Stranglehold (16 page)

He could think of nothing but clichés. He wanted to tell the man in his suffering how even Christine Lambert, the wife everyone said was the perfect police wife, had almost left him twenty years and more ago. How she had screamed her frustration and isolation at a man too immersed in his work, had demanded that he choose between her and the force. But he did not know how to start, and in the end he said nothing: it seemed like a treachery to Christine even to attempt it.

Rushton said dully, ‘We've had a few shouting matches. I hadn't thought it would come to this.'

‘Take some time off. Go and speak to Anne. Tell her you need her. Women like to feel they're needed.'

He wondered why he was so reluctant to use the word ‘love'. It had seemed an effrontery to bring it into lives he scarcely knew; was that what had driven him into that stupid generalization about a whole sex?

‘That's good of you, John.' Rushton brought out the forename self-consciously, even amid his pain, like a grown-up child who is told that he must address a parent thus for the first time. He seemed absurdly grateful for the offer of leave; it was a concession which would have been no more than his right, in these circumstances.

Lambert found that any advice seemed presumptuous to the point of fatuity. Yet his inspector, normally so assertive sat there as if waiting for it. His head was bowed, and there was not a sign of grey in the dark brown hair. Should he tell Rushton to plead with her? From what little he had seen of the lady, that hardly seemed right. Should he reason with her, putting his need for dedication to his work, the progress he was making in the force, the home he was able to provide? He knew Rushton well enough to know that he would have done that fully already; perhaps too often. He said, ‘Tell her you're a family unit. That Kirstie needs you, that the three of you together are more than you can ever be apart.'

Was that what had saved him and Christine when the children were small? He had a dim idea that it was, though he had never framed any argument on those lines. ‘Don't tell her what she needs or you need, but what Kirstie needs, what the three of you are together.'

Rushton looked up into his face for the first time since he had sat down. Lambert saw surprise, and wondered if he was going to be rebuked for his presumption. But Rushton said, ‘Thank you. I will go and see her, but I don't need time off. I'll leave it until the weekend.'

A part of Lambert's mind breathed a sigh of relief. This Strangler business was stretching his team to the limits; Rushton's efficient grasp of the steadily accumulating documentation would have been sorely missed. ‘Well, play it by ear, Chris. You only have to ask. A cooling off period might be a good idea. I'm sure the damage isn't irreparable.' Even the use of that multi-syllabled word seemed a mistake, distancing him, when he should have been close and spontaneous.

Rushton didn't seem to notice. ‘I'll go up at the weekend. Her father should be there then; I've always got on well with him, and Anne listens to him.'

‘That sounds like good tactics. I'm sure you'll find in the end that it's not as serious as it seems now.'

He had dropped back into conventional assurances to cover his embarrassment, and Rushton's response came like a slap of rebuke. ‘Sometimes I think I hate all women. They're so damned unreasonable!' His voice for an instant was raw with passion. Then he dropped quietly back into his normal mode to say, ‘She's talking about a legal separation.'

‘I'm sure it needn't come to that. Tell her that Kirstie needs a father, almost as much as you need a daughter.' Lambert forced a smile.

Rushton nodded absently and stood up. ‘I'll get back to work then. I – I just thought you ought to know, sir.' He looked to Lambert absurdly young, like a boy being brave about a cut knee. It was almost a surprise when he did not limp from the room.

He had got to the door when Lambert said, ‘You did right to come in and tell me, Chris. Keep me posted on the situation.'

Rushton managed a small smile that might have been gratitude. ‘I will. Thank you, sir.'

He had gone out, as he had come in, on that ‘sir'. And both of them in the end had been happy with it. Lambert resolved to think more deeply about Rushton's situation, to provide real rather than token support over the weeks to come. In that naked moment when the inspector had cursed all women, he had seen the strain behind the mask of professional efficiency.

It did not take long for events to thrust that resolution to the back of his mind.

Amy Coleford was a brave woman. Foolhardy, as is often the unfortunate way of these things, but undeniably brave.

She had been badly scared by her experience near home, but she decided that if she did not venture forth the next night, she might lose the confidence to do so at all. Her father had always said you had to remount the horse immediately when you fell off, or you would lose your nerve.

Amy still remembered many of her father's sayings with affection; now that he was no longer around to offer his advice, it seemed even more necessary to take heed of them. It was a kind of homage, after all.

She selected her very best dark skirt, put on a new pair of fishnet tights and a little more make-up than usual, and went forth determinedly into the world which had so nearly seen the end of her on the previous night. She kissed the children with more than her usual fervour, but she was an affectionate mother, and Mrs Price noticed nothing unusual as she settled down in front of the television. She was still too full of the excitements of the American melodrama she was following to give Amy her full attention.

‘You watch out for that Strangler, dear,' she said. ‘Should be strung up, he should, when they get him, but he won't be. Them do-gooders will see us all raped before they've done.' She smacked her lips in salacious horror at the idea. It was no more than a ritual reaction, a revelation of her own vicarious excitement in the killings rather than a real warning to her neighbour.

Mrs Price had decided that young Mrs Coleford must have got herself a boyfriend, to be going out so regularly now in the evenings. So no doubt she was safe enough. There was a touch of naivety about this middle-aged woman who thought herself so worldly-wise.

Amy was brave and foolhardy, but not completely stupid. She had the sense to realize that Oldford was going to be a dangerous place until the Strangler was caught – hadn't she had evidence of that last night? For the moment, she would look for trade somewhere else. It was a pity, for she liked the
Roosters
and knew enough people there to feel comfortable. But Charlie Kemp had ruined all that for her, when he had taken her up to that wood-panelled room and treated her like dirt. She decided that she would go back to the club in a few days, when she had got over that horrid episode. For the moment, she could not face it.

