by J M Gregson
‘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.’
CHAPTER 14
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 p
eople 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.’
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.
CHAPTER 15
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.
