Stranglehold

by J M Gregson

  ‘How do you know what I enjoy any more? I might have enjoyed them a little once – I can’t remember any more. But for years you’ve tarted me up like a Christmas tree and brought me out to be inspected.’ It wasn’t completely fair, she knew: she had gone along with it willingly enough for too long. But she was no longer interested in being fair to him. ‘I’ve had enough of being afraid to open my mouth, in case I reveal something I shouldn’t about one of your shady deals before you’ve pulled it off.’

  ‘I need you, Di. Go with me this time, at least. Then we’ll talk about things, see if we can put it right.’

  It might have worked, if she hadn’t heard the echo of the phrases he had used on her so often before. ‘No, we won’t. I’ve tried to talk to you plenty of times in the last year, but you’ve never had time for me. You’re only trying now because you want to parade me at the Masons.’ She was surprised how calm, how logical she sounded, despite the pounding of her heart. She drew strength from that.

  It was her logic that was defeating him. He had not expected this, had never invited her to reason with him in his life. Confronted with it now, he was at a loss. He clenched his powerful fists, resisting the impulse to try to beat her into submission. ‘It’s my fault, I admit it. You’re right to bring it to my notice.’

  He used the phrase he had picked up as a standby when people began to complain about his business operations. He could hardly claim here, though, that some unthinking underling was at fault, that he had not been personally involved. ‘Now that I know you’re unhappy, my love, we can begin to do something about it.’ He made a clumsy grab for her hand, trying to cushion it between his own broad paws. It was another gesture from the past, but she easily avoided him.

  ‘I’m not your love, and I haven’t been for a long time – perhaps I never was. And I no longer want to be your love.’ She had picked up that phrase he never used, and contrived to deliver it back to him with a sneer that became more pronounced with her repetitions. This was easier than she had thought possible.

  ‘Doesn’t all – all this I’ve provided mean anything to you?’ He gestured vaguely round the bedroom, trying to take in the big house and the garden beyond it with the movement.

  She looked at the long velvet curtains, the wallpaper with its small blue flowers, the long range of built-in wardrobes, the double bed with its bedside cabinet, its elaborate reading lamp and Teasmade, as though she was registering them for the first time. ‘I’ve never asked you for any of this. And God knows what you’ve done at times to get it. But I’ll have my share, when I go. I reckon I’ve earned it.’

  She had never before even hinted that she might leave him. He could not cope with the idea. But he had the sense not to continue an argument where she was scoring all the points. He would get away; think over her bombshell – marshal whatever resources he could to help him. Perhaps he could get their daughter over from Norwich to paper this over: he found it difficult still to think beyond the short term. ‘I’ve got to go, Di. We’ll talk later. Whatever it is, I’ll make it up to you.’

  He still thought in Hollywood clichés that were already generations out of date. He left her studying her face in the mirror; like an ageing Rita Hayworth, he thought.

  In his reserved car parking slot at the Roosters Kemp stood for a moment collecting himself, thinking himself back into the dominant role which he and others expected him to play here.

  He locked the door of the blood-red Mercedes, drew himself sternly erect, pulled down the cuffs of his jacket until he was sure that it hung upon him uncreased. Diana had shaken him, more than he cared to admit. But in this place he was all-powerful; and it was a power that extended to women, as well as to more important things.

  He went and spoke for a moment to the bar manager, letting the man know that the boss was around, but making the effort to be affable, jovial, understanding of the problems of the workers. This was Charlie Kemp, man of the people, in touch with the Oldford FC supporters, providing the success and the excitement they wanted. And controlling them, of course.

  The tables were filling up as he went across the floor to the hall, acknowledging the greetings of the drinkers, smiling the smile he reserved for this royal progress to his own rooms. ‘Just another supporter like you,’ his bearing said, just another soccer-mad boy at heart, who happens to be lucky enough to indulge his passion for football and bring you fortunate people into it at the same time.’ But beneath the affability he had pinned on at the door, he was as observant as a hungry shark.

