Stranglehold by J. M. Gregson Page B

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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜What about the second murder?’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Do you come across Charlie Kemp much?’ Lambert changed his mind and thought that another perspective might be useful.
    â€˜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.’
    An opinion which would be shared by all right-thinking men, thought Lambert.
    Darren Pickering would have been pleased to hear that the police had so far found nothing to incriminate him. But no one had told him that.
    He did not like the police, and they did not much like him. He was not the kind of figure which authority finds attractive. He was a large youth, much given to the wearing of T-shirts just too small to contain his heavily muscled torso without tight stretching. He considered his closely shaven head and his single earring part of a uniform of aggression, but he showed his independence by eschewing the tattoos which many of his Saturday-afternoon football companions affected.
    His massive forearms looked curiously naked as he folded them across his chest and stared glumly at his pint of special. The Roosters was filling up nicely: he didn’t like it