Stranglehold (11 page)

An opinion which would be shared by all right-thinking men, thought Lambert.

Darren Pickering would have been pleased to hear that the police had so far found nothing to incriminate him. But no one had told him that.

He did not like the police, and they did not much like him. He was not the kind of figure which authority finds attractive. He was a large youth, much given to the wearing of T-shirts just too small to contain his heavily muscled torso without tight stretching. He considered his closely shaven head and his single earring part of a uniform of aggression, but he showed his independence by eschewing the tattoos which many of his Saturday-afternoon football companions affected.

His massive forearms looked curiously naked as he folded them across his chest and stared glumly at his pint of special. The
Roosters
was filling up nicely: he didn't like it too quiet. He stretched forward his legs in the tight jeans, wondering as he studied them whether their newness was a little too apparent, whether a little staining, perhaps a couple of small slits around the knees, might produce the effect he thought appropriate. The jeans looked to him a little too pristine above the well-worn blue and white trainers on his size ten feet.

His companion said, ‘Leave them alone, Darren. They'll get sullied soon enough when we have a rumble.' It amused him to show the man beside him how easily he could follow his thoughts. He referred to Pickering, sometimes to his face, as ‘a bear of very little brain', a description Darren accepted inexplicably as a compliment.

Benjamin George Dexter could scarcely have been a greater contrast to the man beside him. Harrow had prepared him for Cambridge, but he had chosen instead to slum it at the London School of Economics. He worked now in the money markets at Bristol, one of those young men who spent much of his day in front of a computer screen and made a lucrative living out of moving other people's money around.

He had draped his jacket over the back of his chair, it seemed less for comfort than to show off the elaborate patterning of his waistcoat upon its rich purple background. The linen of his trousers was sharply creased, his Gucchi leather shoes looked surprisingly delicate upon his substantial feet. As if to underline the crudity of Pickering's hair, his own blond locks fell in a carefully coiffured casualness over his perfect ears.

Pickering said, ‘The pigs had me in again today. There's been another murder, you know. That Hetty you fancied a bit, till you found she was on the game.'

Dexter nodded. ‘I heard. Shame, that: useful bit of crumpet getting snuffed out like that.' He was careful to show no emotion, to confine his previous connection with Hetty Brown to a little casual lust. The police hadn't had him in about this one, so far. They had asked him about Julie Salmon, but as far as he could gather that was only because of his connection with Pickering, who was bound to be in the frame for his girlfriend's death.

The police fascinated Ben Dexter: he studied their workings with the fixed attention of a man who watches the movements of a dangerous snake and is unable to turn away. His father, to whom he had not spoken for over three years, had been a senior policeman when he retired. He said as casually as he could, ‘Did you find out how much they knew about Hetty's death?' He was anxious to know just what progress the pigs had made with their investigations into the killing of Julie Salmon; he suspected not very much. They had let his bear-like friend go after questioning, to his secret disappointment. Probably they thought Darren Pickering would simply not be bright enough to bring it off.

As in other areas of his life, Ben Dexter's judgement was not as sound as he thought it was. Pickering, despite the appearance he chose to affect, was not stupid. He had little in the way of formal qualifications, for he had always fought the system at school. But Julie Salmon had persuaded him to go to evening classes, and he had found himself taking at last to study, surprising both his tutor and himself by his rapid grasp of engineering concepts. He had not been to the class since Julie's body had been found. And now there was this other death, another corpse of a girl he had seen in here.

He said, ‘Hetty hadn't been long dead when the police found her. That Dr Haworth who comes in here had certified her. He's the police surgeon, you know.'

Dexter nodded. ‘Funny bugger he is, too.' He knew little of Haworth, but he was feeding Pickering the appropriate reaction: anyone who chose to associate with the police must be a funny bugger.

‘He used to be Julie's doctor, you know.' Pickering threw in this apparent irrelevance with a superior air, glad to reveal any snippet of information not possessed by his companion. Ben Dexter's unspoken assumption that he was an unthinking prole grated sometimes, even though it was only the acceptance of the image Pickering had chosen to create for himself.

‘Haworth could have his pick of the girls in here,' said Dexter. ‘I've seen them looking at him. Silly bugger doesn't seem interested. Wonder if he's queer.'

‘Shouldn't think so. I expect he has to be a bit careful, being a doctor.'

Dexter's lip curled at the idea of such pusillanimous self-denial, but he said nothing more on the subject. To have done so would have been treating Pickering's opinions as if they were as valid as his own.

They sipped their lager for a moment without speaking. Dexter had in truth been happy to divert their conversation from the subject of Julie Salmon. He found that for reasons he preferred not to confront he was made uncomfortable by any mention of Julie from the lips of this muscular lump who had once been her boyfriend. Danger attracted him, just as violence did, but he resisted the temptation now to come back again to her violent death.

He decided that the excitement they got from football was safer. ‘We'll be in the Vauxhall Conference next season,' he said, not for the first time. ‘Chance of a few rumbles when we travel with the lads. You could be glad of that Martial Arts course we did before Easter.' He looked down at his sinewy fingers, thinking of the scientific, calculated ferocity which they could now inflict. He preferred to rely on Pickering as his minder in any confrontation, but it was as well to be prepared for all situations. There might even be more individual conflicts, where the big man was not at his side with his ready fists.

Dexter loved organizing violence, manipulating situations and the participants. He had never been arrested himself, even in the days when he and a middle-class group like him had marshalled the battalions of travelling West Ham bother boys. There had been blood then, and even the odd knifing, but he had enjoyed it all from the wings. ‘Up the Roosters!' he now said automatically, just as he had once said, ‘Up the Hammers!'

