Unlikely Graves (Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery series) (6 page)

Chapter 14

DC Swift filled Amos in while DC Michael Yates was at the counter. There were no other customers in the café so there was no danger of letting incriminating information into the public domain.

‘First house, mother but no daughter. We asked her if she knew Randall just in case and showed her a photograph but she said she didn’t know him. I think she genuinely didn’t because she didn’t realize at first that he was the murder victim who had been splashed across Look North. It was only when she insisted on knowing what the inquiry was all about that she flipped her lid. Daughter’s at uni taking a master’s degree and doing very well, even allowing for parental exaggeration. She’s at University College London.Anyway, when I told her it was a murder inquiry that was it.

‘The second house we did was even worse. We saw a young woman of about the right age through a downstairs window as we approached but she stepped back when she spotted us. We must look like police or perhaps she’d heard about Randall and was taking no chances. We rang the bell and hammered at the door but got no response. I looked in the front downstairs window and Michael was able to get round the back but there was no sign of life. Finally we had to give up but whe n I glanced back I could see the same girl peeping round the bedroom curtains. She hid again when she saw me glance up.

‘Just to make up for that, at the third house we got a father and two daughters. However, it didn’t do us much good. It didn’t help to have the father sitting in a chair with a can of lager in his hand watching football on the telly. Football in the middle of the afternoon!’ He does no work but he can afford a satellite dish. He also made it clear that he discouraged his daughters from breaking out of the downward spiral although at least he didn’t stop them from going to a decent school.’ Anyway,’ she got back to the point after seeing Amos losing his customary patience at the deviation. ‘We couldn’t get much sense out of him and his presence put off the girls. We finally got the right daughter on her own in the kitchen. Given a choice between keeping an eye on us and the football, the football won.’

‘The damage was done, though. She firmly denied anything we asked. She actually denied attending the school! Those two girls were terrified. I’m going to tell social services about their father. The younger girl is still under age.’ Swift finally paused to sip her now tepid coffee. Sorry, sir,’ she said again between gulps.’

‘Don’t let it worry you,’ Amos assured her. ‘You’ve ascertained exactly the same as we did. We’re on the right track. These are obviously the girls who match the names in the diary. And whatever happened, it is something that they can’t or won’t admit.’

Swift broke the silence that followed.

‘Perhaps they won’t speak in front of a male officer. Why don’t I have a go at one more name on my own? What have we got to lose?’

Amos pulled out the now crumpled list from his inside pocket and selected the address nearest the café.

‘Best of luck,’ he said. ‘We’ll wait here for you. It’s walkable.’

Another round of coffees was ordered, although no-one really wanted one. Amos was simply uncomfortable occupying a table that had just been cleared of the used crockery without doing the decent thing and justifying keeping the otherwise empty café open.

They talked about anything but the case, mainly the sport that had aroused Swift’s scorn a few minutes earlier. Chief topic was Lincoln City’s ability to transform an apparently won game into defeat, especially at home, and the dangers of slipping out of the Football League and into the Conference.

Being based in the county town, they voiced their dismay that those upstarts at Scunthorpe United were in the ascendancy and settled a few mental scores over Grimsby Town, whose fortunes had sunk along with most of the trawlers that once docked at Britain’s premier fishing port.

It was three quarters of an hour later that Swift appeared. The length of time indicated to Amos that she must be getting somewhere at last. He looked up expectantly as she burst in through the door. Optimism immediately turned to dismay.

Swift’s face was drawn and ashen. She collapsed onto a seat, took a deep breath, then blurted out: ‘Sarah Daley is dead.’

Chapter 15

The other three officers present stared at her in silence for a few seconds. As Swift recovered her composure, Amos turned to the waitress behind the bar and called for a coffee. It seemed a rather meagre gesture but the place was not licensed to sell anything stronger.

The café was still empty apart from the four officers and the teenager doling out the sustenance, who was more interested in clearing up as a way of dropping a hint that she wanted to get off home early. There was still a quarter of an hour to the closing time shown on the door, so Amos had no compunction in making her earn the last few minutes’ worth of her wages.

He felt that they could talk freely as long as they kept their voices down.

‘When you’re ready,’ he said to Swift as the waitress retreated after bringing the coffee. ‘Take your time.’

Swift gulped the coffee before pronouncing: ‘That was the most ghastly interview I have ever conducted. I wish I’d taken Marie with me now for support. I was prepared for hostility, anger, indifference, obstruction … anything but what happened.’

