Stranglehold (10 page)

‘Hetty did come in here. It's not against the law.'

‘No. But you weren't going to tell us that. And now she's dead. It makes us wonder why you wished to conceal your relationship with her.' The positions were suddenly reversed; now it was Lambert who was baiting the man who had felt secure enough to taunt him at the outset.

‘I didn't conceal –'

‘Come on!' Hook's outrage came out in the shout, which seemed to echo round that quiet, oak-panelled room. ‘You were pretending just now that you weren't even certain that you knew her.'

‘All right. She came in here. Look, I don't like your attitude –'

‘Would you prefer that we had this conversation at the station? With your lawyer present, of course, if you would like that. It seems that might only be prudent, now that you're in the middle of a murder investigation.' Lambert did not trouble to disguise his satisfaction in the thought. They were not on tape yet; Kemp was merely helping them voluntarily with their inquiries. As a responsible member of the public should.

Kemp stood up now, walking over to where the single long, high window gave a limited view of the pitch outside. They watched his barrel-like torso inflating and deflating as he strove to control his breathing. The Chairman wished suddenly that he was not alone, that he had the reassurance of the brains he employed in different sections of his enterprises at his side. Even the two gorillas who were his muscle would have been a reassurance: even the wife he despised would have reminded these hunters of his respectable side. For he thought of himself now as the quarry of these men. They had scores to settle from the past, and he felt unusually isolated.

He tried as he turned back to them to be conciliatory.

‘Look, she was on the game. You know that now, and I knew it then.'

‘So are you saying you had her in here to warn her about bringing that into the club?'

For a moment he was tempted. Then he said, ‘No. I had sex with her, and paid her for it. That was all.'

‘On how many occasions?' Hook's voice was for the first time unemotional; he held his pen expectantly above the pad.

‘Two, maybe three. Look, there won't be any need to –'

‘Was she in here last night?'

‘No.'

‘Did you kill Harriet Brown, Mr Kemp?'

‘No. Of course I –'

‘Have you any idea who did?'

‘No. How could I have?'

‘Because you keep in touch with the punters here. Because you're a man of the people, priding yourself on your knowledge of what goes on in the
Roosters.
You told us so yourself.'

Kemp acknowledged with a sullen nod that he had claimed as much. ‘All right. That doesn't mean I killed a cheap little tart. Or that I know who did.'

‘Did you see her in the club last night?'

‘I might have.' Something in Lambert's eye must have warned him of the danger of such phrases, for he said hastily, ‘All right. I remember now, I did see her. I suppose it was about nine. I didn't speak to her, though. I challenge you to find someone who says I did.'

Lambert said, ‘And who was she with at the time?' It was a habit of his to cloak the most important questions in his most neutral tone.

‘I don't remember all of them. But she was in a group of six or eight, on one of the round tables, nearer to the end of the room where the bar is.'

It tallied with the information they already had. So far. ‘Was she drinking much?'

‘No more than usual. Hetty wasn't a drinker. She'd have one to loosen her up, perhaps another one later. But mostly she drank orange.'

For a man who had claimed he was not certain that he even knew the girl a quarter of an hour ago, this was an admission of detailed knowledge. But there was no point in rubbing it in now. Lambert was anxious not to blow the cover of their source of information, a young officer from the drugs squad who spent most of his nights now at the club, trying to find the big men behind the pushers of coke and heroin whom he had already identified.

‘Did you meet Hetty Brown later in the evening?'

‘No. Why the hell should –'

‘The girl was murdered within four hours of when you last saw her in the club. You are among the last people to see her alive. Naturally we are interested in your movements during the rest of that evening.'

Kemp said, ‘I didn't see her again after I saw her at that table.'

Lambert stood up, his eyes a good six inches above those of the stockier man, but no more than three feet away; Kemp had not resumed his seat after he had walked so abruptly to the window. ‘Our information is that she left the club because she had an arrangement to meet a man. Presumably not far away, since she had no transport of her own; so quite possibly in the club car park. You're telling us that that man wasn't you?'

