‘No, this doesn’t really match up,’ she said. ‘One or two names do appear but not all of them.’
Doublejoy opened the second class lists file and raised her eyebrows.
‘Aha. Lower sixth contains all the names on your list,’ she said excitedly, then stopped, puzzled. ‘Except that, as I said, the Vs don’t work. We did have a Sarah in that year but she was called Daley.
‘These girls would all be 16 or 17 at that time. They would all take their A levels the following academic year.’
Subsequent years also gave a good correlation to the list, particularly in terms of confirming that all initials except V matched to surnames on the school register. There were inevitably one or two instances where two girls in a particular year fitted the list and it was impossible to say which was the relevant one.
Having been warned by Amos that asking for photocopies of the lists might present an obstacle in the way of child protection, Swift and Holmes copied down addresses of those girls they were sure matched the names in Harry Randall’s diaries.
Finally the detectives took their leave.
‘I still can’t understand the Vs,’ Mrs Doublejoy said thoughtfully as they departed.
‘I’m sure I can,’ Swift thought to herself.
Chapter 13
‘Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,’ said Amos. ‘It’s a lottery which girls to try first. I suppose logic dictates that we should try to match up the first initials in the diary but those girls are probably older and are more likely to have left home or moved away altogether. Let’s try to do it the easy way and see how we get on.’
He selected three names and address fairly close together and another three by the same criteria.
‘Let’s start with these. Juliet, you and Michael take one batch and Marie and I will take the other. We should be able to find at least one girl at home between us. We’ll meet up at the café just down the street when we’re done and compare notes.’
Amos was out of luck at his first port of call but Emma Johnson, his second choice, was at home. So, unfortunately, was her mother.
Mrs Johnson allowed Amos and Jane over the threshold only under sufferance, and only after Amos had offered, in a loud voice, to conduct the interview on the doorstep, within hearing of the neighbours.
The detectives were shown into the front room but were not offered the two comfortable chairs. This room doubled up as sitting room and dining area and Mrs Johnson pulled forward two dining chairs in the hope of causing sufficient discomfort to shorten the proceedings.
That suited Amos, who was now wanting to be on alert for any signs of guilt.
‘I can’t think what this is all about,’ Mrs Johnson said. ‘Emma has never been in any kind of trouble. I think you must have got the wrong girl, whatever it is you’ve come about.’
Amos ignored her and turned to the daughter.
‘Emma,’ he asked politely, ‘do you know Harry Randall?’
Before Emma had chance to answer, her mother butted in indignantly.
‘Do you mean that old man who was found murdered? Why on earth would Emma know him? He’s the other side of North Hykeham. Emma would never get mixed up with someone who would get themselves murdered.’
‘Murder knows no boundaries,’ Amos replied drily. ‘Not class, not breeding, not location. However, perhaps Emma could speak for herself.’
Mrs Johnson bristled and gave Emma a look that said ‘you had better not know him’. The daughter shifted uneasily.
‘No, no, of course not,’ she said flustered and unconvincingly. ‘Of course I didn’t know him. I don’t know anything about him,’ she protested vehemently.
Amos showed her a photograph of the victim, deftly evading Mrs Johnson’s outstretched hand trying to intercept it.
‘Do you recognize this man?’
Emma glanced nervously at her mother and said ‘no’ without looking at the picture.
‘Please take a good look at it, Emma,’ Amos said gently but firmly.
‘She said no,’ her mother intervened, taking the photograph from her daughter’s hand. ‘This is him, Randall, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘I saw the picture on the local TV news. She’s already said she doesn’t know him.’
Amos doubted very much if any picture of Randall had been shown. The police had not released one. In fact, it occurred to the inspector, he could not recall seeing any photographs on display in Randall’s house. This one had been out of sight in a drawer, perhaps forgotten.
Amos retrieved the picture and to Mrs Johnson’s undisguised annoyance handed the photograph once more to the reluctant daughter.
‘Please look at it properly, Emma, and tell me if you recognize this man,’ Amos insisted.
This time Emma looked at the photograph without much enthusiasm and shook her head.
‘No,’ she said simply. ‘I don’t recognize him.’
‘I think that’s enough,’ Mrs Johnson told Amos. ‘I think we have tolerated this intrusion long enough. Emma doesn’t know him and why should she? Neither do I. So if that’s all you came to ask, I’ll show you out.’
The third house looked superficially more promising when it transpired that this time the daughter but not the mother was at home. Amos was, however, soon disabused of any optimism that he might have felt.
The girl was panic stricken. Despite pushing the issue as far as he felt he could, all Amos could elicit was a flustered, stammering denial of everything he asked.
Amos and Marie eventually abandoned the pointless interview as the girl looked wildly at the clock ticking away on the mantelpiece, no doubt counting down the minutes to the appearance of one parent or the other, Amos thought.
He and Marie made their way to the café that the team had agreed would be the meeting place at which they could compare notes. Juliet Swift was not there. After 15 minutes of waiting and stretching out the consumption of a coffee and iced bun as long as was seemly, they saw Juliet with her sidekick Detective Constable Michael Yates appear through the door.
‘Sorry, sir,’ she said as she collapsed into one of the wooden chairs with yellow plastic seats, ‘we got nowhere.’
Amos handed over a fiver to Yates.
‘Get a coffee and a bun for both of you and relax,’ he told the constable. ‘You’ve done no worse than we did.’
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 breakin
g 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. Ins
tead 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.’
Unlikely Graves (Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery series) Page 5
