Sculptress

EIGHTEEN

Roz walked back to the car deep in thought.

“What’s up?” Hal asked her.

“Just something he said.” She put her bag on the roof and stared into the middle distance, trying to pick up an elusive thread.

“It’s no good. I’ll have to go back through my notes.” She unlocked the door.

“So what do we do now? Go to the police?”

She released Hal’s door and he climbed in beside her.

“No. We’d be there all day answering questions and there’s no guarantee they’d act at the end of it.” He thought for a moment.

“And it’s no good tackling Crew either. If we’re going to nail him we’ll have to do it through Stewart Hayes and his security firm.”

Roz winced.

“We? Listen, Hawksley, I’ve already had my hair pulled out once by that gorilla. I’m not sure I fancy it a second time.” She meant it, too.

Hal put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think I fancy it much either.” He could smell the scent of soap on her face and with a sigh he moved away.

“But we’ve got to get it settled one way or another,” he said coolly.

“I can’t stand much more of this.”

Her insecurities resurfaced.

“Much more of what?”

“Sitting around in confined spaces with you,” he growled.

“It requires too much blasted self-control. Come on. Let’s grasp the nettle. I’ll phone Geof Wyatt and see if I can persuade him to hold my hand while I offer the Poacher for sale.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to have Hayes arrested?”

“What for?”

“Breaking and entering.”

“On what evidence?”

“Me,” she said.

“I can identify him.”

“He’ll have an alibi by now.” He flicked a strand of hair from her cheek with a gesture of casual affection.

“We need to tempt Crew into the open.”

It was Roz’s turn to sigh. In the cold light of morning, she was having doubts.

“It’s all guesswork, Hal. Crew could be squeaky clean as far as the Poacher’s concerned. Mr. Hayes likes to give the impression he knows more than he does. It makes him feel important.”

“But it’s the only scenario that makes sense.” He stroked his jaw and smiled at her with a confidence he didn’t really feel.

“My nose is twitching. It’s always a good sign.”

“Of what?”

“That I’m on the right track.”

“You’ll lose the Poacher if you’re wrong.”

“I’ll lose it anyway.” He drummed his fingers on the dashboard.

“Come on,” he said abruptly.

“Let’s go. Head for the city centre. Bell Street runs parallel with the main shopping area.

We’ll stop at the first telephone we see. And keep your eyes peeled for an electrical goods shop.”

She fired the engine and pulled out into the road.

“Why?”

“You’ll find out.”

He dialled Dawlington police station and asked to be put through to Geof Wyatt.

“It’s Hal.” He let the angry recriminations run for a moment, then broke in.

“Save your breath. I’m trying to sort it now, but I need your help.

What do you have on STC Security in Bell Street? No, I’ll wait.” He propped the receiver under his chin and took out a notepad.

“OK. Hayes. ExAriny. Clean as a whistle. You’re sure? Right. Can you meet me there in half an hour?” More squeaks.

“For old time’s sake, that’s why. No, you bastard, I don’t give a monkeys toss if you still feel sick. At the very least, you owe me for Sally. Half an hour.” He hung up.

Roz examined her fingernails with studied uninterest.

“Who’s Sally?” she asked.

“Myex.”

“Why does he owe you for her?”

“He married her.”

“God!” She hadn’t expected that.

He smiled at her startled expression.

“He did me a favour but doesn’t know it. He thinks it’s why I left the Force. His guilt is huge and extremely useful at times like this.”

“That’s cruel.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“It hurt at the time.”

“Sorry,” she said regretfully.

“I keep forgetting we both have pasts.”

He pulled her against him.

“The marriage was long dead, and Geof didn’t set out to poach Sally.

He’s a decent sort. He held her hand out of friendship, and ended up with more than he bargained for. And that’s genuine gratitude talking, Roz, not bitterness.” He kissed her nose.

“Poor bastard. He had no idea what he was signing on for.”

“Olive’s revenge,” she said slowly.

He frowned as he dialled Directory Enquiries.

“I don’t follow.”

Roz gave a hollow laugh.

“She makes clay figures in her room and then sticks pins into them. She did one of me when she was angry with me. I had a migraine for a week.”

“When was that? Yes,” he said into the phone, “STC Security, Southampton, please.”

“A couple of weeks ago.”

“Someone beat you up a couple of weeks ago,” he pointed out.

“That’s why you had a migraine.” He wrote a number on his pad and hung up.

“My ex-husband,” she agreed.

“I told Olive I wanted to kill him and he turned up out of the blue. I could have killed him, too, if I’d had a knife, or been better prepared. I was angry enough.” She shrugged.

