‘Are you saying that the body came in with a routine rubbish collection?’ one of the weekly newspaper reports asked.
‘We think that is probable, almost certain,’ Amos replied. ‘The young man was relatively short and we believe quite slim. Although he would have been fairly heavy compared with the usual rubbish bag, two people could easily have lifted him into the truck.’
A thought struck Amos: ‘Look, just off the record for the moment.’
David, who had been relaxing a little, could be seen tensing up in fear of what indiscretion Amos might blunder into. He need not have worried, however.
‘I hope you will all treat this matter with come sensitivity.’ Amos continued. ‘This person was someone’s son, perhaps a brother or even a father. It’s pretty distasteful to be treating him as a piece of rubbish. OK, back on the record.’
‘Do you have any idea in what town or what area the body was picked up?’ Sheila Burns asked archly.’
‘We have a fair idea from papers found near the body, but unrelated to it, where it came from but we believe that is irrelevant,’ Amos admitted. ‘We cannot be sure that the victim was from the East Lindsey area and our inquiries so far suggest that the young man came from further afield, possibly from outside Lincolnshire altogether. We have alerted neighbouring police authorities and they are checking their missing persons files.’
‘I take it we are talking murder?’ the local newspaper reporter asked.
Amos was surprised that this assumption had remained unsaid for so long.
‘We are treating this as murder.’
Press conference over, Amos reported back to Swift.
‘It went pretty well, I thought. Now all we can do is get on with our other work and wait for developments.’
One came sooner than expected.
Chapter 9
The call came from Gainsborough police station just before 5pm.
‘There’s a guy here who knows something about this body you’ve found,’ the station sergeant from further north up the A156 told Amos. ‘Says he wants to talk only to you. One of the detectives here tried to persuade him to tell us more but he threatened to leave.’
At least one good thing had emerged from the hasty press conference. The inspector’s name had been on the radio all day and in some editions of the evening papers, so anyone with information would know who to ask for. Amos had so little to go on that he preferred to hear any news first hand.
‘Tell him to hang on and we’ll be there in half an hour. If he won’t hang around get his name and address and we’ll go to his home – but don’t tell him that as I’d rather see him at the station. I’ll need an interview room. Is that OK?’
‘Understood, sir.’
Swift’s ears pricked up. Although she could not hear what was being said on the other end of the line, she sensed the slight but perceptible note of excitement in Amos’s voice.
‘You won’t believe this,’ Amos told her, ‘but we may have a breakthrough. You’d better come with me. You drive and I’ll put on the blues and twos until we’re nearly there. I don’t want this guy to lose interest. Gainsborough it is.’
Most of this utterance was delivered on the way to the car park as the two officers hurried from their desks. Swift, being younger, had faster reactions and could drive more quickly. Strictly speaking, this was not an emergency and Amos did not switch on the blue flashing lights and two tone siren until they were well clear of HQ. He switched them off again about half a mile from Gainsborough police station.
The informant had chosen to wait for them. At first glance Amos could see why. Moving any distance would clearly be a struggle. To the inspector’s astonishment, Swift immediately recognized him.
‘I’ve seen you at rugby matches in the past,’ she said. ‘You talked to my boyfriend Jason a few months ago after a match.’
Amos shuddered inwardly. Swift’s macho young man, a thug of a prop forward, occasionally came into the CID office in Lincoln pleading in tears with Swift after one of their many petty squabbles.
However, this 40 something year old man before them now hardly looked as if he himself had been a player even in his prime. Swift gave him a hand as he struggled to his feet.
He was six feet tall and overweight and he needed a walking stick to accompany the two detectives to the interview room. Lack of mobility meant that he was short on sufficient exercise and lack of exercise added to his weight problem. Amos noted that as he walked with stick in right hand he held his left hand across his back.
Once ensconced in the interview room, and a certain breathlessness notwithstanding, the man was quickly into his stride, verbally if not physically.
‘My name’s Guy Stone. Just to fill you in,’ he said directly to Amos, ‘I used to be a rugby player. You wouldn’t think it now to look at me but I was pretty good for local rugby. Now I’m reduced to scouting for the county, and I haven’t been able to manage even that for the past few weeks.
‘That’s why I talked to Jason,’ he added to Swift, ‘as you probably gathered. He’s got talent. He just needs to curb his temper.
‘Anyway, about why I came here and asked how I could contact you. I think I put your body on the dustcart. It was the mistake of my life.’
Stone paused for breath.
‘Do you want a tea, coffee?’ Swift asked. ‘We could try to rustle something up.’
‘No, thanks. I just get a bit short of puff. Walking’s not too bad, it’s getting in and out of a chair that knocks me.’
After a further pause, Stone continued: ‘I was on the bins. No wheelie bins in those days. Bin men have gone soft. We had to pick up the bags and sling them on the lorry.’
Amos smiled to himself. He could remember when a week’s rubbish was put out in a metal dustbin and the binmen slung it onto their backs and tipped it over their heads into the wagon. The binmen of his day had thought Stone’s lot had gone soft just slinging black bags onto the lorry.
