A Face in the Crowd

11

Oswalde was sitting on the sofa, hands laced together, the Polaroids spread out on the coffee table in front of him. He nodded slowly. “So Tony was involved…”

“Yes.”

As if a string had snapped, Oswalde’s head dropped forward. “Thank Christ for that.” He sucked in a huge, relieved breath, then sat forward, staring hard. “Isn’t that Sarah?”

“Yes,” Tennison said. She leaned over, pointing. “And even better… recognize that?”

Oswalde studied the photograph of Harvey and Jason in the garden. He looked up at her, his expression clearing. “It’s the belt…”

Tennison’s eyes gleamed. “We’ve got him, Bob-I want him picked up and I want this place turned over,” she said, gesturing around the flat, fingers snapping.

“Have you got a search warrant?”

“I’ll worry about that.”

Forty-five minutes and two phone calls later the flat was in the throes of a minor invasion. A systematic search brought up piles of soft porn magazines and two shoe boxes filled with original prints and Polaroids: Jason’s private collection, that no doubt he’d stored here to keep from his mother’s prying eyes, Tennison thought. She sorted through it with Lillie.

Some of the early, amateurish stuff was fairly innocuous-pouting adolescent girls pretending to be page three models, quite a few in school uniforms. But there were other, later shots that Tennison found sickening and repugnant. Naked girls bound and gagged, fear in their eyes; real or faked, Tennison couldn’t tell. Some showing groups of two or three, using various implements on themselves. And a number of them featured the kid himself. Jason the porno star, taking the leading role in his own production. These had been taken with remote-control shutter release. The wire could be seen, trailing from his hand to the camera, as he pumped away, face contorted, veins standing out. The girls didn’t look to be enjoying it.

The more professional the photograph, it seemed, the more extreme the poses and situations became, as if Jason was trying to keep pace with his growing technical expertise by dredging up ever more outlandish fantasies from the depths of his sordid imagination.

Lillie held up a magazine cover of an over-blessed blonde and the original, matching color print from Jason’s private hoard. “Quite the little photographer,” he muttered sourly.

Tennison pushed the pile away with disgust, having seen more than plenty. “Get on to Vice. See if you can find out who publishes this muck.” She called out to Oswalde, “Bob, get someone down to Harvey’s bedside. Make sure I’m informed as soon as he can utter a sound.”

She stood up, feeling soiled and grubby and faintly nauseated. Turning away from the piles of magazines and heaps of photographs, she said between gritted teeth, “We’ve got to find this little shit.”

She thought, with a flutter of panic: Before he does to some poor innocent girl what he did to Joanne Fagunwa.

Haskons had used his discretion. He’d weeded out the more explicit material and pinned up on the bulletin board only those shots that might have been deemed fit for mixed company. Even so, some of the sequences, while starting innocently enough, ended up as blatantly pornographic.

“Seems as though Jason prefers amateur models,” Tennison said, moving along them with Muddyman, who himself dabbled in amateur photography, on a more modest scale.

“Yeah, well, he doesn’t have to pay them, does he?” Muddyman pointed them out. “The Polaroids are early photographs. The later ones are much better quality, thirty-five mil. Quite professional.”

“Would he develop them himself?”

Muddyman smoothed back the hair over his bald spot. “I think black and white’s pretty easy. You need more sophisticated equipment for color.”

Tennison pinched her nose, thinking. “I suppose he could have a studio or something… it’s worth checking with any of those places that specialize in developing shady photos. They might have an address, a contact number even.”

Muddyman nodded and went off, back into the fray. The Incident Room was buzzing. Rosper, aided by WPC Havers, was working the computer terminal. Burkin and Oswalde had document files a foot deep on their desks, heads down, plowing through. The other members of the team were on the phones, chasing down even the most tenuous lead. DC Jones came through the desks, looking faintly flushed, eyes blinking behind his spectacles. He held an open folder.

