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

Paul Randall had indeed attended school in Skegness, thrived and won a scholarship to Cambridge. Records showed that the boy was short and slight, just the candidate for the body on the rubbish tip. Furthermore, Yates had secured the names and addresses of other boys in his class at secondary school.
    ‘Ah well,’ Amos said. ‘This is becoming a familiar pattern in this case. We’ll divide the list up and take a batch each all in the same area. Can you arrange that, please, Juliet? We’ll go first thing tomorrow morning and we’ll assign one officer to each name rather than work in pairs so we can get through the list faster. In particular we obviously want to know where Randall junior is now, if he is still alive, and when anyone last saw him. Don’t be too direct, but watch out for any hints as to why there is no evidence of a family in Randall senior’s home. I shall take the school myself. We’ll meet up at the chip shop at the top end of Skegness High Street at noon – but don’t cut short any promising chat just to get there on time.’
    At least this destination was the right side of Lincoln, though it was further in distance at 40 miles. The A158 over the wolds was a pleasant drive in the summer morning sunshine, though Amos half regretted that the quaint market town of Horncastle, which he always enjoyed seeing, now had a bypass that still managed to get clogged up with holiday traffic heading to and from the coast. They took two cars so that a full team could get round as many addresses as possible. The school itself was a co-educational grammar school that had withstood, even to the day that Amos now entered its portals, the inexorable march towards comprehensives. The county of Margaret Thatcher remained a bulwark of traditional education, although the outposts were gradually disappearing. Amos thoroughly approved. He had come from a relatively poor family and benefited from the grammar school system in its heyday in the 1960s. It had helped him to aspire to a less humble lifestyle than his parents. The experience, although life enhancing in his view, had not been without its drawbacks. His best friend at primary school had failed the 11 plus exam that was the gateway to a better education. Amos had at the time naively swallowed the line that you didn’t pass or fail but were ‘selected’ for the most suitable style of education. His friend was not so deceived, and the relationship withered.
    Furthermore, his elder brother, though not quite so academically bright, had been expected to pass but did not. In those days parents had not heard of appeals and although the primary school headmaster was sympathetic, the case was not taken up. Consequently, a wedge was also driven between Amos and his resentful brother although they there was only 15 months difference in their ages.These thoughts went through the inspector’s mind as he walked into the school in warm sunshine. The shadows cast by the sun he thought of as the shadows of his past life, the people he once knew and never saw. The case was getting to him, he realized. There was so little to work on.
    It was one of those buildings that you could tell immediately was a school, reassuringly solid and secure, built of brick and stone with tall railings round the perimeter. Amos had taken the precaution of ringing the headmaster’s secretary to warn of his impending arrival.
    There were three solid doors, one on the left with ‘Boys’ and one on the right with ‘Girls’ etched prominently into the stone above the lintels. The middle door, the most solid of the three with thick metal hinges stretched across solid oak, was presumably the one for staff and visitors. Torn between a bell and a knocker, Amos selected the long metal dangling pole and was gratified to hear a clanging within. Old fashioned bells have more class, he felt, and were fitting for the type of establishment he was about to enter. For the third time in the short life of this