A Face in the Crowd (6 page)

The TV crew had set up at the back of the hall, the photographers crouching in the center aisle, getting lovely close-ups of Kernan’s mounting frustration, and then swiveling to take in the crowd’s angry reactions.

“If that means a no-go area,” Kernan was saying, palms raised, “if that means a no-go area . . .”

“With respect,” Phelps chimed in.

“. . . I can make no such assurances. I am unable”—Kernan valiantly tried again, almost drowned out by the racket from the floor—“I am unable to give any such assurances.”

“The idea is not to create no-go areas,” Phelps said, responding to the point but directly addressing the audience and the cameras. “Quite the reverse. We’ve heard from your Community Liaison Officer—who is of course a white police officer . . .”

Kernan was stung. “Surely that’s a racist remark.”

Ignoring him, Phelps steamrollered on. “. . . heard about sensitive policing, so-called community policing. Yet once again local people are being treated as second-class citizens.”

A chorus of cheers at this, waving fists, the bottled-up antagonism and anger of the black crowd as potent as an invisible, yet deadly nerve gas.

It was obvious what Phelps was referring to, and for the first time Tennison spoke up, determined to get her two cents in before Phelps turned the meeting into a one-man election address. “If you are talking about the investigation that I am heading—”

“I am!”

“Then I believe it’s being carried out in a—”

“In a hostile and intimidatory manner—exactly.” Phelps was nodding, and almost smiling, happy to have scored another point. “With violent arrests being made by your officers . . . though of course, no charges were brought.”

It would be so easy, too easy, to get into a slanging match with Phelps, but that would have been catastrophic. He held all the aces. The best she could do was to remain calm, state the facts as best she could, and trust that there were enough reasonable people out there to give her a fair hearing.

“One of my officers was provoked into making what in retrospect was seen as a hasty action . . .” The hall erupted in a storm of derisive laughter and catcalls. Tennison waited for the din to die down.

“Look—the most important thing is that we have a murderer who has been walking free for six years. We have to find that person. To do that we need the support and cooperation of this community. Now, I and two of my colleagues are going to stay behind afterward to see if you can help to give us some crucial information. For example, who lived at Number fifteen before the Viswandhas.”

“We know, we know that . . .” Midway down the hall, Nola Cameron was on her feet, waving her arms, appealing to those around her. “He left at the same time as Simone was missing. What was his name? Someone here will remember . . .”

Before anyone could, however, Don Patterson had what he thought was a more pressing question. “I’d like to ask Mr. Kernan about the heavy police presence in the Honeyford Road area at the moment . . .”

About to reply, Kernan was cut short by a young guy in the audience, who leaped up, face livid, dreadlocks swinging, pointing an accusing finger. “I wanna ask him how he’s got the nerve to come here at all!” he shouted, “when Derrick Cameron’s locked up for somethin’ he didn’t do!”

Kernan held up his hands. “Obviously, I am unable to discuss the details of that case . . . but I should have thought my mere presence here this evening is an indication of good faith.”

Howls of laughter at that. More people were climbing to their feet, gesticulating, screaming their heads off, and the whole thing was fast sinking to the level of farce. Tight-lipped, Kernan glanced aside at Tennison, shaking his head as if to say, What was the use?

Phelps waited for a slight lull and seized the opportunity.

“The justifiable anger and unhappiness at what has happened to Derrick Cameron cannot be so easily dismissed by a police officer who was stationed at Southampton Row.”

“I’m not dismissing anything,” said Kernan heatedly. “I’m just trying . . . I’m just . . .”

“When the boy,” Phelps went on, “supposedly confessed. Because—just let me finish—the Cameron case focuses on a fundamental question:
Is it possible to expect justice in this country if you are a person of color?
”

Excluding Kernan and Tennison on the platform and DCs Rosper and Lillie at the back of the hall, the verdict was unanimous.

Afterwards, pencils sharpened, notepads at the ready, Rosper and Lillie manned two desks in the entrance hall. They felt like a couple of lepers. The crowd had streamed out, most not bothering to give them a second glance, one or two openly sniggering and dropping heavy hints about the officers’ parentage.

Lillie was doodling clock faces when the man in the leather hat plunked himself down in the seat opposite and leaned his elbows on the desk. He was chewing the stub of an unlit cigar, and seemed to have a sunny disposition, judging by his permanent grin that revealed two gold front teeth.

