Sculptress

ELEVEN

The officer on the gate checked Roz’s name against his list the following Monday, then picked up the telephone.

“The Governor wants to see you,” he said, dialling a number.

“What for?”

“I wouldn’t know, miss.” He spoke into the telephone.

“Miss Leigh’s here for Martin. There’s a note that she’s to see the Governor first. Yes. Will do.” He pointed with his pencil.

“Straight through the first set of gates and you’ll be met the other side.”

It was horribly reminiscent of being hauled before the headmistress at school, thought Roz, waiting nervously in the secretary’s office. She was trying to remember if she’d broken any rule. Bring nothing in and take nothing out. Don’t pass messages. But she had done that, of course, when she spoke to Crew about the will. The slimy little toad must have ratted on her!

“You can go in now,” the secretary told her.

The Governor gestured towards a chair.

“Sit down, Miss Leigh.”

Roz lowered herself into the easy chair, hoping she looked less guilty than she felt.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“No.” She studied Roz for a moment or two, then seemed to reach a decision.

“There’s no point beating about the bush.

Olive has had her privileges suspended and we think you may be the indirect cause of the suspension. According to the logbook you didn’t come in last week, and I’m told Olive was very upset about it. Three days later she destroyed her cell and had to be sedated.” She saw Roz’s surprise.

“She’s been very volatile ever since and, under the circumstances, I am not happy about letting you back in. I think it’s something I need to discuss with the Home Office.”

God! Poor old Olive! Why on earth didn’t I have the sense to phone?

Roz folded her hands in her lap and collected her thoughts rapidly.

“If it was three days before she did anything, what makes you think it was because of my not turning up? Did she say it was?”

“No, but we’re stumped for any other explanation and I’m not prepared to risk your safety.”

Roz mulled this over for a moment or two.

“Let’s assume for a moment you’re right though I should emphasise that I don’t think you are then if I don’t show up again won’t that distress her even more?” She leaned forward.

“Either way it would be more sensible to let me talk to her. If it was to do with my nonappearance then I can reassure her and calm her down; if it wasn’t, then I see no reason why I should be punished with Home Office delays and wasted journeys when I haven’t contributed to Olive’s disturbance.”

The Governor gave a slight smile.

“You’re very confident.”

“I’ve no reason not to be.”

It was the Governor’s turn to reflect. She studied Roz in silence for some time.

“Let’s be clear,” she said finally, ‘about what sort of woman Olive really is.” She tapped her pencil on the desk.

“I told you when you first came here that there was no psychiatric evidence of psychopathy. That was true. It means that when Olive butchered her mother and sister she was completely sane. She knew exactly what she was doing, she understood the consequences of her act, and she was prepared to go ahead with it, despite those consequences.

It also means and this is peculiarly relevant to you that she cannot be cured because there is nothing to cure. Under similar circumstances unhappiness, low self-image, betrayal, in other words whatever triggers her anger she would do the same thing again with the same disregard for the consequences because, in simple terms, having weighed them up, she would consider the consequences worth the action.

I would add, and again this is peculiarly relevant to you, that the consequences are far less daunting to her now than they would have been six years ago. On the whole Olive enjoys being in prison. She has security, she has respect, and she has people to talk to. Outside, she would have none of them. And she knows it.”

It was like being up before her old headmistress. The confident voice of authority.

“So what you’re saying is that she would have no qualms about taking a swipe at me because an additional sentence would only mean a longer stay here? And she would welcome that?”

“In effect, yes.”

“You’re wrong,” said Roz bluntly.

“Not about her sanity. I agree with you, she’s as sane as you or I.

But you’re wrong about her being a danger to me. I’m writing a book about her and she wants that book written. If it is me she’s angry with, and I stress again that I don’t think it is, then her interpretation of my nonappearance last week may be that I’ve lost interest, and it would be very poor psychology to let her go on thinking it.” She composed her arguments.

“You have a notice at the gate, presumably all prisons do. It’s a dedaration of policy. If I remember right, it includes something about helping prison inmates to lead law-abiding lives both inside prison and outside. If that has any meaning at all, and isn’t simply a piece of decorative wallpaper to appease the reformers, then how can you justify provoking further punishable outbursts from Olive by denying her visits which the Home Office has already approved?” She fell silent, worried about saying too much.

