Sculptress

NINE

The following morning, a week later than planned, Roz was shown through to a clerical supervisor at the Social Security office in Dawlington.

He regarded her scabby lip and dark glasses with only mild curiosity and she realised that for him her appearance was nothing unusual. She introduced herself and sat down.

“I telephoned yesterday,” she reminded him.

He nodded.

“Some problem that goes back over six years, you said.” He tapped his forefingers on the desk.

“I should stress we’re unlikely to be able to help. We’ve enough trouble chasing current cases, let alone delving into old records.”

“But you were here six years ago?”

“Seven years in June,” he said without enthusiasm.

“It won’t help, I’m afraid. I don’t remember you or your circumstances.”

“You wouldn’t.” She smiled apologetically.

“I was a little economical with the truth on the telephone. I’m not a consumer.

I’m an author. I’m writing a book about Olive Martin. I need to talk to someone who knew her when she worked here and I didn’t want a straight refusal down the phone.”

He looked amused, glad perhaps that he was spared an impossible search for lost benefits.

“She was the fat girl down the corridor. I didn’t even know what her name was until it appeared in the paper. As far as I remember, I never exchanged more than a dozen words with her. You probably know more about her than I do.” He crossed his arms.

“You should have said what you wanted. You could have saved yourself a drive.”

Roz took out her notebook.

“That doesn’t matter. It’s names I need. People who did speak to her. Is there anyone else who’s been here as long as you?”

“A few, but no one who was friendly with Olive. A couple of reporters came round at the time of the murders and there wasn’t a soul who admitted to passing anything more than the time of day with her.”

Roz felt his distrust.

“And who can blame them?” she said cheerfully.

“Presumably it was the gutter press looking for a juicy headline. i HELD THE HAND OF A MONSTER or something equally tasteless. Only publicity seekers or idiots allow themselves to be used by Wapping to boost their grubby profits.”

“And your book won’t make a profit?” There was a dry inflexion in his voice.

She smiled.

“A very modest one by newspaper standards.”

She pushed her dark glasses to the top of her head, revealing her eyes and the yellow rings around them.

“I’ll be honest with you. I was dragooned into this research by an irritable agent demanding copy. I found the subject distasteful and was prepared to abandon it after a token meeting with Olive.” She looked at him, turning her pencil between her fingers.

“Then I discovered that Olive was human and very likeable, so I kept going. And almost everyone I’ve spoken to has given a similar answer to you. They hardly knew her, they never talked to her, she was just the fat girl down the corridor. Now, I could write my book on that theme alone, how social ostracism led a lonely, unloved girl to turn in a fit of frenzied anger on her teasing family. But I’m not going to because I don’t think it’s true. I believe there’s been a miscarriage of justice. I believe Olive is innocent.”

Surprised, he reassessed her.

“It shocked us rigid when we heard what she’d done,” he admitted.

“Because you thought it out of character?”

“Totally out of character.” He thought back.

“She was a good worker, brighter than most, and she didn’t clock-watch like some of them. OK, she was never going to set the world alight, but she was reliable and willing and she didn’t make waves or get involved in office politics. She was here about eighteen months and while no one would have claimed her as a bosom friend she made no enemies either. She was one of those people you only think about when you want something done and then you remember them with relief because you know they’ll do it. You know the type?”

She nodded.

“Boring but dependable.”

“In a nutshell, yes.”

“Did she tell you anything about her private life?”

He shook his head again.

“It was true what I said at the beginning. Our paths rarely crossed.

Any contact we had was work related and even that was minimal. Most of what I’ve just told you was synthesised from the amazed reactions of the few who did know her.”

“Can you give me their names?”

“I’m not sure I can remember.” He looked doubtful.

“Olive would know them better than I do. Why don’t you ask her?”

Because she won’t tell me. She won’t tell me anything.

“Because,” she said instead, “I don’t want to hurt her.” She saw his look of puzzlement and sighed.

“Supposing doors get slammed in my face and I’m given the cold shoulder by Olive’s so-called friends. She’s bound to ask me how I got on, and how would I answer her? Sorry, Olive, as far as they’re concerned you’re dead and buried. I couldn’t do that.”

He accepted this.

“All right, there is someone who might be willing to help you but I’m not prepared to give you her name without her permission. She’s elderly, retired now, and she may not want to be involved. If you give me five minutes, I’ll telephone and see how she feels about talking to you.”

