Unlikely Graves (Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery series) (7 page)

Chapter 17

Amos returned to his allotted task – the one he hated. While there was a lull in proceedings he set about clearing the pile of paperwork that had built up while he had been distracted by the murder inquiry.

The chore had one silver lining, and a bright one at that: Jennifer.

Amos had scorned the idea of an admin girl being added onto his team. If there is money to spare, let’s spend it on another police officer, he had told the Chief Constable.

However, Amos had been forced to back down. He could not deny that the amount of paperwork was growing and that filling an increasing number of forms for every cough and splutter was not his forte. He regularly fell behind with the paperwork, and such as he did complete often bounced back as incomplete or unacceptable. Sarcasm sits uneasily on an official form.

Indeed, matters would undoubtedly have come to a head sooner but for DC Yates, who seemed to have an affinity for painstaking nitpicking. Even Yates, though, could not entirely protect Amos from the Chief Constable’s growing frustration.

Hence the arrival of Jennifer who was picked by Sir Robert Fletcher without Amos having any say in the matter. The first Amos knew about it was when the Chief Constable introduced her after her interview.

His first mental reaction, as he told Yates later, when no females were present, was: ‘She’s half my age and twice as beautiful.’

Fletcher already knew her and there was clearly some sort of link, though not a sexual one. Jennifer had money inherited from her grandparents and was happy to be in paid work while she was looking for some sort of enterprise to back. Perhaps Fletcher had an idea of pursuing a venture when he retired and was taking Jennifer and her money under his wing.

Amos resented Jennifer, not so much because she had been appointed without his involvement, but more because he hated to admit that Fletcher was right. Jennifer was good at her job and she and Amos had a real spark.

Amos often arrived in the office earlier than necessary to share a packet of muesli with his administrative assistant, dished out into two brightly coloured cereal bowls that she had brought back from a foreign holiday. Jennifer always started early and often finished late. She did not seem to have a social life.

She was also fiercely loyal to Amos from the start. The inspector felt confident that she was not snitching on him to the Chief Constable, who seemed to stay well clear of her once she had settled in.

Amos approved of backing new ideas with private enterprise. He was staunchly Conservative. He rejoiced at the election of Margaret Thatcher and supported most of her policies.

The unions had to be sorted and the crushing of the miners, although causing unpleasant scenes in nearby counties of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, was a necessary evil that warranted the considerable strains it had placed on the police.

He could not, however, forgive her for beginning the move towards increased bureaucracy that had inevitably resulted from the setting of meaningless targets.

He often complained that the police, like education and the health service, spent so much money keeping spending under control that the extra costs exceeded the savings, and that meeting an ever growing list of targets meant that less rather than more work was done.

Amos and Jennifer had just about cleared the paperwork by late afternoon when David, Sir Robert Fletcher’s press secretary and general dogsbody, came bustling round in the state of high excitement he always displayed when Amos was summoned into the Chief Constable’s presence.

David regarded Amos as a loose canon who usually managed to upset Fletcher one way or another, either by being too obsequious or by bordering on insolence. Either way, David was the one who had to suffer the chief’s ill humour for the rest of the day.

Much as he hated a visit to the inner sanctum, as the visit never served any purpose and often ended badly, Amos was glad to leave the last of the box ticking to Jennifer’s tender ministrations.

David hurriedly preceded Amos down the corridor and up the stairs to the Chief Constable’s office. Being younger and fitter, he took the stairs faster, though not so quickly as to open up a sizeable gap. He did not want to be alone with Fletcher awaiting the lagging Amos for more than a couple of seconds.

This was a clear indication, if one were needed, that Fletcher was not in a good mood.

‘He’s here, sir,’ David called out as he entered the door. ‘Right behind me.’

‘Yes, all right, David,’ Fletcher answered tetchily. ‘Have you got the press release ready to go out on the tobacco clampdown? All approved by the regional chief constables?’

Fletcher turned immediately to Amos without waiting for David’s reply. This was worse than expected. When in a bad mood, Fletcher would keep the summoned officer standing like a spare part while he dealt with his latest pet campaign. Dispensing with this preliminary demonstration of his superior status indicated a particularly bad mood.

