Stranglehold

by J M Gregson

  ‘I did emphasize you shouldn’t take that as gospel, you know,’ put in Don Haworth with a modest grin.

  Lambert’s acknowledging smile was briefer, a mere disguise for his irritation at the interruption. ‘We aren’t in a court of law yet. When we are, no doubt we’ll have enough evidence to make sure that you’re not embarrassed under oath, Doctor. We now have Mrs Kemp’s word that her husband was not in the house that night until one thirty-three, despite his earlier statement to us that he was home by midnight.’

  Paul Williams said quietly, as if reluctant to reveal information on a man he had been watching in another context. ‘Kemp took Amy Coleford up to his suite at the Roosters two nights before her death.’

  ‘Why?’ The monosyllable came like a pistol shot, reflecting Lambert’s annoyance that the information should have been held back until now.

  Williams said, ‘It didn’t seem important until a few hours ago, when I heard that Amy had become a Strangler victim. Kemp has always taken girls up there in the three months while I’ve been operating at the Roosters, to have it away with them – there are various rumours among the regulars about how kinky it gets. I think he’s planning to set up some of the girls who are already on the game in houses he will control.

  ‘You will understand that this information is secondary as far as we’re concerned: our primary concern is with the drugs operation. We have an interest in Kemp because we think he may be involved in that, but we haven’t enough evidence yet to be able to move in. It’s the big boys we want, and they’re the most shadowy figures, as always.’

  It was a long speech, and he gave the impression that every word was wrung grudgingly from him. The drugs squad operated with autonomy from normal CID work. Now Williams had the complication that his investigations were being overtaken, his cover threatened, by the oldest and darkest crime of all, and he did not like it.

  Lambert understood all this, and knew also the tension under which this taut, unkempt-looking young man was operating. Drug barons were powerful and unscrupulous men; discovery could mean disappearance and death for those who sought to hunt them down. But Lambert had his own tensions, with a serial killer who had struck three times and might do so again at any moment. ‘Have you any suggestions as to how Kemp’s sexual activities might be linked with these killings?’

  Williams, who looked as though he wished the discussion could become more general again, said, ‘Harriet Brown had been up there as well. I don’t know about Julie Salmon: she wasn’t on the game. But if all three girls had turned him down, that could be a link, I suppose.’ He looked rather desperately at the forensic psychologist, but Stanley Warboys neither confirmed nor denied his suggestion.

  Lambert said, ‘Kemp lied to us about his movements on the night of Amy Coleford’s death, as he did with Harriet Brown. He was in Gloucester with Vic Knowles. He told us he left the Dog and Partridge just before ten, whereas Knowles tells us that it was at half past nine. More significantly, he says he was home before eleven, but his wife tells us he was not in until almost midnight. That leaves two and a half hours unaccounted for, and it covers the period when Amy Coleford was killed.’

  He looked round the table, his expression inviting comment. Rushton said, ‘I suggest we get all these four in again and grill them. Using people who haven’t seen them before.’

  Lambert looked at him for a moment, conjecturing about his pallid cheeks and his intense air. Rushton seemed more determined than ever that this crime should be pinned to one of the four quickly. That was understandable, but he would have expected him to be cooler, more objective. ‘We can do that, certainly, and see if we can unearth any discrepancies in the stories they tell. Kemp for one will demand his lawyer, which means he will say nothing and challenge us to charge him before we go any further. We must keep our minds open: it’s still possible that the Strangler may be none of these men. I’d like to hear what our forensic psychologist thinks, now that he is aware of what we know at this point.’

  Stanley Warboys put both his hands on the table in front of him, studying his closely pared nails for a moment, as if he used them as an aid to concentration. ‘I have listened to what you say about your main suspects. We have to bear in mind the Superintendent’s last remark, that it may be none of the men we have been discussing. So I think it would be best if I couched my thoughts in general terms.’ He had the air of a man launching a dry academic treatise, but there was no lack of attention among the six men who listened to him.

