Authors: Minette Walters
He smiled at her request to tape their conversation,
a studied lift of the lips which lacked sincerity. ‘As you please.’ He folded his hands on his desk. ‘So, Miss
Leigh, you’ve already seen my client. How was she?’
‘She was surprised to hear she still had a solicitor.’
‘I don’t follow,’
‘According to Olive, she hasn’t heard from you in
four years. Are you still representing her?’
His face assumed a look of comical dismay but, like
his smile, it lacked conviction. ‘Good Heavens. Is it
as long as that? Surely not. Didn’t I write to her last
year?’
‘You tell me, Mr Crew.’
He fussed to a cabinet in the corner and flicked
through the files. ‘Here we are. Olive Martin. Dear
me, you’re right. Four years. Mind you,’ he said
sharply, ‘there’s been no communication from her
either.’ He pulled out the file and brought it across
to his desk. ‘The law is a costly business, Miss Leigh.
We don’t send letters for fun, you know.’
Roz lifted an eyebrow. ‘Who’s paying, then? I
assumed she was on Legal Aid.’
He adjusted his yellow hat. ‘Her father paid,
though, frankly, I’m not sure what the position would
be now. He’s dead, you know.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Heart attack a year ago. It was three days before
anyone found him. Messy business. We’re still trying
to sort out the estate.’ He lit a cigarette and then
abandoned it on the edge of an overflowing ashtray.
Roz pencilled a doodle on her notepad. ‘Does
Olive know her father’s dead?’
He was surprised. ‘Of course she does.’
‘Who told her? Obviously, your firm didn’t write.’
He eyed her with the sudden suspicion of an
unwary rambler coming upon a snake in the grass. ‘I
telephoned the prison and spoke to the Governor.
I thought it would be less upsetting for Olive if the
news was given personally.’ He became alarmed. ‘Are
you saying she’s never been told?’
‘No. I just wondered why, if her father had money
to leave, there’s been no correspondence with Olive.
Who’s the beneficiary?’
Mr Crew shook his head. ‘I can’t reveal that. It’s
not Olive, naturally.’
‘Why naturally?’
He tut-tutted crossly. ‘Why do you think, young
woman? She murdered his wife and younger daughter
and condemned the poor man to live out his last years
in the house where it happened. It was completely
unsaleable. Have you any idea how tragic his life
became? He was a recluse, never went out, never
received visitors. It was only because there were milk
bottles on the doorstep that anyone realized there was
something wrong. As I say, he’d been dead for three
days. Of course he wasn’t going to leave money to
Olive.’
Roz shrugged. ‘Then why did he pay her legal bills?
That’s hardly consistent, is it?’
He ignored the question. ‘There would have been
difficulties, in any case. Olive would not have been
allowed to benefit financially from the murder of her
mother and her sister.’
Roz conceded the point. ‘Did he leave much?’
‘Surprisingly, yes. He made a tidy sum on the stock
market.’ His eyes held a wistful regret as he scratched
vigorously under his toupee. ‘Whether through luck
or good judgement he sold everything just before
Black Monday. The estate is now valued at half a
million pounds.’
‘My God!’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Does
Olive know?’
‘Certainly, if she reads the newspapers. The amount
has been published and, because of the murders, it
found its way into the tabloids.’
‘Has it gone to the beneficiary yet?’
He frowned heavily, his brows jutting. ‘I’m afraid
I’m not at liberty to discuss that. The terms of the
will preclude it.’
Roz shrugged and tapped her teeth with her pencil.
‘Black Monday was October eighty-seven. The murders
happened on September ninth, eighty-seven.
That’s odd, don’t you think?’
‘In what way?’
‘I’d expect him to be so shell-shocked that stocks
and shares would be the last thing he’d worry about.’
‘Conversely,’ said Mr Crew reasonably, ‘that very
fact would demand that he find something to occupy his mind. He was semi-retired after the murders. Perhaps
the financial pages were his only remaining
interest.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Time presses. Was
there anything else?’