“Was she fond of Olive?”

“As much as anyone was.”

“Then will you tell her that I don’t believe Olive murdered her mother and sister and that’s why I’m writing the book.” She stood up.

“And please impress on her that it’s desperately important I talk to someone who knew her at the time. So far I’ve only managed to trace one old school friend and a teacher.”

She walked to the door.

“I’ll wait outside.”

True to his word, he was five minutes. He joined her in the corridor and gave her a piece of paper with a name and address on it.

“Her name’s Lily Gainsborough. She was the cleaner cum-tea-lady in the good old days before privatised cleaning and automatic coffee machines.

She retired three years ago at the age of seventy, lives in sheltered accommodation in Pryde Street.” He gave her directions.

“She’s expecting you.” Roz thanked him.

“Give my regards to Olive when you see her,” he said, shaking her hand.

“I had more hair and less flab six years ago, so a description won’t be much use, but she might remember my name. Most people do.”

Roz chuckled. His name was Michael Jackson.

“Of course I remember Olive. Called her “Dumpling”, didn’t I, and she called me “Flower”. Get it, dear? Because of my name, Lily. There wasn’t an ounce of harm in her. I never believed what they said she done and I wrote and told her so when I heard where they’d sent her.

She wrote me back and said I was wrong, it was all her fault and she had to pay the penalty.” Old wise eyes peered shortsightedly at Roz.

“I understood what she meant, even if no one else did. She never did it but it wouldn’t have happened if she’d not done what she shouldn’t have. More tea, dear?”

“Thank you.” Roz held out her cup and waited while the frail old lady hefted a large stainless steel teapot. A relic from her job on the tea trolley? The tea was thick and charged with tannin, and Roz could hardly bring herself to drink it. She accepted another indigestible scone.

“What did she do that she shouldn’t have?”

“Upset her mum, that’s what. Took up with one of the O’Brien boys, didn’t she?”

“Which one?”

“Ah, well, that I’m not too sure about. I’ve always thought it was the baby, young Gary mind, I only saw them together once and those boys are very alike. Could have been any of them.”

“How many are there?”

“Now you’re asking.” Lily pursed her mouth into a wrinkled rosebud.

“It’s a big family. Can’t keep track of them. Their mum must be a grandmother twenty times over and I doubt she’s reached sixty yet.

Gyppos, dear. Bad apples the lot of them. In and out of prison that regular you’d think they owned the place.

The mum included. Taught them to steal soon as they could walk. The kids kept being taken off her, of course, but never for very long.

Always found their way home. Young Gary was sent to a boarding school approved schools, they was called in my day did quite well by all accounts.” She crumbled a scone on her plate.

“Till he went home, that is. She had him back on the thieving quicker than you can say knife.”

Roz thought for a moment.

“Did Olive tell you she was going out with one of them?”

“Not inso many words.” She tapped her forehead.

“Put two and two together, didn’t I? She was that pleased with herself, lost some weight, bought some pretty dresses from that boutique her sister went to work in, dabbed some colour on her face.

Made herself look quite bonny, didn’t she? Stood to reason there was a man behind it somewhere. Asked her once who it was and she just smiled and said, “No names no pack drill, Flower, because Mummy would have a fit if she ever found out.” And then, two or three days later, I came across her with one of the O’Brien boys. Her face gave her away, as sunny as the day is long it was. That was him all right the one she was soppy over but he turned away as I passed, and I never did know exactly which O’Brien he was.”

“But what made you think it was an O’Brien anyway?”

“The uniform,” said Lily.

“They all wore the same uniform.”

“They were in the Army?” asked Roz in surprise.

“Leathers, they call them.”

“Oh, I see. You mean they’re bikers, they ride motorbikes.”

“That’s it. Hell’s Angels.”

Roz drew her brows together in a perplexed frown. She had told Hal with absolute conviction that Olive was not the rebellious type. But Hell’s Angels, for God’s sake! Could a convent girl get more rebellious than that?

“Are you sure about this, Lily?”

