"Sculptress" - читать интересную книгу автора (Walters Minette)

The statement was a photocopy, covering three typed sheets of A4. On the reverse of the last sheet was a photocopied extract from what was presumably the pathologist’s report. It was brief, just a concluding paragraph, and there was no indication to show who had written it.

The injuries to the heads are entirely consistent with a blow or blows from a heavy solid object. These were inflicted before death and were not fatal. While there is no forensic evidence to suggest that the rolling pin was the weapon used, there is none to prove it wasn’t.

Death in both cases was caused by severance of the carotid artery during the decapitation process. Examination of the axe revealed considerable rusting beneath the blood stains. It is highly probable that it was blunt before it was used to dismember the bodies. The extensive bruising around the cuts on Amber Martin’s neck and trunk indicate three or four strikes with an axe before the cawing knife was used to cut the throat. It is unlikely that she ever regained consciousness In Mrs. Gwen Martin’s case, however, the lacerations to her hands and forearms, inflicted before death, are consistent with her regaining consciousness and trying to defend herself. Two stabbing incisions below the jawline imply two failed attempts before her throat was successfully cut with the knife. These attacks were carried out with savage ferocity.

Roz read the pages through then put them on the table beside her and stared into the middle distance. She felt very cold.

Olive Martin took an axe… Oh, God! No wonder Mr. Crew called her a psychopath. Three or four strikes with a blunted axe and Amber was still alive! Bile rose in her throat, nauseous, bitter, gagging. She must stop thinking about it. But she couldn’t, of course. The muffled thuds of metal bouncing off soft flesh boomed loudly in her brain. How dark and shadowy the flat was. She reached out abruptly and snapped on a table lamp but the light did nothing to dispel the vivid pictures that crowded her imagination, nightmare visions of a madwoman, frenzied by blood-lust. And the bodies… How far had she committed herself to writing this book? Had she signed anything? Had she received an advance. She couldn’t remember and a cold fist of panic squeezed her insides. She was living in a twilight world where so little mattered that day followed day with nothing to distinguish their passing. She thrust herself out of her chair and paced about the floor, cursing Iris for bouncing her, cursing herself for her own insanity, and cursing Mr.

Crew for not sending her the statement when she’d first written to him.

She seized the telephone and dialled Iris’s number.

“Have I signed anything on the Olive Martin book? Why? Because I damn well can’t write it, that’s why. The woman scares the bloody shit out of me and I am not visiting her again.”

“I thought you liked her.” Iris spoke calmly through a mouthful of supper.

Roz ignored this comment.

“I’ve got her statement here and the pathologist’s report, or his conclusions at least. I should have read them first. I’m not doing it. I will not glorify what she did by writing a book about it. My God, Iris, they were alive when she cut their heads off. Her poor wretched mother tried to ward off the axe. It’s making me sick just thinking about it.”

“OK.”

“OK what?”

“Don’t write it.”

Roz’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“I thought you’d argue at least.”

“Why? One thing I’ve learnt in this business is that you can’t force people to write. Correction. You can if you’re persistent and manipulative enough, but the result is always below par.”

Roz heard her take a drink.

“In any case, Jenny Atherton sent me the first ten chapters of her new book this morning. It’s all good stuff on the inherent dangers of a poor self-image, with obesity as number one confidence crippler.

She’s unearthed a positive gold mine of film and television personalities who’ve all sunk to untold depths since gaining weight and being forced off camera. It’s disgustingly tasteless, of course, like all Jenny’s books, but it’ll sell. I think you should send all your gen sorry about the pun to her. Olive would make rather a dramatic conclusion, don’t you think, particularly if we can get a photograph of her in her cell.”

“No chance.”

“No chance of getting a photograph? Shame.”

“No chance of my sending anything to Jenny Atherton.

Honestly, Iris,” she stormed, losing her temper, ‘you really are beneath contempt. You should be working for the gutter press. You believe in exploiting anyone just as long as they bring in the cash.

Jenny Atherton is the last person I’d allow near Olive.”

“Can’t see why,” said Iris, now chewing heartily on something.

“I mean if you don’t want to write about her and you’re refusing ever to visit her again because she makes you sick, why cavil at somebody else having a bash?”

“It’s the principle.”

“Can’t see it, old thing. Sounds more like dog in the manger to me.

Listen, I can’t dally. We’ve got people in. At least let me tell Jenny that Olive’s up for grabs. She can start from scratch.

It’s not as though you’ve got very far, is it?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Roz snapped.

“I will do it. Goodbye.” She slammed the receiver down.

At the other end of the line, Iris winked at her husband.

“And you accuse me of not caring,” she murmured.

“Now, what could have been more caring than that?”

“Hobnailed boots,” Gerry Fielding suggested acidly.

Roz read Olive’s statement again.

“My relationship with my mother and sister was never close.” She reached for her tape recorder and rewound the tape, flicking to and fro till she found the piece she wanted.

“I called her Amber because, at the age of two, I couldn’t get my tongue round the “1” or the “s”. It suited her. She had lovely honey-blonde hair, and as she grew up she always answered to Amber and never to Alison.

She was very pretty…”

It meant nothing of course, in itself. There was no unwritten law that said psychopaths were incapable of pretending. Rather the reverse, in fact. But there was a definite softening of the voice when she spoke about her sister, a tenderness which from anyone else Roz would have interpreted as love.

And why hadn’t she mentioned the fight with her mother?

Really, that was very odd. It could well have been her justification for what she did that day.

The chaplain, quite unaware that Olive was behind him, started violently as a large hand fell on his shoulder. It wasn’t the first time she had crept up on him and he wondered again, as he had wondered before, how she managed to do it. Her normal gait was a painful shuffle which set his teeth on edge every time he heard its approach.

He steeled himself and turned with a friendly smile.

“Why, Olive, how nice to see you. What brings you to the chapel?”

The bald eyes were amused.

“Did I frighten you?”

“You startled me. I didn’t hear you coming.”

“Probably because you weren’t listening. You must listen first if you want to hear, Chaplain.

Surely they taught you that much at theological college. God talks in a whisper at the best of times.”

It would be easier, he thought sometimes, if he could despise Olive.

But he had never been able to.

He feared and disliked her but he did not despise her.

“What can I do for you?”

“You had some new diaries delivered this morning. I’d like one.

“Are you sure, Olive? These are no different from the others. They still have a religious text for every day of the year and last time I gave you one you tore it up.”

She shrugged.

“But I need a diary so I’m prepared to tolerate the little homilies.”

“They’re in the vestry.”

“I know.”

She had not come for a diary. That much he could guess. But what did she plan to steal from the chapel while his back was turned? What was there to steal except Bibles and prayer books?

A candle, he told the Governor afterwards. Olive Martin took a six-inch candle from the altar. But she, of course, denied it, and though her cell was searched from top to bottom, the candle was never found.

THREE

Graham Deedes was young, harassed, and black. He saw Roz’s surprise as she came into his room, and he frowned his irritation.

“I had no idea black bannisters were such a rarity, Miss Leigh.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked curiously, sitting down in the chair he indicated.

“You looked surprised.”

“I am, but not by your colour. You’re much younger than I expected.”

“Thirty-three,” he said.

“Not so young.”

“No, but when you were briefed to appear for Olive Martin you can only have been twenty-six or twenty-seven. That is young for a murder trial.”

“True,” he agreed, ‘but I was only the junior. The QC was considerably older.”

“But you did most of the preparation?”

He nodded.

“Such as there was. It was a very unusual case.”

She took her tape-recorder from her bag.

“Have you any objections to being recorded?”

“Not if you intend to talk about Olive Martin.”

“Ido.”

He chuckled.

“Then I’ve no objections, for the simple reason that I can tell you virtually nothing about her. I saw the woman once, on the day she was sentenced, and I never even spoke to her.”

“But I understood you were preparing a diminished responsibility defence. Didn’t you meet her in the course of doing that?”

“No, she refused to see me. I did all my work from material her solicitor sent me.” He smiled ruefully.

“Which wasn’t much, I have to say. We would, quite literally, have been laughed out of court if we’d had to proceed, so I was quite relieved when the judge ruled her guilty plea admissible.”

“What arguments would you have used if you had been called?”

“We planned two different approaches.” Deedes considered for a moment.

“One, that the balance of her mind was temporarily disturbed as far as I recall it was the day after her birthday and she was deeply upset because instead of paying her attention the family teased her about being fat.” He raised his eyebrows in query and Roz nodded.

“In addition, I believe, she made a reference in her statement to not liking noise. We did manage to find a doctor who was prepared to give evidence that noise can cause such violent distress in some people that they may act out of character in trying to stop it. There was no psychiatric or medical evidence, however, to prove that Olive was of this type.” He tapped his forefingers together.

“Two, we were going to work backwards from the appalling savagery of the crime and invite the court to draw what we hoped to persuade them was an inescapable inference that Olive was a psychopath. We hadn’t a cat’s chance on the balance of her mind argument, but the psychopathy’ he made a see-saw motion with one hand ‘maybe. We found a professor of psychology who was prepared to stick his neck out after seeing the photographs of the bodies.”

“But did he ever talk to her?”

He shook his head.

“There wasn’t time and she wouldn’t have seen him anyway. She was quite determined to plead guilty. I assume Mr. Crew told you that she wrote to the Home Office demanding an independent psychiatric report to prove that she was competent to plead?” Roz nodded.

“After that there was really nothing we could do. It was an extraordinary business,” he mused.

“Most defendants fall over themselves to come up with excuses.”

“Mr. Crew seems convinced she’s a psychopath.”

“I think I’d agree with him.”

“Because of what she did to Amber and her mother? You don’t have any other evidence?”

“No. Isn’t that enough?”

“Then how do you explain that five psychiatrists have all diagnosed her normal?” Roz looked up.

“She’s had several sessions, as far as I can gather, in the prison.”

“Who told you this? Olive?” He looked sceptical.

“Yes, but I spoke to the Governor afterwards and she verified it.”

He shrugged.

“I wouldn’t place too much reliance on it.

You’d have to see the reports. It depends who wrote them and why they were testing her.”

“Still, it’s odd, don’t you think?”

“In what way?”

“You’d expect some measurable level of sociopathic behaviour over a period of time if she was a psychopath.”

“Not necessarily. Prison may be the sort of controlled environment that suits her. Or perhaps her particular psychopathy was directed against her family. Something brought it on that day and once rid of them, she settled down.” He shrugged again.

“Who knows? Psychiatry is hardly an exact science.” He was silent for a moment.

“In my experience, well adjusted people don’t hack their mothers and their sisters to death. You do know they were still alive when she set to with the axe?” He smiled grimly.

“She knew it, too. Don’t imagine she didn’t.”

Roz frowned.

“There is another explanation,” she said slowly, ‘but the trouble is, while it fits the facts, it’s too absurd to be credible.”

He waited.

“Well?” he asked at last.

“Olive didn’t do it.” She saw his amused disbelief and hurried on.

“I’m not saying I go along with it, I’m just saying that it fits the facts.”

“Your facts,” he pointed out gently.

“It seems to me you’re being a little selective in what you choose to believe.”

“Maybe.” Roz remembered her extremes of mood of the previous evening.

He watched her for a moment.

“She knew a great deal about the murders for someone who wasn’t responsible for them.”

“Do you think so?”

“Of course. Don’t you?”

“She doesn’t say anything about her mother trying to ward off the axe and the carving knife. But that must have been the most frightening part. Why didn’t she mention it?”

“Shame. Embarrassment. Traumatic amnesia. You’d be surprised how many murderers blot what they’ve done from their memories. Sometimes it’s years before they come to terms with their guilt. In any case, I doubt the struggle with her mother was as frightening for Olive as you suggest. Gwen Martin was a tiny woman, five feet at the most, I would think. Physically, Olive took after her father, so containing her mother would have been easy for her.” He saw the hesitation in Roz’s eyes.

“Let me put a question to you. Why would Olive confess to two murders she didn’t commit?”

“Because people do.”

“Not when they have their lawyers present, Miss Leigh. I accept that it happened, which is why new rules were introduced governing the taking of evidence, but Olive did not fall into the category of either forced confession or having her confession subsequently tampered with.

She had legal representation throughout. So I repeat, why would she confess to something she didn’t do?”

“To protect someone else?” She was relieved they weren’t in court. He was a bruising cross-examiner.

“Who?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

“There was no one else except her father, and he was at work.

The police had him thoroughly checked and his alibi was unbreakable.”

“There was Olive’s lover.” He stared at her.

“She told me she’d had an abortion. Presumably, then, she must have had a lover.”

He found that very entertaining.

“Poor Olive.” He laughed.

“Well, I guess an abortion is as good a way as any of keeping her end up. Especially’ he laughed again ‘if everyone believes her. I shouldn’t be too gullible, if I were you.”

She smiled coldly.

“Perhaps it’s you who is being gullible by subscribing to the cheap male view that a woman like Olive could not attract a lover.”

Deedes studied her set face and wondered what was driving her.

“You’re right, Miss Leigh, it was cheap, and I apologise.”

He raised his hands briefly, then dropped them again.

“But this is the first I have heard about an abortion. Let’s just say it strikes me as a little unlikely. And somewhat convenient, perhaps?

It’s not something you can ever really check, is it, not without Olive’s permission. If laymen were allowed to browse through other people’s medical records some very delicate secrets might be exposed.”

Roz regretted her waspish remark. Deedes was a nicer man than Crew and hadn’t deserved it.

“Olive mentioned an abortion. I assumed the lover. But perhaps she was raped.

Babies can be conceived as easily in hate as in love.

He shrugged.

“Beware of being used, Miss Leigh. Olive Martin dominated the court the day she appeared in it. I had the impression then, and still have it, that it was we who were dancing to her tune not she to ours.”

Dawlington was a small eastern suburb of Southampton, once an isolated village, now swallowed up in the great urban expansion of the twentieth century. It maintained an identity of a sort by the busy trunk-roads that gave it tarmac boundaries but, even so, the place was easy to miss. Only a tired peeling shop sign, advertising Dawlington Newsagents, alerted Roz to the fact that she had left one suburb and entered another. She drew into the kerb before a left-hand turning and consulted her map.

She was, presumably, in the High Street and the road to the left she squinted at the sign was Ainsley Street. She ran her finger across the grid.

“Ainsley Street,” she muttered.

“Come on, you bugger, where are you? OK. Leven Road. First right, second left.” With a glance in her driving mirror, she pulled out into the traffic and turned right.

Olive’s story, she thought, grew odder by the minute, as she studied number twenty-two, Leven Road, from her parked car. Mr. Crew had said the house was un saleable She had imagined something out of a Gothic novel, twelve months of dereliction and decay since the death of Robert Martin, a house condemned by the haunting horror in its kitchen.

Instead, the reality was a cheerful little semi, freshly painted, with pink, white, and red geraniums nodding in boxes beneath its windows.

Who, she wondered, had bought it? Who was brave enough (or ghoulish enough?) to live with the ghosts of that tragic family?

She double-checked the address from press cuttings she had put together that morning in the archives basement of the local newspaper. There was no mistake. A black and white photograph of “The House of Horror’ showed this same neat semi, but without its window-boxes.

She climbed out of the car and crossed the road.

The house remained stubbornly silent to her ring on the doorbell, so she went next door and tried there. A young woman answered with a sleepy toddler clinging round her neck.

“Yes?”

“Hello,” said Roz, “I’m sorry to bother you.” She indicated towards her right.

“It’s your neighbours I really want to talk to but there’s no one in.

Have you any idea when they might be back?”

The young woman thrust out a hip to support the child more easily and subjected Roz to a penetrating glare.

“There’s nothing to see, you know. You’re wasting your time.”

“I’m sorry?”

“They pulled the innards out of the house and revamped the whole of the inside. They’ve done it up nice. There’s nothing to see, no blood stains, no spirits roaming about, nothing.” She pressed the child’s head against her shoulder, a casual, proprietary gesture, a statement of tender motherhood at odds with the hostility in her voice.

“You want to know what I think? You should see a psychiatrist. It’s the likes of you who’re the real sick people of society.” She prepared to close the door.

Roz raised her palms in a gesture of surrender.

She smiled sheepishly.

“I haven’t come to gawp,” she said.

“My name is Rosalind Leigh and I’m working in co-operation with the late Mr. Martin’s solicitor.”

