A Face in the Crowd (7 page)

“Not particularly, no.”

“Well, what else?” Bream mused, scratching his chin with his gloved finger. He looked across at the skeleton. “Fractured her wrist when she was younger . . . playing ball? Perhaps she fell off her bike? That’s for you to discover.”

Tennison sighed. “Don’t rub it in. Can you tell me if she was black or white?”

“No.”

“
Shit.
I’ve been going up a dead-end street.”

Bream was trying to be helpful. He had a good deal of respect for Jane Tennison, considered her a fine police officer with a keen intellect and an intuitive grasp of the many complex strands that went to make up a homicide inquiry. And to top it all, he rather liked her. Not an opinion he would have extended to quite a few chief inspectors of his acquaintance. He said, “Well, we’ve got a man here who does all kinds of jiggery-pokery with the skull to ascertain ethnic origins. Better still, a medical artist who could make you a clay head, at a price.”

“Is he good?”

“He’s our very own Auguste Rodin,” Bream said, a glimmer of a smile lurking behind his usual deadpan facade.

“Yeah, but is he good?”

“Naturellement.”

“That’s expensive, right?”

Bream nodded, looking down on her over his glasses. “Do you want a word with Mike Kernan?”

Tennison nibbled her lip. Then she decided. “No, screw it. Let’s just do it.”

“Okay.”

“So how long before I can pick it up?”

“Three weeks.”

“Fine,” Tennison said, moving back to watch Paul engaged in his painstaking assembly of the skull. “I’ll pick it up in three days.”

“I’ll have a word with him.” Bream stood at her shoulder. “Perhaps if you were prepared to model in the nude . . . ?”

“That’s sexual harassment.”

Bream slowly blinked, his expression sanguine. “What isn’t these days?”

Tennison folded her arms, stroking her chin as she gazed at the skull in the bright cone of light. “How did she die, Oscar?”

“I’ve no idea,” Bream confessed. “Her skull could’ve been smashed after death. For all I know she could’ve been buried alive.”

The Incident Room was buzzing with activity when Tennison walked in. Almost all the team was here, shirtsleeves rolled up, plowing through all the Harveys in the telephone directories. It was tedious and frustrating, having to redial when the line was busy, or waiting with drumming fingers for a phone that was never answered. When they did get through to someone, the routine was always the same.

“David Harvey? I’m a police officer carrying out routine inquiries. I wonder if you can help me. Can you tell me whether you were ever domiciled at Number fifteen, Honeyford Road?”

The same routine, and up to now, the same response. Tick the name off and start again. What the hell, Rosper thought, tapping out the next number. It was better than digging up gas mains for a living.

Tennison draped her raincoat over the back of a chair and tucked her blouse into her straight, black skirt. Covering her mouth, she belched softly, still digesting the egg and cottage cheese sandwich she’d eaten driving back in the car, washed down with a carton of orange juice. She did a quick scan of the board, checking if anything new had been pinned up.

“Got anything for me?”

“Nothing so far, boss,” Haskons said, glancing up, keeping his finger on the number he was about to dial. “But we have got some more stuff that’s been dug up in the garden of Number fifteen. Jonesey’s getting it from Gold.”

“Let’s hope it’s good.” Standing at the desk, Tennison raised her voice. “Right, listen up. I’ve just come back from Oscar Bream at the Path Labs. It’s definitely not Simone Cameron.” A wave of disgruntled mutters and sighs went through the room; dark looks were exchanged. As well as an unidentified murderer, they now had an unidentified victim too.

“So we need to operate on two fronts,” Tennison went on. “Find David Harvey and identify Nadine. It’s a bottle of Scotch for David Harvey.”

The team went back to work. Tennison busied herself with the duty roster wondering if she needed to ask the Super for more manpower. Then she remembered the clay model head she’d requested, without first clearing it with him, and decided to let it hang for the time being.

Jones arrived with the new material from Forensic. Tennison shoved the papers aside to make space on the desk.

“They found a plastic bag buried as well, ma’am, and Gold has linked it to the girl. Contained this.”

Tennison stared down at the roll of heavily-woven cloth, dark browns and greens with threads of gold. Next to it Jones had placed two large chunky bracelets, hand-carved with an intricate design.

“The cloth is West African,” Jones said, consulting his notebook. “Several yards of it, in fact. And these ivory bracelets are Nigerian.”