It was on the tip of Roz’s tongue to ask why, if
Robert Martin had made a killing on the stock
exchange, he had chosen to live out his days in an
unsaleable house. Surely a man worth half a million
could have afforded to move, irrespective of what his
property was worth? What, she wondered, was in that
house to make Martin sacrifice himself to it? But she
sensed Crew’s hostility to her and decided that discretion
was the better part of valour. This man was one
of the few sources of corroborative information open
to her and she would need him again, even though
his sympathies clearly lay more with the father than
the daughter. ‘Just one or two more questions this
morning.’ She smiled pleasantly, a studied use of
charm as insincere as his. ‘I’m still feeling my way on
this, Mr Crew. To tell you the truth, I’m not yet
convinced there’s a book in it.’ And what an understatement
that was. She wasn’t intending to write
anything. Or was she?
He steepled his fingers and tapped them together
impatiently. ‘If you remember, Miss Leigh, I made
that very point in my letter to you.’
She nodded gravely, pandering to his ego. ‘And as
I told you, I don’t want to write Olive’s story simply
to cover the pages with lurid details of what she did. But one part of your letter implied an angle that might
be worth pursuing. You advised her to plead not guilty
to murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Had that succeeded, you suggested, she would
have been found guilty of manslaughter and would, in
all probability, have been sentenced to indefinite
detention. I think you went on to estimate ten to
fifteen years in a secure unit if she had been given
psychiatric treatment and had responded favourably
to it.’
‘That is correct,’ he agreed. ‘And I think it was a
reasonable estimate. Certainly she would have served
nothing like the twenty-five year sentence the judge
recommended she serve.’
‘But she rejected your advice. Do you know why?’
‘Yes. She had a morbid fear of being locked up
with mad people and she misunderstood the nature of
indefinite detention. She was convinced that it meant
endless, and, try as we might, we could not persuade
her otherwise.’
‘In that case, why didn’t you lodge a not guilty
plea on her behalf? The very fact that she couldn’t
grasp what you were telling her implies that she wasn’t
capable of pleading for herself. You must have thought
she had a defence or you wouldn’t have suggested it.’
He smiled grimly. ‘I don’t quite understand why,
Miss Leigh, but you seem to have decided that we
failed Olive in some way.’ He scribbled a name and
address on a piece of paper. ‘I suggest you talk to this man before you come to any more erroneous
conclusions.’ He flicked the paper in her direction.
‘He’s the barrister we briefed for her defence. Graham
Deedes. In the event, she outmanoeuvred us and he
was never called to defend her.’
‘But why? How could she outmanoeuvre you?’ She
frowned. ‘I’m sorry if I sound critical, Mr Crew, and
please believe me, you are wrong in assuming I have
reached any unfavourable conclusions.’ But was that
really true? she wondered. ‘I am simply a perplexed
onlooker asking questions. If this Deedes was in a
position to raise serious doubts over her quote
sanity
unquote, then surely he should have insisted that the
court hear her defence whether she wanted it or not.
Not to put too fine a point on it, if she was bonkers
then the system had a duty to recognize the fact, even
if she herself thought she was sane.’
He relented a little. ‘You’re using very emotive
language, Miss Leigh – there was never a question of
pleading insanity, only diminished responsibility – but
I do take your point. I used the word outmanoeuvred
advisedly. The simple truth is that a few weeks before
the scheduled date of her trial, Olive wrote to the
Home Secretary demanding to know whether she had
the right to plead guilty or whether, under British law,
this right was denied her. She claimed that undue
pressure was being brought to bear to force a lengthy
trial that would do nothing to help her but only
prolong the agony for her father. The trial date was postponed while tests were carried out to discover if
she was fit to plead. She was ruled eminently fit and
was allowed to plead guilty.’
‘Good Lord!’ Roz chewed her lower lip. ‘Good
Lord!’ she said again. ‘Were they right?’
‘Of course.’ He noticed the forgotten cigarette
with a curl of ash dripping from its end and, with a
gesture of annoyance, stubbed it out. ‘She knew
exactly what the consequences would be. They even
told her what sort of sentence to expect. Nor would
prison have come as any surprise to her. She spent
four months on remand before the trial. Frankly, even
had she agreed to defend herself the result would
still have been the same. The evidence for a plea of
diminished responsibility was very flimsy. I doubt we
could have swung a jury.’
