'What made you change your mind?' asked Pascoe.
'I needed a job, didn't I? Anyway, he told me there was regular transport laid on for the staff. So I thought, why not give it a whirl? I'm starting tomorrow so I can get to know the ropes before the next lot of guests come at the weekend. That's what it is mainly, see, these rich men coming up for the shooting.'
She spoke with real respect. No wonder Kassell had hired her! The rich would get real service. But what did that make Kassell? Added to the information supplied by Sergeant Myers, it made him a lot less than a perfectly respectable witness. Not that it mattered too much now that Mrs Warsop had changed her mind.
'On Friday night, did you notice the other people with Major Kassell?'
'Yeah,' she said. 'There was that bookie, Charlesworth. He gets in a lot. And this big fat bloke, pissed out of his mind. He looked a real villain! Is that who you're after?'
'No, no,' prevaricated Pascoe hastily. 'Just a general question. I was really just interested in the restaurant and the clientele generally.'
'Here, it's not old Abbiss you're after?' said the girl, with sudden malice. 'I could tell you a thing or two about his fiddles. You want to be looking at him and that old dyke from The Towers, that's what you want to be doing.'
'From The Towers?' said Pascoe, suddenly alert. 'You mean Mrs Warsop?'
'That's right. She brings her little fancy girls along, rubs knees with them under the table, it makes me sick!' said Andrea viciously.
'Bad tipper, is she?' said Pascoe disapprovingly.
'Tip? Her? You never see her money. Signs her bill, like she was important. But Abbiss, he never sees her money either.'
'What are you trying to tell me, Andrea?' said Pascoe gently.
But the girl had gone full circle and was now back to her original instinctive distrust.
'Nothing,' she said. 'I've said nothing. It's nothing to do with me any more. I'm off now.'
She stepped over the fence into her own garden. From the house a plaintive wail arose.
'Teeny! Where's my biscuits?'
'Thank Christ I'll be away from that!' she said half to herself.
'I'll see you again some time, Andrea,' promised Pascoe.
'Will you?' she said, turning on him a crooked, not unattractive smile. 'Perhaps.'
'Perhaps,' agreed Pascoe. 'Perhaps.'
Chapter 20
'All my possessions for one moment of time!'
Dennis Seymour was inclined to regard this consultation with Arnie Charlesworth as a slight on his own detective resources. Having spent several hours trudging round all the possible, and some pretty improbable, betting shops, he resented the implication that Charlesworth could cover the same ground with a few telephone calls. Worst of all would be, of course, if Charlesworth proved to have succeeded where he had failed.
No. He corrected this. It'd be a blow to his amour-propre, but the worst thing of all would be if this investigation which he had begun to regard as very much his own should finally grind to a halt.
Charlesworth lived in the highest of a quartet of flats carved out of a tall Victorian terraced house near the town centre. It was somehow curiously depersonalized, feeling more like a hotel suite than a permanent residence. The only personal touches were a set of racing prints on one of the lounge walls and a framed photograph of a group of young men in rugby kit, with one of them holding a large cup.
When Seymour introduced himself at the door, Charlesworth had regarded him with cold assessing eyes before letting him in. Not a man you could get close to, thought Seymour. There was something reserved and watching about him, a mind calculating the odds and at the same time sardonically amused at the absurdity of the race.
'Drink?' said Charlesworth. ‘I could manage a beer,' said Seymour, sitting on a rather hard armchair.
Charlesworth poured him a lager. He took nothing himself.
'Cheers,' said Seymour, taking a sip. 'Did you have any luck, sir?'
'Luck?' said Charlesworth as though it were not a word he was acquainted with. 'In the whole of this city there was only one bet placed which linked those three horses last Friday, and that was for a hundred pounds, and the punter concerned is well known by name and in person.'
'Ah,' said Seymour. 'No luck then.'
'How old are you, son?' asked Charlesworth.
It was an unexpected question, but Charlesworth was not the kind of man whose unexpected questions could be ignored.
'Twenty-three,' said Seymour.
'And you like your work?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Ambitious?'
'Yes, sir.'
What was all this about? wondered Seymour. Was he being sounded out for a bribe? The story of Dalziel's troubles, suitably embellished, was all over the station by now. According to this, the bookie had the fat man in his pocket; was he now looking to invest in the future?
If so, should not Seymour perhaps be flattered by being singled out as a prospective high-flier?
'I had a son,' said Charlesworth abruptly.
'Sir?'
'He was twenty-three when he died. Nearly. Another week and he'd have been twenty-three.'
'I'm sorry,' said Seymour helplessly. He finished his beer and made as if to rise, but something in Charlesworth's hard, set face told him that he was not yet excused.
'You interested in racing? Apart from professionally, that is?' asked Charlesworth.
'Well, yes. I like to go when I get the chance. And I like a bet,' said Seymour, glad to re-enter the realm of casual conversation, even if it might lead to some kind of offer which he hoped he'd have the strength and the sense to refuse.
'It's a mug's game,' said Charlesworth dismissively. 'Punters are mugs. Bookies can be mugs as well, but it takes another bookie to do that.'
Seymour laughed, deciding this must be a joke, but Charlesworth didn't even smile. Seymour wasn't sure what the subject was but he decided to change it.
'Nice prints,' said the young detective. 'Worth a bob or two if they're genuine.'
'They're what they look like,' said Charlesworth ambiguously. 'That's the most you can say about anything, isn't it?'
'I suppose so, sir,' said Seymour, using his interest in the prints as an excuse to rise and study them more closely, with a view to making an early exit.
'I had a Stubbs once. You know Stubbs?'
'I've heard of him,' said Seymour. 'That'd be really valuable, wouldn't it?'
'I let my wife take it,' said Charlesworth. 'She liked it. My son liked it too. So when we divorced, I let her take it.'
Seymour wandered round the room, showing great interest in long stretches of light green emulsion paint, till he arrived at the team photograph.
'Is this your son here?' he said, stabbing his finger at the youth holding the cup. 'I can see the resemblance.'
'No,' said Charlesworth. 'That's me.'
Seymour looked more closely. There was no writing on the photograph, but now he looked, he could see that the cut of the shorts, not to mention the hair, suggested a distant era.
'Rugby, isn't it?' he said.
'Yes. The Mid-Yorkshire cup,' said Charlesworth.
'Hold on,' said Seymour, peering even more closely. One of the figures in the back row, a large solid young man, well-muscled and with the grin of a tiger, looked familiar.
'That's never…' he said doubtfully.
'Your Mr Dalziel? Oh yes,' said Charlesworth. 'We go back a long way.'
'My God!' said Seymour, delighted. 'He hasn't changed much. I mean, he's put on a lot of weight, but you can still see…'
'He's changed,' interrupted Charlesworth brusquely. 'We all change, given the chance.'
'Yes, sir,' said Seymour. 'Well, thanks again for your help. I'd best be getting back. It's a pity, but I think we'll just have to give up on this one; I reckon it was always a long shot…'