Unlikely Graves (Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery series) (11 page)

Chapter 28

Gemma Irwin proved more of a problem than Amos had expected. There was no difficulty in finding her at her home in Waddington, a pleasant enough drive down the A607 towards Grantham.

She was now known as Gemma Gordon, was married to a successful businessman who spent much of his time in London and enjoyed a leisurely existence in a detached house in a quiet road.

Nor was she particularly elusive. The previous evening she had agreed to meet them at 9am that morning readily enough. The difficulty was that in the intervening hours she had decided she should talk only in the presence of her solicitor, and she did not announce this change of heart until Amos and Swift arrived on a wasted errand.

The two detectives did not even get through the front door before learning of the delay. Amos pressed the urgency and seriousness of the case on Gordon, who professed to seeing no reason to hurry as ‘anything I know is hardly of particular relevance to your inquiries’.

‘We need to talk now,’ he said firmly. ‘This morning.  Kindly ring your solicitor now and arrange for him or her to come straight to police HQ in Nettleham. We will drive you there and I’ll arrange for you to be brought back as soon as the interview is over.’

The strength of his words overcame Gordon’s procrastination and with some hesitation she turned back to pick up the telephone in the hall. Amos took the opportunity to step over the threshold and gain a foothold in the house.

Radio Lincolnshire could be heard playing quite loudly in the lounge. Through the open door to the room, Amos could see a pile of Lincolnshire Echos spread out on a coffee table and spilling onto the floor. Reports of the Harry Randall murder inquiry were visible.

Gordon saw his line of vision and promptly pulled the lounge door closed as she waited for her solicitor to answer. After a few words had been exchanged, she said curtly: ‘Mr Gudgeon will be at the police station in three quarters of an hour – at 10 o’clock.’

From the brevity of the call, and the ready availability of Gudgeon, Amos reckoned that the arrangement had been set up already. Gordon’s protestations that she was quite happy to drive to Nettleham herself ‘to save you the trouble of bringing me back,’ were brushed aside.

‘It’s the least we can do,’ Amos assured her smoothly, ‘considering that it is you who are willingly helping us.’ 

Swift drove with Amos in the front passenger seat and Gordon in the back.

Amos half turned so that he could see the woman’s face and remarked casually: ‘You seem to take a great interest in Lincolnshire and its goings on.’

‘The last I heard that wasn’t a crime,’ Gordon replied coldly.

And with that, there was no further communication between the three occupants of the car until they reached Nettleham.

Chapter 29

Although it was not yet the allotted hour, Gudgeon was already at the police station awaiting his client and her escort. His journey from the centre of Lincoln had been shorter.

Not a word was spoken, greetings being confined to a mere nod. The quartet walked through to an empty interview room.

‘Do you want a private word with your client before we start, Mr Gudgeon?’ Amos asked.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Gudgeon replied. ‘My client has nothing to hide, although she cannot understand why you want to talk to her. She hardly knew Harry Randall and had not seen him for years.’

‘When did you in fact last see Harry Randall?’ Amos asked.

Gordon glanced at her solicitor before replying: ‘About 15 years ago.’

‘That would be when his daughter disappeared?’

Another glance at the solicitor.

‘Yes.’

‘Had you met him before the disappearance?’

‘No.’

‘Did he discuss his daughter’s disappearance with you?’

‘No.’

‘Did he talk to your brother about it in your presence?’

‘No.’

‘Did your brother tell you anything that he and Randall discussed at the time, any thoughts about what might have happened to his daughter Rita?’

‘No.’

Each monosyllabic response was preceded by a glance at Gudgeon, who now intervened to ask precisely what Amos was getting at since it was quite obvious that Mrs Gordon could not help with the murder inquiry.

‘It’s not about Harry Randall as such,’ Amos said. ‘We are trying to established what happened to his son, who we believe is the body that we recovered from the rubbish tip in East Lindsey. I would be obliged, by the way, if you kept that information to yourself. The fewer people who know, the greater the chance that the murderer will slip up. But I wanted to know if you ever met Randall’s son John.’

‘Yes, I did meet him,’ Mrs Gordon replied without so much as a glance at her solicitor. ‘I met him three or four times. I wasn’t married then and I saw quite a bit of my brother at the time. He, Rita, John and I sometimes made up a foursome when Rita was in Lincoln for the weekend.’

