The Sculptress (9 page)

He sniffed at his sleeve. ‘You don’t notice it after
a while.’ He turned the taps on full and emptied bath
foam into the running water. ‘There’s only the one
loo, I’m afraid, so if you’re going to puke you’d better
stay there.’ He started to undress.

She stood up hurriedly. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

He dropped his jacket on to the floor and unbuttoned
his shirt. ‘Just don’t be sick all over my carpets,’
he called after her. ‘There’s a sink in the kitchen.
Use that.’ He was easing the shirt carefully off his
shoulders, unaware that she was still behind him, and
she stared in horror at the blackened scabs all over his
back.

‘What happened to you?’

He pulled the shirt back on. ‘Nothing. Scoot. Make
yourself a sandwich. There’s bread on the side and
cheese in the fridge.’ He saw her expression. ‘It looks
worse than it is,’ he said prosaically. ‘Bruising always
does.’

‘What happened?’

He held her gaze. ‘Let’s just say I fell off my bike.’

With a contemptuous smile, Olive extracted the
candle from its hiding place. They had given up body
searches after a woman haemorrhaged in front of one
of the Board of Visitors following a particularly
aggressive probing of her vagina for illicit drugs. The
Visitor had been a MAN. (Olive always thought of
men in capital letters.) No woman would have fallen
for it. But MEN, of course, were different. Menstruation
disturbed them, particularly if the blood flowed
freely enough to stain the woman’s clothes.

The candle was soft from the warmth of her body
and she pulled off the end and began to mould it.
Her memory was good. She had no doubt of her
ability to imbue the tiny figure with a distinct individuality.
This one would be a MAN.

Roz, preparing sandwiches in the kitchen, looked
towards the bathroom door. The prospect of questioning
Hawksley about the Olive Martin case
unnerved her suddenly. Crew had become very
annoyed when she questioned
him
; and Crew was a
civilized man – in so far as he did not look as if he’d
spent half an hour in a dark alley having the shit
beaten out of him by Arnold Schwarzenegger. She
wondered about Hawksley. Would he be annoyed
when he learnt that she was delving into a case he
had been involved with? The idea was an uncomfortable
one.

There was a bottle of champagne in the fridge. On
the rather naïve assumption that another injection of
alcohol might make Hawksley more amenable, Roz
put it on a tray with the sandwiches and a couple of
glasses.

‘Were you saving the champagne?’ she asked
brightly –
too brightly?
– placing the tray on the lavatory
seat lid and turning round.

He was lying in a welter of foam, black hair slicked
back, face cleaned and relaxed, eyes closed. ‘’Fraid
so,’ he said.

‘Oh.’ She was apologetic. ‘I’ll put it back
then.’

He opened one eye. ‘I was saving it for my
birthday.’

‘And when’s that?’

‘Tonight.’

She gave an involuntary laugh. ‘I don’t believe you.
What’s the date?’

‘The sixteenth.’

Her eyes danced wickedly. ‘I still don’t believe you.
How old are you?’ She was unprepared for his look of
amused recognition and couldn’t stop the adolescent
flush that tinged her pale cheeks. He thought she was
flirting with him.
Well – dammit! – maybe she was
. She
had grown weary of suffocating under the weight of
her own misery.

‘Forty. The big four-o.’ He pushed himself into a
sitting position and beckoned for the bottle. ‘Well,
well, this is jolly.’ His lips twitched humorously. ‘I
wasn’t expecting company or I’d have dressed for
the occasion.’ He unbound the wire and eased out the
cork, losing only a dribble of bubbly into the foam
before filling the glasses that she held out to him. He
lowered the bottle to the floor and took a glass. ‘To
life,’ he said, clinking hers.

‘To life. Happy birthday.’

His eyes watched her briefly, before closing again
as he leant his head against the back of the bath. ‘Eat
a sandwich,’ he murmured. ‘There’s nothing worse
than champagne on an empty stomach.’

‘I’ve had three already. Sorry I couldn’t wait for
the sirloin. You have one.’ She put the tray beside the
bottle and left him to help himself. ‘Do you have a
laundry basket or something?’ she asked, stirring the
heap of stinking clothes with her toe.

‘They’re not worth saving. I’ll chuck ’em out.’

‘I can do that.’

He yawned. ‘Bin bags. Second cupboard on the
left in the kitchen.’

