Blood at the Bookies. Simon Brett
– she knew she’d be on a hiding to nothing – but she couldn’t help asking, ‘So you think this man was murdered because he was an immigrant?’
‘Obviously.’ He flashed her an urbane and slightly patronizing smile. ‘I’m sorry, we don’t know each other. Ewan Urquhart.’ So he was one of the partners in the agency. ‘And my son Hamish.’
‘This is Jude,’ said Ted Crisp, as though he’d been remiss in not making the introduction before.
‘I’ve seen you walking along the High Street,’ said the estate agent. ‘Never fail to notice an attractive woman, you know.’ It was a knee-jerk compliment, a little too smoothly delivered. Jude decided she would not buy a house from this man.
‘But, Mr Urquhart, you were saying—’
‘Ewan, please.’
‘Ewan. You seemed to be making the assumption that this man’s death must have happened because he was an immigrant …?’
‘Well, my dear, in a situation like this the law of probability kicks in, doesn’t it? Get the country full of foreigners and they bring their own ways with them. So you get welfare scroungers, gangs, people traffickers …’ He seemed to be picking randomly at Daily Mail headlines. ‘And then with the ones from the Indian subcontinent you get these so-called “honour killings”. Bumping your sister off because you don’t like her choice of boyfriend. I mean, what kind of behaviour is that?’
‘Barbaric,’ his son supplied.
‘You’re right, Hamish. It’s barbaric. A culture of violence. We never used to have a culture of violence in this country.’
‘No? What about our good old traditional soccer hooligans …?’ Jude was tempted to add, ‘or our good old traditional public schools …?’, but didn’t.
Ewan Urquhart smiled blandly. He was clearly a man who thought he had a way with women and knew how to deal with their little foibles. ‘Ah, now I think you’re just being perverse, Jude. Much as we’d all like to believe there’s no connection between increased immigration and the crime statistics, I’m afraid the facts don’t leave much room for doubt. If you leave your borders open, it’s inevitable that you’re going to get a lot of riff-raff coming in. For me, I’m afraid, it all goes back to joining the Common Market. Worst move this country ever made.’
He was clearly preaching to the converted as far as Ted Crisp was concerned. ‘Couldn’t agree with you more, Ewan. I don’t want to be ordered about by bloody Brussels.’
‘Nor me,’ Hamish managed to slip in before his father continued. ‘Being British used to be a cause for pride. Not showing-off pride like some other countries are so fond of. Not standing up and saying “Aren’t I wonderful?” pride. But that quiet British pride that just does the right thing without crowing about it. And where’s that gone, I ask you? God knows. Now our bloody politicians seem to be apologizing all the time … desperate not to offend anyone “of a different ethnic background”. Margaret Thatcher never used to apologize for being British.’
Surely Ted was going to take issue with that? In his stand-up days Thatcher-bashing had been a major ingredient of his material. But he said nothing, as Ewan Urquhart steamrollered on. ‘Things like this murder should be a wake-up call, you know. Get people to stop and think what we’re actually doing to this country by allowing uncontrolled immigration. As I say, I’m not a racist, but I do think there comes a point when you have to recognize that enough is enough.’
‘You’re too right, Dad,’ said Hamish.
Jude had intended to have supper in the Crown and Anchor. But as Ewan Urquhart continued his tub-thumping, and as Ted Crisp and Hamish continued to agree with him, the prospect became less attractive. When she’d finished the one Chilean Chardonnay, she went back to Woodside Cottage. She’d find something in the fridge.
FOUR
Carole Seddon’s flu was slow to shift, but after the weekend the prospect of life continuing in some form did once again seem a possibility. She was pleased to feel better, but also guiltily relieved that it had lasted as long as it did. The weekend had been one she was dreading, and she was glad that the flu had prevented her from participating in it. Being Carole Seddon, she was also worried about the extent to which she had used the illness as an excuse.
The event she had avoided was a meeting with her son Stephen, his wife Gaby and their four-month-old daughter Lily. But it wasn’t them Carole didn’t want to see. Since the baby’s birth she had actually bonded more with the young couple, happy on occasions to go and help her daughter-in-law out at their Fulham house. And she found Lily a miracle. That something so tiny and so perfect could suddenly exist was a source of constant amazement to her. Though she was the last person to go all gooey in public about babies, Carole did find she was suffering from considerable internal gooeyness. Of course she didn’t vocalize such self-indulgent thoughts, but they did give her a warm glow.
It was all so different from when she’d had Stephen. Then she’d been in such turmoil, finding herself in the one state she had tried to avoid all her life – out of control. The strange things that had happened to her body, the demanding new presence in her life, the realignment of her relationship with her husband … everything conspired to make her feel threatened and useless. Had she gone to a doctor about her feelings, there might have been a diagnosis of mild post-natal depression, but Carole Seddon had always believed that doctors were there to deal with physical problems, not feelings. And depression was something that happened to other people.
So she hadn’t been worried about seeing Lily and her parents at the weekend. In fact she longed to witness her granddaughter’s every tiny development. But Stephen had included another person in the proposed visit to Fethering.
His father. Carole’s ex-husband David. Stephen was still under the illusion that, because he’d seen his estranged parents together at social events – like his wedding – when they hadn’t actually come to blows, a new rapprochement between them was possible. With a wistful innocence that made Carole feel even guiltier, her son was desperate to be part of a happy family. And, now Lily was on the scene, of a happy extended family.
It was an ambition that Carole couldn’t share. Getting over the divorce had taken a good few years and at times it still felt like an open wound. But one of the important components of rehabilitation into her new single life had been not seeing David. Even the sound of his voice on the phone could upset her hard-won equilibrium for days on end.
As a result of this, she had bought a new telephone with a Caller Display facility. If David were to ring her, she could then identify his number and choose whether or not to take the call. So far he hadn’t called – and in fact David’s was the one set of digits where Carole’s usual facility for remembering phone numbers failed (a psychological block no doubt, though she would never have recognized it as such). But the Caller Display did give her a sense of security.
The thought of seeing David in Fethering made Carole feel even more unsettled. High Tor had been bought as a weekend retreat for both of them in happier times, when the marriage was still more or less ticking over. Under the terms of the divorce settlement, Carole had taken sole possession, and had managed over the years to expunge all memories of their shared occupation. Seeing David back on the premises would stir up a hornets’ nest of unwanted recollection.
As soon as she’d made the arrangement for the weekend, Carole had regretted it. Stephen had caught her in an unguarded moment, when she had been cuddling Lily, and at such times all the world seemed benign and she hadn’t been able to refuse him. So the fated weekend had continued to loom ever larger on her horizon until the threat was removed by the mercy of her flu.
She felt deeply relieved that the encounter hadn’t happened. But she was sorry not to have seen Lily.
Still, now she was feeling better, she could begin to focus her mind on the death of Tadeusz Jankowski. With the return of her health came a prurient