“Well, as to being sure, I don’t know as I’m sure about anything any more. There was a time when I was sure that governments knew better how to run things than I did. Can’t say as I do these days. There was a time when I was sure that if God was in his heaven all would be right with the world. Can’t say as I think that now. If God’s there, dear, He’s blind, deaf, and dumb, far as I’m concerned. But, yes, I am sure my poor Dumpling had fallen for one of the O’Briens. You’d only to look at her to see she was head over heels in love with the lad.”

She compressed her lips.

“Bad business. Bad business.”

Roz sipped the bitter tea.

“And you think it was the O’Brien lad who murdered Olive’s mother and sister?”

“Must have been, mustn’t it? As I said, dear, bad apples.”

“Did you tell the police any of this?” asked Roz curiously.

“I might have done if they’d asked, but I didn’t see no point in volunteering the information. If Dumpling wanted them kept out, then that was her affair. And, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t that keen to run up against them. Stick together, they do, and my Frank had passed on not many months before. Wouldn’t have stood a chance if they’d come looking, would I?”

“Where do they live?”

“The Barrow Estate, back of the High Street. Council likes to keep ‘em together, under their eye so to speak. It’s a shocking place. Not an honest family there, and they’re not all O’Briens neither. Den of thieves, that’s what it is.”

Roz took another thoughtful sip from her cup.

“Are you prepared to let me use this information, Lily? You do realise that if there’s anything in it it could help Olive.”

“Course I do, dear. Why would I tell you otherwise?”

“The police would become involved. They’d want to talk to you.”

“I know that.”

“In which case your name would be out, and the O’Briens could still come looking for you.”

The old eyes appraised her shrewdly.

“You’re only a slip of a thing, dear, but you’ve survived a beating by the look of it.

Reckon I can too. In any case,” she went on stoutly, “I’ve spent six years feeling bad about not speaking up, and I was that glad when young Mick phoned and said you was coming, you wouldn’t believe. You go ahead, dear, and don’t mind about me.

It’s safer here, anyway, than my old place. They could have set the whole thing alight and I’d have been dead long before anyone’d have thought of phoning for help.”

If Roz had expected to see a chapter of Hell’s Angels rampaging about the Barrow Estate she was disappointed. At lunchtime on a Friday it was an unexceptional place, where only the odd dog barked and young women, in ones and twos, pushed babies in prams piled high with shopping for the weekend. Like too many council estates there was a naked and un cared for look about it, a recognition that what it offered was not what its tenants wanted. If individuality was present in these dull uniform walls then it was inside, away from view. But Roz doubted its existence. She had a sense of empty spaces marking time where people waited for somebody else to offer them something better.

Like her, she thought. Like her flat.

As she drove away she passed a large school, advertising itself with a tired sign beside the gate. Parkway Comprehensive.

Children milled about the tarmac, the sound of their voices loud in the warm air. Roz slowed the car to watch them for a moment. Groups of children played the same games whichever school they went to, but she could see why Gwen had turned her nose up at Parkway and had sent her girls to the convent. Its close proximity to the Barrow Estate would worry even the most liberal of parents, and Gwen certainly wasn’t that.

But it was ironic, if what Lily and Mr. Hayes had said was true, that both Gwen’s daughters had succumbed to the attractions of this other world. Was that in spite of or because of their mother? she wondered.

She told herself she needed a tame policeman to give her the low-down on the O’Briens, and her road led inevitably to the Poacher. Being lunchtime the door to the restaurant was unlocked, but the tables were as empty as ever. She selected one well away from the window and sat down, her dark glasses firmly in place.

“You won’t need those,” said Hawksley’s amused voice from the kitchen doorway.

“I don’t intend to put the lights on.”

She smiled, but did not remove the glasses.

“I’d like to order some lunch.”

“OK.” He held the door wide.

“Come into the kitchen. It’s more comfortable in there.”

“No, I’ll have it in here.” She stood up.

“At the table in the window. I’d like the door open and’ she looked for amplifiers and found them ‘some loud music, preferably jazz. Let’s liven the place up a bit. Nobody wants to eat in a morgue, for God’s sake.” She seated herself in the window.

“No,” he said, an odd inflexion in his voice.

“If you want lunch, you eat it in here with me. Otherwise, you go somewhere else.”

She studied him thoughtfully.

“This has nothing to do with the recession, has it?”

“What hasn’t?”

“Your non-existent customers.”

He gestured towards the kitchen.

“Are you going or staying?”

“Staying,” she said, standing up. What was this all about? she wondered.

