anywhere.
“How about the funeral?” I asked.
“That will be up to the coroner,” he said. “The inquest will be opened on Monday. You should have received a summons to attend by now.”
I thought about the pile of unopened letters on my hall table. The opening of my mail, or rather the lack of it, was another of my failings. On a par with failing to eat properly, or at all.
“Why do they need to summons me?” I said.
“For identification purposes,” he said. “You are the deceased’s next of kin.”
So I was, I thought. How strange to be next of kin when, for all my life, I hadn’t even known that I had any kin, other than my aged grandparents.
“But isn’t it a bit soon to hold an inquest?” I said.
“It will only be opened for formal identification of the deceased and then it will be adjourned to a later date,” the chief inspector said. “The coroner may issue a certificate for burial. But that will be up to him.”
Formal identification could be interesting, I thought. Talbot, Grady, or Van Buren, Willem.
“As next of kin, is it my job to organize the funeral?” I asked.
“Up to you,” he said. “It’s usual but not compulsory.”
“Right,” I said. I looked at my watch. “Is there anything else?”
“Not for now, Mr. Talbot,” said the chief inspector. “But don’t go anywhere.”
“Is that an official request?” I asked.
“You know, there’s something about you I don’t like,” he said.
“Perhaps you just don’t like bookmakers,” I said back.
“You are so right,” he said. “But there’s something else about you.” He jabbed his finger in my chest.
I thought he was trying to intimidate me, or perhaps he was hoping to provoke me into saying something I would regret. So I simply smiled at him.
“I can’t say I’m very fond of you either, Chief Inspector,” I said, staring him in the eye. “But I don’t suppose it will cloud the professional dealings between us, now will it?”
It certainly would, I thought. At least, it would on my side.
He didn’t answer the question but turned on his heel and started to walk away. But he only went three paces before turning and coming back.
“Don’t pick a fight with me, Mr. Talbot,” he said, his face about six inches from mine. “Because you’ll lose.”
I decided that silence here was the best policy.
Eventually, he turned again and walked off.
“Be careful, Mr. Talbot,” the detective sergeant said to me in a more friendly tone. “He doesn’t like to be crossed.”
“He started it,” I said in my defense.
“Just take the warning,” he said seriously.
“I will,” I said. “Thank you, Sergeant.”
“And I’d also watch my back, if I were you,” he said.
“Surely Chief Inspector Llewellyn is not that malicious?” I said jokingly.
“No, not quite,” he said with a smile. “But I was really thinking about the man who killed your father. You were a witness to that, don’t forget. I just wouldn’t walk down any dark alleys alone at night, that’s all. Witnesses to murders are an endangered species.” The smile had left his face. He was deadly serious.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” I said again. “I’ll take that warning too.”
He nodded, and set off to follow the detective chief inspector.
“Just a minute,” I called after him. “Do you happen to know where my mother was murdered?”
He stopped and came back. “Where?” he said.
“Yes,” I replied. “Where did she die? And when?”
“Thirty-six years ago,” he said.
“Yes, but when exactly? What date? And where was she found?”
“I’ll have a look,” he said. “Can’t promise anything, but I’ll read the file.”
“Thanks,” I said.
He went off, hurrying to catch up with his boss, leaving me to wonder if my father’s killer knew who I was, and how to find me.
What was all that about?” asked Luca when I went back to our pitch.
“Tuesday,” I said.
“What exactly happened on Tuesday?” he asked.
“I got mugged,” I said, repeating my original story.
“Those two coppers have been here now to see you twice,” he said. “Come on, don’t tell me it was just because someone mugged a bookie. What else?”
“Well,” I said, “you know about the murder in the parking lot?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Of course.” Everyone was still talking about it.
“It seems the man who mugged me might have been the killer.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s all right, then.” He seemed relieved.
“What do you mean ‘all right’?” I cried, exasperated. “He could have killed me too, you know.”
“Yeah,” he said.“But he didn’t.” He smiled.“Betsy and I reckoned you must be in some sort of trouble with the law.”
“Oh thanks,” I said sardonically. “Such confidence you have in your provider.”
As predicted, the first two races, the Chesham and the Hardwicke Stakes, were each won by the favorite.
“That was fine by us,” said Luca into my ear after the second. “We had that laid at better odds, so, for a change, the favorite’s done us a favor.”
“Well done,” I said back to him. “Now for the fun and games.”
Betting on the Golden Jubilee Stakes was brisk, with queues of eager punters forming in front of me wanting to hand over their money. As Luca had expected, Pulpit Reader was established as the market leader, but at odds of four-to-one or better. The race was wide open, and the market reflected it.
“Fifty on Pulpit,” said the man in front of me.
“Fifty on number five at fours,” I said to Luca, who pushed his keypad. I took the ticket from the printer and handed it to the man.
“What price number sixteen?” asked A.J., the next man in the queue, who was sporting today a rather traditional gray vest under his expansive black jacket.
Our electronic board was not big enough to have all the runners displayed at once.
“Horse sixteen?” I said to Luca.
“Thirty-threes,” he said back.
“Tenner each way,” A.J. said, pushing a twenty-pound note towards me.
The ticket duly appeared from the printer.
And so it went on. Mostly smallish bets of ten or twenty pounds or so. A wager on the Golden Jubilee was more for entertainment than for making serious money.
We were still taking bets as the race started. A young woman in a black-and-white dress with a matching wide-brimmed hat was my last customer, thrusting a ten-pound note my way even as the horses were passing the five-furlong pole. “Ten pounds to win on horse number five, please,” she implored breathlessly from somewhere beneath her headgear. I took her money and issued the ticket.
“No more,” I said, but there were no more. Everyone was watching the race, most of them on one of the big- screen TVs set up opposite the grandstand.
The Golden Jubilee Stakes is the British leg of the Global Sprint Challenge, and, consequently, it attracts horses from overseas. It was an American horse on this occasion that broke away from the pack in the final furlong to win by more than a length. The crowd were unusually hushed. Pulpit Reader, number five, could only finish fourth. The young woman in black and white had enjoyed less than a minute’s run for her money, which would now remain
