A Face in the Crowd Read Free

satisfied that inquiries with the family were proceeding smoothly.
    “Waiting for you, Guv.” Tony Muddyman opened the door. Kernan went first down the steps. With the entire garden area as brightly lit as a film set, the steady downpour was like a boiling mist under the arc lamps.
    The back garden had been completely paved over when the Viswandhas moved in. But then there was trouble with the drains. A local building firm had been brought in to lay new pipes to connect with the main sewage system which ran along the rear alleyway. Paving slabs had been lifted and digging begun to remove the old pipework. About two feet down, the workmen had uncovered something far more grisly than broken pipes. Their spades had slashed through some polyethylene sheeting, exposing the pale gleam of human bones.
    Kernan, raincoat collar turned up, stood at the edge of the makeshift structure of plastic sheeting the forensic people had erected to keep the rain out. There were three or four people down in the shallow trench, so it was difficult to make anything out. Water had seeped down, and the bottom and sides had congealed into sticky, clinging mud. Peter Gold, Forensic’s bright new boy, was there, Kernan saw, clad in white overalls and green Wellington boots, down on his knees in the mire. Above him, crouched down on the paving slabs, Richards, the police photographer, was trying for the best position to get a clear shot.
    Farther along the trench, buttoned up to the neck in his rain gear, the portly, balding figure of Oscar Bream, Chief Pathologist, was leaning forward, gloved hands gripping his knees. Bream’s heavily lidded eyes, as ever, revealed nothing. He had only one expression—inscrutable. Perhaps he really felt nothing, felt no real emotion, just another job of work; or perhaps the years of looking into the pit of horrors of what human beings were capable of doing to their fellow creatures had forced him to adopt this dead-eyed mask as a form of protective camouflage.
    Gold was using a small trowel and paintbrush to clear away the mud. “Over here, sir . . . see?”
    “Right,” Bream grunted, bending lower. “Let’s take a look.”
    Protruding from the wall of the trench, about eighteen inches from the surface, part of a rib cage and pelvis gleamed under the arc lamps. Bream stepped back and gestured to Richards. The camera flashed three times. Bream bent forward, brushing away a smear of mud with his gloved hand. The remains of a human skull stared up, black sockets for eyes, with an expression almost as inscrutable as Oscar Bream’s.
    “So tell me what happened,” Tennison said, “when you sodomized her.”
    Oswalde was out of his chair. She had him on the run now; she knew it, and he was catching on fast.
    “I know what’s gwan on . . .” He looked down on Tennison, and then his eyes flicked across to Thorndike, who was trying not to meet his gaze. Oswalde was nodding, dredging up a faint smile. “. . . with little pinktoes here.” His accent thickened. “Look ’pon her nuh,” he sneered derisively, inviting the other male in the room to join forces against this sly, female conspiracy.
    “Sit down please, Robert,” Tennison said calmly.
    “She love it.” Oswalde snapped his fingers. “Cockteaser, ennit? What she say I did to that bitch is just turnin’ her on—”
    “Sit down please, Robert,” Tennison repeated, and under the force of her level stare he slowly sank back into the chair. “The thought of a woman being humiliated doesn’t turn me on, Robert. Someone being frightened half to death. But that turns you on, doesn’t it?”
    Oswalde twitched his broad shoulders in a shrug.
    “It must. Why else would you need to force yourself on someone? You’re a very attractive man. How tall are you?”
    “Six foot four.”
    Tennison raised one eyebrow. “Really? I’m sure a lot of women do fall for you. But not this one.”
    “Some women say ‘no’ when they mean ‘yes.’