Perhaps unconsciously, she turned towards somewhere with happier associations. Years ago, she had been with her father to the ancient docks at Gloucester. She remembered standing with her small hand in his large one, watching the barges and the men stripped to the waist who unloaded them. She thought it had been beneath a blue sky and flying white clouds, but most of her childhood memories seemed to be framed in such a context. They said the docks were a beautiful place now, quite a tourist attraction, with a glass-topped building full of shops and a museum. Perhaps, if it was as good as they all said, she would take the children there during the day, when the holidays arrived in a week or two.

She did not see the man who watched her leave the house.

Amy had not realized how long it had been since she had visited the docks as a child. She had some difficulty in finding her way down to the water over the newly paved approaches. Everything had been tidied up, and looked different from the way she remembered it. Where once there had been interesting dirt and disorder, there was now an almost clinical tidiness, especially on a quiet, still night like this.

But it was beautiful. She decided that as she came quite suddenly upon a wide stretch of water and wandered between the huge silhouettes of former warehouses. A bridge ran over the broad canal which connected this water to the main basin of the docks. She found herself beside a big, brightly painted boat. The water scarcely moved against its hull, so still and warm was the night.
Queen Boadicea II,
said the letters near the bow. You could take boat trips on this spruce vessel during the day. She would treat the kids to a sail, if the weather was good. She smiled at the thought of their eager, open faces. They would love it, and it would be educational for them, too. She could afford it, now that she had found out how to make money so easily.

The thought reminded her why she was here. She had somehow expected the docks to be rather sleazy, with dubious pubs and an even more dubious night life, where a girl might pick up men who had money and were anxious to spend it, where the authorities might turn a blind eye because they expected such activities here.

But it was not like that at all. There was a new shopping centre, which seemed in this light to be constructed entirely of glass – not a material to encourage surreptitious dealings. And the building beside which she now moved was actually a church. She grinned at the thought of the transactions she had proposed to conduct in its environs.

The only pub she could see was called
Doctor Foster's.
It looked as innocent as its nursery rhyme name suggested – not at all the sort of hostelry where girls like her might operate profitably. She noticed how that phrase ‘girls like her' had crept into her vocabulary. Well, she might as well accept what it was she was doing; perhaps Charlie Kemp's brutal words had brought a necessary touch of realism to her thinking.

The pub was brightly lit, but quiet; it was but thinly patronized tonight. She walked past it and along the quay, heading automatically for the more dimly lit part of the area, though she knew now that she would do no business here. The black water of the main basin of the docks was as still as a mirror; the reflections of the lights in it almost as clear as the real lamps at the tops of their columns.

It was as beautiful as Venice. And the silent warehouses which cast their tall shadows across the water might have been palaces upon the Grand Canal. She had never been to Venice, but she had read about it many times, and promised herself that she would go there one day. She had been in a scene from
The Merchant of Venice
which her form at the comprehensive had done for a parents' concert. How long ago that seemed now! But she could still remember some of the words:

The moon shines bright! in such a night as this,

When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,

And they did make no noise ...

The moon shone here too, white and full and round, reflected in the water, larger and more beautiful than any of the lamps around her. She walked slowly to the far end of the great expanse of the main basin, her heels ringing loud in the silence which seemed to come seeping like mist from the water. There she found a seat beneath a lamp whose bulb had failed, and sat in a pool of darkness to appreciate the still water, the vast sky which was so exquisitely reflected in it, and the pleasing shapes of the manmade architecture, which seemed from here to have been built to complement the heavens and the water.

Somewhere, in a flat she could not see, hands she would never know were playing a piano. When she arched her head back and listened, she could just hear the occasional sequence of notes, though she could distinguish no tune. She remembered more of the scene from that play;

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Shakespeare must have written that on such a night as this. She threw her head back, looked at the same sky that he must have seen all those years ago, then shut her eyes and basked in the soft stillness of this magical night. In a moment, she would open them, run them over the Venetian stillness of the water which lay everywhere around her among the tall, silent buildings.

She would not look tonight for men with money to spend upon her. She would let this peace and beauty work their own therapy upon her troubled soul. She acknowledged to herself for the first time how disturbed she was by the life she was adopting, how febrile she was in her planning and her thinking. Perhaps it was on such a night as this that many people began to take stock of themselves.

The man's feet fell very softly behind her. He was almost upon her before she turned. She knew him, so that her first reaction in that quiet place was one of relief. By the time she found his two thumbs pressing like iron upon the sides of her throat, it was too late.

Her killer watched her face as she died, as he had planned to do on the previous night. Most of all, he watched her eyes, almost bursting with the pressure of the blood behind them. Quickly, as he knew it would be, they saw and felt no more, though they bulged more widely than they ever had in life. Her arms dropped limply to her sides and her assailant put her carefully, almost primly, down on the bench from which she had scarcely risen. He closed her eyes, as he had closed those of Hetty Brown, and put her hands together in her lap. She looked as though she had closed her eyes to pray, as quietly composed in death as Hetty had been. He liked that.

Amy Coleford's short life was over. On such a night as this.

It was well after midnight when a distraught Mrs Price dialled 999 and the police learned that another Oldford girl was missing.

The body of Amy Coleford sat cooling through the night in its pool of darkness by the docks at Gloucester. The late-night walkers ignored the dark figure on the bench beneath the lamp which shed no light. Once they would have been driven by curiosity or charity to investigate it. Now the dogma said that you minded your own business. The figure might be one shattered by drugs or drink, or driven to some other craziness by the pressures of our civilized society. It might even be the bait in a trap, waiting to snap shut on those unwary enough to approach it.