“You were right, ma’am-Jason Reynolds attended the same school as Tony Allen. They were in the same year. When Eileen moved to Margate, to be near one of her boyfriends, Jason stayed on in London, living mainly at Number Fifteen…”

“Oh, right!” Tennison breathed.

“Their class president reckons they weren’t friends though. He says Jason was a troublemaker-bit of a jack-the-lad.” Jones added doubtfully, “I suppose if they were neighbors they might have hung out together, but they sound very different.”

“Which brings us back to Sarah.” Tennison smacked her knuckles into her palm, fretting, frustrated. “Who Kernan has ruled out-of-bounds.”

“Boss…?” Haskons beckoned, and went back to frowning at two photographs on the board. They were earlier shots of an attractive blond teenager, in bra and black fishnets, gazing over her shoulder with an invitation in her dark eyes.

“This is a bit out of left field, but I think I recognize her.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t know.” Haskons was distinctly uneasy. He cleared his throat. “I’ve been looking at them for ages.”

“Richard…” Tennison said warningly, her eyes like gimlets.

“No, I mean, Camilla’s really happy there,” Haskons said feebly.

Tennison was stumped. Camilla was his eldest girl, six years old. “What’s Camilla got to do with it?”

Haskons stared at the photos, worrying his thumbnail. “I think it’s her teacher,” he said.

Miriam Todd, in charge of the third grade at St. John’s Primary, was attractive enough, and dark eyed, but she wasn’t blond. She had shoulder-length black hair and was about twenty-two, Tennison guessed. Supposing the pinups of the girl in bra and fishnets to have been taken five, six years ago, Miriam would then have been in her mid-teens. Near enough the right age.

Perched on tiny chairs, they sat in the sunny classroom during the lunchtime break, the cheerful clamor of kids in the playground an odd and unsettling backdrop to the purpose of Tennison’s visit.

She took the two photographs of the blond girl Haskons thought he recognized from her bag and showed them to Miriam.

“Tell me if you recognize this person.”

“No, I’ve never seen them before, Inspector.”

But her nostrils betrayed her. They had flared, just a fraction, enough for Tennison to notice the sharp intake of breath Miriam was trying to disguise. She tried a different tack.

“What about this girl?”

Miriam looked at the full color studio portrait of Joanne that her mother had supplied, happy and smiling, sparking with life.

Miriam shook her head slowly. “No. She’s beautiful…”

“No, Miriam,” Tennison said bluntly. “She was beautiful. Her remains were found buried in the garden of Number Fifteen, Honeyford Road. Her hands had been tied behind her back with a belt. The belt belonged to Jason Reynolds. Do you recognize this man?” She held up the picture of Harvey and Jason together, and Miriam blanched. “Do you want to look at these photographs again?”

“No need.” Miriam’s voice was barely audible. She avoided Tennison’s direct gaze.

“Tell me what you know about the photographer.”

“Jason Reynolds.” Miriam sat up straighter and moistened her lips. “I met him in the summer of… eighty-six. At that time I was still at school, still living with my parents in Margate. He was taking photographs on the beach. You know, a seaside photographer. He was charming, funny…” She took a breath and plunged on, “As you know, I let him take photographs of me. For a while he made me feel attractive, the center of attention. I stripped and posed, I dressed up and posed. Whatever he asked for, really. I wanted to get away from home. My mother was ill.”

She looked down at her hands, twisting in her lap. Tennison waited.

“He said… he said his uncle had a flat I could rent, that he’d look after me. I came with him to London. To Honeyford Road…”

There was a noise in the corridor as the children trooped in from the playground. They bunched in the doorway, one or two spilling into the classroom. Tennison put the photographs away in her bag.

“Can you wait outside, please,” Miriam called to them. “Just line up quietly.” They went out. She turned back, brushing a few strands of hair from her pale forehead. “I lived in the basement flat there for two months.”

“June and July?”

“Yes.”

“Did you work as a prostitute, Miriam?”

