Unlikely Graves (Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery series)

by Rodney Hobson

  Emma was another, better example. Once gaunt and grey, worn down by care and sheer weariness, Emma had been reborn as vitality, prettiness and exuberance. Two Emmas had appeared in the diaries.

  His own name, Paul, had risen and fallen, never reaching the heights of fashion but never facing extinction either, running in gentler waves that would never quite wash out the writing in the sand.

  But what of Amos? His surname was also a boy’s name or, at least, it had been. Amos was old and sunburnt, with leathery skin from farm work. Amos was all but gone. Why had Josh returned to run through the cornfields of youth while Amos was condemned to pass away slowly and painfully, unwanted and unloved?

  A quiet voice made Amos jump. A middle aged woman had appeared at his side from nowhere, too old or too young for an Emma or a Sarah, more a Marion or Marjorie, names that were approaching their own midlife crisis before their children decided whether to save them for posterity or discard them without a thought or a regret.

  This woman was plain and uninteresting. Probably childless like himself, Amos decided for no good reason. Her name would die with her, as perhaps his would, not from revulsion but from boredom.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  There was a slightly accusatory tone to the voice. Amos was an intruder, a possible threat to the natural order of school life, an evil sprite intent on some wickedness against the gathering of innocents.

  Amos fumbled for his warrant card, causing some concern to Marion or Marjorie or whatever she was called, who stepped back for fear he was searching for some offensive weapon.

  Yet she still held open the door through which she had noiselessly materialized. A gap in the fence, a gate wide open and unlocked in any case, and a door ajar. It was as well that he could give his name and rank and legitimately request a chat with the headmistress in her vulnerable inner sanctum.

  The youthful Karen was, as it turned out, better protected than her protégées, not least because the fearsome Marion shielded her tactfully but firmly from those who sought her. Only when Amos insisted that he speak to the head, and only the head, was he admitted with reluctance.

  Marion, or Marjorie, unlocked the outer door to the head’s office, leading the way into what was presumably the secretary’s quarters, and walked straight in without a knock through a second door, leaving the first to swing back into Amos’s face as he followed.

  The inner door was pulled closed before Amos reached it and he could hear a few words of explanation and apology before being informed perfunctorily: ‘Mrs Jackson will see you.’

  As Amos had theorised, Jackson was 18 years old. At least, that was how she looked to Amos. Hardly old enough to be legally married, let alone have qualified as a teacher and certainly not sufficiently mature to be running a school. But then, Maid Marion probably did it for her.

  Like her school buildings, Jackson lacked the substance of those who had gone before. She flustered and fussed. Amos noticed that she was well advanced in her pregnancy. A wedding photograph on her desk showed that her voluminous wedding dress had not entirely hidden the early stages of the bulge.

  He preferred not to pass moral judgement, though his puritanical spirit found it hard to accept that a young woman who got pregnant before marriage should be running a primary school. Sex before, or indeed without, marriage was acceptable between consenting adults in private but really there was no excuse for getting pregnant in the 1990s. What sort of example was that for children who would soon enough be single mothers or absent fathers?

  Years in the force had taught Amos that he should judge all those whom he interviewed solely on the grounds of truthfulness. Balanced against this were the last vestiges of his Baptist upbringing, long since left behind, which made him ponder whether young children should be in this young woman’s tender care.

  Soon she would be off on maternity leave, leaving a void until she returned, baby in her arms distracting her from the work that was already abrogated to her administrative assistant. At least the baby would be part of her charges’ education, for better or worse.

  Amos had time to ponder all this because Jackson flustered around with the papers on her desk, creating a mess for the invaluable Marion to put back in order.

  The power behind the throne, easily sensing the head’s discomfort at being approached by a police officer, made to sit down but Jackson quickly interposed: ‘That’s all right, Joan, I shan’t need you.’

  Joan then, not Marion or Marjorie. A name that was never really fashionable and never out of use, like Paul. Put your prejudices aside, Amos told himself.

