all punters, she was tempted. Maybe this wasn’t just a one-off win …? Maybe it was the beginning of a winning streak …? Maybe her luck was in …?
But a glimpse of Gulliver outside reminded her of her priorities. The hailstorm might have ended, but the poor dog must be feeling pretty cold. No, she wouldn’t bet again. She would do what all gamblers intend – and almost always fail – to do: stop after a big win. She thanked Sonny Frank profusely for the tip and, picking up her Allinstore carriers, made for the door.
The young man in the blue naval overcoat was no longer there. Off to lie down somewhere, sleep off the booze, Jude conjectured.
And then she saw it. A circle of dark fluid seeping into the carpet tiles by the door. Against the blue the red turned almost purple. She didn’t have to touch it to recognize it was blood.
More drips had stained coin-sized marks, tracing the man’s exit from the betting shop. Without a word to anyone, Jude followed them.
Outside, she freed Gulliver from the ring he’d been tied to and held his lead tightly. As she pulled him in the direction the red spots on the pavement indicated, the Labrador sniffed at one and then almost pulled her arm out of its socket as he followed the track. His first experience of being a bloodhound, and Gulliver liked it.
The trail of blood, though diluted by the melting sleet, was still easy to follow.
They didn’t have far to go. Alongside the betting shop was a narrow alley which led round the back of the building to a small area of scrub that gave access to Fethering Beach.
He hadn’t made it all the way down the alley. The bloodspots grew bigger and bigger until they coalesced into a widening stream.
At the end of which lay the man in the navy overcoat.
He hardly breathed and his eyes were glazing over. As Jude knelt down beside him, he murmured something in a heavily accented voice. It sounded like ‘Fifi …’
A moment later the man was dead.
THREE
Jude had rung Carole on the mobile to say she would be delayed in bringing her shopping back, though she didn’t specify the reason. And when she finally got back to Woodside Cottage after being questioned by the police, she rang again on the landline. They had long ago exchanged spare keys, but Jude knew that her neighbour never liked being surprised by an unannounced visit, even from her. Carole Seddon endeavoured to organize her life so that it involved the minimum of surprises. The slipping in and out of people’s houses in which some people indulged was anathema to her. It was one of those habits for which Carole reserved one of her adjectives expressing major disapprobation: northern.
Inside High Tor, Jude, having served Gulliver a large helping of his long-wished-for Pedigree Chum, went upstairs to see the invalid.
It was a measure of the severity of Carole’s flu that, having granted permission for the visit, she hadn’t got out of bed to greet her guest. And in her reduced state even the news of a suspicious death in Fethering High Street didn’t bring the animation it usually would have done. The questions she asked were listless, and Jude almost had to insist on telling her the known details of what had happened.
‘As ever, the police didn’t volunteer much information, but then I don’t think they had much information to volunteer. Until they’ve established the identity of the dead man, they haven’t really got anything to go on. I can tell you, though, that he wasn’t a regular at the betting shop.’
Jude waited to be asked how she knew that, but with no question forthcoming, continued her monologue. ‘The detectives took me back into the shop after I’d shown them the body, and they asked general questions to everyone who was there. Most of the punters hadn’t even noticed the guy, but Ryan the Manager – who I guess makes it his business to clock everyone who comes in – said he’d never seen him before.’
She waited for a further prompt, but didn’t get one. ‘Obviously, having only seen him in the overcoat, I don’t know which part of his body the blood was coming from, and it could be something natural … a haemorrhage of some kind … but I’m afraid my first thought was murder.’
This word did bring a small spark to Carole’s pale blue eyes. Probably the activity she’d most enjoyed since her retirement to Fethering had been the investigation of murders with Jude.
‘If it was murder,’ her neighbour went on, ‘then the most obvious thought would be that it was a stabbing. I suppose it could also be a gunshot wound … Either way, the actual attack didn’t happen in the betting shop.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Carole, intrigued in spite of herself.
‘Positive. He came in through the front door.’
‘Is it just the one room?’ asked Carole, who prided herself on never having been inside a betting shop.
‘Well, there are offices behind the counter … and there are the toilets … and presumably there is a back entrance,’ Jude added thoughtfully. ‘But he definitely came in at the front. It was as if he was looking for something … Or maybe someone.’ The skin around her brown eyes tightened as she tried to work it out. ‘And I’m pretty sure he must have put the overcoat on after he was stabbed – or shot or whatever it was.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘The lack of visible blood. It was a thick coat. If he’d put it on after he’d been wounded, then it would have taken a while for the blood to seep through.’
‘There’s one odd thing …’ mused Carole, now firmly hooked in spite of her illness.
‘What?’
‘Why didn’t he ask for help?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Here’s this man, seriously wounded – mortally wounded, as it turned out – and he must know that he’s hurt … and he staggers into a public place, the betting shop, surrounded by people … and he doesn’t say a thing. You’d have thought, in those circumstances, almost anyone would have said something … would have asked for a doctor to be called, or an ambulance … But he didn’t say anything. Or did he, Jude? Did he say anything to you?’
‘Not in the betting shop, no. He just smiled.’ And the image of that weak smile brought home to her the horror of what she had witnessed. An involuntary shiver ran through her plump body.
‘Well,’ Carole continued, joining the links in her chain of logic, ‘the fact that he didn’t say anything … didn’t draw attention to himself, even though he was dying … suggests, wouldn’t you say, that the man had something to hide?’
‘Yes,’ said Jude, ‘I suppose it could.’
‘And if we find out what he was trying to hide, then we’ll probably be a good way to finding out why he was killed.’
Jude wasn’t really convinced by that line of enquiry. But it was the only one they had.
Both women realized that they had been letting their imaginations run away with them. They didn’t even know that the death had been unnatural, and already they were building up pictures