  His eye picked out the vulnerable, attractive figure of Amy Coleford. It was a fateful moment, for both of them.

  He stopped for a moment to check that she was alone, then spoke quietly to her. ‘Come up and have a drink with me, if you like. I enjoy meeting our supporters.’ It was his standard line, almost a formula by now, which most of the girls knew as well as he did. Charlie Kemp didn’t care if they spotted it for what it was; didn’t have to care, he thought.

  Amy Coleford did not recognize it as a limp chat-up line. A few moments later, she mounted the carpeted stairs beneath the little hanging sign that said PRIVATE. She was not so naive that she thought she was going just for a drink. But had she exchanged notes with other practitioners of that trade she scarcely realized she had entered, she would have known better what to expect.

  Kemp watched her cup her hands round the tumbler of gin and tonic, then sat on the arm of couch beside her and fondled the back of her neck. With the back of his knuckles, he felt her hair. It was soft and gossamer light, as he remembered Diana’s had been once. At about this girl’s age, he thought vindictively.

  Amy did not look up at him. She still found these opening movements in the sexual exchange difficult; she supposed she would get over the embarrassment in time. She always told herself that it must be worse for the men on the other side, having to think up the things to say. But on this occasion she did not think that could be so; this man must be very experienced. The drink was useful; she stared into it with her small, glassy, uncommitted smile, resolutely avoiding the eyes of the man who had poured it for her until he should make his intentions clear.

  He said, ‘A girl like you could cause a lot of trouble.’ It was a line from one of his favourite old movies. Robert Mitchum, he thought, or Humphrey Bogart. The girl didn’t seem to think it was corny, perhaps because he didn’t himself: he delivered it with complete confidence.

  She said, ‘I’m not out to do that, Mr Kemp.’ Sitting in his chair in these lavish surroundings, she found herself on new, exciting ground. They said that all women had a little of the courtesan or the temptress in them; she switched into what she thought of as her tartish mode. Using the hand which now did not have a wedding ring, she brushed her hair back over her left temple, looked up at him for the first time, and said, ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t want to give you any trouble.’

  ‘You won’t do that, I’m sure, my dear. And it’s Charlie, when we’re together up here.’ He slid down beside her and put his arm round her shoulders.

  She liked that gesture. It reminded her how much she missed the protection of a man – had missed it for a long time now, because Harry had been a threat rather than a shield for months before he actually went. She nestled into the large shoulder next to her. ‘It’s nice up here, Charlie.’ She had to force herself into the boldness of using his name, but it sounded easy enough on her ears as it came out. They liked you to use their names, if they gave them to you: it made it seem less of a commercial transaction, more personal.

  He kept his left arm around her, drew her closer to him, holding her against his side like a gentle bear. He could feel the warmth of her through her thin dress, fancied that he could even feel the pulse in the slim thigh as it pressed against his. He ran his right hand over the nylon of her knee, up on to the unresisting thigh beyond it. Both their eyes were on that large, muscular hand as it moved and stroked. She kept a small, unchanging smile on lips that were parted just enough to reveal a ve
ry regular set of white teeth.

  He moved his hand up her thigh, taking with it the skirt that was too tight to allow this movement, feeling the suspender at the top of the nylon, lingering there for a little to savour the moment, the lack of resistance he might choose to interpret as pleasure.

  She was pleased with herself when she felt that pause. They said, all the magazines, that men preferred stockings to tights, and here it was being proved. She allowed herself a little shudder, hoping he might take it for pleasure, moving herself still more tightly into his side. She allowed herself to move her hand on to his arm, caressing him lightly where the muscle bulged above his elbow. She might even grow to like this trade, if it could be as gentle, as unhurried, as this.

