Stranglehold (19 page)

Dexter was thrown by the aggression concealed beneath this village-bobby exterior. He did not realize what Lambert had learned long ago, that Bert Hook was an unexpectedly good actor when interrogating, perfectly prepared to simulate whatever emotion he thought most useful. He said sullenly, ‘I was at the
Roosters.
I usually am in the evenings. Do you –'

‘With Darren Pickering?'

‘No. I'm not his keeper, you know. Perhaps you'd better tell me what that bear of very little brain has been doing.'

‘Were you in the
Roosters
club until closing time?'

‘No.' Dexter turned back to Lambert, suddenly conciliatory in tone, the educated young man conversing with his intellectual equal. He was well aware of this man's exalted rank: it was almost that attained by Ben's rejected father. He said, guying himself like a man in a bad stage thriller, ‘Perhaps you had better tell me what this is all about, Superintendent.'

Lambert studied the young face for a moment before he said, ‘No doubt you knew a girl called Amy Coleford.'

‘I know Amy, yes. Husband's left her, silly bugger. She's a useful little number, Amy. Been putting it about a bit since he left her, too.' He stopped suddenly then, as if the Superintendent's use of the past tense had only just struck him: he brought off the effect quite well. ‘Look, you're not telling me something's happened to Amy now? I –'

‘Amy was strangled last night. Just as Julie Salmon and Harriet Brown, whom you also knew, had been strangled before her. What time did you leave the
Roosters
last night?'

Dexter's hands ran quickly up and down his bright red braces. It was not the affectation it might have been a few minutes earlier. He was nervous now, for his fingers would not stay still, even when he dropped them down on to his thighs. He wished after all that he had sat more normally behind the desk, which would at least have afforded him some concealment; perched absurdly against the front of it, he suddenly felt very much exposed. ‘I left about nine o'clock, I think. It might have been a little later.'

‘And why did you leave at that time? Our information is that you usually stay until last orders are called.' Lambert blessed again the good fortune which had given them a drugs squad officer working at the
Roosters.
The background material which Paul Williams had been able to provide on their suspects was one of the few bright spots in the present darkness.

Dexter was shaken by the extent of their knowledge. ‘I just felt like an early night. It was too quiet in the
Roosters
' He was not going to tell them, indeed could hardly admit to himself, that the place had seemed empty without the considerable physical presence of Darren Pickering.

Lambert paused to study Dexter's right foot, with its highly polished Gucchi shoe. It was big enough to have made the print they had found near the body of Hetty Brown. The foot was swinging backwards and forwards in what had begun as a casual gesture, but had now lost its rhythm and become a series of irregular jerks. ‘And where did you go then?'

He put the query so quietly that it seemed invested with nuances of suggestion beyond its simple form. Perhaps it was these which made Dexter's reply sound even in his own ears like a lie. ‘I – I went home. Back to my flat.'

‘You share a flat?'

‘No. I live alone.'

It was Hook, taking it upon himself to deliver the final blow to this golden-haired young Apollo gone decadent, who said, ‘Is there anyone in the building where you live who could confirm the time when you arrived there last night?'

‘No. I shouldn't think so.'

‘Pity, that. We shall ask, though. It's surprising what people see or hear sometimes. Even late at night.'

Lambert said, ‘You have a blue Porsche motor car. Registration J143 FCV.'

‘Yes.' Dexter was shaken anew by the extent of their knowledge. He did not know that it was one of the cars which had been reported parked within half a mile of the place where Hetty Brown had been killed three nights earlier.

‘How long would it have taken you to drive from the
Roosters
club to Gloucester in that car last night?'

At the beginning of the interview, Dexter would have ridiculed the question. Now, he moistened dry lips before he said, ‘No more than a quarter of an hour at that time, I suppose.'

‘Did you in fact drive to Gloucester?'

‘No.'

‘Because, you see, Amy Coleford was strangled by the docks in Gloucester last night. At the time you cannot account for, after you say you had left the
Roosters
club.'

‘It wasn't me.' The denial was almost an appeal.

‘We shall be checking the whereabouts of your car last night. No doubt such a distinctive vehicle will be remembered.'

Dexter looked from one granite face to the other. It was Hook who said, ‘Did you kill Amy Coleford, Mr Dexter?'

‘No.'

‘Have you any idea who might have killed her?'

‘No.'

‘We shall require you to sign a formal statement later. In the meantime, you should consider your position and any other information you might be able to offer us.'

Ben Dexter said dully, ‘These killings all seem to be connected with Oldford Football Club and the
Roosters
'

Lambert said, ‘That has already occurred to us; even PC Plod can sometimes make connections.'

In the echoing rooms of the big house on the outskirts of Oldford, Diana Kemp was listening to the radio. She moved restlessly from kitchen to dining-room to lounge; she had a set on in each, and the sounds of the news bulletin rose and fell as she wandered about her house.

She sat down on one of the dining-room chairs to listen to the earnest tones of the Chief Constable, who came on at the end of the report on the attempts to trap the Strangler. ‘Somewhere, someone is shielding the man who killed these women. Perhaps it is a mother or a wife; perhaps it is a brother or a sister. Perhaps it is a landlord or a landlady, who has let a room. Whoever it may be, I beg them to come forward before more lives are lost. This man has killed three times in two weeks, and he is almost certain to kill again if he is not checked. The man who has brutally strangled these women needs help. It will be in his own interest if whoever is shielding him comes forward now. Please, don't wait to be certain; if you have any reason for suspicion contact us immediately. The police are dependent on your help if further bloodshed is to be avoided.'

