Lynda La Plante: A Face in the Crowd

Gold looked a bit pale and drawn, but his enthusiasm was undimmed, and so was his industry. He’d separated the various items of clothing and artifacts found with the body and lined them up in shallow trays on the bench. He went along, detailing his finds to Tennison, while Jones took notes.

“I’ll get all this stuff bagged for you as soon as possible if you want Mrs. Cameron to look at it.” Gold lifted some woven material with a rubber-gloved hand. “The sweater remains-pretty color, don’t you think?” He moved along. “Bra, pants, labels, some studs from her Levi’s, Adidas sneakers, and so on. Not very helpful, I’m afraid…”

One of his assistants came up, holding a small fragment in stainless steel tweezers. Gold squinted at it. “Looks like a piece of skull. Get it sent over to Oscar Bream.”

He gestured Tennison forward to another bench. Here, laid out on separate sheets of blotter, were a number of smaller, tarnished items. They didn’t look like much to Tennison, though Gold seemed quite pleased. “But we have found several coins! The most recent of which is 1986.”

Tennison frowned at him. “So?”

“Have you got any change in your pocket?”

Jones fished out a handful and Gold plucked out a five-pence piece, which he held up with a conjurer’s flourish. “There. 1991. Which proves that you were walking around above ground until at least that year.”

“Thank God for that,” Jones muttered, pulling a face for Tennison’s benefit behind the young scientist’s back.

Gold was holding up a scabby piece of coiled leather, covered in green mildew. Evidently his prize specimen, from the way he was beaming. “Perhaps most promising so far-the belt that secured her hands behind her back. Distinctive buckle.”

Distinctive, Tennison thought, but not all that rare, having seen the design before: a Red Indian chief with full-feathered headdress, in profile, cast in silvery metal that was now dulled and pitted.

“Could have belonged to her, I suppose,” Gold conjectured.

Tennison nodded slowly, tugging her earlobe. “Or the killer,” she said.

As the front door opened, Ken Lillie switched on his best smile, showing his warrant card to the middle-aged black woman in a floral print pinafore and fluffy pink slippers.

“Good morning, madam. DC Lillie, local C.I.D. We’re investigating a suspicious death in the-”

He jerked his head around, distracted by one hell of a commotion coming from two doors along. He could hear a man’s voice, yelling, and then a woman’s, screaming blue murder. “Excuse me…” Lillie muttered, retreating fast down the path. He caught sight of Frank Burkin dragging a black teenager through the garden gate into the street. Behind the pair, a woman in a brightly patterned head scarf-the boy’s mother, Lillie judged-was beating her fists at Burkin’s broad back, screaming at him to leave the lad alone.

People from neighboring houses were running into the street, shouting and shaking their fists as Burkin wrestled the black kid into the back of the Ford Sierra. Lillie ran up, waving both hands in an attempt to placate what had already the makings of an ugly mob. As he reached the spot, the Sierra’s doors slammed and the car sped off with a squeal of tires, leaving Lillie to confront a sea of angry black faces and the distraught mother, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Tennison sent DC Jones off to get her a mug of decent coffee instead of the pig swill from the machine, and returned to the Incident Room to help Haskons collate whatever information was to be had. She was suffering the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal acutely, and desperately trying to concentrate while ignoring the craving itch at the back of her throat.

“What have we got on the property developer?” she asked, leaning over Haskon’s shoulder.

“Has since gone bankrupt and disappeared off the face of the earth, boss…”

Mike Kernan pushed open the swing door and stuck his head in. “Jane. A word.”

Tennison glanced around. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“My office,” Kernan barked. “Now.”

Tennison exchanged a look with Haskons, tugged her jacket straight, and went through the door, catching it on the second swing. Haskons’s doom-laden voice floated after her. “Kernan the Barbarian…”

Cigarette in hand, the Super was pacing his office, shoulders hunched, thunderclouds gathering overhead. He said, “Burkin has just arrested a young black lad for possession.”

Tennison leaned against the door, eyes closed. “Oh God.”

Kernan jabbed the air. “He’s doing his bloody house-to-house, there’s the smell of pot, and he barges in. Pulls the lad out by the scruff of the neck.”

“I don’t believe it…”

“So now we’ve got bricks thrown into the garden of Number fifteen and a reception full of people bleating on about infringement of civil liberties and police harassment.” He kicked his desk. “And with this bloody meeting tonight-I just don’t believe it!”

“Do you want me to remove Burkin from this inquiry?” asked Tennison quietly. She didn’t know what else to suggest.

Kernan shook his head and gave her a sideways glance. “We can’t do that, Jane.” He took a drag. “I’m up for promotion.”

There was a slight pause as it sank in. “Promotion?”

“Chief Super.” Kernan cleared his throat. He’d kept this under wraps till now, hadn’t intended to tell anyone, least of all DCI Jane Tennison. “Right now I can’t afford to do my dirty washing in public,” he went on, a bit pathetically, she thought. “My interview will be a nightmare if this keeps up.”

Tennison let a moment pass. The sly bastard wouldn’t have breathed a word if this mess with Burkin hadn’t happened. She stepped forward and said in a quiet, controlled voice, “I hope you’ll be recommending me for your post.”

“Oh do you?” Kernan said darkly, glowering at her from under his brows. “Well, don’t take too much for granted.” More finger jabbing, as if he were trying to bore a hole through galvanized steel. “Now make sure this boy is cautioned and released and tear bloody Burkin up for arse paper!”

Seething and trying not to show it, Tennison marched straight to her office and told her secretary, WPC Havers, to have DI Burkin report to her pronto. She wasn’t sure who she was most pissed-off with-Burkin for antagonizing the local community and trying to wreck the murder inquiry before it had even got off the ground, or Mike Kernan and his devious little schemes to get shunted up the ladder without telling her. Bloody typical, and she was fed up with it! As the senior AMIT officer under his command, she was naturally next in line for his position, and what’s more she deserved it. She’d paid her dues, eighteen months at the Reading Rape Centre, five years with the Flying Squad, and to top it all, cracking the Marlow serial killer case when the rest of the team had been flapping around like headless chickens. She was damn sure that if Kernan’s most senior officer had been male, Kernan would have been grooming him for stardom, bringing him along, even putting in a good word for him with the “board,” the panel of senior Metropolitan officers who decided these matters. But of course she was a stupid, weak woman, with half a brain, hysterical with PMS once a month, and what’s more a dire threat to the macho image that even today prevailed throughout the police force. God, it made her feel like weeping, but she wouldn’t, and didn’t.

So she was in a fine mood for Burkin, when he appeared, and she faced him standing, even though he was a clear twelve inches taller, his bruiser’s mug showing not a trace of doubt or remorse.

“Look, he was blatant, Guv. Almost blowing the smoke in my face, as if to say, go on, nick me.”