Stranglehold (29 page)

‘It wasn't just that,' said Rushton defensively. ‘When a person's job is to save life, you somehow don't think of him as a killer. And he'd almost made himself part of our team.'

‘At least it wasn't a policeman,' said Johnson. For him, that would have been the worst thing of all. He would never need to admit now that he had even entertained the wild thought that the Strangler might be DI Rushton, when he had looked at him after the conference on Saturday, white, distraught, deprived of his wife, and cursing all women.

Lambert went home early for once that Monday afternoon. He made himself a mug of tea and sat in the armchair which had seen so little of him in the last week. There he waited for his wife to come home from school, wondering how to tell her the news of Don Haworth's arrest.

He need not have worried. The news was round the staff room by lunch-time; most of them presumed that Christine would already know all the gory details, and left her feeling that her ignorance was a failure on her part.

She made quite a noise coming in, but she did not disturb John Lambert. The batsmen in the test match flickered to and fro on the television screen unwitnessed. The mug of tea was full and cold at his elbow. A curling strand of grey hair had fallen across his forehead, as if taking advantage of the opportunity to break ranks.

The Superintendent slumbered deep and untroubled in his chair.

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