  She wondered when she should broach the question of payment. It was always the moment which gave her most difficulty, particularly when men had been considerate to her, like this. Something told her that she must be careful this time, must not rush it. She even had a wild, vague hope that this man might want her for a mistress, rather than a quick bang and away. You never knew, when you were still young. He seemed at this moment as if he wanted to care for her, and he certainly had the money. And a kind of glamour: to be Charlie Kemp’s mistress would certainly carry a little excitement.

  Amy Coleford was still very young.

  He moved his hand up on to her hip, then round to the softness behind it, pulling her round to face him so that he might explore her secret areas the better. As she buried her face in his chest, she gave a little whimper of pleasure; at that moment, she was not even sure herself whether it was genuine or a part of the technique she was fashioning as she gathered experience.

  He felt her pliancy, her femininity, against him, thrust his face into her soft hair. As a punishment in his mind for Diana, he thought of his wife’s harshness, of her hard, unrelenting face in the mirror of her dressing-table, trying to contrast her ageing with the youth and femininity he held against him.

  It was a fatal juxtaposition. For some reason he could not fathom, lust forsook him when he felt the need of it most. With the thought of his wife, he wanted only to humiliate the whole of her sex. If he had been able to order this soft creature to strip before him, to lay herself out to be taken violently by him, to name her price as if she had been so much meat in the market, he might still have taken her. Harshly, and with no pretence at love; as a mere sating of an animal appetite, with what was going on clear to both sides.

  But he had begun in the wrong way to do that now. He would not mind shocking the woman at his side: that might even add to the pleasure, once he had begun the process of humiliation. But it was himself he could not switch on. He could not find the words, and he could not operate without words to initiate him, few though they might be.

  He eased himself a fraction away from her, withdrew his hands from her body. ‘If you’re going to make money at this game, you need to be organized, dear, same as in any other business.’

  The change in his tone was so abrupt that at first she did not fully comprehend that he was talking about her. Men often talked about their own business worries, the stress they were under, as though they had to excuse to themselves the fact that they were paying for sex. She must encourage him to talk about it, if that was what he wanted. She looked up at him with round blue eyes, misting with a little moisture in her bewilderment. Innocence and vulnerability were always the best cards to play with men when you were confused.

  But not this time. Kemp thought of his wife’s phrase about him coming home smelling of whores and decided that Amy Coleford represented whoredom. ‘If you’re going to peddle your wares like this, you’ll need to be put into a proper set-up. Oldford hasn’t got any brothels yet, but they’re coming. You stick with me, babe, and you could be in on the ground floor.’

  It was his absurd, outdated Hollywood dialogue that freed her tongue and her anger. ‘I don’t need your help, I can look after myself. I – I thought you wanted me, or I wouldn’t have ...’ The words tailed away and she gestured hopelessly with both hands at her body and his, the couch, the drink on the table beside her, the silent, thickly carpeted room with its rich wood panelling.

  ‘Come off it, Amy. You were offering your fanny for money, and we both knew it.’ He watched her wince, saw the tears forming, and was exultant. He stood up, towering over her, dominating her. ‘You’ve got a nice little body there. Slim and healthy, but still plenty of what the punters like to get hold of.’

  He liked that: it made it sound as though his earlier moves on the couch were no more than a sampling of the goods as a preliminary to the proposition he was now about to put to her.

  She said, ‘If you don’t want me, Charlie, there’s no need to insult me.’ She wanted to get up, to face him, to give him as good as she got if the insults were going to fly. But her legs were like water and she was suddenly bereft of all energy. She felt the hotness of tears in her eyes, and was furious with herself for her weakness, when she so wanted to be furious with him.

  He looked down at her, contemptuous now as he saw her tears. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t want you: I might, in time. That might be part of the deal. What I’m telling you is that if you’re planning to open your legs up for money to all and sundry, you want to make sure it pays. And you need protection. What I’m offering you is the benefit of my organization. We’ll set you up with a base, set the rates, vet the clients, make sure you have protection. At a price, of course. Nothing is for nothing, especially sex; we shall take our percentage, that’s only fair.’

  ‘I don’t want to work for you.’ She was scrambling to get up, but he stood very near her, and she could not manage to raise herself from the low, softly sprung couch.

