Holy Murder

by Rodney Hobson

  “You’re welcome to keep any pictures you want,” Franklin said. “I’ve still got the negatives. I can soon get reprints done.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr Franklin, but I shall need the negatives. We may need to print more copies, do blow-ups and they could be evidence. I can let you keep most of the prints. I just need three or four. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t vital.

  “Let me have your movements in the UK and your address in the US and I’ll send you a set of prints to replace the ones we are keeping. I’ll let you have the negatives in due course if I possibly can.”

  “Hey, that’s all right,” Franklin replied magnanimously. “Glad to help. The kids’ll be thrilled to bits we’re helping with a homicide. We’re leaving Boston as soon as I’ve finished here. We’ve done all the Pilgrim Fathers history. We’re staying at the White Hart in Lincoln for a couple of nights before moving on to York.”

  Franklin wrote down his address in Boston Massachusetts and handed it to Amos.

  The inspector picked out six photographs and extracted all the negatives from the packet that Franklin had placed on the table. He handed back the rest of the prints to their owner.

  “Thank you,” Amos said. “Detective Sergeant Swift will show you out and you can resume your holiday.”

  Chapter 19

  “I must go and find a phone,” Amos said, leaving the bemused American staring at a bank of telephones laid out on the tables but dead to the world.

  Burnside had already left, no doubt having forgotten to ring Mrs Amos, which was just as well as the inspector would now be seriously delayed for Sunday lunch, even at 6pm.

  Amos rang HQ at Nettleham. David, the Chief Inspector’s fussy press officer, would not be around on a Sunday afternoon and could be bypassed.

  “Get BBC Look North and the Evening Echo in for an emergency press conference in an hour’s time, or as soon after as they can make it,” he ordered the detective who picked up the phone. “We need a camera crew from Look North. Tell them it will be worth it. Just get them.”

  Amos slammed the phone down before the detective could protest.

  “Get the car moving,” he ordered Swift as she returned from seeing Bobby Franklin off the premises. “I’ll grab our stuff from the incident room.”

  There was not, in fact, anything to grab apart from the precious photographs. Swift had brought the car from the car park round to the front door in the sixty seconds it took for Amos to emerge and they were soon picking their path through the traffic on John Adams Way with siren blaring and lights flashing.

  Eventually they picked up the Sleaford signs and followed the A17 until they swung north along the A15 towards Lincoln.

  Luck was still running for Amos. A TV camera crew was making its way back from Grantham to Hull and was diverted to Nettleham, while an Evening Echo reporter had also been despatched to find out what Amos was so excited about.

  Amos addressed the assembly of two reporters and a cameraman in his office.

  “This is all on the record,” he announced. “You can start filming.

  “I have here some photographs taken in Boston Stump just before the tragic accident that occurred yesterday morning when a man taking part in an abseiling charity event fell to his death. I must stress that all the people appearing in these photographs were present legitimately and none of them are under suspicion. They were photographed entirely by chance.

  “I am appealing to anyone pictured here who has not yet made a statement to the police to contact my team at Boston Police Station urgently. You may have vital information.

  “Also, if you recognise anyone, will you please ring me and give me their names. You will NOT be getting anyone into trouble. I repeat, they are not suspects and they left the church entirely legitimately, possibly well before the accident occurred. If nothing else, we need to eliminate them from our inquiries.”

  Amos paused for breath. How he hated that last phrase, which was always a lie, like ‘your cheque is in the post’ or ‘of course I’ll still love you in the morning’. The truth was that all these people were possible suspects and he hoped one of them was indeed the murderer and could be promptly arrested as such.

  The reality, alas, was that they almost certainly would be eliminated and the phrase would turn out to be the truth after all.

  The TV reporter took back his microphone.

  “Can we assume that this is a murder inquiry?” he asked, before putting the microphone back under Amos’s nose.