She colored a little. “No, not really. Jason tried to get me to go with various friends he brought around, but…” She shrugged. “Well, none of us really knew what we were doing.”

Tennison looked into the dark eyes with their fringe of black lashes. Sick shit that he was, Tennison thought, Jason Reynolds must have something going for him, some form of mesmerizing power, to have snared, among many others, such an attractive teenager as Miriam Todd must have been six years ago. She said, “Did you have sex with his uncle? David Harvey?”

“Sometimes,” Miriam admitted. “When I couldn’t pay the rent.”

“Do you recognize either of these men?” Tennison showed her pictures of Vernon and Tony Allen. “Did you have sex with either of them?”

“No.”

“Where were those photographs of you taken?”

“At the flat.”

“And in Margate?”

“His uncle had a trailer.”

“Can you tell me where that was exactly?”

Tennison felt herself tense up, willing Miriam to provide a name, a location, but she was shaking her head. “I can’t remember the name of the site. It was somewhere out of town.”

“Right. Well.” Tennison stood up. She fastened her shoulder bag. “Thank you very much.”

“That’s it?” Miriam said, staring up.

“Yes. Thank you,” Tennison said, and departed.

It was too late for a cafeteria lunch, and she couldn’t face another sandwich, so once back in the hectic Incident Room she smoked a cigarette to fend off the hunger pangs. Her consumption was gradually creeping up again. To hell with it, no good worrying: she’d try stamping out the filthy weed once this case was finished.

“Boss-have you seen this?” She glanced around at Lillie, who was unpinning one of the photographs.

“What?”

He brought it over and laid it on the desk: a young girl ogling the camera, hands cupping her breasts. The room was tiny and cluttered, a bunk bed and a small window visible in the shot. It looked like the interior of a trailer. Lillie pointed to a calendar behind the girl’s right shoulder, taped to the end of the bunk bed.

“That’s a 1992 calendar,” he said.

It was, Tennison saw, peering at it closely. “So he could still be using the trailer. Try all the sites in the Margate area.” She stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “I want Eileen Reynolds arrested,” she informed everybody. “Bring her in, put her in an interview room and let her stew. Perhaps that might bring Jason out from under his stone.”

Muddyman called to Rosper, “Check all the campsites in the Margare area-Jonesy, give him a hand.”

There was a bustle and excitement in the room, as well as a fog of cigarette smoke. Now they had something positive to go on. They had a real live prime suspect and they were going after him.

Lillie opened the plastic bag and took out the belt with the Indian Chief’s head buckle. He passed it to Tennison, who held it in her spread hands for Eileen Reynolds to see.

Eileen had been sitting in the interview room for half an hour or more, with only a WPC for company. She’d drunk two cups of machine coffee, smoked three cigarettes, and she was looking sullen. Tennison didn’t expect her to cooperate, but that didn’t matter. The woman seated opposite her, she was convinced, was the mother of a murderer, so she was in no mood to be gentle or pull any punches.

“This is the belt, Eileen, that was used to tie Joanne’s hands behind her back.”

“I’ve never seen it before.” Eileen dismissed it with hardly a glance. From an envelope Tennison took the photograph of Harvey and Jason. She saw Eileen register that the buckle on Jason’s belt was identical. But all it brought was an indifferent shrug. “Lots of belts that look like that.”

“Really. I think it’s quite distinctive.” Tennison took out the polaroids and placed them, one by one, in a row, on the table. She said, “The dead girl, Joanne Fagunwa. Joanne and Tony. Joanne and Sarah.”

Eileen stuck her head forward. “So why isn’t it Mrs.-fucking-Allen sitting here?” she snarled. “Go and arrest her. Arrest Sarah.”

Tennison said quietly, “Because it’s my belief that Jason took those photographs.”

“You have no proof of that.”

“They were found in your brother’s flat, Eileen.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Eileen said shortly. Her sallow cheeks were flushed. She was putting up a stone wall, but it was crumbling at the foundations. In her eyes Tennison could see the fearful uncertainty, and thought: she’s going to crack.