  ‘Anything I have to say is obviously hypothetical. But perhaps I should emphasize that I do not work in isolation; I try to put together the scene of crime findings and other forensic evidence with any thoughts I might have on the psychology behind a crime. One thing I would be reasonably certain of is that you are looking for a man living alone – but not necessarily physically alone. This man does not seem a likely killer in his normal working and social life; that is probably why you have had no useful suggestions yet from the public. He may well be living with a companion who does not suspect, or has not yet cared to confront, the possibility that he is a killer. The Yorkshire Ripper had a wife, but he lived a completely different life outside his house.’

  Rushton said, ‘Should we expect our man to have previous form? A history of violence?’

  ‘Not necessarily, I’m afraid. No doubt you’ve had men combing criminal records in the last week, but the trouble with serial killers is that by definition they have embarked on a new kind of crime for them. I think we would agree that this mind is unbalanced, and the things which throw minds off balance don’t confine themselves to those who’ve been in prison. I think you’re probably looking for a highly intelligent man, but that doesn’t necessarily mean someone with a lot of formal education.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Don Haworth’s question had a ring of professional curiosity.

  ‘For a start, he’s outwitted an intensive search by a police machine which is experienced and highly efficient, whatever the popular press might be saying about you this morning.’ Warboys permitted himself a small, ironic smile. ‘Moreover, he seems to be taking a delight in outwitting your efforts. When you concentrated your resources upon the Oldford area, as all the previous evidence suggested you should, he killed in Gloucester. Either he watched your precautions, or he anticipated them. His third murder was a taunt to the efforts of the sixty officers detailed to catch him. And the way he laid out the second and third corpses, like ritual sacrifices or pious emblems, is another form of black humour.’

  ‘It’s almost as though he was familiar with our methods.’ Sergeant Johnson looked embarrassed as the faces turned to him; he had voiced the thought even as it came into his mind, without weighing it. He was a stolid figure, with short, carefully cut hair, a conscientious scene of crime officer whose normal work involved the patient accumulation of scraps of physical evidence. He found this more tentative and oblique approach fascinating.

  Warboys looked at Johnson, then slid his bottom lip thoughtfully beneath his front teeth. It made him look more than ever like an alert red squirrel. ‘It’s possible he does know police work. And possible also that he has a degree of medical knowledge. All three girls died by vagal inhibition within a few seconds. They were expertly despatched, and that efficiency probably appeals to our man: I think he will have a perverted pride in the swift competence of his killing.’

  Rushton said harshly, his words almost treading upon the calm phrases of the psychologist, ‘Are you saying that we should be looking for someone with medical training?’

  As Warboys shook his head, it was the police surgeon, Don Haworth, who said, ‘Not necessarily. I examined all the bodies. I agree about the efficiency of despatch: not more than a few seconds in each case, with the girl probably not permitted a single scream. But the degree of medical knowledge required is minimal. It could be someone like a male nurse, but it could also be someone who’s learned how to kill: there are plenty of people who have been taught a little ka
rate and become very dangerous to the rest of us. It could even be someone who’s simply read it up.’

  ‘Like a professional man,’ said Hook.

  ‘Yes. Or someone who comes into contact with violence and death in the course of his work,’ said Warboys quietly.

  ‘Someone like an ambulance driver,’ said Johnson.

  ‘Or a policeman,’ said Warboys.

  It is not easy to shock the kind of group to whom the forensic psychologist addressed this thought, but for fifteen seconds there was an electric silence in the room. The policemen looked to Lambert to speak, but he said nothing. It was the hoarse voice of DI Rushton which eventually said, ‘Is that a serious suggestion?’

