Lynda La Plante: A Face in the Crowd

“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.”