She carried the bundle at arm’s length and sealed
the lot into three layers of clean white plastic. It took
only a few minutes but when she went back he was
asleep, his glass clasped in loose fingers against his
chest.

She removed it carefully and put it on the floor.
What now? she wondered. She might have been his
sister, so unaroused was he by her presence. Go or
stay? She had an absurd longing to sit quietly and
watch him sleep but she was nervous of waking him.
He would never understand her need to be at peace,
just briefly, with a man.

Her eyes softened. It was a nice face. No amount
of battering and bruising could hide the laughter lines,
and she knew that if she let it it would grow on her and
make her pleased to see it. She turned away abruptly.
She had been nurturing her bitterness too long to
give it up as easily as this. God had not been punished
enough.

She retrieved her handbag from where she’d
dropped it beside the lavatory and tiptoed down the
stairs. But the door was locked and the key was missing.
She felt more foolish than concerned, like the
embarrassed eavesdropper trapped inside a room
whose only object is to escape without being noticed.
He must have put the wretched thing in his pocket.
She crept back up to the kitchen to scrabble through
the dirty clothes bundle but the pockets were all
empty. Perplexed, she stared about the work surfaces,
searched the tables in the sitting-room and bedroom.
If keys existed, they were well hidden. With a sigh
of frustration, she pulled back a curtain to see if
there was another way out, a fire escape or a balcony,
and found herself gazing on a window full of
bars. She tried another window and another. All were
barred.

Predictably, anger took over.

Without pausing to consider the wisdom of what
she was doing, she stormed into the bathroom and
shook him violently. ‘You bastard!’ she snapped.
‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at! What
are you? Some kind of Bluebeard. I want to get out
of here. Now!’

He was hardly awake before he’d smashed the
champagne bottle against the tiled wall, caught her by
the hair, and thrust the jagged glass against her neck.
His bloodshot eyes blazed into hers before a sort of
recognition dawned and he let her go, pushing her
away from him. ‘You stupid bitch,’ he snarled. ‘Don’t
you ever do that again.’ He rubbed his face vigorously
to clear it of sleep.

She was very shaken. ‘I want to go.’

‘So what’s stopping you?’

‘You’ve hidden the key.’

He looked at her for a moment, then started to
soap himself. ‘It’s on the architrave above the door.
Turn it twice. It’s a double lock.’

‘Your windows are all barred.’

‘They are indeed.’ He splashed water on his face.
‘Goodbye, Ms Leigh.’

‘Goodbye.’ She made a weak gesture of apology.
‘I’m sorry. I thought I was a prisoner.’

He pulled out the plug and tugged a towel off the
rail. ‘You are.’

‘But – you said the key—’

‘Goodbye, Ms Leigh.’ He splayed his hand against
the door and pushed it to, forcing her out.

*

She should not be driving
. The thought hammered in
her head like a migraine, a despairing reminder that
self-preservation was the first of all the human
instincts. But he was right. She
was
a prisoner and the
yearning to escape was too strong. So easy, she
thought, so very, very easy. Successive headlamps grew
from tiny distant pinpoints to huge white suns, sweeping
through her windscreen with a beautiful and
blinding iridescence, drawing her eyes into the heart
of their brilliance. The urge to turn the wheel towards
the lights was insistent. How painless the transition
would be at the moment of blindness and how bright
eternity.
So easy . . . so easy . . . so easy
. . .

OLIVE TOOK A
cigarette and lit it greedily. ‘You’re
late. I was afraid you wouldn’t come.’ She sucked
down the smoke. ‘I’ve been dying for a bloody fag.’
Her hands and shift were filthy with what looked like
dried clay.

‘Aren’t you allowed cigarettes?’

‘Only what you can buy with your earnings. I
always run out before the end of the week.’ She
rubbed the backs of her hands vigorously and
showered the table with small grey flakes.

‘What is that?’ Roz asked.

‘Clay.’ Olive left the cigarette in her mouth and set
to work, plucking the smears from her bosom. ‘Why
do you think they call me the Sculptress?’

Roz was about to say something tactless, but
thought better of it. ‘What do you make?’

‘People.’

‘What sort of people? Imaginary people or people
you know?’

There was a brief hesitation. ‘Both.’ She held Roz’s
gaze. ‘I made one of you.’