But she was not about to spare Eileen’s feelings; she intended carrying on the way she had started. Coolly, as if dealing a hand of cards, she placed a set of the later, harder, more explicit shots in the middle of the table.

“That’s your son, Eileen. Your son the pornographer. Would you look at them, please?” Eileen deliberately stared off. “Look at them, please. You won’t look at them. All right,” Tennison said, her back straight, her clasped hands resting on the table, “I’ll describe them to you. The first shows a girl, she’s about fourteen, I would say. Your son’s penis is inserted in the girl’s anus. Her face shows pain… and fear.”

“Stop it…!” Eileen’s whole body was straining forward, her mouth an ugly twisted shape. “You sick bastard bitch!”

“It’s not me in the photographs, Eileen,” Tennison went smoothly on, “I didn’t take them. Your son Jason did that.” She glanced down. “The next, a different girl, slightly older perhaps…”

There was no need to go on.

Eileen rocked forward, covering her face, her head shaking to and fro. A strangled sob escaped from her. She was breaking into pieces. Tennison looked at her, unmoved. She said, “Tell me where Jason is.”

“I don’t know…” Eileen looked up, spittle dribbling down her chin, her eyes tortured. “We should never have come south. God… I did my best…” Tears rolled down her face. “He’s no son of mine. He’s… he’s… he’s some sort of…”

“Tell me where Jason is,” Tennison repeated.

“I don’t know,” Eileen said in a pathetic high-pitched voice, almost like a little girl’s. Tennison believed her.

“Where’s your brother’s trailer, Eileen?”

“As far as I know he… he sold it.” She was sobbing, fighting for breath. “To help pay off the loan.”

Tennison replaced the photographs in the folder. With it tucked under her arm she left the room, not looking back. All the way down the corridor she could hear Eileen’s racking sobs. She wondered if Joanne Fagunwa had sobbed like that, just before Jason Reynolds bashed her brains in.

Vernon Allen was sitting at the table in the living room, newspapers spread out in front of him. Unusually for a man who took pride in his appearance, he was unshaven and disheveled, almost scruffy. He wore his shapeless cardigan, his shirt collar was undone, and his felt hat was shoved to the back of his head. Rather mechanically he was cutting out articles and photographs, placing them in a neat pile. The room was in semi-darkness, the flickering blue light from the TV set and a small lamp in the corner providing the only illumination.

Vernon snipped away, added the clipping to the pile and reached for another newspaper. He looked up as a shadow fell across the table. Sarah was standing in the doorway. She was barefoot, a terry robe wrapped around her.

“How is she?” he asked. His voice sounded dull, as if he didn’t care one way or the other; he did care, deeply, but he was wrung out of all emotion, hollow inside.

“Sleeping.”

“I don’t like her taking drugs.”

“It’s better than having her crying all night.” Sarah came in and sat on the arm of an armchair. She looked in silence at the clippings and mangled newspapers. “Pop, why are you doing that?” she asked quietly.

“They’re about Anthony.”

“I know that. I just don’t see how it helps.”

“Well,” Vernon said wistfully, “if it helps me, then surely there’s nothing wrong.”

“You know I’ll be going back to college right after the inquest,” Sarah said.

“Of course.” The scissors snipped. “Is there someone who can take notes for you, so you don’t fall behind?”

“Yes.” She sighed; as if it mattered at a time like this. “Yes, don’t worry.”

“Sarah, did Tony ever talk to you about… about that night?”

“No.” Sarah got up. She folded her arms tightly across her chest, hands underneath her armpits. “My bath’ll be running over.”

Vernon became still, the scissors poised in his hand. His son was on TV. His Tony. It was the local news, and there was a small picture of him in the corner of the screen, above the announcer’s left shoulder.

