Blood at the Bookies

Thirty-One

That evening Jude was getting ready for bed when Zofia returned from her shift at the Crown and Anchor. “Please, I am sorry for intrusion,” said the girl. “May I just check the email on the laptop?”

“Of course you can. But actually it’s not here. I took it downstairs, so that you’d be able to get at it. It’s on the kitchen table.”

“Oh, I am sorry. I did not look down there.”

“No reason why you should have done.” Jude belted her dressing-gown around her substantial waist. “I’ll come down and see if anything’s come through.”

“I just wish to see if there is anything more from Pavel,” said Zofia, as they made their way down to the kitchen. “I asked him if he knew about Tadek’s Joan.”

“Well, let’s hope he knows more than I thought I did.” And, while Zofia got to work on the keyboard, Jude spelt out the failure of her trip with Carole to the Bull.

“Ah yes, there is a reply from Pavel,” said the girl excitedly. “Quite a long one. And look – he has attached another song as well.”

Jude looked at the lines of incomprehensible words on the screen. “So what does it mean? What does he say?”

“I’ll tell you. First I get out my notebook, make some notes.” She opened the blue book on the kitchen table. Then, as her eyes scanned down the text, the girl translated from the Polish. “He say yes, Tadek did meet the English woman at the festival in Leipzig last summer. He say Tadek did call her ‘Joan’, but he think perhaps it is a nickname. The girl come up on stage and sing with the band one evening when they are in a club. That is how my brother meet her. And Tadek is in love…yes, yes, like he has never been in love before. Always the same with my brother. And Pavel says the woman is very beautiful.”

“What does she look like?”

“He does not say. Maybe later. It is a long email, and Pavel writes like he talks, all out of order, just thoughts as they come to him. Ah, and then he says the songs he is attaching are ones Tadek recorded in Leipzig with the girl, her singing to his accompaniment…Now he says why Tadek call her ‘Joan’. He think her voice like one of his favourite singers, Joan Baez.”

“Of course. His other song was called ‘Just Like Joan’. We got it wrong. The girl’s name wasn’t Joan, she was like Joan.” Jude was pretty sure now that she knew the mystery woman’s identity. “Can we hear the song?”

Zofia’s nimble fingers set up the playback. Again it was an amateur recording. “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’. Another Joan Baez standard. With Tadek’s acoustic guitar accompanying the pure soprano that Jude had last heard in the theatre at Clincham College singing ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”