Tennison picked them up, turning them round and round. She was surprised at their weight. She slipped one onto her own wrist. Worn smooth through long use, its internal circumference was large enough to slide up to her elbow.

“Yoruba amulets,” Jones informed her, “supposed to ward off evil spirits. Obviously didn’t work for our Nadine. Apparently they’re very old and very valuable.”

Tennison was shaking her head and frowning at the two bracelets she held in her hands. As if speaking to herself, she murmured under her breath, “Who was this girl?”

M
any of the houses on the quiet, tree-lined road were detached, others substantial semi-detached properties of the thirties period. It was clear that the Allens had gone up in the world. Esme’s cafe must be a little gold mine, Tennison thought, parking the Orion alongside a low stone wall bordered by neatly-trimmed shrubbery. She made a mental note, and walked up the driveway, briefcase in hand.

Lights glowed behind a vestibule door of stained glass. She rang the bell, and in a few moments a boy of about nine appeared, very smart in a white shirt and school tie, shorts with knife-edge creases in them, polished black shoes.

Tennison smiled. “Can I see your mummy, please?”

“Yes. Please wait here,” said the boy politely, and turned back indoors. She heard him call, “Mum, someone to see you,” and then Esme Allen came through, smiling, holding the door wider.

“Hello, it’s Jane Tennison.”

“Yes, come in.”

The living room was warm and cosy, with a beige carpet and furniture upholstered in burgundy with embroidered backs. Wall lights with red tasseled shades and thick velvet curtains made for a restful atmosphere. Tennison had interrupted a dressmaking session. On the coffee table stood a pretty child of three, with pigtails, being fitted for a bridesmaid’s dress. The hem of the pale yellow satin dress had been partly pinned. The little girl’s chubby black fists dreamily smoothed the material as she waited patiently for it to be finished.

A young man in a gray sweater and jeans, early twenties, Tennison guessed, and rather good-looking, was sitting on the edge of the sofa, hands between his knees, rubbing his palms together. He gave her a brief sidelong glance as she came in, then looked away shyly. Still smiling, the elegant, graceful Esme introduced them.

“This is my son Tony. And this is his daughter, Cleo. Say hello, Cleo.”

“Hello,” Cleo said, dimples in her cheeks.

“Tony and his girlfriend are doing the decent thing—at long last,” Esme confided, casting a look at Tennison under her eyelashes. She spoke educated, standard English; no trace of the heavy West Indian patois she’d used in the shop that morning. “Their daughter is to be a bridesmaid. Lord, how times have changed! You wanted to see my husband?”

“Yes, please.”

Esme sat the little girl on the edge of the coffee table and went out. Tennison took the armchair opposite the sofa and placed her briefcase flat on her knees. There was a momentary, awkward silence, filled with the ticking of a gilt carriage clock on the mantelpiece.

Tennison said, “So when’s the happy day, Tony?”

Nervously, Tony cleared his throat. “Ummm . . .” He gazed off at something in the corner of the room.

“Do you like my dress?” Cleo asked, plucking at it, her legs in white ankle socks swinging under the table.

“Yes, I do. I think it’s lovely—oh, Tony, just a minute.”

Tennison put her hand up as he half-rose, about to leave. He sank back again.

Tennison opened her briefcase and handed him a typewritten sheet. “Could you have a look at this, please? That’s a description of the dead girl. Do you remember seeing anyone like her in the Honeyford Road area in the mid-eighties? She may have been at school with you.”

“I’m a Bride’s Maid,” Cleo said importantly, pronouncing it very clearly as two distinct words.

“You are, aren’t you?” Tennison agreed, touching the satiny material and smiling.

“Have you ever been a Bride’s Maid?”

“Do you know, I have. But never the bride.”

Tony held out the sheet of paper. “No,” he said shortly, and got up again to leave as Esme came in. She swung the child up. “Come along, baby. Say bye-bye.”

Cleo waved her fingers at Tennison, mouthing, “Bye-bye.”

“Bye.”

In the doorway, Vernon Allen stood aside to let Tony pass. “Wedding boy,” he said jovially, adding a chuckle, his voice a deep rumbling bass. He turned then, a big bear of a man casually dressed in a check shirt and loose-buttoned cardigan, and looked keenly at Tennison through horn-rimmed glasses. “Chief Inspector . . . what can I do for you?”