The woman eyed her suspiciously.

“Oh, yeah? What’s his name?”

“Peter Crew.”

“You could of got it from the paper.”

“I have a letter from him. May I show it to you? It will prove Iamwholsaylam.”

“Go on then.”

“It’s in the car. I’ll fetch it.” She retrieved her briefcase hurriedly from the boot, but when she got back, the door was closed.

She rang several times and waited for ten minutes on the doorstep, but it was obvious the young woman had no intention of answering. From a room above came the wail of a baby. Roz listened to the mother’s soothing tones as she climbed the stairs, then, thoroughly annoyed with herself, she retreated to the car and pondered her next step.

The press cuttings were disappointing. It was names she wanted, names of friends or neighbours, even old school teachers, who could give her background detail. But the local newspaper had, like the nationals, sensationalised the crime’s horror without uncovering any details about Olive’s life or why she might have done it. There were the usual quotes from ‘neighbours’ all anonymous and all wise after the event but they were so uniformly un enlightening that Roz suspected imaginative journalism at work.

“No, I’m not surprised,” said a neighbour, ‘shocked and appalled, yes, but not surprised. She was a strange girl, unfriendly, kept herself to herself. Not like the sister. She was the attractive, outgoing one.

We all liked Amber.”

“The parents found her very difficult. She wouldn’t mix or make friends. She was shy, I suppose, because of her size but she had a way of looking at you that wasn’t normal.”

Beyond the sensationalism, there had been nothing to write about. There was no police investigation to report Olive had phoned them herself, had confessed to the crime in the presence of her solicitor, and had been charged with murder.

Because she had pleaded guilty there had been no salacious details from a lengthy trial, no names of friends or associates to draw on, and her sentencing had rated a single paragraph under the headline: TWBNTY-FIVE YEARS FOR BRUTAL MURDERS. A conspiracy of journalistic apathy seemed to surround the whole event. Of the five cardinal his of the journalist’s creed Where?” When?” What?” Who?” and Why? the first four had been amply covered. Everyone knew what had happened, who had done it, where, and when.

But no one, it seemed, knew why. Nor, and this was the real puzzle, had anyone actually asked. Could teasing alone really drive a young woman to such a pitch of anger that she would hack her family to pieces?

With a sigh, Roz switched on the radio and fed Pavarotti into the tape-deck. Bad choice, she thought, as “Nessun Dorma’ flooded the car and brought back bitter memories of a summer she would rather forget.

Strange how a piece of music could be so evocative, but then the path to separation had been choreographed around the television screen with “Nessun Dorma’ triggering the stops and starts of their rows. She could remember every detail of every World Cup football match. They were the only peaceful periods in a summer of war. How much better, she thought wearily, if she had called a halt then instead of dragging the misery out to its far more terrible conclusion.

A net curtain, in the semi to the right, number 24, twitched behind a Neighbourhood Watch sticker which proclaimed itself loudly against the glass. A case, Roz wondered, of locking the stable door after the horse had bolted? Or was that Same net curtain twitching the day Olive wielded her chopper? Two garages filled the gap between the houses, but it was possible the occupants had heard something.

“Olive Martin took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks…” The words circled in her brain as they had done, on and off, for days.

She resumed her contemplation of number 22, but watched the net curtain out of the corner of her eye. It moved again, plucked by prying fingers, and she felt unreasonably irritated by the busybody spying on her. It was an empty, wasted life that had time to stand and stare.

What sort of interfering old bitch inhabited there, she wondered? The frustrated spinster who got off on voyeurism? Or the bored and boring wife with nothing better to do than find fault? Then something clicked inside her head, a realignment of thought like the points on a railway line.

Just the sort of busybody she wanted, of course, but why had that not occurred to her immediately? Really, she worried about herself. She spent so much time in neutral now, just listening to the footfalls, leading nowhere, that echoed in her memory.

A frail old man opened the door, a small, shrunken person with transparent skin and bowed shoulders.

“Come in, come in,” he said, standing back and ushering her into his corridor.

“I heard what you said to Mrs. Blair. She won’t talk to you, and I’ll tell you something else, it wouldn’t help you if she did. They only came four years ago when the first youngster was on the way.

Didn’t know the family at all and, as far as I know, never spoke to poor old Bob. What shall I say? She’s got a nerve. Typical of today’s youngsters. Always wanting something for nothing.” He muttered on, leading the way into his living room.

“Resents living in a goldfish bowl but forgets that they got the house for a pittance just because it was a goldfish bowl. Ted and Dorothy Clarke virtually gave the place away because they couldn’t stand it any longer. What shall I say? Ungrateful girl. Imagine what it’s like for those of us who’ve always lived here. No bargains for us. We have to put up with it, don’t we? Sit down.

Sit down.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re from Mr. Crew, you say. They found the child yet?”

He stared into her face with disconcertingly bright blue eyes.

Roz stared back, her mind racing.

“That’s not my province,” she said carefully, ‘so I’m not sure where they are on that one. I’m conducting a follow-up of Olive’s case. You did know that Mr. Crew is still representing her?”

“What’s to represent?” he asked. His eyes strayed in disappointment.

“Poor little Amber. They should never have made her give it up. I said it would cause trouble.”

Roz sat very still and stared at the worn carpet.

“People don’t listen, of course,” he said crossly.

“You give them well-meant advice and they tell you you’re interfering.

What shall I say? I could see where it would lead.” He fell into a resentful silence.

“You’re talking about the child,” said Roz at last.

He looked at her curiously.

“If they’d found him, you’d know.”

It was a boy, then.

“Oh, yes.”

“Bob did his best but there’s rules about these things.

They’d signed him away, given up their stake, so to speak.

You’d think it was different where money’s concerned, but there’s no contest for the likes of us against the government.

What shall I say? They’re all thieves.”

Roz made what she could of this speech. Was he talking about Mr.

Martin’s will? Was this child (Amber’s child?) the beneficiary? On the pretext of looking for a handkerchief, she opened her bag and surreptitiously switched on her tape-recorder. This conversation, she felt, was going to be tortuous.

“You mean,” she tried tentatively, ‘that the government will get the money?”

“Course.”

She nodded wisely.

“Things aren’t exactly stacked in our favour.”

“Never are. Damn thieves. Take every last penny off you. And what for? To make sure the ski vers go on breeding like rabbits at the expense of the rest of us. Makes you sick. There’s a woman in the council houses has five children, and all by different fathers.

What shall I say? They’re all worthless. Is that the sort of breeding stock we want in this country? Goodfor-nothings, with not a brain between them. Where’s the sense in encouraging a woman like that?

Should have sterilised her and put a stop to it.”

Roz was noncommittal, unwilling to be drawn down a culdesac, even more unwilling to antagonise him.

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“Course I’m right, and it’ll be the death of the species.

Before the dole, she’d have starved to death and her brood with her, and quite right too. What shall I say? It’s the survival of the fittest in this world. There’s no other species mollycoddles its rotten apples the way we do, and certainly none that pays its rotten apples to produce more rotten apples. Makes you sick.

How many children have you got?”

Roz smiled faintly.

“None, I’m afraid. I’m not married.”

“See what I mean?” He cleared his throat noisily.

“Makes you sick. What shall I say? It’s your sort, decent sort, should have the children.”

“How many do you have, Mr. er-?” She made a play of consulting her diary, as if looking for his name.

“Hayes. Mr. Hayes. Two lads. Fine boys. Grown up now, of course.

Only the one granddaughter,” he added morosely.

“It’s not right. I keep telling them they’ve a duty to their class but I could be pissing in the wind excuse my French for all the good it does.” His face set into familiar lines of irritation. His obsession was clearly a deep-seated one.

Roz knew she had to take the plunge or one hobby horse would follow another as inexorably as night follows day.

“You’re a very perceptive man, Mr. Hayes. Why were you so sure that making Amber give up her son would cause trouble?”

“Stands to reason there’d come a time when he was wanted again. It’s sod’s law, isn’t it? The minute you throw something out, that’s the minute you find you needed it after all. But it’s too late by then.

It’s gone. My wife was one, forever throwing things away, pots of paint, carpet, and two years later you needed to patch. Me, I hoard.

What shall I say? I value everything.”

“So, are you saying Mr. Martin wasn’t bothered about his grandson before the murders?”

He touched the end of his nose with thumb and forefinger.

“Who’s to say? He kept his own counsel, did Bob. It was Gwen who insisted on signing the kid away. Wouldn’t have it in the house.

Understandable, I suppose, in view of Amber’s age.”

“How old was she?”

He frowned.

“I thought Mr. Crew knew all this.”

She smiled.

“He does but, as I told you, it’s not my province. I’m just interested, that’s all. It seems so tragic.”

“It is that. Thirteen,” he said wistfully.

“She was thirteen. Poor little kid. Didn’t know anything about anything. Some lout at the school was responsible.”

He jerked his head towards the back of his house.

“Parkway Comprehensive.”

“Is that the school Amber and Olive went to?”

“Hah!” His old eyes were amused.

“Gwen wouldn’t have stood for that. She sent them to the posh Convent where they learnt their times tables and didn’t learn the facts of life.”

“Why didn’t Amber have an abortion? Were they Catholics?” She thought again about Olive and foetuses being washed down the sink.

“They didn’t know she was pregnant, did they?

Thought it was puppy fat.” He cackled suddenly.

“Rushed her off to hospital with suspected appendicitis and out pops a bouncing baby boy. They got away with it, too. Best kept secret I’ve ever come across. Even the nuns didn’t know.”

“But you knew,” she prompted.

“The wife guessed,” he said owlishly.

“It was obvious something untoward had happened, and not appendicitis neither. Gwen was well-nigh hysterical the night it happened and my Jeannie put two and two together. Still, we know how to keep our mouths shut. No reason to make life harder for the kid. It wasn’t her fault.”

Roz did some rapid mental arithmetic. Amber was two years younger than Olive which would have made her twenty-six if she were still alive.

“Her son’s thirteen,” she said, ‘and due to inherit half a million pounds. I wonder why Mr. Crew can’t find him. There must be records of the adoption.”

“I heard they’d found traces.” The old man clicked his false teeth with disappointment.

“But, there, it was probably just rumour, Brown Australia,” he muttered with disgust, as if that explained everything.

“I ask you.”

Roz allowed this cryptic remark to pass unchallenged. Time enough to puzzle over it later without claiming ignorance yet again.

“Tell me about Olive,” she invited.

“Were you surprised that she did what she did?”

“I hardly knew the girl.” He sucked his teeth.

“And you don’t feel surprised when people you know get hacked to death, young lady, you feel bloody sick. It did for my Jeannie. She was never the same afterwards, died a couple of years later.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded, but it was clearly an old wound that had healed.

“Used to see the child come and go but she wasn’t a great talker. Shy, I suppose.”

“Because she was fat?”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully.

“Maybe. Jeannie said she was teased a lot, but I’ve known fat girls who’ve been the life and soul of the party. It was her nature, I think, to look on the black side. Never laughed much. No sense of humour. That sort doesn’t make friends easily.”

“And Amber did?”

“Oh, yes. She was very popular.” He glanced back down the passages of time.

“She was a pretty girl.”

“Was Olive jealous of her?”

“Jealous?” Mr. Hayes looked surprised.

“I’ve never thought about it. What shall I say? They always seemed very fond of each other.”

Roz shrugged her bewilderment.

“Then why did Olive kill her? And why mutilate the bodies? It’s very odd.”

He scowled suspiciously.

“I thought you were representing her. You should know if anyone does.”

“She won’t say.”

He stared out of the window.

“Well, then.”

Well then what?

“Do you know why?”

“Jeannie reckoned it was hormones.”

“Hormones?” Roz echoed blankly.

“What sort of hormones?”

“You know.” He looked embarrassed.

“Monthly ones.”

“Ah.” PMT? she wondered. But it was hardly a subject she could pursue with him. He was of a generation where menstruation was never mentioned.

“Did Mr. Martin ever say why he thought she did it?”

He shook his head.

“The subject didn’t arise.

What shall I say? We saw very little of him afterwards. He talked about his will once or twice, and the child it was all he thought about.” He cleared his throat again.

“He became a recluse, you know. Wouldn’t have anyone in the house, not even the Clarkes, and there was a time when Ted and he were close as brothers.” His mouth turned down at the corners.

“It was Ted started it, mind. Took against Bob for some reason and wouldn’t go in.

And others followed suit, of course, the way they do.

Reckon I was his only friend at the end. It was me as realised something was wrong, seeing the milk bottles outside.”

“But why did he stay? He was rich enough to let number twenty-two go for peanuts. You’d have thought he’d go anywhere rather than stay with the ghosts of his family.”

Mr. Hayes muttered to himself.

“Never understood it myself. Perhaps he wanted his friends about him.”

“You said the Clarkes moved. Where did they go?”

He shook his head.

“No idea. They upped and went one morning without a word to anyone. A removal van took out their furniture three days later and the house stood empty for a year till the Blairs bought it. Never heard a word from them since. No forwarding address. Nothing. What shall I say?

We were good friends, the six of us, and I’m the only one left now.

Strange business.”

Very strange, thought Roz.

“Can you remember which estate agent sold the house?”

“Peterson’s, but you won’t learn anything from them. Little Hitlers,” he said, ‘all bursting with self importance Told me to mind my own business when I went in and asked what was what. It’s a free world, I pointed out, no reason why a man shouldn’t ask after his friends, but oh, no, they had instructions of confidentiality or some such rubbish.

What shall I say? Made out it was me the Clarkes were cutting their ties with. Hah!

More likely Bob, I told them, or ghosts. And they said if I spread those sort of rumours, they’d take action. You know who I blame. The estate agents’ federation, if there is one, which I doubt…” He rambled on, venting his spleen out of loneliness and frustration.

Roz felt sorry for him.

“Do you see much of your sons?” she asked when he drew to a halt.

“Now and then.”

“How old are they?”

“Forties,” he said after a moment’s thought.

“What did they think of Olive and Amber?”

He pinched his nose again and waggled it from side to side.

“Never knew them. Left home long before either of the girls reached their teens.”

“They didn’t baby-sit or anything like that?”

“My lads? You wouldn’t catch them baby-sitting.” His old eyes moistened, and he nodded towards the sideboard where photographs of two young men in uniform crowded the surface.

“Fine boys. Soldiers.” He thrust out his chest.

“Took my advice and joined up. Mind, they’re out of jobs now, what with the bloomin’ regiment being cut from under them. It makes you sick when you think them and me’s served Queen and country for nigh on fifty years between us. Did I tell you I was in the desert during the war?” He looked vacantly about the room.

“There’s a photograph somewhere of Churchill and Monty in a jeep. We all got one, us boys who were out there. Worth a bob or two, I should think. Now where is it?” He became agitated.

Roz picked up her briefcase.

“Don’t worry about it now, Mr. Hayes. Perhaps I could see it next time I come.”

“You coming back?”

“I’d like to, if it’s no trouble.” She took a card from her handbag, flicking the switch on the recorder at the same time.

“That’s my name and telephone number. Rosalind Leigh. It’s a London number but I’ll be down here regularly over the next few weeks, so if you feel like a chat’ she smiled encouragingly and stood up - ‘give me a ring.”

He regarded her with astonishment.

“A chat.

Goodness me. A youngster like you has better things to do with her time.”

Too right, she thought, but I do need information.

Her smile, like Mr. Crew’s, was false.

“I’ll be seeing you then, Mr. Hayes.”

He pushed himself awkwardly out of his chair and held out a marbled hand.

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Leigh. What shall I say? It’s not often an old man sees charming young ladies out of the blue.”

He spoke with such sincerity that she felt chastened by her own lack of it. Why, oh why, she wondered, was the human condition so damn bloody?

FOUR

Roz found the local convent with the help of a police an “That’ll be St. Angela’s,” he told her.

“Left at the traffic lights and left again. Large red-brick building set back from the road. You can’t miss it. It’s the only decent piece of architecture still standing round there.”

It reared in solid Victorian magnificence above its surrounding clutter of cheap concrete obsolescence, a monument to education in a way that none of the modern prefabricated schools could ever be. Roz entered the front door with a sense of familiarity, for this was a schooling she recognised.