Whatever shortcoming he had been summoned for, it had to be serious if it took priority over the about-to-be-unleashed campaign to stop retailers selling cigarettes to underage smokers.

‘What the hell’s going on, Amos?’

Amos was not sure what the rather vague question referred to so he assumed an air of innocence.

‘You mean the tobacco campaign, sir? I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Don’t play the bloody clever dick with me, Amos. Of course I don’t mean the tobacco campaign. That’s all under control because David and I are sorting it despite all the interruptions you are causing.’

David relaxed and allowed himself a small smirk, quickly hiding his expression by turning and shuffling the press release.

‘Don’t fidget, David,’ Fletcher barked. ‘I mean whatshisname, the chap you got murdered. What is his bloody name? And that kid in the rubbish tip.’

This was really bad, quite apart from the fact that the Chief Constable seemed to be blaming the inspector for Randall’s death. Fletcher, like Amos, was from the old school of life whose pupils did not clutter their sentences with meaningless expletives. It was, in Fletcher’s view, Amos’s one saving grace apart from the lesser consideration that the inspector was pretty good at solving difficult crimes.

Fletcher did not like even the most hard bitten of his officers using so much as the mildest of swear words on duty. It gave the public a bad impression and was not conducive to clear thinking.

Answer carefully, Amos told himself. Fletcher was rarely interested in knowing the names of crime victims.

‘Randall, sir. Harry Randall.’ Amos replied coldly. ‘He’s the one in the house. We’ve not yet identified the other body. It’s early days and there’s not much to go on.’

‘Yes, Randall. And the other,’ Fletcher said vehemently. ‘Are you trying to go round upsetting all the council departments in the county? First you get the refuse service on my back, now it’s the education department.’

‘Have you any idea how long it will take to trawl through all the school registers for the past 30 years?  Just when I need them onside for my tobacco campaign.’

‘We need to get the message across,’ he went on, leaning over and banging the desk to emphasise his point, ‘that schoolchildren will not be served cigarettes or tobacco in any corner of Lincolnshire. Stop them going into the tobacconists in the first place and we stop the problem in its tracks.’

Fletcher drew himself upright and sniffed. Amos, having already blundered at the start of this diatribe, judged it politic to remain silent.

‘Do you even know if whatshecalled … yes Randall, if his son went to school in this county?’

‘We’re not absolutely certain,’ Amos admitted cautiously, taking care to disguise the fact that he was not even certain that Randall actually had a son in the first place. ‘But it is highly likely.’

‘In any case,’ he added hastily before Fletcher could harangue him further, ‘it is vital that we find out what happened to him.’

If he did have a son, that is, Amos omitted to say out loud.

‘It is a very distinct possibility that he is the murderer,’ Amos continued. ‘As you know, sir, the overwhelming majority of murder victims knew their killer and most murders are committed by family members.’

Fletcher knew no such thing, having never been a detective nor ever having summoned up much interest in crime of any sort, but he could hardly admit his ignorance and retain his superiority.

‘So, we’ve got a corpse we can’t identify and another who may or may not have a son who may or may not have killed him and who could be living anywhere. That’s about it, isn’t it? Hmmm,’ said Fletcher.

Amos looked at the ground. There was no disputing that little progress had been made in either case.

‘And there is no obvious link between the two?’ the Chief Constable went on.

Again, Amos said nothing. He could not contradict what Fletcher was saying.

‘I think it would be a good idea, then,’ Fletcher concluded, ‘If I took the first corpse off your hands and gave it to Grimshaw. I don’t think you can cope with two investigations at the same time.’

Fletcher looked squarely at Amos. He knew the inspector and his rival of the same rank, Derek Grimshaw, were barely on speaking terms and that either would hate to have a case removed from their grasp and given to the other.

Amos made the unfortunate mistake of failing to conceal his relief. Fletcher had judged, incorrectly, that Amos would prefer to keep the body on the tip as being by far the more interesting and intellectually challenging of the two.