“I don’t like the police,” he began cheerfully.

Lillie nodded. “Thank you.”

“But I’ll tell you this, you should talk to the guy that Nola mentioned.” He removed the cigar stub, leaving the glinting grin intact. “White guy about fifty. Worked as a builder.”

Lillie dutifully jotted this down. “Can you tell me his name, sir?”

“We argued about parkin’ space, you know. Then in the mornin’ all my car is covered in brake fluid.”

“I see.”

“Don’t worry, I got me own back.”

Lillie waited. “Go on, then, tell me.”

The man in the leather hat started wheezing. “I pissed in his petrol tank.” He let out a bellow of laughter, thumping the desk.

Lillie smiled, still waiting.

The man chewed on the dead stub, eyes roaming about. “Dave Hardy? Harley? Somethin’ like that. You talk to him.”

Lillie wrote it down.

When Tennison returned from seeing Kernan off, the haul was meager. Lillie gave her what little information he had, though Rosper thought he might have gotten a lead.

“Word is that a family lived in Number seventeen called Allen. One or two people reckon they might have owned Number fifteen as well.” He tore off the sheet and handed it to her. “Point is, Esme Allen still runs a West Indian take-out nearby.”

Tennison looked at the address he’d jotted down, then at her watch. She was starting to see double. “Give it another half an hour here, then call it a day.”

As far as she was concerned, DCI Jane Tennison was about to call it a day, a night, and a day.

She let herself into the empty flat and trailed through to the bedroom, carrying the small suitcase she’d had with her on the course. Dumping it on a chair, she switched on the bedside lamp, kicked off her shoes, and lay down on top of the pink duvet, fully-clothed. The instant her eyelids closed she was fast asleep, arms by her sides, snoring softly.

The hand-lettered sign in the window read “Esme’s Take-Away Fast Food.” The cafe was in the middle of a row of small shops which served the local West Indian community, cardboard boxes and wooden trays of exotic foodstuffs—breadfruit, mooli, okra, and yams—laid out on the pavement.

Tennison lingered outside the open door. It was a few minutes after nine thirty, the sky hazy overhead with the sun doing its best to break through. She was warm inside her Burberry raincoat, beginning to wish she’d put on something lighter, though it had looked like rain when she left the flat. Her hair, hastily dried after a shower while she wolfed down two pieces of toast, was still damp at the roots.

Inside the cafe, behind the high counter, Esme Allen was chatting with a middle-aged woman with silvery hair coiled into a neat bun. Esme was a tall, graceful black woman, somewhere in her early forties, Tennison judged, noting the faint traces of gray in her curly, cropped hair. She wore a long plastic apron over a red sweater, the elegant curve of her neck accented by a pair of dangling earrings that swung as she chattered away.

“Me small son study for his school exam, you know, an’ me daughter Sarah, she study law at the university.”

Tennison stepped inside. “Mrs. Allen?”

“. . . I tell you, them think the world is at them feet. They’ll never have to scrub floors or take out rubbish!”

The silvery-haired woman nodded. “Let’s hope them don’t come down to earth with a bump, ennit?”

“Mrs. Allen? Mrs. Esme Allen?”

Esme Allen turned to her with a bright smile. “Yes, dear?”

“I’m Jane Tennison. I’m a police officer.”

The smile faltered and her large brown eyes clouded over. “It’s not bad news? Don’t tell me someone’s been hurt . . . Sarah? Not Tony?”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” Tennison said promptly, shaking her head. “I’m making some inquiries, that’s all.”

“Oh, my Lord, you gave me such a fright,” Esme Allen breathed, clutching the sweater above her heart. She patted her chest, regaining her composure. “Is it about that poor Cameron girl?”

“In a way.” Tennison glanced round. The cafe was quite small, with just two tables for those customers who wanted to eat their food on the premises. “Is there somewhere more private we could talk?”

The silvery-haired woman, a friend, it seemed, as well as a customer, put her shopping bag down and made a shooing motion. “You take the lady through to the back. I’ll look after the shop.”

