to write his songs.”

“Do you think he came to England because he thought there would be better opportunities in the English music scene?”

The girl shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t think so. He was enjoying his music in Warsaw. He was in a band with some friends, it all seemed to be going well. Then suddenly he tell us all he is going to England.”

“And you’ve no idea why he might have done that?”

“No. Tadek was not very…I don’t know the word…not good at details of life, doing things that needed to be done every day.”

“You mean he wasn’t practical?”

“I think this is the word, yes. He lived in the clouds. He had wild ideas which, were not easy to make happen.”

“He was a romantic?”

“Yes. And an optimist. He think everything will come good some time. But of course he was wrong.”

“When you say he was a romantic,” asked Jude, “does that extend to his emotional life? Was he romantic about women?”

Zofia nodded vigorously. “Yes, even after growing up with me and our mother, Tadek still put women…up high…I don’t know…”

“On a pedestal?”

“That is good word. Often he want to be with women who are not right for him. Too old for him sometimes. But he still…yes, put them on a pedestal.”

“So do you think it might have been a woman who brought him to England?”

“It is possible. But he did not say anything to me about a woman. Usually he tell me who is the new one he has fallen in love with. And tell me when it has broken up—as they all did.”

“Did your brother have any friends in England? Was there someone he could have stayed with when he first arrived?”

“I do not know of many. Tadek had not been to England before. I do not know of any English friends of him. But it is possible he meet people. He travelled a lot in Europe. To music festivals and such events, with his band. But again it is unusual for him not to tell me about people he meet.”

“Did the police ask you about his friends?”

“Of course. I cannot help them much—like I cannot help you much. But they do tell me where he was living.”

“Littlehampton, I gather.”

“Yes, they give me address. I will go there. After seeing you, this must be the next place I go. Maybe I find out something.”

“Well, if you do, please let me know.”

The girl’s hazel eyes sought out Jude’s brown ones. “You also are wanting to find out how Tadek died?”

“Yes,” Jude replied simply.

After Zofia had left, Jude was tidying up in the kitchen when she heard the rattle of something coming through her letterbox. Too late for the post (even though that did seem to be getting later and later). She managed to get to the front window just in time to see the person who’d made the delivery moving on next door to High Tor.

Through the encroaching dusk, she recognized him from the previous week in the Crown and Anchor. Dressed in a Drizabone coat and tweed cap, it was Hamish Urquhart. Running errands for his father. Jude looked down at the that to see what he had delivered.

The envelope was addressed to ‘The Occupier’. From, as she might have guessed, Urquhart & Pease, the estate agents. They were always looking for new properties in the ‘much sought-after’ location of Fethering. Anyone looking to sell could not do better than engage the services of the long-established, efficient and courteous firm of Urquhart & Pease, who would be happy to offer a free valuation.

Normally Jude would have shoved such a letter straight into the bin. But that day, given her earlier restlessness, it had a pertinence for her. Maybe it was a psychic nudge, telling her she should be moving out of Fethering. The timing was interesting. And Jude was a great believer in synchronicity.

S
hortly after Carole had put her flyer from Urquhart &Pease straight in the recycling bin, she had a phone call from Ted Crisp. He wasn’t good at remembering numbers, but hers had stayed stuck in his head from the time of their brief affair, so he rang her rather than Jude.

“Been doing my bit on the old Licensed Victuallers grapevine,” he announced. “Found out where the dead man did his bar work.”

“Oh, really? Well done.”

“Pub on the Fedborough road out of Littlehampton. Just by the river bridge. Cat and Fiddle. Do you know it?”

“No,” said Carole unsurprisingly. The Crown and Anchor was about the only pub she did know. Carole Seddon still didn’t think of herself as a ‘pub person’.

“Run by a woman called Shona Nuttall. Known in the trade as ‘The Cat On The Fiddle’. One of those self-appointed ‘characters’, of whom there are so many in the pub business.”

“Your tone of voice suggests that she’s not your favourite person.”

“Does it?” He neither confirmed nor denied the impression.