  “At this stage we are treating the death as suspicious,” Amos answered coolly, unsure whether the adjective murder would cause people to shy away or hasten forward. “We shall know more after the post mortem is held tomorrow and we have had the opportunity to question more witnesses.”

  “But you can’t rule out murder?”

  “No, we can’t rule out murder. But the important thing at this stage is for anyone who was at Boston church yesterday morning to come forward.”

  There were no further questions.

  “Can you film the photographs on the table as close up as possible?” Amos asked the cameraman. “Then I can give the prints to the Evening Echo. I’ll tell you the people I am particularly keen to identify. Is there any way you can circle them for public consumption?”

  All three media people nodded. Amos picked out the boy and the two women who could have been his mother, the man and woman smiling at Knowles, plus a couple of men.

  “Please say that Detective Inspector Paul Amos is in charge of the inquiry, assisted by Detective Sergeant Juliet Swift, but that anyone at Boston Police station will take down details if we are not available.”

  Once the filming was over, camera crew, Evening Echo reporter, Amos and Swift made their escapes. Amos glanced at his watch. He’d promised to ring home to say when he’d be back but it was a bit late now for his wife to put the chicken in the oven. Better to get Swift back to Jason then himself home and they could both get the retribution over with.

  Chapter 20

  Amos drove Swift home feeling rather pleased with how the day had improved from unpromising beginnings. Doing a TV slot always made him feel slightly smug, especially when it could be slipped out without Chief Constable Sir Robert Fletcher or his obsequious press officer David having the chance to interfere.

  No doubt there would be hell to play the next day but Amos had the excuse that Fletcher had specifically wanted to get this investigation moving. Rather more discreetly, perhaps, but moving.

  However, Amos found that the day was starting to come full circle as he pulled into the road where Swift lived. He immediately spotted Jason, her lachrymose, rugby-playing boyfriend, sitting forlornly on the garden wall. He was still wearing his dirty rugby kit.

  Jason was just staring blankly at the pavement. He hardly glanced up as the car pulled to a halt alongside him.

  Swift, visibly alarmed, jumped out before the vehicle was fully stationary.

  “Jason, are you all right?” she asked, urgently but gently.

  Jason’s response was to launch into uncontrollable sobs.

  “I got sent off. I lost my rag and hit someone,” he gasped between sobs. “We lost. We’re out of the cup. It’s all my fault.”

  “Oh Jason, I’m so sorry,” Swift said tenderly, embracing his huddled form. “I should have been there for you. I’m so sorry.”

  She helped him down from the wall, picked up the holdall containing his clothes that lay on the pavement and supported him up the short path to the house without a backward glance at Amos. The inspector heaved a sigh and drove off, hoping against hope that his own homecoming would be less stressful. He swung hastily across the road without a glance in his mirror, anxious to avert his eyes from the tragi-comedy that had unfolded on the pavement.

  The blast of a car’s horn narrowly averted a nasty collision, forcing Amos to swing sharply to his right. A quick look down the pavement showed that Swift and Jason were already through their front door and had thus missed the inspe
ctor’s ignominy.

  Amos was soon feeling buoyed again by the thought that tonight he would be on Look North and he hurried home in eager anticipation.

  There was an ominous silence as he opened the front door. No cheery welcome nor blare of television.

  The door of the dining room was wide open, which was unusual. Amos walked down the passageway gingerly, a sense of impending disaster growing with each step.

  There on the dining table was the fully cooked chicken with two slices carved from its breast, vegetable tureens, a half full gravy boat and one plate, knife and fork. Dinner had been cooked, consumed and left to go cold.

  In the front room, Mrs Amos was sitting in icy silence, her arms folded.

  Their eyes met. Amos knew better than to speak.

  Finally, Mrs Amos said: “Gerry Burnside rang. You told him you’d be home for dinner. It’s on the table. I’ve had mine.”

  With that, she got to her feet, pushed past her husband and stomped upstairs.

