Unlikely Graves (Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery series) (13 page)

Chapter 34

Amos had just put his calculations to one side when the day began to go rapidly downhill.

DC Michael Yates, who had been doing such sterling if plodding service, blotted his copybook by returning from lunch with the news that Sheila Burns, the chief reporter on the Lincolnshire Echo, had called while he was interviewing Mrs Gordon.

Yates had rightly picked up the call because staff were under strict instructions that Amos’s phone must be answered in his absence during a murder inquiry.

‘She was asking if you were free for coffee, sir,’ Yates told the inspector. ‘She said she had something very important to discuss.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Amos exploded. ‘Why the hell did you go for lunch instead of waiting for me to come out of the interview room? You could at least have left a message on my desk.’

Yates was spared further berating, at least for the time being, because at that moment Amos found out what the call was all about. The first edition of the Lincolnshire Echo dropped on his desk like a bombshell. Normally there was little in it to interest him. The better stories, news breaking that day, appeared in the afternoon editions.

If Sheila Burns was hoping to take her revenge after he had let her down earlier in the investigation, she had certainly succeeded. The front page lead must have been written overnight and Burns must have been sufficiently confident she had it all to herself if she had held it back to run all editions rather than slam it into the final edition the previous day.

She was right about that, and in labeling it EXCLUSIVE, too.

‘I saw the Randall murderer’ screamed the headline. A quick glance showed that Burns had achieved what Amos and his team had neglected to pursue, a chat with the elusive woman who lived almost opposite the late and so far unlamented Harry Randall.

According to the report, Joan Gunstone claimed that she ‘just happened’ to be looking out of her front bedroom window when she saw someone she took to be a woman knock at Randall’s door and he let her in almost immediately.

Gunstone was surprised that the woman was middle aged, since ‘it was usually tarty teenage girls’ visiting Randall and they never needed to knock because ‘he was always watching out for them’.

The witness went on to say that she had never seen the woman visit Randall before, although ‘of course’ she did not keep watch on his house all the time so she could not be sure that the woman had never been there.

However, she got a clear view of the murderer and would undoubtedly recognize her if she saw her again.

Gunstone certainly gave a good impression of keeping watch on Randall, for she was well aware of the regular if infrequent visits of a young man who called from time to time. Like several other neighbours, she was quite convinced that this was Randall’s son. Indeed, she stated categorically that it was, though there was nothing in the story to suggest that she knew for certain.

The report went on to describe Gunstone as well known throughout the county because she formerly ran a nursery garden on land that she had acquired at the back of her house and was something of an expert on hardy plants.

Amos grabbed his jacket, which he had only just dropped over the back of his chair.

‘Come on, Juliet,’ he called to Swift. ‘This time we will talk to the Gunstone woman if we have to knock the door down.’

Yates called across to him as he rose. He had returned swiftly to his desk just in time to pick up another call was waving a telephone with his hand firmly over the speaking part.

‘Sheila Burns again,’ he mouthed quietly.

‘Tell her she’s just missed me,’ Amos replied. ‘Say I’ll catch up with her later.’

It was not Burns that Amos was most anxious to avoid, though. As he and Swift made a hasty exit through the back into the car park, he caught sight of the lower half of David, the Chief Constable’s faithful lapdog, trotting down the stairs at the far end of the corridor.

As expected, Fletcher had according to his custom taken a glance at the front page of the first edition hoping to see some measure of support for his anti-smoking campaign and was affronted to see that priority was given to a murder, and one that he had not been properly briefed on at that.

Amos and Swift made their getaway down the steep hill that led to the lower part of the city, only to suffer the frustration of being held up at the level crossing near the station, where the barrier stayed down for a good 20 minutes as several trains came through.

‘What on earth’s going on?’ Amos demanded. ‘We never get more than two trains at a time if that, one each way.’

‘We heard about it at headquarters,’ Swift explained, ‘but it went right out of my mind in the rush. Motorists have been ringing up to complain. I gather that there has been a power failure on the main East Coast line through Grantham and trains are being diverted through here.’

‘Just what we need,’ grumbled Amos. ‘It’s too far to go round now. When we see the barriers come up, put on the siren and shoot round the queue.’

This proved to be of limited benefit. The car was too far back for them to see the barrier properly, so by the time Swift shot forward there was already a melee where the road turned left into the lower section of the High Street.

A large swell of pedestrians stretching across the road surged both ways over the tracks, colliding with the wave coming in the opposite direction and daring motorists to mow them down. As Swift took the turn on the wrong side of the road, she almost collided with the first vehicles forging through from the south.

She had just forced her way back onto her correct side when the barriers came down again. This time the hold-up cost another 15 minutes but at least when the way came clear again the siren parted the crowd like Moses and the Red Sea.

Swift took the siren off as soon as the officers were clear of the seething mass but the lower part of the High Street was narrow and the traffic was busy, so progress remained slow. Finally they made their way south to the road where Harry Randall had met his fate under the watchful but unhelpful gaze of Joan Gunstone.

The car finally pulled up at Gunstone’s home the best part of half an hour later than Amos had expected. There was already a posse banging on her door. Amos recognized the reporter from Radio Lincolnshire and a reporter and cameraman from BBC Look North.

They were looking pretty cheesed off. There are few more woeful or angry sights than journalists who have been scooped and who are being denied the opportunity to catch up.

Hope soared more than expectation as Amos jumped out of the car. The two reporters were shouting, one in each ear, and thrusting microphones in front of his face.