Glimpses through classroom doors of desks, blackboards, shelves of books, attentive girls in neat uniforms. A place of quiet learning, where parents could dictate the sort of education their daughters received simply by threatening to remove the pupils and withhold the fees. And whenever parents had that power the requirements were always the same: discipline, structure, results. She peeped through a window into what was obviously the library. Well, well, no wonder Gwen had insisted on sending the girls here. Roz would put money on Parkway Comprehensive being an unruly bedlam where English, History, Religion and Geography were all taught as the single subject of General Studies, spelling was an anachronism, French an extracurricular activity, Latin unheard of, and Science a series of chats about the greenhouse effect…

“Can I help you?”

She turned with a smile.

“I hope so.”

A smart woman in her late fifties had paused in front of a door marked Secretary.

“Are you a prospective parent?”

“I wish I were. It’s a lovely school. No children,” she explained at the woman’s look of puzzled enquiry.

“I see. So how can I help you?”

Roz took out one of her cards.

“Rosalind Leigh,” she introduced herself.

“Would it be possible for me to talk to the headmistress?”

“Now?” said the woman in surprise.

“Yes, if she’s free. If not, I can make an appointment and come back later.”

The woman took the card and read it closely.

“May I ask what you want to talk about?”

Roz shrugged.

“Just some general information about the school and the sort of girls who come here.”

“Would you be the Rosalind Leigh who wrote Through the Looking Glass by any chance?”

Roz nodded. Through the Looking Glass, her last book and her best, had sold well and won some excellent reviews. A study of the changing perceptions of female beauty down the ages, she wondered now how she had ever managed to summon the energy to write it. A labour of love, she thought, because the subject had fascinated her.

“I’ve read it.” The other smiled.

“I agreed with very few of your conclusions but it was extremely thought-provoking none the less. You write lovely prose, but I’m sure you know that.”

Roz laughed. She felt an immediate liking for the woman.

“At least you’re honest.”

The other looked at her watch.

“Come into my office. I have Some parents to see in half an hour, but I’m happy to give you general information until then.

This way.” She opened the secretary’s door and ushered Roz through to an adjoining office.

“Sit down, do. Coffee?”

“Please.” Roz took the chair indicated and watched her busy herself with a kettle and some cups.

“Are you the headmistress?”

“I am.”

“They were always nuns in my day.”

“So you’re a convent girl. I thought you might be. Milk?”

“Black and no sugar, please.”

She placed a steaming cup on the desk in front of Roz and sat down opposite her.

“In fact I am a nun. Sister Bridget. My order gave up wearing the habit quite some time ago. We found it tended to create an artificial barrier between us and the rest of society.” She chuckled.

“I don’t know what it is about religious uniforms, but people try to avoid you if they can. I suppose they feel they have to be on their best behaviour. It’s very frustrating.

The conversation is often so stilted.”

Roz crossed her legs and relaxed into the chair. She was unaware of it but her eyes betrayed her. They brimmed with all the warmth and humour that, a year ago, had been the outward expression of her personality.

Bitterness, it seemed, could only corrode so far.

“It’s probably guilt,” she said.

“We have to guard our tongues in case we provoke the sermon we know we deserve.” She sipped the coffee.

“What made you think I was a convent girl?”

“Your book. You get very hot under the collar about established religions. I guessed you were either a lapsed Jew or a lapsed Catholic. The Protestant yoke is easier to discard, being far less oppressive in the first place.”

“In fact I wasn’t a lapsed anything when I wrote Through the Looking Glass,” said Roz mildly.

“I was a good Catholic still.”

Sister Bridget interpreted the cynicism in her voice.

“But not now.”

“No. God died on me.” She smiled slightly at the look of understanding on the other woman’s face.

“You read about it, I suppose. I can’t applaud your taste in newspapers.”

“I’m an educator, my dear. We take the tabloids here as well as the broad sheets She didn’t drop her gaze or show embarrassment, for which Roz was grateful.

“Yes, I read about it and I would have punished God, too. It was very cruel of Him.”

Roz nodded.

“If I remember right,” she said, reverting to her book, ‘religion is confined to only one chapter of my book.

Why did you find my conclusions so hard to agree with?”

“Because they are all drawn from a single pre miss As I can’t accept the pre miss then I can’t agree with the conclusions.”

Roz wrinkled her brow.

“Which pre miss “That beauty is only skin deep.”

Roz was surprised.

“And you don’t think that’s true?”

“No, not as a general rule.”

“I’m speechless. And you a nun!”

“Being a nun has nothing to do with it. I’m streetwise.”

It was an unconscious echo of Olive.

“You really believe that beautiful people are beautiful all the way through? I can’t accept that. By the same token ugly people are ugly all the way through.”

“You’re putting words into my mouth, my dear.” Sister Bridget was amused.

“I am simply questioning the idea that beauty is a surface quality.”

She cradled her coffee cup in her hands.

“It’s a comfortable thought, of course it means we can all feel good abouj ourselves but beauty, like wealth, is a moral asset. The wealthy can afford to be law abiding, generous and kind. The very poor cannot.

Even kindness is a struggle when you don’t know where your next penny is coming from.”

She gave a quirky smile.

“Poverty is only uplifting when you can choose it.”

“I wouldn’t disagree with that, but I don’t see the connection between beauty and wealth.”

“Beauty cushions you against the negative emotions that loneliness and rejection inspire. Beautiful people are prized they always have been, you made that point yourself so they have less reason to be spiteful, less reason to be jealous, less reason to covet what they can’t have.

They tend to be the focus of all those emotions, rarely the instigators of them.” She shrugged.

“You will always have exceptions most of them you uncovered in your book but, in my experience, if a person is attractive then that attractiveness runs deep. You can argue which comes first, the inner beauty or the outer, but they do tend to walk together.”

“So if you’re rich and beautiful the pearly gates will swing open for you?” She smiled cynically.

“That’s a somewhat radical philosophy for a Christian, isn’t it? I thought Jesus preached the exact opposite. Something like it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Sister Bridget laughed good-humouredly.

“Yours was obviously an excellent convent.” She stirred her coffee absentmindedly with a biro.

“Yes, He did say that but, if you put it in context, it supports my view, I think, rather than detracts from it.

If you remember, a wealthy young man asked Him how he could have eternal life. Jesus said: keep the commandments. The youth answered: I have kept them, since childhood, but what more can I do. If you want to be perfect, said Jesus and I emphasise the perfect sell all you have and give it to the poor, then follow me. The young man went away sorrowing because he had many possessions and could not bring himself to sell them. It was then Jesus made the reference to the camel and the eye of the needle.

He was, you see, talking about perfection, not goodness.” She sucked the end of her biro.

“In fairness to the young man, I have always assumed that to sell his possessions would have meant selling houses and businesses with tenants and employees in them, so the moral dilemma would have been a difficult one.

But what I think Jesus was saying was this: so far you have been a goodman, but to test how good you really are, reduce yourself to abject poverty. Perfection is to follow me and keep the commandments when you are so poor that stealing and lying are a way of life if you want to be sure of waking up the next morning. An impossible goal.” She sipped her coffee.

“I could be wrong, of course.” There was a twinkle in her eye.

“Well, I’m not going to argue the toss with you on that,” said Roz bluntly.

“I suspect I’d be on a hiding to nothing. But I reckon you’re on very bumpy ground with your beauty is a moral asset argument. What about the pitfalls of vanity and arrogance? And how do you explain that some of the nicest people I know are, by no stretch of the imagination, beautiful?”

Sister Bridget laughed again, a happy sound.

“You keep twisting my words. I have never said that to be nice you have to be beautiful. I merely dispute your assertion that beautiful people are not nice. My observation is that very often they are. At the risk of labouring the point, they can afford to be.”

“Then we’re back to my previous question. Does that mean ugly people are very often not nice?”

“It doesn’t follow, you know, any more than saying poor people are invariably wicked. It just means the tests are harder.” She cocked her head on one side.

“Take Olive and Amber as a case in point. After all, that’s why you’ve really come to see me. Amber led a charmed life. She was quite the loveliest child I’ve ever seen and with a nature to match. Everyone adored her. Olive, on the other hand, was universally unpopular. She had few redeeming features. She was greedy, deceitful, and often cruel. I found her very hard to like.”

Roz made no attempt to deny her interest. The conversation had, in any case, been about them from the beginning.

“Then you were being tested as much as she was. Did you fail? Was it impossible to like her?”

“It was very difficult until Amber joined the school.

Olive’s best quality was that she loved her sister, without reserve and quite unselfishly. It was really rather touching. She fussed over Amber like a mother hen, often ignoring her own interests to promote Amber’s. I’ve never seen such affection between sisters.”

“So why did she kill her?”

“Why indeed? It’s time that question was asked.”

The older woman drummed her fingers impatiently on the desk.

“I visit her when I can. She won’t tell me, and the only explanation I can offer is that her love, which was obsession ai turned to a hate that was equally obsessional. Have you met Olive?”

Roz nodded.

“What did you make of her?”

“She’s bright.”

“Yes, she is. She could have gone to university if only the then headmistress had managed to persuade her mother of the advantages. I was a lowly teacher in those days.” She sighed.

“But Mrs. Martin was a decided woman, and Olive very much under her thumb. There was nothing we, as a school, could do to make her change her mind. The two girls left together, Olive with three good A-levels and Amber with four rather indifferent 0-levels.” She sighed again.

“Poor Olive. She went to work as a cashier in a supermarket while Amber, I believe, tried her hand at hairdressing.”

“Which supermarket was it?”

“Pettit’s in the High Street. But the place went out of business years ago. It’s an off-licence now.”

“She was working at the local DHSS, wasn’t she, at the time of the murders?”

“Yes and doing very well, I believe. Her mother pushed her into it, of course.” Sister Bridget reflected for a moment.

“Funnily enough, I bumped into Olive quite by chance just a week or so before the murders. I was pleased to see her. She looked’ she paused ‘happy. Yes, I think happy is exactly the word for it.”

Roz let the silence drift while she busied herself with her own thoughts. There was so much about this story that didn’t make sense.

“Did she get on with her mother?” she asked at last. “I don’t know. I always had the impression she preferred her father. It was Mrs. Martin who wore the trousers, of course. If there were choices to be made, it was invariably she who made them. She was very domineenng, but I don’t recall Olive voicing any antagonism towards her. She was a difficult woman to talk to. Very correct, always. She appeared to watch every word she said in case she gave herself away.” She shook her head.

“But I never did find out what it was that needed hiding.”

There was a knock on the connecting door and a woman popped her head inside.

“Mr. and Mrs. Barker are waiting, Sister. Are you ready for them?”

“Two minutes, Betty.” She smiled at Roz.

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure I’ve been very helpful. Olive had one friend while she was here, not a friend as you or I would know it, but a girl with whom she talked rather more than she did with any of the others.

Her married name is Wright Geraldine Wright and she lives in a village called Wooling about ten miles north of here. If she’s willing to talk to you then I’m sure she can tell you more than I have. The name of her house is Oaktrees.

Roz jotted down the details in her diary.

“Why do I have the feeling you were expecting me?”

“Olive showed me your letter the last time I saw her.”

Roz stood up, gathering her briefcase and handbag together. She regarded the other woman thoughtfully.

“It may be that the only book I can write is a cruel one.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No, I don’t think so either.” She paused by the door.

“I’ve enjoyed meeting you.”

“Come and see me again,” said Sister Bridget.

“I’d like to know how you get on.”

Roz nodded.

“I suppose there’s no doubt that she did it?”

“I really don’t know,” said the other woman slowly.

“I’ve wondered, of course. The whole thing is so shocking that it is hard to accept.” She seemed to come to a conclusion.

“Be very careful, my dear.

The only certainty about Olive is that she lies about almost everything.”

Roz jotted down the name of the arresting officer from the press clippings and called in at the police station on her way back to London.

“I’m looking for a DS Hawksley,” she told the young constable behind the front desk.

“He was with this division in nineteen eighty-seven. Is he still here?”

He shook his head.

“Jacked it in, twelve eighteen months ago.” He leaned his elbows on the counter and eyed her over with an approving glance.

“Will I do instead?”

Her lips curved involuntarily.

“Perhaps you can tell me where he went?”

“Sure. He opened a restaurant in Wenceslas Street. Lives in the flat above it.”

“And how do I find Wenceslas Street?”

“Well, now’ he rubbed his jaw thoughtfully ‘by far the easiest way is to hang around for half an hour till the end of my shift. I’ll take you.”

She laughed.

“And what would your girlfriend say to that?”

“A ruddy mouthful. She’s got a tongue like a chain-saw.” He winked.

“I won’t tell her if you won’t.”

“Sorry, sunshine. I’m shackled to a husband who hates policemen only marginally less than he hates toy-boys.” Lies were always easier.

He grinned.

“Turn left out of the station and Wenceslas Street is about a mile down on the left. There’s an empty shop on the corner. The Sergeant’s restaurant is bang next door to it. It’s called the Poacher.” He tapped his pencil on the desk.

“Are you planning to eat there?”

“No,” she said, ‘it’s purely business. I don’t intend to hang around.”

He nodded approval.

“Wise woman. The Sergeant’s not much of a cook. He’d have done better to stick with policing.”

She had to pass the restaurant to reach the London road. Rather reluctantly she pulled into its abandoned car park and climbed out of the car. She was tired, she hadn’t planned on talking to Hawksley that day, and the young constable’s lighthearted flirtation depressed her because it had left her cold.

The Poacher was an attractive red-brick building, set back from the road with the car park in front. Leaded bay windows curved out on either side of a solid oak door and wist aria heavy with buds, grew in profusion across the whole facade. Like St. Angela’s Convent it was at odds with its surroundings.

The shops on either side, both apparently empty, their windows a repository for advertising stickers, complemented each other in cheap post-war pragmatism but did nothing for the old faded beauty in their midst. Worse, a thoughtless council had allowed a previous owner to erect a two-storey extension behind the red-brick frontage, and it gboomed above the restaurant’s tiled roof in dirty pebble-dashed concrete. An attempt had been made to divert the wist aria across the roof but, starved of sunlight by the jutting property to the right, the probing tendrils showed little enthusiasm for reaching up to veil the dreary elevation.

Roz pushed open the door and went inside. The place was dark and deserted. Empty tables in an empty room, she thought despondently.

Like her.

Like her life. She was on the point of calling out, but thought better of it. It was all so peaceful and she was in no hurry. She tiptoed across the floor and took a stool at a bar in the corner. A smell of cooking lingered on the air, garlicky, tempting, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten all day. She waited a long time, unseen and unheard, a trespasser upon another’s silence. She thought about leaving, unobtrusively, as she had come, but it was strangely restful and her head drooped against her hand. Depression, an all too constant companion, folded its arms around her again, and turned her mind, as it often did, to death. She would do it one day. Sleeping pills or the car. The car, always the car. Alone, at night, in the rain. So easy just to turn the wheel and find a peaceful oblivion. It would be justice of a sort. Her head hurt where the hate swelled and throbbed inside it. God, what a mess she had become. If only someone could lance her destructive anger and let the poison go. Was Iris right?

Should she see a psychiatrist? Without warning, the terrible unhappiness burst like a flood inside her, threatening to spill out in tears.

“Oh, shit” she muttered furiously, dashing at her eyes with the palms of her hands. She scrabbled in her bag for her car keys.

“Shit! Shit! And more bloody shit! Where the hell are you?”

A slight movement caught her attention and she lifted her head abruptly. A shadowy stranger leant against the back counter, quietly polishing a glass and watching her.

She blushed furiously and looked away.

“How long have you been there?” she demanded angrily.

“Long enough.”

She retrieved her keys from the inside of her diary and glared at him briefly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged.

“Long enough.”

“Yes, well, you’re obviously not open yet, so I’ll be on my way.” She pushed herself off the stool.

“Suit yourself,” he said with supreme indifference.

“I was just about to have a glass of wine. You can go or you can join me.

I’m easy either way.” He turned his back on her and uncorked a bottle.

The colour receded from her cheeks.

“Are you Sergeant Hawksley?”

He lifted the cork to his nose and sniffed it appreciatively.

“I was, once. Now I’m just plain Hal.” He turned round and poured the wine into two glasses.

“Who’s asking?”

She opened her bag again.

“I’ve got a card somewhere.”

“A voice would do just as well.” He pushed one of the glasses towards her.

