wedding, and it’s still over a year away.”
“That might be a front,” Carole suggested. “And all the time she’s really keeping her eye on everything that goes on?”
Ryan looked at her pityingly. “Tell you, with Nikki, what you see is what you get. She is seriously thick.”
“Oh.” This didn’t seem very gallant, but presumably he knew the woman he worked with.
“If that’s it, I’d better…”
“One more thing…” Jude raised a hand to detain him. “I asked you about this before. There’s a woman who’s a regular at the betting shop…”
“There are a few.”
“Well, I say she is a regular. I should have said was a regular. Stopped coming in around October last year.”
“People come and go, that’s up to them.”
“This one was well dressed, sort of middle class.”
Ryan narrowed his eyes with the effort of recollection. “I think I know the one you mean.”
“You wouldn’t know her name, would you?”
He shook his head. “Some people tell us their names, some don’t. If they don’t, we’ve no means of knowing.”
“No. And I suppose if you don’t know her name, the chances of you knowing where she lives…”
“Are about as slender as those of one of Harold Peskett’s bloody accumulators coming up.” This moment of levity showed how relaxed he now was. “Why do you want to know about her?”
“Apparently Tadeusz Jankowski spoke to her when he went into the betting shop last October.”
“Ah, well, I wouldn’t know about that,” said the manager with something approaching smugness. “I was on holiday.”
Shortly after he reiterated that he must be on his way and left.
“There goes a relieved man,” said Jude.
“How do you mean?”
“He was very relieved when he found out what we were interested in – just whether he’d seen Tadeusz Jankowski before. He had no worries about answering that enquiry. Which means…” Jude grimaced “…that there was something else he was afraid we wanted to talk to him about.”
“Any idea what?”
“Well, only conjecture…but I’m pretty sure I’m right. Seeing the way he put away that vodka…and given the fact that he’s always sucking peppermints, I would think it’s a pretty fair bet that young Ryan has a drink problem.”
“And he thought we wanted to talk to him about that?”
“That’s my theory. When I saw him in the back yard this morning, he was out there having a swig from his secret supply. He thought I’d actually seen him drinking. That’s the only reason he agreed to meet us. He was afraid we might shop him to Head Office.”
“But why on earth would he think that?”
“Alcoholics are paranoid. Like all addicts. Including gamblers.”
“Well,” said Carole sniffily, “you’d know about that.”
? Blood at the Bookies ?
Thirteen
The decision to stay in the Crown and Anchor for another glass of the Chilean Chardonnay was quickly made. And they were soon joined by other after-work regulars. Shortly after six Ewan Urquhart and his younger clone Hamish appeared. Maybe they did this every evening after a hard day’s estate agenting (though Jude sometimes wondered whether ‘a hard day’s estate agenting’ wasn’t the perfect definition of an oxymoron). Certainly the speed with which Ted Crisp set up a pair of unordered pints for them suggested a daily ritual.
Father and son took the first sip together and both smacked their lips in appreciation, another part of the ritual that needed to be observed. Then Ewan Urquhart took in the occupants of the pub and nodded recognition to Jude. She smiled back.
“Cold enough for you?” he asked, falling back, as most Englishmen do in casual conversation, on the weather.
“Pretty nippy,” Jude agreed, following the convention. She decided it wasn’t the moment to engage in further talk. On their previous encounter Ewan Urquhart had not endeared himself to her. But the introduction had been made and who could say when a tame estate agent might suddenly become a useful source of information? She continued to talk to Carole about Friday’s impending visit of Gaby and Lily. But through their desultory conversation they managed to hear what the Urquharts were saying at the bar. Doing so was in fact unavoidable. Ewan Urquhart was one of those men who thought it was his God-given right to talk loudly.
“Do you know, led, what an absolute chump my son has been today…?”
“Tell me about it,” said the landlord.
“He only managed to turn up for a viewing of a property having left the keys in the office. Client wasn’t best pleased about that, let me tell you.” While the litany of his incompetence was spelt out, Hamish’s reaction was interesting. He looked apologetic, but at the same time almost grateful for the attention, as though undergoing such criticism was an essential part of the bond with his father. Hamish had apparently been cast early as the family buffoon, and it was a role that he played up to.
“Client was one of these city slickers,” Ewan Urquhart went on, “investing his obscene bonus in a country cottage. Kind of guy for whom time is money. Wasn’t best pleased to turn up to the property and find he couldn’t get in. Gave you a bit of an ear-bashing, didn’t he, Hamish?”
“Yes, Dad,” came the sheepish reply.
“So, needless to say, a call comes through to the office and I have to leap into the Lexus, take the keys and smooth the city slicker’s ruffled feathers. Turns out all right, actually, because when I get chatting to the chap, turns out he’s an Old Carthusian just like me.”
“What’s that when it’s at home?” asked Ted Crisp.
“Old Carthusian? Means I went to a little educational establishment that goes by the name of Charterhouse. Rather decent public school, as it happens. So of course when the city slicker finds out we went to the same school we’re all chums…and of course Hamish wouldn’t have had the same connection, because you were too thick to pass the Common Entrance, weren’t you?”
“Yes, Dad,” Hamish agreed, once again apparently proud of his inadequacy.
“Anyway, so once again I got the boy out of a mess. Which means that you’re bloody well paying for the drinks tonight.”
“Of course, Dad.” The young man’s wallet was out immediately; as yet no money had changed hands.
“And you can buy a drink for your sister when she arrives too.”
“Will do.” Hamish Urquhart looked at his watch. “She said she’d be along about six-fifteen. Got some class or other up at Clincham College.” Carole and Jude pricked up their ears at that. “Guarantee she’ll be on the G and Ts. Ted, could you take for the pints and do me a large G and T too?” The young man’s bluff bonhomie sounded like a parody of his father’s. “And won’t you have one yourself?”
“No, thanks,” the landlord replied. “I don’t have anything till the end of the evening. Otherwise I’d drink myself into an early grave.”
“And we don’t want that happening, do we?” said Ewan Urquhart heartily. “I’m sure you’re just like me, Ted, want to keep going as long as possible, becoming more and more curmudgeonly with every passing year, eh?”
“I reckon I’m pretty curmudgeonly already,” said the landlord as he poured tonic into a double gin with ice and lemon.
“Nonsense, nonsense. You’re a fine upstanding English gentleman. Which is more than can be said for that fellow we had in the office this afternoon, eh, Hamish?”
“I’ll say. He was very much an ‘oriental visitor’.” The young man put on a very bad cod-Indian accent for the