However reasonable the woman might be, she could not afford to have her authority challenged. Few people could.

“Why does Olive want this book written?” asked the Governor mildly.

“She hasn’t sought public notoriety before and you’re not the first author to show an interest in her. We had several applications in the early days. She refused them all.”

“I don’t know,” said Roz honestly.

“Perhaps it has something to do with her father’s death. She claimed that one of her reasons for pleading guilty was to avoid putting him through the mill of a trial.” She shrugged.

“Presumably she felt a book would have been just as devastating to him, so waited till he died.”

The Governor was more cynical.

“Alternatively, while he was alive, her father was in a position to contest what she said; dead, he cannot. However, that is no concern of mine. My concern is with the ordered running of my prison.” She tapped her fingers impatiently on her desk. She had no desire at all to be drawn into a three-cornered dispute between herself, the Home Office, and Roz, but time-consuming correspondence with civil servants would pale into insignificance beside the murder of a civilian inside her prison. She had hoped to persuade Roz to abort the visit herself. She was surprised and, if the truth be told, rather intrigued by her own failure. What was Rosalind Leigh getting right in her relationship with Olive that the rest of them were getting wrong?

“You may talk to her for half an hour,” she said abruptly, ‘in the Legal Visits room, which is larger than the one you are used to. There will be two male officers present throughout the interview. Should either you or Olive breach any regulation of this prison, your visits will cease immediately and I will personally ensure that they will never resume. Is that understood, Miss Leigh?”

“Yes.”

The other nodded.

“I’m curious, you know. Are you raising her expectations by telling her your book will get her released?”

“No. Apart from anything else, she won’t talk to me about the murders.” Roz reached for her briefcase.

“Then why are you so confident you’re safe with her?”

“Because as far as I can make out I’m the only outsider she’s met who’s not frightened of her.”

Privately, she retracted that statement as Olive was ushered into the Legal Visits room by two large male officers who then retreated to the door behind Olive’s back and stationed themselves on either side of it.

The woman’s look of dislike was chilling, and Roz recalled Hal saying to her that she might think differently about Olive if she ever saw her in a rage.

“Hi.” She held Olive’s gaze.

“The Governor has allowed me to see you, but we’re on trial, both of us. If we misbehave today my visits will be stopped. Do you understand?”

BITCH, Olive mouthed, unseen by the officers. FUCKING BITCH. But was she referring to Roz or the Governor? Roz couldn’t tell.

“I’m sorry I didn’t make it last Monday.” She touched her lip where the ugly scab still showed.

“I got thrashed by my miserable husband.” She forced a smile.

“I couldn’t go out for a week, Olive, not even for you. I do have some pride, you know.”

Olive examined her stolidly for a second or two then dropped her eyes to the cigarette packet on the table. She plucked greedily at a cigarette and popped it between her fat lips.

“I’ve been on the block,” she said, flaring a match to the tip.

“The bastards wouldn’t let me smoke. And they’ve been starving me.”

She threw a baleful glance behind her.

“Bastards! Did you kill him?”

Roz followed her gaze. Every word she and Olive said would be reported back.

“Of course not.”

Olive smoothed the limp, greasy hair from her forehead with the hand that held the cigarette. A streak of nicotine staining along her parting showed she had done it many times before.

“I didn’t think you would,” she said contemptuously.

“It’s not as easy as it looks on the telly. You’ve heard what I did?”

“Yes.”

“So why have they let you see me?”

“Because I told the Governor that whatever you had done was nothing to do with me. Which it wasn’t, was it?” She pressed one of Olive’s feet with hers under the table.

“Presumably somebody else upset you?”

“Bloody Chaplain,” said Olive morosely. A bald eyelid drooped in a wink.

“Told me that God would do the rock’ n’roll in heaven if I got down on my knees and said: “Alleluiah, I repent.” Stupid sod. He’s always trying to make religion relevant to modern criminals with low IQs. We can’t cope with “There will be much rejoicing in heaven over one sinner that repenteth”, so we get God will do the fucking rock’n’roll instead.” She listened with some satisfaction to the snorts of amusement behind her, then her eyes narrowed. I TRUSTED YOU, she mouthed at Roz.

Roz nodded.

“I assumed it was something like that.” She watched Olive’s meaty fingers play with the tiny cigarette.