‘Were you and John Randall an item?’ Amos blurted out, unable to hide his surprise.

‘Not really,’ Mrs Gordon said with a faint laugh. ‘We didn’t go out together or have a mad passionate affair. We really just made up a foursome with Brad and Rita on the rare occasions that John visited his sister here. Don’t get me wrong. He was great company and we got on like a house on fire. But it wasn’t sexual. We really were just good friends.’

‘You don’t have to answer personal questions if you don’t want to,’ Gudgeon intervened needlessly. He seemed concerned that Gordon had relaxed noticeably and was talking quite freely after her hesitant start.

‘It’s all right, I’ve nothing to hide,’ his client replied as much for Amos’s ears as for her solicitor. Gudgeon sank back, looking slightly perplexed.

‘Did he seem to have any worries, anything that would cause him to disappear?’ Amos asked. ‘Money troubles? Anyone who might want to harm him?’

‘On the contrary, he seemed quite happy with his lot. After all, he had been to one of the top two universities in the country, had a first class degree and could have stayed on at Cambridge to take a doctorate. His main problem in life, going by what he said, was how to choose between two great job offers. If he had any money troubles, they were about to disappear under a rather large salary.’

‘Did he say where the jobs were or who the employers were?’ Amos asked eagerly.

‘No. He didn’t want to say until he had decided which offer to take and I didn’t press him. It was all completely out of my league and I wasn’t in the least interested in chemistry and pouring one liquid into another and watching it change colour. I couldn’t really tell you what he did. If I’d seen him as marriage material I suppose it might have been different, though I doubt it. But he wasn’t interested in me and I wasn’t interested in him, not in that way, so we didn’t talk about his career particularly.’

‘If you weren’t his girlfriend, did he ever mention one that he did have?’

‘I can’t say that he ever did, but then there was no reason why he should.’

‘Did you get the impression that he might be homosexual?’ Amos asked. ‘Did he mention any boys in particular as close friends?’

‘I say, inspector,’ Gudgeon intervened with the righteous indignation of a man who felt that he really ought to be earning the inflated fee that he intended charging Mrs Gordon’s husband.

‘You really cannot expect my client to discuss the sexual proclivities of someone she hardly knew.’

Mrs Gordon, however, showed no signs of perturbation.

‘I have no reason whatsoever the think that John batted for the other side, as I believe the popular expression is,’ she replied.

‘He didn’t seem particularly interested in sex. I think he was in love with chemistry, and I don’t mean chemistry between two human beings,’ she added with a laugh.

‘Do you remember if he mentioned any close friends of any description?’

‘He might have done but I don’t recall anyone in particular.’

‘Can you think of anyone at the time who might have wished him harm? Someone jealous of his success, someone who fancied him and he spurned?’

‘I really am very sorry, inspector, but I simply cannot think of anyone who actively disliked him. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice that he was there.’

‘All right,’ said Amos, recognizing that this line of questioning was going nowhere. ‘What happened when Rita disappeared, as you recall it?’

Chapter 30

At this point George Gudgeon, a master in insincere solicitations, suggested that Mrs Gordon might like a short break from the ‘gruelling ordeal’ but his client took a cavalier attitude to the experience and urged Amos onwards.

‘We’re paying you by the hour, I assume,’ she said coldly to Gudgeon, then to Amos: ‘Plough on.’

‘The weekend Rita Randall disappeared,’ Amos prompted.

‘Oh, yes. The weekend she disappeared,’ Gordon said thoughtfully. ‘Well, not really the weekend. She was fine on Sunday night. Brad phoned me on the Friday afternoon. He’d managed to find a phone box that worked. He’d had to walk up into the centre of Lincoln where they tend to be too open to view to get vandalized. Anyway, he sounded quite excited and he wanted me and John to join him and Rita for a night out on the Sunday. We agreed to meet at his flat. I got the impression that he had something he wanted to tell me but I couldn’t draw him out. Look, Brad and I hadn’t always been on great terms. We never actually fell out but there was quite a bit of sibling rivalry. Funny, really,’ she deviated from her discourse with a sardonic laugh. ‘Neither of us ever achieved anything much. But I think he resented the fact that I had held down a job for the past three years and had just got a mortgage on my first home and moved in while he rented a couple of rooms in a two up two down. I suppose I did rub it in a bit.Well, actually, there’s no suppose about it.’

