“Thank you.” the binoculars were thrust back into the hands of their owner, who, given the breadth of Jude’s smile, could not fail to reciprocate with one of his own. But she didn’t see it. Already, with a querulous Carole in tow, she was trying to weave a speedy way through the melee leaving the grandstand down towards the railing.
When they got there, inevitably, Donal had filtered away into the crowd, but Victor and Yolanta Brewis were still at trackside. Though she knew who they were, Jude couldn’t really claim acquaintance. It was extremely unlikely that they’d even noticed her on the occasion they’d all three been at Long Bamber Stables. So, with a cautionary gesture to Carole, Jude slowed to within earshot of the couple, and became suddenly intrigued in the race-card details of the next set of runners.
The sight of Yolanta suggested that Carole’s anxieties about being overdressed had been unwarranted. She loomed, icily beautiful, over her husband, and wore a long wide-skirted, white sheepskin coat tied at the front with strings and bobbles. Thigh-length brown leather boots followed the shapely line of her legs down to unfeasibly sharp pointed toes, and on her magenta head was a brown leather hat with a two-foot radius. Her hands were encrusted with gemstone rings like mussels round the edge of a rock pool.
Victor too had pushed the sartorial boat out. Over bright yellow corduroy trousers and stout brown shoes, he wore a long coat in a bold tweed of ginger and bog green. The hat he wore exactly matched his wife’s, making his head look like an apoplectic ringed Saturn.
Jude had only seen them twice, but she got the feeling the couple didn’t possess any old clothes. Everything they wore seemed to have just come out of the cellophane, and gave the impression, like old music hall stars, of making “one appearance only.”
Though the Brewises’ appearance did everything to draw attention to them, their conversation, as overheard by Carole and Jude, was almost furtive.
“Do you think that will be enough to keep him quiet?” asked Yolanta in her heavily accented English.
“For the time being,” Victor replied.
“But if he gets nasty?”
“I may have to get nasty too,” said her husband grimly. Then he smiled at his wife. “If he makes trouble, at least we know where to find him. Couldn’t be handier.”
She chuckled. Victor Brewis opened his race card and spoke suddenly louder, all affability. “Now the horse George Tufton recommended is in the next race. We want to take a close look at him.”
“You are going to buy him, my darling?”
“If he wins, yes. If not, forget it. Let’s go and have a look in the parade ring.”
And they wandered off through the milling crowd, unaware of the sniggers that their appearance prompted.
“Who on earth are those people?” Carole asked.
Jude gave a quick resume of the Brewises and their connection to Long Bamber Stables.
“So Donal’s blackmailing them too, is he?”
Jude rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Or maybe they’re the only ones he’s blackmailing. A wealthy couple who have a connection to Long Bamber Stables-well, the Brewises fit that description just as well as the Dalrymples.”
“But isn’t it a huge risk, handing over blackmail money in a public place like this?”
Jude chuckled. “No, I would say it’s about the safest place in the world. Nobody thinks twice at a racecourse when they see a large wodge of cash handed over. It happens all the time.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right. So what do we do next?”
“What we came to do, Carole. Find Donal. Now we definitely know he’s here.”
“Where do we look?”
“Well, he could be round the stables or the horse boxes. But knowing him, I’d have thought it’s more likely he’s round one of the bars.”
Jude knew that Fontwell Park racecourse boasted a lot of bars. She was familiar with the large one, the National Spirit Bar, on the ground floor under the Kerman stand; the Comedy of Errors Bar nearby, and the Salmon Spray Bar next to the on-course betting shop. But she had to explore to find the Premier Bar and the Garden Bar under the premier stand, and the exclusive Owners’ and Trainers’ Bar at the back of the Salmon Spray. Alcohol was also available in the hospitality suites, but Jude didn’t think Donal Geraghty would be invited to any of those. He would have looked out of place amongst the suited executives and giggly wives enjoying their corporate freebie.
The National Spirit Bar was so full that Carole and Jude might easily have missed him, but they separated to do a dutiful trawl around the room, rejoining at the door to report their lack of progress. They checked the Salmon Spray Bar, which was equally crammed with people downing paper plates full of food-and a surprising amount of champagne. Being so much smaller, this was easier to search, but there was still no sign of Donal. They were making for the Premier Bar when Jude noticed the horses were moving from the parade ring towards the course.
“Oh, quick! I haven’t backed anything!”
“Surely finding Donal is more important than putting money on a horse?”
“Yes, but we haven’t found him, and he’s sure to be watching the race from somewhere, so we’d do better to continue looking after it’s finished.”
“But you can give one race a miss, can’t you, Jude?”
“No way.”
Jude’s fancy in the third was a tall rangy bay called Tout Complet, which she managed to get from a trackside bookmaker at nine to one.
They were too late to take their accustomed place in the stand, and watched the race from the grassy area just by the entrance to the premier stand. The horses were so close they could see every fleck of sweat and spatter of mud.
Tout Complet did everything that was required of it, staying close up to the pace for most of the race in fourth or fifth position. Then in the last five furlongs, he slowly accelerated, picking off the tiring horses in front of him, until he jumped the last just ahead of its nearest challenger. By this time Jude was bouncing up and down, shrieking deliriously. Carole, though less flamboyant in her excitement, also found herself shouting for the horse to win.
And it very nearly did. On the run-in, though, the odds-on favourite, which had been only fourth at the last jump, showed its flat-racing pedigree and sprinted to win by a short head.
“Oh well.” Jude looked glumly down at her ticket before tearing it neatly in two and dropping it into a nearby litter bin.