  Joan look distinctly put out. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked aggressively. ‘Are you quite sure?’ Her stare suggested otherwise but Jackson looked down at her papers rather than meet the persistent stare.

  ‘No, no, it’s all right Joan. Really.’

  More shuffling of the papers on the desk. Joan showed no signs of budging. Jackson showed no sign of looking her in the eye. Finally Joan edged reluctantly to the door, taking six steps where two would have sufficed.

  ‘Please see we are not disturbed, Joan,’ the headmistress ordered with a moderately successful attempt at firmness and authority.

  Jackson sat down and got up again a couple of times, called in her secretary to repeat that she was not to be disturbed and finally settled down, plonking her clasped hands on the desk.

  ‘Inspector, what have we done? We promise not to do it again.’

  A weak smile matched the feebleness of her little joke. Amos returned the flicker of the mouth corners and began: ‘I have some names Mrs Jackson. I’d like to see if they match …’

  Jackson was on her feet in a shot, cutting him short.

  ‘Inspector,’ she interrupted. ‘I can explain. It was all something and nothing. We had an internal inquiry and this talk of child abuse was all nonsense.’

  ‘But there were suspicions of child abuse?’ Amos inquired. He had been wondering how to raise the subject, or whether to raise it at all until he was sure there was a connection with this particular school. He had dreaded confronting the issue, hoping that his worst fears were unfounded. Why would Randall keep a list of victims that might come to light at any time?

  Yet the girls’ names in the dead man’s diary seemed to point only one way, especially the references to sports activities with exclamation marks. Was Jackson about to confirm the abuse of children under the age of 11, albeit by denying it?

  ‘Joan is completely above reproach,’ Jackson responded. ‘She loved the children here as if they were her own. She never married. This was her life.’

  And in her lifetime, women didn’t get pregnant outside marriage, Amos thought. Not respectable ones, anyway.

  However, he did not voice his views on matrimony and motherhood, pointing out instead: ‘You speak in the past tense, Mrs Jackson. When are we talking about?’

  ‘Christmas ’89 . How could I forget?’ Jackson went on bitterly. ‘It was my first nativity service as deputy head. That wretched woman.’

  ‘I don’t mean Joan,’ she added hastily. ‘It was that wretched Thelma Vernon.’

  ‘Did she have a lot of children, this Mrs Vernon?’ Amos asked. Could she account for all the Vs in the diary after all?

  ‘Just two, and that was two too many. They were real pains. I mean real pains. We had to handle them with mega kid gloves. They swore at the playground helpers and when we called Mr and Mrs Vernon in they accused us. They said their children never swore at home and couldn’t possibly have learnt the words there so they must have learnt them at school.

  ‘They said if it wasn’t the teachers then it must be the council house children and we really ought to keep them under control. What a nerve.’

  ‘So what happened?’ Amos prompted.

  ‘Nothing for the rest of the term. The Vernons were friends of the chairman of the school governors. He wouldn’t back us up. We just had to try to keep a lid on their children’s behaviour but the other children started usi
ng bad language when they saw that the Vernon boys could get away with it. So the other parents weren’t happy. I just didn’t see how we could get through the next two years before both boys went to secondary school.

  ‘We struggled on to the end of the autumn term, heaven knows how, then we had the incident you obviously know about,’ Jackson assumed erroneously. ‘It killed Mr Smith, you know. Although we were completely exonerated, and Mrs Vernon removed her little brats, he never got over it. He took early retirement at Easter and died two months later. But you know all that.’

  ‘Tell me about the contretemps. The accusation by the Vernons,’ he added hastily on realising that Jackson had no idea what a contretemps was.

  The headmistress eyed him suspiciously. She was not sure what he was implying. However, after a short pause, she explained.

  ‘Well, as I said – and you obviously already know – it was at the nativity service on the last afternoon of term. A lot of parents were there and those who weren’t were supposed to come at the end of the service to take their children home.

