Lynda La Plante_Prime Suspect 02

by A Face in the Crowd

  Thorndike nagged on. “But why this specific investigation?”

  “The body’s been found in Honeyford Road, where the Cameron family still lives. Added to which, it looks like it could be Simone Cameron.”

  “Politically sensitive, certainly,” Thorndike agreed. He gave her a sideways look. “A word of advice. Charges may be brought against the officers involved in the Derrick Cameron case if it goes to the Court of Appeal …”

  “Quite right too if that boy was framed.” She frowned at him. “What are you getting at?”

  “I’d be careful if I were you—this may not turn out to be such a prize for you.” And then turning away, not meeting her eye, he added, “Obviously you’re a liberated and enlightened woman.”

  “Thank you, David,” said Tennison dryly. But she still didn’t have a clue what, in his pussy-footing way, he was driving at. Of course it wasn’t straightforward police work to him, it was bloody politics, dropping poison into people’s ears, watching your back all the time in case there was a knife sticking in it. Tennison hadn’t the time nor the patience for all that bullshit; life was too short.

  Thorndike saw her to the door. “Don’t be too trusting of our Afro-Caribbean friends.”

  “That’s your advice, is it?” She tucked the briefcase under her arm, giving him a quick, formal smile. “Good luck tomorrow.”

  Thorndike waited by the open door, his weak, watery eyes fixed on her as she entered the elevator. “Oh, and drive carefully if you’ve been drinking,” was his final word of warning.

  Going down in the elevator, Tennison cupped her hand to her mouth, trying to smell her own breath. Didn’t seem that bad, and besides, she’d only had two glasses of red wine. Old Mother Thorndike must have a keen sense of smell if he’d got a whiff of alcohol fumes from that.

  Honeyford Road was quiet again. The crowd had dispersed, returned to their homes, the stretch of pavement outside Number 15 cordoned off with striped tape that had POLICE—NO ENTRY stamped on it in red letters. The rain had eased off, but there was a damp, chill breeze blowing as Tennison drove her car along the street, searching for a place to park. She slowed down, bending sideways to peer through the misted-up passenger window at a lone figure still standing vigil next to the flapping tape. Tennison recognized the short, dumpy woman in the woven cap, the long shapeless coat reaching almost to the ground; she pressed the button to lower the window.

  “Nola—go home!”

  Nola Cameron shook her head defiantly. “Not if that’s my Simone. I won’t lose her a second time!” She turned back to stare at the house, chin set stubbornly, feet planted on the wet pavement.

  Gold was enjoying himself. He didn’t seem to notice, or to mind, that he had been kneeling at the bottom of a cold, slimy trench since early evening, and it was not past ten thirty. With the arrival of DCI Tennison, the officer appointed to take charge of the case, he had a new and receptive listener on which to vent his expertise. Crouched down on her haunches on the paving stones, muffled inside the hood of her raincoat, Tennison watched intently as the work of excavation went on; the skull and most of the upper part of the skeleton had been removed, and the team was not concentrating on the lower torso. For the moment she was content to listen to Gold give his impromptu lecture.

  “… natural plant fiber such as cotton tends to disintegrate, form part of the diet of the early inhabitants of the corpse. But wool, like hair—they’re made of the same stuff—can be remarkably resilient. Now, I’ve got some pieces of sweater and Professor Bream has quite a lot of hair—”

  “If only,” Bream said lugubriously, cleaning his spectacles with the end of his tie. It was meant to be a joke, but everyone was too tired and cold and pissed-off to even give a smile.

  “With beads in it,” Gold continued, so intent that the pathologist’s remark hadn’t even registered with him.

  “Did the Cameron girl wear her hair like this?” Tennison’s question was addressed to the assembly at large.

  “I’m told she did sometimes,” DI Muddyman put it.

  Arms clasped around her knees, Tennison rubbed her gloved palms together, already feeling the cold night air creeping into her fingers and toes. “How old do you think she is, Oscar?”

  “She hasn’t quite finished growing, so still in her teens, I’d say.”

  “Well, how long do you think it would take for a corpse to get like this?”