“Rosalind Leigh,” she said shortly, propping the card against the telephone on the bar.

She stared at him in the semi-darkness, her embarrassment temporarily forgotten. He was hardly a run of the mill restaurateur. If she had any sense, she thought, she would take to her heels now. He hadn’t shaved and his dark suit hung in rumpled folds as if he’d slept in it.

He had no tie and half the buttons on his shirt were missing, revealing a mass of tight black curls on his chest. A swelling contusion on his upper left cheek was rapidly closing the eye above it, and thick dried blood encrusted both nostrils. He raised his glass with an ironic smile.

“To your good health, Rosalind. Welcome to the Poacher.” There was a lilt to his voice, a touch of Geordie, tempered by long association with the South.

“It might be more sensible to drink to your good health,” she said bluntly.

“You look as though you need it.”

“To us then. May we both get the better of whatever ails us.

“Which, in your case, would appear to be a steamroller.”

He fingered the spreading bruise.

“Not far off,” he agreed.

“And you? What ails you?”

“Nothing,” she said lightly.

“I’m fine.”

“Sure you are.” His dark eyes rested kindly on her for a moment.

“You’re half alive and I’m hail dead.”

He drained his glass and filled it again.

“What did you want with Sergeant Hawksley?”

She glanced about the room.

“Shouldn’t you be opening up?”

“What for?”

She shrugged.

“Customers.”

“Customers,” he echoed thoughtfully.

“Now there’s beautiful word.” He gave a ghost of a chuckle.

“They’re an endangered species, or haven’t you heard? The last time I saw a customer was three days ago, a skinny little runt with a rucksack on his back who was scratching about in search of a vegetarian omelette and decaffeinated coffee.” He fell silent.

“Depressing.”

“Yes.”

She eased herself on to the stool again.

“It’s not your fault,” she said sympathetically.

“It’s the recession. Everyone’s going under. Your neighbours already have, by the look of it.” She gestured towards the door.

He reached up and flicked a switch at the side of the bar. Muted lamplight glowed around the walls, bringing a sparkle to the glasses on the tables. She looked at him with alarm. The contusion on his cheek was the least of his problems. Bright red blood was seeping from a scab above his ear and running down his neck. He seemed unaware of it.

“Who did you say you were?” His dark eyes searched hers for a moment then moved past her to search the room.

“Rosalind Leigh. I think I should call an ambulance,” she said helplessly.

“You’re bleeding.”

She had a strange feeling of being outside herself, quite remote from this extraordinary situation. Who was this man?

Not her responsibility, certainly. She was a simple bystander who had stumbled upon him by accident.

“I’ll call your wife,” she said.

He gave a lopsided grin.

“Why not? She always enjoyed a good laugh. Presumably she still does.” He reached for a tea towel and held it to his head.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to die on you. Head wounds always look worse than they are. You’re very beautiful.

“From the east to western Ind, No jewel is like Rosalind.”

“It’s Roz and I’d rather you didn’t quote that,” she said sharply.

“It annoys me.”

He shrugged.

“As You Like It.”

She sucked in an angry breath.

“I suppose you think that’s original.”

“A tender nerve, I see. Who are we talking about?” He looked at her ring finger.

“Husband? Ex-husband? Boyfriend?”

She ignored him.

“Is there anyone else here? Someone in the kitchen? You should have that cut cleaned.” She wrinkled her nose.

“In fact you should have this place cleaned. It stinks of fish.” The smell, once noticed, was appalling.

“Are you always this rude?” he asked curiously. He rinsed the tea-towel under a tap and watched the blood run out of it.

“It’s me,” he said matter of factly.

“I went for a ride on a ton of mackerel. Not a pleasant experience.”

He gripped the edge of the small sink and stood staring into it, head lowered in exhaustion, like a bull before the coup de grace of the matador.

“Are you all right?” Roz watched him with a perplexed frown creasing her forehead. She didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t her problem, she kept telling herself, but she couldn’t just walk away from it.

Supposing he passed out?

“Surely there’s someone I can call,” she insisted.

“A friend. A neighbour.

Where do you live?” But she knew that. In the flat above, the young policeman had said.

“Jesus, woman,” he growled, ‘give it a rest, for Christ’s sake.”

“I’m only trying to help.”

“Is that what you call it? It sounded more like nagging to me.” He was alert suddenly, listening to something she couldn’t hear.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, alarmed by his expression.

“Did you lock the door after you?”

She stared at him.

“No. Of course I didn’t.”

He dowsed the lights and padded across to the entrance door, almost invisible in the sudden darkness. She heard the sound of bolts being thrust home.

“Look-‘ she began, getting off her stool.

He loomed up beside her and put an arm around her shoulder and a finger to her lips.

“Quiet, woman.” He held her motionless.

“But-‘ “Quiet!”

A car’s headlamps swept across the windows, slicing the darkness with white light. The engine throbbed in neutral for a moment or two, then the gears engaged and the vehicle drove away. Roz tried to draw away but Hawksley’s arm only gripped her more firmly.

“Not yet,” he whispered.

They stood in silent immobility among the tables, statues at a spectral feast. Roz shook herself free angrily.

“This is absolutely absurd,” she hissed.

“I don’t know what on earth is going on but I’m not staying like this for the rest of the night. Who was in that car?”

“Customers,” he said regretfully.

“You’re mad.”

He took her hand.

“Come on,” he whispered, ‘we’ll go upstairs.”

“We will not,” she said, snatching her hand away.

“My God, doesn’t anyone think about anything except screwing these days.”

Amused laughter fanned her face.

“Who said anything about screwing?”

“I’m going.”

“I’ll see you out.”

She took a deep breath.

“Why do you want to go upstairs?”

“My flat’s up there and I need a bath.”

“So what do you want me for?”

He sighed.

“If you remember, Rosalind, it was you who came in here asking for me.

I’ve never met a woman who was so damn prickly.”

“Prickly!” she stuttered.

“My God, that’s rich. You stink to high heaven, you’ve obviously been in a fight, you plunge us into total darkness, moan about not having any customers and then turn them away when they do come, make me sit for five minutes without moving, try to manhandle me upstairs….” She paused for breath.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she blurted out.

“Oh, great! That’s all I need.” He took her hand again.

“Come on. I’m not going to rape you. To tell you the truth I haven’t the strength at the moment. What’s wrong?”

She stumbled after him.

“I haven’t eaten all day.”

“Join the club.” He led her through the darkened kitchen and unlocked a side door, reaching past her to switch on some lights.

“Up the stairs,” he told her, ‘and the bathroom’s on the right.”

She could hear him double-locking the door behind her as she collapsed on the lavatory seat and pressed her head between her knees, waiting for the waves of nausea to pass.

The light came on.

“Here. Drink this. It’s water.” Hawksley squatted on the floor in front of her and looked into her white face. She had skin like creamy alabaster and eyes as dark as sloes. A very cold beauty, he thought.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“What?”

“Whatever’s making you so unhappy.”

She sipped the water.

“I’m not unhappy. I’m hungry.”

He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself upright.

“OK. Let’s eat. How does sirloin steak sound?”

She smiled weakly.

“Wonderful.”

“Thank God for that! I’ve got a freezer full of the flaming stuff. How do you like it?”

“Rare but-‘ “But what?”

She pulled a face.

“I think it’s the smell that’s making me sick.” She put her hands to her mouth.

“I’m sorry but I really think it would be better if you got cleaned up first. Mackerel-flavoured sirloin doesn’t appeal over much.”

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 civilised 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 naive 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…

FIVE

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 ifithy 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 head ache, 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.”

There was no insistence in Olive’s touch. It was a display of friendship, supportive, undemanding.

Roz squeezed the fat, warm fingers in acknowledgement then withdrew her hand. It’s not despair, she was going to say, just overwork and tiredness.

“I’d like to do what you did,” she said in a monotone, ‘and kill someone.” There was a long silence. Her own statement had shocked her.

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not? It’s the truth.”

“I doubt it. I haven’t the guts to kill anyone.”

Olive stared at her.

“That doesn’t stop you wanting to,” she said reasonably.

“No. But if you can’t summon the guts then I don’t think the will is really there.” She smiled distantly.

“I can’t even find the guts to kill myself and sometimes I see that as the only sensible option.”

“Why?”

Roz’s eyes were over bright.

“I hurt,” she said simply.

“I’ve been hurting for months.” But why was she telling Olive all this instead of the nice safe psychiatrist Iris had recommended? Because Olive would understand.

“Who do you want dead?” The question vibrated in the air between them like a tolled bell.

Roz thought about the wisdom of answering.

“My ex husband she said.

“Because he left you?”

“No.”

“What did he do?”

But Roz shook her head.

“If I tell you, you’ll try to persuade me I’m wrong to hate him.” She gave a strange laugh.

“And I need to hate him. Sometimes I think it’s the only thing that’s keeping me alive.”

“Yes,” said Olive evenly.

“I can understand that.” She breathed on the window and drew a gallows in the mist with her finger.

“You loved him once.” It was a statement, expecting no reply, but Roz felt compelled to answer.

“I can’t remember now.”

“You must have done.” The fat woman’s voice became a croon.

“You can’t hate what you never loved, you can only dislike it and avoid it. Real hate, like real love, consumes you.”

With a sweep of her large palm she wiped the gallows from the window.

“I suppose,” she went on, matter of factly, ‘you came to see me to find out whether murder is worth it.”

“I don’t know,” Roz said honestly.

“Hall the time I’m in limbo, the other hail I’m obsessed by anger. The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m slowly falling apart.”

Olive shrugged.

“Because it’s inside your head. Like I said, it’s bad to keep things bottled up. It’s a pity you’re not a Catholic. You could go to confession and feel better immediately.”

Such a simple solution had never occurred to Roz.

“I was a Catholic, once. I suppose I still am.”

Olive took another cigarette and placed it reverently between her lips like a consecrated wafer.

“Obsessions,” she murmured, reaching for a match, ‘are invariably destructive. That, at least, I have learnt.” She spoke sympathetically.

“You need more time before you can talk about it. I understand. You think I’ll pick at the scab and make you bleed again.”

Roz nodded.

You don’t trust people. You’re right. Trust has a way of rebounding.

I know about these things.”

Roz watched her light the cigarette.

“What was your obsession?”

She ificked Roz a strangely intimate look but didn’t answer.

“I needn’t write this book, you know, not if you don’t want me to.”

Olive smoothed her thin blonde hair with the back of her thumb.

“It’ll upset Sister Bridget if we give up now. I know you’ve seen her.”

“Does that matter?”

Olive shrugged.

“It might upset you if we give up now. Does that matter?”

She smiled suddenly and her whole face brightened. How very nice she looked, thought Roz.

“Maybe, maybe not,” she said.

“I’m not convinced myself that I want to write it.”

“Why not?”

Roz pulled a face.

“I should hate to turn you into a freak side-show.”

“Aren’t I that already?”

“In here perhaps. Not outside. They’ve forgotten all about you outside. It may be better to leave it that way.”

“What would persuade you to write it?”

“If you tell me why.”

The silence grew between them. Ominous.

“Have they found my nephew?” Olive asked at last.

“I don’t think so.” Roz frowned.

“How did you know they were looking for him?”

Olive gave a hearty chuckle.

“Cell telegraph.

Everyone knows everything in here. There’s bugger all else to do except mind other people’s business, and we all have solicitors and we all read the newspapers and everyone talks. I could have guessed anyway. My father left a lot of money. He would always leave it to family if he could.”

“I spoke to one of your neighbours, a Mr. Hayes. Do you remember him?” Olive nodded.

“If I understood him right, Amber’s child was adopted by some people called Brown who’ve since emigrated to Australia. I assume that’s why Mr. Crew’s firm is having so much difficulty in tracing him. Big place, cone on name.”

She waited for a moment but Olive didn’t say anything.

“Why do you want to know? Does it make a difference to you whether he’s found or not?”

“Maybe,” she said heavily.

“Why?”

Olive shook her head.

“Do you want him found?”

The door crashed open, startling them both.

“Time’s up, Sculptress. Come on, let’s be having you.” The officer’s voice boomed about the peaceful room, tearing the fabric of their precarious intimacy. Roz saw her own irritation reflected in Olive’s eyes. But the moment was lost.

She gave an involuntary wink.

“It’s true what they say, you know. Time does fly when you’re enjoying yourself. I’ll see you next week.” The huge woman lumbered awkwardly to her feet.

“My father was a very lazy man, which is why he let my mother rule the roost.” She rested a hand against the door jamb to balance herself.

“His other favourite saying, because it annoyed her so much, was: never do today what can always be done tomorrow.” She smiled faintly.

“As a result, of course, he was completely contemptible. The only allegiance he recognised was his allegiance to himself, but it was allegiance without responsibility. He should have studied existentialism.”

Her tongue lingered on the word.

“He would have learnt something about man’s imperative to choose and act wisely. We are all masters of our fate, Roz, including you.” She nodded briefly then turned away, drawing the prison officer and the metal chair into her laborious, shuffling wake.

Now what, Roz wondered, watching them, was that supposed to mean?

“Mrs. Wright?”

“Yes?” The young woman held the front door half open, a restraining hand hooked into her growling dog’s collar. She was pretty in a colourless sort of way, pale and fine drawn with large grey eyes and a swinging bob of straw-gold hair.

Roz offered her card.

“I’m writing a book about Olive Martin. Sister Bridget at your old convent school suggested you might be prepared to talk to me. She said you were the dos est friend Olive had there.”

Geraldine Wright made a pretence of reading the card then offered it back again.

“I don’t think so, thank you.” She said it in the sort of tone she might have used to a Jehovah’s Witness. She prepared to close the door.

Roz held it open with her hand.

“May I ask why not?”

“I’d rather not be involved.”

“I don’t need to mention you by name.” She smiled encouragingly.

“Please, Mrs. Wright. I won’t embarrass you. That’s not the way I work. It’s information I’m after, not exposure. No one will ever know you were connected with her, not through me or my book at least.” She saw a slight hesitancy in the other woman’s eyes.

“Ring Sister Bridget,” she urged.

“I know she’ll vouch for me.”

“Oh, I suppose it’s all right. But only for half an hour. I have to collect the children at three thirty.” She opened the door wide and pulled the dog away from it.

“Come in. The sitting room’s on the left. I’ll have to shut Boomer in the kitchen or he won’t leave us alone.”

Roz walked through into the sitting room, a pleasant, sunny space with wide patio doors opening out on to a small terrace. Beyond, a neat garden, carefully tended, merged effortlessly into a green field with distant cows.

“It’s a lovely view,” she said as Mrs. Wright joined her.

“We were lucky to get it,” said the other woman with some pride.

“The house was rather out of our price range, but the previous owner took a bridging loan on another property just before the interest rates went through the roof. He was so keen to be shot of this one we got it for twenty-five thousand less than he was asking. We’re very happy here.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Roz warmly.

“It’s a beautiful part of the world.”

“Let’s sit down.” She lowered herself gracefully into an armchair.

“I’m not ashamed of my friendship with Olive,” she excused herself.

“I just don’t like talking about it. People are SO persistent. They simply won’t accept that I knew nothing about the murders.” She examined her painted fingernails.

“I hadn’t seen her, you know, for at least three years before it happened and I certainly haven’t seen her since. I really can’t think what I can tell you that will be of any use.”

Roz made no attempt to record the conversation. She was afraid of scaring the woman.

“Tell me what she was like at school,” she said, taking out a pencil and notepad.

“Were you in the same form?”

“Yes, we both stayed on to do A-levels.”

“Did you like her?”

“Not much.” Geraldine sighed.

“That does sound unkind, doesn’t it? Look, you really won’t use my name, will you? I mean, if there’s a chance you will, I just won’t say any more. I should hate Olive to know how I really felt about her. It would be so hurtful.”

Of course it would, thought Roz, but why would you care?

She took some headed notepaper from her briefcase, wrote two sentences on it and signed it. “I, Rosalind Leigh, of the above address, agree to treat all information given to me by Mrs. Geraldine Wright of Oaktrees, Wooing, Hants, as confidential. I shall not reveal her as the source of any information, either verbally or in writing, now or at any time in the future.” There.

Will that do?” She forced a smile.

“You can sue me for a fortune if I break my word.”

“Oh dear, she’ll guess it’s me. I’m the only one she talked to.

At school, anyway.” She took the piece of paper.