“… twenty-two-year-old Anthony Allen, who is at the center of an internal police inquiry into the running of that station. Detective Superintendent Mike Kernan today issued the following statement, after the news was announced that the coroner’s inquest into the death would start tomorrow.”

Sarah couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to leave him, unable to bear the glazed, obsessive expression on her father’s face. The picture switched to Kernan outside Southampton Row.

“I’m very pleased that the inquest opening tomorrow comes so promptly after this tragic event. I am confident that the verdict will fully vindicate the police…”

In the darkened, flickering room Vernon stared at the screen, his cheeks wet with tears. He didn’t realize he had any left to shed.

The train rattled past, briefly illuminating the figure crouched beside the track. As soon as it had disappeared around the curve, Jason skipped nimbly over the tracks and went down the opposite embankment. He stopped halfway, partially concealed behind some bushes, almost level with the bedroom window of the house that backed onto the railroad. The light was on and the curtains hadn’t been drawn.

Sarah Allen entered the bedroom. She was wrapped in a large bath towel, a smaller towel around her head. She took down a suit that was hanging from the closet door and removed the plastic cover; the suit had just been dry cleaned. She held it up to the light for inspection, and hung it back on the closet door.

Jason unzipped his Windbreaker. He reached inside for the Pentax Z10 that was slung around his neck. The camera had three-speed power zoom with auto-focus and automatic wind/rewind. He clicked it on and checked the LCD display for battery level. Then he was ready.

Sarah unwrapped the large bath towel and let it fall. No need to draw the curtains, when the rear of the house wasn’t overlooked. She removed the towel from around her head and began to dry her hair.

Grinning, Jason put his eye to the viewfinder and pressed the shutter.

The death of Tony Allen in police custody was a hot story, and the press and TV were there in force, milling about on the steps of the Coroner’s Court. Jonathan Phelps never missed an opportunity, and he was keen to make an early statement, announcing that he personally had secured the services of a top attorney, Mrs. Elizabeth Duhra, to represent the Allen family.

It was just as well he got in quick. The arrival of Tony’s fiancée Esta with their daughter Cleo stole his thunder. This was the shot the media wanted, and they closed in, jostling and elbowing each other aside as she stepped out of the cab with Cleo in her arms. Esta pushed through and struggled up the steps, a barrage of flashes dazzling her and frightening the little girl. Gratefully she accepted the help of an usher, who came to her rescue and led her inside, from pandemonium to relative peace and calm. And the ordeal hadn’t yet begun.

Oswalde sat with Burkin and Calder on the witnesses’ bench. To his left he could see Tennison, talking quietly with Superintendent Kernan. Oswalde’s eyes swept around the packed court, then he bowed his head and stared at the floor. He couldn’t look at the Allen family. Vernon’s arm was clasped around his wife’s shoulder; she looked to be in a state of shock. Not even crying, just blank-eyed, drugged to the point where she hardly knew what was going on or whether it was actually happening.

Sarah was sitting with Esta, Cleo between them. Sarah was staring at Oswalde, and even though he kept his eyes on the floor, he could feel the force of her emotion, like a wave of hatred sweeping over him. No mercy there, and it didn’t surprise him, when he had none for himself.

The coroner was anxious to get the proceedings started. He waited while the court official called for silence, and then began by addressing the jury. His voice was brisk, neutral, cleansed of all nuance or feeling.

“No one is on trial. We are not investigating a crime, but a death. It is our job-yours and mine-to decide how Anthony Allen came to die in police custody. One word of warning. You may be asked to study some distressing photographs taken both at the time of the young man’s death and at the autopsy. I consider the viewing of these pictures to be vital as an aid to reaching your decision. We will begin today by hearing from the pathologist, Professor Bream.”

Bream was on the stand less than ten minutes. He stated the cause of death, from asphyxiation, and answered one or two questions from the coroner. Custody Sergeant Calder was then called to the stand. He swore the oath, and knew he was in for a tough time immediately when Mrs. Duhra started questioning him. She was a slim, elegant, dark-haired woman with high cheekbones and quick, intelligent eyes; a member of a prominent Anglo-Indian family, most of whom were in the legal profession.

