Lynda La Plante_Prime Suspect 02

by A Face in the Crowd

  Groans and muttered oaths. That kind of follow-up meant days of futile legwork, endless hours tramping the streets, knocking on doors, and getting blank stares and shaken heads. In short, a lot of hard work for minimal return.

  “I’ve asked DS Haskons to be office manager.” Tennison looked toward Muddyman, leafing through a dog-eared copy of the A to Z directory. “Tony—a name for this operation.”

  “The first N is Nadine Street, Guv.”

  “Very nice. So it’s Operation Nadine then.”

  Somebody snapped his fingers and started to sing an old Buddy Holly number “Nadine, Honey, Is That You?” and the others took it up, joining in the chorus.

  Already halfway to the door, Tennison rapped out, “Right, let’s go … Jonesy!”

  While the team got on with the house-to-house, Tennison, with DC Jones trailing in her wake, went down two flights to the Forensic Science labs, situated in an annex at the rear of the station. Two white-coated technicians were scooping mud from the plastic containers, mixing it with water into a thin soup, and sieving it. Any resulting fragments, even the tiniest specks, were placed on sheets of white blotter for Gold to examine later.

  Gold looked a bit pale and drawn, but his enthusiasm was undimmed, and so was his industry. He’d separated the various items of clothing and artifacts found with the body and lined them up in shallow trays on the bench. He went along, detailing his finds to Tennison, while Jones took notes.

  “I’ll get all this stuff bagged for you as soon as possible if you want Mrs. Cameron to look at it.” Gold lifted some woven material with a rubber-gloved hand. “The sweater remains—pretty color, don’t you think?” He moved along. “Bra, pants, labels, some studs from her Levi’s, Adidas sneakers, and so on. Not very helpful, I’m afraid …”

  One of his assistants came up, holding a small fragment in stainless steel tweezers. Gold squinted at it. “Looks like a piece of skull. Get it sent over to Oscar Bream.”

  He gestured Tennison forward to another bench. Here, laid out on separate sheets of blotter, were a number of smaller, tarnished items. They didn’t look like much to Tennison, though Gold seemed quite pleased. “But we have found several coins! The most recent of which is 1986.”

  Tennison frowned at him. “So?”

  “Have you got any change in your pocket?”

  Jones fished out a handful and Gold plucked out a five-pence piece, which he held up with a conjurer’s flourish. “There. 1991. Which proves that you were walking around above ground until at least that year.”

  “Thank God for that,” Jones muttered, pulling a face for Tennison’s benefit behind the young scientist’s back.

  Gold was holding up a scabby piece of coiled leather, covered in green mildew. Evidently his prize specimen, from the way he was beaming. “Perhaps most promising so far—the belt that secured her hands behind her back. Distinctive buckle.”

  Distinctive, Tennison thought, but not all that rare, having seen the design before: a Red Indian chief with full-feathered headdress, in profile, cast in silvery metal that was now dulled and pitted.

  “Could have belonged to her, I suppose,” Gold conjectured.

  Tennison nodded slowly, tugging her earlobe. “Or the killer,” she said.

  As the front door opened, Ken Lillie switched on his best smile, showing his warrant card to the middle-aged black woman in a floral print pinafore and fluffy pink slippers.

  “Good morning, madam. DC Lillie, local C.I.D. We’re investigating a suspicious death in the—”

  He jerked his head around, distracted by one hell of a commotion coming from two doors along. He could hear a man’s voice, yelling, and then a woman’s, screaming blue murder. “Excuse me …” Lillie muttered, retreating fast down the path. He caught sight of Frank Burkin dragging a black teenager through the garden gate into the street. Behind the pair, a woman in a brightly patterned head scarf—the boy’s mother, Lillie judged—was beating her fists at Burkin’s broad back, screaming at him to leave the lad alone.

  People from neighboring houses were running into the street, shouting and shaking their fists as Burkin wrestled the black kid into the back of the Ford Sierra. Lillie ran up, waving both hands in an attempt to placate what had already the makings of an ugly mob. As he reached the spot, the Sierra’s doors slammed and the car sped off with a squeal of tires, leaving Lillie to confront a sea of angry black faces and the distraught mother, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Tennison sent DC Jones off to get her a mug of decent coffee instead of the pig swill from the machine, and returned to the Incident Room to help Haskons collate whatever information was to be had. She was suffering the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal acutely, and desperately trying to concentrate while ignoring the craving itch at the back of her throat.

  “What have we got on the property developer?” she asked, leaning over Haskon’s shoulder.

  “Has since gone bankrupt and disappeared off the face of the earth, boss …”

  Mike Kernan pushed open the swing door and stuck his head in. “Jane. A word.”

  Tennison glanced around. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “My office,” Kernan barked. “Now.”

  Tennison exchanged a look with Haskons, tugged her jacket straight, and went through the door, catching it on the second swing. Haskons’s doom-laden voice floated after her. “Kernan the Barbarian …”

  Cigarette in hand, the Super was pacing his office, shoulders hunched, thunderclouds gathering overhead. He said, “Burkin has just arrested a young black lad for possession.”

  Tennison leaned against the door, eyes closed. “Oh God.”