“I don’t know.”

God, what a ditherer! It occurred to Roz then that Olive may well have found the friendship as unrewarding as Geraldine appeared to have done.

“Let me give you an idea of how I’ll use what you tell me, then you’ll see there’s nothing to worry about.

You’ve just said you didn’t like her much. That will end up in the book as something like: “Olive was never popular at school.” Can you go along with that?”

The woman brightened.

“Oh, yes. That’s absolutely true anyway.”

“OK. Why wasn’t she popular?”

“She never really fitted in, I suppose.”

“Why not?”

“Oh dear.” Geraldine shrugged irritatingly.

“Because she was fat, perhaps.”

This was going to be like drawing teeth, slow and extremely painful.

“Did she try to make friends or didn’t she bother?”

“She didn’t really bother. She hardly ever said anything, you know, just used to sit and stare at everyone else while they talked. People didn’t like that very much. To tell you the truth, I think we were all rather frightened of her. She was very much taller than the rest of us.”

“Was that the only reason she scared you? Her size?”

Geraldine thought back.

“It was a sort of overall thing. I don’t know how to describe it. She was very quiet. You could be talking to someone and you’d turn round to find her standing right behind you, staring at you.”

“Did she bully people?”

“Only if they were nasty to Amber.”

“And did that happen often?”

“No. Everyone liked Amber.”

“OK.” Roz tapped her pencil against her teeth.

“You say you were the only one Olive spoke to. What sort of things did you talk about?”

Geraldine plucked at her skirt.

“Just things,” she said unhelpfully.

“I can’t remember now.”

“The sort of things all girls talk about at school.”

“Well, yes, I suppose so.”

Roz gritted her teeth.

“So you discussed sex, and boys, and clothes, and make-up?”

“Well, yes,” she said again.

“I find that hard to believe, Mrs. Wright. Not unless she’s changed a great deal in ten years. I’ve met her, you know. She’s not remotely interested in trivia and she doesn’t like talking about herself. She wants to know about me and what Ido.”

“That’s probably because she’s in prison and you’re her only visitor.”

“I’m not, in actual fact. Also, I am told that most prisoners do the exact opposite when someone visits them. They talk about themselves nineteen to the dozen because it’s the only time they get a sympathetic hearing.” She raised a speculative eyebrow.

“I think it’s Olive’s nature to quiz the person she’s talking to. I suspect she’s always done it, and that’s why none of you liked her very much. You probably thought she was nosy.”

Pray God, I’m right, she thought, because this one, who’s about as manipulable as putty, will say I am regardless.

“How funny,” said Geraldine.

“Now you mention it, she did ask a lot of questions. She was always wanting to know about my parents, whether they held hands and kissed, and whether I’d ever heard them making love.” She turned her mouth down.

“Yes, I remember now, that’s why I didn’t like her. She was forever trying to find out how often my parents had sex, and she used to push her face up close when she asked, and stare.” She gave a small shudder.

“I used to hate that. She had such greedy eyes.”

“Did you tell her?”

“About my parents?” Geraldine sniggered.

“Not the truth, certainly. I didn’t know myself. Whenever she asked, I always said, yes, they’d had sex the night before, just to get away from her. Everyone did. It became a silly sort of game in the end.”

“Why did she want to know?”

The woman shrugged.

“I always thought it was because she had a dirty mind. There’s a woman in the village who’s just the same. The first thing she says to anyone is, “Tell me all the gossip,” and her eyes light up. I hate that sort of thing. She’s the last person to hear what’s going on, of course.

She puts people’s backs up.”

Roz thought for a moment.

“Did Olive’s parents kiss and cuddle?”

“Lord, no!”

“You’re very certain.”

“Well, of course. They loathed each other. My mother said they only stayed together because he was too lazy to move out and she was too mercenary to let him.”

“So Olive was looking for reassurance?”

“I’m sorry?”

“When she asked you about your parents,” said Roz coolly, ‘she was looking for reassurance. The poor kid was trying to find out if hers were the only ones who didn’t get on.”

“Oh,” said Geraldine in surprise.

“Do you think so?” She made a pretty little moue with her lips.

“No,” she said, “I’m sure you’re wrong. It was the sex bits she wanted to know about. I told you, her eyes had a greedy look.”

Roz let this pass.

“Did she tell lies?”

“Yes, that was another thing.” Memories chased themselves across her face.

“She was always lying.

How odd, I’d forgotten that. In the end, you know, nobody ever believed anything she said.”

“What did she lie about?”

“Everything.”

“What in particular? Herself? Other people? Her parents?”

“Everything.” She saw the impatience in Roz’s face.

“Oh dear, it’s so hard to explain. She told stories. I mean, she couldn’t open her mouth without telling stories. Oh dear, let me see now. All right, she used to talk about boyfriends that didn’t exist, and she said the family had been on holiday to France one summer but it turned out they’d stayed at home, and she kept talking about her dog, but everyone knew she didn’t have a dog.” She pulled a face.

“And she used to cheat, of course, all the time. It was really annoying that. She’d steal your homework out of your satchel when you weren’t looking and crib your ideas.”

“She was bright, though, wasn’t she? She got three A-levels.”

“She passed them all but I don’t think her grades were anything to shout home about.” It was said with a touch of malice.

“Anyway, if she was so bright, why couldn’t she get herself a decent job? My mother said it was embarrassing going to Pettit’s and being served by Olive.”

Roz looked away from the colourless face to gaze out over the view from the window. She let some moments pass while COmmon sense battled with the angry reproaches that were clamouring inside her head. After all, she thought, she could be wrong. And yet… And yet it seemed so clear to her that Olive must have been a deeply unhappy child. She forced herself to smile.

“Olive was obviously closer to you than anyone else, except, perhaps, her sister. Why do you think that was?”

“Oh, goodness, I haven’t a clue. My mother says it’s because I reminded her of Amber. I couldn’t see it myself, but it’s true that people who saw the three of us together always assumed Amber was my sister and not Olive’s.” She thought back.

“Mother’s probably right. Olive stopped following me around quite so much when Amber joined the school.”

“That must have been a relief.” There was a certain acidity in her tone, mercifully lost on Geraldine.

“I suppose so. Except’ she added this as a wistful afterthought ‘nobody dared tease when Olive was with me.”

Roz watched her for a moment.

“Sister Bridget said Olive was devoted to Amber.”

“She was. But then everyone liked Amber.”

“Why?”

Geraldine shrugged.

“She was nice.”

Roz laughed suddenly.

“To be frank, Amber’s beginning to get up my nose. She sounds too damn good to be true. What was so special about her?”

“Oh dear.” She frowned in recollection.

“Mother said it was because she was willing. People put on her, but she never seemed to mind. She smiled a lot, of course.”

Roz drew her cherub doodle on the notepad and thought about the unwanted pregnancy.

“How was she put upon?”

“I suppose she just wanted to please. It was only little things, like lending out her pencils and running errands for the nuns. I needed a clean sports shirt once for a net ball match, so I borrowed Amber’s.

That sort of thing.”

“Without asking?”

Surprisingly, Geraldine blushed.

“You didn’t need to, not with Amber. She never minded. It was only Olive who got angry. She was perfectly beastly about that sports shirt.” She looked at the clock.

“I shall have to go. It’s getting late.” She stood up.

“I haven’t been very helpful, I’m afraid.”

“On the contrary,” said Roz, pushing herself out of her chair, ‘you’ve been extremely helpful. Thank you very much.”

They walked into the hall together.

“Did it never seem odd to you,” Roz asked as Geraldine opened the front door, ‘that Olive should kill her sister?”

“Well, yes, of course it did. I was terribly shocked.”

“Shocked enough to wonder if she actually did it?

In view of all you’ve said about their relationship it seems a very unlikely thing for her to do.”

The wide grey eyes clouded with uncertainty.

“How strange. That’s just what my mother always said. But if she didn’t do it, then why did she say she did?”

‘1 don’t know. Perhaps because she makes a habit of protecting people.” She smiled in a friendly way.

“Would your mother be prepared to talk to me, do you think?”

“Oh Lord, I shouldn’t think so. She hates anyone even knowing I was at school with Olive.”

“Will you ask her anyway? And if she agrees, phone me at that number on the card.”

Geraldine shook her head.

“It would be a waste of time. She won’t agree.”

“Fair enough.” Roz stepped through the door and on to the gravel.

“What a lovely house this is,” she said with enthusiasm, looking up at the clematis over the porch.

“Where were you living before?”

The other woman grimaced theatrically.

“A nasty modern box on the outskirts of Dawlington.”

Roz laughed.

“So coming here was by way of a culture shock.” She opened the car door.

“Do you ever go back to Dawlington?”

“Oh, yes,” said the other.

“My parents still live there. I see them once a week.”

Roz tossed her bag and briefcase on to the back seat.

“They must be very proud of you.” She held out a hand.

“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Wright, and please don’t worry, I shall be very careful how I use the information you’ve given me.” She lowered herself on to the driver’s seat and pulled the door to.

“There’s just one last thing,” she said through the open window, her dark eyes guileless.

“Can I have your maiden name so I can cross you off the school list Sister Bridget gave me? I don’t want to go troubling you again by mistake.”

“Hopwood,” said Geraldine helpfully.

It wasn’t difficult to locate Mrs. Hopwood. Roz drove to the library in Dawlington and consulted the local telephone directory. There were three Hopwoods with Dawlington addresses. She made a note of these with their numbers, found a telephone box and rang each in turn, claiming to be an old friend of Geraldine’s and asking to speak to her.

The first two denied any knowledge of such a person, the last, a man’s voice, told her that Geraldine had married and was now living in Wooling.

He gave her Geraldine’s telephone number and told her, rather sweetly, how nice it had been to talk to her again. Roz smiled as she put down the receiver. Geraldine, she thought, took after her father.

This impression was forcibly confirmed when Mrs. Hopwooci rattled her safety chain into place and opened the front door.

She eyed Roz with deep suspicion.

“Yes?” she demanded.

“Mrs. Hopwood?”

“Yes.”

Roz had planned a simple cover story but, seeing the hard glint in the woman’s eyes, decided to abandon it. Mrs. Hopwood was not the type to take kindly to flannel.

“I’m afraid I bamboozled your daughter and your husband into giving away this address,” she said with a slight smile.

“My name’s-‘ “Rosalind Leigh and you’re writing a book about Olive. I know. I’ve just had Geraldine on the phone. It didn’t take her long to put two and two together. I’m sorry but I can’t help you. I hardly knew the girl.” But she didn’t close the door. Something curiosity? kept her there.

“You know her better than I do, Mrs. Hopwood.”

“But I haven’t chosen to write a book about her, young woman. Nor would I.”

“Not even if you thought she was innocent?”

Mrs. Hopwood didn’t answer.

“Supposing she didn’t do it? You’ve considered that, haven’t you?”

“It’s not my affair.” She started to close the door.

“Then whose affair is it, for God’s sake?” demanded Roz, suddenly angry.

“Your daughter paints a picture of two sisters, both of whom were so insecure that one told lies and cheated to give herself some status and the other was afraid to say no in case people didn’t like her. What the hell was happening to them at home to make them like that? And where were you then? Where was anybody? The only real friend either of them had was the other.” She saw the thin compression of the woman’s lips through the gap in the door and she shook her head contemptuously.

“Your daughter misled me, I’m afraid. From something she said I thought you might be a Samaritan.” She smiled coldly.

“I see you’re a Pharisee, after all. Goodbye, Mrs. Hopwood.”

The other clicked her tongue impatiently.

“You’d better come in, but I’m warning you, I shall insist on a transcript of this interview. I will not have words put into my mouth afterwards simply to fit some sentimental view you have of Olive.”

Roz produced her tape-recorder.

“I’ll tape the whole thing. If you have a recorder you can tape it at the same time, or I can send you a copy of mine.”

Mrs. Hopwood nodded approval as she unhooked the chain and opened the door.

“We have our own. My husband can set it up while I make a cup of tea.

Come in, and wipe your feet, please.”

Ten minutes later they were ready. Mrs. Hopwood took natural control.

“The easiest way is for me to tell you everything I remember. When I’ve finished you can ask me questions.

Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“I said I hardly knew Olive. That’s true. She came here perhaps five or six times in all, twice to Geraldine’s birthday parties, and on three or four occasions to tea. I didn’t take to her. She was a clumsy girl, slow, impossible to talk to, lacking in humour, and, frankly, extremely unattractive. This may sound harsh and unkind but there you are you can’t pretend feelings that you don’t have. I wasn’t sorry when her friendship with Geraldine died a natural death.” She paused to collect her thoughts.

“After that, I really had very little to do with her. She never came to this house again. I heard stories, of course, from Geraldine and Geraldine’s friends. The impression I formed was very much along the lines you set out earlier a sad, unloved, and unlovely child, who had resorted to boasting about holidays she hadn’t taken and boyfriends she didn’t have to make up for unhappiness at home. The cheating, I think, was the result of her mother’s constant pressure to do well, as indeed was the compulsive eating. She was always plump but during her adolescence her eating habits became pathological.

According to Geraldine, she used to steal food from the school kitchen and cram it, in its entirety, into her mouth, as if she were afraid someone would take it away from her before she had finished.

“Now, you would interpret this behaviour, I imagine, as a symptom of a troubled home background.” She looked enquiringly at Roz, who nodded.

“Yes, well, I think I’d agree with you. It wasn’t natural, and nor was Amber’s submissiveness, although I must stress I never witnessed either girl in action, so to speak. I am relating only what I was told by Geraldine and her friends. In any event, it did trouble me, mostly because I had met Gwen and Robert Martin when I went to collect Geraldine on the few occasions she was invited to their house. They were a very strange couple. They hardly spoke.

He lived in a downstairs room at the back of the house and she and the two girls lived at the front. As far as I could make out, virtually all contact between them was conducted through Olive and Amber.” Seeing Roz’s expression, she stopped.

“No one’s told you this yet?”

Roz shook her head.

“I never did know how many people were aware of it. She kept up appearances, of course, and, frankly, had Geraldine not told me she had seen a bed in Mr. Martin’s study, I wouldn’t have guessed what was going on.” She wrinkled her brow.

“But it’s always the way, isn’t it? Once you begin to suspect something, then everything you see confirms that suspicion.

They were never together, except at the odd parents’ evening, and then there would always be a third party with them, usually one of the teachers.” She smiled self-consciously.

“I used to watch them, you know, not out of malice my husband will confirm that but just to prove myself wrong.” She shook her head.

“I came to the conclusion that they simply loathed each other. And it wasn’t just that they never spoke, they couldn’t bring themselves to exchange anything touches, glances anything. Does that make sense to you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Roz with feeling.

“Hatred has as strong a body language as love.”

“It was she, I think, who was the instigator of it all. I’ve always assumed he must have had an affair which she found out about, though I must stress I don’t know that. He was a nice looking man, very easy to talk to, and, of course, he got out and about with his job. Whereas she, as far as I could see, had no friends at all, a few acquaintances perhaps, but one never came across her socially. She was a very controlled woman, cold and unemotional. Really rather unpleasant.

Certainly not the type one could ever grow fond of.” She was silent for a moment.

“Olive was very much her daughter, of Course, both in looks and personality, and Amber his. Poor Olive,” she said with genuine compassion.

“She did have very little going for her.”

Mrs. Hopwood looked at Roz and sighed heavily.

“You asked me earlier where I was while all this was going on. I was bringing up my own children, my dear, and if you have any yourself you will know it’s hard enough to cope with them, let alone interfere with someone else’s. I do regret now that I didn’t say anything at the time, but, really, what could I have done? In any case, I felt it was the school’s responsibility.” She spread her hands.

“But there you are, it’s so easy with hindsight, and who could possibly have guessed that Olive would do what she did? I don’t suppose anyone realised just how disturbed she was.” She dropped her hands to her lap and looked helplessly at her husband.

Mr. Hopwood pondered for a moment.

“Still,” he said slowly, ‘there’s no point pretending we’ve ever believed she killed Amber. I went to the police about that, you know, told them I thought it was very unlikely. They said my disquiet was based on out-of-date information.” He sucked his teeth.

“Which of course waA true. It was five years or so since we’d had any dealings with the family, and in five years the sisters could well have learned to dislike each other.” He fell silent.

