The Sculptress (15 page)

‘He could have gone round the corner and come
back again.’

‘He left home at eight-thirty and arrived at work
at nine. We tested the drive and it took half an hour.’
He shrugged. ‘As I said, he was whiter than white.’

‘What about lunch? Could he have gone back
then?’

‘He had a pint and a sandwich in the local pub
with two men from the office.’

‘OK. Go on.’

There was little more to tell. In spite of Crew’s advice
to remain silent, Olive agreed to answer police questions,
and at nine-thirty, expressing relief to have got
the whole thing off her chest, she signed her statement
and was formally charged with the murder of her
mother and sister.

Following her remand into custody on the morning
of the next day, Hal and Geoff Wyatt were given the
task of detailing the police case against her. It was a
straightforward collating of pathological, forensic, and
police evidence, all of which, upon examination, supported
the facts given in Olive’s statement. Namely
that, acting alone, she had, on the morning of the
ninth of September, 1987, murdered her mother and
sister by cutting their throats with a carving knife.

THERE WAS A
lengthy silence. Hal splayed his hands
on the scrubbed deal table and pushed himself to his
feet. ‘How about some more coffee?’ He watched
her industrious pen scribbling across a page of her
notebook. ‘More coffee?’ he repeated.

‘Mm. Black, no sugar.’ She didn’t look up but went
on writing.

‘Sure, baas. Don’t mind me, baas. I’se just de paid
help, baas.’

Roz laughed. ‘Sorry. Yes, thank you, I’d love some
more coffee. Look, if you can just bear with me for a
moment, I’ve a few questions to ask and I’m trying
to jot them down while the thing’s still fresh.’

He watched her while she wrote. Botticelli’s
Venus
,
he had thought the first time he saw her, but she was
too thin for his liking, hardly more than seven stone
and a good five feet six. She made a fabulous clothes’-
horse, of course, but there was no softness to hug, no
comfort in the tautly strung body. He wondered if her slenderness was a deliberate thing or if she lived
on her nerves. The latter, he thought. She was clearly
a woman of obsessions if her crusade for Olive was
anything to go by. He put a fresh cup of coffee in
front of her but stayed standing, cradling his own
coffee cup between his hands.

‘OK,’ she said, sorting out the pages, ‘let’s start
with the kitchen. You say the forensic evidence supported
Olive’s statement that she acted alone. How?’

He thought back. ‘You have to picture that place.
It was a slaughter house, and every time she moved
she left footprints in the congealing blood. We photographed
each one separately and they were all hers,
including the bloody prints that her shoes left on the
carpet in the hall.’ He shrugged. ‘There were also
bloody palm-prints and fingerprints over most of the
surfaces where she had rested her hands. Again all
hers. We did raise other fingerprints, admittedly,
including about three, I think, which we were never
able to match with any of the Martins or their neighbours,
but you’d expect that in a kitchen. The gas
man, the electricity man, a plumber maybe. There was
no blood on them so we inclined to the view that
they had been left in the days prior to the murder.’

Roz chewed her pencil. ‘And the axe and the knife?
I suppose they had only her fingerprints.’

‘Actually no. The cutting weapons were so smeared
that we couldn’t get anything off them at all.’ He
chuckled at her immediate interest. ‘You’re chasing red herrings. Wet blood is slippery stuff. It would
have been very surprising if we
had
found some perfect
prints. The rolling pin had three damn good ones,
all hers.’

She made a note. ‘I didn’t know you could take
them off unpolished wood.’

‘It was solid glass, two feet long, a massive thing.
I suppose if we were surprised by anything it was that
the blows she struck with it hadn’t killed Gwen and
Amber. They were both tiny women. By rights she
should have smashed their skulls with it.’ He sipped
his coffee. ‘It leant some credence to her story, in
fact, that she only tapped them lightly in the first
instance to make them shut up. We were afraid she
might use that in her defence to get the charge
reduced to manslaughter, the argument being that
she slit their throats
only
because she believed they
were already dead and she was trying to dismember
them in panic. If she could then go on to show that
the initial blows with the rolling pin were struck with
very little force – well, she might almost have persuaded
a jury that the whole thing was a macabre
accident. Which is one good reason, by the way, why
she never mentioned the fight with her mother. We
did push her on that, but she kept insisting that no
mist on the mirror meant they were dead.’ He pulled
a face. ‘So I spent a very unpleasant two days working
with the pathologist and the bodies, going step by
step through what actually happened. We ended up with enough evidence of the fight Gwen put up to
save her life to press a murder charge. Poor woman.
Her hands and arms were literally cut to ribbons
where she had tried to ward off the blows.’