“But it was rude of me not to phone the prison and ask them to pass on a message. I had the mother and father of all headaches most of last week. You’ll have to put it down to that.”

“I know you did.”

Roz frowned.

“How?”

With a ifick of her fingers Olive squeezed the glowing head from the cigarette and dropped it into an ashtray on the table.

“Elementary, my dear Watson. Your ex gave you two black eyes if all that yellow round them isn’t some weird sort of make-up.

And headaches usually accompany black eyes.” But she was bored with the subject and fished an envelope abruptly from her pocket. She held it above her head.

“Mr. Allenby, sir. Are you going to let me show this to the lady?”

“What is it?” asked one of the men, stepping forward.

“Letter from my solicitor.”

He took it from her raised hand, ignoring the two-fingered salute she gave him, and skimmed through it.

“I’ve no objections,” he said, placing it on the table and returning to his place by the door.

Olive prodded it towards Roz.

“Read it. He says the chances of tracing my nephew are virtually nil.”

She reached for another cigarette, her eyes watching Roz closely. There was a strange awareness in them as if she knew something that Roz didn’t, and Roz found it disturbing. Olive, it seemed, now held the initiative in this unnatural glasshouse relationship of theirs but why and when she had taken it, Roz couldn’t begin to fathom. It was she, wasn’t it, who had engineered this meeting against the odds?

Surprisingly, Crew had handwritten his letter in a neat, sloping script, and Roz could only assume he had composed it out of office hours and decided not to waste company time and money by having it typed. She found that oddly offensive.

Dear Olive, I understand from Miss Rosalind Leigh that you are acquainted with some of the terms of your late father’s will, principally those concerning Amber’s illegitimate son. The bulk of the estate has been left in trust to the child although other provisions have been made in the event of failure on our part to trace him. Thus far, my people have met with little success and it is fair to say that we are increasingly pessimistic about our chances. We have established that your nephew emigrated to Australia with his family some twelve years ago when he was little more than a baby but, following their move from a rented flat in Sydney where they remained for the first six months, the trail goes cold. Unfortunately the child’s adopted surname is a common one and we have no guarantee that he and his family remained in Australia. Nor can we rule out the possibility that the family decided to add to their name or change it entirely. Carefully worded advertisements in several Australian newspapers have produced no response.

Your father was most insistent that we should be circumspect in how we traced the child. His view, which I endorsed wholeheartedly, was that great damage could be done if there was any publicity associated with the bequest. He was very conscious of the shock his grandson might suffer if he learnt through an incontinent media campaign of his tragic association with the Martin family. For this reason, we have kept and will continue to keep your nephew’s name a closely guarded secret. We are pressing on with our enquiries but, as your father stipulated a limited period for searches, the likelihood is that I, as executor, will be obliged to adopt the alternative provisions specified.

These are a range of donations to hospitals and charities which care entirely for the needs and welfare of children.

Although your father never instructed me to keep the terms of his will from you, he was very concerned that you should not be distressed by them. It was for this reason that I thought it wiser to keep you in ignorance of his intentions.

Had I known that you were already in possession of some of the facts, I should have corresponded sooner.

Trusting you are in good health, Yours sincerely, Peter Crew Roz refolded the letter and pushed it back to Olive.

“You said last time that it mattered to you if your nephew was found, but you didn’t enlarge on it.” She glanced towards the two officers, but they were showing little interest in anything except the floor. She leaned forward and lowered her voice.

“Are you going to talk to me about it now?”

Olive jammed her cigarette angrily into the ashtray. She made no attempt to keep her voice down.

“My father was a terrible MAN.” Even in speech the word carried capital letters.

“I couldn’t see it at the time but I’ve had years to think about it and I can see it now.” She nodded towards the letter.

“His conscience was troubling him. That’s why he wrote that will. It was his way of feeling good about himself after the appalling damage he’d done. Why else would he leave his money to Amber’s baby when he never cared shit for Amber herself?”

Roz looked at her curiously.

“Are you saying your father did the murders?” she murmured.

Olive snorted.

“I’m saying, why use Amber’s baby to whitewash himself?”

“What had he done that needed whitewashing?”

But Olive didn’t answer.

Roz waited a moment, then tried a different tack.

“You said your father would always leave money to family if he could.

Does that mean there’s other family he could have left it to? Or did you hope he’d leave it to you?”

Olive shook her head.