“But if Olive didn’t kill Amber,” Roz prompted, ‘then who did?”

“Gwen,” he said with surprise, as if it went without saying.

He smoothed his white hair.

“We think Olive walked in on her mother battering Amber. That would have been quite enough to send her berserk, assuming she had retained her fondness for the girl.”

“Was Gwen capable of doing such a thing?”

They looked at each other.

“We’ve always thought so,” said Mr. Hopwood.

“She was very hostile towards Amber, probably because Amber was so like her father.”

“What did the police say?” asked Roz.

“I gather Robert Martin had already suggested the same thing.

They put it to Olive and she denied it.”

Roz stared at him.

“You’re saying Olive’s father told the police that he thought his wife had battered his younger daughter to death and that Olive then killed her mother?”

He nodded.

“God!” she breathed.

“His solicitor never said a word about that.” She thought for a moment.

“It implies, you know, that Gwen had battered the child before. No man would make an accusation like that unless he had grounds for it, would he?”

“Perhaps he just shared our disbelief that Olive could kill her sister.”

Roz chewed her thumbnail and stared at the carpet.

“She claimed in her statement that her relationship with her sister had never been close. Now, I might go along with that if I accept that in the years after school they drifted apart, but I can’t go along with it if her own father thought they were still so close that Olive would kill to revenge her.” She shook her head.

“I’m damn sure Olive’s barrister never got to hear about this. The poor man was trying to conjure a defence out of thin air.” She looked up.

“Why did Robert Martin give up on it? Why did he let her plead guilty?

According to her she did it to spare him the anguish of a trial.”

Mr. Hopwood shook his head.

“I really couldn’t say. We never saw him again. Presumably, he somehow became convinced of her guilt.” He massaged arthritic fingers.

“The problem for all of us is trying to accept that a person we know is capable of doing something so horrible, perhaps because it shows up the fallibility of our judgement. We knew her before it happened. You, I imagine, have met her since. In both cases, we have failed to see the flaw in her character that led her to murder her mother and sister, and we look for excuses. In the end, though, I don’t think there are any.

It’s not as if the police had to beat her confession out of her. As far as I understand it, it was they who insisted she wait till her solicitor was present.”

Roz frowned.

“And yet you’re still troubled by it.”

He smiled slightly.

“Only when someone pops up to stir the dregs again. By and large we rarely think about it. There’s no getting away from the fact that she signed a confession saying she did it.”

“People are always confessing to crimes they didn’t commit,” countered Roz bluntly.

“Timothy Evans was hanged for his confession, while downstairs Christie went on burying his victims under the floorboards. Sister Bridget said Olive lied about everything, you and your daughter have both cited lies she told. What makes you think she was telling the truth in this one instance?”

They didn’t say anything.

“I’m so sorry,” said Roz with an apologetic smile.

“I don’t mean to harangue you. I just wish I understood what it was all about. There are so many inconsistencies. I mean why, for example, did Robert Martin stay in the house after the deaths?

You’d expect him to move heaven and earth to get out of it.”

“You must talk to the police,” said Mr. Hopwood.

“They know more about it than anyone.”

“Yes,” Roz said quietly, “I must.” She picked up her cup and saucer from the floor and put them on the table.

“Can I ask you three more things? Then I’ll leave you in peace. First, is there anyone else you can think of who might be able to help me?”

Mrs. Hopwood shook her head.

“I really know very little about her after she left school. You’ll have to trace the people she worked with.”

“Fair enough. Second, did you know that Amber had a baby when she was thirteen years old?” She read the astonishment in their faces.

“Good Heavens!” said Mrs. Hopwood.

“Quite. Third…” She paused for a moment, remembering Graham Deedes’ amused reaction. Was it fair to make Olive a figure of fun?

“Third,” she repeated firmly, “Gwen persuaded Olive to have an abortion. Do you know anything about that?”

Mrs. Hopwood looked thoughtful.

“Would that have been at the beginning of eighty-seven?”

Roz, unsure how to answer, nodded.

“I was having problems of my own with a prolonged menopause,” said Mrs.

Hopwood, matter of factly.

“I bumped into her and Gwen quite by chance at the hospital. It was the last time I saw them. Gwen was very jumpy. She tried to pretend they were there for a gynaecological reason of her own but I couldn’t help noticing that it was clearly Olive who had the problem. The poor girl was in tears.” She tut-tutted crossly.

“What a mistake not to let her have it. It explains the murders, of course. They must have happened around the time the baby would have been due. No wonder she was disturbed.”

Roz drove back to Leven Road. This time the door to number 22 stood ajar and a young woman was clipping the low hedge that bordered the front garden. Roz drew her car into the kerb and stepped out.

“Hi,” she said, holding out her hand and shaking the other’s firmly.

Immediate, friendly contact, she hoped, would stop this woman barring the door to her as her neighbour had done.

“I’m Rosalind Leigh. I came the other day but you were out. I can see your time’s precious so I won’t stop you working, but can we talk while you’re doing it?”

The young woman shrugged as she resumed her clipping.

“If you’re selling anything, and that includes religion, then you’re wasting your time.”

“I want to talk about your house.”

“Oh, Christ!” said the other in disgust.

“Sometimes I wish we’d never bought the flaming thing. What are you?

Psychical bloody research? They’re all nutters. They seem to think the kitchen is oozing with ectoplasm or something equally disgusting.”

“No. Far more earthbound. I’m writing a follow-up report on the Olive Martin case.”

“Why?”

“There are some unanswered questions. Like, for example, why did Robert Martin remain here after the murders?”

“And you’re expecting me to answer that?” She snorted.

“I never even met him. He was long dead before we moved in.

You should talk to old Hayes’ she jerked her head towards the adjoining garages ‘he’s the only one who knew the family.”

“I have talked to him. He doesn’t know either.” She glanced towards the open front door but all she could see was an expanse of peach wall and a triangle of russet carpet.

“I gather the house has been gutted and redecorated. Did you do that yourselves or did you buy it after it was done?”

“We did it ourselves. My old man’s in the building trade. Or was,” she corrected herself.

“He was made redundant ten, twelve months ago. We were lucky, managed to sell our other house without losing too much, and bought this for a song. Did it without a mortgage, too, so we’re not struggling the way some other poor sods are.”

“Has he found another job?” Roz asked sympathetically.

The young woman shook her head.

“Hardly. Building’s all he knows and there’s precious little of that at the moment. Still, he’s trying his best. Can’t do more than that, can he?” She lowered the shears.

“I suppose you’re wondering if we found anything when we gutted the house.”

Roz nodded.

“Something like that.”

“If we had, we’d have told someone.”

“Of course, but I wouldn’t have expected you to find anything incriminating. I was thinking more in terms of impressions. Did the place look loved, for example? Is that why he stayed?

Because he loved it?”

The woman shook her head.

“I reckon it was more of a prison. I can’t swear to it because I don’t know for sure, but my guess is he only used one room and that was the room downstairs at the back, the one that was attached to the kitchen and the cloakroom with its own door into the garden. Maybe he went through to the kitchen to cook, but I doubt it. The connecting door was locked and we never found the key. Plus, there was an ancient Baby Being still plugged into one of the sockets in that room, which the house clearers couldn’t be bothered to take, and my bet is he did all his cooking on that.

The garden was nice. I think he lived in the one room and the garden, and never went into the rest of the house at all.”

“Because the door was locked?”

“No, because of the nicotine. The windows were so thick with it that the glass looked yellow. And the ceiling’ she pulled a face ‘was dark brown. The smell of old tobacco was overpowering. He must have smoked non-stop in there. It was disgusting. But there were no nicotine stains anywhere else in the house. If he ever went beyond the connecting door, then it can’t have been for very long.”

Roz nodded.

“He died of a heart attack.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Would you object to my taking a look inside?”

“There’s no point. It’s completely different. We knocked out any walls that weren’t structural and changed the whole layout downstairs.

If you want to know what it looked like when he was here, then I’ll draw you a plan. But you don’t come in. If I say yes to you, then there’s no end to it, is there? Any Tom, Dick, or Harry can demand to put his foot through our door.”

“Point taken. A plan would be more helpful, anyway.” She reached into the car for a notepad and pencil and passed it across.

“It’s much nicer now,” said the self-possessed young woman, drawing with swift strokes.

“We’ve opened up the rooms and put some colour into them. Poor Mrs.

Martin had no idea at all. I think, you know, she was probably rather boring. There.” She passed the notepad back.

“That’s the best I can do.”

“Thank you,” said Roz studying the plan.

“Why do you think Mrs. Martin was boring?”

“Because everything walls, doors, ceilings, everything was painted white. It was like an operating theatre, cold and antiseptic, without a spot of colour. And she didn’t have pictures either, because there were no marks on the walls.” She shuddered.

“I don’t like houses like that. They never look lived in.”

Roz smiled as she glanced up at the red-brick facade.

“I’m glad it’s you who bought it. I should think it feels lived in flow. I don’t believe in ghosts myself.”

“Put it this way, if you want to see ghosts, you’ll see them.

If you don’t, you won’t.” She tapped the side of her head.

“It’s all in the mind. My old dad used to see pink elephants but no one ever thought his house was haunted.”

Roz was laughing as she drove away.

SIX

The car park of the Poacher was as deserted as before but this time itw as three o’clock in the afternoon, lunchtime was over, and the door was bolted. Roz tapped on the window pane but, getting no response, made her way round to the alley at the back where the kitchen door must be.

It stood ajar and from inside came the sound of singing.

“Hello,” she called.

“Sergeant Hawksley?” She put her hand on the door to push it wider and almost lost her balance when it was whipped away from her.

“You did that on purpose!” she snapped.

“I could have broken my arm.”

“Good God, woman,” he said in mock disgust.

“Can’t you open your mouth without nagging? I’m beginning to think I did my ex-wife an injustice.” He crossed his arms, a fish slice dangling from one hand.

“What do you want this time?”

He had a peculiar talent for putting her at a disadvantage. She bit back an angry retort.

“I’m sorry,” she said instead.

“It’s just that I nearly fell over. Look, are you busy at the moment or can I come in and talk to you?” She examined his face warily for signs of further damage but there were none that hadn’t been there before.

“I’m busy.”

“What if I came back in an hour? Could you talk then?”

“Maybe.”

She gave a rueful smile.

“I’il try again at four.”

He watched her walk up the alleyway.

“What are you going to do for an hour?” he called after her.

She turned round.

“I expect I’il sit in the car. I’ve some flotes to work on.”

He swung the fish slice.

“I’m cooking steak au poivre with some lightly steamed vegetables and potatoes fried in butter.”

“Bully for you,” she said.

“There’s enough for two.”

She smiled.

“Is that an invitation or a refined form of torture?”

“It’s an invitation.”

She came back slowly.

“Actually, I’m starving.”

A slight smile warmed his face.

“So what’s new?” He took her into the kitchen and pulled out a chair at the table. He eyed her critically as he turned the gas up under some simmering pans.

“You look as if you haven’t had a square meal in days.”

“I haven’t.” She recalled what the young policeman had said.

“Are you a good cook?”

He turned his back on her without answering, and she regretted the question. Talking to Hawksley was almost as intimidating as talking to Olive. She couldn’t speak, it seemed, without treading on a nerve.

Except for a muted thank you when he poured her a glass of wine she sat in uncomfortable silence for five minutes, wondering how to open the conversation. She was highly doubtful that he would greet her proposed book on Olive with any enthusiasm.

He placed the steaks on warmed plates, surrounded them with fried whole potatoes, steamed mange tout and baby carrots, and garnished them with the juices from the pan.

“There,” he said, whisking a plate in front of Roz, apparently unaware of her discomfort, ‘that’ll put some colour in your cheeks.” He sat down and attacked his own plate.

“Well, come on, woman. What are you waiting for?”

“A knife and fork.”

“Ah!” He pulled open a drawer in the table and slid some cutlery across.

“Now, get stuck in and don’t yatter while you’re eating. Food should be enjoyed for its own sake.”

She needed no further bidding but set to with a will.

“Fabulous,” she said at last, pushing her empty plate to one side with a sigh of contentment.

“Absolutely fabulous.”

He arched a sardonic eyebrow.

“So what’s the verdict? Can I cook or can I cook?”

She laughed.

“You can cook. May I ask you something?”

He filled her empty glass.

“If you must.”

“If I hadn’t turned up would you have eaten all that yourself?”

“I might have drawn the line at one steak.” He paused.

“Then again I might not. I’ve no bookings for tonight and they don’t keep. I’d probably have eaten them both.”

She heard the trace of bitterness in his voice.

“How much longer can you stay open without customers?” she asked incautiously.

He ignored the question.

“You said you wanted to talk to me,” he reminded her.

“What about?”

She nodded. Apparently, he had no more desire than she to lick wounds in public.

“Olive Martin,” she told him.

“I’m writing a book about her. I believe you were one of the arresting officers.”

He didn’t answer immediately but sat looking at her over the rim of his wine glass.

“Why Olive Martin?”

“She interests me.” It was impossible to gauge his reaction.

“Of course.” He shrugged.

“She did something completely horrific. You’d be very unnatural if you didn’t find her interesting. Have you met her?”

She nodded.

“And?”

“I like her.”

“Only because you’re naive.” He stretched his long arms towards the ceiling, cracking the joints in his shoulders.

“You steeled yourself to delve in the sewer, expecting to pull out a monster, and you’ve landed yourself something comparatively pleasant instead. Olive’s not unusual in that. Most criminals are pleasant most of the time. Ask any prison officer. They know better than anyone that the penal system relies almost entirely on the goodwill of the prisoners.” His eyes narrowed.

“But Olive hacked two completely innocent women to death. The fact that she presents a human face to you now doesn’t make what she did any less horrific.”

“Have I said it does?”

“You’re writing a book about her. Even if you castigate her, she will still be something of a celebrity.” He leaned forward, his tone unfriendly.

“But what about her mother and sister?

Where is the justice for them in giving their murderer the thrill and the kudos of being written about?”

Roz dropped her eyes.

“It does worry me,” she admitted.

“No, that’s wrong.” She looked up.

“It did worry me. I’m a little more sure now of where I’m heading. But I take your point about her victims. It’s all too easy to focus on Olive. She’s alive and they’re dead, and the dead are difficult to recreate.

You have to rely on what other people tell you, and just as their perceptions at the time were not always accurate, neither are their memories now.” She sighed.

“I still have reservations there’s no point in pretending I don’t but I need to understand what happened that day before I can make up my mind.” She fingered the stem of her wine glass.

“I think I may very well be naive but I’d need convincing that that is a bad thing. I could argue, with considerable justification, that anyone delving regularly in sewers must come up jaundiced.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He was amused.

She looked at him again.

“That what Olive did shocks you but doesn’t surprise you. You’ve known, or known of, other people who’ve done similar things before.”

“So?”

“So you never established why she did it. Whereas I, being naive’ she held his gaze ‘am surprised as well as shocked and I want to know why.”

He frowned.

“It’s all in her statement. I can’t remember the exact details now, but she resented not being given a birthday party, I think, and then blew a fuse when her mother got angry with her for persuading the sister to ring in sick the next day.

Domestic violence erupts over the most trivial things. Olive’s motives were rather more substantial than some I’ve known.”

Roz bent down to open her briefcase.

“I’ve a copy of her statement here.” She handed it across and waited while he read it through.

“I can’t see your problem,” he said at last.

“She makes it dear as crystal why she did it. She got angry, hit them, and then didn’t know how to dispose of the bodies.”

“That’s what she says, I agree, but it doesn’t mean it’s true.

There’s at least one blatant lie in that statement and possibly two.”

She tapped her pencil on the table.

“In the first paragraph she says that her relationship with her mother and sister had never been close but that’s been flatly contradicted by everyone I’ve spoken to. They all say she was devoted to Amber.”

He frowned again.

“What’s the other lie?”

She leaned over with her pencil and put a line by one of the middle paragraphs.

“She says she held a mirror to their lips to see if there was any mist.

According to her, there wasn’t, so she proceeded to dismember the bodies.” She turned the pages over.

“But here, according to the pathologist, Mrs. Martin put up a struggle to defend herself before her throat was cut. Olive makes no mention of that in her statement.”

He shook his head.

“That doesn’t mean a damn thing. Either she decided to put a gloss on the whole affair out of belated shame, or shock simply blotted the less acceptable bits out of her memory.”