‘Mrs Daley was there alone. Sarah was her only child, she said. Kind, loving, quite shy. Didn’t go out much. Came home from school, did her homework. She was doing really well and had some nice friends. Mrs Daley showed me her school reports. Sarah was in the top stream and was about fourth or fifth overall in a class of 30. You couldn’t get much from the teachers’ comments, which were all to a set formula that conveyed general wellbeing but no genuine information. Three years ago, just after her 16th birthday, it all changed. Mrs Daley says Sarah became fascinated with a girl called Christine. Mrs Daley couldn’t remember the surname and didn’t know anything much about her – not even where she lived. She’d been to a different primary school from Sarah and had her own group of mates. There were suggestions of bullying but none of the girls ever spoke up and the teachers closed ranks. Sarah just kept well clear lower down the school and they seem to have left her alone. There were none of the classic signs of Sarah being bullied. She never tried to bunk off school, in fact she couldn’t get there soon enough in a morning. Her pocket money was not going missing. Nor did her schoolwork ever suffer. Not until she was 16.’

‘Sarah seemed increasingly preoccupied leading up to the birthday. She still wanted to go to school but her homework started to suffer a bit. She also made the occasional mention of Christine. Mrs Daley was initially alarmed but Sarah assured her that Christine was “all right” and not a problem. The mother satisfied herself that Christine was not picking on her daughter. Quite the opposite. She got the impression that there was a bit of hero worship. It was like a teenage crush. Mrs Daley didn’t like it but felt that interfering might create a problem where none existed so she decided to leave well alone. After all, Sarah didn’t seem at all unhappy. Just distracted. Mrs Daley thought she would probably just grow out of it.’

Swift finished her coffee. The waitress seemed to have given up on getting rid of her troublesome last customers and sat resignedly on a stool in a corner listening to something mindlessly beating a steady, monotonous tone on her earplugs.

‘It was a few days after Sarah’s 16th birthday that Mrs Daley’s world started to fall apart. One afternoon Sarah came home later than usual from school, very agitated. She rushed straight up to the bathroom and bolted the door. Mrs Daley could hear the tap running and was frankly alarmed. It just wasn’t like Sarah to come home late, even by just an hour as in this case, and certainly not to run upstairs without saying hello properly. Mrs Daley knocked on the bathroom door and there was no response. However, on the second knock Sarah answered, though rather curtly, which again wasn’t like her. She said she wanted a bath and wasn’t hungry. She’d have something to eat later. Mr Daley had a beard so there were no razors in the bathroom and when Sarah could be heard getting into the bath and splashing a bit as if washing herself, Mrs Daley was a little less anxious, though her fears rose again as Sarah spent nearly an hour in the bath. Somewhat alarmed again, Mrs Daley went upstairs half way through and this time Sarah shouted that she was all right and to leave her alone. The family always ate as soon as Mr Daley came home from work but on this occasion Sarah stayed in the bathroom long after her father had appeared. He at least was hungry. He worked in the fields picking vegetables and ate like a horse but Mrs Daley couldn’t touch her food.’

‘Sarah finally emerged in pyjamas and dressing gown, hardly ate and hardly spoke a word apart from a few grunts. It was so unlike her. She was always chatting about the school day normally. She went off to bed and switched off her bedroom light. Mrs Daley couldn’t be sure, but when she and her husband turned in she thought she heard Sarah sobbing. When she opened her daughter’s bedroom door to check, it all went quiet and Sarah pulled the sheet up almost over her head and kept her eyes tightly closed.’

Swift picked up her mug again, saw it was empty and put it down. She shook her head when Amos turned round to order her another coffee. She was beginning to drown, in coffee and in her story.

‘From that point on, Sarah became completely withdrawn,’ Swift picked up the tale again. ‘It was as if she was in a permanent state of shock. She just nibbled at her food and left much of it. Conversation virtually ceased. Likewise her homework. Mrs Daley feared that Sarah had been rebuffed by Christine and was now being bullied, though Sarah denied it vehemently, insisting that Christine was all right. She seemed terrified of her mother having it out with Christine so Mrs Daley backed off. Instead she went round to the school surreptitiously and hid where she could see the playground. When the girls came out in the morning break, Sarah wandered off into a corner on her own. Christine and her cronies made no attempt to come near her. They never touched her or even looked at her, nor did they say anything to her.

‘Mrs Daley returned to her vantage spot at going home time and once again there was absolutely to sign that anyone was picking on her daughter. Sarah and Christine actually exchanged a nod and “bye” civilly if briefly. At home, Sarah refused to talk about whatever the problem was. Rather, she denied that anything was wrong. If Mrs Daley pressed her she just became more withdrawn so she had no choice but to back off and hope that it would all resolve itself. It didn’t. When Sarah was down to less than six stone, they had to seek medical help. Her daughter was vanishing before their eyes. It was too late. Sarah fooled the medical staff by pretending to eat and hiding the food, as they discovered later. She died within a week of being admitted to hospital. Mr Daley blamed his wife and the two split up in acrimony. He lives down on the fens somewhere. She stayed in the house clinging to memories and wondering where it all went wrong.’