“There’s no one. Both my parents were only children. And he couldn’t leave it to me, could me?”

She slammed her fist on the table, her voice rising furiously.

“Otherwise everyone would kill their fucking families!” The great ugly face leered at Roz. YOU WANTED TO, mouthed the sausage lips.

“Keep the volume down, Sculptress,” said Mr. Allenby mildly, ‘or the visit finishes now.”

Roz pressed a finger and thumb to her eyelids where she could feel her headache coming back. Olive Martin took an axe she tried to thrust the thought away, but it wouldn’t go -and gave her mother forty whacks.

“I don’t understand why the will makes you so angry,” she said, forcing her voice to sound steady.

“If family was important to him who else is there except his grandson?”

Olive stared at the table, her jaw jutting aggressively.

“It’s the principle,” she muttered.

“Dad’s dead. What does it matter now what people think?”

Roz recalled something Mrs. Hopwood had said.

“I’ve always assumed he must have had an affair…” She took a shot in the dark.

“Do you have a half-brother or sister somewhere? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

Olive found this amusing.

“Hardly. He’d have to have had a mistress for that and he didn’t like women.” She gave a sardonic laugh.

“He did like MEN though.” Again the strange emphasis on the word.

Roz was very taken aback.

“Are you saying he was a homosexual?”

“I’m saying,” said Olive with exaggerated patience, ‘that the only person I ever saw make Dad’s face light up was our nextdoor neighbour, Mr. Clarke. Dad used to get quite skittish whenever he was around.”

She lit another cigarette.

“I thought it was rather sweet at the time, but only because I was too bloody thick to recognise a couple of queens when I saw them. Now I just think it was sick. It’s no wonder my mother hated the Clarkes.”

“They moved after the murders,” said Roz thoughtfully.

“Vanished one morning without leaving a forwarding address.

No one knows what happened to them or where they went.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. I expect she was behind it.”

“Mrs. Clarke?”

“She never liked him coming round to our house. He used to hop across the fence at the back and he and Dad would shut themselves in Dad’s room and not come out for hours. I should think it must have worried her sick after the murders when Dad was all alone in the house.”

Images, gleaned from things people had said, chased themselves across Roz’s mind. Robert Martin’s vanity and his Peter Pan looks; he and Ted Clarke being as close as brothers; the room at the back with the bed in it; Gwen’s keeping up appearances; her frigid flinching from her husband; the secret that needed hiding. It all made sense, she thought, but did it affect anything if Olive hadn’t known it at the time?

“Was Mr. Clarke his only lover, do you think?”

“How would I know? Probably not,” she went on, contradicting herself immediately.

“He had his own back door in that room he used. He could have been out after rent-boys every night for all any of us would have known about it. I hate him.”

She looked as if she were about to erupt again but Roz’s look of alarm gave her pause.

“I hated him,” she repeated, before lapsing into silence.

“Because he killed Gwen and Amber?” asked Roz for the second time.

But Olive was dismissive: “He was at work all day. Everyone knows that.”

Olive Martin took an axe… Are you raising her expectations by telling her your book will get her out?

“Did your lover kill them?” She felt she was being clumsy, asking the wrong questions, in the wrong way, at the wrong time.

Olive sniggered.

“What makes you think I had a lover?”

“Someone made you pregnant.”

“Oh, that.” She was scornful.

“I lied about the abortion. I wanted the girls here to think I was attractive once.” She spoke loudly as if intent on the officers hearing everything.

A cold fist of certainty squeezed at Roz’s heart. Deedes had warned her of this four weeks ago.

“Then who was the man who sent you letters via Gary O’Brien?” she asked.

“Wasn’t he your lover?”

Olive’s eyes glittered like snakes’ eyes.

“He was Amber’s lover.”

Roz stared at her.

“But why would he send letters to you?”

“Because Amber was too frightened to receive them herself.

She was a coward.” There was a brief pause.

“Like my father.”

“What was she frightened of?”

“My mother.”

“What was your father frightened of?”

“My mother.”

“And were you frightened of your mother?”

“No.”

“Who was Amber’s lover?”

“I don’t know. She never told me.”

“What was in his letters?”

“Love, I expect. Everyone loved Amber.”

“Including you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And your mother. Did she love Amber?”

“Of course.”

“That’s not what Mrs. Hopwood says.”