“And the lie about not getting on with Amber? How do you explain that away?”

“Do I need to? The confession was completely voluntary. We even made her wait until her solicitor arrived to avoid any hint of police pressure.” He drained his glass.

“And you’re not going to try and argue that an innocent woman would confess to a crime like this?”

“It’s happened before.”

“Only after days of police interrogation and then, when it comes to the trial, they plead not guilty and deny their statement.

Olive did neither.” He looked amused.

“Take it from me, she was so damned relieved to get it all off her chest she couldn’t confess fast enough.”

“How? Did she deliver a monologue or did you have to ask questions?”

He clasped his hands behind his neck.

“Unless she’s changed a great deal I should imagine you’ve already discovered that Olive doesn’t volunteer information easily.” He cocked his head enquiringly.

“We had to ask questions but she answered them readily enough.” He looked thoughtful.

“For most of the time she sat and stared at us as if she were trying to engrave our faces on her memory. To be honest, I live in terror of her getting out and doing to me what she did to her family.”

“Five minutes ago you described her as comparatively pleasant.”

He rubbed his jaw.

“Comparatively pleasant as far as you were concerned,” he corrected her.

“But you were expecting something inhuman, which is why you find it difficult to be objective.”

Roz refused to be drawn again down this blind alley. Instead she took her recorder from her briefcase and put it on the table.

“Can I tape this conversation?”

“I haven’t agreed to talk to you yet.” He stood up abruptly and filled a kettle with water. You’d do better,” he said after a moment, ‘to ring Detective Sergeant Wyatt. He was there when she gave her statement, and he’s still on the Force. Coffee?”

“Please.” She watched him select a dark Arabica and spoon the grounds into a cafetiere.

“I really would rather talk to you,” she said evenly.

“Policemen are notoriously difficult to pin down. It could take me weeks to get an interview with him. I won’t quote you, I won’t even name you, if you’d rather I didn’t, and you can read the final draught before it goes to print.” She gave a hollow laugh.

“Assuming it ever gets that far. What you say may persuade me not to write it.”

He looked at her, absentmindedly scratching his chest through his shirt, then made up his mind.

“All right. I’ll tell you as much as I can remember but you’ll have to double check everything. It’s a long time ago and I can’t vouch for my memory. Where do I start?”

“With her telephone call to the police.”

He waited for the kettle to boil, then filled the cafetiere and placed it on the table.

“It wasn’t a 999 call. She looked up the number in the book and dialled the desk.” He shook his head, remembering.

“It started out as a farce because the sergeant on duty couldn’t make head or tail of what she was saying.”

He was shrugging into his jacket at the end of his shift when the desk sergeant came in and handed him a piece of paper with an address on it.

“Do me a favour, Hal, and check this out on your way home. It’s Leven Road. You virtually pass it. Some madwoman’s been bawling down the phone about chicken legs on her kitchen floor.” He pulled a face.

“Wants a policeman to take them away.” He grinned.

“Presumably she’s a vegetarian.

You’re the cookery expert. Sort it out, there’s a good chap.”

Hawksley eyed him suspiciously.

“Is this a wind-up?”

“No. Scout’s honour.” He chuckled.

“Look, she’s obviously a mental case. They’re all over the place, poor sods, since the Government chucked ‘em on to the streets. Just do as she asks or we’ll have her phoning all night. It’ll take you five minutes out of your way.”

Olive Martin, red eyed from weeping, opened the door to him. She smelt strongly of B. O. and her bulky shoulders were hunched in unattractive despair. So much blood was smeared over her baggy T-shirt and trousers that it took on the property of an abstract pattern and his eyes hardly registered it. And why should they? He had no premonition of the horror in store.

“DS.

Hawksley,” he said with an encouraging smile, showing her his card.

“You rang the police station.”

She stepped back, holding the door open.

“They’re in the kitchen.” She pointed down the corridor.

“On the floor.”

“OK. We’ll go down and have a look. What’s your name, love?”

“Olive.”

“Right, Olive, you lead the way. Let’s see what’s upset you.”

Would it have been better to know what was in there?

Probably not. He often thought afterwards that he could never have entered the room at all if he’d been told in advance that he was about to step into a human abattoir. He stared in horror at the butchered bodies, the axe, the blood that ran in rivers across the floor, and his shock was so great that he could hardly breathe for the iron fist that thrust against his diaphragm and squeezed the breath from his lungs.

The room reeked of blood.

He leant against the door jamb and sucked desperately at the sickly, cloying air, before bolting down the corridor and retching over and over again into the tiny patch of front garden.

Olive sat on the stairs and watched him, her fat moon face as white and pasty as his.

“You should have brought a friend,” she told him miserably.

“It wouldn’t have been so bad if there’d been two of you.”

He held a handkerchief to his lips as he used his radio to summon assistance. While he spoke he eyed her warily, registering the blood all over her clothes. Nausea choked him.

Jesus JESUS! How mad was she? Mad enough to take the axe to him?

“For God’s sake, make it quick,” he shouted into the mouthpiece.

“This is an emergency.” He stayed outside, too frightened to go back in.

She looked at him stolidly.

“I won’t hurt you. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

He mopped at his forehead.

“Who are they, Olive?”

“My mother and sister.” Her eyes slid to her hands.

“We had a row.”

His mouth was dry with shock and fear.

“Best not talk about it,” he said.

Tears rolled down her fat cheeks.

“I didn’t mean it to happen.

We had a row. My mother got so angry with me. Should I give my statement now?”

He shook his head.

“There’s no hurry.”

She stared at him without blinking, her tears drying in dirty streaks down her face.

“Will you be able to take them away before my father comes home?” she asked him after a minute or two.

“I think it would be better.”

Bile rose in his throat.

“When do you expect him back?”

“He leaves work at three o’clock. He’s part-time.”

Hal glanced at his watch, an automatic gesture. His mind was numb.

“It’s twenty to now.”

She was very composed.

“Then perhaps a policeman could go there and explain what’s happened.

It would be better,” she said again. They heard the wail of approaching sirens.

“Please,” she said urgently.

He nodded.

“I’ll arrange it. Where does he work?”

“Carters Haulage. It’s in the Docks.”

He was passing the message on as two cars, sirens shrieking, swept round the corner and bore down on number 22. Doors flew open all along the road and curious faces peered out. Hal switched off the radio and looked at her.

“All done,” he said.

“You can stop worrying about your father.”

A large tear slipped down her blotchy face.

“Should I make a pot of tea?”

Hal thought of the kitchen.

“Better not.”

The sirens stilled as policemen erupted from the cars.

“I’m sorry to cause so much bother,” she said into the silence.

She spoke very little after that, but only, thought Hal on reflection, because nobody spoke to her. She was packed into the living room, under the eye of a shocked W. P. C.” and sat in bovine immobility watching the comings and goings through the open door. If she was aware of the mounting horror that was gathering about her, she didn’t show it. Nor, as time passed and the signs of emotion faded from her face, did she display any further grief or remorse for what she had done. Faced with such complete indifference, the consensus view was that she was mad.

“But she wept in front of you,” interrupted Roz.

“Did you think she was mad?”

“I spent two hours in that kitchen with the pathologist, trying to work out the order of events from the blood splashes over the floor, the table, the kitchen units. And then, after the photographs had been taken, we embarked on the grisly jigsaw of deciding which bit belonged to which woman. Of course I thought she was mad. No normal person could have done it.”

Roz chewed her pencil.

“That’s begging the question, you know. All you’re really saying is that the act itself was one of madness. I asked you if, from your experience of her, you thought Olive was mad.”

“And you’re splitting hairs. As far as I could see, the two were inextricably linked. Yes, I thought Olive was mad. That’s why we were so careful to make sure her solicitor was there when she made her statement. The idea of her getting off on a technicality and spending twelve months in hospital before some idiot psychiatrist decided she was responding well enough to treatment to be allowed out scared us rigid.”

“So did it surprise you when she was judged fit to plead guilty?”

“Yes,” he admitted, ‘it did.”

At around six o’clock attention switched to Olive. Areas of dried blood were lifted carefully from her arms and each fingernail was minutely scraped before she was taken upstairs to bathe herself and change into clean clothes. Everything she had been wearing was packed into individual polythene bags and loaded into a police van. An inspector drew Hal to one side.

“I gather she’s already admitted she did it.” Hal nodded.

“More or less.”

Roz interrupted again.

“Less is right. If what you said earlier is correct, she did not admit anything. She said they’d had a row, that her mother got angry, and she didn’t mean it to happen. She didn’t say she had killed them.”

Hal agreed.

“I accept that. But the implication was there which is why I told her not to talk about it. I didn’t want her claiming afterwards that she hadn’t been properly cautioned.”

He sipped his coffee.

“By the same token, she didn’t deny killing them, which is the first thing an innocent person would have done, especially as she had their blood all over her.”

“But the point is, you assumed her guilt before you knew it for a fact.”

“She was certainly our prime suspect,” he said drily.

The inspector ordered Hal to take Olive down to the station.

“But don’t let her say anything until we can get hold of a solicitor.

We’ll do it by the book. OK?”

Hal nodded again.

“There’s a father. He’ll be at the nick by now. I sent a car to pick him up from work but I don’t know what he’s been told.”

“You’d better find out then, and, for Christ’s sake, Sergeant, if he doesn’t know, then break it to him gently or you’ll give the poor sod a heart attack. Find out if he’s got a solicitor and if he’s willing to have him or her represent his daughter.”

They put a blanket over Olive’s head when they took her out to the car.

A crowd had gathered, lured by rumours of a hideous crime, and cameramen jostled for a photograph. Boos greeted her appearance and a woman laughed.

“What good’s a blanket, boys? You’d need a bloody marquee to cover that fat cow. I’d recognise her legs anywhere. What you done, Olive?”

Roz interrupted again when he jumped the story on to his meeting with Robert Martin at the police station.

“Hang on. Did she say anything in the car?”

He thought for a moment.

“She asked me if I liked her dress.

Isaidldid.”

“Were you being polite?”

“No. It was a vast improvement on the T-shirt and trousers.”

“Because they had blood on them?”

“Probably. No,” he contradicted himself, ruffling his hair, ‘because the dress gave her a bit of shape, I suppose, made her look more feminine. Does it matter?”

Roz ignored this.

“Did she say anything else?”

“I think she said something like: “That’s good. It’s my favourite.”

“But in her statement, she said she was going to London. Why wasn’t she wearing the dress when she committed the murders?”

He looked puzzled.

“Because she was going to London in trousers, presumably.”

“No,” said Roz stubbornly.

“If the dress was her favourite, then that’s what she would have worn for her trip to town.

London was her birthday treat to herself. She probably had dreams of bumping into Mr. Right on Waterloo station. It simply wouldn’t occur to her to wear anything but her best. You need to be a woman to understand that.”

He was amused.

“But I see hundreds of girls walking around in shapeless trousers and baggy T-shirts, particularly the fat ones. I think they look grotesque but they seem to like it.

Presumably they’re making a statement about their refusal to pander to conventional standards of beauty. Why should Olive have been any different?”

“Because she wasn’t the rebellious type. She lived at home under her mother’s thumb, took the job her mother wanted her to take, and was apparently so unused to going out alone for the day that she had to beg her sister to go with her.” She drummed her fingers impatiently on the table.

“I’m right. I know I am. If she wasn’t lying about the trip to London then she should have been wearing her dress.”

He was not impressed.

“She was rebellious enough to kill her mother and sister,” he remarked.

“If she could do that, she could certainly go to London in trousers.

You’re splitting hairs again. Anyway, she might have changed to keep the dress clean.”

“But she definitely intended to go to London? Did you check that?”

“She certainly booked the day off work. We accepted that London was where she was going because, as far as we could establish, she hadn’t mentioned her plans to anyone else.”

“Not even to her father?”

“If she did, he didn’t remember it.”

Olive waited in an interview room while Hal spoke to her father. It was a difficult conversation. Whether he had schooled himself to it, or whether it was a natural trick of behaviour, Robert Martin reacted little to anything that was said to him. He was a handsome man but, in the way that a Greek sculpture is handsome, he invited admiration but lacked warmth or attraction. His curiously impassive face had an unlined and ageless quality, and only his hands, knotted with arthritis, gave any indication that he had passed his middle years.

Once or twice he smoothed his blond hair with the flat of his hand or touched his fingers to his tie, but for all the expression on his plastic features Hal might have been passing the time of day. It was impossible to gauge from his expression how deeply he was shocked or whether, indeed, he was shocked at all.

“Did you like him?” asked Roz.

“Not much. He reminded me of Olive. I don’t know where I am with people who hide their feelings. It makes me uncomfortable.”

Roz could identify with that.

Hal kept detail to a minimum, informing him only that the bodies of his wife and one of his daughters had been discovered that afternoon in the kitchen of his house, and that his other daughter, Olive, had given the police reason to believe she had killed them.

Robert Martin crossed his legs and folded his hands calmly in his lap.

“Have you charged her with anything?”

“No. We haven’t questioned her either.” He watched the other man closely.

“Frankly, sir, in view of the serious nature of the possible charges we think she should have a solicitor with her.”

“Of course. I’m sure my man, Peter Crew, will come.” Mild enquiry twitched his brows.

“What’s the procedure? Should I telephone him?”

Hal was puzzled by the man’s composure. He wiped a hand across his face.

“Are you sure you understand what’s happened, sir?”

“I believe so. Gwen and Amber are dead and you think Olive murdered them.”

“That’s not quite accurate. Olive has implied that she was responsible for their deaths but, until we take a statement from her, I can’t say what the charges will be.” He paused for a moment.

“I want you to be quite clear on this, Mr. Martin. The Home Office pathologist who examined the scene had no doubts that considerable ferocity was used both before and after death.

In due course, I’m afraid to say, we will have to ask you to identify the bodies and you may, when you see them, feel less charitably inclined towards any possible suspect. On that basis, do you have any reservations about your solicitor representing Olive?”

Martin shook his head.

“I would be happier dealing with someone I know.”

“There may be a conflict of interests. Have you considered that?”

“In what way?”

“At the risk of labouring the point, sir,” said Hal coldly, ‘your wife and daughter have been brutally murdered. I imagine you will want the perpetrator prosecuted?” He lifted an eyebrow in enquiry and Martin nodded.

“Then you may well want a solicitor yourself to ensure that the prosecution proceeds to your satisfaction, but if your own solicitor is already representing your daughter, he will be unable to assist you because your interests will conflict with your daughter’s.”

“Not if she’s innocent.” Martin pinched the crease in his trousers, aligning it with the centre of his knee.

“I am really not concerned with what Olive may have implied, Sergeant Hawksley. There is no conflict of interest in my mind. Establishing her innocence and representing me in pressing for a prosecution can be done by the same solicitor. Now, if you could lend me the use of a telephone, I will ring Peter Crew, and afterwards, perhaps you will allow me to talk to my daughter.”

Hal shook his head.

“I’m sorry, sir, but that won’t be possible, not until we’ve taken a statement from her. You will also be required to make a statement. You may be allowed to speak to her afterwards, but at the moment I can’t guarantee it.”

“And that,” he said, recalling the incident, ‘was the one and only time he showed any emotion. He looked quite upset, but whether because I’d denied him access to Olive or because I’d told him he’d have to make a statement, I don’t know.” He considered for a moment.

“It must have been the denial of access. We went through every minute of that man’s day and he came out whiter than white. He worked in an open-plan office with five other people and, apart from the odd trip to the lavatory, he was under someone’s eye the whole day. There just wasn’t time for him to go home.”

“But you did suspect him?”

“Yes.”

Roz looked interested.

“In spite of Olive’s confession?”

He nodded.

“He was so damn cold blooded about it all. Even identifying the bodies didn’t faze him.”

Roz thought for a moment.

“There was another conflict of interest which you don’t seem to have considered.” She chewed her pencil.

“If Robert Martin was the murderer, he could have used his solicitor to manipulate Olive into confessing. Peter Crew makes no secret of his dislike of her, you know. I think he regrets the abolition of capital punishment.”

Hal folded his arms, then smiled in amusement.