Gordon stopped as the words caught in her throat and she recovered her composure. The unconvincingly solicitous Gudgeon again suggested a break but Gordon waved him away.

After a few seconds of silence, Amos, who was keen to hear what Gordon’s brother eventually told her on the Sunday evening, felt sufficiently safe in prompting her without appearing too eager.

‘Anyway, I take it you agreed to the arrangement,’ he said.

‘Yes. I was curious to know what his news was. He had lived abroad for a time, as he reminded me every time I mentioned my middle class lifestyle, and I wondered if he was making a clean break and going off again. But when he said that John was going to be in Lincoln that weekend and he had already invited him, I began to wonder if he and Rita were going to get engaged. I wasn’t sure how serious it was, as I didn’t see them very often, and I think he was keener than her but who knows.’

‘Had getting engaged ever been discussed before this weekend, as far as you know?’ Amos asked. ‘Had it been mentioned at your previous foursomes or had he hinted about it to you privately? Had you ever asked him if it was serious with Rita?’

‘No, he didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask because he wouldn’t have told me. It’s just that on the phone he said that it would be a rather apt symmetry to have me as well as John there. The phrase stuck in my mind because it was a bit highfalutin for Brad, who usually talked in monosyllables. Then the pips went and he hadn’t any money so that was the end of the conversation. And that was another thing that seemed a bit odd. On the rare occasions that Brad rang me he always rang in the daytime on weekdays when he knew that my husband would be at work and he could reverse the charges. This time he paid for the call himself.  There had to be something going on.  Anyway, the line went dead and I had no chance to press him.’

‘Did you hear again from him over the weekend – before you met up on Sunday evening?’

‘No, but then there was no reason why I would. We’d managed to make the arrangements to meet on the Sunday at the start of the call. None of us had a lot of money in those days so we met at Brad’s place and walked round to a pub nearby that did cheap meals. Rita was already there when I arrived, of course, as she was staying for the weekend. It was a two room flat and I don’t know whether Rita shared Brad’s bed or slept in the kitchen, before you ask.’

‘What was the atmosphere like between them? How did they seem?’

‘It was a bit of a let down, really. I was expecting a bit of excitement but they both seemed a bit subdued, to be honest. I didn’t say anything about the expected news because John was supposed to hear it as well. I asked Rita how Cambridge was going but she seemed distracted so I didn’t get much out of her. Brad only had beer in the flat as usual so we drank one each out of cans while we waited for John. Just to make the atmosphere more awkward, John arrived late so there was a lot of looking at watches and wondering what had happened to him.’

‘Eventually he turned up, blaming the two level crossings for holding him up. There were still two stations back then. St Marks didn’t close for another ten years and if you timed it wrong you got stuck at both level crossings.

‘That was a silly excuse. It was pretty horrendous for traffic on the High Street but it didn’t account for him being half an hour late. He’d come on foot from a friend’s he stayed at in Lincoln. I did wonder if he thought the same as me, that Brad and Rita were going to announce their engagement, and he was putting off hearing about it for as long as possible. John was offered a beer but said he’d wait till we got to the pub so we finished ours and set off. John and I walked together and Brad, who came out last so he could lock up, was behind us with Rita. I glanced round to speak to them and they were walking with a gap between them, not even linking arms as they usually did. They were also walking quite slowly, so John and I got further ahead, far enough to be out of earshot. We quickly agreed that we would not ask Brad what his news was unless he raised the subject first, which he didn’t.’

‘Did anyone actually fall out with anyone else that evening?’ Amos inquired.

‘No,’ came the answer promptly. ‘It was all civil but not warm. The conversation degenerated into a discussion on the state of Lincoln City’s football ground, the desperate need to rebuild it and where the money was going to come from. And would you believe, I was actually relieved to be bored out of my skull. At least I didn’t have to think.’

‘So how did the evening wind up?’ Amos persisted. ‘Was the mystery news item ever revealed?’

‘No. It remains a mystery to this day,’ Gordon replied.

‘What happened at the end of the evening?’

‘We walked back to Brad’s place. He half-heartedly invited us in for coffee but John and I made our excuses and left. It was the last time I ever saw either Brad or Rita.’