Blood at the Bookies. Simon Brett
wind-chimes. It would have been hard to imagine a more unlikely friend for Carole Seddon, but, though Carole would never have admitted it out loud, she valued the friendship more than almost anything else in her life.
Jude took Gulliver on to the beach and let him scamper around off the lead, playing elaborate war games with weed-fringed plastic bottles and lumps of polystyrene. She allowed him twenty minutes of this, while she scrunched to and fro on the shingle. Then she let out a hopeful whistle, and was gratified that Gulliver came obediently to heel and let her reattach the lead.
It was a typical early February day. Though the people of West Sussex bemoaned the lack of winter snow and spoke ominously of global warming, the weather proved itself able still to come up with good old-fashioned coldness. Jude’s face, the only part of her not wrapped in a swathe of coats and scarves, was stung by the air, and underfoot the pebbles were joined by links of ice.
She did her shopping at Allinstore, the town’s only supermarket (though many Fethering residents reckoned the prefix ‘super’ in that context was an offence under the Trades Descriptions Act). Jude bought organically when it came to meat and fresh vegetables, but she was not proscriptive about it. There were also baked beans on her shelves and hamburgers in her fridge. She knew her own body and, though she generally ate healthily, she would occasionally indulge in a massive fry-up or a fish supper in one of the local cafés. Jude believed that in all things well-being came from variety.
As well as the Pedigree Chum and a couple of other items her neighbour had asked for, Jude bought some of the things she thought Carole needed. As she had said, warming soups, Lucozade and whisky. Jude was very definite about the style in which one should be ill. Illness made you feel miserable, so there was no point in making yourself feel even more miserable. Pampering was the answer. Oh yes, and of course, magazines. Country Life and Marie-Claire. She bought them, already relishing Carole’s reaction to such frivolous extravagance.
As she emerged from Allinstore the heavens opened, vindictively spitting down a fusillade of hailstones. The parade was suddenly evacuated, as the denizens of Fethering rushed for shelter. So fierce was the blizzard that Jude, scuttling to her destination, could hardly see a foot in front of her face. Fortunately, the betting shop had a projecting canopy over its frontage, and she was able to tie Gulliver’s lead to a metal ring which would keep him out of the weather.
Fethering High Street still had an old-fashioned parade of shops. Although this meant there weren’t many of them, it did ensure that they were all close together. But the choice was limited. You could still get your hair styled at what used to be Connie’s Cuts but had now been made-over and rebranded as ‘Marnie’. You could still investigate house purchase at Urquhart & Pease or one of the other estate agents. But in the previous ten years the independent butcher and green-grocer had both closed and been replaced by charity shops.
And Sonny Frank’s, the former independent bookmaker’s, had been taken over by one of the major national chains. This Jude knew from no less an authority than Sonny Frank himself, who had been unable to cut his links with the business completely and was still a fixture on the premises. Sonny, who in his days as a bookie had been known as ‘Perfectly’ Frank, always sat on a tall stool near the betting shop’s central pillar, from where he could command a good view of the wall of television screens, as well as the enclosed counter where bets were taken and winnings paid.
And, sure enough, there he was at one-thirty that Thursday afternoon, when Jude hurried in from the sleet to put on Harold Peskett’s bets. Sonny Frank was a small man, whose arms and legs seemed almost irrelevant appendages to the round ball of his body. On top of this was another ball, his head, across which dyed black hair had been combed over so tight that it looked as though it had been painted on. He wore a frayed suit in subdued colours but large checks, and he greeted Jude cheerfully. Sonny Frank greeted everyone who went into the shop cheerfully, as though he were still its owner, but he held back an extra ration of cheerfulness for attractive women.
Though Jude had popped in sporadically since she’d been a Fethering resident, during the fortnight of Harold Peskett’s flu she had become a regular, so Sonny knew her name. ‘Hello, Jude darling. You look like you just come out of the fridge.’
Sure enough, in the short dash from Allinstore to the betting shop, her head and shoulders had taken on an encrustation of ice.
‘Yes, look at it out there. It’s quite revolting.’
‘I would look at it, but I can’t see a thing.’ It was true. The opposite side of the road was invisible through the icy downpour.
‘So we’re all much snugger in here, Jude. So … got a hot tip for me today, have you … as the actress said to the bishop?’
‘You’re much more likely to know something than I am, Sonny,’ Jude replied, as she brushed the ice off her shoulders. ‘You’re the one with the inside knowledge.’
‘Don’t you believe it, darling. What you’ve got and I haven’t is women’s intuition.’
‘A fat lot of good that’s ever done me.’
‘What, with the men or the horses?’
‘Either. Both totally unreliable.’
‘What’s old Harold up for today then?’
‘Heaven knows.’ She reached into her pocket and flourished a sheaf of closely written betting slips. ‘All his usual trebles and Yankees and goodness knows what. I don’t understand what he does – I just put the bets on.’
It was true. Harold Peskett’s betting system was arcane and deeply personal. Every morning he spent two hours religiously scouring the Racing Post and checking the tips given in the Sun, Daily Express and Daily Mirror before coming up with his recipe for ‘the big win’. This involved a complex combination of horses at meetings across the country in formulations which, to the untrained eye, made Fermat’s Last Theorem look straightforward. The total sum invested never exceeded two pounds, so it didn’t make too many inroads into his pension. And at least his betting habit kept the ninety-two-year-old off the streets.
Jude handed over the betting slips to the vacuously beautiful blonde behind the counter, whose name badge proclaimed her to be ‘Nikki’. She got an automatic ‘Thank you’, but not the automatic smile she would have received had she been a man. Behind the girl, the shop’s manager, Ryan, fiddled on the keyboard of a computer. He was an edgy and uncommunicative man in his mid-thirties, thin with nervous dark eyes and with spiky black hair that could never quite be flattened by comb or brush. He always seemed to be sucking a peppermint. Both he and Nikki were dressed in the blue and black livery of their employers. Supported by other part-time staff, Ryan and Nikki provided the continuity of the betting shop. Though there was a lot of banter flying about the place, they never really joined in. They produced the manufactured smiles they had been taught during their training, but neither gave much impression of enjoying the job.
‘So …’ asked Sonny Frank, as Jude passed him on the way to the door, ‘know anything?’
It was another of his regular lines. And anyone incautious enough to ask what he meant – as Jude had been when he first said it to her – would be treated to the full explanation. As a young man Sonny had actually met Edgar Wallace, who, as well as being a prolific writing phenomenon, was also an obsessive gambler. And Wallace’s opening gambit to betting friends had always been the punter’s eternal search for the life-changing tip: ‘Know anything?’
‘You’ve already asked me, Sonny, and I’ve already said you’re the one with the inside knowledge.’
The ex-bookie looked elaborately furtive, then leaned forward on his stool till his cracked lips were very close to Jude’s ear and his purple cheek brushed against the hanging tendrils of her hair. ‘Well, as it happens … I do know a good thing.’
‘Oh?’
‘1.40 at Wincanton. Hasn’t raced for over two hundred days. Gonna romp home.’
Jude looked out of the window. Still