  Kernan jabbed the air. “He’s doing his bloody house-to-house, there’s the smell of pot, and he barges in. Pulls the lad out by the scruff of the neck.”

  “I don’t believe it …”

  “So now we’ve got bricks thrown into the garden of Number fifteen and a reception full of people bleating on about infringement of civil liberties and police harassment.” He kicked his desk. “And with this bloody meeting tonight—I just don’t believe it!”

  “Do you want me to remove Burkin from this inquiry?” asked Tennison quietly. She didn’t know what else to suggest.

  Kernan shook his head and gave her a sideways glance. “We can’t do that, Jane.” He took a drag. “I’m up for promotion.”

  There was a slight pause as it sank in. “Promotion?”

  “Chief Super.” Kernan cleared his throat. He’d kept this under wraps till now, hadn’t intended to tell anyone, least of all DCI Jane Tennison. “Right now I can’t afford to do my dirty washing in public,” he went on, a bit pathetically, she thought. “My interview will be a nightmare if this keeps up.”

  Tennison let a moment pass. The sly bastard wouldn’t have breathed a word if this mess with Burkin hadn’t happened. She stepped forward and said in a quiet, controlled voice, “I hope you’ll be recommending me for your post.”

  “Oh do you?” Kernan said darkly, glowering at her from under his brows. “Well, don’t take too much for granted.” More finger jabbing, as if he were trying to bore a hole through galvanized steel. “Now make sure this boy is cautioned and released and tear bloody Burkin up for arse paper!”

  Seething and trying not to show it, Tennison marched straight to her office and told her secretary, WPC Havers, to have DI Burkin report to her pronto. She wasn’t sure who she was most pissed-off with—Burkin for antagonizing the local community and trying to wreck the murder inquiry before it had even got off the ground, or Mike Kernan and his devious little schemes to get shunted up the ladder without telling her. Bloody typical, and she was fed up with it! As the senior AMIT officer under his command, she was naturally next in line for his position, and what’s more she deserved it. She’d paid her dues, eighteen months at the Reading Rape Centre, five years with the Flying Squad, and to top it all, cracking the Marlow serial killer case when the rest of the team had been flapping around like headles
s chickens. She was damn sure that if Kernan’s most senior officer had been male, Kernan would have been grooming him for stardom, bringing him along, even putting in a good word for him with the “board,” the panel of senior Metropolitan officers who decided these matters. But of course she was a stupid, weak woman, with half a brain, hysterical with PMS once a month, and what’s more a dire threat to the macho image that even today prevailed throughout the police force. God, it made her feel like weeping, but she wouldn’t, and didn’t.

  So she was in a fine mood for Burkin, when he appeared, and she faced him standing, even though he was a clear twelve inches taller, his bruiser’s mug showing not a trace of doubt or remorse.

  “Look, he was blatant, Guv. Almost blowing the smoke in my face, as if to say, go on, nick me.”

  “That’s not the point. At the moment, what with the Cameron case—”

  Burkin rudely interrupted. “Derrick Cameron was a criminal and he deserves to be locked up.”

  “Frank …” Tennison said, holding on to her temper, but Burkin barged on, as set in his ways as quick-drying concrete.

  “So we had to lean on him a little to get a confession—so what?”

  Tennison bristled. “So what? So our reputation goes down the toilet again!”

  “What reputation?” Burkin’s mouth twisted in a scathing sneer. “They bloody hate us. Well—I’ll tell you something, I ain’t so keen on them. As far as I’m concerned, one less on the streets is no loss.”

  “You’re making a fool of yourself, Frank.”

  “Look,” Burkin said stolidly, “if they don’t want to be part of our country they should go home.”

  Tennison stared up at him, her eyes glacial. “That’s enough, Frank. Just shut it.”

  Burkin’s mouth tightened. He was near the edge and he knew it. It chafed him raw that he had to stand here, like a snotty-nosed kid in the headmaster’s study, taking all this crap from a bitch with a dried-up crack. Give him half a chance, he’d soon straighten her out, give her what she was short of, wipe that holier-than-fucking-thou expression off her face. Make her into a real woman instead of this Miss-Prim-Little-Bossy-Boots act she tried to put on. Underneath she was like all the rest. A good, juicy fuck from a real man would fix her up.

  “If I hear an outburst like that from you again, it’ll be a disciplinary matter.”

  “Yeah, then perhaps you better take me off the case,” Burkin said, looking straight past her to the opposite wall.

  “You won’t be off the case, Frank, you’ll be off the Force.” Tennison’s voice was lethal. “If you think setting someone up because they’re black is okay, then you shouldn’t be a cop at all. Simple as that.”

  The intercom buzzed. Tennison reached over to press the button, and Maureen Havers announced that Nola Cameron was in reception, waiting to see her. Tennison said she’d be right there, and turned back to Burkin, shaking her head.

  “Jesus, this is a murder investigation, Frank. A young girl ends up buried in someone’s backyard like the family cat? Her skull smashed to pieces? What difference does it make what color her skin used to be?” She said with quiet finality, “I want the boy cautioned and released and then get back to work.”

  Without a word, Burkin turned and left the office.