Olive shrugged.

“What would she know about it? She hardly knew us. She was always fussing over her precious Geraldine.”

A sly smile crept about her mouth, making her ugly.

“What does anybody know about it now except me?”

Roz could feel the scales peeling from her eyes in slow and terrible disillusionment.

“Is that why you waited till your father died before you would talk to anyone? So that there’d be no one left to contradict you?”

Olive stared at her with undisguised dislike then, with a careless gesture hidden from the officers’ eyes but all too visible to Roz she removed a tiny clay doll from her pocket and turned the long pin that was piercing the doll’s head. Red hair. Green dress. It required little imagination on Roz’s part to endow the clay with a personality.

She gave a hollow laugh.

“I’m a sceptic, Olive. It’s like religion. It only works if you believe in it.”

“I believe in it.”

“Then more fool you.” She stood up abruptly and walked to the door, nodding to Mr. Allenby to let her out. What had induced her to believe the woman innocent in the first place?

And why, for Christ’s sake, had she picked on a bloody murderess to fill the void that Alice had left in her heart?

She stopped at a payphone and dialled St. Angela’s Convent. It was Sister Bridget herself who answered.

“How may I help?” asked her comfortable lilting voice.

Roz smiled weakly into the receiver.

“You could say: “Come on down, Roz, I’ll give you an hour to listen to your woes.”

Sister Bridget’s light chuckle lost none of its warmth by transmission down the wire.

“Come on down, dear. I’ve a whole evening free and I like nothing better than listening. Are the woes so bad?”

“Yes. I think Olive did it.”

“Not so bad. You’re no worse off than when you started. I live in the house next to the school. It’s called Donegal. Totally inappropriate, of course, but rather charming. Join me as soon as you can. We’ll have supper together.”

There was a strained note in Roz’s voice.

“Do you believe in black magic, Sister?”

“Should I?”

“Olive is sticking pins into a clay image of me.”

“Good Lord!”

“And I’ve got a headache.”

“I’m not surprised. If I had just had my faith in someone shattered, I would have a headache, too. What an absurd creature she is! Presumably it’s her way of trying to regain some semblance of control. Prison is soul destroying in that respect.” She tut-tutted in annoyance.

“Really quite absurd, and I’ve always had such a high esteem for Olive’s intellect. I’ll expect you when I see you, my dear.”

Roz listened to the click at the other end, then cradled the receiver against her chest. Thank God for Sister Bridget… She put the receiver back with two hands that trembled. Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!

THANK GOD FOR SISTER BRIDGET… Supper was a simple affair of soup, scrambled eggs on toast, fresh fruit and cheese, with Roz’s contribution of a light sparkling wine. They ate in the dining room, looking out over the tiny walled garden where climbing plants tumbled their vigorous new growth in glossy green cascades. It took Roz two hours to run through all her notes and give Sister Bridget a complete account of everything she had discovered.

Sister Bridget, rather more rosy-cheeked than usual, sat in contemplative silence for a long time after Roz had finished. If she noticed the bruises on the other woman’s face, she did not remark on them.

“You know, my dear,” she said at last, ‘if I’m surprised by anything it is your sudden certainty that Olive is guilty. I can see nothing in what she said to make you overturn your previous conviction that she was innocent.” She raised mildly enquiring eyebrows.

“It was the sly way she smiled when she talked about being the only one who knew anything,” said Roz tiredly.

“There was something so unpleasantly knowing about it. Does that make sense?”

“Not really. The Olive I see has a permanently sly look. I wish she could be as open with me as she seems to have been with you, but I’m afraid she will always regard me as the guardian of her morals. It makes it harder for her to be honest.”

She paused for a moment.

“Are you sure you’re not simply reacting to her hostility towards you?

It’s so much easier to believe well of people who like us, and Olive made no secret of her liking for you on the two previous occasions you went to see her.”

“Probably.” Roz sighed.

“But that just means I’m as naive as everyone keeps accusing me of being.” Most criminals are pleasant most of the time, Hal had said.

“I think you probably are naive,” agreed Sister Bridget, ‘which is why you’ve ferreted out information that none of the cynical professionals thought worth bothering with. Naivety has its uses, just like everything else.”

“Not when it encourages you to believe lies, it doesn’t,” said Roz with feeling.

