Lynda La Plante - A Face in the Crowd

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.”

Ignoring him, Phelps steamrollered on. “… heard about sensitive policing, so-called community policing. Yet once again local people are being treated as second-class citizens.”

A chorus of cheers at this, waving fists, the bottled-up antagonism and anger of the black crowd as potent as an invisible, yet deadly nerve gas.

It was obvious what Phelps was referring to, and for the first time Tennison spoke up, determined to get her two cents in before Phelps turned the meeting into a one-man election address. “If you are talking about the investigation that I am heading-”

“I am!”

“Then I believe it’s being carried out in a-”

“In a hostile and intimidatory manner-exactly.” Phelps was nodding, and almost smiling, happy to have scored another point. “With violent arrests being made by your officers… though of course, no charges were brought.”

It would be so easy, too easy, to get into a slanging match with Phelps, but that would have been catastrophic. He held all the aces. The best she could do was to remain calm, state the facts as best she could, and trust that there were enough reasonable people out there to give her a fair hearing.

“One of my officers was provoked into making what in retrospect was seen as a hasty action…” The hall erupted in a storm of derisive laughter and catcalls. Tennison waited for the din to die down.

“Look-the most important thing is that we have a murderer who has been walking free for six years. We have to find that person. To do that we need the support and cooperation of this community. Now, I and two of my colleagues are going to stay behind afterward to see if you can help to give us some crucial information. For example, who lived at Number fifteen before the Viswandhas.”

“We know, we know that…” Midway down the hall, Nola Cameron was on her feet, waving her arms, appealing to those around her. “He left at the same time as Simone was missing. What was his name? Someone here will remember…”

Before anyone could, however, Don Patterson had what he thought was a more pressing question. “I’d like to ask Mr. Kernan about the heavy police presence in the Honeyford Road area at the moment…”

About to reply, Kernan was cut short by a young guy in the audience, who leaped up, face livid, dreadlocks swinging, pointing an accusing finger. “I wanna ask him how he’s got the nerve to come here at all!” he shouted, “when Derrick Cameron’s locked up for somethin’ he didn’t do!”

Kernan held up his hands. “Obviously, I am unable to discuss the details of that case… but I should have thought my mere presence here this evening is an indication of good faith.”

Howls of laughter at that. More people were climbing to their feet, gesticulating, screaming their heads off, and the whole thing was fast sinking to the level of farce. Tight-lipped, Kernan glanced aside at Tennison, shaking his head as if to say, What was the use?

Phelps waited for a slight lull and seized the opportunity.

“The justifiable anger and unhappiness at what has happened to Derrick Cameron cannot be so easily dismissed by a police officer who was stationed at Southampton Row.”

“I’m not dismissing anything,” said Kernan heatedly. “I’m just trying… I’m just…”

“When the boy,” Phelps went on, “supposedly confessed. Because-just let me finish-the Cameron case focuses on a fundamental question: Is it possible to expect justice in this country if you are a person of color? ”

Excluding Kernan and Tennison on the platform and DCs Rosper and Lillie at the back of the hall, the verdict was unanimous.

Afterwards, pencils sharpened, notepads at the ready, Rosper and Lillie manned two desks in the entrance hall. They felt like a couple of lepers. The crowd had streamed out, most not bothering to give them a second glance, one or two openly sniggering and dropping heavy hints about the officers’ parentage.

Lillie was doodling clock faces when the man in the leather hat plunked himself down in the seat opposite and leaned his elbows on the desk. He was chewing the stub of an unlit cigar, and seemed to have a sunny disposition, judging by his permanent grin that revealed two gold front teeth.

“I don’t like the police,” he began cheerfully.

Lillie nodded. “Thank you.”

“But I’ll tell you this, you should talk to the guy that Nola mentioned.” He removed the cigar stub, leaving the glinting grin intact. “White guy about fifty. Worked as a builder.”

Lillie dutifully jotted this down. “Can you tell me his name, sir?”

“We argued about parkin’ space, you know. Then in the mornin’ all my car is covered in brake fluid.”

“I see.”

“Don’t worry, I got me own back.”

Lillie waited. “Go on, then, tell me.”

The man in the leather hat started wheezing. “I pissed in his petrol tank.” He let out a bellow of laughter, thumping the desk.

Lillie smiled, still waiting.

The man chewed on the dead stub, eyes roaming about. “Dave Hardy? Harley? Somethin’ like that. You talk to him.”

Lillie wrote it down.

When Tennison returned from seeing Kernan off, the haul was meager. Lillie gave her what little information he had, though Rosper thought he might have gotten a lead.

“Word is that a family lived in Number seventeen called Allen. One or two people reckon they might have owned Number fifteen as well.” He tore off the sheet and handed it to her. “Point is, Esme Allen still runs a West Indian take-out nearby.”

Tennison looked at the address he’d jotted down, then at her watch. She was starting to see double. “Give it another half an hour here, then call it a day.”

As far as she was concerned, DCI Jane Tennison was about to call it a day, a night, and a day.

She let herself into the empty flat and trailed through to the bedroom, carrying the small suitcase she’d had with her on the course. Dumping it on a chair, she switched on the bedside lamp, kicked off her shoes, and lay down on top of the pink duvet, fully-clothed. The instant her eyelids closed she was fast asleep, arms by her sides, snoring softly.

The hand-lettered sign in the window read “Esme’s Take-Away Fast Food.” The cafe was in the middle of a row of small shops which served the local West Indian community, cardboard boxes and wooden trays of exotic foodstuffs-breadfruit, mooli, okra, and yams-laid out on the pavement.