‘One day we were going down East Street – I lived and worked in the Louth area then – when I went to pick up this bag and it was heavy. Actually, it was two bags, one inside the other and I actually tore the outside bag trying to lift it.’
So far so good, Amos thought. That could well be the tear that eventually exposed the skeleton arm.
‘One of the other guys offered to help me sling it on,’ Stone continued. ‘but I was too proud. I was strong and I knew how to lift, bending your knees and not your back, so I shifted it on my own. The lads gave me a round of applause and I took a bow.
‘That’s when I felt it as I straightened up. Just a sharp twinge and it was gone. But as the day wore on I was starting to feel it in my back.’
Stone paused again.
‘You seem to remember all this remarkably well,’ Amos interposed. ‘People don’t usually remember events of 15 years or so in such vivid detail.’
Stone snorted sardonically.
‘Oh yes, I remember it all right. How could I forget? It was the beginning of the end. I have had plenty of time to think about it since and often wondered what was in that bag. Now I know.
‘Next morning I could hardly get out of bed. I had to take a couple of days off, the first sickies I had ever taken. I tried to get back to work but after a few weeks my back was really playing up.
‘We were near the end of the rugby season and I hoped the summer layoff would do the trick but I never played again. Over the years my back has got worse, not better.’
Stone struggled to reach into his inside jacket pocket and fish out a piece of paper.
‘You can have this,’ he said. ‘I wrote down the date I was finally laid off by the council. The incident with the rubbish bag must have been early March that same year.’
Amos took the piece of paper. The date on it was 15 November, 1977. The previous March fitted in with the dates found on papers with the body.
‘I don’t suppose you remember which house the bag was outside?’ Swift asked
Stone shrugged.
‘It was pretty near the bottom, on the left hand side going down. I don’t remember precisely.’
‘I’ll need your address, Mr Stone,’ Amos said. The inspector wrote down the details that Stone gave him on the piece of paper below the date.
‘Phone number?’
Stone shook his head.
‘Mr Stone,’ Amos said, ‘many thanks for coming forward. It’s much appreciated. We’ll give you a lift home.’
This offer proved more difficult to fulfill than Amos expected. Stone took several minutes to shuffle to the police station car park and he struggled to get into the back seat. Then the same performance was required to get him out of the car and into his house.
Amos’s conscience over the misuse of sirens prevented him from activating the device to speed the car twice in one day, so it was well after 7pm when they reached HQ.
Sergeant Blackbourne was at the desk. He greeted the returning pair with the words: ‘Better turn right round. We’ve got another body for you. This one’s a bit fresher.’
Chapter 10
The telephone stood in the hall on a small, nondescript table about three feet high and about four feet by two. Amos opened a drawer at the end. Two diaries, one for the current year and one for the previous year, were at the front.
He and Detective Sergeant Juliet Swift had cut round the north and west side of Lincoln, avoiding the worst of the end-of-the-working day traffic and, more importantly, the dreaded level crossing gates in the lower part of the High Street which would be rising and falling more frequently at this time.
The judicious occasional use of sirens had carried them through rapidly towards North Hykeham on the directly opposite side of the county capital from Nettleham.
The road where the murder had taken place was a quiet one with detached and semi-detached houses. The victim, identified from the electoral roll and confirmed in the telephone directory as Harry Randall, lived on the north side of the road, the rear giving a partial view of the cathedral perched on the edge of the ridge.
Amos flicked over the pages of the current diary. Its pages were completely blank. The one for the previous year was similarly empty as far as events or appointments were concerned but it did contain first names and, in some cases, initials that appeared on two or three weekdays each week.
The officer went back to January of the earliest year and looked through. The first two names appeared on the sixth: Emma J and Chris. There was nothing else that week but Emma J and Sue appeared on one day the following week while Pat and Kate S made an appearance two days later along with Chris.
Lizzie V was listed a week later with Emma J and Chris again recorded. Amos flicked on. Names were repeated and new ones appeared, including Emma T, Jo B and Hilary. The name Lizzie cropped up again but with no initial, although there were two other Vs in the following two weeks, Jane and Teri.
Amos flicked on, pausing less as he worked through April and May. Lizzie never reappeared although Teri and Jane were back several times without the initial.
In June, for the first time, words appeared. The names Emma J and Kate T were followed in capital letters and with two exclamation marks by the remark: TENNIS SHORTS!! It was not clear whether this related to the two girls. It was written beneath their names but could be a separate entry.
As none of the names had previously had any other wording, Amos decided to keep an open mind although, as he commented to Detective Sergeant Swift who appeared at his elbow: ‘Randall was a bit old for taking up tennis and he would hardly have rated buying a pair of tennis shorts as worthy of two exclamation marks.’
A couple of weeks later the sport rated another mention under the names Kate T and the V-less Jane. This time the message, again in caps but minus exclamation marks, was: “LATE. 5PM. TENNIS PRACTICE”.
