Lynda La Plante_Prime Suspect 02

by A Face in the Crowd

  “Wait a minute … Sarah …”

  “What’s his daughter going to do now?”

  Tennison had gone still. It had hit her what Sarah had just said.

  “How did you know that she was tied up?” she asked. She tried to grab Sarah’s arm, hoping to calm her. “How did you know she was raped?”

  Sarah wrenched herself away. “That’s another life you’ve ruined,” she almost snarled.

  Tennison still wanted an answer. “Who told you that?” she demanded.

  “He was going to be married this weekend …” Sarah broke down, sobbing. Tennison reached out, and the girl backed away. “Just leave us alone!” She turned her tear-stained face away and did a staggering run back to her car.

  When Tennison got there, she had locked herself inside. Tennison tapped on the window. “Who told you that she was tied up?”

  But she soon saw that it was useless. Sarah was gripping the wheel with both hands, her head resting between them, her shoulders heaving as she wept uncontrollably. For the time being, at any rate, the question would have to remain unanswered.

  The door opened and the mortuary attendant stood there. “Would you like to come this way, sir?”

  Vernon Allen rose heavily from the bench and followed him through. Tennison was sitting in the corridor outside. She stood up as Vernon passed, but said nothing and made no move as he went through the white door into the mortuary itself. She sat down again.

  Tony Allen was lying on a metal table, covered to the waist by a sheet. His eyes were closed, and but for the puckered purplish circle round his neck, he might have been asleep. Vernon gazed down at him. His eyes were dry. A tiny muscle jumped at the corner of his mouth. Very slowly, he bent forward and kissed his son on the lips.

  Tennison stood up as Vernon emerged from the mortuary. He walked past her, looking straight ahead, his face empty of all expression, and went outside into the gray drizzle sweeping down from a dark sky.

  When Tennison rang his office she was told that the super was having lunch in the cafeteria. She went up in the elevator, and having no appetite, got herself a cup of black coffee and carried it across to his table. She might grab a sandwich later on, if she felt like it.

  Kernan was finishing off apple crumble and custard, watching the lunchtime news. She told him about her visit to the mortuary, and of what Sarah had said. He licked his spoon and held it up to quiet her as a photograph of Tony Allen appeared on the screen.

  The announcer was saying, “Tony Allen, who was to have been married this weekend, leaves a fiancée and a three-year-old daughter …”

  Kernan dropped his spoon in the bowl and wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. “You can’t pull Sarah Allen in. Not with all this going on.”

  He gestured at the television, which was showing “all this,” in the person of Jonathan Phelps. Together they watched the newly elected Labour MP being interviewed outside the House of Commons.

  “… today should have been a day of celebration for me and my supporters. Instead, it has turned into a wake as another black man dies in police custody.”

  Turning away, Tennison leaned towards Kernan. “I just want to talk to her off the premises,” she said reasonably.

  It wasn’t reason enough. Kernan shook his head. “Too soon. Go back to Harvey.”

  “He can’t talk at the moment. I don’t know whether he’ll be able to again.”

  “Well, then, see where other lines of inquiry lead you. We’ll review the situation in a few days.” He crumpled the napkin and tossed it down, giving Tennison a critical scrutiny. Her makeup couldn’t disguise the lines of tiredness at the corners of her mouth and the slight puffiness under her eyes. “Go home and get some sleep, Jane.”

  “Yeah …”

  “And leave Sarah Allen out of it,” Kernan ordered. “For the moment.”

  He departed, leaving Tennison gazing listlessly at the TV screen, where Phelps was saying, “With all due respect, a system where police officers investigate their fellow officers cannot be sufficiently objective. All too often a blanket of silence falls on the case …”

  A shape moved behind the panes of colored glass in the vestibule; the light came on and Tennison saw that it was Vernon Allen. He opened the inner door and peered out, trying to see who had rung the bell.

  Tennison tapped on the glass panel at the outer door and pressed her face closer. “Vernon, I have to speak to Sarah …”

  He flinched, as if someone had spat in his face. “How dare you come here! How dare you …”

  “Vernon, it’s really important that I speak to Sarah.”

  “Haven’t you done enough damage?” He was trembling, the outrage in his voice strained and pitiful. “Just leave us alone—”

  “But I have to speak to Sarah!” Tennison insisted. She tapped again, urgently, seeing him about to close the door.

  “My wife is …” Vernon Allen choked, overcome at the thought of Esme’s grief. The huge man seemed to be physically shrinking. He bowed his head in anguish. “My wife …”

  Sarah appeared beside him. “Go inside, Pop. Let me handle this. Go on.”

  He shambled off. Sarah stepped forward, tight-lipped, and stared coldly at Tennison through the glass panel, making no move to open the door. Tennison knew she had only a few seconds. She said quickly, “Sarah, were you there that night?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “—or has Jason Reynolds spoken to you?”

  “I don’t know any Jason Reynolds,” Sarah snapped. “Now leave us alone! I’m closing the door—”

  “Sarah, please,” Tennison said, “for Tony’s sake—”

  “I’m closing the door.”