  3

  Nola Cameron was a pathetic sight, still wearing the woven cap and shapeless coat of the previous night. Tennison escorted her into the interview room, holding her arm. “This way, Nola, my love …”

  The clothing and other items were laid out on a table; stained with mud and partially decayed, they were sad mementos of a young life that had been brutally cut short, stopped in its tracks before it had time to flower into womanhood.

  Tennison said gently, “Now, Nola, I want you to look at these things and tell me if you recognize any of them as having belonged to Simone.” She kept her eyes on the woman’s face, watching her closely as Nola Cameron fingered the sweater, then touched the other scraps of clothing. Almost at once she was nodding, a haunted expression straining her features.

  “Yes.” She swallowed hard. “These are her things.”

  “Nola, please, look carefully, take your time.”

  “These are all her things,” Nola Cameron insisted, nodding again, blinking back her tears.

  “We found this belt buried with her.” Tennison showed her the large silver buckle in the shape of the Red Indian’s head. “Do you recognize that?”

  “Yes, yes,” Nola Cameron said, hardly glancing at it. “That is her belt. She always wore this belt.”

  “I see.” Tennison slipped off her wristwatch and laid it next to the Adidas sneakers. “And what about this watch?”

  “That is hers.” Nola Cameron started sobbing, head bowed, rocking back and forth. “I bought her this watch.”

  Tennison wrapped her arm around the shaking shoulders. “Nola, would you like a cup of tea? Do you want to sit down?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Tennison led her to the door. “The experts will be able to give us a lot more information soon. Your dentist has provided Simone’s dental records and we can compare those against those of the girl we found. That will tell us for sure.” She hesitated. “And so until then—these things are all we have to go on. Are you sure you recognize them?”

  “Oh, yes,” Nola Cameron whispered. “Yes.”

  “I see, all right. Well, thank you very much.”

  Thoughtfully, Tennison watched as the bowed figure shuffled off across the reception area. Then with a sigh she picked up her watch, slipped it back on, and returned to the Incident Room.

  DC Jones was standing at the board. While most of the desk-bound team worked in shirtsleeves, Jones prided himself on keeping up appearances, jacket on, necktie neatly knotted; with his glasses firmly on his nose, he looked like an earnest insurance salesman about to make a pitch. He held up a sheaf of typewritten sheets, claiming her attention.

  “Report in from Gold, boss. He reckons Nadine was infested by maggots. Bluebottles.”

  “So?”

  “Bluebottles won’t lay their eggs underground.”

  Arms folded, Tennison studied the 10 × 8 glossy photographs pinned to the board, the whole grisly sequence as the corpse was disinterred.

  “So that means she was above ground for a while before she was buried?”

  Jones nodded eagerly. “At least a few hours. The other thing is that she must have been killed in the summer, ’cos that’s when bluebottles are active.”

  “And Simone was missing in February.” Tennison subsided into a chair, rubbing her eyes, feeling suddenly very weary. “Which means I go into tonight’s meeting none-the-bloody-wiser.”

  The community center was packed to overflowing. There would have been a reasonable turnout anyway, but with the Derrick Cameron case back in the headlines, and now the discovery of the body in Honeyford Road, the local, mainly black residents had turned out in force. Community policing had always been a contentious issue, and here was a golden opportunity for them to air their grievances and put the senior police officers on the spot.

  Tennison and Kernan arrived together, to be met by Don Patterson, who was to chair the meeting, a young West Indian casually dressed in T-shirt, jeans, and leather sandals. He led them through the crowd milling around the entrance, skirting the television crew and knot of reporters clamoring for Jonathan Phelps to make a statement. Phelps, of mixed-West Indian and Asian parentage, was a tall, balding, well-dressed man, rather good-looking in a severe way, keenly-intelligent and a forceful presence. He had been educated at the London School of Economics, where he himself now lectured, and had been selected as Labour’s candidate in the forthcoming by-election. Tonight’s meeting was a gift on a silver platter, and he was making the most of the media exposure to pursue his political ambitions.

  Tennison couldn’t quite see him through the crowd of newsmen and photographers, but she could hear him all right: the firm, resonant voice, the incisive delivery,
confidence in every phrase.

  “… my concern is that Derrick Cameron’s case reaches the Court of Appeal—and that someone who has been wrongly imprisoned for six years is released. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act brought in stricter safeguards for the interrogating of suspects, but that was not much help to Derrick Cameron, who along with an increasing number of individuals”—here a pause for emphasis, while his voice took on a dry, mocking tone—“apparently wanted to confess to the police in the car on the way to the station.”

  The media lapped it up. Passing inside, Tennison and Kernan exchanged gloomy looks. This was going to be as bad—worse perhaps—than they had feared. Phelps had set the tone and the agenda for the evening with his opening remarks, and any hope of a cool, reasonable discussion had flown out the window. And that’s how it turned out. Seated up on the platform with Phelps and Patterson, and Tennison beside him, Kernan was fighting a losing battle from the start, struggling to make himself heard above the rowdy, packed hall, constantly interrupted in mid-sentence by people leaping up, not so much to ask questions as to hurl abuse.

  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.”