Roz watched her for a moment. ‘Well, I just hope
you don’t decide to stick pins into it,’ she said with a
faint smile. ‘Judging by the way I feel today, somebody
else is at that already.’

A flicker of amusement crossed Olive’s face. She
abandoned the smears and fixed Roz with her penetrating
stare. ‘So what’s wrong with you.’

Roz had spent a weekend in limbo, analysing and
re-analysing until her brain was on fire. ‘Nothing. Just
a headache, that’s all.’ And that was true as far as it
went. Her situation hadn’t altered. She was still a
prisoner.

Olive screwed her eyes against the smoke.
‘Changed your mind about the book?’

‘No.’

‘OK. Fire away.’

Roz switched on the tape-recorder. ‘Second conversation
with Olive Martin. Date: Monday, April
nineteen. Tell me about Sergeant Hawksley, Olive,
the policeman who arrested you. Did you get to know
him well? How did he treat you?’

If the big woman was surprised by the question,
she didn’t show it, but then she didn’t show anything
very much. She thought for some moments. ‘Was he
the dark-haired one? Hal, I think they called him.’

Roz nodded.

‘He was all right.’

‘Did he bully you?’

‘He was all right.’ She drew on her cigarette and
stared stolidly across the table. ‘Have you spoken to
him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he tell you he threw up when he saw the
bodies?’ There was an edge to her voice. Of amusement?
Roz wondered. Somehow, amusement didn’t
quite square.

‘No,’ she said. ‘He didn’t mention that.’

‘He wasn’t the only one.’ A short silence. ‘I offered
to make them a pot of tea but the kettle was in the
kitchen.’ She transferred her gaze to the ceiling,
aware, perhaps, of having said something tasteless.
‘Matter of fact, I liked him. He was the only one who
talked to me. I might have been deaf and dumb for
all the interest the others showed. He gave me a
sandwich at the police station. He was all right.’

Roz nodded. ‘Tell me what happened.’

Olive took another cigarette and lit it from the old
one. ‘They arrested me.’

‘No. I mean before that.’

‘I called the police station, gave my address, and
said the bodies were in the kitchen.’

‘And before that?’

Olive didn’t answer.

Roz tried a different tack. ‘The ninth of September,
eighty-seven, was a Wednesday. According to your
statement you killed and dismembered Amber and
your mother in the morning and early afternoon.’
She watched the woman closely. ‘Did none of the
neighbours hear anything, come and investigate?’

There was a tiny movement at the corner of one
eye, a tic, hardly noticeable amidst the fat. ‘It’s a man,
isn’t it?’ said Olive gently.

Roz was puzzled. ‘What’s a man?’

Sympathy peeped out from between the puffy, bald
lids. ‘It’s one of the few advantages of being in a place
like this. No men to make your life a misery. You
get the odd bit of bother, of course, husbands and
boyfriends playing up on the outside, but you don’t
get the anguish of a daily relationship.’ She pursed
her lips in recollection. ‘I always envied the nuns, you
know. It’s so much easier when you don’t have to
compete.’

Roz played with her pencil. Olive was too canny to
discuss a man in her own life, she thought, assuming
there had ever been one.
Had she told the truth about
her abortion?
‘But less rewarding,’ she said.

A rumble issued from the other side of the table.
‘Some reward you’re getting. You know what my
father’s favourite expression was? The game is not
worth the candle. He used to drive my mother mad
with it. But it’s true in your case. Whoever it is you’re
after, he’s not doing you any good.’

Roz drew a doodle on her pad, a fat cherub inside
a balloon. Was the abortion a fantasy, a perverted link
in Olive’s mind with Amber’s unwanted son? There
was a long silence. She pencilled in the cherub’s smile
and spoke without thinking. ‘Not whoever,’ she said,
‘whatever. It’s what I want, not who I want.’ She
regretted it as soon as she’d said it. ‘It’s not
important.’

Again there was no response and she began to find
Olive’s silences oppressive. It was a waiting game, a
trap to make her speak. And then what? The toe-curling
embarrassment of stammered apologies.

She bent her head. ‘Let’s go back to the day of the
murders,’ she suggested.

A meaty hand suddenly covered hers and stroked
the fingers affectionately. ‘I know about despair. I’ve
felt it often. If you keep it bottled up, it feeds on itself
like a cancer.’