  So Gerry had rung after all. With a sigh, Amos slouched into the dining room. His appetite had waned and he ate little. Then he poured a scotch and went through into the front room to watch the television in glum, solitary silence.

  There was nothing on the regional news after all. His interview had been held over until Monday.

  Amos switched off the TV and trudged up to bed. Mrs Amos was in the spare room.

  Chapter 21

  The sense of impending doom that had enveloped Amos at home on the previous evening returned long before he made his way to the mortuary the following morning.

  It was no use taking breakfast to Mrs Amos when she was in this mood and the breakfast for one routine that Amos had perfected for those mornings when his wife was still asleep was too much to think about.

  So juggling the boiling of porridge and kettle was abandoned in favour of toast, which was normally reserved for off-duty Sundays. Amos hated this breaking of routine.

  It would, as Amos thought from time to time, be so much easier if he lived on his own with his irregular working hours. It was not as if he and his wife were particularly close any more. However, when the possibility of a split arose he always backed away from the lurch into the unknown.

  In contrast, pathologist Brian Slater was in one of his cheery moods. You could tell, Amos knew, that he was in a good mood because he was attempting to whistle the hymn Take it to the Lord in prayer. The effort was more wind than whistle but was just about recognisable.

  The hymn had irritated Amos in his Baptist churchgoing days and he suspected that Slater whistled or, more accurately, blew it just to be annoying. Taking your troubles to the Lord, in prayer or by other means, seemed particularly ineffective to Amos when his burdens were generally imposed by a chief constable who was reluctant to ease them.

  “Trade’s good,” Slater announced blithely as he glanced up from the slab when he heard Amos enter the mortuary. “Bit too good if anything.”

  “When’s Simeon Knowles scheduled for?” Amos asked.

  “This year, next year, sometime, never,” Slater replied with a sigh that indicated that Amos was in serious danger of dispelling the pathologist’s unusual air of contentment. “Who knows? I’m sure I don’t.”

  Having wheezed through a line and a half of his hymn, Slater went back to the beginning and started again, a habit that particularly infuriated Amos, who felt that if the discordant imposition had to be endured it was better to get it over and done with.

  “For goodness sake, Brian, shut up that infernal racket,” Amos exploded. “When are you doing the autopsy on Simeon Knowles? It’s a simple enough question.”

  Slater stopped again mid line but the twinkle was back in his eye.

  “Bit narky, today, inspector,” he said after a pause.

  “It’s no use taking it out on me,” Slater added, breaking off from his attentions to the half carved up body lying before him and looking Amos in the eye.

  “Sir Robert Fletcher, the Chief Constable himself, has so decreed,” he went on grandly, “we have two drug overdose victims to prioritise. The latest campaign, you know.”

  Amos knew only too well. The Chief Constable frequently launched a new crusade, running them for a few months with great intensity at the expense of other police work, then tiring of them and moving on to a new hobby horse.

  Drug abuse among the young was the latest thing. Fletcher’s crusades were at their most intense as he built up to the next quarterly meeting of the East Midlands chief constables, now looming large in Lincoln. At this stage in proceedings, all other aspects of justice took a back seat and Fletcher was always particularly edgy when he was acting as host.

  “I’m afraid you’re low priority,” Slater confirmed. “Low priority.”

  “Low priority?” Amos exploded again. “It’s a murder, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Only a murder,” Slater commented with a shrug of his shoulders. “Only a murder. You already know what he died of so what’s your problem?” The pathologist indicated by raising his arm and making a diving motion with his hand: “Splat! You don’t need me to tell you. I can tell you he played a mean clarinet, though. Terrific. Funnily enough, he hated jazz but he came round the villages and accompanied carol singing every Christmas without fail. ”

  Take it to the Lord in prayer started up again from the beginning but Slater interrupted himself after only four puffs.

  “Why don’t you take it up with the Chief Constable?” he suggested genially. “If he gives the go-ahead, I can slot you in first thing tomorrow. Best I can offer – and only if Fletcher says so.”

