A Face in the Crowd (21 page)

The more professional the photograph, it seemed, the more extreme the poses and situations became, as if Jason was trying to keep pace with his growing technical expertise by dredging up ever more outlandish fantasies from the depths of his sordid imagination.

Lillie held up a magazine cover of an over-blessed blonde and the original, matching color print from Jason’s private hoard. “Quite the little photographer,” he muttered sourly.

Tennison pushed the pile away with disgust, having seen more than plenty. “Get on to Vice. See if you can find out who publishes this muck.” She called out to Oswalde, “Bob, get someone down to Harvey’s bedside. Make sure I’m informed as soon as he can utter a sound.”

She stood up, feeling soiled and grubby and faintly nauseated. Turning away from the piles of magazines and heaps of photographs, she said between gritted teeth, “We’ve got to find this little shit.”

She thought, with a flutter of panic: Before he does to some poor innocent girl what he did to Joanne Fagunwa.

Haskons had used his discretion. He’d weeded out the more explicit material and pinned up on the bulletin board only those shots that might have been deemed fit for mixed company. Even so, some of the sequences, while starting innocently enough, ended up as blatantly pornographic.

“Seems as though Jason prefers amateur models,” Tennison said, moving along them with Muddyman, who himself dabbled in amateur photography, on a more modest scale.

“Yeah, well, he doesn’t have to pay them, does he?” Muddyman pointed them out. “The Polaroids are early photographs. The later ones are much better quality, thirty-five mil. Quite professional.”

“Would he develop them himself?”

Muddyman smoothed back the hair over his bald spot. “I think black and white’s pretty easy. You need more sophisticated equipment for color.”

Tennison pinched her nose, thinking. “I suppose he could have a studio or something . . . it’s worth checking with any of those places that specialize in developing shady photos. They might have an address, a contact number even.”

Muddyman nodded and went off, back into the fray. The Incident Room was buzzing. Rosper, aided by WPC Havers, was working the computer terminal. Burkin and Oswalde had document files a foot deep on their desks, heads down, plowing through. The other members of the team were on the phones, chasing down even the most tenuous lead. DC Jones came through the desks, looking faintly flushed, eyes blinking behind his spectacles. He held an open folder.

“You were right, ma’am—Jason Reynolds attended the same school as Tony Allen. They were in the same year. When Eileen moved to Margate, to be near one of her boyfriends, Jason stayed on in London, living mainly at Number Fifteen . . .”

“Oh, right!” Tennison breathed.

“Their class president reckons they weren’t friends though. He says Jason was a troublemaker—bit of a jack-the-lad.” Jones added doubtfully, “I suppose if they were neighbors they might have hung out together, but they sound very different.”

“Which brings us back to Sarah.” Tennison smacked her knuckles into her palm, fretting, frustrated. “Who Kernan has ruled out-of-bounds.”

“Boss . . . ?” Haskons beckoned, and went back to frowning at two photographs on the board. They were earlier shots of an attractive blond teenager, in bra and black fishnets, gazing over her shoulder with an invitation in her dark eyes.

“This is a bit out of left field, but I think I recognize her.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t know.” Haskons was distinctly uneasy. He cleared his throat. “I’ve been looking at them for ages.”

“Richard . . .” Tennison said warningly, her eyes like gimlets.

“No, I mean, Camilla’s really happy there,” Haskons said feebly.

Tennison was stumped. Camilla was his eldest girl, six years old. “What’s Camilla got to do with it?”

Haskons stared at the photos, worrying his thumbnail. “I think it’s her teacher,” he said.

Miriam Todd, in charge of the third grade at St. John’s Primary, was attractive enough, and dark eyed, but she wasn’t blond. She had shoulder-length black hair and was about twenty-two, Tennison guessed. Supposing the pinups of the girl in bra and fishnets to have been taken five, six years ago, Miriam would then have been in her mid-teens. Near enough the right age.

Perched on tiny chairs, they sat in the sunny classroom during the lunchtime break, the cheerful clamor of kids in the playground an odd and unsettling backdrop to the purpose of Tennison’s visit.

She took the two photographs of the blond girl Haskons thought he recognized from her bag and showed them to Miriam.

“Tell me if you recognize this person.”

“No, I’ve never seen them before, Inspector.”