Chapter 16

‘How’s the house to house going?’ Amos asked his team as they reassembled the following morning.

‘We’ve managed to talk to all the neighbours except one.’ Swift reported. ‘Rather annoyingly it is the house almost directly opposite Randall’s. According to the electoral register there is just one person living there -  Joan Gunstone.’

‘She’s deliberately avoiding us,’ DC Marie Holmes added. ‘I’ve been twice and the second time I’m sure I heard someone inside. The first visit I didn’t think anything much of it. We were trying to work our way down the street and we just moved onto the next house if we got no response anywhere.’

‘When we went back in the evening to work through the houses that were empty in the daytime I could hear a vacuum cleaner running as I got to the door and it stopped as soon as I knocked.’

‘OK,’ said Amos. ‘We ought to have enough to go on with the statements we’ve got. If we need to talk to the errant Gunstone we’ll catch up with her later. Let’s look through the statements that we have got to get a general picture.’

No-one had seen anything suspicious or out of the ordinary in the days leading up to Randall’s death, nor had anyone spotted a visitor on the day he died. A man in his late 30s, or early 40s, but possibly just still in his 20s or just into his 50s, depending on whose statement you consulted, was an occasional but irregular visitor.

The women tended to put his age lower and his height higher than the men but it seemed to be the same person despite widely differing descriptions, and everyone agreed that they had seen him more than once.

‘Never rely on witnesses to settle a court case,’ Amos remarked sardonically.

One neighbour remembered the mystery man visiting a week earlier, or it might have been 10 days or a fortnight, or a bit less than a week, she couldn’t be sure. It was sometime in the afternoon, or maybe early evening, almost certainly on a weekday.

Hardly anyone had had much of a conversation with Randall, who seemed to have been a fairly unsociable sort of person, civil but not chatty. He had driven a car until three or six months ago or a year or two depending on who you asked but had given up after a minor accident. No-one was injured but he had been badly shaken, one local resident said.

He had mentioned having a son to another neighbour but was vague about where he was or what he did. That could account for the irregular visitor, Swift suggested.

‘Yet Randall had no telephone numbers written down and no photographs of any children on show, not even of one with the mother of his child,’ Amos protested. ‘Surely in this day and age he would have his own son’s phone number. After all, he did have a telephone.’

The group sat in silence, digesting this curious state of affairs. After a few moments Amos said to DC Michael Yates: ‘Sorry, you get the short straw. Get onto the county education department to see if any boy called Randall came through the system. He may not have been in Lincolnshire but if he was we need to know date of birth, full name, address, primary and secondary schools he attended. See if he passed any GCEs or A levels and if he did, which university he went to. Let’s see if we can track him down before he turns up again to find his father has been murdered. It’ll be a bit of a shock – unless he did it himself, of course, which is quite possible, in which case we need to find him even more urgently.’

Yates took the hint and strode off to his desk, picking up the phone as he walked round it to his seat.

‘And let’s go back to the neighbours who claim to have seen him to find out if they can remember anything, anything at all, that might cast light on him or his whereabouts,’ Amos went on. ‘Juliet, I’ll leave you in charge of that.’

‘There’s one other thing,’ Swift replied. ‘Randall did have an altercation with one of the neighbours, though it was quite a while ago now. At one point there was a bit of trouble in the area with teenagers hanging around the end of the road. Mainly boys but one or two girls sometimes.’

‘They got quite unpleasant with anyone walking past, especially after they had had a few lagers. It was worse if there were a couple of girls there because the boys were keener to show off. Apparently while all his neighbours were up in arms about it – complaining to the police, council and the local newspapers, Randall would stop to speak to them whenever he went past them and didn’t get any abuse. The neighbours muttered about it but didn’t say anything to Randall apart from dropping hints. One person did tackle him, though. George Scott at number 63 used to go round in a morning picking up the litter and accused Randall of encouraging yobbish behaviour. Randall said the kids were all right and weren’t doing any real harm so Scott saw no point in pursuing the matter with him. He just kept on clearing up the cans. After a while the situation resolved itself. Either the teenagers tired of the sport or they grew up or moved on to pastures new.’

‘Randall seems to have an affinity with young people,’ Amos remarked drily. And with that the team broke up to press on with their tasks.