The Sculptress (16 page)

Roz glanced at her watch as she drove away. It was
four thirty. If she pushed it she might catch Peter
Crew before he went home for the day. She found a
parking space in the centre of Southampton and
arrived at his office just as he was leaving.

‘Mr Crew!’ she called, running after him.

He turned with his unconvincing smile, only to
frown when he saw who it was. ‘I’ve no time to talk
to you now, Miss Leigh. I have an engagement.’

‘Let me walk with you,’ she urged. ‘I won’t delay
you, I promise.’

He gave a nod of acquiescence and set off again, the hair of his toupee bobbing in time to his steps.
‘My car isn’t far.’

Roz did not waste time on pleasantries. ‘I gather
Mr Martin left his money to Amber’s illegitimate son.
I have been told’ – she stretched the truth like a piece
of elastic – ‘that he was adopted by some people called
Brown who have since emigrated to Australia. Can
you tell me if you’ve made any progress in finding
him?’

Mr Crew shot her an annoyed glance. ‘Now where
did you find that out, I wonder?’ His voice clipped
the words angrily. ‘Has someone in my practice been
talking?’

‘No,’ she assured him. ‘I had it from an independent
source.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I find that hard to believe.
May I ask who it was?’

Roz smiled easily. ‘Someone who knew Amber at
the time the baby was born.’

‘How did they know the name?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Robert certainly wouldn’t have talked,’ he muttered.
‘There are rules governing the tracing of
adopted children, which he was well aware of, but
even allowing for that he was passionate on the subject
of secrecy. If the child were to be found he didn’t
want any publicity surrounding the inheritance. The
stigma of the murders could follow the boy all his
life.’ He shook his head crossly. ‘I must insist, Miss Leigh, that you keep this information to yourself. It
would be gross irresponsibility to publish it. It could
jeopardize the lad’s future.’

‘You really do have quite the wrong impression of
me,’ said Roz pleasantly. ‘I approach my work with
immense care, and I do not set out to expose people
for the sake of it.’

He turned a corner. ‘Well, be warned, young lady.
I shan’t hesitate to take out an injunction against your
book if I think it justified.’ A gust of wind lifted the
toupee’s peak and he pressed it firmly to his head like
a hat.

Roz, a step or two behind him, scurried alongside.
‘Fair enough,’ she said, biting back her laughter. ‘So,
on that basis, could you answer my question? Have
you found him yet? Are you anywhere near finding
him?’

He padded on doggedly. ‘Without wishing to be
offensive, Miss Leigh, I don’t see how that information
can help you. We have just agreed you won’t
be publishing it.’

She decided to be straight with him. ‘Olive knows
all about him, knows her father left him his money,
knows you’re looking for him.’ She lifted her hands
at his expression of irritation. ‘Not, in the first
instance, from me, Mr Crew. She’s very astute and
what she hadn’t guessed for herself she picked up on
the prison grapevine. She said her father would always
leave money to family if he could so it hardly required much imagination to guess that he would try and
trace Amber’s child. Anyway, whether or not you’ve
had any success seems to matter to her. I hoped you
could tell me something that would set her mind at
rest.’

He stopped abruptly. ‘Does she want him found?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Hm. Perhaps she thinks the money will come to
her in the absence of the named beneficiary?’

Roz showed her surprise. ‘I don’t think that’s ever
occurred to her. It couldn’t, anyway, could it? You
made that point before.’

Mr Crew set off again. ‘Robert did not insist that
Olive should be kept in the dark. His only instruction
was that we should avoid distressing her unnecessarily.
Wrongly, perhaps, I assumed that knowledge of the
terms of the will
would
distress her. However, if she
is already acquainted with them – well, well, you can
leave that with me, Miss Leigh. Was there anything
else?’

‘Yes. Did Robert Martin ever visit her in prison?’

‘No. I’m sorry to say he never spoke to her again
after she was charged with the murders.’

Roz caught his arm. ‘But he thought she was innocent,’
she protested with some indignation, ‘and he
paid her legal bills. Why wouldn’t he see her? That
was very cruel, wasn’t it?’

There was a sharp gleam in the man’s eyes. ‘Very
cruel,’ he agreed, ‘but not on Robert’s part. It was Olive who refused to see him. It drove him to his
death, which, I think, was her intention all along.’