“It’s really none of your concern, Miss Leigh,” he murmured, reading her mind.

“I suggest you stick to what you know and leave me to deal with my affairs in my own way.” Geof had phoned through the results of his check the previous Monday.

“She’s kosher,” he had said.

“A London-based author. Divorced.

Had a daughter who died in a car accident. No previous connections with anyone in the area. Sorry, Hal.”

“OK,” Roz said mildly, ‘but you must admit it’s very intriguing. I was effectively warned off eating here by a police man when I went to the station to find out where you were. I’ve been wondering why ever since. With friends like that you don’t really need enemies, do you?”

His smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“Then you’re very brave to accept my hospitality a second time.” He held the door wide.

She walked past him into the kitchen.

“Just greedy,” she said.

“You’re a better cook than I am. In any case, I intend to pay for what I eat unless, of course’ her smile didn’t reach her eyes either ‘this isn’t a restaurant at all, but a front for something else.”

That amused him.

“You’ve an overactive imagination.” He pulled out a chair for her.

“Maybe,” she said, sitting down.

“But I’ve never met a restaurateur before who barricades himself behind bars, presides over empty tables, has no staff, and looms up in the dark looking like something that’s been fed through a mincing machine.”

She arched her eyebrows.

“If you didn’t cook so well, I’d be even more inclined to think this wasn’t a restaurant.”

He leaned forward abruptly and removed her dark glasses, folding them and laying them on the table.

“And what should I deduce from this?” he said, unexpectedly moved by the damage done to her beautiful eyes.

“That you’re not a writer because someone’s left his handprints all over your face?” He frowned suddenly.

“It wasn’t Olive, was it?”

She looked surprised.

“Of course not.”

“Who was it, then?”

She dropped her gaze.

“No one. It’s not important.”

He waited for a moment.

“Is it someone you care about?”

“No.” She da sped her hands loosely on the table top.

“Rather the reverse. It’s someone I don’t care about.” She looked up with a half smile.

“Who beat you up, Sergeant? Someone you care about?”

He pulled open a fudge door and examined its contents.

“One of these days your passion for poking your nose into other people’s business is going to get you into trouble. What do you fancy?

Lamb?”

“I really came to see you for some more information,” she told him over coffee.

Humour creased his eyes. He really was extraordinarily attractive, she thought, wistfully aware that the attraction was all one way. Lunch had been a friendly but distant meal, with a large sign between them saying: so far and no further.

“Go on, then.”

“Do you know the O’Brien family? They live on the Barrow Estate.”

“Everyone knows the O’Briens.” He frowned at her.

“But if there’s a connection between them and Olive I’ll eat my hat.”

“You’re going to have galloping indigestion then,” she said acidly.

“I’ve been told she was going out with one of the sons at the time of the murders. Probably Gary, the youngest. What’s he like? Have you met him?”

He linked his hands behind his head.

“Someone’s winding you up,” he murmured.

“Gary is marginally brighter than the rest of them, but I’d guess his educational level is still about fourteen years old. They are the most useless, inadequate bunch I’ve ever come across. The only thing they know how to do is petty thieving and they don’t even do that very well.

There’s Ma O’Brien and about nine children, mostly boys, all grown up now, and, when they’re not in prison, they play box and cox in a three-bed roomed house on the estate.”

“Aren’t any of them married?”

“Not for long. Divorce is more prevalent in that family than marriage.

The wives usually make other arrangements while their men are inside.”

He flexed his laced fingers.

“They produce a lot of babies, though, if the fact that a third generation of O’Briens has started appearing regularly in the juvenile courts is anything to go by.” He shook his head.

“Someone’s winding you up,” he said again.

“For all her sins Olive wasn’t stupid and she’d have to have been brain-dead to fall for a jerk like Gary O’Brien.”

“Are they really as bad as that?” she asked him curiously.

“Or is this police animosity?”

He smiled.

“I’m not police, remember? But they’re that bad,” he assured her.

“Every patch has families like the O’Briens.

Sometimes, if you’re really unlucky, you get an estateful of them, like the Barrow Estate, when the council decides to lump all its bad apples into one basket and then expects the wretched police to throw a cordon round it.” He gave a humourless laugh.

