“In what way, Hamish?” asked Jude as she put the coffee cup in front of him.
“Thanks. Well, the show seemed to be saying that war is always a bad thing.”
“And you don’t agree with that?”
“Good God, no. I mean, I’m not recommending that countries should go around invading and bombing other countries whenever the fancy strikes them, but sometimes action has to be taken. Every country needs to have an army, and I reckon we’ve got one of the best in the world. So I don’t like it when I hear our brave boys being mocked. They do a damned fine job in extraordinarily difficult conditions. And they’re bloody necessary. Always have been. I mean, if Mr Hitler had been allowed to go his merry way in 1939 without anyone trying to stop him…well, we’d probably now be conducting this conversation in bloody German!” Again he sounded as if he was quoting his father verbatim.
“Talking of Germany…” said Jude, snatching at the most tenuous of links, “your sister was saying she’d been there in her gap year.”
“Yes. Lucky old Soph, actually getting a gap year. I didn’t have one. Straight out of school into the family business. None of that university nonsense for me.” Hamish made it sound as if he had made a choice in the matter, but Jude remembered Ewan Urquhart saying it was lack of academic ability that had kept his son out of university.
“And she’s such a good singer,” Jude went on, worming her way round to what she really wanted to ask. “Do you know if Sophia did any singing while she was in Europe?”
“I think she did, actually. I know she went to some music festivals and things. She kept sending Dad postcards.”
“Where from?” Hamish seemed so innocent and unsuspicious in his answers that Jude didn’t worry about pressing him.
“Berlin, certainly. I remember she was there. And Frankfurt, I think…and Leipzig. I remember that, because Dad made some comment about my sister being in the land of the Commie Krauts!” He guffawed once again at his father’s wit.
Still, Jude had got what she wanted. Proof positive that Sophia Urquhart, in spite of her denial when asked about it, had actually been to Leipzig. So now Jude had a solid fact to underpin her conjectures.
“Are you musical too, Hamish?” she asked.
“God, no. Can maybe join in the chorus of some filthy song down the rugby club, but that’s the extent of it. No, Soph’s the one in the family with talent.” He spoke this as an accepted fact, one that he had been told about so many times that it caused him no resentment.
“And she’s very pretty too,” said Jude, still angling the conversation in the direction she wanted it to go. “She must be surrounded by boyfriends.”
“She hasn’t had that many, actually.”
“Seems strange. I’d have thought the boys’d be after her like bees round a honey-pot.”
“Maybe some’d like to be, but they don’t get far.” He let out another hearty laugh. “You see, none of them can pass Dad’s quality control.”
“You don’t know whether she met anyone on her gap year?”
“No,” Hamish replied shortly. Then he clammed up. For the first time, he looked suspicious of Jude.
“Or what about at college? Drama students traditionally are supposed to have colourful love lives.”
“No, I don’t think…I don’t know…” He looked confused. “I don’t think she’d got anyone special, but…Why, have you heard anything?”
Jude shrugged, in part at the incongruity of the question. So far as Hamish knew, she had nothing to do with Clincham College, and yet here he was asking her for information about his sister’s relationships there.
“Just rumours,” she replied airily. “As you know, the main product of this entire area is gossip.”
“Yes,” said Hamish thoughtfully.
At that moment the doorbell rang. Jude went through to the hall to let in Ewan Urquhart, who with unctuous smoothness held her hand for slightly longer than was necessary and asked, “Sorry? Is my idiot boy still with you?”
“Hamish is here. Through in the kitchen.”
Ewan Urquhart marched through, brandishing a couple of stapled printed sheets. “Only forgot to bring the terms and conditions, didn’t you, Hamish?”
His son admitted his error, looking like a guilty schoolboy. But once again he didn’t seem genuinely shamed. His incompetence was an essential part of his personality. Perhaps within the family it was what made him lovable.
Ewan handed the sheet to Jude. “Sorry. The old adage that if you want something done, you’d better do it yourself has never been more true than when it comes to dealing with Hamish. As I have learnt, to my cost, over the years. Anyway, I hope he’s done a proper valuation for you.”
“Yes, he’s been excellent,” said Jude, who was getting sick of hearing the young man constantly diminished.
“What price did he give you?”
Jude told him. The older man rubbed his chin sceptically. “I think he may have overstated it. Exuberance of youth, eh? To be on the safe side, I’d say five thousand less.”
“Well, it’s still a huge amount more than I paid for it.”
“I bet. Oh, you can’t go wrong with property. Just sit at home and watch the money grow around you.” He let out a guffaw, exactly like the one Hamish had copied from him. Then he turned to his son. “Come on. We’ve got a business to run. Can’t sit around drinking coffee all day.”
The young man was on his feet before his father had finished speaking. Ewan Urquhart focused on Jude again. “Just whenever you decide you want to sell, remember Urquhart & Pease. There are, of course, other estate agents around…the area’s bristling with them, but many are branches of big chains, and I think you’re guaranteed a more sympathetic experience dealing with a family firm like Urquhart & Pease.”
So Hamish had actually learnt the spiel word for word from his father.
Before he left the kitchen, Ewan Urquhart paused for a moment, looking at the clutter on the table. Jude couldn’t be certain, but it looked as though he had seen the open notebook on whose page Zofia had spelt out his daughter’s love triangle. Something certainly seemed to have changed his manner. As he said goodbye, there was a new beadiness in the older estate agent’s eyes.
¦
Next door at High Tor, Carole Seddon sat in a state of bleak desolation. Her lifelong instinct had been never to trust anyone, and once again it had been proved right.
Drop your defences, allow another person inside your comfort zone, and you’re just inviting them to betray you. Only a matter of time before it happens.
Jude was selling Woodside Cottage. She hadn’t thought it necessary to impart that decision to her neighbour. And Carole, who didn’t have many, had thought they were friends.
? Blood at the Bookies ?
Thirty-Three
Jude would have gone straight round and told Carole about the confirmation of Sophia Urquhart’s presence in Leipzig, but her friend had said she was going to take Gulliver out for a walk. So Jude rang Andy Constant’s mobile.
“I wondered if we could get together.”
“I don’t see why not.” His voice was full of lazy self-congratulation. The parting from their last encounter had not been harmonious. When she’d seen Tadek’s guitar in the Drama Studio, Jude had broken from their kiss to question Andy about it. The interruption had destroyed the mood between them and certainly thwarted the plans he had been nursing for the rest of the evening. In his frustration he had become very childish and refused to answer her questions.
But there was still information Jude needed that she could only get from him, so another meeting was imperative.
