Blood at the Bookies. Simon Brett
found quite a lot of material. Immigration, particularly from Poland, was a topical issue, and the murder had unleashed pages and pages of ill-informed speculation.
Jude was surprised it took till the Monday for the police to contact her again. They’d taken all her details when they’d questioned her on the Thursday, saying they’d be in touch. And on the old principle that the first suspect in a murder investigation tends to be the person who finds the body, she had expected them to show more interest in her.
But the two young detectives who came to Woodside Cottage seemed very relaxed. They certainly didn’t give her the impression that she was a suspect and, given her previous experience of dealing with the police, were surprisingly generous with information.
‘We’re pretty sure,’ said the one who was called Detective Sergeant Baines, ‘that the victim had nothing to do with anyone in the betting shop that afternoon.’
‘No one in there knew him?’
‘No. We took statements from them all, you know, after you’d gone. None of them knew him from Adam. The manager, who makes it his business to see who comes in and out, had never seen him before.’
‘So why did he go into the betting shop?’
‘No idea. Maybe he was walking past and, feeling weak after being stabbed, just went in there to sit down. Or to get some shelter from the hailstorm.’
‘Don’t you think it’s odd he didn’t ask for help?’ asked Jude, reiterating Carole’s point.
Baines shrugged. ‘Perhaps he didn’t know how badly injured he was. Perhaps he was already too weak to speak. Or he could have been in shock. I don’t know.’
‘And do you know where he actually was when he was stabbed?’
The other one, Detective Sergeant Yelland, exchanged a grin with Baines and said, ‘If we knew that, we’d be well on the way to solving the case, wouldn’t we?’
‘But it can’t have been far away, can it? Or there would have been more blood at the bookie’s, wouldn’t there?’
Unlike previous detectives Jude had met, these two didn’t seem to object to her working out her own theories. ‘Maybe,’ said Baines. ‘They won’t really know till they get the detailed post-mortem report. It could have been an injury that didn’t bleed much at first, but then got worse. In fact, that must have been the case, because there was no trail of blood leading towards the betting shop, only away from it.’
Jude found his use of the personal pronoun interesting. ‘They’ would get the post-mortem report, not ‘we’. The main part of the investigation was going on elsewhere. Baines and Yelland were juniors, minor players in the game. Realizing this encouraged her to ask more questions.
‘I just heard the man’s name on the television. And they said he was Polish. Have you been able to find out much more about him?’
Baines showed no reticence in answering. ‘He was from Warsaw. Finished at university there last year. Been doing casual bar work over here.’
‘Do you know where he lived?’
‘Rented room in Littlehampton.’
‘Not far away …’ Jude looked thoughtful. ‘Have his family in Poland been contacted?’
Detective Sergeant Yelland seemed suddenly aware of the incongruity of the situation. ‘Just a minute. Aren’t we the ones who’re meant to be asking you the questions?’ But he sounded amused rather than resentful.
‘I agree that’s traditional,’ said Jude with a winning smile. ‘But you haven’t asked many, and we don’t want to sit here in silence, do we?’
Both men grinned. ‘Yes, his family have been told,’ Baines replied. ‘And there’s been contact with the Polish police authorities.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, makes sense. Most likely the reason he was attacked is something to do with his own community. Probably goes back to some rivalry back home.’
‘Can you be sure of that?’
‘Can’t be sure of much in our business,’ said Yelland.
Jude now understood the explanation for their relaxed demeanour. Neither Baines nor Yelland was particularly interested in the case. They were underlings who did as they were told. They had been told to interview her and they were following their instructions. But they had no expectations that anything she might say would be useful to the investigation. They regarded the murder as a foreign case, which just happened to have taken place on their patch.
Jude decided to test the limits of their goodwill and persist in her questioning. ‘I just wondered … whether it might be more local …?’ Remembering Ewan Urquhart’s pontificating in the Crown and Anchor the previous week, she went on, ‘There does seem to be quite a lot of resentment of immigrants round here.’
‘Not that much,’ said Baines. ‘In some of the inner city areas, yes, there are problems. But down here, it’s not as if they’re taking people’s jobs or anything like that. Maybe a bit of trouble in the bigger cities … Brighton, Portsmouth, Southampton. Get a bit of racial conflict at chucking-out time, you know, the odd fight. But not somewhere as small as Fethering. We don’t get called out much on disputes with immigrants, do we?’
Yelland agreed that they didn’t.
‘I would just have thought—’
‘I can assure you that they are investigating every possibility.’ Again Baines’s tell-tale use of ‘they’. ‘And if there is someone local involved, I’m sure they’ll find out about it. But the initial enquiries will be focusing on the Polish community.’
‘Right.’
‘So …’ asked Yelland ironically, ‘is there anything else you want to ask us?’
‘Not at the moment. But if there are any further questions, I’ll be in touch.’
Yelland grinned at his colleague. ‘Stealing all our lines, isn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ said Baines. ‘And if you remember anything else you might think is relevant, you be in touch too.’
‘Will do.’
‘Or if there’s anything you want to add to the statement you made on Thursday …?’
‘I can’t think of anything at the moment.’
‘Fine. Well, if there’s an arrest, you’ll hear about it on the telly.’
But Detective Sergeant Baines didn’t sound optimistic. Jude got the firm impression that neither he nor Yelland expected an early solution to the case. And that they weren’t that bothered.
FIVE
After the murder the betting shop had been closed while the police made their forensic examination of the premises, but it was allowed to reopen on the Monday. Which, Jude extrapolated, meant that they had been expecting to receive little information there. It wasn’t exactly a crime scene; the crime had happened elsewhere. Apparently detectives had made enquiries at other premises along the parade, but did not seem to have identified where the stabbing had taken place. Or if they had, they were keeping quiet about it.
No unsuspecting punter entering the betting shop on the Monday would have been aware that anything untoward had taken place there. But when she arrived that afternoon, Jude noticed that new, brighter blue carpet tiles had replaced the ones on to which the dying man’s blood had dripped. The originals were presumably under scrutiny in a police laboratory.
She had come in again to place Harold Peskett’s bets. The old man’s flu seemed to be hanging on. He felt lousy, but he still wanted to keep up with what he insisted on calling his ‘investments’. This had obviously been a