  ‘It was a great relief for all of us, I can tell you, that we had got through another term. Just two more terms to go before we got rid of the eldest Vernon child. Perhaps the youngest one wouldn’t be so difficult on his own, though he was worse than his brother. He tried to live up to the family reputation.’

  Elder, not eldest, Amos noted mentally. Younger, not youngest. How can they teach English when they don’t know the language themselves?

  ‘Mrs Vernon was there,’ Jackson went on, unaware that Amos was mentally correcting her English. ‘We had to give her eldest boy a part in the service to keep him – and his mother – quiet. Unfortunately even that backfired.

  ‘While the eldest was spouting on about the shepherds in the fields the youngest stood up to see him and was pointing. Joan, poor woman, had been charged with sitting with that class. The class teacher was off sick. Who could blame her after a term with a Vernon child?

  ‘She put her hand on the boys arm and settled him back into his seat. If it hadn’t been his brother reading the lesson I think Mrs Vernon would have got up there and then and accused Joan.

  ‘Anyway, she wasted no time in rushing over afterwards. The vicar had hardly closed his mouth when she was barging across, knocking other parents aside, to accuse Joan of assaulting her child. It ruined Joan’s Christmas. She was in tears. She’d given her life to this school.

  ‘There wasn’t much we could do, it being the last day of term, so we had to suspend Joan and look into it in January. Luckily Mrs Vernon didn’t do herself any favours. Other mothers came forward and backed Joan. They said she had restrained him gently. Mrs Vernon intimidated some of them but she couldn’t shut up the council house mothers she’d insulted earlier.

  ‘I think,’ Jackson added confidentially, ‘that they got together and agreed on their stories. Still, justice was done. Mrs Vernon moved her children to another school. I don’t know which and I don’t care.

  ‘She threatened to go to the police and accuse us of child abuse. Well, she’s certainly taken her time but here you are.’

  ‘Are you quite sure the Vernons had no daughters?’ Amos asked. ‘Could they have gone to another primary school? Do you know if the boys had any cousins in the area?’

  Jackson was understandably baffled by this question. While Amos had the advantage of knowing that they were at cross purposes, the headmistress did not.

  ‘No, no daughters. Definitely not. I don’t know about cousins.’

  Then suddenly guessing at the reason for the question, Jackson asked brightly: ‘Have there been complaints about another school? It certainly supports our case if the Vernons have been scattering accusations about.’

  Amos ignored her eager face. Instead of replying he asked: ‘Does the name Harry Randall mean anything to you?’

  Jackson was puzzled as well as deflated.

  ‘No,’ she replied shaking her head. ‘I don’t remember any child of that name at the school. Joan has been here longer. I’ll ask her.’

  Before Amos had time to stop her, Jackson sprang from behind her desk and reached her office door with considerably more alacrity than Joan had done. Indeed, the secretary had scarcely time to step back from the other side of the door where Amos was sure she had been eavesdropping.

  ‘Have we had a Harry Randall?’ Jackson asked her.

  ‘We had no Harrys in all the time I’ve been here up to Harry Jones starting two years ago.’

  Another old man’s name had been rescued from the brink of oblivion along with Joshua and Samuel. Would anyone save Amos?

  ‘If the Vernons have finally got round to complaining we have nothing further to say,’ Joan continued in a rehearsed vein that confirmed she had indeed been privy to the conversation, or at least Jackson’s side of it. Amos was pleased that he had spoken quietly with his back to the door.

  ‘There was a full inquiry and I was completely vindicated. Several parents backed me up. Even the governors’ chairman had to admit I was in the right.’

  Amos regretted mentioning Harry Randall’s name. When news of his murder inevitably came out these two would quickly associate his name with child abuse if he asked them about the names in the diary. Still, it had to be done.

  The inspector handed over the list of names, scrawled out in block capitals and arranged into the three academic years covered in the diaries.

  ‘Do these names fit into any years at your school?’ Amos inquired. When no response was forthcoming immediately he added: ‘I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. These children could be in danger.’

