A Face in the Crowd (3 page)

While her job still had priority, the attraction, the sexual chemistry between her and Bob Oswalde had been just too great to resist. And she’d thought, Why the hell not? All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl. She wasn’t feeling dull and jaded now; her body felt vibrant and alive, and the night was still young.

Taking up his teasing mood, she said archly, “Now what was it you were saying about white women liking it rough?”

The instant the words came out, she knew that it was the wrong thing to say. Bob Oswalde reared back a little, his arms slackening, and she cursed her own clumsiness.

“Hey, that wasn’t me,” he protested, hurt. “I don’t think like that.”

“I know—I’m sorry.” She kissed his chest and then the side of his neck, snuggling up to him, cozy and warm in the fluffy, white bathrobe, feeling the heat of his body. She had an idea. “Know what I’d like to do now?”

“No, what?” Bob Oswalde said through a crooked half grin.

“Let’s drink the entire contents of the minibar.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know—I just feel like it.” Jane suddenly sat up and grinned at him. Her short, ruffled blond hair and impish grin made her appear like a mischievous tomboy, a startling transformation from her conventional role as the cool, at times obsessive professional policewoman with a daunting reputation.

Bob Oswalde swung his long legs around to sit on the edge of the bed. “Okay, what would you like first?”

Jane clapped her hands. “Champagne!”

“Right.”

As he went over to the minibar she flopped full-length on the bed, stretching out her arms luxuriously. She hadn’t felt so content and totally relaxed in a long time. She hadn’t been looking forward to this three-day conference at all, confined to airless, smoke-filled rooms and conference halls (especially as she was trying to give up the noxious weed!), having her brains picked by male colleagues who, deep down, probably resented being lectured to by a woman. The Super had suggested she “volunteer,” which was his unsubtle way of giving a direct order by stealth. Well, the laugh was on him. She was enjoying herself, and at the public’s expense to boot.

The phone rang, a soft trilling tone. Bob Oswalde was stripping the foil from a half-bottle of champagne, and Jane said quickly before she answered it, “That’s Dame Sybil. Don’t make a sound.”

But it was Kernan, and Jane sat up straighter, holding her robe close to her neck, as if it made any difference.

“Oh, hello, Guv. About two hours . . . why?” She listened, her eyes serious, nodding her head. “Yeah, right . . . okay. Oh yeah, absolutely. Okay, see you. ’Bye.”

She hung up, staring straight ahead at the built-in closet.

“What’s wrong?”

“That was my Guv. He wants me back.”

“Oh.” The champagne dangled in his hand.

“Now.”

“What?”

“Yeah.” Jane slid off the bed, unfastening her bathrobe, while she hopped around to open the closet door. “He wants me to head a murder inquiry. I’ll have to tell Thorndike.” She brushed her fingers through her hair. “Damn, and it’s my lecture tomorrow too . . .”

“Look, nuts to Thorndike.” Oswalde glanced down at the bottle he was holding, then placed it on top of the minibar.

Burrowing in the closet, Jane said over her shoulder, “I’m sorry, Bob, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“I know that.” The words were neutral enough, though he was looking at her sharply. Jane paused in laying out her blouse and suit on the bed. She glanced up.

“So what’s your problem then?”

“What about us?”

“What about us?” she asked, frowning slightly.

“Oh, I see.”

Jane spread her hands. “Bob, I’m not saying I don’t want to see you again. Okay?”

“Aren’t you?”

She watched him in silence as he whipped off his bathrobe and rapidly dressed, eyes downcast, handsome face empty of expression.

Jane sighed. “C’mon, this is hard enough as it is . . .”

“Look, I hear you, okay?” He sat with his back to her, pulling on his socks and shoes. He stated flatly, “The Detective Chief Inspector has received her orders.”

“What did you expect?” His attitude was annoying her, and she clenched her fists. “You know that’s really unfair. It’s not as though the love of your life is walking out on you.”

Bob Oswalde snatched his sweater from the back of a chair and dragged it on over his T-shirt. His dark eyes flashed at her. “I just don’t like being treated like some black stud.”

Hands on hips, Jane said with faint disbelief, “Is that what you think’s been going on here?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, that’s in your head.”

“Is it?”