“You so nearly won ninety pounds,” Carole commiserated.
“A hundred and eighty.”
“What?” Maybe, Carole thought, there’s some aspect of racecourse mathematics that I haven’t grasped yet. “How’s that?”
“I put twenty on that one.”
“Twenty?” Carole’s jaw dropped, and, not for the first time, she wondered where Jude got her money from.
Her friend grinned. “You have to speculate to accumulate.”
“Maybe. But you may have observed that, while you are doing very well on the speculation front, you haven’t so far done much in the way of accumulating.”
“No. Early days, though. Three more races to come.”
“Surely you’re not going to bet on-” But Carole didn’t get the end of the sentence out. Instead she pointed towards the Salmon Spray Bar. Scuttling towards it was the unmistakable figure of Donal Geraghty.
“Come on. We’ll get him!”
Though it hadn’t given them as good a view of the course, their position by the entrance to the enclosure was now an advantage. They were well ahead of the postrace crowd and quickly into the bar. Donal, up at the counter trying to catch the barman’s attention, saw them immediately. They’d been worried how he might react. Do a bunk? Turn violent? After all, the last time they’d met, he’d just plunged a knife into the ample form of Ted Crisp.
But the incident did not seem to weigh on Donal Geraghty. Instead of more extreme actions, he just gave a crooked smile and said, “Well, isn’t that luck? Somebody to buy me a drink just at the moment I need one.”
“I’ll do it,” said Carole, moving up to the bar and opening her handbag. “White wine, Jude?”
“Please.”
“And is yours still the large Jameson’s?” She tried to sound as though she spent all her life ordering drinks for knife-wielding ex-jockeys at racecourse bars.
“Could you make that a quadruple? Gets too crowded in here to do a second round.”
He backed away and leant against the shelf round the edge of the bar, designed for the eaters to balance their paper plates of food. “So…Jude isn’t it?”
“That’s right.” She perched on one of the few tall stools.
“And what can I do for you? Is it a tip you’re after?”
“Might be glad of a tip later. I’ve had a disastrous afternoon so far.”
“Well, I can tell you what’ll win the next. It’ll cost you, though.”
“Cost more than a quadruple Jameson’s?”
“Maybe.”
Jude found it strange that he’d made no mention of their most recent encounter, given how dramatic it had been. Maybe he was ashamed of what had happened, but he didn’t show any signs of embarrassment. He behaved instead as if he had forgotten about the incident, as if it had never taken place.
Carole joined them with the drinks. The white wine came in little bottles containing two modest glasses’ worth. Her instinct would have been to buy only one for the two of them, but she wasn’t sure such parsimony would be appropriate to Jude’s expansive mood on the racecourse. Still, bearing at mind that they’d come in the Renault, Carole determined only to sip at hers.
Donal almost snatched his quadruple Jameson’s and, as ever without thanks, took a long sip. Jude didn’t beat about the bush. “When we last spoke, you were talking about blackmail.”
“Was I now?”
“Yes,” said Carole incisively, “and, in case you’ve forgotten, when we last spoke was in the Crown and Anchor, where you attacked the landlord with a knife.”
“So? Are you suggesting that gives you some kind of hold over me?”
“I’m suggesting that, if you don’t want to have even more dealings with the police, you might be wise to cooperate with us.”
“Hm.” Donal assessed this for a minute, then turned, with the satirical look of a submissive lapdog, to Jude. “So how can I help you?”
“You implied that you knew something about a married couple, and you were prepared to demand money from them to secure your silence on the matter.”
“‘Demand’ is a strong word.” He grinned. “I’d prefer ‘ask.’”
“Whatever. I want to know whether the married couple you’re putting the squeeze on are Yolanta and Victor Brewis.”
The fact that she knew the names shocked him. Thrown for a moment, he took a long shuddering swallow of Jameson’s. Seeming calmed, he smiled mischievously. “No. There’s all the answer I’m giving you. No.”
“So it’s the Dalrymples?”
The flicker of Donal Geraghty’s eyelids told Jude she’d hit a bull’s eye, but of course he denied the assumption. “I think you’re narrowing down your suspects too much. There’s going to be more than one couple having extramarital flings in a place like Fethering. Surely you know that.”
“I do. But, till you told me, I didn’t know it was an extramarital fling we were talking about.”
His face registered annoyance at his carelessness. “Ah, well now, I didn’t say…”
But backtracking was hopeless. Emboldened by the information she had procured, Jude pressed her advantage. “And might this extramarital fling have something to do with Walter Fleet’s murder?”
He smiled enigmatically. “I don’t think the change of circumstances there are going to stop me from getting my little meal ticket.”
“What change of circumstances are you talking about?”
“You mean you don’t know?” Teasing out his narrative, he took another long pull at his glass of Jameson’s and smacked his lips elaborately before continuing. “The case is over.”
“How do you mean?”
“The police know who killed Walter Fleet.”
“How?”
“Because they’ve had a confession.”
Jude looked appalled. “Not that poor girl?”
“Poor girl? I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s a man who’s confessed.”
“Who?” asked Carole.
“Alec Potton. Now do you want this tip for the next race or don’t you?”
He gave them a horse’s name. Chateau Dego. Jude put twenty pounds on it at sixteen to one. Carole desisted, not wishing to risk the precious three pounds fifty she had won on Becktrout. As a result, she missed out on the three hundred and twenty pounds that Jude won when Chateau Dego romped home by a mile.
But neither the winning punter nor the nonpunter showed much emotion. They reacted numbly, as in a daze. Carole and Jude were both preoccupied by the news they had heard about Alec Potton.