  It was Joan who responded firmly: ‘These names don’t fit any year here, past or present.’

  ‘Are you sure? How many classes do you have each year? Can you check your records?’

  ‘I’m quite sure,’ came the cold reply. ‘We have just one class of 30 to 35 each year and I have no difficulty in remembering their names. These do not tally.’

  Jackson was a little more curious. ‘What are these initials? Are they middle names?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Amos replied, ‘or they could be surnames.’

  ‘It seems a bit unlikely,’ Joan opined. ‘V isn’t all that common an initial.’

  ‘No indeed,’ Amos concurred sadly. ‘No indeed.’

  Joan challenged him: ‘Are you going to tell us what this is about? And what it has to do with us?’

  ‘If you do not recognize this list of names, then it almost certainly has nothing to do with you whatsoever.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Joan was not entirely convinced that there was no nefarious subterfuge behind Amos’s motives but at least it was clear that this was unconnected with the Vernons.

  ‘Could it be further back?’ she asked. ‘Karen Potts, Christine Edwards, Christine Jones could be the Christine J, Susan Emmett. The Gang of Four.’

  ‘How long ago would that be?’

  ‘About eight or nine years.’

  ‘Could you look in the records to check?’

  ‘I don’t think I should show you the records without the approval of the governors and the Lincolnshire Education Authority,’ Joan said abruptly, handing the list back to Amos and looking sharply at the headmistress. ‘In any case, the names could be from just about any school admitting girls and I don’t recognize a lot of the names.’

  ‘No, quite so,’ Amos responded in a conciliatory tone. ‘Just one more thing. Where do the girls go to at 11?’

  Eager to deflect attention away from her own charges, Jackson replied: ‘Most go to the mixed comprehensive. Some girls go to Park Road Girls School. One or two who can’t get into Park Road go private.’

  Joan shot a glare at the headmistress as Amos stood and took his leave.

  Chapter 12

  Park Lane Girls’ School proved more receptive to helping the police inquiry. In this case the headmistress and her assistant seemed quite excited at the prospect.

  It also helped that Amos decided to send
Det Sgt Swift and DC Marie Holmes, they being female, younger and of lower rank, which made the approach seem less of an issue for the school.

  Moreover, Mrs Sonia Doublejoy, the headmistress, had been at the school for some time and had the confidence and charisma that her counterpart at the primary school lacked.

  ‘A murder inquiry?’ she said bubbling with enthusiasm. ‘We’ve never had one of those. How exciting! And you think we can help you trace people who can help with your inquiry, I suppose.’

  ‘We’d rather this was kept just within these four walls,’ Swift said conspiratorially. ‘It’s all rather vague and speculative so we wouldn’t want any of the girls here now getting the wrong idea.’

  ‘Of course,’ Doublejoy responded in like vein. ‘Quite so. We don’t want a panic in the corridors.’

  ‘In any case,’ Swift went on, ‘this matter does not, as far as we know, concern any of your current pupils. We think it could be girls who left in the past five years, not all at the same time.’

  She produced the list that Amos had shown without success at the primary school, adding: ‘They are divided up into groups who we believe left in the same summer term, the first group to leave being at the top and working forwards.’

  ‘Hmm, these are all pretty usual girls’ names,’ the headmistress mused. ‘I take it the initials are surnames which helps. I think you may be in luck, except … except…’

  Swift decided not to interrupt as she went into a trance.

  ‘… except I don’t recall ever having a girl with a surname beginning with V. Perhaps these are middle names … but then again, V isn’t all that common. Vera, Veronica … yes, we had a Veronica, Violet, we had a Vyvyan but no-one was sure how to spell it …’

  Doublejoy wandered over to a filing cabinet as she pondered the rich varieties of names that children are blessed or cursed with.

  She selected half a dozen files which she placed on her desk. These were marked ‘class lists’ followed by a year. She opened the one with the oldest date on and glanced at the names at the top of Swift’s list.