“You’ll have to be very careful if you intend to make statements like that in your book. Miss Leigh. Solicitors are not required to like their clients, they merely have to represent them. In any case, Robert Martin dropped out of the frame very rapidly. We toyed with the idea that he killed Gwen and Amber before he went to work and Olive then set about disposing the bodies to protect him, but the numbers didn’t add up. He had an alibi even for that. There was a neighbour who saw her husband off to work a few minutes before Martin himself left. Amber and Gwen were alive then because she spoke to them on their doorstep.

She remembered asking Amber how she was getting on at Glitzy.

They waved as Martin drove away.”

“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 Geof 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.

SEVEN

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 Geof 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 Geof 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 recognisable. Martin ID’d the bits and so did the neighbour.” He stabbed a finger in the air.

“There were some buttons, too.

Martin recognised 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.

“Geof,” 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.”

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 jeopardise 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 naY ve 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 dogged 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 ifick 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 day 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 day, 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 answer phone 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 jack plug 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?”

EIGHT

Roz closed her eyes and saw again the tattered, pale face her five-year-old daughter, as ugly in death as she ad 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 un cared-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.

Tears slithered down his drink-sodden face.

“I weep for her every day, you know.”

“Do you, Rupert? I don’t. I haven’t the energy.”

“Then you didn’t love her as much as I loved her,” he sobbed, his body heaving to control itself.

Roz’s lips curled contemptuously.

“Really? Then why your indecent haste to provide her replacement? I worked it out, you know. You must have impregnated your precious Jessica within a week of walking away unscathed from the accident.” She larded the word with sarcasm.

“Is Sam a good replacement, Rupert? Does he wind your hair round his finger the way Alice used to do? Does he laugh like her? Does he wait by the door for you and hug your knees and say: “Mummy, Mummy, Daddy’s home”?” Her anger made her voice brittle.

“Does he, Rupert? Is he everything Alice was and more? Or is he nothing like her and that’s why you have to weep for her every day?”

“He’s a baby, for Christ’s sake.” He clenched his fists, her hatred mirrored in his eyes.

“God, you’re a fucking bitch, Roz. I never set out to replace her. How could I? Alice was Alice. I couldn’t bring her back.”

She turned away to look out of the window.

“No.”

“Then why do you blame Sam? It wasn’t his fault either. He doesn’t even know he had a half-sister.”

“I don’t blame Sam.” She stared at a couple, lit by orange light, on the other side of the road. They held each other tenderly, stroking hair, stroking arms, kissing. How naive they were. They thought love was kind.

“I resent him.”

She heard him blunder against her coffee table.

“That’s just bloody spite,” he slurred.

“Yes,” she said quietly, more to herself than to him, her breath misting the glass, ‘but I don’t see why you should be happy when I am not? You killed my daughter but you got away with it because the law said you’d suffered enough. I’ve suffered far more and my only crime was to let my adulterous husband have access to his daughter because I knew she loved him and I didn’t want to see her unhappy “If you’d only been more understanding,” he wept, ‘it would never have happened. It was your fault, Roz. You’re the one who really killed her.” She didn’t hear his approach. She was turning back into the room when his fist smashed against her face.

It was a shabby, sordid fight. Where words had failed them -the very predictability of their conversations meant they were always forearmed they hit and scratched instead in a brutish desire to hurt. It was a curiously passionless exercise, motivated more by feelings of guilt than by hate or revenge, for at the back of both their minds was the knowledge that it was the failure of their marriage, the war they had conducted between themselves, that had led Rupert to accelerate away in frustrated anger with their daughter, unstrapped, upon the back seat.

And who could have foreseen the car that would hurtle out of control across a central reservation and, under the force of its impact, toss a helpless five-year-old through shards of broken glass, smashing her fragile skull as she went? An act of God, according to the insurance company. But for Roz, at least, it had been God’s final act. He and Alice had perished together.

Rupert was the first to stay his hand, aware, perhaps, that the fight was an unequal one or because, quite simply, he had sobered up. He crawled away to sit huddled in a corner. Roz fingered the tenderness round her mouth and licked blood from her lips, then closed her eyes and sat for several minutes in restful silence, her murderous anger assuaged. They should have done this a long time ago. She felt at peace for the first time in months, as if she had exorcised her own guilt in some way. She should, she knew, have gone out to the car that day and strapped Alice into the seat herself, but instead she had slammed the front door on them both and retreated to the kitchen to nurse her hurt pride with a bottle of gin and an orgy of tearing up photographs.

Perhaps, after all, she had needed to be punished too. Her guilt had never been expiated. Her own atonement, a private rending of herself, had brought about her disintegration and not her redemption.

Enough, she saw now, was enough.

“We are all masters of our fate, Roz, including you.”

She pushed herself gingerly to her feet, located the jack plug and inserted it back into its socket. She glanced at Rupert for a moment, then dialled Jessica.

“It’s Roz,” she said.

“Rupert’s here and he needs collecting, I’m afraid.” She heard the sigh at the other end of the line.

“It’s the last time, Jessica, I promise.” She gave a hint of a laugh.

“We’ve declared a truce. No more recriminations. OK, half an hour.

He’ll be waiting for you downstairs.” She replaced the receiver.

“I mean it, Rupert.

It’s over. It was an accident. Let’s stop blaming each other and find some peace at last.”

Iris Fielding’s insensitivity was legendary but even she was shocked by the sight of Roz’s battered face the next day.

“God, you look awful!” she said bluntly, making straight for the drinks cabinet and pouring herself a brandy. As an afterthought she poured one for Roz.

“Who did it?”

Roz closed the door and limped back to the sofa.

Iris drained her glass.

“Was it Rupert?” She proffered the second glass to Roz who shook her head to the brandy and the question.

“Of course it wasn’t Rupert.” She lowered herself carefully on to the sofa, half lying, half sitting, while Mrs. Antrobus stalked across the soft fluff of her dressing-gowned chest to butt her chin with an affectionate head.

“Could you feed Mrs. A. for me? There’s an opened tin in the fridge.”

Iris glowered at Mrs. Antrobus.

“Horrible flea-bitten creature. Where were you when your mistress needed you?” But she disappeared into the kitchen and rattled a saucer anyway.

“Are you sure it wasn’t Rupert?” she asked again when she reemerged.

“No. Not his style at all. The fights we have are entirely verbal and infinitely more bruising.”

Iris looked thoughtful.

“You’ve always told me how supportive he’s been.”

“Ilied.”

Iris looked even more thoughtful.

“So who was it?”

“Some creep I picked up at a wine bar. He was more fanciable with his clothes on than off, so I told him to get stuffed and he took exception.” She saw a question in Iris’s eyes and smiled cynically through her split lip.

“No, he didn’t rape me. My virtue is intact. I defended it with my face.”

“Hm. Well, far be it from me to criticise, my love, but wouldn’t it have been more sensible to defend your face with your virtue? I’m not a great believer in fighting over lost causes.” She drank Roz’s brandy.

“Did you call the police?”

“No.”

“A doctor?”

“No.” She put a hand on the telephone.

“And you’re not calling them either.”

Iris shrugged.

“So what have you been doing all morning?”

“Trying to work out how I could get by without calling anyone. At midday, I realised I couldn’t. I’ve used all my aspirin, I’ve no food in the house, and I’m not going out looking like this.” She raised bruised and suspiciously bright eyes.

“So I thought of the least shock able and the most egocentric person I know and I telephoned her. You’ll have to go out shopping for me, Iris. I need enough to last me a week.”

Iris was amused.

“I would never deny that I’m egocentric but why is that important?”

Roz bared her teeth.

“Because you’re so wrapped up in yourself you’ll have forgotten all about this by the time you get home. Plus, you’re not going to pressure me into doing the right thing and nailing the little bastard.

It wouldn’t reflect well on your agency if one of your authors was in the habit of bringing home pick-ups from wine bars.” She clenched both hands over the telephone and Iris watched her knuckles whiten under the strain.

“True,” she agreed calmly.

Roz relaxed a little.

“I really couldn’t bear it, you know, if this got out, and it will if doctors or the police are involved.

You know the bloody press as well as I do. Any excuse, and they’ll plaster their front pages all over again with pictures of Alice in the wreckage.” Poor little Alice. Malign providence had put a freelance photographer beside the dual carriage way when she was tossed like a rag doll from Rupert’s car. His dramatic shots published, according to the tabloid editors, as a tragic reminder to other families of the importance of wearing seat belts had been Alice’s most lasting memorial.

“You can imagine the sordid parallels they’ll draw. MOTHER DISFIGURED LIKE DAUGHTER. I couldn’t survive it a second time.” She fished in her pocket and produced a shopping list.

“I’ll write you a cheque when you come back. And whatever you do, don’t forget the aspirin. I’m in agony.”

Iris tucked the shopping list into her bag.

“Keys,” she said, holding out her hand.

“You can go to bed while I’m out. I’ll let myself back in.”

Roz pointed to her keys on a shelf by the door.

“Thank you,” she said, ‘and, Iris-‘ She didn’t finish.

“And, Iris, what?”

She made an attempt at a wry grimace but abandoned it because it was too painful.

“And, Iris, I’m sorry.”

“So am I, old thing.” She gave an airy wave and let herself out of the flat.

For reasons best known to herself, Iris returned a couple of hours later with the shopping and a suitcase.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said severely, administering aspirin in a glass of water.

“I intend to keep an eye on you for a day or two. For entirely mercenary purposes, of course. I like to guard my investments closely.

And anyway,” she scratched under Mrs. Antrobus’s chin, ‘someone’s got to feed this revolting moggy for you. You’ll only start howling if it dies of starvation.”

Roz, depressed and very lonely, was touched.

Detective Sergeant Geof Wyatt toyed unhappily with his wine glass. His stomach was playing up, he was very tired, it was Saturday, he would rather have been at a Saints’ football match, and the sight of Hal tucking into a plateful of rare steak needled him.

“Look,” he said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice, “I hear what you’re saying but evidence is evidence.

What are you expecting me to do? Tamper with it?”

“It’s hardly evidence if it was tampered with at the outset,” Hal snapped.

“It was a frame, for Christ’s sake.” He pushed his plate away.

“You should have had some,” he said acidly.

“It might have improved your temper.”

Wyatt looked away.

“There’s nothing wrong with my temper and I ate before I got here.” He lit a cigarette and glanced towards the door into the restaurant.

“I’ve never felt comfortable in kitchens, not since seeing those women on Olive’s floor. Too many murder weapons and too much bloody meat about the place. Couldn’t we go next door?”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Hal curtly.

“Damn it, Geof, you owe me a few one way and another.”

Wyatt sighed.

“How’s it going to help you if I get suspended for doing dodgy favours for an ex-copper?”

“I’m not asking for dodgy favours. Just get the pressure taken off.

Give me a breathing space.”

“How?”

“You could start by persuading the Inspector to back off.”

“And that’s not dodgy?” His mouth turned down.

“Anyway, I’ve tried. He’s not playing. He’s new, he’s honest, and he doesn’t like anyone who bends the rules, particularly policemen.” He tapped ash on the floor.

“You should never have left the Force, Hal. I did warn you. It’s very lonely outside.”

Hal rubbed his unshaven face.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if my erstwhile colleagues didn’t keep treating me like a criminal.”

Wyatt stared at the remains of the steak on Hal’s plate. He felt very queasy.

“Well, if it comes to that, you shouldn’t have been so damn careless, then they wouldn’t have to.”

Hal’s eyes narrowed unpleasantly.

“One of these days you’re going to wish you hadn’t said that.”

With a shrug, Wyatt ground his cigarette against his shoe and tossed the butt into the sink.

“Can’t see it, old son. I’ve been shitting my backside off ever since the Inspector rumbled you.

It’s made me ill, it really has.” He pushed back his chair and stood up.

“Why the hell did you have to cut corners instead of doing it by the book the way you were supposed to?”

Hal nodded towards the door.

“Out,” he said, ‘before I rip your two-faced head off.”

“What about that check you wanted me to run?”

Hal fished in his pocket and removed a piece of paper.

“That’s her name and address. See if there’s anything on her.”

“Like what?”

Hal shrugged.

“Anything that will give me a lever. This book she’s writing is too well timed.” He frowned.

“And I don’t believe in coincidence.”

One of the few advantages of being fat was that it was easier to hide things. Another bulge here or there passed unnoticed and the soft cavity between Olive’s breasts could accommodate itself to almost anything. In any case, she had noticed very early on that the officers preferred not to search her too diligently on the rare occasions when they thought it necessary. She had assumed at first that they were frightened of her, but she soon came to recognise that it was her fatness that inhibited them.

Politically correct thinking within the prison service meant that while they were free to say what they liked about her behind her back they had to guard their tongues in her presence and treat her with a modicum of respect. Thus the helpful legacy of her anguished tears during strip-searches at the beginning, when her huge, repulsive body shook with distress, was a reluctance on the part of the screws now to do anything more than a perfunctory running of their hands down the sides of her shift.

But she had problems. Her small family of wax figures, absurdly cheerful in their painted cottonwool wigs and strips of dark material which she had wound around them like miniature suits, kept softening against the warmth of her skin and losing their shape. With infinite patience, she set her awkward fingers to re moulding them, first removing the pins which skewered the wigs to each of the heads. She wondered idly if the one of Roz’s husband looked anything like him.

“What a ghastly place this is,” said Iris, gazing critically about the bleak grey walls of Roz’s flat from her place on the vinyl sofa.

“Haven’t you ever felt the urge to liven it up a bit?”

“No. I’m just passing through. It’s a waiting room.”

“You’ve been here twelve months. I can’t think why you don’t use the money from the divorce and buy yourself a house.”

Roz rested her head against the back of her chair.

“I like waiting rooms. You can be idle in them without feeling guilty.

There’s nothing to do except wait.”

Thoughtfully, Iris put a cigarette between her brilliant red lips.

“What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know.”

She flicked a lighter to the tip of her cigarette while her penetrating eye-lined gaze fixed uncomfortably on Roz.

“One thing does puzzle me,” she said.

“If it wasn’t Rupert, then why did he leave another tearful message on my answer phone telling me he had behaved badly?”

“Another?” Roz stared at her hands.

“Does that mean he’s done it before?”

“With tedious regularity.”

“You’ve never mentioned it.”

“You’ve never asked me.”

Roz digested this for some moments in silence, then let out a long sigh.

“I’ve been realising recently how dependent I’ve become on him.” She touched her sore lip.

“His dependence hasn’t changed, of course. It’s the same as it always was, a constant demand for reassurance. Don’t worry, Rupert. It’s not your fault, Rupert. Everything will be all right, Rupert.” She spoke the words without emphasis.

“It’s why he prefers women.

Women are more sympathetic.” She fell silent.

“How does that make you dependent on him?”

Roz gave a slight smile.

“He’s never left me alone long enough to let me think straight. I’ve been angry for months.” She shrugged.

“It’s very destructive. You can’t concentrate on anything because the anger won’t go away. I tear his letters up without reading them, because I know what they’ll say, but his handwriting sets my teeth on edge. If I see him or hear him, I start shaking.” She gave a hollow laugh.

“You can become obsessed by hatred, I think. I could have moved a long time ago but, instead, I stay here waiting for Rupert to make me angry.

That’s how I’m dependent on him. It’s a prison of sorts.”

Iris wiped her cigarette end round the rim of an ashtray. Roz was telling her nothing she hadn’t worked out for herself a long time ago, but she had never been able to put it into words for the simple reason that Roz had never let her. She wondered what had happened to bring the barbed wire down. Clearly, it was nothing to do with Rupert, however much Roz might like to think it was.

“So how are you going to break out of this prison? Have you decided?”

“Not yet.”

“Perhaps you should do what Olive has done,” said Iris mildly.

“And what’s that?”

“Let someone else in.”

Olive waited by her cell door for two hours. One of the officers, wondering why, paused to talk to her.

“Everything all right, Sculptress?”

The fat woman’s eyes fixed on her.

“What day is it?” she demanded.

“Monday.

“That’s what I thought.” She sounded angry.

The officer frowned.

“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”

“There’s nothing.”

“Were you expecting a visitor?”

“No. I’m hungry. What’s for tea?”

“Pizza.” Reassured, the officer moved on. It made sense.

There were few hours in the day when Olive wasn’t hungry, and the threat of withholding her meals was often the only way to control her.

A medical officer had tried to persuade her once of the benefits of dieting. He had come away very shaken and never tried again. Olive craved food in the way others craved heroin.