  ‘Be sensible, dear. You won’t have much choice. In a few months, you’ll be working for us, on our terms, or you won’t be working at all. Not with that.’ He gestured obscenely at her groin.

  She managed at last to get to her feet, staggering a little with her emotion. ‘You can’t stop me. I’ll do my own –’

  ‘Fight us, will you? On your own? Don’t even think of it, my dear!’ He managed to snarl out the term of endearment as though it were another obscenity. He was on his own ground now, threatening a weakling with the power of the thugs ranged unseen behind him. ‘You won’t make much of a hooker with your face slashed to ribbons.’

  She faced him but could not look at him; her damp pretty face was a mask of frustration and rage. ‘I don’t need you. I’ll manage. There are people who’d like to know about what you’re doing ...’ She stopped, realizing too late that she should not have threatened him.

  ‘You need me far more than you know, Amy Coleford.’ His voice had dropped to a growl. ‘You must have heard about these girls who’ve been killed. The last one at least was on the game. Dabbling in it without protection, like you. You’ll end up like those two before long unless you come to heel, I can tell you. Now get out!’

  She raised her hands a little in front of her, as though to protest, then turned hopelessly to the door where she had come in.

  ‘Not that way.’ He could not have that face with its rivers of eye-shadow going through the club. He took her out of the other end of the hospitality suite and showed her the top of the outside staircase, which except on match days was almost his private access to his rooms here.

  She looked him in the face before she went out into the air, for the first time since he had decided he did not want to take her. Was it one of this man’s men who had followed her last night? Or even Charlie Kemp himself? She wanted to say something, to fling some last defiance before she slunk away from him. But she saw his features set like flint against her, and the words would not come.

  He shut the door upon her and watched through the small window beside it as she went down the iron steps and into the car park. She walked a hundred yards across the tarmac, turned for a single backward glance of resentment at the tall building where he stood, and was gone. He stood watching for a moment, reviewi
ng what he had said to her in the excitement of crushing her. It was too much, too soon. She could do him damage now, if she talked. The last threat he had thrown at her came back to him, and he looked at the spot where she had disappeared with a cold smile.

  It would quite suit his purposes if the Strangler was to get her.

  CHAPTER 11

  The new Chief Constable had his reservations about John Lambert. He liked his superintendents to play things by the book. In the modern police force, that meant they remained at the station, the visible head of a murder investigation, the focus for all the streams of information that flowed in from an extensive team. There were now over sixty officers involved in varying degrees in the Strangler case, and the officer-in-charge should be the man who coordinated the efforts: the man who bullied, cajoled and informed the troops, using whatever means were necessary to keep morale high.

  Lambert did not work like that. He let the Scene-of-Crime team and the house-to-house men get on with their necessary routine work, reporting in the main to DI Rushton, who enjoyed the painstaking documentation and checking for discrepancies much more than he did. He headed the CID investigation himself, spending most of his hours away from the Murder Room, interviewing important witnesses himself wherever possible, using a detective-sergeant, rather than the more normal inspector, to accompany him, to support him; even, when he thought it necessary, to conduct key interviews.

  It was irregular, but it worked. The old Chief Constable, Douglas Gibson, had told his successor all about Lambert when he handed over. ‘He has his own methods. You’ll find yourself calling him old-fashioned, though I’m not sure that’s the right phrase. Stubborn, certainly. But not threatening: I believe him when he says he wants to stay exactly where he is as far as rank goes. And he gets results.’

  It was the last phrase which struck home with George Harding. In an era where crime statistics are public property and a senior policeman’s job can depend on clear-up rates, Detective-Superintendent Lambert’s record was second to none. That was bound to win him a little indulgence. And Harding found that he had assembled a team around him who seemed to accept his methods. Policemen generally did, if the villains were nailed. That was in everyone’s interest, including those young thrusters for promotion who occasionally found Lambert treading on their toes.