Blood at the Bookies. Simon Brett

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      FOUR

      Carole Seddon’s flu was slow to shift, but after the weekend the prospect of life continuing in some form did once again seem a possibility. She was pleased to feel better, but also guiltily relieved that it had lasted as long as it did. The weekend had been one she was dreading, and she was glad that the flu had prevented her from participating in it. Being Carole Seddon, she was also worried about the extent to which she had used the illness as an excuse.

      The event she had avoided was a meeting with her son Stephen, his wife Gaby and their four-month-old daughter Lily. But it wasn’t them Carole didn’t want to see. Since the baby’s birth she had actually bonded more with the young couple, happy on occasions to go and help her daughter-in-law out at their Fulham house. And she found Lily a miracle. That something so tiny and so perfect could suddenly exist was a source of constant amazement to her. Though she was the last person to go all gooey in public about babies, Carole did find she was suffering from considerable internal gooeyness. Of course she didn’t vocalize such self-indulgent thoughts, but they did give her a warm glow.

      It was all so different from when she’d had Stephen. Then she’d been in such turmoil, finding herself in the one state she had tried to avoid all her life – out of control. The strange things that had happened to her body, the demanding new presence in her life, the realignment of her relationship with her husband … everything conspired to make her feel threatened and useless. Had she gone to a doctor about her feelings, there might have been a diagnosis of mild post-natal depression, but Carole Seddon had always believed that doctors were there to deal with physical problems, not feelings. And depression was something that happened to other people.

      So she hadn’t been worried about seeing Lily and her parents at the weekend. In fact she longed to witness her granddaughter’s every tiny development. But Stephen had included another person in the proposed visit to Fethering.

      His father. Carole’s ex-husband David. Stephen was still under the illusion that, because he’d seen his estranged parents together at social events – like his wedding – when they hadn’t actually come to blows, a new rapprochement between them was possible. With a wistful innocence that made Carole feel even guiltier, her son was desperate to be part of a happy family. And, now Lily was on the scene, of a happy extended family.

      It was an ambition that Carole couldn’t share. Getting over the divorce had taken a good few years and at times it still felt like an open wound. But one of the important components of rehabilitation into her new single life had been not seeing David. Even the sound of his voice on the phone could upset her hard-won equilibrium for days on end.

      As a result of this, she had bought a new telephone with a Caller Display facility. If David were to ring her, she could then identify his number and choose whether or not to take the call. So far he hadn’t called – and in fact David’s was the one set of digits where Carole’s usual facility for remembering phone numbers failed (a psychological block no doubt, though she would never have recognized it as such). But the Caller Display did give her a sense of security.

      The thought of seeing David in Fethering made Carole feel even more unsettled. High Tor had been bought as a weekend retreat for both of them in happier times, when the marriage was still more or less ticking over. Under the terms of the divorce settlement, Carole had taken sole possession, and had managed over the years to expunge all memories of their shared occupation. Seeing David back on the premises would stir up a hornets’ nest of unwanted recollection.

      As soon as she’d made the arrangement for the weekend, Carole had regretted it. Stephen had caught her in an unguarded moment, when she had been cuddling Lily, and at such times all the world seemed benign and she hadn’t been able to refuse him. So the fated weekend had continued to loom ever larger on her horizon until the threat was removed by the mercy of her flu.

      She felt deeply relieved that the encounter hadn’t happened. But she was sorry not to have seen Lily.

      Still, now she was feeling better, she could begin to focus her mind on the death of Tadeusz Jankowski. With the return of her health came a prurient wistfulness, almost a jealousy, prompted by the fact that Jude had witnessed the young man’s dying moments. If there was to be an investigation, Carole wanted to be part of it. So she sought through the weekend papers and cut out all the coverage of the murder, anything that might have relevance to the case. She found quite a lot of material. Immigration, particularly from Poland, was a topical issue, and the murder had unleashed pages and pages of ill-informed speculation.

      Jude was surprised it took till the Monday for the police to contact her again. They’d taken all her details when they’d questioned her on the Thursday, saying they’d be in touch. And on the old principle that the first suspect in a murder investigation tends to be the person who finds the body, she had expected them to show more interest in her.

      But the two young detectives who came to Woodside Cottage seemed very relaxed. They certainly didn’t give her the impression that she was a suspect and, given her previous experience of dealing with the police, were surprisingly generous with information.

      ‘We’re pretty sure,’ said the one who was called Detective Sergeant Baines, ‘that the victim had nothing to do with anyone in the betting shop that afternoon.’

      ‘No one in there knew him?’

      ‘No. We took statements from them all, you know, after you’d gone. None of them knew him from Adam. The manager, who makes it his business to see who comes in and out, had never seen him before.’

      ‘So why did he go into the betting shop?’

      ‘No idea. Maybe he was walking past and, feeling weak after being stabbed, just went in there to sit down. Or to get some shelter from the hailstorm.’

      ‘Don’t you think it’s odd he didn’t ask for help?’ asked Jude, reiterating Carole’s point.

      Baines shrugged. ‘Perhaps he didn’t know how badly injured he was. Perhaps he was already too weak to speak. Or he could have been in shock. I don’t know.’

      ‘And do you know where he actually was when he was stabbed?’

      The other one, Detective Sergeant Yelland, exchanged a grin with Baines and said, ‘If we knew that, we’d be well on the way to solving the case, wouldn’t we?’

      ‘But it can’t have been far away, can it? Or there would have been more blood at the bookie’s, wouldn’t there?’

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