  “That I can’t tell.” There was the suggestion of a weary sigh in Bream’s voice. Always the same, the murder squad, expecting answers up front to impossible questions. They’d only ever be happy if he could look at the decaying remains of a corpse and give them its name, address, and national insurance number.

  Tennison was a terrier, not so easily put off. “Come on, Oscar. Minimum time?”

  “Two years? Don’t quote me on that.”

  “So it could be Simone …”

  “You see, you’re doing it already!”

  Tennison eased herself up, stamping her feet to get the circulation going. She could have cheerfully murdered for a cigarette, but this was the real testing time, and she was determined to kick the habit. It had scared her badly when her consumption climbed to sixty a day, the dread specter of the big C giving her the cold sweats. Now or never, shit or bust. Quelling the desire, she glanced around to her officers, Muddyman, Lillie, and Jones, their tall figures silhouetted in the glare of the arc lamps.

  “When were these garden slabs laid?”

  “Before the Viswandhas came here,” Jones told her.

  “Which was?”

  “About eighteen months ago.”

  “Do we know who they bought the house from?”

  “All Mr. Viswandha could tell me was the name of a property developer,” Jones said.

  “So have these slabs been disturbed since then?”

  DC Lillie shook his head. “Not according to the workmen.”

  Tennison gazed down into the shallow trench, trying to get the chronology straight in her own mind. “So she must have been put there before the slabs were laid, which means our prime suspect has to be whoever was living here when she was buried. We need a definite date of death, Oscar.”

  Bream gave her his fishy-eyed stare and called out to Lillie, “Is there any of that soup left?”

  “Oh—if there is,” Tennison said, “can you get some to Nola Cameron, if she’s still out there?” She looked at her watch. “The rest of you might as well go home and get some sleep. I’ll aim to brief the team at ten in the morning.”

  “Right, Guv,” said Muddyman, not bothering to hide his heartfelt relief. Knowing Tennison, her obsessive tenacity with any case she took on, he’d been afraid she’d keep them there till the wee small hours, standing around watching Bream & Co. digging up the rest of Simone Cameron—if that’s who it was. The woman didn’t seem to have a home to go to; any private life at all, as far as that went.

  The officers dispersed, leaving through the back garden gate. Tennison stayed. She was glad she did, because a few moments later Gold made an important discovery. He beckoned the photographer over to take several close-up shots of the corpse’s wrists, behind its back, beneath the pelvis.

  Bream craned forward, speaking softly into a small pocket recorder. “Hands tied together at the back with …”

  Gingerly, Gold pulled something out and held it up.

  “… a leather belt,” Bream intoned.

  A movement caught Tennison’s eye and she turned to see the little Viswandha boy standing on the top step, all agog.

  “For God’s sake … didn’t anyone think to get the family moved?” She went up the steps, ushering him ahead of her. “It’ll be gone soon,” she said reassuringly.

  He wasn’t a bit frightened, just filled with curiosity. “Is it a real person?”

  “Let’s get you inside, you’ll catch cold. You should be in bed.”

  “It should have been buried deeper, shouldn’t it?” he said with a child’s irrefutable logic
. “Then it wouldn’t have come back.”

  Mrs. Viswandha was on her way downstairs, clearly distraught after trying to comfort her daughter. She clutched the boy to her, scolding and hugging him at the same time.

  “Don’t you have family or friends you could go to stay with?” Tennison asked sympathetically.

  “My husband won’t leave here …” She was almost in tears.

  “Do you want me to talk to him?”

  The woman found a wan smile, nodding gratefully. “Thank you.”

  Tennison had hoped that the forensic boys might have finished before daybreak, folded their tents and stolen silently away under cover of darkness. But it was not to be. In the gray light of dawn, with gray, haggard faces to match, they trudged along the alleyway carrying a body bag and several large plastic containers. As they came between the tall Victorian houses into Honeyford Road where the dark-blue police van was parked, rear doors open, the pathetic figure of Nola Cameron, shivering, eyes red-rimmed, let out a shrill cry and went stumbling towards them.

  “Simone! Simone!”