Roz frowned unhappily. ‘You and I have very different
views of her, Mr Crew. I’ve only experienced her
kindness.’ The frown deepened. ‘She did know he
wanted to see her, I suppose.’

‘Of course. As a prosecution witness he had to
apply to the Home Office for special permission
to visit her, even though she was his daughter. If you
contact them they’ll verify it for you.’ He moved on
again and Roz had to run to keep up with him.

‘What about the inconsistencies in her statement,
Mr Crew? Did you ask her about them?’

‘What inconsistencies?’

‘Well, for example, the fact that she doesn’t mention
the fight with her mother but claims Gwen and
Amber were dead before she started to dismember
them.’

He cast an impatient glance at his watch. ‘She was
lying.’

Roz caught at his arm again and forced him to
stop. ‘You were her solicitor,’ she said angrily. ‘You
had a duty to believe her.’

‘Don’t be naïve, Miss Leigh. I had a duty to
represent
her.’ He shook himself free. ‘If solicitors were
required to believe everything their clients told them
there would be little or no legal representation left.’
His lips thinned in distaste. ‘In any case I did believe
her. She said she killed them and I accepted it. I had to. In spite of every attempt I made to suggest she
said nothing, she insisted on making her confession.’
His eyes bored into hers. ‘Are you telling me now
that she denies the murders?’

‘No,’ Roz admitted, ‘but I don’t think the version
she gave the police is the correct one.’

He studied her for a moment. ‘Did you talk to
Graham Deedes?’ She nodded. ‘And?’

‘He agrees with you.’

‘The police?’

She nodded again. ‘One of them. He also agrees
with you.’

‘And doesn’t that tell you anything?’

‘Not really. Deedes was briefed by you and never
even spoke to her and the police have been wrong
before.’ She brushed a curl of red hair from her face.
‘Unfortunately, I don’t have your faith in British
justice.’

‘Obviously not.’ Crew smiled coolly. ‘But your
scepticism is misplaced this time. Good day to you,
Miss Leigh.’ He loped away up the wind-swept street,
the absurd toupee held in place under his hand, his
coat-tails whipping about his long legs. He was a
comical figure, but Roz did not feel like laughing. For
all his idiotic mannerisms he had a certain dignity.

She telephoned St Angela’s Convent from a payphone
but it was after five o’clock and whoever answered said Sister Bridget had gone home for the evening.
She called Directory Enquiries for the DSS number
in Dawlington, but, when she tried it, the office had
closed for the night and there was no answer. Back in
her car she pencilled in a rough timetable for the
following morning, then sat for some time with her
notebook propped against the steering-wheel, running
over in her mind what Crew had told her. But
she couldn’t concentrate. Her attention kept wandering
to the more attractive lure of Hal Hawksley in the
Poacher’s kitchen.

He had an unnerving trick of catching her eye
when she wasn’t expecting it, and the shock to her
system every time was cataclysmic. She thought
‘going weak at the knees’ was something invented
by romantic authoresses. But the way things
were, if she went back to the Poacher, she’d need a
Zimmer frame just to make it through the door!
Was she mad
? The man was some sort of gangster.
Whoever heard of a restaurant without customers?
People had to eat, even in recessions. With a rueful
shake of her head, she fired the engine and set off
back to London.
What the hell, anyway!
Sod’s law
predicated that because thoughts of him filled her
mind with erotic fantasies his thoughts of her (if he
thought about her at all) would be anything but
libidinous.

London, when she reached it, was fittingly clogged and oppressive with Thursday night rush-hour
traffic.

An older motherly inmate, elected by the others,
paused nervously by the open door. The Sculptress
terrified her but, as the girls kept saying, she was the
only one Olive would talk to. You remind her of her
mother, they all said. The idea alarmed her, but she
was
curious. She watched the huge brooding figure,
clumsily rolling a cigarette paper around a meagre
sprinkling of tobacco, for several moments before she
spoke. ‘Hey, Sculptress! Who’s the redhead you’re
seeing?’

Except for a brief flick of her eyes, Olive ignored
her.

‘Here, have one of mine.’ She fished a pack of Silk
Cut from her pocket and proffered it. The response
was immediate. Like a dog responding to the ringing
tap of its dinner plate, Olive shuffled across the floor
and took one, secreting it in the folds of her dress
somewhere. ‘So who’s the redhead?’ persisted the
other.