Esme Allen raised the counter flap and Tennison followed her into a narrow, cramped room with a single window, part office, part storeroom, shelves to the ceiling stacked with provisions. The air was pungent with the mingled odors of herbs and spices. Esme indicated a canvas-backed folding chair and invited Tennison to sit down. She herself took the chair next to the desk, pushing aside a bundle of invoices to rest her elbow. She smiled attentively, lacing together her long, slender fingers.

“Mrs. Allen, I understand in the 1980s you and your husband owned Number fifteen, Honeyford Road.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“While you lived at Number seventeen with your family.”

“Yes.”

Without a pause, Tennison said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you that a body has been found buried in the back garden of Number fifteen.”

Esme Allen sat back, her strong white teeth biting her lower lip. “My God . . . you think he killed poor Simone?” she asked in a small, shocked voice.

“We just want to eliminate him from our inquiries,” Tennison replied, giving the standard line. If Esme Allen had been friendly with the occupant of Number 15, then it was possible that she might wish to protect him, or throw the police off the scent. “What was his name, Esme?”

“David Harvey.” No hesitation. Straight out with it.

Tennison nodded. “Right.” She unscrewed the cap off her gold pen and wrote down the name on her notepad. She glanced up. “Do you know where he is now?”

“No.” Esme shook her head, blinking as she tried to think. “My husband Vernon might know, but . . . well, we tried not to have anything to do with the man. I would never let my daughter Sarah go near that house. We all knew what he was like. Particularly with young girls.”

Tennison leaned forward slightly but said nothing.

“He wasn’t always like that, but after his wife died . . . I thought they were a lovely couple, but after she’d gone . . .” Esme lowered her voice. “Drinking and cursing and, you know, carrying on . . .”

Tennison put her fountain pen away and slipped the notepad into her pocket. “I’d like to speak to your husband if it’s
possible
—in fact to the whole family.” She got up to leave. “As soon as possible, please.”

“This evening,” Esme said, ushering Tennison through to the shop. “We’ll all be there this evening.”

“Fine. Thank you.”

Tennison went directly to a phone booth and got through to Muddyman in the Incident Room.

“It’s Harvey, not Harley or Hardy—Harvey. H-A-R-V-E-Y. So we’ve got to start again. I’m off to see Oscar Bream. ’Bye.”

“It makes a pleasant change, not being up to the armpits in someone’s viscera,” Bream said, opening the door to the Path Lab. He went in first, his considerable bulk swathed in a green plastic apron, rubber gloves up to the elbows. Two of his assistants were at work, assembling and measuring the skeleton on a table in the center of the lab. His senior assistant, Paul, was busy at another bench, reconstructing the smashed skull, piece by piece. It was largely complete, except for a jagged hole towards the back on the right-hand side, and he was fiddling with several fragments, puzzling how they might fit into the bone jigsaw.

Bream gestured towards the skeleton. “Though I must admit this girlie is sorely taxing my memory of my student anatomy classes,” he admitted to Tennison. “You know there are two hundred and six named bones of the body? Twenty-six to each foot alone. Luckily, most of those were still inside her shoes.”

“Fascinating, Oscar. But is it Simone Cameron?”

Bream had planted himself in front of the skeleton, arms folded across the green plastic apron. “Absolutely not.”

Tennison, coming around to join him, stopped dead in her tracks, mouth dropping open. “What?”

“As I said before, like Simone, in her teens—sixteen to seventeen. But taller—Simone was five seven, this girl is five eight, five nine.” He bent his head, peering at Tennison over the top of his glasses. “At the moment it looks as if she was all there, no mutilation. Good head of hair . . .”

And there it was, in a shallow tray, like a discarded wig, plaited and beaded. Bream moved over to the skull, which was raised up on a plinth, the beams of a spotlight shining eerily through the empty eye sockets. “Luckily, Paul here likes jigsaws.” He examined a fragment and handed it to his assistant, muttering, “Could be a bit of the zygomatic arch.”

Tennison was still grappling with this new revelation. It was always unwise to jump to conclusions without any sort of proof, but it was easily done; and Simone’s disappearance and the discovery of the body had seemed a neat fit. Too neat, as it now turned out. But she had to be absolutely certain that Bream himself was certain.

“You’re sure it’s not Simone?”

“Yeah.” He wandered over to the lightbox and stuck up x-rays of two skulls, side by side. One was Simone Cameron’s, taken from her medical records, the other Nadine’s. Bream turned to her. “Do you want me to point out the differences?”