She could do without this. It was he who was hung up on racial stereotyping, not her. He was an attractive man, period, and she’d enjoyed tremendously having sex with him, but if he had difficulty accepting it simply for what it was, tough luck.

Jane said, “I think you’d better go.”

“Don’t worry,” Oswalde said, already on the move, “I’m going.”

“I hope I can rely on you to be discreet.”

With his hand on the doorknob, Oswalde slowly turned his head and gave her a long, hard stare over his shoulder.

“You really are something else, aren’t you?” he muttered softly, and with a little shake of the head went out.

Returning to his room after dinner, DCI David Thorndike was fumbling for his key when he heard a door slam, followed by the rapid thump of footsteps. Craning backwards, he spied DS Oswalde, head down, marching along the corridor towards the elevator. He’d come out of the room two doors away from his, Thorndike noted. Well, well, well. Tennison . . . fraternizing with the troops no less.

He turned the key in the lock and slipped into his room as Oswalde, muttering to himself, came up to the elevator. Standing with his ear to the crack in the door, Thorndike heard Oswalde’s low, angry “Bitch!” as he punched the button.

Pursing his lips prudishly, DCI Thorndike eased the door shut.

W
ithin ten minutes Tennison was fully-dressed, had applied a dab of makeup, run a brush through her hair, packed her bag and was ready to go. She gave herself a final once-over in the dressing table mirror and set off to see Thorndike in his lair. He was the type, she knew very well, who never made life easy, always had to nitpick. But she steeled herself to deal with him as quickly and calmly as possible and get the hell out. She had a job to do.

After she’d broken the news, he paced up and down his room, rubbing the little cluster of blue veins at his temple, shaking his head distractedly. “But I don’t know anything about rape victims,” he complained, realizing he would have to give the lecture at ten the next morning.

“Then it’s time you did. It’s attitudes like that that account for the fact that only eight percent of rapes are ever reported.” Tennison took a sheaf of papers from her briefcase and held them out. “I’ll leave you my notes.”

“Well, that would be a help, but . . .” Thorndike dropped the papers on a table, sighing. “It’s still bloody annoying.”

“What can I do, David?” She was fed up to the back teeth with his prissy, old-womanish whining, but she controlled her temper.

He glanced at her with a pained expression. “Hasn’t Mike Kernan got other DCIs available?”

“Yes, but he wants me to head it.”

“Why?”

“Maybe he thinks I’m a good detective,” Tennison said tightly.

Thorndike nagged on. “But why this specific investigation?”

“The body’s been found in Honeyford Road, where the Cameron family still lives. Added to which, it looks like it could be Simone Cameron.”

“Politically sensitive, certainly,” Thorndike agreed. He gave her a sideways look. “A word of advice. Charges may be brought against the officers involved in the Derrick Cameron case if it goes to the Court of Appeal . . .”

“Quite right too if that boy was framed.” She frowned at him. “What are you getting at?”

“I’d be careful if I were you—this may not turn out to be such a prize for you.” And then turning away, not meeting her eye, he added, “Obviously you’re a liberated and enlightened woman.”

“Thank you, David,” said Tennison dryly. But she still didn’t have a clue what, in his pussy-footing way, he was driving at. Of course it wasn’t straightforward police work to him, it was bloody politics, dropping poison into people’s ears, watching your back all the time in case there was a knife sticking in it. Tennison hadn’t the time nor the patience for all that bullshit; life was too short.

Thorndike saw her to the door. “Don’t be too trusting of our Afro-Caribbean friends.”

“That’s your advice, is it?” She tucked the briefcase under her arm, giving him a quick, formal smile. “Good luck tomorrow.”

Thorndike waited by the open door, his weak, watery eyes fixed on her as she entered the elevator. “Oh, and drive carefully if you’ve been drinking,” was his final word of warning.

Going down in the elevator, Tennison cupped her hand to her mouth, trying to smell her own breath. Didn’t seem that bad, and besides, she’d only had two glasses of red wine. Old Mother Thorndike must have a keen sense of smell if he’d got a whiff of alcohol fumes from that.

