Blood at the Bookies. Simon Brett
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 Vic.
‘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, Vic 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, Vic 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.
SIX
Fethering boasted two cafés. 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, éclairs 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