Tennison looked towards the door. “Perhaps I can ask her a few questions while she’s here…?”
“Oh, no, that’s not her,” Harvey said, and with an effort craned around in his chair as a young man carrying a tray covered with a clean white tea towel came in. “This is my nephew Jason.”
Jason paused in the doorway, pale blue eyes under fair lashes flicking from one to the other. “What’s going on?” he asked sharply.
“We’re police officers,” Muddyman said. He picked up the typewritten sheet from the coffee table and dangled it in Harvey’s face. “You’re sure you don’t recognize the girl from this description?”
Jason flushed, getting angry. “What do you want with my uncle?” he demanded, hands gripping the tray tightly. He wore faded jeans and sneakers, a dark Windbreaker over a white T-shirt, which he filled quite impressively. His blond hair was cut short and neatly brushed, though he favored long sideburns.
In reply to Muddyman’s question, Harvey said in a tired, undisturbed tone, “Quite sure.” To his nephew he murmured, “I’ll tell you in a minute.”
Jason was glaring at Muddyman with ill-concealed distaste. “You know he’s very ill?”
“It’s fine, don’t worry,” Harvey said, waving a trembling hand placatingly. “I’m fine…”
“No, you’re not! What’s this about?”
“Your uncle will tell you later, Jason,” Tennison said, fastening her briefcase and getting up. “Thank you very much, Mr. Harvey. We’ll see ourselves out.”
“Have a good meal,” Muddyman said, and followed Tennison, Jason’s stare burning holes in his back.
On the landing below, lighting up, Muddyman said, “Lying bastard. Trotting out his alibi like a speech he’d learned by heart.” He flung the match into the piss-stained corner.
“Yeah, right…”
“And he wasn’t shuffling about like that six years ago! If he could lay those slabs he could smash a young girl’s skull.”
“Well, we’d better get a move on,” Tennison said, giving him a hard, sidelong look. “Before David Aloysius Harvey dies on us.”
Superintendent Kernan pushed the swing door of the Incident Room and held it open for the tall, handsome, broad-shouldered figure who came after him. He looked around the busy room and approached Haskons at the duty desk. “Where’s DCI Tennison?”
“Following up a lead, Guv.”
The bustle ceased as Kernan called out, “Can I have your attention please.” Heads turned. Kernan held out his hand. “This is DS Bob Oswalde. Bob’s joining us from West Lane to assist on Operation Nadine.”
There were one or two puzzled, uncertain looks exchanged; this was the first they’d heard about drafting in new manpower. Never one to waste time on formalities, Kernan waved to them to get on with it, then beckoned Oswalde over. “DS Haskons here is the office manager. He’ll fill you in.”
“Hello Bob.”
Oswalde returned the nod. “Richard.”
“You two know each other?” Kernan said.
“I used to be at West End Lane,” Haskons said.
“Of course you were. Good.” Job done, Kernan departed.
Haskons was as puzzled as some of the others. He said, “Tennison didn’t mention that you were joining us.”
Oswalde turned from sizing up the situation, seeing if there was anyone else he recognized. He looked down on Haskons’s mere six feet from his six-feet-four. “She doesn’t know,” he said.
5
A hospital porter pointed the way to the medical artist’s studio. Tennison walked along the echoing, white-tiled corridor and found the door with a piece of white card taped to it, “STUDIO” scrawled on the card in green felt-tip. It looked to her like a shoestring operation; this guy had better be good for the money they were shelling out.
Upon entering, Tennison saw that it wasn’t a studio at all, but more a medical science laboratory. There were human organs immersed in fluid in giant test tubes, which she didn’t examine too closely in case they turned out to be real. A tall young man in a black polo-necked sweater and a gray apron was working on the far side of the room, next to a wide-slanting window to gain the maximum natural daylight. Tennison threaded through the exhibits, keeping her eyes to the front. She’d seen real human beings in gruesome conditions, and the sight of blood didn’t bother her, but these mummified floating bits of internal plumbing gave her the creeps.
“I’m DCI Tennison. I think you’re making a clay head for us?”
It was the clay head he was actually working on. He stood back, wiping brown clay onto his apron, allowing her to get a good look.
“It may not look like much at the moment, but I have high hopes.” He had a drawling, dreamlike voice, as if he spent much of his time on another plane of existence. Probably did, Tennison thought.
She moved closer. A plaster cast had been taken of Nadine’s skull into which he had hammered dozens of steel pins. These formed the scaffolding for the features he was building up in clay. At the moment the underlying structure could be seen, exposed muscles and ligatures, and the effect was macabre, a face stripped down to its component parts.
“She had the most beautiful skull I’ve ever seen,” the young man said.
“Really?”
“Yes. See this…” He used a stainless steel scalpel as a pointer. “The orbicularis oris. The muscle originates on the maxilla and mandible, near the midline, on the eminences due to the incisor and canine teeth. Its fibers surround the oral aperture. Function-closing of the mouth and pursing of lips. You see, I’m a scientist,” he added, giving her his shy, dreamy smile. “Otherwise I’d have said it’s the muscle that allows you to kiss someone.”
“When will she be ready?”
“By the end of the week.”
As office manager, Haskons was doing a bit of reorganizing-much to Ken Lillie’s displeasure, because he was the one being reorganized.
“But why?” Lillie asked, his arms piled up with document files.
“I’m moving you.”
“Why me?”
“Bob needs a desk.”
“No, no, that’s not an answer… why me?”
Haskons plunked a cardboard box of miscellaneous stuff on top of the pile, so that Lillie had to raise his head to peer over it.
“Because you’re only ever at your desk to drink coffee.”
“Yeah,” Lillie agreed vehemently. “Normally I’m out there making sure the streets are safe to walk.”
Hoots of derision from all corners of the room. Catcalls and shouts of “SuperLillie Strikes Again,” and “Batman and Lillie.”
Oswalde was studying the photographs of Nadine on the big bulletin board, keeping well out of it. He was edgy enough as it was, nervously watching the door for Tennison’s arrival. Kernan had arranged his transfer without consulting her, which put Oswalde in a spot he knew he shouldn’t be in. Especially after what had occurred at the conference. Had he been paranoid, Oswalde reflected, he might have suspected that Kernan had deliberately thrown the two of them together, part of a gleeful, devious plot so he could sit back and watch the pair of them squirm.
No, Kernan would never stoop to that. Would he?
Oswalde had other eyes on him. Burkin was slumped in his chair, long legs splayed out, chewing a matchstick. He muttered to Rosper at the next desk, “It’s bad enough having to police the buggers, let alone work with them.”
“You’re only saying that ’cos he’s taller than you,” Rosper quipped, always the easygoing one.
Burkin was stung. “No he ain’t.”
The door swung open and Tennison breezed in, raincoat flapping around her. Halfway to her desk she caught sight of Oswalde and stopped dead in her tracks. Oswalde was attempting the impossible, hoping not to draw attention to them both by not looking at her, at the same time trying to convey to her by some mysterious telepathic process that he was as blameless as she was, just another innocent pawn in the game.