Honeyford Road was quiet again. The crowd had dispersed, returned to their homes, the stretch of pavement outside Number 15 cordoned off with striped tape that had POLICE—NO ENTRY stamped on it in red letters. The rain had eased off, but there was a damp, chill breeze blowing as Tennison drove her car along the street, searching for a place to park. She slowed down, bending sideways to peer through the misted-up passenger window at a lone figure still standing vigil next to the flapping tape. Tennison recognized the short, dumpy woman in the woven cap, the long shapeless coat reaching almost to the ground; she pressed the button to lower the window.

“Nola—go home!”

Nola Cameron shook her head defiantly. “Not if that’s my Simone. I won’t lose her a second time!” She turned back to stare at the house, chin set stubbornly, feet planted on the wet pavement.

Gold was enjoying himself. He didn’t seem to notice, or to mind, that he had been kneeling at the bottom of a cold, slimy trench since early evening, and it was not past ten thirty. With the arrival of DCI Tennison, the officer appointed to take charge of the case, he had a new and receptive listener on which to vent his expertise. Crouched down on her haunches on the paving stones, muffled inside the hood of her raincoat, Tennison watched intently as the work of excavation went on; the skull and most of the upper part of the skeleton had been removed, and the team was not concentrating on the lower torso. For the moment she was content to listen to Gold give his impromptu lecture.

“. . . natural plant fiber such as cotton tends to disintegrate, form part of the diet of the early inhabitants of the corpse. But wool, like hair—they’re made of the same stuff—can be remarkably resilient. Now, I’ve got some pieces of sweater and Professor Bream has quite a lot of hair—”

“If only,” Bream said lugubriously, cleaning his spectacles with the end of his tie. It was meant to be a joke, but everyone was too tired and cold and pissed-off to even give a smile.

“With beads in it,” Gold continued, so intent that the pathologist’s remark hadn’t even registered with him.

“Did the Cameron girl wear her hair like this?” Tennison’s question was addressed to the assembly at large.

“I’m told she did sometimes,” DI Muddyman put it.

Arms clasped around her knees, Tennison rubbed her gloved palms together, already feeling the cold night air creeping into her fingers and toes. “How old do you think she is, Oscar?”

“She hasn’t quite finished growing, so still in her teens, I’d say.”

“Well, how long do you think it would take for a corpse to get like this?”

“That I can’t tell.” There was the suggestion of a weary sigh in Bream’s voice. Always the same, the murder squad, expecting answers up front to impossible questions. They’d only ever be happy if he could look at the decaying remains of a corpse and give them its name, address, and national insurance number.

Tennison was a terrier, not so easily put off. “Come on, Oscar. Minimum time?”

“Two years? Don’t quote me on that.”

“So it could be Simone . . .”

“You see, you’re doing it already!”

Tennison eased herself up, stamping her feet to get the circulation going. She could have cheerfully murdered for a cigarette, but this was the real testing time, and she was determined to kick the habit. It had scared her badly when her consumption climbed to sixty a day, the dread specter of the big C giving her the cold sweats. Now or never, shit or bust. Quelling the desire, she glanced around to her officers, Muddyman, Lillie, and Jones, their tall figures silhouetted in the glare of the arc lamps.

“When were these garden slabs laid?”

“Before the Viswandhas came here,” Jones told her.

“Which was?”

“About eighteen months ago.”

“Do we know who they bought the house from?”

“All Mr. Viswandha could tell me was the name of a property developer,” Jones said.

“So have these slabs been disturbed since then?”

DC Lillie shook his head. “Not according to the workmen.”

Tennison gazed down into the shallow trench, trying to get the chronology straight in her own mind. “So she must have been put there before the slabs were laid, which means our prime suspect has to be whoever was living here when she was buried. We need a definite date of death, Oscar.”

Bream gave her his fishy-eyed stare and called out to Lillie, “Is there any of that soup left?”

“Oh—if there is,” Tennison said, “can you get some to Nola Cameron, if she’s still out there?” She looked at her watch. “The rest of you might as well go home and get some sleep. I’ll aim to brief the team at ten in the morning.”

“Right, Guv,” said Muddyman, not bothering to hide his heartfelt relief. Knowing Tennison, her obsessive tenacity with any case she took on, he’d been afraid she’d keep them there till the wee small hours, standing around watching Bream & Co. digging up the rest of Simone Cameron—if that’s who it was. The woman didn’t seem to have a home to go to; any private life at all, as far as that went.