Stranglehold (20 page)

Diana Kemp trembled a little: this was the moment she had anticipated during those difficult hours when she had built up her resolve. ‘That isn't correct. It was about half past one when he got in. I have one of those digital illuminated clocks by my bed. It said one thirty-three.' The detail seemed to her like the last twist of the knife in her betrayal. But he had betrayed her often enough over these last few years.

‘You're certain of this?'

‘Yes. I've thought about it carefully. I'm sure.'

‘Thank you. There may be another explanation of where he was, as well as the obvious one.'

‘I know that. I just felt – felt that you ought to know.' She wondered how much that was true, and how much she was motivated by the hatred which had lain dormant for so long within her and now burst out like a cancer.

‘Have you any idea where he might have been?'

‘No. At least – well, I don't know where he was that night. I do know there have been other women. At the
Roosters,
mainly. He's come home smelling of them often enough.'

Lambert glanced at Hook, who took over readily. ‘Mrs Kemp, we see a lot of the more unsavoury side of life in our work. Lots of men, unfortunately, are unfaithful to their wives: some of them with several women, as your husband seems to have been. It doesn't usually make them into murderers.'

‘No.' The monosyllable did not reveal whether she found that a comfort or a disappointment.

‘Is there anything that makes you think his sexual behaviour might be connected with violence? Anything ... well, unusual about these sexual liaisons?'

She nodded. She had thought she might never get this out, but their quiet questioning, their assurance that nothing she could say would shock them, were drawing her on. She would not stop now. ‘I found photographs last week. In his desk at home. Girls fastened up. And Charlie too, in one of them. Whips, handcuffs, ropes.' She stared resolutely at the carpet between them, determined to go on until she had rid herself of all this knowledge.

Sergeant and Superintendent looked at each other, then back to the conventional figure between them. Bondage. It was not as unusual as Diana Kemp seemed to think, nor even necessarily connected with violence. But sometimes it was, and the incidence was certainly interesting in this context.

Lambert said, ‘Thank you for telling us. Again it may be merely unsavoury, rather than sinister, but it is certainly something we need to know about. We appreciate your honesty. Let me assure you that you've done the right thing – but I think you already know that.'

She nodded again, still looking at the carpet, like a small girl concentrating fiercely on the words of a recitation. ‘I think he's trying to start up a call-girl racket. I don't know, but I heard a bit of a conversation when I came in one day. He was laughing about what he called the perks on the side.' She looked up at them at last, as if she feared she might catch them laughing now at her.

‘If you're right, Mrs Kemp, that is a serious crime. It is a matter we shall certainly have to investigate, and we thank you once again for doing your duty as a citizen and coming forward. But, serious as it is, it doesn't make a man necessarily a murderer, any more than adultery does.'

‘I know that. But I felt that if I was going to say anything, you should have the complete picture.'

‘What did you do with the photographs?'

‘I put them back where I found them. Do you want –'

‘No, not at present. You did much the best thing in putting them back. He won't realize they've been disturbed?'

‘No.' He was too arrogant even to think that she might spy on him.

‘Does your husband know that you've come here today, Mrs Kemp?'

Suddenly there was fear in the grey eyes that had been so still. ‘No. He mustn't –'

‘We shall do our very best not to reveal our source of information. But these things will have to be followed up, as you're aware, and Kemp is no fool. He may realize, or at least suspect, that we have talked to you. Do you think you need protection?'

‘No. He won't hurt me. Not seriously.'

‘Can you be sure of that?'

‘Yes. He'd have more sense, wouldn't he? As you say, he's no fool.' From many women, that observation on a husband would have come with a touch of pride. Perhaps it might have done once from Diana Kemp. Today it came out as a bitter irony.

‘Very well. Needless to say, it will make our work of investigation easier if he's not alerted to it like that. But if your views change, please contact us immediately.'

‘I'm going to stay with my sister for the weekend in Harrogate, anyway. It was arranged months ago.'