But her nostrils betrayed her. They had flared, just a fraction, enough for Tennison to notice the sharp intake of breath Miriam was trying to disguise. She tried a different tack.

“What about this girl?”

Miriam looked at the full color studio portrait of Joanne that her mother had supplied, happy and smiling, sparking with life.

Miriam shook her head slowly. “No. She’s beautiful . . .”

“No, Miriam,” Tennison said bluntly. “She was beautiful. Her remains were found buried in the garden of Number Fifteen, Honeyford Road. Her hands had been tied behind her back with a belt. The belt belonged to Jason Reynolds. Do you recognize this man?” She held up the picture of Harvey and Jason together, and Miriam blanched. “Do you want to look at these photographs again?”

“No need.” Miriam’s voice was barely audible. She avoided Tennison’s direct gaze.

“Tell me what you know about the photographer.”

“Jason Reynolds.” Miriam sat up straighter and moistened her lips. “I met him in the summer of . . . eighty-six. At that time I was still at school, still living with my parents in Margate. He was taking photographs on the beach. You know, a seaside photographer. He was charming, funny . . .” She took a breath and plunged on, “As you know, I let him take photographs of me. For a while he made me feel attractive, the center of attention. I stripped and posed, I dressed up and posed. Whatever he asked for, really. I wanted to get away from home. My mother was ill.”

She looked down at her hands, twisting in her lap. Tennison waited.

“He said . . . he said his uncle had a flat I could rent, that he’d look after me. I came with him to London. To Honeyford Road . . .”

There was a noise in the corridor as the children trooped in from the playground. They bunched in the doorway, one or two spilling into the classroom. Tennison put the photographs away in her bag.

“Can you wait outside, please,” Miriam called to them. “Just line up quietly.” They went out. She turned back, brushing a few strands of hair from her pale forehead. “I lived in the basement flat there for two months.”

“June and July?”

“Yes.”

“Did you work as a prostitute, Miriam?”

She colored a little. “No, not really. Jason tried to get me to go with various friends he brought around, but . . .” She shrugged. “Well, none of us really knew what we were doing.”

Tennison looked into the dark eyes with their fringe of black lashes. Sick shit that he was, Tennison thought, Jason Reynolds must have something going for him, some form of mesmerizing power, to have snared, among many others, such an attractive teenager as Miriam Todd must have been six years ago. She said, “Did you have sex with his uncle? David Harvey?”

“Sometimes,” Miriam admitted. “When I couldn’t pay the rent.”

“Do you recognize either of these men?” Tennison showed her pictures of Vernon and Tony Allen. “Did you have sex with either of them?”

“No.”

“Where were those photographs of you taken?”

“At the flat.”

“And in Margate?”

“His uncle had a trailer.”

“Can you tell me where that was exactly?”

Tennison felt herself tense up, willing Miriam to provide a name, a location, but she was shaking her head. “I can’t remember the name of the site. It was somewhere out of town.”

“Right. Well.” Tennison stood up. She fastened her shoulder bag. “Thank you very much.”

“That’s it?” Miriam said, staring up.

“Yes. Thank you,” Tennison said, and departed.

It was too late for a cafeteria lunch, and she couldn’t face another sandwich, so once back in the hectic Incident Room she smoked a cigarette to fend off the hunger pangs. Her consumption was gradually creeping up again. To hell with it, no good worrying: she’d try stamping out the filthy weed once this case was finished.

“Boss—have you seen this?” She glanced around at Lillie, who was unpinning one of the photographs.

“What?”

He brought it over and laid it on the desk: a young girl ogling the camera, hands cupping her breasts. The room was tiny and cluttered, a bunk bed and a small window visible in the shot. It looked like the interior of a trailer. Lillie pointed to a calendar behind the girl’s right shoulder, taped to the end of the bunk bed.

“That’s a 1992 calendar,” he said.

It was, Tennison saw, peering at it closely. “So he could still be using the trailer. Try all the sites in the Margate area.” She stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “I want Eileen Reynolds arrested,” she informed everybody. “Bring her in, put her in an interview room and let her stew. Perhaps that might bring Jason out from under his stone.”

Muddyman called to Rosper, “Check all the campsites in the Margare area—Jonesy, give him a hand.”