‘And yet in your letter you said that, in spite of
everything, you are still convinced she’s a psychopath.
Why?’
He fingered the file on his desk. ‘I saw the photographs
of Gwen and Amber’s bodies, taken before
their removal from the kitchen. It was a slaughterhouse
running with blood, the most horrifying scene
I have ever witnessed. Nothing will ever convince me
that a psychologically stable personality could wreak
such atrocity on anyone, let alone on a mother and
sister.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘No, despite what the
psychiatrists say – and you must remember, Miss
Leigh, that whether or not psychopathy is a diagnosable disease is under constant debate – Olive Martin
is a dangerous woman. I advise you to be extremely
wary in your dealings with her.’
Roz switched off her tape-recorder and reached for
her briefcase. ‘I suppose there’s no doubt that she did
it.’
He stared at her as if she had said something dirty.
‘None at all,’ he snapped. ‘What are you implying?’
‘It just occurs to me that a simple explanation for
the discrepancy between the psychiatric evidence of
Olive’s normality and the quite
ab
normal nature
of the crime is that she didn’t do it but is covering
for whoever did.’ She stood up and gave a small shrug
in face of his tight-lipped expression. ‘It was just a
thought. I agree it makes little sense, but nothing
about this case makes much sense. I mean, if she really
is
a psychopathic murderess she wouldn’t have cared
tuppence about putting her father through the mill
of a trial. Thank you for your time, Mr Crew. I can
see myself out.’
He held up a hand to hold her back. ‘Have you
read her statement, Miss Leigh?’
‘Not yet. Your office promised to send it to me.’
He sorted through the file and took out some
stapled sheets of paper. ‘This is a copy you may keep,’
he told her, passing the pages across the desk. ‘I urge
you to read it before you go any further. It will persuade
you, I think, as it persuaded me, of Olive’s
guilt.’
Roz picked up the papers. ‘You really don’t like
her, do you?’
His eyes hardened. ‘I have no feelings for her, one
way or the other. I merely question society’s rationale
in keeping her alive. She kills people. Don’t forget
that, Miss Leigh. Good day to you.’
It took Roz an hour and a half to drive back to her
flat in London and for most of that time Crew’s words
– S
he kills people
– obscured all other thoughts. She
took them out of context and wrote them large across
the screen of her mind, dwelling on them with a kind
of grim satisfaction.
It was later, curled up in an armchair, that she
realized the journey home was a complete blank. She
had no recollection, even, of leaving Southampton, a
city she wasn’t familiar with.
She
could have killed
someone, crushing them under the wheels of her car,
and she wouldn’t have been able to remember when
or how it happened. She stared out of her sitting-room
window at the dismal grey façades opposite,
and she wondered quite seriously about the nature of
diminished responsibility.
Statement made by Olive Martin
9.9.87 – 9.30 p.m.
Present: DS Hawksley, DS Wyatt,
E.P. Crew (Solicitor)
My name is Olive Martin. I was born on 8th September,
1964. I live at 22 Leven Road, Dawlington,
Southampton. I am employed as a clerk in
the Department of Health and Social Security in
Dawlington High Street. Yesterday was my birthday.
I am twenty-three years old. I have always
lived at home. My relationship with my mother
and sister has never been close. I get on well with
my father. I weigh eighteen and a half stone and my
mother and sister have always teased me about
it. Their nickname for me was Fattie-Hattie, after
Hattie Jacques, the actress. I am sensitive to being
laughed at for my size.
Nothing was planned for my birthday and that
upset me. My mother said I wasn’t a child any
more and that I must organize my own treats. I
decided to show her I was capable of doing something
on my own. I arranged to have today off
work with the idea of taking the train to London
and spending the day sight-seeing. I did not organize
the treat for yesterday, my birthday, in case she
had planned a surprise for the evening which is
what she did for my sister’s twenty-first birthday in
July. She did not. We all spent the evening quietly
watching television. I went to bed feeling very
upset. My parents gave me a pale pink jumper for
my birthday present. It was very unflattering and
I didn’t like it. My sister gave me some new slippers
which I did like.