Blood at the Bookies

Thirty-Three

Jude would have gone straight round and told Carole about the confirmation of Sophia Urquhart’s presence in Leipzig, but her friend had said she was going to take Gulliver out for a walk. So Jude rang Andy Constant’s mobile.

“I wondered if we could get together.”

“I don’t see why not.” His voice was full of lazy self-congratulation. The parting from their last encounter had not been harmonious. When she’d seen Tadek’s guitar in the Drama Studio, Jude had broken from their kiss to question Andy about it. The interruption had destroyed the mood between them and certainly thwarted the plans he had been nursing for the rest of the evening. In his frustration he had become very childish and refused to answer her questions.

But there was still information Jude needed that she could only get from him, so another meeting was imperative.

Of course, Andy Constant, being the kind of man he was, interpreted her getting in touch with him as the action of a woman who had seen the error of her ways. Yes, she must have known she had behaved badly when they last met, but she obviously couldn’t stop thinking about him. He reckoned the old Andy Constant animal magnetism was once again exerting its irresistible pull.

Jude didn’t mind what he thought her motives were, so long as he agreed to see her again. Which he readily did. “Don’t let’s bother with meeting in the pub,” he said, his voice low in a way that he knew to be sexy. “Come straight to the Drama Studio.”

“Will I be able to get in?”

“I’ll leave the building unlocked.”

“I meant – will I be able to get past security on the main gate?”

“There’s another way in. There’s a small door into the campus in Maiden Avenue. It’s meant to be locked, but some of the staff have keys and it very rarely is. A lot of the students come and go through it.” There was something unappealing about the practised ease with which he went through these details. Jude wondered how many other women had been given these instructions before an assignation with Andy Constant.

“All right. I’ll come in that way.”

“Good, Jude.” He sounded patronizing, as if speaking to a recalcitrant child. “Let’s say six o’clock. I’ll really enjoy seeing you.”

I wouldn’t be so sure about that, thought Jude as she finished the call.

She rang to see if Carole was back, but there was no reply. In the afternoon she had a couple of clients for her healing services, a man with a stomach complaint for which the doctors could find no explanation, and a woman who suffered from panic attacks. In both eases Jude felt she made some progress.

Just before she left for Clincham, she tried ringing her neighbour again. Still no reply. Must be out.

Inside High Tor, Carole looked at the Caller Display and did not pick up the phone.

The door in Maiden Avenue was, as Andy Constant had promised, unlocked. The road fringed Clincham’s main park and there was no street lighting. The February night was dark. Jude slipped into the campus, reflecting on the laxness of the security. No doubt an alternative means of access was convenient for the staff, but it would only take one incident of violence by an outsider against a student for them to realize their foolishness in leaving the door unlocked.

Jude hadn’t yet worked out the best approach to use with Andy Constant. Her suspicion was growing that the lecturer had killed Tadeusz Jankowski. Replaying the scene she had overheard between him and Sophia Urquhart in the Bull made her more certain than ever that they were lovers. He was having an affair with ‘Joan’ and ‘Joan’ was Sophia’s nickname, at least for Tadek. Maybe she had told her Drama tutor that and he had relished the idea of using it as well.

Andy Constant was a spoilt and petulant man, used to getting his own way. He wouldn’t have taken kindly to having a rival for his beautiful student’s affections. Quite how he’d come to be in Fethering to meet and kill the young Pole, Jude didn’t know, but she felt sure she could find out.

As she pushed open the door into the unlit Drama Studio block, she felt a little stab of fear. If Andy was the murderer and she threatened to reveal that fact to the world, he might not think twice about killing again. Pauline’s late husband’s view that the prime motive for murder was to keep people quiet came into her mind. She needed to be very circumspect in her approach.

There were no lights on in the lobby, but memory guided her towards the door of the studio itself. She pushed open its heavy mass. The only light inside came from an illuminated ‘Exit’ sign.

It wasn’t a lot, but sufficient for her to see the body of a man lying on the double mattress. And sufficient to be reflected in the glistening of wet redness on his chest.

Jude heard a sound behind her in the lobby. She reached for her mobile and pressed the buttons to dial Carole’s number.

In High Tor, as soon as the caller was identified, the phone remained untouched.