  Standing by her car, Tennison watched the uniformed policeman on duty at the front gate step forward, barring her way. The pitiful cries rang out in the quiet street—“Simone, Simone!”—as the body bag was hoisted into the van and the doors slammed shut.

  Tennison drove away, averting her eyes from the rearview mirror, from the terrible pain of the grieving mother. If it really was Simone Cameron in that body bag, she knew one thing for sure. All hell was about to break loose.

  There wasn’t time to return to the flat. She drove straight to Southampton Row, knowing that Mike Kernan would be hopping about like a cat on broken glass. The cafeteria didn’t open till eight thirty. She had to make do with a styrofoam cup of disgusting machine coffee to wash down three paracetamol, in the hope that she could keep the dull, throbbing headache at bay for a few hours at least. Going without sleep was part of the job, but she was no spring chicken anymore and couldn’t handle it as she used to.

  Kernan was at his desk, enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke, which wouldn’t do his ulcer much good, Tennison thought. With his heavy-lidded eyes and pouchy cheeks, he put her in mind of a grumpy chipmunk with a hangover. He launched right in, telling her about the meeting, that same evening, which couldn’t have come at a worst time. “It was all arranged weeks ago. I’m going with the Community Liaison Officer, guy named Patterson. I can’t back out now, but it’s going to be a nightmare. I want you to be there. Starts at eight.”

  Kernan sucked in a lungful, pushed his packet of Embassy her way.

  “No thanks.” Tennison shook her head firmly. “I’m trying to give it up.”

  “Christ,” Kernan muttered, in a state of shock. “Since when?”

  “Five days, six hours and …” Tennison gazed at the ceiling “… ’bout fifteen minutes.”

  Kernan was so impressed he stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another. “The meeting’s supposed to be to discuss community policing, but given what’s happening just now we’re sure to be dragged facedown through the shit about the Cameron family.” His heavy brows came together. “And Phelps is coming down tonight, and he’s bound to have the media in tow. That man can smell a vote-winner from fifty miles.”

  “Let’s face it, Guv—Nola may be jumping to conclusions but we can’t claim to have done well by her family, can we? Not if it turns out that Derrick was framed.”

  “Yeah, well …” Kernan was uncomfortable with the subject. “Let’s concentrate on the immediate problem. Is it the Cameron girl or not?”

  “I don’t know. And I won’t find anything out from Oscar Bream till tomorrow at the earliest.”

  The phone rang and Kernan snatched it up. His secretary informed him that Commander Trayner was on the line. “Right, I’ll hold.” He looked at Tennison through the wreaths of tobacco smoke. “If we knew one way or another before tonight’s meeting, our lives would be a whole lot easier.”

  Tennison nodded. “I’ll see if the forensic boys can shed some light. And I want the rest of the garden dug up in case there are other bodies …”

  “Jesus, what do you want?” Kernan growled, aghast. “Another Nilsen?” He stiffened slightly as the commander came on. “Sir?” He listened, nodding, his drooping eyes fixed on the desk blotter.

  “That’s right. I thought she was the very best person for the job. It requires tact and … well, I’m sure she’ll be able to cope.”

  Tennison pursed her mouth, giving a little rueful half-smile. The antiwomen bias in the Force extended all the way from the ranks right to the upper echelons. Having a female DCI heading a murder inquiry still went against the grain, even though the official line was that there was no sexual discrimination; every one rose by merit, experience, hard work. Which was a load of crap.

  “I will do. ’Bye, sir.” Thoughtfully, Kernan hung up. He took a long drag, letting the smoke plume from his nostrils, and stared across the desk with cloudy eyes. “Now how in hell does the commander know what happened on your course already?”

  Tennison went very still. “What do you mean?”

  “That I brought you back to lead this inquiry?”

  She breathed out. For a nasty moment there she had had a dreadful, sinking sensation that her dalliance in the hotel room had spread like wildfire, sniggers and dirty jokes in the locker rooms … Hey, heard the latest—that bitch Tennison likes her men big, rough, and black!

  “I’ll give you one guess,” she told Kernan. “And it involves some funny handshakes.”