There was a bustle and excitement in the room, as well as a fog of cigarette smoke. Now they had something positive to go on. They had a real live prime suspect and they were going after him.

Lillie opened the plastic bag and took out the belt with the Indian Chief’s head buckle. He passed it to Tennison, who held it in her spread hands for Eileen Reynolds to see.

Eileen had been sitting in the interview room for half an hour or more, with only a WPC for company. She’d drunk two cups of machine coffee, smoked three cigarettes, and she was looking sullen. Tennison didn’t expect her to cooperate, but that didn’t matter. The woman seated opposite her, she was convinced, was the mother of a murderer, so she was in no mood to be gentle or pull any punches.

“This is the belt, Eileen, that was used to tie Joanne’s hands behind her back.”

“I’ve never seen it before.” Eileen dismissed it with hardly a glance. From an envelope Tennison took the photograph of Harvey and Jason. She saw Eileen register that the buckle on Jason’s belt was identical. But all it brought was an indifferent shrug. “Lots of belts that look like that.”

“Really. I think it’s quite distinctive.” Tennison took out the polaroids and placed them, one by one, in a row, on the table. She said, “The dead girl, Joanne Fagunwa. Joanne and Tony. Joanne and Sarah.”

Eileen stuck her head forward. “So why isn’t it Mrs.-
fucking
-Allen sitting here?” she snarled. “Go and arrest her. Arrest Sarah.”

Tennison said quietly, “Because it’s my belief that Jason took those photographs.”

“You have no proof of that.”

“They were found in your brother’s flat, Eileen.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Eileen said shortly. Her sallow cheeks were flushed. She was putting up a stone wall, but it was crumbling at the foundations. In her eyes Tennison could see the fearful uncertainty, and thought: she’s going to crack.

But she was not about to spare Eileen’s feelings; she intended carrying on the way she had started. Coolly, as if dealing a hand of cards, she placed a set of the later, harder, more explicit shots in the middle of the table.

“That’s your son, Eileen. Your son the pornographer. Would you look at them, please?” Eileen deliberately stared off. “Look at them, please. You won’t look at them. All right,” Tennison said, her back straight, her clasped hands resting on the table, “I’ll describe them to you. The first shows a girl, she’s about fourteen, I would say. Your son’s penis is inserted in the girl’s anus. Her face shows pain . . . and fear.”

“Stop it . . . !” Eileen’s whole body was straining forward, her mouth an ugly twisted shape. “You sick bastard bitch!”

“It’s not me in the photographs, Eileen,” Tennison went smoothly on, “I didn’t take them. Your son Jason did that.” She glanced down. “The next, a different girl, slightly older perhaps . . .”

There was no need to go on.

Eileen rocked forward, covering her face, her head shaking to and fro. A strangled sob escaped from her. She was breaking into pieces. Tennison looked at her, unmoved. She said, “Tell me where Jason is.”

“I don’t know . . .” Eileen looked up, spittle dribbling down her chin, her eyes tortured. “We should never have come south. God . . . I did my best . . .” Tears rolled down her face. “He’s no son of mine. He’s . . . he’s . . . he’s some sort of . . .”

“Tell me where Jason is,” Tennison repeated.

“I don’t know,” Eileen said in a pathetic high-pitched voice, almost like a little girl’s. Tennison believed her.

“Where’s your brother’s trailer, Eileen?”

“As far as I know he . . . he sold it.” She was sobbing, fighting for breath. “To help pay off the loan.”

Tennison replaced the photographs in the folder. With it tucked under her arm she left the room, not looking back. All the way down the corridor she could hear Eileen’s racking sobs. She wondered if Joanne Fagunwa had sobbed like that, just before Jason Reynolds bashed her brains in.

Vernon Allen was sitting at the table in the living room, newspapers spread out in front of him. Unusually for a man who took pride in his appearance, he was unshaven and disheveled, almost scruffy. He wore his shapeless cardigan, his shirt collar was undone, and his felt hat was shoved to the back of his head. Rather mechanically he was cutting out articles and photographs, placing them in a neat pile. The room was in semi-darkness, the flickering blue light from the TV set and a small lamp in the corner providing the only illumination.

Vernon snipped away, added the clipping to the pile and reached for another newspaper. He looked up as a shadow fell across the table. Sarah was standing in the doorway. She was barefoot, a terry robe wrapped around her.