So he won't be aware of his danger. The thought lay between them for a moment. Then Lambert said, ‘You know that a third girl, Amy Coleford, was killed last night? She left two young children behind.' He threw in the detail to encourage the woman opposite him to any new revelations she might make, but his own outrage sprang out for a moment with the phrase.

‘I know that. In Gloucester. Charlie was in Gloucester last night. I think he was meeting the new manager he's putting in at the football club.'

‘That's correct. We've already talked to your husband, and to Mr Knowles, who is the man you mention. What we'd like you to tell us if you can is the time when your husband came home last night.'

‘I can indeed.' The information had been burning in her brain ever since she had heard of this latest killing on her radio in the kitchen. ‘It was just after midnight.'

They thanked her politely, watched her leave, a composed middle-aged woman in a muted but expensive summer coat, who might have been reporting a lost dog.

Instead of a woman who had just revealed to them that Charlie Kemp had lied twice about his whereabouts when two girls were killed.

On that weekend at the beginning of July, a lot of police leave was cancelled. There was not much grumbling from the team. They expected it, and with the prospect of a fourth killing at any moment, no one was inclined to argue.

Detective-Inspector Christopher Rushton, assembling his documentation for the team conference on Saturday morning, had put off his visit to seek reconciliation with his wife. That did not disappoint him: he was glad that the urgency of the hunt for the Strangler gave him the excuse to avoid a conversation he felt unable to handle. Those other women, the three dead victims of the Strangler, occupied his mind more and more. He wondered more acutely than most where the next victim might be found.

Lambert picked up Hook on his way to the station. It was still only nine, but Hook had been at work since six-thirty on his studies with the Open University. ‘It's when they have to transmit a lot of their broadcasts,' he said. ‘I don't mind making way for the test match, but I sometimes think the latest American sit-com shouldn't take priority.'

‘It's the advance of philistinism,' said Lambert portentously. ‘We import everything that is dire from America, and ignore their better facets.'

‘It isn't their fault, but the OU certainly isn't user-friendly,' said Hook. He knew how his chief deprecated Americanisms, and was rewarded by a snort of derision from his right.

‘No good language ever came out of America,' said Lambert firmly. ‘Remember that, Bert, if you aspire to masquerade as an educated man.' They ran through the suburbs of Oldford, still only beginning to stir on this weekend morning. ‘Anyway, it's good of you to come in to this conference when I said you needn't. Old-fashioned and un-American of you to be so conscientious.'

‘ “Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called Conscience,” ' quoted Hook with heavy solemnity.

‘A very English sentiment,' said Lambert approvingly. ‘Bunyan, I expect.'

‘Chap called George Washington, actually,' said Hook.

There was a pause before Lambert said rather desperately, ‘Sanctimonious little sod who cut down fruit trees and then boasted about it.'

It was Hook's only moment of amusement in a dark weekend.

Lambert was not as conservative in his views of policing as he often pretended to be. It was he who had arranged for a forensic psychologist to be present at their conference on that Saturday morning.

In the courtroom, psychiatrists are the traditional enemies of policemen, called by the defence to introduce doubts into cases that seem open and shut, producing views on the personalities of those charged with criminal offences which seem naive and unhelpful to those charged with the preservation of law and order. During the course of investigations, however, their views on the likely personalities and psychological make-ups of people who have committed serious crimes are sought more and more readily by the CID, particularly in the case of so-called ‘motiveless' offences.

Stanley Warboys was not at all vague or unworldly. He was a small man, with a neat beard, closely cut reddish-brown hair and alert brown eyes. He reminded Lambert of a highly intelligent squirrel. But instead of nuts, he stored information, and when he had eventually digested it, he came up with useful and original ideas. He was not afraid to go out on a limb, and though he often emphasized that his ideas on the kind of person they might seek out for particular crimes were quite speculative, he had not so far been made to look ridiculous when criminals had eventually been discovered.