However, in Amos’s view it was better to keep the fresh case with fresh leads and a reasonable prospect of success. Grimshaw would get nowhere picking up a cold case and there was always the possibility that Amos could prize it back later, especially if it subsequently transpired that the two deaths were linked after all.

‘No, no,’ Fletcher commented reflectively. ‘Perhaps it would be better if you took the old case as you’ve had time to get a grip on it. You’re just the chap to tackle an awkward assignment. I’ll give Grimshaw the Randall case.’

It was at this point that Swift, who had been listening outside the door judging developments within, burst dramatically onto the scene.

‘There is a link,’ she declared breathlessly as if she had just run up the stairs. ‘It looks like the body on the rubbish tip was Randall’s son.’

Chapter 18

‘You really can be remarkably devious,’ Amos told Swift on the way back to CID.

‘It did the trick though, didn’t it?’ the detective sergeant replied with a self-satisfied smirk.

Chief Constable Sir Robert Fletcher had conceded that Amos should keep control of both cases, insisting unconvincingly that it was what he really wanted ‘just as long as there was a genuine link’.

Only as they were coming down the stairs did Swift admit that the link was hardly less tenuous now than it had been all along. She had not heard the full conversation between Amos and Fletcher but had hovered outside the door listening unnoticed to the later stages to see how the wind was blowing before making her dramatic intervention.

She had not, in fact, intended to make the link quite so palpable. She knew Amos’s golden rule that the less you told the Chief Constable the better. The aim was merely to convey that Randall did indeed have a son, a discovery that did at least suggest that the inquiry was making a modicum of progress. Swift had rightly judged, however, that something a little more spectacular was required.

By now members of the team had returned from further door-to-door inquiries in North Hykeham. Amos called them together in his office where they could update him without any possibility of others overhearing what was said. There was no point in risking a leak back to Fletcher.

DC Yates, who had been in charge of gathering information from the county education department, had fared better than expected despite the department’s protestations to the Chief Constable.

John Paul Randall had indeed attended school in Skegness, thrived and won a scholarship to Cambridge. Records showed that the boy was short and slight, just the candidate for the body on the rubbish tip. Furthermore, Yates had secured the names and addresses of other boys in his class at secondary school.

‘Ah well,’ Amos said. ‘This is becoming a familiar pattern in this case. We’ll divide the list up and take a batch each all in the same area. Can you arrange that, please, Juliet? We’ll go first thing tomorrow morning and we’ll assign one officer to each name rather than work in pairs so we can get through the list faster. In particular we obviously want to know where Randall junior is now, if he is still alive, and when anyone last saw him. Don’t be too direct, but watch out for any hints as to why there is no evidence of a family in Randall senior’s home. I shall take the school myself. We’ll meet up at the chip shop at the top end of Skegness High Street at noon – but don’t cut short any promising chat just to get there on time.’

At least this destination was the right side of Lincoln, though it was further in distance at 40 miles. The A158 over the wolds was a pleasant drive in the summer morning sunshine, though Amos half regretted that the quaint market town of Horncastle, which he always enjoyed seeing, now had a bypass that still managed to get clogged up with holiday traffic heading to and from the coast. They took two cars so that a full team could get round as many addresses as possible. The school itself was a co-educational grammar school that had withstood, even to the day that Amos now entered its portals, the inexorable march towards comprehensives. The county of Margaret Thatcher remained a bulwark of traditional education, although the outposts were gradually disappearing. Amos thoroughly approved. He had come from a relatively poor family and benefited from the grammar school system in its heyday in the 1960s. It had helped him to aspire to a less humble lifestyle than his parents. The experience, although life enhancing in his view, had not been without its drawbacks. His best friend at primary school had failed the 11 plus exam that was the gateway to a better education. Amos had at the time naively swallowed the line that you didn’t pass or fail but were ‘selected’ for the most suitable style of education. His friend was not so deceived, and the relationship withered.