Tennis practice occurred each week on a Thursday until the second week of July, when it ceased abruptly. The names thinned out rapidly and there was a gap for about five or six weeks before they started up again on the seventh of September. One or two new names appeared, including Joan V, while Emma J and Kate T, so prominent earlier in the year, had vanished.
Arrivals and departures evoked no comment or explanation in Randall’s diary but hockey practice now caused delays, with 5pm or even 5.30pm recorded on some Tuesdays. As with tennis, the same names tended to appear on hockey practice days. The names petered out towards the end of September and the last entry, the lone Jane, was recorded in mid-October.
‘What strikes you?’ Amos asked his deputy.
Swift replied promptly.
‘All the names are either girl’s names or could belong to either sex. Chris or Pat. There are no entries that are specifically boys.’
‘The initials are presumably surnames to distinguish the Kates and Emmas of this world.’
‘Strange that the letter V crops up several times,’ Amos replied thoughtful. ‘It isn’t a common initial for a surname. Vernon, Vaux, Vardy.’
‘Sisters, cousins,’ Swift suggested.
‘There’s something else,’ Amos continued, effectively ignoring Swift’s contribution. ‘In all other cases where a letter is used, there are two similar first names and the initial appears every time. But with the Vs, they occur even where there is no duplication of name and the letter disappears after the first mention.’
Amos put down the diary and rooted around in the shallow drawer. Pushed to the back were two more books of similar size. They turned out to be diaries for the previous two years. Underneath them was a photograph of the dead man.
The pattern of names, some with initials, some without, was repeated in these diaries.
The previous year, netball rated a mention in February and March together with the epithet: ‘SHORT SKIRTS!!’. Again, capitals and two exclamation marks.
‘Look,’ said Amos. ‘Some names disappear in the summer just as they did in the latest diary. I think we can work out why.’
Chapter 11
Amos spotted Constable Gordon Dean through the open door of the living room. Dean, he knew, was a local man and would be familiar with the immediate neighbourhood.
‘Gordon,’ Amos called. ‘Which is the nearest school to here?’
Dean answered without hesitation: ‘The county primary is just up the road and round the corner. No more than a couple of minutes walking.’
Amos stood thinking, which gave Dean time to consider further.
‘There is a girls’ secondary school but that’s a good bit further. It’s in Sandy Lane. Walkable but 10 to 15 minutes I should say.’
Amos took out a notebook and wrote down the names of the girls, divided into school years as they appeared in the diaries. It was a failing of his to do jobs that he ought to delegate to his juniors.
The willingness to get drawn into time-consuming, nit-picking work had often stood him in good stead when it came to solving crimes but it took his attention away from the big picture, the commitment to overall strategy that was essential in the winning of promotion.
Results, in the police as elsewhere, did not count for everything. Still, they gave Amos a pride in his work. As he sometimes remarked, you have to live with yourself.
Amos left his team searching through the dead man’s house and made the short walk to the local county primary school. There were no more houses between Randall’s house and the left hand turning that the constable had directed him to take except for a Victorian redbrick building just on the corner.
It had been the old all-age school before the coming of secondary moderns and, subsequently, the comprehensives that had been long resisted in rural Lincolnshire.
The building had now been converted into flats. To retain the air of authenticity so beloved of those who like to live at addresses such as the old rectory, the old bank or the old school, the lintels bearing the respective inscriptions Boys’ Entrance and Girls’ Entrance had been retained but the doorways had been bricked up and new ones knocked out.
Those were the days when people knew where to put apostrophes, Amos mused as he walked past. And why retain the lintels but not the doorways, he wondered. Around the corner a narrow roadway now gave access to the playground, which had inevitably been converted into a car park. It was about half full at this time of day, the ranks of dwellers split between those who drove to work and those who walked, used public transport or stayed at home.
About 100 yards or so further on was the new primary school, its thin prefabricated walls a stark contrast to the solid Victorian building it replaced.
The single storey building was concrete up to window level then wood and glass. The roof was flat. Although the height of the rooms was considerably lower than in its predecessor, it probably cost a good deal more to heat, Amos thought, and probably to maintain as well.
Amos walked along the high wire netting that marked the edge of the playground. Here and there it had become unravelled and at one point it was possible for a small child to squeeze through.
The entrance to the school was a wide double gate, one of which had been left open in disregard of safety. With a sigh, Amos closed it carefully behind him lest he be accused of the misdemeanour.
A sign over the door proclaimed that Karen Jackson was headmistress. Karen was one of the names in the diaries. There had been a Karen J, Amos recalled.
The name of the previous incumbent had been painted over, fairly recently Amos suspected, and the replacement inserted, rather in the way that pub licensees dispatch the departed landlords to oblivion.
From her name, Amos assumed this addition to the upper ranks of primary education was comparatively young. He knew of no-one over the age of 30 called Karen. Names come in waves. It wasn’t always a guarantee but it was a useful tip in sorting out suspects.
When he was young, no-one under the age of 70 was called Sarah. Just as it appeared that the name would be consigned to history, it reappeared among the grandchildren of those preparing to meet their maker, an example of how life renews itself just when you think it is about to be stamped out.
Unlikely Graves (Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery series) Page 3