In the tiny storage room upstairs that Vernon Allen used as an office, Tennison sat at the desk, flicking through the pile of old rent books dating back ten years. Everything was neatly filled in: tenants, dates, amounts. It all seemed kosher.

She screwed the cap back on her pen. “But you have no idea where David Aloysius Harvey lives now?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Tennison sat back in the swivel chair, tilting her head to look at him. In the light of the desk lamp her blond hair shimmered like a fuzzy golden halo. Her first instinct, which she put great faith in, was that Vernon Allen was a decent, trustworthy man. He’d answered her questions simply and directly, speaking slowly in his deep, rumbling voice. At all times his eyes met hers, slightly magnified through the lenses of his spectacles. She’d have laid bets he was as kosher as the rent books, but she had to probe deeper.

“So you bought the property in 1981, right?”

“Yes.”

“And Harvey moved in shortly after?”

Vernon Allen nodded. “With his wife. After she died he let things go.”

“And you sold the property in . . .” Tennison checked her notes “. . . ’89, with Mr. Harvey as a resident tenant?” Vernon Allen’s nod confirmed this. “Did that lead to much bad feeling between you and Mr. Harvey?”

“Some. Not much.” He wagged his head from side to side, the light catching the flecks of gray in his thick hair. “The problem we had was that he was very erratic in paying the rent. Sometimes he seemed to have money; sometimes not.”

“Mmm,” Tennison said, as if mulling this over, and then she said quickly, “I presume you have a set of keys to the property?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Allen, did you do anything to the garden while you were the owner of the property?”

“No. Harvey laid the slabs. I didn’t want him to, but he did very much as he pleased really.”

“When were those slabs laid?”

“I’d say 1986. 1987 . . . ?”

The door was ajar a couple of inches. There was a movement outside on the landing, the creaking of a floorboard.

“Because, you know,” Tennison went on, “it’s almost certain that the body was buried before the slabs went down.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Vernon Allen said.

“Mr. Allen, how is it you could afford two properties on your pay?”

He didn’t seem surprised at this change of tack, or even mildly annoyed by the question.

“Esme’s cafe has always done well.” He shrugged his broad shoulders in the rumpled cardigan. “To tell you the truth, it was her money that paid for the second mortgage.”

“And your son’s at private school?” Tennison said, having jotted down in her mental file the blue-and-green striped tie the polite schoolboy had been wearing.

At that moment the door was pushed roughly open and a tall, willowy girl barged in, an exact younger version of Esme Allen, hair cropped very short with tiny-plaited dreadlocks trailing over her ears. Attractive and vivacious, with large flashing eyes, the effect was spoiled somewhat by the way she was twisting her mouth.

“When will you ever learn, Pop? Black people aren’t supposed to own businesses, houses, get an education . . .”

She regarded Tennison with open hostility.

“This is my daughter, Sarah,” Vernon Allen said, standing up. “There’s no need to be rude,” he gently rebuked her.

“I agree,” Sarah snapped.

Tennison rose, glancing down at the notebook in her hand. “Sarah . . . you’re the law student. And you’re twenty. So in the summer of, say, 1986, you would have been . . . let me see . . .”

There was a slight pause.

“Fourteen. Mathematics not your strong point?” the girl said sarcastically.

Tennison was unabashed. “Not particularly, no.” She smiled. Sarah’s rudeness didn’t upset her one bit, but it embarrassed Vernon Allen.

“It’s my son David who’s the wizard at math,” he said, trying to lighten up the atmosphere.

Tennison took the description of Nadine from her briefcase and handed it to the girl. “Do you recall seeing anyone like that in the vicinity of Honeyford Road?”

Sarah hardly glanced at it. “Yes, of course, Simone Cameron,” she said curtly.

“It’s not Simone. We’re quite sure about that,” Tennison stated evenly. “Would you look at the description, please.”

Sarah blinked rapidly, obviously taken aback. Then the icy, scathing tone returned, this time with a touch of venom.

“Well, then, if it’s not Simone, you’ll need to be a bit more specific, won’t you? That’s if you can be bothered!”

“And would that mean . . .”

Sarah interrupted, “The police aren’t exactly noted for their enthusiasm in solving cases when the victim is black, are they?” Again the sneering twist to her mouth, her contemptuous summing up of all police officers, be they male or female.