Furthermore, his elder brother, though not quite so academically bright, had been expected to pass but did not. In those days parents had not heard of appeals and although the primary school headmaster was sympathetic, the case was not taken up. Consequently, a wedge was also driven between Amos and his resentful brother although they there was only 15 months difference in their ages.These thoughts went through the inspector’s mind as he walked into the school in warm sunshine. The shadows cast by the sun he thought of as the shadows of his past life, the people he once knew and never saw. The case was getting to him, he realized. There was so little to work on.

It was one of those buildings that you could tell immediately was a school, reassuringly solid and secure, built of brick and stone with tall railings round the perimeter. Amos had taken the precaution of ringing the headmaster’s secretary to warn of his impending arrival.

There were three solid doors, one on the left with ‘Boys’ and one on the right with ‘Girls’ etched prominently into the stone above the lintels. The middle door, the most solid of the three with thick metal hinges stretched across solid oak, was presumably the one for staff and visitors. Torn between a bell and a knocker, Amos selected the long metal dangling pole and was gratified to hear a clanging within. Old fashioned bells have more class, he felt, and were fitting for the type of establishment he was about to enter. For the third time in the short life of this inquiry, Amos found himself being ushered into a head teacher’s study. William Fox was aged about 50, probably too young for Amos’s purposes unless he had worked his way up through the school from his first posting.

Fox greeted Amos expansively, talking at a measured pace in cultured English but with a hint of an accent that could not be entirely hidden.

‘I’m looking for a teacher who was at this school 20 years ago,’ Amos said. ‘Is there a long serving member of staff you can think of? I take it you yourself are not from round these parts.’

Fox’s face fell at being rumbled.

‘No, I’m originally from London,’ Fox replied a little coldly.

Ah yes, Amos thought. That hint of accent is Cockney. Funny to think of someone trying to ditch a Southern accent to get a job further North. He knew of people who had concealed any connection with Lincolnshire in order to get employment in the capital, never the other way round.

‘Mrs Quinn, our head of chemistry, is from that era,’ Fox continued. ‘We’re very fortunate to have such an excellent teacher. I’m afraid girls didn’t take chemistry when she went to school and there was prejudice against employing her but my predecessor had more vision and snapped her up. The barriers preventing her from getting a department headship elsewhere worked in our favour. She’s busy at the moment blowing up the lower sixth – that’s a joke,’ he added hastily, ‘but she has a free period at ten thirty so you could see her then if you wouldn’t mind  waiting a few minutes. Unless it’s very urgent, of course.’

‘Ten thirty will do fine,’ Amos responded amicably.

‘May I ask what this is about?’ Fox inquired reasonably. ‘If it affects the school I should know about it, even if,’ he continued, hesitating for a moment then continuing with an overdone accent, ‘I was still darn sarf then. Nothing too grisly, I hope.’

Amos decided that a decayed body on a rubbish tip might be classified as grisly and replied simply and not untruthfully: ‘Missing person. And as you will have gathered,’ he added hastily, ‘from a long way back.’

Both men looked down at their hands for want of anything more to say. Amos was a poor conversationalist, especially so after an adulthood of asking questions bluntly rather than subtly.

It was Fox who broke the ice.

‘Will you be at Sincil Bank next season? Oh, no, I suppose that’s just uniformed officers.’

‘Actually, I will be there except when I’m tied up with a case but I shall be among the long suffering supporters, not on duty.’

‘It’s a bit of a problem for me,’ Fox responded in relief that he had found some common ground. ‘Leyton Orient were my old team. I’m never sure which side to support when they play Lincoln City. I guess you always look for your home town’s results first and it’s a bit of a wrench when I follow the Imps these days.’

‘Still, I think wherever you live you should fit in with the local life.’

Amos, who had never lived outside Lincolnshire but who felt some affinity, from his earlier days in the police force, for Skegness Town in a lower league, concurred. Then the bell for the end of the period rang a merciful conclusion to the banal and stilted effort at conversation.

Mrs Quinn came from Newcastle (‘that’s upon Tyne, not under Lyme,’ she stressed) but there was no need other than civic pride to explain as she made no attempt to hide her Geordie accent.

Besides, as she pointed out forcefully when Fox introduced the inspector as a fellow Lincoln City supporter, she had no cause to be ashamed of HER team, being in the Premier League and not among the soft southerners supported by her male colleagues. Lincoln to her was in the south.