“And what about the pub? How does she run that?”

“Not the way I would,” Ted Crisp replied eloquently.

The Cat and Fiddle’s perfect riverside position ensured continuous trade throughout the summer, but it wasn’t so busy on a cold Tuesday evening in February. Even before Carole and Jude entered, they were aware of why it wasn’t the sort of pub Ted Crisp would have liked. The inn sign was a Disneyfied version of a cute cat with bulbous eyes playing the fiddle to a group of goofy-toothed square-dancing rabbits. Notices in the vast car park bore the same motif, as did the signs on the children’s play area. Whether the Cat and Fiddle was a one-off business or not, it gave the Impression of being part of a franchise.

This was intensified by the interior, open-plan with lots of pine divisions which were reminiscent of some immaculate stable-yard, an image encouraged by the romantic country music that filled the air. Pointless rosettes were pinned to pillars; halters and unused riding tack hung from hooks. The narrow awning over the bar was thatched, and the bar staff, male and female, wore dungarees over red gingham shirts. On the wall-mounted menus another incarnation of the goggle-eyed cat pointed down to a sign reading ‘Good Ol’ Country Cookin’.

The few customers did not sit on their show-home pine stools with the ease that identifies the true pub regular. Suited businessmen at single tables worked silently through meals piled high with orange chips. An unspeaking couple in a stable-like booth looked as if they were mentally checking through the final details of their suicide pact.

Behind the bar stood a large woman whose lack of dungaree livery meant she must be the landlady. Tight cream trousers outlined the contours of her substantial bottom and thighs, while a spangly black and gold top gave a generous view of her vertiginously deep cleavage. She had a tan that looked as if it had just returned from the Canary Islands and wore a lot of chunky gold. Earrings, necklaces, bracelets and a jeweller’s windowful of rings. When she flashed a greeting to the two women, a gold tooth was exposed at the corner of her smile.

“Good evening. Welcome to the Cat and Fiddle.” Her voice was brash and slightly nasal. “What can I get you? We do have a Special Winter Warmer Mulled Wine for these winter evenings.”

Carole and Jude, who shared the view that nothing spoiled wine so much as heating it up and shoving in herbs and sugar, both opted for a Chilean Chardonnay. Carole had intended not to drink alcohol on this rare second visit to a pub in the same day, but the atmosphere of the place seemed to require some form of anaesthetic.

They had wondered in the car how they were going to get round to the subject of Tadeusz Jankowski, but they needn’t have worried. The landlady, who must be the Shona Nuttall Ted had referred to, brought it up almost immediately.

“You local, are you?” she began.

“Fethering.”

“Oh, very close. I haven’t seen you in here before, though.” She beamed so far that the gold tooth glinted again. “Well, now you’ve found us, I hope you’ll get the Cat and Fiddle habit.”

Both women, while mentally forswearing the place for ever, made some polite reaction.

“It’s a real old·fashioned friendly pub. Got lots of atmosphere,” said Shona Nuttall, in the teeth of the evidence. The many photographs pinned behind the bar all featured the landlady grinning hugely and crushing some hapless customer in her flabby arms.

“Mind you, though,” she went on, saving them the effort of even the most basic probing, “we have had our sadnesses here recently…”

“Oh?” asked Carole, providing a prompt which probably wasn’t needed.

“I don’t know if you heard on the telly about that poor young man who was stabbed…?”

“Yes, we did,” said Jude.

“Course you would have done, living right there in Fethering. Well, do you know…” She gathered up her bosom in her arms as she prepared to make the revelation “…that boy only worked in here.”

“Really?” Jude sounded suitably surprised. “Tadeusz Jankowski?”

“Yes, him. Mind you, I could never pronounce his name, so I just called him Teddy.”

“What did he actually do for you…? Sorry, I don’t know your name…?” Carole lied.

First names were exchanged, then the landlady went on with what was clearly becoming her party piece. “I’d got an ad in the
Littlehampton Gazette
for staff. I always need extra bodies running up to Christmas and New Year, then it slackens off, but some of my real stalwarts tend to take their holidays this time of year, so I’m still a bit short. Well, Teddy saw the ad and came along.”