Darren Pickering did not react, unless his long pull at his lager could be called a reaction. He looked round the club. This early on a Wednesday evening, it was still not half full. ‘Not much action here. Let's go down the town.' He drained his glass and stood up, straightening his powerful limbs ostentatiously beneath the jeans and the overstretched shirt.

Dexter glanced at his expensive watch, then lounged back, straightening his long legs beside the table and studying his feet. ‘No. Let's give it another half-hour and see what turns up.'

Pickering said obstinately, ‘I'm going anyway,' turned upon his companion, and walked out. He had suddenly realized that he wanted to be on his own. He felt good as he emerged into the cooler air of the car park. For once, he had made this decision, not Dexter.

Neither of them had seen Charlie Kemp watching their separation from the small glass observation panel above them.

Amy Coleford did not go to the
Roosters
that Wednesday night. Some of the lurid imaginings of her neighbour about the two girls who had died in the last three weeks had stayed obstinately in her mind, long after she had thought she had shrugged them away.

She went into Oldford, hoping secretly to pick up the kindly middle-aged man who had been content merely to fondle her for half an hour two nights earlier. Easy money, that, she told herself; if the silly fool was prepared to pay her thirty pounds for a quick grope, she was certainly prepared to take his money. She was working hard at creating around herself the porcelain-hard glazing of bright indifference she saw in the more experienced practitioners of her trade. Emotions, she knew, must be kept for home: this was business. But she was not finding the distinction easy. A small part of her still wondered about the lives her clients went back to when they left her.

Oldford was quiet. Any experienced street-walker would have told her that it was too small a town to have many good pitches, that a Wednesday evening in summer when dusk was scarcely departed was not a good time. She should have given her phone number to those customers who were affluent and harmless, and waited at home for them to ring for her services. Then, with an eager client on the other end of the line, she could have announced her list of charges for the various services she was prepared to offer. With youth on her side, it would have been easy to build up a list of regular and harmless clients.

But Amy Coleford was new to the game and knew none of this. Without the dubious benefit of a pimp to organize her work, or advice from an older practitioner of the ancient profession, she was learning the hard way. She would learn the ropes in time – if she was allowed that time.

She tried a road which led off the town's main street and down to a shabby inn at the bottom of a gentle slope. There were shops down both sides of the road, most of them with flats above. It was darker here, with only a strip of sky visible between the tops of the three-storey buildings. Men did not like to conduct the first negotiations in a place that was too well-lit.

But she had not been there five minutes when a harsh female voice from a doorway behind her said, ‘And what the hell do you think you're doing, you little cow?'

It was an older woman, unmistakably looking for trade in her short black leather skirt. Her peroxided hair bounced with fury as she warned off the young rival, her lined face raw with anger beneath the mask of make-up. Amy had never heard such a vicious string of obscenities before, not even from Harry in their rows before he had left her. It shook her: for the first time in months she felt the need of the mother who was dead.

She walked up and down the High Street for a few minutes, trying to recover the composure the woman had battered away. Then a police car pulled up alongside her. ‘What are you doing, love?' the non-driving policeman asked her. He knew well enough: they had been watching her for five minutes.

‘I – I'm waiting for a friend. I – I don't think she's going to come,' she said. The man's brown, humorous eyes, shadowed by his black and white hat, seemed to see right through her.

‘Get home, love, while you can. And don't let us see you touting for custom here again, or we'll have to take you in.' They watched her walk a hundred yards, looking back twice over her shoulder to see if they were still watching her. Then the car eased quietly forward and stopped again at her elbow. ‘Do you want a lift home, love?'

She was tempted. Then something told her she must not let the police know her address. They were the enemy, weren't they? ‘No, thanks, I'll walk. I haven't far to go,' she said stiffly.

‘Suit yourself then, love, but take care. You know about these killings we've been having. You stay home at nights there's a good girl.' He was not from anywhere round Oldford; his Yorkshire accent seemed to her immensely reassuring, so that she did not want to leave the security it suggested. He was older than she had thought at first. She had a sudden fantasy of him as a client, putting his arms round her protectively when they had finished, wanting to forbid her ever to sell herself again. She might even accept. The police car was gone before she had dismissed the notion.

She had thought she might call in at the
Roosters
club after all; she could see the lights of it, no more than two hundred yards away at one point and seeming nearer in the summer darkness. But she was more shaken and depressed than she would admit by the memory of that raddled woman in the town centre. Was this what she must come to in due course? The future stretched blankly away in front of her, impenetrable and ominous.

For once, she would cut her losses and go home. It would mean paying Mrs Price needlessly for her baby-sitting, but she had done well enough in her short career to be able to afford that. She began to think of reasons she could give for her early return, cheering herself up with the thought of her children's sleeping faces.

She did not hear the car which had been following her when it stopped. She heard its driver's door shut quietly a moment later, but she apprehended no particular danger from that.

It was only when she heard the footsteps, a good two minutes later, that she felt the first thrill of fear. She looked back; at the outskirts of the town, the lights were poor and widely spaced. She saw only the silhouette of a figure, intensely black against the yellow light behind him. He looked larger like that, and taller still when he raised his right arm above his head in a single, restraining gesture.

He might be the customer she had given up hope of attracting, and for a moment she thought of turning towards him with the welcoming smile she had practised in front of her mirror. But he had not called out, and his silence was suddenly significant to her.

She began to run, cursing now the high heels she had thought such essential footwear when she went out.

He loped behind her, his footsteps less noisy now that he ran than when he had walked. She wondered if it was really so, or whether her own haste and the wind that rushed past her ears was shutting out other sounds. She could not be more than three hundred yards from home now, but half of it was down a lane with nothing but a straggling hawthorn hedge on one side and a single house, set well back from the road, on the other.