his death. He had been looking for Sophia. His last moments of life had been spent looking for the woman he loved. Though whether they would ever be able to pass the information on to anyone else looked, at that moment, unlikely.
Hamish smiled in self-congratulation. “I thought that was rather clever. Thinking she was nearby and would be back in a minute, he relaxed. I asked him to take his coat off, and then revealed the real purpose of his visit. I told the sneaky bastard we took a pretty dim view of his interest in Soph and…” He made an eloquent gesture with his knife.
Ewan Urquhart was having difficulty in believing what he was hearing. “You stabbed him?”
“Yes. In the chest.” Hamish grinned with self-satisfaction. “Worked out rather well, really. I hadn’t decided what I was going to do with the body, but then he put his coat on and went out. Luck was on my side, of course – it always is for people who dare to be bold. The weather suddenly turned, and that hailstorm meant nobody saw him leaving the office. Then he went to the betting shop and…” He spread his hands wide. They all knew what had happened next. “I think I can be said to have used the Urquhart initiative.”
“And Sophia’s lecturer?” asked Ewan Urquhart, his eyes wide with terror.
“Yes. Andy Constant,” said Hamish in a self-congratulatory tone. “Soph had mentioned him to me, but I didn’t know until recently that he’d been coming on to her.” He grinned triumphantly at Jude. “In fact I had my suspicions confirmed when I was doing the valuation of your cottage. There was some writing in a notebook on your kitchen table which linked Andy Constant’s name to Soph’s.
“Well, I knew what your views would be about that, Dad – the idea of someone nearly your own age messing around with your daughter. And I was right, because I just heard you telling these ladies what you thought about that. So again I thought, no need to bother you about it. I took things into my own hands. Soph had told me a bit about Andy Constant’s habits, and I worked out that the Drama Studio would be the best place to get him. I borrowed Soph’s Barbour because I thought it’d make me look more like one of the students, you know, pass unnoticed on the campus. And I told Soph, if anyone asked, she should say I was at home with her yesterday evening. Oh, I thought the whole thing through. And I would have killed the lecturer too, if I hadn’t been disturbed. By you, I gather,” he said, turning with sudden vindictiveness towards Jude.
She said nothing. The knife was dangerously close, and Hamish Urquhart’s eyes showed that he was way beyond responding to logical argument.
“So what are you going to do now?” asked his father, very quietly.
Hamish gestured with the knife. “Deal with these two,” he said airily. “I’ll put their bodies in the van and dispose of them after dark.”
“Where?”
“I don’t need to bother you with the details, Dad. Trust me, it’s all in hand.” He still sounded like a parody of Ewan Urquhart. Hamish was relishing the reversal. For once, he was patronizing his father, he was the one making the decisions. “We need never talk about it again. And don’t you worry. If I find any more unsuitable men sniffing round Soph, trust me to deal with them.”
“Are you telling me, Hamish, that you killed Tadeusz Jankowski and nearly killed Andy Constant because you didn’t think they were suitable men to mix with your sister?”
“Yes, Dad. Of course. Come on, you’re not usually so slow on the uptake.” The boy guffawed. “Usually I’m the one in that role.”
“But, Hamish, don’t you realize, killing someone because they’re having a relationship you disapprove of, well…that’s no different from an ‘honour killing’, the kind of thing Asian immigrants get involved in?”
“Nonsense. Totally different. I’m just upholding the honour of the Urquharts, that’s all.” He looked around the room, then turned to his father and said compassionately, “Look, I’ll sort this out, Dad. No need for you to be involved. Why don’t you nip out to Polly’s for a coffee and a teacake? Come back in half an hour and the whole thing’ll be sorted.”
He spoke so airily that Carole and Jude had to remind themselves that what he was proposing to ‘sort’ was their deaths. To their dismay, Ewan Urquhart rose, zombie-like, from behind his desk and said, “Yes, Hamish. Maybe that’s a good idea.”
When his father reached the door, the son stopped him with an arm on his sleeve. “One thing you haven’t said, Dad…”
“What?”
“You haven’t said you’re proud of me for what I’ve done.” The appeal in the young man’s face was naked and pathetic.
“No, I haven’t,” said his father dully.
“Well, please. Say you’re proud of me.”
The two generations looked at each other. In Hamish Urquhart’s eyes was abject pleading, asking his father at last to give him a ration of praise. The expression in Ewan Urquhart’s eyes was harder to read.
The older man moved very quickly. With his left hand he snatched the knife from his son’s grasp. His right, bunched in a fist, crashed up into the young man’s chin.
Hamish Urquhart went down like a dead weight, thumping the back of his head on a shelf as he fell. He lay immobile. As ever, his father had proved stronger than he was.
Carole and Jude breathed out, letting the accumulated tension twitch out of their bodies.
? Blood at the Bookies ?
Thirty-Nine
Hamish Urquhart was taken in for questioning by the police later that Saturday morning. Their suspicions had been moving towards him for some time, and these were confirmed by their interview with Andy Constant in the hospital. He had also been identified by CCTV camera footage on the campus of the University of Clincham. Soon after, the Maiden Avenue entrance to the campus was bricked up.
In police custody Hamish Urquhart made no attempt to deny his crimes and was quickly charged with the murder of Tadeusz Jankowski and the attempted murder of Andy Constant. His defence team were in a quandary as to whether they should put in a plea of insanity. He showed no remorse about his actions, and kept telling them that he had finally done something that would make his father proud of him.
While he was on remand, his sister Sophia visited him as often as she could. Their father didn’t. In Ewan Urquhart’s view, his son had always been unsatisfactory. Now he was no longer on the scene, the older man found it easier and more convenient to forget that he had ever had a son.
And, once her brother had been sentenced to life, Sophia’s visits to him ceased.
She dropped out of the University of Clincharri before the end of that academic year and went to join her father in the offices of Urquhart & Pease. She learnt the business quickly and her good looks went down well with the male clients. There were plenty of admirers around, but none of her relationships lasted for more than a few months. All of the aspiring swains failed for the same reason. They couldn’t match the impossibly high standards set by Ewan Urquhart for ‘the kind of man worthy of my little Soph’.
Magic Dragon broke up even before Sophia left the university and she didn’t sing much after that. The gold of her hair faded and her face and neck thickened out, as she reconciled herself to her fate of looking after her father until he died. Which, of course, suited Ewan Urquhart perfectly. And everyone appreciated the sterling work Sophia put in making teas at Old Carthusian cricket matches. Maybe after her father’s death she might be able to carve out a life for herself, but nobody was putting bets on it.
Bets continued, however, to be put on horses at the betting shop (though most of the shop’s income continued to come from the fixed-price gaming machines). Sonny ‘Perfectly’ Frank continued to ask ‘Know anything?’ to everyone who came in. The waiters from the Golden Palace regularly abandoned serving sweet and sour pork for the quick fix of a bet and kept up their high-pitched wind-chime banter. Pauline continued to enjoy the warm, while Wes and Vie continued to neglect their decorating work. They still shouted at every race, surprised like circling goldfish every time their latest brilliant fancy turned out to be a failure.
One regular ceased to attend. After his flu Harold Peskett had resumed going to the betting shop with his elaborate scribbled permutations of doubles and trebles. Then finally one day the results worked for him, and he won over a thousand pounds. So great was the shock that he died of a heart attack right there in the betting shop.