  “Thorndike? The same lodge?”

  “I’d put money on it,” Tennison said, getting up, smoothing her skirt.

  “Then you’d better make sure you vindicate my decision,” Kernan said, and he wasn’t joking.

  “I’ll do my best, sir,” she said crisply, and went out.

  The cold water felt good. Leaning over the washbasin in the locker room, Tennison splashed a couple more palmfuls into her face, then dried herself and made a critical inspection in the mirror. Oh God. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. It seemed a world away now, though it was less than twelve hours since she’d been lying in Bob Oswalde’s arms in the hotel room, drinking Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

  Two clerks came in, chattering away, though Tennison seemed oblivious, intent on repairing the ravages of a night without sleep, giving her hair a vigorous brushing and applying fresh makeup. Usually sparing with perfume when on duty, this morning she put an extra dab on her wrists and behind her ears to perk herself up. Then, shrugging into her tailored jacket and straightening her shoulders, she was ready for the fray.

  There was a fog of smoke in the Incident Room, the members of the team lounging around drinking coffee, laying bets on the identity of the collection of bones discovered in the back garden of Honeyford Road.

  “Fiver says it’s Simone …”

  “You’re on!”

  “What odds you offering?”

  “I’m starting a book.”

  “Huh!” said DC Lillie with a scowl. “Last time I ended up seventy-five quid out of pocket …”

  Tennison came in, calling out to Muddyman as she strode briskly to the desk in front of the long white bulletin board that took up one full wall. “Tony, we need a name. Where we up to in the A to Z?”

  “I think it’s N, Guv.”

  “Look up the first N for us then, Tony.” She stood at the desk, waiting a moment or two for the chatter to die down. When there was complete silence, Tennison began.

  “As some of you will be aware, workmen digging in the back garden of Number fifteen, Honeyford Road, have uncovered skeletonized human remains. The arms had been tied behind the back and the body wrapped in polyethylene, so it’s a suspicious death.”

  Tennison pointed to the photographs of the corpse, which had been processed overnight and pinned up on the board by DC Jones.

  “Those of you who’ve been down there will know that there’s a lot of speculation that it cou
ld be the body of a local girl who was reported missing two years ago—Simone Cameron. Her mother, Nola, who still lives a few doors away from Number fifteen, is completely convinced it’s Simone. We’ll get the forensic boys and the pathologist boys to give us an answer to that as soon as possible.”

  Tennison paused, her eyes raking over the assembled officers, who were all, to a man, paying rapt attention.

  “In the meantime, we have to treat Nola Cameron’s fears seriously. The unfortunate thing is that the Cameron family have been the focus of attention in that area for some years now. The oldest boy, Derrick, was accused of stabbing a white youth to death. He was sent to prison on the basis of that confession, made here in this station. Now there are doubts about the safety of that conviction.”

  Dark glances were exchanged between the men. Tennison raised her voice to cut short the rumbling murmurs.

  “A campaign led by Jonathan Phelps—Labour’s candidate in the by-election—to have Derrick’s case brought before the Court of Appeal is gaining a lot of support from all sorts of people. So … there’s a lot of anger and bitterness, and resentment against the police. It looks like we can rule out the present owners, so our first priority is to locate all former occupants of Number fifteen. Let’s get down there straightaway and see what information we can gather.”

  There was a general movement. Climbing to his feet, DI Burkin glanced around, a grin on his handsome, slightly battered face, the result of several bouts in the boxing ring, which made him the current holder of the south Thames Metropolitan title. “Passports at the ready, lads …”

  “Frank, you know that’s out of order,” Tennison snapped, wiping away his grin. “Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?”

  Silence fell. Tennison’s gaze swept around the room, her face stony. “I don’t want the Camerons—and that means aunts, uncles, all of them—interviewed at all. As far as the other residents go, remember this: if we go in there expecting aggro, start leaning on people, we’ll get it. So it’s easy does it.” She came around the desk, raising an eyebrow and softening her tone to take the sting out of her rebuke. “You’re all graduates of the Rank Charm School, right? I want a list of all former residents of the Honeyford Road area over the last ten years.”