“It’s one of the reasons I left the Force. I got sick to death of being sent out to sweep up society’s messes. It’s not the police who create these ghettos, it’s the councils and the governments, and ultimately society itself.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” she said.

“In that case why do you despise the O’Briens so much? They sound as if they need help and support rather than condemnation.”

He shrugged.

“I suppose it’s because they’ve already had more help and support than you or I will ever be offered. They take everything society gives them and then demand more.

There’s no quid pro quo with people like that. They put nothing in to compensate for what they’ve had out. Society owes them a living and, by God, they make sure society pays, usually in the shape of some poor old woman who has all her savings stolen.”

His lips thinned.

“If you’d arrested those worthless shits as often as I have, you’d despise them, too. I don’t deny they represent an underdass of society’s making, but I resent their unwillingness to try and rise above it.” He saw her frown.

“You look very disapproving. Have I offended your liberal sensibilities?”

“No,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

“I was just thinking how like Mr. Hayes you sound. Remember him?

“What shall I say?” she mimicked the old man’s soft burr ‘“They should all be strung up from the nearest lamppost and shot.” She smiled when he laughed.

“My sympathies with the criminal classes are a trifle frayed at the moment,” he said after a moment.

“More accurately, my sympathies in general are frayed.”

“Classic symptoms of stress,” she said lightly, watching him.

“Under pressure we always reserve our compassion for ourselves.”

He didn’t answer.

“You said the O’Briens are inadequate,” Roz prompted.

“Perhaps they can’t rise above their situation.”

“I believed that once,” he admitted, toying with his empty wine glass, ‘when I first joined the police force, but you have to be very naY ve to go on believing it. They’re professional thieves who simply don’t subscribe to the same values as the rest of us hold. It’s not a case of can’t, but more a case of won’t. Different ball game entirely.” He smiled at her.

“And if you’re a policeman who wants to hold on to the few drops of human kindness that remain to you, you get out quick the minute you realise that. Otherwise you end up as unprincipled as the people you’re arresting.”

Curiouser and curiouser, thought Roz. So he had little sympathy left for the police either. He gave the impression of a man under siege, isolated and angry within the walls of his castle. But why should his friends in the police have abandoned him? Presumably he had had some.

“Have any of the O’Briens been charged with murder or GBH?”

“No. As I said, they’re thieves. Shoplifting, pick-pocketing, house burglaries, cars, that sort of thing. Old Ma acts as a fence whenever she can get her hands on stolen property but they’re not violent.”

“I was told they’re all Hell’s Angels.”

He gave her an amused look.

“You’ve been given some very duff information. Are you toying with the idea, perhaps, that Gary did the murders and Olive was so besotted with him that she took the rap on his behalf?”

“It doesn’t sound very plausible, does it?”

“About as plausible as little green men on Mars. Apart from anything else, Gary is scared of his own shadow. He was challenged once during a burglary he didn’t think anyone was in the house and he burst into tears. He could no more have cut Gwen’s throat while she was struggling with him than you or I could. Or for that matter, than his brothers could. They’re skinny little foxes, not ravening wolves. Who on earth have you been talking to? Someone with a sense of humour, obviously.”

She shrugged, suddenly out of patience with him.

“It’s not important. Offhand, do you know the O’Briens’ address? It would save me having to look it up.”

He grinned.

“You’re not planning on going there?”

“Of course I am,” she said, annoyed by his amusement.

“It’s the most promising lead I’ve had. And now that I know they’re not axe-wielding Hell’s Angels, I’m not so worried about it. So what’s their address?”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Think again, sunshine,” she said roundly.

“I don’t want you queering my pitch. Are you going to give me the address or must I look it up?”

“Number seven, Baytree Avenue. You can’t miss it. It’s the only house in that road with a satellite dish. Nicked for sure.”

“Thank you.” She reached for her handbag.

“Now, if we can just settle my bill, I’ll leave you in peace.”

He unfolded himself from his chair and walked round to draw hers back.

“On the house,” he said.

She stood up and regarded him gravely.

“But I’d like to pay. I didn’t come here at lunchtime just to scrounge off you and, anyway’ she smiled ‘how else can I show my appreciation of your cooking? Money always speaks louder than words. I can say it was fabulous, like the last time, but I might just be being polite.”

He raised a hand as if he was going to touch her, then dropped it abruptly.

“I’ll see you out,” was all he said.