Sixsmith.'
Suddenly he could see her quite easily in a betting shop, able to deal with and subdue any bad loser looking for someone to blame.
He glanced at Eddie, giving his mother the option of getting him out of the room, also giving himself a bit more time.
Mrs. Oto said, 'Eddie, I suggest you go upstairs and spring clean that machine of yours. However you got this stuff, it wasn't legal. You may be smarter than me with computers, but you I can read like a book. When I come up there after I'm finished with Mr. Sixsmith, I'm going to ask you if there's anything else illegal you're hooked up to. And if you say no and I don't believe you, I'm going to take a hammer to that machine of yours, you hear me?'
'Yes, Ma,' said Eddie.
Looking about five years younger than when he'd come in, the boy left.
'Right, Mr. Sixsmith, you got a professional association?'
'Yes, ma'am.' Like Eddie, he felt himself getting younger by the minute.
'What'll they do to you if they hear you're in trouble for getting a minor to perform illegal acts?'
She made it sound unspeakable but Joe knew better than to protest.
'They'll expel me,' he said.
'So, you want to stay in work, you'd better start talking,' she said.
There were times when he'd had Sergeant Chivers's mad eyes glaring into his from six inches and still been able to burble about client confidentiality. But not now.
By the time he'd finished, she was back to the old Mrs. Oto, serene and polite.
'So how's your investigation proceeding, Mr. Sixsmith?' she asked. 'Any suspects?'
Was this the time to tell her he thought her other daughter might be in the frame? Maybe not.
He said, 'I gotta suspect everyone till I learn different, Mrs. Oto. Like the guys who come into Storey's, I study the form then I make my choice.'
'That's a bad example, Mr. Sixsmith. Most of those guys are dedicated losers. Is that how you see yourself? A loser?'
He met her steady gaze steadily.
'No. I'm more like the guy who's doing this fix on Zak. I don't like putting my money on anything but a certainty.'
She nodded.
'Fair enough. OK, ask your questions.'
'Questions?'
'You didn't leave your coat here just so's you could come back and sample my tea, which you've let go cold anyway.'
In a world full of people smarter than I am, how come I chose this job? Joe asked himself, not for the first time.
Because, he answered himself as always, it's being just smart enough to put smarter folk to work that makes millionaires.
He said, 'So who do you think could be behind all this, Mrs. Oto?'
Instead of making a crack about doing his work for him she considered the question seriously.
'Someone with a load of money,' she said. These are big sums being laid.'
'Yeah, but they're just blips on a computer screen, right? It's not like anyone had to go to a counter with a sackful of bank notes.'
'You ever tried opening an account with Stan?' she said,
looking him up and down. 'No offence, Mr. Sixsmith, but I doubt you'd get more than a fifty limit. Sure, they're just blips on a screen, but there's got to be a lot of other blips on another screen saying you're good for the money before anyone's going to take any notice.'
'OK,' he said. 'Don't bookies get worried if a lot of money starts chasing an outsider? Is there enough here to start alarm bells ringing out East?'
'They'd be jangling like Christmas at Stan's,' she said. 'But things are different out there. They assume any result can be and probably has been fixed, so it's almost built into the odds. Over here, if we get suspicious, usually we blow the whistle. Over there, they may just start looking for ways of covering their backs.'
It was funny. You see a person nicely dressed in a nice house in a nice area, even when you know it hasn't always been like this for them, it's hard not to think this protected life was what they were born to. But not so many years ago, the Otos had been living on Hermsprong. Joe knew what that was like because it was still like it graffiti on the walls, crap in the lifts, lights all busted so even the police didn't care to be there less than mob-handed after dark, plus a hardcore of red, white and blue racists calling themselves the True Brits dedicated to making life unbearable for anybody whose face didn't fit their perverted view of things.
So why feel surprise that Mrs. Oto who worked at Stan Storey's knew a thing or two? Come to think of it, moving into Grandison was probably no bean feast. They might not ride motorbikes and wear Union Jack T-shirts round here, but there were still plenty of good solid citizens ready to spray graffiti on people's minds.
He said, 'You ever have any trouble round here, Mrs. Oto?'