Calder wasn’t sure that she was deliberately playing to the largely black public gallery, but she didn’t seem to mind their occasional shouts and angry interruptions.

“It must have taken a great deal of force, and determination, to strangle himself in such a manner.” Mrs. Duhra tilted her head a fraction, inviting his agreement. “Wouldn’t you say?”

As procedure demanded, and as he had been taught, Calder directed his replies to the coroner.

“I don’t know about that.”

“Professor Bream thought so. He thought Tony Allen may have taken rather a long time to die.” She glanced down at some papers, and looked up again. “You did make your checks every fifteen minutes, didn’t you?”

Calder gazed straight in front of him, the globed lights reflecting on his bald head. “Thirty minutes, sir.”

“Oh yes…” Mrs. Duhra nodded. Her lips thinned. “Because it’s checks every fifteen minutes for prisoners at risk. And, of course, you’d decided that Tony Allen wasn’t at risk, hadn’t you?”

“Mrs. Duhra,” the coroner mildly rebuked her. She was making assumptions about Calder’s judgment at the time without any supporting testimony to that effect.

“Why was the flap left open?” Mrs. Duhra asked.

“Because the prisoner requested it to be left open, sir.”

“Why?”

“To let in some fresh air.”

“Because he couldn’t breathe… because he was claustrophobic?”

“I don’t know about that, sir.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” Mrs. Duhra said, though her tone implied that any person with half a brain ought to have known. “If, as you say, he refused the offer of a lawyer-”

“He did, sir.” Calder wanted that on the record.

“-why did you not make sure that some responsible adult was with him? His father, for example, who was in reception almost the whole time?”

“Because there was no need.”

Mrs. Duhra frowned, giving him a quizzical look that was more for the benefit of the jury. “But his mental health was of concern to you, was it not?”

“No, sir,” Calder said stolidly. “It was not.”

This reply seemed to puzzle Mrs. Duhra even more. She consulted her papers. “But as we can see from the custody record, you called a doctor at nine fifteen p.m.” She glanced up, waiting.

“Yes,” Calder admitted. He’d forgotten about procedure, addressing his reply directly to her.

“So you must have been concerned,” Mrs. Duhra went on, logically proving her point. “But he didn’t arrive, did he? Until after one a.m. Didn’t you think to call another doctor?”

Calder’s mind went blank. He said in a rush, “I was busy.”

Mrs. Duhra let the silence work for her. She said, all the more effective for her quiet tone, “A boy loses his life because you were busy?”

The coroner leaned forward. “Please, Mrs. Duhra…”

“Doctor or no doctor, you had it in your power to send Tony Allen to the hospital. With hindsight would you not agree that you made a series of ill-judged-not to say fatal-decisions?”

The court waited. Calder finally nodded. “Yes. I made mistakes, I admit it…”

In the hubbub that followed, while the court official called for silence, Kernan muttered to himself, “For God’s sake, don’t cry about it, man!”

The call came a few minutes after eight p.m. Tennison was in the kitchen, preparing her evening meal. This entailed removing the dinner-for-one (complete meal with two vegetables) from the freezer and nuking it in the microwave. She unhooked the wall phone. “Tennison.”

“It’s Muddyman. I’m at the hospital. David Harvey died at seven thirty this evening.

“God…” She sagged against the door frame. “This investigation is turning into a graveyard.”

“How did it go today?”

“Dreadful.”

“Oh, well, tomorrow’s another day.”

She said good-bye and hung up. The microwave pinged. She took out the shallow tray, peeled back the cover, and contemplated the dinner-for-one. There were a couple of muddy shapes swimming in a sea of streaky orange-brown sauce. A dog couldn’t live off this, she thought, reaching down a plate and rooting in the drawer for a knife and fork.