“I was so sure she had told me the truth about the abortion, and if anything set me questioning her guilt it was that. A secret lover floating around, a rapist even’ she shrugged ‘either would have made a hell of a difference to her case. If he didn’t do the murders himself, he might well have provoked them in some way. She cut that ground from under me when she told me the abortion was a lie.”

Sister Bridget looked at her closely for a moment.

“But when did she lie? When she told you about the abortion or, today, when she denied it?”

“Not today,” said Roz decisively.

“Her denial had a ring of truth which her admission never had.”

“I wonder. Don’t forget, you were inclined to believe her the first time. Since when, everyone, except Geraldine’s mother, has poured cold water on the idea. Subconsciously, you’ve been slowly conditioned to reject the idea that Olive could have had a sexual relationship with a man. That’s made you very quick to accept that what she told you today was the truth.”

“Only because it makes more sense.”

Sister Bridget chuckled.

“It makes more sense to believe that Olive’s confession was true but you’ve highlighted too many inconsistencies to take it at face value.

She tells lies, you know that. The trick is to sort out fact from fiction.”

“But why does she lie?” asked Roz in sudden exasperation.

“What good does it do her?”

“If we knew that, we’d have the answer to everything. She lied as a child to shore up the image she wanted to project and to shield herself and Amber from her mother’s angry disappointment. She was afraid of rejection. It’s why most of us lie, after all. Perhaps she keeps on with it for the same reasons.

“But her mother and Amber are dead,” Roz pointed out, ‘and isn’t her image diminished by denying she had a lover?”

Sister Bridget sipped her wine. She didn’t respond directly.

“She may, of course, have done it to get her own back. I suppose you’ve considered that. I can’t help feeling she’s adopted you as a surrogate Amber or a surrogate Gwen.”

“And look what happened to them.” Roz winced.

“Getting her own back for what, anyway?”

“For missing a visit. You said that upset her.”

“I had good reason.”

“I’m sure you did.” The kind eyes rested on the bruises.

“That’s not to say Olive believed you or, if she did, that a week of resentment could be cast off so easily. She may, quite simply, have wanted to spite you in the only way she could, by hurting you. And she’s succeeded. You are hurt.”

“Yes,” Roz admitted, “I am. I believed in her. But I’m the one who’s feeling rejected, not Olive.”

“Of course. Which is exactly what she wanted to achieve.”

“Even if it means I walk away and abandon her for good?”

“Spite is rarely sensible, Roz.” She shook her head.

“Poor Olive. She must be quite desperate at the moment if she’s resorting to clay dolls and outbursts of anger. I wonder what’s brought it on. She’s been very tetchy with me, too, these last few months.”

“Her father’s death,” said Roz.

“There’s nothing else.”

Sister Bridget sighed.

“What a tragic life his was. One does wonder what he did to deserve it.” She fell silent.

“I am disin dined to believe,” she went on after a moment, ‘that this man who sent the letters was Amber’s lover. I think I told you that I bumped into Olive shortly before the murders. I was surprised to see how nice she looked. She was still very big, of course, but she had taken such trouble with her appearance that she looked quite pretty. A different girl entirely from the one who’d been at St. Angela’s. Such transformations never come about in a vacuum. There’s always a reason for them and, in my experience, the reason is usually a man. Then, you know, there is Amber’s character to consider. She was never as bright as her sister and she lacked Olive’s independence and maturity. I would be very surprised if, at the age of twenty-one, she had been able to sustain an affair with anybody for as long as six months.”

“But you said yourself, men can bring about amazing transformations.

Perhaps she changed under his influence.”

“I can’t deny that, but if he was Amber’s lover, then I can point to a very definite lie that Olive has told you. She would know exactly what was in the letters, either because Amber would have told her or because she would have found a way to open them. She always pried into things that weren’t her concern. It sounds so churlish to say it now, but we all had to be very careful of our personal possessions while Olive was at St. Angela’s. Address books and diaries, in particular, drew her like magnets.”

“Mamie at Wells-Fargo thought Gary O’Brien had a yen for Olive. Perhaps he was the man she was dressing up for.”

“Perhaps.” They sat in silence for some time watching twilight fall.

Sister Bridget’s cat, a threadbare tabby of advanced years, had curled in a ball on Roz’s lap, and she stroked it mechanically in time to its purrs with the same careless affection that she bestowed on Mrs.

