Tennison held up the picture of Nadine.
“Look. This is the likeness of the dead girl…”
Rachel bent forward to peer at the clay head, staring sightlessly into the camera. She pulled away with a little shudder. “Spooky. No.” She shook her head of tousled curls. “Never seen her before either.”
Tennison folded a twenty-pound note and slipped it under Rachel’s saucer. “Do your best, darling,” she said with a smile, and got up to leave.
“I always do,” Rachel said.
“Ask around. I must go… ’bye.”
Jane poured herself a treble of neat Bushmills and on her way back to the sofa pressed the playback button on the answering machine. She kicked off her shoes and curled up on the sofa, closing her eyes and resting her head on the cushions. She felt bone-weary, yet her brain was ticking like an unexploded bomb. She couldn’t turn off her thoughts, they crowded in, swamping everything. When she was working on a case, she gave it every ounce of her concentration and emotional energy. No wonder Peter hadn’t been able to stick it out. Would any man? If it wasn’t an empty-headed bimbo they wanted, it was a wife and homemaker, and she didn’t fit either category.
The machine clicked on. It was her mother.
Jane, remember, this Friday is Emma’s first birthday, so don’t forget to send a card, will you?
Emma was her sister Pam’s little girl. Pam was happily married to Tony, a company accountant, with three children, the perfect nuclear family. While Jane was the black sheep of her own family, the mad, obsessive career woman doing a job no woman should do-or so Jane’s mother thought. She had learned to live with, if not fully accept, her family’s total lack of understanding about the kind of work she did; it never ceased to puzzle them why she didn’t find herself a steady guy and settle down, have a couple of kids before it was too late, forget all this career nonsense.
“I haven’t forgotten, Mum…” Eyes closed, both hands around the glass, she took a sip of whisky.
. . . if you’re in before ten thirty you can telephone me. Daddy sends his love.
There was a click, a hissing pause, followed by the next message.
Mike Kernan at nine thirty-five. I was hoping for an update, Jane. Any results from your clay head? A slight hesitation then, throat-clearing. Er. . . it’s my interview tomorrow and they’re, um, bound to ask me about Operation Nadine. Particularly whether my DCI’s come in on budget. Anyway, ring me tonight if you can-or drop by my office first thing.
Jane stretched out and took another sip, feeling the Bushmills burn a molten path all the way down. She had no intention of calling a living soul.
Tennison was at the station bright and early the next morning. After dumping her coat and briefcase in her office, she went to the Incident Room and checked on the duty roster for the day. It was a few minutes after nine thirty when she hurried along to Kernan’s office and found him primping in front of the mirror, getting ready for his interview.
She reported, “We’ve spoken to the Sunsplash concert organizers. They’ve given us the names of the bands using backup singers. We’re talking to them now.”
“Tread carefully there, Jane. We’re under the microscope.” Kernan adjusted the knot in his silk tie, glancing at her in the mirror. “How’s Oswalde getting on?”
“Fine.”
He turned and caught her smiling. “What?” Tennison edged up his breast pocket handkerchief a fraction and smoothed it flat. “How do I look?” he asked anxiously.
“Like a Chief Superintendent.”
“Good,” Kernan said, and she could almost see his chest swell.
As she entered the Incident Room, DC Jones called her over.
“Guv!” He was elated, his eyes bright behind his rimless glasses. “I thought you’d like to know-Forensic have found a fragment of our girl’s tooth between the floorboards of the front room of Number fifteen…”
Tennison punched the air with her fist. “Yes!”
News was coming in thick and fast. Next it was Oswalde’s turn. He came over waving a page of computer printout, the result of all those hours crouched over the VDU screen.
“I think I might’ve found her.”
“Yeah?” Tennison barely glanced at him, her tone neutral.
“Joanne Fagunwa, mixed parentage, became missing in early eighty-five from Birmingham.”
“Is there a photograph?”
“Yes, well, I suppose that’s with the file in Birmingham.”
Tennison nodded brusquely. “Let’s get it faxed through. If it looks promising, then go…”
Oswalde looked incredulous. “To Birmingham?”
“Yes.” She turned away. “Richard, have we checked when Mrs. Harvey died?”
“August eighty-five, wasn’t it?” Haskons said.
“Let’s check.”
“Course.”
Muddyman put his head in and said to Tennison, “Let’s go.”
She was gone, leaving Oswalde with the computer printout in his hand and an expression of pent-up frustration on his face.
“Nice one, Bob,” Haskons said sincerely, a small token in lieu of Tennison’s lukewarm appreciation for his efforts. Oswalde went back to his desk; he was getting more than a bit pissed-off with being given the brush-off. As if he were here on sufferance, not really part of the team at all. Well. We’d see about that.
DI Burkin didn’t like what he saw, and he took no great pains to disguise the fact. The recording studio was in a prefabricated building, provided by the council, two streets away from Honeyford Road. A sheer criminal waste of poll tax, in Burkin’s view, most of which had been coughed up by white people to give these jungle bunnies somewhere to hang out all day, amusing themselves at the taxpayers’ expense.
In respect to his seniority, Rosper let Burkin carry out the questioning, though he was uncomfortable about it.
There was a recording session in progress. Through the large glass panel they could see, but couldn’t hear, a group of musicians banging away at guitars and drums, with three guys in the brass section. The band they were interviewing had played at the Sunsplash festival, but they were none too cooperative; mainly, Rosper suspected, because of the hostile vibes coming off Burkin like a bad smell.
One of them, the bass player, lounging back in an old armchair with the stuffing spilling out, was more interested in the recording session than the photographs of Nadine Burkin was showing him. He gave them a cursory glance. “Don’t know nothin’ about it…”
“Do you wanna look at them, sir, before you answer?” Burkin said, making the “sir” sound like he was having a tooth extracted without anesthetic.
The bassman plucked one out, looked, flipped it back. “I tell you I don’t know her.”
Burkin’s lips thinned. “Okay. I’m going to ask you one more time. Will you please look at the photograph before you answer-”
The drummer, a thin, wiry fellow wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt and a black velvet Zari hat, interrupted. “You can’t make a man look at a photograph if he doesn’t want to.”
“Oh, can’t I?” Burkin bared his teeth in a nasty grin. “I can arrest him for obstructing police inquiries…”
Rosper put his hand over his eyes.
The drummer said, “He wasn’t even in the band then!”
Burkin’s eyes flashed. He opened his mouth, and Rosper said quickly, “Can I have a word, Frank? Guv?”
“Let me have a look,” the drummer said, reaching out.
“Your battyman wants a word with you, Frank,” the bassman said to Burkin, pinching his nose, but keeping a straight face.