‘Still, I don’t suppose you came here to be taught a lesson in football,’ she ventured. ‘How can I help you?’

‘Mrs Quinn,’ Amos said as Fox departed to leave them to it, as he put it. ‘I understand you have been here for some years. Do you by any chance remember John Paul Randall?’

‘I do indeed,’ Quinn replied enthusiastically. ‘The Saint.’

Amos raised his eyebrows in query. Quinn smiled enigmatically.

‘It was when Pope John died only a month after taking office and he was replaced by Paul. So we had John and Paul in quick succession. John Paul Randall was rather a quiet boy with a saintly air and that was when he acquired his nickname. Funnily enough, a few years later we got a Pope called John-Paul.’

‘You obviously remember him very well after all these years,’ Amos prompted.

‘I certainly do,’ Quinn said rather alarmed. ‘Has something happened to him? I hope not.’

‘We’re trying to trace him,’ Amos explained, again selecting the element of truth that suited his purpose. ‘His father has died and we have no idea where he is.’

Quinn reflected on this news. She had obviously not noted the murder reported in the media, or at least not connected the name of the victim with her former pupil.

Finally she said: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is either. He was a brilliant chemist, which is why I remember him so well, and he well deserved his place at Cambridge. He called in to see us during the three years he was at university just to let us know how he was doing. Then he just stopped calling.We get used to it. Most of our brighter pupils call in after they leave but they gradually all drop off. His visits lasted longer than most.’

‘So he left here in 1975 and you last saw him in 1978?’ Amos asked.

‘That sounds about right. I’d have to check the dates to be sure but that does sound right. He was a brilliant boy. I hope nothing has happened to him.’

‘Did he have any particular friends?’ Amos asked.

‘Not really. He was, as I say, quiet, and didn’t get into trouble. I wanted to nominate him as head boy in his final year but the head master – not Mr Fox then, of course – blocked it. He felt that John lacked the charisma and outward-going nature needed in a leader.’

‘Anyone who didn’t like him, then? If he was so talented there must have been some jealousies.’

‘I suppose there were, but nothing serious. Mind you,’ Quinn said thoughtfully and then paused. ‘I’m not sure I should mention this as it wasn’t really anything to do with John.’

‘Please forgive me for pressing you,’ Amos said gently, ‘but I would not be asking you about events so long ago if it were not important. Anything you say could help us to find what we are looking for.’

Quinn was clearly disappointed not to elicit anything more definite from Amos but she could hardly stop now, having broached what was evidently a sensitive subject.

‘John had a younger sister, Rita, who also attended this school. She was good at chemistry as well and she too ended up in Cambridge. Rita was only slightly less able but she made up for that in application. As a matter of fact, she was even more quiet and studious than her elder brother. There were just the two siblings, I believe. Well, John came to see me just after he got his Cambridge place and asked to have a quiet word in strictest confidence. He was very worried about Rita and wondered whether he should give up his place at Cambridge. You can imagine, I was absolutely stunned. I knew from the parents’ evenings that it was John and Rita’s father who turned up and took an interest. John told me that his mother had left home when he was about 13. His father had been violent towards her but had never touched the children. Thinking they were safe, she had escaped to relatives. John kept in touch on the QT. His father removed all trace of her. Any photograph she appeared on was destroyed. The clothes she left behind and any other personal possessions were dumped in the bin.’

Amos shuddered as he heard those last four words. Quinn did not notice and continued her narrative.

‘John said that his father had started to molest Rita and he was worried that his absence during term time would give his father free rein. I said to leave it with me but under no circumstances was he to give up his golden opportunity. The family lived in a cramped cottage and were struggling to make ends meet. I couldn’t believe what John was saying. Mr Randall was working nights to earn extra to keep his family together and be there to get breakfast and an evening meal for them at the start and end of his shift. He really encouraged them to do well and Rita’s school work did not seem to be suffering. I took her on one side discretely and asked if everything was OK at home. She said things were fine and I didn’t take it any further. John went off to Cambridge and Rita followed him in her turn.