‘Is it true? … Joan Gunstone … murderer … witness … saw her … what’s happening … where is she? …’ Words and phrases whirled round Amos’s head without connecting. As the media crew had surged towards him, Amos was able to stride past them and get to the door.

‘It’s no use knocking. There’s no reply,’ the radio reporter called out.

‘Why did you give Sheila Burns a scoop?’ the woman from Look North demanded. ‘Is she giving you something on the side?’

Amos blushed, partly from embarrassment and partly from anger. There was absolutely nothing sexual between him and Sheila Burns, just good old-fashioned respect between two people who did their jobs well.

A denial of impropriety would sound hollow. Admitting that Burns had scooped the police as well as her fellow journalists could not be contemplated.

‘Get them off the premises, sergeant,’ Amos snapped.

He looked in through the two downstairs front windows as Swift ushered the reluctant broadcasting trio back to the pavement, working backwards and forwards like a collie in sheep dog trials.

There was no sign of life – or death for that matter, he thought with relief. With a nasty feeling, he opened the unlocked side gate and, shutting it behind him so the journalists could not see him or film him, he made his way down the side wall.

There was just one, comparatively small window. Amos peered in. It was an old-fashioned pantry, with cupboards and a wire-meshed ‘safe’, not the type where you kept valuables under lock and key but a cold stone for perishables dating back to pre-refrigeration days.  Four large meat hooks were fixed to the ceiling.

Amos reached the corner. The garden was very neat as far as a low wall, with flowers and, further back, vegetables. Beyond the wall Gunstone had acquired land around the back of her immediate neighbours’ properties. This far stretch was now overgrown.

The back door was immediately beyond the corner. It had clearly been forced. There was a concrete path along the back house wall and Amos looked to check that there were no obvious signs of footprints before edging forwards.

There was no-one in the kitchen, the room that the back door opened onto. Amos slipped on a pair of rubber gloves which, fearing the worst, he had stuffed into his pocket before leaving the car, and pushed open the door.

Joan Gunstone was prostrate in the hallway near to the telephone, which was lying on the floor, the receiver well clear of the hook. It looked as if she had been strangled, just like Randall. Perhaps the intruder had gained entry sufficiently quietly and taken her by surprise while she was on the phone.

Trying not to step any further into the hall than necessary, Amos lent over and picked up the telephone, dragging the receiver towards him by its cord. As he did so, the receiver started to emit the high pitched wail that warns householders that they have not replaced the phone after ending the previous call.

Amos, already feeling the tension, jumped visibly and dropped the phone with a clatter. He waited a moment, listening. The murderer had clearly not been gone long if the warning siren was only just cutting in and could still be in the house. There was no sound as far as he could make out above the angry wail of the phone.

The inspector picked up the phone, clicked on the handset to end the siren and get an answering tone. There was still no sound of movement upstairs but Amos was ready for anyone rushing down to escape.

He rang DC Yates at HQ.

‘We’ve got problems,’ he said. ‘Get the rest of the team down to Joan Gunstone’s house. The murderer got here before us.’

Chapter 35

‘Juliet,’ Amos said to his detective sergeant, ‘I want you to take charge here. You know the ropes as well as I do. I don’t suppose anyone will relish slogging through all the same house to house inquiries for a second time but at least the neighbours should be getting used to it. I’m going to do something else that I wish I’d done sooner. Best you don’t know about it. The Chief Constable won’t like it.’

Amos shot back to HQ. Sgt Jenkins was on the desk, which was a much needed piece of luck. Jenkins was in his early 50s and was nearing the point where he could retire on a 35-years’ service pension.

Now portly and with greying hair, he preferred the desk to pounding the beat while younger officers liked to get out a bit. He also preferred to take the line of least resistance, which meant that Amos could cadge a couple of burly uniformed officers.

Even Jenkins grumbled at this imposition, added as it was to the two officers he had supplied at short notice to keep the public at bay in front of Joan Gunstone’s house.

‘The sooner I have them, the sooner you have them back – and the pair you sent to Joan Gunstone’s as well,’ Amos sought to reassure him. ‘I just have to get a search warrant and get it signed by a magistrate so I won’t need them for another hour.’

Amos dashed off to his office before Jenkins had time to protest. He quickly grabbed a warrant form, filed in the details and wrote the address that he intended to visit on a piece of paper that he handed to Jenkins on his way out.

‘Tell them to meet me there in an hour. It’s down Sincil Bank,’ Amos said.

‘I know where it is,’ Jenkins replied with uncharacteristic irritability.

Jenkins would have to be taken for a pint, Amos realized. In fact, this was probably a two pint imposition. No, make that three Amos thought as he spotted David, the chief  constable’s running dog, heading down the stairs.

‘Not a word to David,’ Amos hissed.

As he left the office hurriedly through the front door, he could hear Jenkins muttering ‘This had better be worth it’ and David calling ‘Er, Amos, a moment’.

David would have caught Amos getting into his car but Jenkins saved the day.

‘He’s rushing back down to Sincil Bank,’ the desk sergeant said. David hesitated long enough to lose his quarry.

Five minutes later, Amos was at the home of Miss Woodward, the nearest JP. There had been no time to alert her but she was mercifully at home, she, but not her formidable reputation, having retired. After the lunchtime I’ve had, Amos thought, I deserve this luck. Let’s keep going while it lasts.

‘I’m afraid this is one of the most unpleasant search warrants I have had to ask for,’ he explained to Miss Woodward. ‘I am about to turn life upside down for entirely innocent people but there really is no option.’

‘What are you looking for, a body?’ Woodward asked with a hint of sarcasm.

‘Yes. Precisely,’ Amos answered to her surprise.