A Face in the Crowd by Lynda La Plante Read Free Book Online Page A

of the desk-bound team worked in shirtsleeves, Jones prided himself on keeping up appearances, jacket on, necktie neatly knotted; with his glasses firmly on his nose, he looked like an earnest insurance salesman about to make a pitch. He held up a sheaf of typewritten sheets, claiming her attention.
    “Report in from Gold, boss. He reckons Nadine was infested by maggots. Bluebottles.”
    “So?”
    “Bluebottles won’t lay their eggs underground.”
    Arms folded, Tennison studied the 10 × 8 glossy photographs pinned to the board, the whole grisly sequence as the corpse was disinterred.
    “So that means she was above ground for a while before she was buried?”
    Jones nodded eagerly. “At least a few hours. The other thing is that she must have been killed in the summer, ’cos that’s when bluebottles are active.”
    “And Simone was missing in February.” Tennison subsided into a chair, rubbing her eyes, feeling suddenly very weary. “Which means I go into tonight’s meeting none-the-bloody-wiser.”
    The community center was packed to overflowing. There would have been a reasonable turnout anyway, but with the Derrick Cameron case back in the headlines, and now the discovery of the body in Honeyford Road, the local, mainly black residents had turned out in force. Community policing had always been a contentious issue, and here was a golden opportunity for them to air their grievances and put the senior police officers on the spot.
    Tennison and Kernan arrived together, to be met by Don Patterson, who was to chair the meeting, a young West Indian casually dressed in T-shirt, jeans, and leather sandals. He led them through the crowd milling around the entrance, skirting the television crew and knot of reporters clamoring for Jonathan Phelps to make a statement. Phelps, of mixed-West Indian and Asian parentage, was a tall, balding, well-dressed man, rather good-looking in a severe way, keenly-intelligent and a forceful presence. He had been educated at the London School of Economics, where he himself now lectured, and had been selected as Labour’s candidate in the forthcoming by-election. Tonight’s meeting was a gift on a silver platter, and he was making the most of the media exposure to pursue his political ambitions.
    Tennison couldn’t quite see him through the crowd of newsmen and photographers, but she could hear him all right: the firm, resonant voice, the incisive delivery, confidence in every phrase.
    “. . . my concern is that Derrick Cameron’s case reaches the Court of Appeal—and that someone who has been wrongly imprisoned for six years is released. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act brought in stricter safeguards for the interrogating of suspects, but that was not much help to Derrick Cameron, who along with an increasing number of individuals”—here a pause for emphasis, while his voice took on a dry, mocking tone—“apparently wanted to confess to the police in the car on the way to the station.”
    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