‘An author. She’s writing a book about me.’

‘Christ!’ said the older woman in disgust. ‘What
she want to write about you for? I’m the one got
bloody stitched up.’

Olive stared at her. ‘Maybe I did, too.’

‘Oh, sure,’ the other sniggered, tapping her thigh.
‘Now pull the other one. It’s got frigging bells on.’

A wheeze of amusement gusted from Olive’s lips.
‘Well, you know what they say: you can fool some of
the people all of the time and all of the people some
of the time . . .’ She paused invitingly.

‘But not all of the people all of the time,’ the
woman finished obligingly. She wagged her finger.
‘You haven’t got a prayer.’

Olive’s unblinking eyes held hers. ‘So who needs
prayers?’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘Find yourself
a gullible journalist, then use a bit more of this.
Even
you
might get somewhere. She’s an opinion-former.
You fool her and she fools everyone else.’

‘That stinks!’ declared the woman incautiously. ‘It’s
only the bloody psychos they’re ever interested in.
The rest of us poor sods can go hang ourselves for all
they care.’

Something rather unpleasant shifted at the back of
Olive’s tiny eyes. ‘Are you calling me a psycho?’

The woman smiled weakly and retreated a step.
‘Hey, Sculptress, it was a slip of the tongue.’ She held
up her hands. ‘OK? No harm done.’ She was sweating
as she walked away.

Behind her, using her bulk to obscure what she
was doing from prying eyes, Olive took the clay figure
she was working on from her bottom drawer and set
her ponderous fingers to moulding the child on its
mother’s lap. Whether it was intentional or whether she hadn’t the skill to do it differently, the mother’s
crude hands, barely disinterred from the clay, seemed
to be smothering the life from the baby’s plump,
round body.

Olive crooned quietly to herself as she worked.
Behind the mother and child, a series of figures, like
grey gingerbread men, lined the back of the table.
Two or three had lost their heads.

He sat slumped on the steps outside the front door
of her block of flats, smelling of beer, his head buried
in his hands. Roz stared at him for several seconds, her
face blank of expression. ‘What are you doing here?’

He had been crying, she saw. ‘We need to talk,’ he
said. ‘You never talk to me.’

She didn’t bother to answer. Her ex-husband was
very drunk. There was nothing they could say that
hadn’t been said a hundred times before. She was so
tired of his messages on her answerphone, tired of the
letters, tired of the hatred that knotted inside her
when she heard his voice or saw his handwriting.

He plucked at her skirt as she tried to pass, clinging
to it like a child. ‘Please, Roz. I’m too pissed to go
home.’

She took him upstairs out of an absurd sense of
past duty. ‘But you can’t stay,’ she told him, pushing
him on to the sofa. ‘I’ll ring Jessica and get her to
come and collect you.’

‘Sam’s sick,’ he muttered. ‘She won’t leave him.’

Roz shrugged unsympathetically. ‘Then I’ll call a
cab.’

‘No.’ He reached down and jerked the jackplug
from its socket. ‘I’m staying.

There was a raw edge to his voice which was a
warning, if she had chosen to heed it, that he was in
no mood to be trifled with. But they had been married
too long and had had too many bruising rows for her
to allow him to dictate terms. She had only contempt
for him now. ‘Please yourself,’ she said. ‘I’ll go to a
hotel.’

He stumbled to the door and stood with his back
to it. ‘It wasn’t my fault, Roz. It was an accident. For
God’s sake, will you stop punishing me?’

ROZ CLOSED HER
eyes and saw again the tattered,
pale face of her five-year-old daughter, as ugly in death
as she had been beautiful in life, her skin ripped and
torn by the exploding glass of the windscreen. Could
she have accepted it more easily, she wondered as she
had wondered so many times before, if Rupert had
died too? Could she have forgiven him, dead, as she
could not forgive him, alive? ‘I never see you,’ she said
with a tight smile, ‘so how can I be punishing you?
You’re drunk and you’re being ridiculous. Neither of
which conditions is any way out of the ordinary.’ He
had an unhealthy and uncared-for look which fuelled
her scorn and made her impatient. ‘Oh, for God’s
sake,’ she snapped, ‘just get out, will you? I don’t feel
anything for you any more and, to be honest, I don’t
think I ever did.’ But that wasn’t true, not really. ‘You
can’t hate what you never loved,’ Olive had said.