Lynda La Plante - A Face in the Crowd

“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.

Tennison raised her eyebrows. “Was she black? It doesn’t say so here.” Taking back the description, she gave Sarah a cool, level stare. “Maybe it’s you who’s jumping to conclusions.”

Tony was in the hallway with Cleo in his arms when Vernon Allen showed Tennison to the front door. Tennison smiled at the little girl and asked, “When’s the happy day, Tony?”

He looked down at the carpet, throat working, too shy or too tongue-tied to give a coherent reply. Sarah had followed them downstairs. She came into the hallway, transformed into a beautiful young woman by a beaming smile as she looked fondly at her brother and his daughter, and Tennison noticed that she gripped Tony’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly.

“Two weeks away now,” Sarah said, and even her voice was different, warm and affectionate, when speaking of Tony.

“Well, I’ll see you again before that,” Tennison said, nodding to Vernon Allen as he held the door open for her. “Thanks for your help. Good-bye.”

It was late when she returned to Southampton Row. The cleaners didn’t start their assault on the disaster area of the Incident Room till the early hours. Everyone had gone, except for DS Haskons, who was tidying up his desk, getting ready for home. He looked frazzled after the long day, shirt collar wrinkled, tie undone, wavy, brown hair tousled from continually brushing his fingers through it.

“Got anything on David Harvey?” Tennison asked, dumping her briefcase on the desk.