  She did. The light went out. And that was that.

  At first Tennison couldn’t figure out what the screeching noise was, or where it was coming from.

  Nearly ten thirty, the station was quiet, and she was on the point of leaving when she heard it. Puzzled, she walked down the empty corridor and pushed through the doors into the Incident Room. All alone, Oswalde was crouched in a chair in front of the TV, the remote control in his hand. The screeching was speeded-up reggae as he fast-forwarded the tape of the Sunsplash concert. He paused it, leaning forward with a fixed, obsessive stare, his eyes glued to Joanne and Tony on the stage.

  Tennison moved quietly toward him, frowning to herself. He pressed the rewind and played the same sequence over again, and she could see the tension in the hunched shoulders and the hand gripping the remote.

  “Bob,” Tennison said, making an effort to sound casual. “Give yourself a break.”

  Oswalde flicked a glance at her and went back to the screen. “You can talk.”

  She watched him for a moment longer, then unslung her shoulder bag. She found her Filofax, and scribbled something on a slip of paper and handed it to him. “Call this number. It’s a friend of mine. She helped someone who was at Broadwater Farm. She’s good.”

  “A shrink … ?” Oswalde was bitterly amused.

  “Sort of,” Tennison said. “Listen, there’s no shame in that. Other people make mistakes at work and the firm loses a few grand. We make a mistake and someone loses their life.” It was an argument she used on herself, whenever she screwed up or was feeling depressed.

  Oswalde had zapped back and was studying the same sequence all over again, just as intensely as before. Tennison hitched her bag onto her shoulder and turned to go. He was a big boy, and she wasn’t a wet nurse. She stopped as a thought occurred to her.

  “Did Mrs. Fagunwa recognize that belt?”

  “No.”

  Tennison nodded, on her way to the door. “Go home, Bob,” she said, and went out.

  The house where Eileen Reynolds lived was a stone’s throw from the tower blocks of the Lloyd George Estate. In fact, Tennison thought, as she knocked on the door, if you threw a stone from Harvey’s balcony it would break one of his sister’s windows.

  Eileen opened the door, her a
rms filled with sheets and pillow slips ready for the wash.

  Tennison smiled. “Hello, Eileen.”

  Eileen didn’t return the smile. In the clear light of day her face had a hard, pinched look, that of a woman who had lived through a few trials and tribulations in her time, and survived to tell the tale. Her short, bleached hair was showing brown and gray at the roots.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” she said, and went inside, leaving Tennison to shut the door.

  “I wasn’t lying. He was there with me that weekend. He came down a lot in those days. He had a trailer there. Sometimes he’d stay with me, sometimes at the van.” Eileen stuffed the last of the washing in the machine, straightened up wearily, and banged the door to with her knee.

  Tennison said, “So why did you say it was the anniversary of his wife’s death?”

  “Makes no difference.” Eileen folded her arms and gave a contemptuous shrug. “I’ve spoken to a lawyer and he tells me that confession is not worth the paper it’s written on. It was ‘obtained under duress,’ ” she enunciated, her Scottish accent coming to the fore. “And if my brother did it, why has that blackie killed himself?”

  “Did you know Tony Allen?” Tennison asked, quietly curious.

  “No, I seen it on the TV.” Eileen leaned forward, thrusting her face, eyes screwed tight, at Tennison. “Because he did it—that’s why!”

  “Then why did your brother confess?”

  She had a sharp-tongued Glaswegian answer to everything. “To get you lot off his back.”

  “Eileen, you’re not helping your brother by lying …”

  “I’m not lying!”

  Tennison leaned against the sink, watching as Eileen heaved a basket of clean washing onto the kitchen table. She was a small, almost scrawny woman, yet tough as old boots, and Tennison wouldn’t have fancied her own chances in a scrap, even with the tricks she’d learned from the Met’s karate instructors.

  She said, “You don’t have to stop loving him, you don’t have to stop supporting him. But you do have to stop lying for him.”

  “You know something?” Eileen swung around, blazing. “You’re a pious cow! I’ve done everything for that bloody man since he’s been ill. I work my fingers to the bone to support him …”

  “I know.” Tennison nodded. “That’s what I’m saying. I know you support him. I know that must be a struggle. Like taking on that loan—”

  “You all think you know everything!”

  “—for him. Five grand’s a lot of money.” She paused. “How could you afford to do that, Eileen?”

  “My son helps out.” She glared across the kitchen. “All right?”

  Tennison reflected. “What does Jason do for a living?”

  “You leave that boy out of this!”

  “It’s a simple question,” Tennison said placidly.

  Eileen sniffed. “He has a sort of … photography business.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “In the summer he works on the beach. I don’t really know. I don’t pry like you do,” she said with something like a sneer.

  “You mean he’s a beach photographer?” Tennison said, and a tiny surge of excitement, like electricity, ran through her. She didn’t quite know why, but then something clicked in her brain.