Roz stared into her coffee for some minutes. ‘Olive
was very kind to me the other day. I can’t imagine
her doing something like that.’

‘You’ve never seen her in a rage. You might think
differently if you had.’

‘Have you seen her in a rage?’

‘No,’ he admitted.

‘Well, I find it difficult even to imagine that. I
accept she’s put on a lot of weight in the last six
years but she’s a heavy, stolid type. It’s highly strung,
impatient people who lose their tempers.’ She saw his
scepticism and laughed. ‘I know, I know, amateur
psychology of the worst kind. Just two more questions
then I’ll leave you in peace. What happened to Gwen
and Amber’s clothes?’

‘She burnt them in one of those square wire incinerators
in the garden. We retrieved some scraps from
the ashes which matched the descriptions that Martin
gave of the clothes the two women had been wearing
that morning.’

‘Why did she do that?’

‘To get rid of them, presumably.’

‘You didn’t ask her?’

He frowned. ‘I’m sure we must have done. I can’t
remember now.’

‘There’s nothing in her statement about burning
clothes.’

He lowered his head in reflection and pressed a
thumb and forefinger to his eyelids. ‘We asked her
why she took their clothes off,’ he murmured, ‘and
she said they had to be naked or she couldn’t see
where to make the cuts through the joints. I think
Geoff then asked her what she had done with the
clothes.’ He fell silent.

‘And?’

He looked up and rubbed his jaw pensively. ‘I don’t
think she gave an answer. If she did, I can’t remember
it. I have a feeling the information about the scraps
in the incinerator came in the next morning when we
made a thorough search of the garden.’

‘So you asked her then?’

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t, though I suppose
Geoff may have done. Gwen had a floral nylon overall
that had melted over a lump of wool and cotton. We
had to peel it apart into its constituent elements but
there was enough there that was recognizable. Martin
ID’d the bits and so did the neighbour.’ He stabbed
a finger in the air. ‘There were some buttons, too.
Martin recognized those straightaway as being from
the dress his wife had been wearing.’

‘But didn’t you wonder why Olive took time out
to burn the clothes? She could have put them in the
suitcases with the bodies and dumped the whole lot
in the sea.’

‘The incinerator certainly wasn’t burning at five
o’clock that night or we’d have noticed it; therefore
disposing of the clothes must have been one of the
first things she did. She wouldn’t have seen it as taking
time out because at that stage she probably still
thought dismembering two bodies would be comparatively
easy. Look, she was trying to get rid of
evidence. The only reason she panicked and called us
in was because her father was coming home. If it had
been just the three women living in that house she
could have gone through with her plan, and we’d
have had the job of trying to identify some bits and
pieces of mutilated flesh found floating in the sea off
Southampton. She might even have got away with it.’

‘I doubt it. The neighbours weren’t stupid. They’d
have wondered why Gwen and Amber were missing.’

‘True,’ he conceded. ‘What was the other
question?’

‘Did Olive’s hands and arms have a lot of scratches
on them from her fight with Gwen?’

He shook his head. ‘None. She had some bruising
but no scratches.’

Roz stared at him. ‘Didn’t that strike you as odd?
You said Gwen was fighting for her life.’

‘She had nothing to scratch with,’ he said almost
apologetically. ‘Her fingernails were bitten to the
quick. It was rather pathetic in a woman of her age.
All she could do was grip Olive’s wrists to try and keep the knife away. That’s what the bruises were.
Deep finger-marks. We took photographs of them.’

With an abrupt movement Roz squared her papers
and dropped them into her briefcase. ‘Not much
room for doubt then, is there?’ she said, picking up
her coffee cup.