He joined a small but highly informed group. There were no more than seven in all; even the Chief Constable had agreed to content himself with a mere report on their exchanges. Lambert and Hook, Rushton and ‘Jack' Johnson, the officer who had taken charge of the Scene of Crime team, were the policemen representing the sixty officers who were now involved in the search for the Strangler.

The only policeman from outside the team was Sergeant Paul Williams, the drug squad officer operating under cover at the
Roosters.
He was twenty-four, a slight, nervous-looking man with jeans and a shirt streaked with white paint; his chin was covered with a two-day growth of stubble. Serial killers transcended even the boundaries of police bureaucracy, so that Lambert had met no difficulties in having him attend this meeting. To preserve his cover, Williams had come to the station crouched beneath plastic bags in the back of Johnson's car, and would depart in the same way.

The only other person there was Don Haworth, the police surgeon who had shown such a lively supporting interest in their work. To Lambert's secret relief, Cyril Burgess, the pathologist who might normally have brought his irritating interest in crime fiction to their deliberations, was on holiday in Austria.

‘The idea,' said Lambert in his role of unofficial Chair, ‘is that we put together the information we have and add to it our own ideas. I want no one to be diffident because he is afraid of looking foolish. We have a murderer who is almost certainly deranged, no discernible motive, and a string of killings which is going to become longer if people like us don't come up with some ideas. Ideas, not answers – I don't want anyone to hold back on suggestions for lack of evidence at the moment. Let's have your thoughts however bizarre: they needn't go down on paper or even be retailed outside this room.'

Despite this invitation to be adventurous, Rushton began with a cautious thought, checking his own conclusions against those of the others. ‘The case seems to be connected in some way with the
Roosters
club. All the victims frequented the place to some extent. Our leading suspects have connections with either Oldford Football Club or the
Roosters
itself.' He was beginning to check things off on his fingers, in his normal, rational way, though he looked as if he had not slept for days.

Hook said, ‘But our list of suspects isn't exclusive. Our man may be someone who watches for girls leaving there and follows them. Someone we haven't even identified yet.'

Rushton frowned, irritated at having his thoughts interrupted. He felt an old tension with Hook, partly because the Sergeant was an older man, partly because Hook had refused promotion and preferred to remain as Sergeant, conferring upon himself that totally unwitting superiority which comes from integrity in an ambitious profession. Rushton could now add Hook's late but happy marriage and family to the list of his resentments against him, though he was totally unconscious of that.

He said brusquely, ‘I take it we are agreed at least that we are looking for a man?'

The meeting looked automatically to Warboys, who simply nodded and didn't enlarge. Rushton said, ‘Then perhaps we should go through our list of suspects before we indulge in any lateral thinking.' He had not intended this as a dig against Lambert's encouragement of speculation, but it came out as such. The DI was white and tense.

He said, ‘Let's start with Vic Knowles, our only non-local suspect. That perhaps makes it more significant that he should be in the area of all three killings on the nights they occurred. Sergeant Johnson now has the forensic reports on the examination of his car, which most of you probably haven't yet heard.'

Johnson took his cue, reporting sensational material in an even, unexcited voice, almost as if he was in court. ‘These findings relate mainly to the second killing, that of Harriet Brown. We gave Knowles's car a detailed examination the next day. Fibres from the back seat of Knowles's car are certainly from Hetty Brown's clothing: there are samples from both her skirt and sweater. There were also fibres from Knowles's trousers and shirt present on the clothing taken from the body.'

Rushton said, ‘This is good to have, but it isn't a clincher. When I interviewed Knowles about that night, he admitted to picking up a prostitute outside the
Roosters
and having sex with her in the back of his car. According to him, she then got out and left him there. Said she was near home. His story is that he didn't even know her name. We've been to the spot and it is very close to the place where she shared a flat. He's told us a pack of lies earlier in his interview, though; all I'm saying is that these findings don't contradict his story.'