  ‘Perfectly serious. But not exclusive.’ Warboys chose his words as primly as a man eating cherries with a knife and fork. He lifted the fingers he had studied at the beginning of his exposition and steepled them six inches in front of his eyes. ‘To summarize my thoughts, for what they are worth: I think you are looking for an intelligent man, who enjoys the thought of outwitting his hunters; a man who knows how to kill quickly and silently, and has a pride in that efficiency; who has a degree therefore of medical knowledge, but one he could have acquired in a variety of ways; who has been so excited by his first killing that he has been led on to others and is unlikely to stop at three.’

  The silence this time was one of assimilation rather than outrage. It was the first time that Lambert had spoken in many minutes when he said, ‘Does that exclude any of our present suspects?’

  Warboys said heavily, ‘Not from what I understand. Neither Kemp nor Pickering has much in the way of formal qualifications, but neither of them is stupid: in their different ways, they have the kind of shrewdness, and certainly the delight in outwitting police procedures, that I have suggested.’

  Rushton said, ‘And Knowles likes to give the impression of being a rough diamond, but he was actually quite well educated in his youth. Could have gone to university apparently, if he hadn’t become a professional footballer.’

  Williams said, ‘The best fit for your profile is probably Ben Dexter. He’s sharp, loves violence, and delights in outwitting the police. And he’s a drug user. On a trip, I could see him strangling girls.’

  Warboys said, ‘I agree he seems marginally the most likely of your suspects. The way the last two corpses have been tidily arranged for inspection – Harriet Brown like an effigy on a mediaeval tomb and Amy Coleford like a woman sitting quietly in a chair by the fireside – argues both an insolence and a need to taunt those pursuing him. It also reinforces the view that the first killing, where the corpse was not treated like that but left as it fell, stemmed from a more personal hatred of Julie Salmon. That suggests in turn that there was some sort of previous relationship between killer and victim. But I must reiterate that the psychological profile I have outlined doesn’t exclude any of your four. Nor does it mean necessarily that your killer must come from within that group.’

  Lambert was not sure whether it had been a good idea to bring this precise, almost pedantic man, into their discussions. Probably his observations would be useful, once they had had the chance to digest them and put them together with the more normal work of a murder investigation. He wound up the meeting quickly.

  It was when they were preparing to depart that Warboys, gathering his papers into a neat folder, said, ‘There is one further thing. It is impossible that with three murders already you should not intensify police pressure and activity, both in Oldford and further afield. I do not see that you could do otherwise. However, I have to warn you that this may well incite your killer to a further demonstration of what he considers his superiority.’

  CHAPTER 16

  On that eighteenth day of June, a belt of rain came in from the Atlantic and worked its way slowly but steadily across the West Country.

  Late in the day, it would reach the area around Oldford which the tabloids had dubbed ‘The Strangler’s Stretch’. But it was still fine there when the rain reached Bristol. It was a soft, gentle rain, which the farmers welcomed in the rich agricultural tracts around the city. But in the area of the old city where nothing grew but weeds, it fell as a depressing drizzle.

  The district through which Charles Kemp drove was quiet, even apparently deserted. Warehouses are rarely busy on a Saturday afternoon, and on this damp summer day they were silent indeed. He watched his rear-view mirror carefully as he moved the blood-red Mercedes cautiously over the shining acres of tarmac. Only when he was satisfied that he was not being followed did he turn the car into the narrower street which led to the building where the meeting had been arranged.

  There were two cars there before him, parked unobtrusively below street level. He ran the Mercedes down the steep concrete ramp, turned its nose so that it was ready to move off swiftly when they had finished their business, and left it alongside the other two vehicles.

  He could not resist a look of satisfaction at the car before he left it. It gleamed sleekly beneath the droplets which had gathered on its polished surface; rain always enhanced that effect. It might have been brand new rather than eighteen months old and due for a change. Perhaps he would keep this one a little longer. His cars were still the visible reassurance he gave himself that Charlie Kemp had made it to the big time. That was the phrase he always used, to himself as well as others.

