Unlikely Graves (Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery series) by Rodney Hobson Page B

In any case, Swift did not look up at him but concentrated on adjusting the driving seat and mirror. It was a charade but as long as both players stuck to the rules there would be no embarrassment when they both had to face each other sooner rather than later.
    ‘Do you think she was exaggerating?’
    The words made Swift jump visibly, since she had not expected Amos to speak yet. She was not paying attention to him as he closed the front passenger door and pulled down his seat belt. This wasn’t in the rules of the charade. He had recovered his composure more quickly than she had reckoned on. Swift paused, her hand on the unturned ignition key. Best to just carry on naturally.
    ‘Probably,’ she responded after a couple of moment’s thought. ‘I daresay it was embellished a bit, though not by much and perhaps not at all. I’m quite sure the basic story was true.’
    ‘Oh, that I have no doubt about,’ Amos said firmly, leaving Swift wondering why he had asked her opinion in the first place. ‘It accounts for all the entries in the diary, which she almost certainly did not know about.’
    ‘It also explains why all the other girls were so reluctant to admit that they even knew Randall, let alone why their initials were in the diary. Oh yes, we have the full, unexpurgated and possibly unvarnished account of the secret and sordid life of Randall at last.’
    Amos paused to click his seatbelt in place and Swift stated the engine. As she glanced in the rear mirror she could see Evans leaning against her doorpost with her arms folded and an amused expression on her face. She had evidently enjoyed the fact that her revelation had given the police officers something to chew over.Silence followed as Swift manoeuvred out into the road, Amos looking over his shoulder to give her the all clear as they pulled across.
    ‘It does raise the question,’ Amos finally pronounced, ‘of whether Randall’s murder and the demise of his son, if that is who was on the tip, are unconnected after all. Are they just an unfortunate coincidence? Two different, entirely unconnected killers? We don’t even know if the boy was murdered, though he probably was or why else would his body have been disposed of so unceremoniously?’
    ‘Hmm,’ Swift responded. She screwed up her face in thought. ‘Too much of a coincidence for me. A body turns up and, lo and behold, his father is immediately murdered. It’s stretching it a bit.’
    Amos thought for a few moments.
    ‘It doesn’t really matter,’ he decided. ‘We want to keep control of both operations anyway. But let’s keep an open mind.’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    ‘However,’ Amos said with emphasis, ‘we do now need to consider the possibility that one of the girls, willing or not in the great seduction scenario, murdered Randall.’
    ‘There are loads of possibilities. One of the girls may have met him again recently. She could have gone back to his place for a reprise and it went wrong. Or perhaps Randall leered at her and she wanted to keep a lid on the sordid events of up to five years ago.’
    ‘Especially,’ Amos lurched about with renewed vigour, ‘if her mother was around when she bumped into him. You saw how the presence of mothers caused the girls to clamp up. One or two protested too much.’
    ‘Sorry, sir, but I still don’t buy the coincidence line,’ Swift said respectfully.
    ‘Don’t apologise,’ Amos assured her. ‘I need you to offer alternatives and point out the flaws. You’re better at seeing them than anyone else on the team.’
     

 
     
    Chapter 22
     
    The following morning DC Yates produced another breakthrough. Deep and dusty among the archives was buried the file of the mysterious disappearance of Randall’s daughter Rita. Amos flicked through a detailed and conscientiously recorded summary of the case, drawn up by the officer in charge, the now retired Inspector Barry Winchester. Rita had been visiting her boyfriend in Lincoln for the