  Amos was reluctant to go to the Chief Constable. It was hard to get any sense out of him when he was in full flood with a new campaign plus he knew Knowles personally; the inquiry had not got very far yet; and Slater was right to say that there was really no doubt as to how Knowles had died.

  Slater broke off from another tuneless attempt at his favourite hymn.

  “I think Sir Robert has lost interest in this case,” he remarked casually. “Perhaps there are things he doesn’t want coming out. Why do you think he put you on it?” Seeing Amos look startled and hurt by this observation, Slater went on: “Why don’t you go and see Dr Austin? She can tell you anything else you want to know about Knowles.”

  Amos, who was pondering the distinct possibility that Slater could be right about Fletcher, looked at the pathologist quizzically.

  “Didn’t you know?” Slater asked with a look of amusement. “She was his doctor. He consulted her often enough.”

  Chapter 22

  Detective Inspector Amos stomped back to CID in an even worse mood than when he had left it a quarter of an hour previously.

  He called Juliet Swift into his office curtly. Swift feared the worst. Amos rarely hid away in his office, a small room that he had neither sought nor asked for, preferring to work with his team rather than setting himself apart. The Chief Constable had bestowed it upon him in a rash moment as a reward for a piece of crime solving.

  Swift closed the door behind her. Amos was staring out of the window in silence.

  “What is it, Sir?” the detective sergeant asked. “You’re obviously not best pleased.”

  Amos turned round with an air of resignation.

  “It’s OK, Juliet. It’s nothing you or the team have done.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “We don’t have the post mortem on Knowles and I don’t know when we are going to get it. I daren’t go to the Chief Constable to try to get it prioritised because he’s all wrapped up in his wretched anti-drugs campaign. He’ll only complain if I do and you know as well as I do that the longer he is kept out of this inquiry the better.

  “However, what has really got up my nose is that it turns out that Lesley Austin is Simeon Knowles’s doctor, for heaven’s sake. Why the hell didn’t she mention it? Please don’t remind me,” he said holding up his hands. “I know. I interviewed her myself. It never occurred to me to ask beca
use I assumed she would have mentioned it. Why on earth did she say nothing?”

  “Perhaps she didn’t think it was relevant,” Swift suggested. “After all, his medical history had no bearing on his death. It’s not as if he had a heart attack at the top of the Stump and toppled off.”

  “Well, we’ll soon find out,” Amos said decisively. “You and I will pay Dr Austin a visit. And while we’re there, watch for any indications that she and Knowles were having an affair. You’re better than I am at spotting these things.

  “If necessary I will ask her outright. When I look at you, shake your head to warn me off or nod for OK. But I expect her to deny it even if it’s true.”

  Amos instructed one of the constables to ring Austin’s surgery to warn of their visit and to ask her to try to clear a slot between patient appointments. Amos drove as there was no desperate hurry and Swift tended to go a little too quickly for his liking. Besides, it was shorter to cut across country to Billinghay on minor roads en route to the surgery north of Boston rather than take the A15 and pick up the A17 at Sleaford, which would bring them too far south.

  Swift sighed as they reached Metheringham and shifted her feet on imaginary pedals. She would have gone the speedy way. Amos drove on, regardless, with his customary cautiousness, and they arrived at the surgery to find a couple of patients waiting.

  The receptionist was expecting them. Before they had time to introduce themselves she gestured towards a couple of empty seats and assured them that Dr Austin would see them as soon as she had finished with her current patient.

  It was all done to avoid mention that this was an official police visit but Amos could tell from the surreptitious sideways glances of the two waiting patients that they knew perfectly well what it was all about. The patients sat in silence, staring ahead most of the time to avoid looking at the elephants in the room.

  The delay was less than five minutes before the receptionist looked up and said: “Dr Austin will see you now if you’d like to go through. It’s the door on the right.”