‘None at all. And it wouldn’t have made any difference,
you know, if she’d kept her mouth shut or
pleaded not guilty. She would still have been convicted.
The evidence against her was overwhelming.
In the end, even her father had to accept that. I felt
quite sorry for him then. He became an old man
overnight.’

Roz glanced at the tape, which was still running.
‘Was he very fond of her?’

‘I don’t know. He was the most undemonstrative
person I’ve ever met. I got the impression he wasn’t
fond of any of them but’ – he shrugged – ‘he certainly
took Olive’s guilt very badly.’

She drank her coffee. ‘Presumably the post-mortem
revealed that Amber had had a baby when she was
thirteen?’

He nodded.

‘Did you pursue that at all? Try and trace the child?’

‘We didn’t see the need. It had happened eight
years before. It was hardly likely to have any bearing
on the case.’ He waited, but she didn’t say anything.
‘So? Will you go on with the book?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said.

He looked surprised. ‘Why?’

‘Because there are more inconsistencies now than
there were before.’ She held up her fingers and ticked
them off point by point. ‘Why was she crying so much
when she telephoned the police station that the desk
sergeant couldn’t understand what she was saying?
Why wasn’t she wearing her best dress for London?
Why did she burn the clothes? Why did her father
think she was innocent? Why wasn’t he shocked by
Gwen and Amber’s deaths? Why did she say she didn’t
like Amber? Why didn’t she mention the fight with
her mother if she intended to plead guilty? Why were
the blows from the rolling pin so comparatively light?
Why? Why? Why?’ She dropped her hands to the table
with a wry smile. ‘They may very well be red herrings
but I can’t get rid of a gut feeling that there’s something
wrong. Ultimately, perhaps, I cannot square
your and her solicitor’s conviction that Olive was mad
with the assessments of five psychiatrists who all say
she’s normal.’

He studied her for some minutes in silence. ‘You
accused me of assuming her guilt before I knew it for a
fact, but you’re doing something rather worse. You’re
assuming her innocence
in spite of
the facts. Supposing
you manage to whip up support for her
through this book of yours – and in view of the way
the judicial system is reeling at the moment, that’s
not as unlikely as it should be – have you no qualms
about releasing someone like her back into society?’

‘None at all, if she’s innocent.’

‘And if she isn’t, but you get her out anyway?’

‘Then the law is an ass.’

‘All right, if she didn’t do it, who did?’

‘Someone she cared about.’ She finished her coffee
and switched off the tape. ‘Anything else just doesn’t
make sense.’ She shut the recorder into her briefcase
and stood up. ‘You’ve been very kind to give up so
much of your time. Thank you, and thank you for the
lunch.’ She held out a hand.

He took it gravely. ‘My pleasure, Miss Leigh.’ Her
fingers, soft and warm in his, moved nervously when
he held them too long, and he thought she seemed
suddenly rather afraid of him. It was probably for the
best. One way and another, she spelt trouble.

She walked to the door. ‘Goodbye, Sergeant
Hawksley. I hope the business picks up for you.’

He gave a savage smile. ‘It will. This is what’s
known as a temporary blip, I assure you.’

‘Good.’ She paused. ‘There’s just one last thing. I
understand Robert Martin told you he thought the
more likely scenario was that Gwen battered Amber,
and Olive then killed Gwen trying to defend her sister.
Why did you dismiss that possibility?’

‘It didn’t hold water. The pathologist established
that both throats were cut with the same hand. The
size, depth, and angle of the wounds were consistent
with one attacker. Gwen wasn’t just fighting for herself,
you know, she was fighting for Amber, too. Olive is completely ruthless. You would be very foolish to
forget that.’ He smiled again but the smile didn’t
reach his eyes. ‘If you’ll take my advice you’ll abandon
the whole thing.’

Roz shrugged. ‘I tell you what, Sergeant’ – she
gestured towards the restaurant – ‘you mind your
business, and I’ll mind mine.’

He listened to her heels tapping away down the
alley, then reached for the telephone and dialled.
‘Geoff,’ he snapped into the mouthpiece, ‘get down
here, will you? We need to talk.’ His eyes hardened
as he listened to the voice at the other end. ‘Like hell
it’s not your problem. I’m damned if I’ll be the fall
guy for this one.’