  Eileen was busy sorting out the stuff that needed ironing. “Yeah—he used to keep a bloody monkey here at one time, okay?”

  Tennison left her car parked at the end of the street and walked along the flagged pathway that led to the flats. She entered Dwyfor House and began to climb the smelly staircase. She wanted to have another look around Harvey’s flat, and in particular at the photographs on the glass-fronted bureau. The ones taken by Jason Reynolds, professional photographer.

  On the thirteenth floor, in flat Number 136, Jason Reynolds was on his knees, searching in the cupboard under the sink. He found what he was after, a black plastic bag, and padded through into the living room. The place was in a bit of a shambles, coffee table on its side, ashtray and loose cigarettes spilled over the floor, nothing tidied up since they’d carted his uncle off to the hospital.

  He shook the bag open and went around the sofa to the bureau. He reached for the nearest framed photograph and suddenly went still. He tilted his head, listening. There was someone outside the front door. Silently he skirted the sofa and crept into the hallway, his sneakers making no sound. Somebody was fumbling with the mailbox flap. Fingers poked through and fished for the string, and started to pull it up, the key attached to the end. Jason watched as the key was drawn through the mailbox.

  He looked around, instantly in a sweat. As the key went into the lock he dashed sideways into the kitchen and closed the door a bare crack, putting his eye to it. He held his breath, white-faced and tense, and through the crack saw Tennison pass along the hallway to the living room. He felt sure she must hear his heart.

  Tennison moved slowly around the sofa to the bureau. Along with Muddyman she’d merely glanced at the photographs in their cheap Woolworth’s frames. Now she examined each in turn closely. The one she had looked at before, of Harvey and his wife. The sunset over the sea. Harvey and Eileen together. A smaller print of Eileen on her own. And one of Harvey and Jason, in a back garden, smiling, Harvey’s arm around his nephew’s shoulder. Tennison touched the glass. Her finger traced Jason’s check shirt down to the Indian Chief’s head on the belt looped through his jeans.

  The surge of electricity was now a jolt, stiffening her spine.

  She turned her head, feeling a cool waft of air on her cheek. Putting the photograph back, she went through into the hallway. The front door was open. Had she closed it? She was positive she had. She looked out onto the landing. She listened for a moment, heard nothing, and went back inside, making sure the door was locked.

  In the living room she took the photograph down, turned it over, and flicked up the plastic tabs, intending to take just the print itself. As the cardboard backing came away, Tennison froze. Concealed there, behind the print, were half a dozen polaroids. She spread them out on the back of the frame, her mouth dry, struggling a little to catch her breath. They were of Joanne Fagunwa and Sarah Allen, fully clothed yet posing rather suggestively, their hands squeezing their breasts. They looked to be in a kitchen. And there was a close-up of Joanne and Sarah, giggling into the camera, with Tony Allen between them, pulling a funny face.

  Tennison shut her eyes. This was it. What they’d been seeking all along. The link—Joanne—Sarah—Tony—and whoever had taken the polaroids. All together. And whoever had taken the polaroids was the wearer of the Indian Chief’s head belt.

  She went to the phone and dialed Southampton Row, and asked for DS Oswalde. When he came on the line she said, “Bob, it’s Jane. I’m at Harvey’s. I’ve found something interesting.”

  11

  Oswalde was sitting on the sofa, hands laced together, the Polaroids spread out on the coffee table in front of him. He nodded slowly. “So Tony was involved …”

  “Yes.”

  As if a string had snapped, Oswalde’s head dropped forward. “Thank Christ for that.” He sucked in a huge, relieved breath, then sat forward, staring hard. “Isn’t that Sarah?”

  “Yes,” Tennison said. She leaned over, pointing. “And even better … recognize that?”

  Oswalde studied the photograph of Harvey and Jason in the garden. He looked up at her, his expression clearing. “It’s the belt …”

  Tennison’s eyes gleamed. “We’ve got him, Bob—I want him picked up and I want this place turned over,” she said, gesturing around the flat, fingers snapping.

  “Have you got a search warrant?”

  “I’ll worry about that.”

  Forty-five minutes and two phone calls later the flat was in the throes of a minor invasion. A systematic search brought up piles of soft porn magazines and two shoe boxes filled with original prints and Polaroids: Jason’s private collection, that no doubt he’d stored here to keep from his mother’s pr
ying eyes, Tennison thought. She sorted through it with Lillie.

  Some of the early, amateurish stuff was fairly innocuous—pouting adolescent girls pretending to be page three models, quite a few in school uniforms. But there were other, later shots that Tennison found sickening and repugnant. Naked girls bound and gagged, fear in their eyes; real or faked, Tennison couldn’t tell. Some showing groups of two or three, using various implements on themselves. And a number of them featured the kid himself. Jason the porno star, taking the leading role in his own production. These had been taken with remote-control shutter release. The wire could be seen, trailing from his hand to the camera, as he pumped away, face contorted, veins standing out. The girls didn’t look to be enjoying it.

  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.