‘No. I was up here.'

‘Alone.'

‘Yes.' There was just enough hesitation before the word to suggest to them that he was deciding to lie.

‘Do you know who it was that she met?'

‘No.'

‘Can you provide us with any suggestions? It would be in your own interests to do so.'

‘No.'

‘We shall need details of the rest of your movements during the evening.'

Kemp's face was creased with hostility now; there could scarcely have been a greater contrast to the contrived urbanity with which he had begun the interview. ‘I had a drink downstairs. I came up here then.'

‘Time?' Hook contrived to sound as though he expected a lie.

‘About half past nine, quarter to ten, I suppose.'

‘You say you were on your own up here?'

Again there was that momentary hesitation. ‘Yes.'

‘For how long?'

‘Perhaps a couple of hours. About that.'

‘And what were you doing?'

‘Paperwork.' None of the three men in the room thought it was true, but Hook wrote it down.

‘Did you have any more to drink?'

‘A whisky, I think.'

‘So the bar staff could probably confirm your presence here, some time after Hetty Brown had left.'

‘No. I have my own bottle up here.

‘Gents?'

Kemp shook his head. ‘Not downstairs. There's one up here, if I need it. But I drink my whisky neat.' For a moment, the functioning of his bladder seemed to be more important to him than murder.

‘What then?'

‘I left the club.'

‘Alone?'

‘Yes. I've told you.' He hadn't, but they let that pass.

‘And where did you go then?'

He must have been as aware as they were that this was about the time of the killing. ‘I went home.'

‘And arrived there when?'

‘I couldn't be sure. Some time around midnight, I suppose.'

‘So your wife could confirm the time, presumably.'

‘No. She was in bed and asleep when I arrived.'

‘And you didn't disturb her, of course.' Lambert allowed his cynicism free rein.

‘No. We have separate bedrooms. Not that that's any business of yours.'

The two men were still facing each other, not a yard apart. Hook, who was recording the detail of Kemp's replies below them, thought they were like prize-fighters squaring up to one another. Lambert looked abruptly down at the feet that were so near to his own. They were in good shoes, fashioned in better leather than his own. ‘What size of shoe do you take?'

‘Tens. What's that to you?'

‘The Scene of Crime team found the imprint of a shoe near Hetty Brown's body. Size nine and a half or ten, they thought: I had to get them to translate these new-fangled continental sizes for me. A city shoe, by the look of the sole, they said.' He looked down at Kemp's traditional Oxford leather shoes with considerable satisfaction.

Kemp said, ‘It might not have been the murderer's shoe. There could have been lots of footmarks in the clay round there.'

‘Know exactly where she was found then, do you? Interesting, that; especially as we haven't released any of the details yet.'

They could almost hear Kemp's mind working in the pause which followed. ‘I – I heard where she died. On that building site, wasn't it? You can't hush these things up. It's been all round the club today.'

It was Lambert's turn to pause, pretending to weigh this and find it unconvincing. Eventually he said quietly, ‘Did you know a girl called Julie Salmon, Mr Kemp?' Though Hook had used it once before, it was the first time Lambert had afforded Kemp the title, and it fell from his lips with the irony of insult, much as his own Christian name had been dropped by his opponent earlier in their exchanges.

‘The girl who was killed a fortnight ago? She used to come in here, yes. You're not trying to pin that one on me, surely?' The sense of outrage he wanted did not come through in the words, but his fear did.

‘We may need an account of your movements on the night she died, Mr Kemp.' They had already checked before they came here, but it would be useful to know if he thought it necessary to lie. There had been a meeting of Oldford FC Committee in the earlier part of the evening, but no one knew accurately when Julie Salmon had died, because she had not been found for two days.