  But if his slang was stuck in a ’fifties time-warp, his villainy was entirely up to date. Heroin, cocaine and that lucrative derivative of cocaine known as crack yielded rich profits to the modern criminal entrepreneur. And Kemp prided himself on being one of those. He took a last, automatic glance up towards the corner of the street before he went inside the building. It was deserted, as the whole of the industrial estate appeared to be on this wet Saturday afternoon.

  They met in the basement, in a room without windows, as though they used the earth itself to cover their designs. There were only four men at this subterranean gathering. The Greek, who had made a legitimate fortune from shipping and a much larger one from supplying more sinister substances, was the biggest importer of crack into the UK. His muscle would not be far away, but they never came with him into meetings. They were always at hand, but rarely visible: Kemp thought that an impressive touch of class.

  The Greek spoke perfect English. The Levantine beside him spoke very little English, but that little was all he needed. He hardly spoke during the entire meeting, but his nod was an acceptance of the price of a million dollars for the heroin he was overseeing on its roundabout route through the Middle East.

  The other man on Kemp’s side of the table was a ‘wholesaler’, as Kemp was planning to be. He operated somewhere in the Black Country. He and Kemp did not know each other’s names, and did not want to learn them. Anonymity meant safety when the police across the world made their occasional indentations into this wall of vice.

  Ostensibly the four met to fix a price. But each of them knew within five per cent what that price would be when they came into that low, airless room with its harsh fluorescent lighting. They were token negotiations, and not much time was wasted over them.

  What Kemp did not know was the quantity he would be offered. It was three times what he had expected. The quality was ‘guaranteed’, though both he and the man beside him were too eager to acquire the drugs to digest quite what that word meant. They had dealt with these men before, and showed handsome profits. They knew they were the ones taking the greatest risks, for it was they who had to set up the network of retailers, and every extra person involved was a potential leak. But that was the way of these things, when the demand they had created outstripped the supply.

  Kemp tried hard to conceal his excitement as he arranged for three hundred thousand dollars to be transferred to a Swiss bank account which he knew only by number. His quick brain calculated even as he agreed the deal that he would make two hundred per cent profit if he sold on the streets at the rates he intended.

  The Greek could have told him that more
experienced middle men would have expected more.

  But Kemp drove away happy. The Greek and the Levantine would be out of the UK before midnight. But the stuff he had bargained for was already in the country; he must alert his network of dealers. Charlie Kemp was in the big time now, all right.

  The big red Mercedes was well out of the city before he remembered that other business which the excitement had temporarily driven from his mind. He had better get on with the task of arranging an alibi for those hours when Hetty Brown and Amy Coleford had died: it was obvious to someone of his experience that the police were suspicious.

  But he had outwitted them before, and he would do so now. Pigs were stupid, and he would prove it again.

  Whatever Charlie Kemp’s views might be, the Chief Constable was no fool. Media conferences called for four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon were not likely to be prolonged, with cynical pressmen and television staff anxious to get away to relax in what remained of their weekends.

  George Harding kept it as low-key as possible, for he had nothing worthwhile to report. He dealt courteously but briskly with the expected questions. No man was ‘helping the police with their inquiries’, though the press officer would give them the impressive numbers of those who had been interviewed. No vehicle which had been seen near the scene of the crimes was being sought. No woman other than the three victims had reported being threatened. (The tabloid reporter who had just agreed to give a local lady of ill repute a thousand pounds for a story headlined WAS IT THE STRANGLER WHO HAD HIS FINGERS ON MY THROAT? decided that Monday’s edition could still carry the piece.)

  The Chief Constable and the press officer did most of the fencing with the members of the third estate. Lambert’s main role was as a tangible link with the routine of the investigation itself, an assurance to the media that the men engaged in detection were anxious to keep the public informed about their efforts as well as determined to give women whatever protection they could against further bloodletting. He gave a terse account of the progress of his team, explained with a grim smile that of course he could not give the names or other details of the men who particularly interested them.