“When would this have been?”

“Middle of October. That’s when I have to start thinking about Christmas. Anyway, Teddy seemed a nice enough lad…well, considering he was Polish…so I thought I’d give him a try.”

“Was he working behind the bar?” Jude tried with difficulty to visualize the young man she’d seen in dungarees and red gingham.

“No, no. His English wasn’t good enough for that. And, you know, handling the money, you can’t be too careful…particularly with foreigners.” As she had been with Ewan Urquhart, Jude was struck by the endemic mild racism of West Sussex. “My staff do a kind of probation period before I let them behind the bar.”

“What work did he do then?” asked Carole.

“Washing up mostly. You know, clearing the rubbish from the kitchen, helping the chef. No cooking, mind. Kitchen porter kind of thing.”

“But not mixing with the customers?”

“No.”

“Was he friendly with the other staff?”

“Oh yes, yes, he was a nice boy. Such a tragedy, somebody so young,” Shona said automatically. “Look, that’s how friendly he was.” She pointed to one of the photographs behind the bar. Out of deference to the deceased, somebody had pinned a black ribbon bow over it. Tadeusz Jankowski looked very small and embarrassed in his employer’s all-consuming embrace. The photograph may have shown how friendly Shona Nuttall was; it didn’t look as though the boy had had much choice in the matter.

“Any particular friends amongst the other staff?” Carole persisted.

“No, not really. Not that I noticed. He only did two-hour shifts, and he was kept pretty busy, so he didn’t have much time to socialize.”

“Did he ever mention having a girlfriend? Or did you see him with one?”

The landlady shook her head. “I was asked all these questions by the police, you know.” This was not said to make them desist in their interrogation; it was spoken with pride. The death of Tadeusz Jankowski had given Shona Nuttall a starring role in her own drama and she was going to enjoy every moment of it.

“Did he say anything about other friends?” asked Jude. “Or why he had come to England?”

“The police asked me that too, but I wasn’t able to help them, you know. I mean, I’m very good to all the people who work for me, but I do have a business to run, so that has to be my first priority. Not too much time for idle chatter with the kitchen staff, particularly when they don’t speak much English.”

“Did the police question you for long?”

“Oh, quite a while. Half an hour, probably. And…”

Shona Nuttall slowed down as she prepared to produce her biggest bombshell: “…I was actually on the television.”

“Were you?”

“Yes. You may have seen me. Friday I was on the news.”

Carole looked puzzled. “I’m fairly sure I did see the news on Friday evening. I had flu, but I got out of bed specially to watch it. I don’t remember seeing you, though.”

“Ah, well, I was just on the local news.” The landlady seemed put out to have to make this admission. “Six-thirty in the evening.”

“No, then I wouldn’t have seen that.”

“I do have the video.” Not only did she have it, she had it set up in the VCR on the bar. She pressed the relevant controls and told them to look up at the big screen. The practised ease with which she went through these motions suggested that Carole and Jude weren’t the first Cat and Fiddle customers who had been shown the recording.

Shona Nuttall’s moment of television fame was very short. A brief shot of the exterior of the pub was shown, followed by a close-up of her behind the bar saying, “He seemed a nice boy. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt him.” Then, with one of those bad edits so beloved of local television news, they cut back to the studio and the presenter talking about the increase of the rat population in Worthing.

“You came across very well,” said Jude, and Shona Nuttall glowed with the compliment. What a sycophantic remark, thought Carole, but she was still envious of the way her neighbour could always say the right thing to put people at their ease.

“And did Tad…Teddy ever talk to you about his music?”

“Sorry?”

“He was a very keen musician. He wrote songs and played guitar.”

“I didn’t know that. He wasn’t into country music, was he?”

“I don’t think so. More sort of folk.”

“Oh. Because we do have regular Country Evenings here at the Cat and Fiddle. Line Dancing too. I don’t know if that’s your sort of thing…?”