Bert Hook stood up at a nod from Lambert. ‘The forensic team will need to go over this place, and perhaps your office as well, to see if there are fibres from Harriet Brown's clothing present.'

‘If you're going to start on police persecution, perhaps –'

‘And of course, when we have the report on the clothing Miss Brown wore on the night of her death, we may need to check your wardrobe for any fibres that tally. We tend to be both meticulous and persistent when murder is the crime. And the magistrates tend to be sympathetic to our efforts when it comes to search warrants. No doubt you will let us know if you plan to move out of the area.' Lambert turned abruptly on his heel and was gone, without waiting for any reply.

Kemp poured himself one of his neat whiskies when he was sure they had left, feeling the therapeutic effect of its warm fire as it coursed into his system. Then he went into his office, looked up a number in the notebook in the top drawer of his desk, and tapped out the numbers carefully on the phone.

‘The police have been here. About Hetty Brown. They wanted to know about what I did last night. I told them I was in the hospitality room, on my own. They didn't believe me, but that's the story at the moment. If they try to pin it on me, you may need to tell them you were here with me. For the moment, keep quiet about it.'

Back at the Murder Room, Lambert found Don Haworth, the police surgeon. He had called in to check the latest progress on the case. Lambert was pleased to find a busy medic so interested in their work, particularly as Haworth, unlike Cyril Burgess, the pathologist, had no interest in lurid detective fiction.

‘No luck with Julie Salmon's boyfriend, I believe,' said Haworth.

‘Darren Pickering? Afraid not. Mind you, he's been in trouble with the uniformed boys before, and there was no way he was going to be easily intimidated,' said Lambert. ‘He had the duty solicitor there all the time we questioned him, and of course that helpful gentleman kept telling him not to answer leading questions.'

Pickering, a powerful young man with a shaven head and a small earring, had been the boyfriend of Julie Salmon, the first girl killed. Or rather the former boyfriend, since she had broken with him two weeks before her death. No one, least of all Pickering, seemed certain how permanent a break it had been. He had been in a highly emotional state when they had brought him in for questioning, but that might have stemmed from shock or genuine grief at her death as easily as from fear.

‘Didn't the search of his room throw up anything?' Lambert wondered suddenly if Haworth would be interested in Burgess's job when the old boy retired: he couldn't have more than a couple of years to go now. He would welcome this bright, cooperative young man who seemed so interested in their investigations. Maybe, with a failed marriage behind him, he wanted to immerse himself in his work. If so, he deserved every encouragement. ‘We found lots of things to connect him with Julie Salmon, as you'd expect, but nothing to identify him definitely with the killing. We've sent some of his hairs off for a DNA test to compare with the sperm sample from Julie Salmon, but we won't have the results for a day or two.'

‘What about the second murder?'

‘Pickering has no clear alibi for the time of the murder – between twelve and one, you thought – but then lots of innocent people wouldn't have.'

Haworth grinned. ‘Don't hold me to that time. As I said, it was informed speculation rather than an authoritative estimate. Have you got anyone else in the frame?'

It was Lambert's turn to smile, at the doctor's adoption of the police jargon. ‘One or two possibilities. Nothing more.' He did not want to discuss Charlie Kemp with outsiders at this stage. ‘It looks as though our man might be someone who frequents the
Roosters
social club, but that gives us a big field. It's a pity from our point of view that the place is so successful.'

‘I pop in there from time to time myself, you know. I'm the official team doctor, though they have a physio who does a lot more than I do. It's the close season, now, but I still use the club in the evenings sometimes. One advantage of being single is that you can follow your interests, and I've always been a football nut.'

‘Do you come across Charlie Kemp much?' Lambert changed his mind and thought that another perspective might be useful.

‘Not a lot. He poses as an amiable tycoon, a likeable rogue who's been lucky enough to make a bob or two. But I should think he could be pretty ruthless if you got on the wrong side of him. The players certainly think so. I'm glad I don't have to work for him, anyway.'