Diana Kemp went into the hall and looked at herself in the mirror. She saw a plump, unexciting face – perhaps because that was what she was prepared to see. Her features were still almost unlined, the grey was not unbecoming in her carefully coiffured hair. Her make-up was light but, she thought, reasonably effective: she hated those American women who fought the advance of age every inch of the way. The crow's feet were beginning to appear around her grey eyes, but that inexorable bird had trodden but lightly as yet.

All in all, it was not the face of a traitor.

She went back into the dining-room, pulled her chair up to the round table, and picked up the phone.

The number had begun to ring before her nerve went.

She could not go through with it when it came to the point; not dispassionately, not with no one to persuade her mouth into treachery. She wished she could ring the man she had just heard on the radio and let him convince her that she should speak, speaking personally now rather than in that general, blanket appeal. He had sounded like an understanding man.

Mrs Kemp sat by the phone for a full ten minutes without moving. That was the name she would use when she rang: she was too schooled in the ways of her generation to announce herself in any other way. But that very title made what she was going to do seem more like a betrayal.

She went into the small cloakroom and put on her light summer coat, examining herself again in the mirror, this time more to put off what she was going to do than from any access of vanity; her life had long since rid her of that. She hesitated a moment when she had shut the front door behind her, then went straight past the doors of the double garage, giving a little, unconscious nod to herself. She would not use the car because he had provided it; besides, she was fighting an obscure fear that he might see it parked near the police station.

She did not have to wait long at the bus stop. But the bus seemed to take ages to reach the centre of the small town; it was so long since she had used one that she had forgotten how circuitous was its route. Each stop was a temptation to leave it, to abandon the resolution which had seemed so firm when she had made it that morning. She was beset now not just by the notion of treachery, but by the English fear of looking a fool in public. Surely it couldn't be Charlie who had ...

She sat looking steadily and unseeingly ahead of her, trying to stiffen her resolve by thinking of the pictures she had found in the drawer of his desk at home.

She had expected to wait at the police station, had steeled herself not to walk out when she was left sitting on the bench a few yards from the station sergeant. Instead, she was ushered straight through to see the man in charge of the investigation. She did not realize how her very name was an immediate passport through the barriers of police bureaucracy.

The tall man with the iron-grey hair said that he was Superintendent Lambert. He sent for tea and took pains to seat her comfortably in the stark, untidy office. He reminded her of the specialist who had explained the need for her hysterectomy. She wondered if all those papers which were spread across the big desk could really be connected with the Strangler case.

He was kind to her, trying hard to put her at her ease when she realized that he could really have very little time to spare for such niceties. She wanted to tell him that there was no need for that, that all she wanted to do was to spit out her poison and have done with it, leaving them to make what they might of it.

She started in herself without any prompting, long before the tea came. ‘It's about my husband, Charlie Kemp.'

Lambert nodded calmly. ‘I thought it might be.'

He gave her the impression that he had been waiting for this, that it had been inevitable that she should come, that wives came in like this on every day of the week. That made it easier. ‘It may be nothing, of course. Probably it isn't.'

Lambert smiled at her and nodded. ‘We understand that. We're following up all kinds of information. If yours proves to be irrelevant, there's no reason why your husband should even know that you've been here.'

She nodded, trying to produce a small answering smile to show that she understood and appreciated his concern. The smile was very reluctant to come; she could feel a tautness in her lips which she never remembered before. ‘Well, I've been reading about the times when these girls were killed. I know you've seen Charles, and you must have asked him about where he was when these things happened.'

For a moment, Lambert thought that she had come after all to do her best for Kemp, to render him the wifely service of an alibi for the times of the killings. They might not believe her, but that would not matter, unless they could prove beyond legal doubt that he was elsewhere at the times she specified.

Then he looked at her troubled, hesitant face, and divined that he was wrong. ‘Would it be easier for you if I simply asked you a few questions? Then you could answer them and add anything you thought might be useful afterwards.' She nodded her gratitude, just as Bert Hook carried in a tray on which he balanced two mugs of tea and a cup and saucer for her. Lambert marvelled at his sergeant's resource: he had not seen a saucer around the CID section for months. ‘Sergeant Hook will just make a note of what you have to tell us. If we think it's useful, we may ask you to sign a statement later.'

It was not possible to be sure how much she understood of this. Her hands trembled a little as she took the cup, and she looked down at them in surprise, as though they belonged to someone else. Lambert moved briskly through the first killing, where she could surely have little to tell them. ‘The first girl killed was Julie Salmon. Our problem is that we are not sure exactly when she was killed, because her body was not discovered until some time afterwards. Your husband was in the area on the night of her death, and cannot account for his movements for two hours or so of it. But it's only fair to say that there are several other people in the same position.'

Diana Kemp said, ‘I've thought about that night a lot. But I can't be sure what time he came in.'

Lambert said, ‘Forgive the intrusion, but your husband has told us that you have separate bedrooms. Is that correct?'

She smiled now, a sad, bitter smile that spoke of lost hopes. ‘It is correct. But the rooms are next door to each other. I'm usually aware of when he comes in. But sometimes, when things are especially bad, I take a sleeping tablet.' She looked at him apologetically. ‘I think the night when Julie Salmon died must have been one of those.'

Lambert felt a little burst of anticipatory excitement. ‘Well, as I say, we haven't been able to pin down a definite time for that death yet. But we know fairly certainly just when the second girl, Harriet Brown, was killed.' He turned to his notes, trying to project to her the air of calm routine which would make her answers seem a small part of a larger pattern, although he knew by heart the details he was about to put to her.

‘Mr Kemp admits to seeing Harriet Brown at the
Roosters
club at nine o'clock on Tuesday night. She was dead within four hours of that time. Mr Kemp cannot account for his movements in those hours. He says he drank on his own in his room at the club for about two of them, and then went home alone. He's not sure when he got in, but he thinks it was around midnight.'