Antrobus.

“I wish,” she murmured, ‘there was some independent way of finding out whether or not she had the abortion, but I’d never be allowed within spitting distance of her medical records. Not without her permission, and probably not even then.”

“And supposing it turns out that she didn’t have an abortion?

Would that tell you anything? It doesn’t mean she didn’t have a man in her life.”

“No,” agreed Roz, ‘but by the same token if she did have an abortion then there can be no doubt there was a man. I’d be so much more confident about pressing ahead if I knew a lover existed.”

Sister Bridget’s perceptive eyes remained on her too long for comfort.

“And so much more confident about dropping the whole thing if you can be convinced he didn’t. I think, my dear, you should have more faith in your ability to judge people.

Instinct is as good a guide as written evidence.”

“But my instinct at the moment tells me she’s guilty as hell.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Her companion’s light laughter rang about the room.

“If it did you wouldn’t have driven all these miles to talk to me. You could have sought out your friendly policeman. He would have approved your change of heart.” Her eyes danced.

“I, on the other hand, am the one person you know who could be relied on to fight Olive’s corner.”

Roz smiled.

“Does that mean you now think she didn’t do it?”

Sister Bridget stared out of the window.

“No,” she said frankly.

“I’m still in two minds.”

“Thanks,” said Roz with heavy irony, ‘and you expect me to have faith.

That’s a bit two-faced, isn’t it?”

“Very. But you were chosen, Roz, and I wasn’t.”

Roz arrived back at her flat around midnight. The telephone was ringing as she let herself in but after three or four bells the answer phone took over. Iris, she thought. No one else would call at such an unearthly hour, not even Rupert. She had no intention of speaking to her but, out of curiosity, she flicked the switch on the machine to hear Iris leave her message.

“I wonder where you are,” slurred Hal’s voice, slack with drink and tiredness.

“I’ve been calling for hours. I’m drunk as a skunk, woman, and it’s your fault. You’re too bloody thin, but what the hell!” He gave a baritone chuckle.

“I’m drowning in shit here, Roz. Me and Olive both. Mad, bad and dangerous to know.” He sighed.

“From East to western md, no jewel is like Rosalind. Who are you, anyway? Nemesis? You lied, you know.

You said you’d leave me in peace.” There was the sound of a crash.

“Jesus” he roared into the telephone.

“I’ve dropped the bloody bottle.” The line was cut abruptly.

Roz wondered if her grin looked as idiotic as it felt. She switched the answer phone back to automatic and went to bed.

She fell asleep almost immediately.

The phone rang again at nine o’clock the next morning.

“Roz?” asked his sober, guarded voice.

“Speaking.”

“It’s Hal Hawksley.”

“Hi,” she said cheerfully.

“I didn’t know you knew my number.”

“You gave me your card, remember.”

“Oh, yes. What can I do for you?”

“I tried you yesterday, left a message on your answer phone She smiled into the receiver.

“Sorry,” she told him, ‘the tape’s on the blink. All I got was my ear-drums pierced by high pitched crackling. Has something happened?”

His relief was audible.

“No.” There was a brief pause.

“I just wondered how you got on with the O’Briens.”

“I saw Ma. It cost me fifty quid but it was worth it. Are you busy today or can I come and chew your ear off again? I need a couple of favours: a photograph of Olive’s father and access to her medical records.”

He was happy talking details.

“No chance on the latter,” he told her.

“Olive can demand to see them but you’d have more chance breaking into Parkhurst than breaking into NHS files. I might be able to get hold of a photograph of him, though, if I can persuade Geof Wyatt to take a photocopy of the one on file.”

“What about pictures of Gwen and Amber? Could he get photocopies of them too?”

“Depends how strong your stomach is. The only ones I remember are the post-mortem shots. You’ll have to get on to Martin’s executors if you want pictures of them alive.”

“OK, but I’d still like to see the post-mortem ones if that’s possible.

I won’t try to publish them without the proper authority,” she promised.

“You’d have a job. Police photocopies are usually the worst you’ll ever see. If your publisher can make a decent negative out of them, he probably deserves a medal. I’ll see what I can do. What time will you get here?”

“Early afternoon? There’s someone I need to see first. Could you get me a copy of Olive as well?”

“Probably.” He was silent for a moment.

“High-pitched crackling. Are you sure that’s all you heard?”