“And then there’s you and Crew and the Poacher, and Wyatt taking your wife, and her father dying. All people she blames for what’s happened to her.” He looked surprised.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

She laughed.

“No, of course I don’t.” But she did. Only she knew how much her head had hurt when Olive turned the pin.

“STC Security,” said a woman’s bright voice at the other end of the wire.

Hal looked at Roz as he spoke.

“Good morning. I’d like to discuss security arrangements for my restaurant with Mr. Stewart Hayes.”

“I’m not sure he’s available to talk at the moment, sir.”

“He will be for me. Try his number and tell him that Hal Hawksley of the Poacher is on the line.”

“One moment, please.”

Several moments passed before she came back to him.

“Mr. Hayes will talk to you now, Mr. Hawksley.”

A bluff, friendly voice swelled down the wire.

“Good morning, Mr. Hawksley. How may I help you?”

“You can’t, Mr. Hayes, but I can help you. You have a window of opportunity which will stay open for the length of time it takes me to reach your office. Roughly half an hour.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m prepared to sell the Poacher, but at my price, and today.

That’s the only offer you’ll ever get.”

There was a short silence.

“I’m not in the market for buying restaurants, Mr. Hawksley.”

“But Mr. Crew is, so I suggest you consult with him before you allow the window to close.”

There was another silence.

“I don’t know any Mr. Crew.” Hal ignored this.

“Tell him the Olive Martin case is about to blow wide open.” He gave Roz a broad wink.

“She is already taking legal advice from another solicitor and is expected to lodge an appeal against the terms of her father’s will within seven days on the grounds that she is innocent. Crew buys the Poacher today, at my price, or he doesn’t buy it at all. You have half an hour, Mr. Hayes.” He hung up.

Geof was waiting on the pavement when they arrived.

“You didn’t mention you were bringing company,” he said suspiciously, bending down to look through the open passenger window.

Hal introduced them.

“Sergeant Wyatt, Miss Rosalind Leigh.”

“Jesus, Hal,” he said in disgust.

“What on earth do you want to bring her for?”

“I fancy her.”

Geof shook his head in exasperation.

“You’re mad.” Hal opened the door and got out.

“I trust you’re referring to my motives in bringing her here. If I thought you were impugning my choice, I’d bop you on the nose.” He looked across the roof at Roz who had got out on the other side and was locking her door.

“I think you should stay in the car.”

“Why?”

“You might get your hair pulled.”

“So might you.”

“It’s my battle.”

“And mine, if I’m really thinking of making this relationship permanent. Anyway, you need me. I’m the one with the Tampax.”

“They won’t work.”

Roz chuckled at the expression on Geof’s face.

“They will.

Trust me.”

Hal tipped a finger at Wyatt.

“Now you know why I brought 7 her.”

“You’re both bloody mad.” Geof dropped his cigarette butt on to the pavement and ground it out beneath his heel.

“So what do you want me for? By rights I should be arresting you.” He eyed Roz curiously.

“I suppose he’s told you everything.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” she said cheerfully, walking round the back of the car.

“I only learnt half an hour ago that his ex wife’s name was Sally and you married her. So, on that basis, there must be an awful lot more still to come.”

“I was referring,” he said sourly, ‘to the numerous prosecutions he’s about to face when this little farce is over and I take him down the nick.”

“Oh, them.” She gave a dismissive wave.

“Bits of paper, that’s all they are.”

Geoff not altogether happy with his new marital arrangements, watched her amused exchange of glances with Hal and wondered why other people, infinitely less deserving than he, had all the luck.

He listened to Hal’s instructions for him with a hand pressed to his queasy stomach.

Roz had expected something seedy and run-down like the Wells-Fargo office: instead they walked into a clean, brightly painted reception with an efficient-looking receptionist behind an efficient looking desk. Someone, she thought, had spent a great deal of money on STC Secwity. But who?

And where had it come from?

Hal favoured the receptionist with his most charming smile.

“Hal Hawksley. Mr. Hayes is expecting me.”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled in return.

“He said to show you straight in.” She leaned forward and pointed down the corridor.

“Third door on the left.

Perhaps your friends would like to take a seat Out here?” She indicated some chairs in the corner.

“Thank you, miss,” said Geon.

“Don’t mind if I do.” He hefted one as he passed and took it with him down the corridor.

“No,” she called, “I didn’t mean take one away.”

He beamed back at her as Hal and Roz disappeared through the third door without knocking and he stationed himself on the chair in the middle of the closed doorway.

“Very comfortable, I must say.” He lit a cigarette and watched, with some amusement, as she picked up the phone and put through a flustered call.

On the other side of the door, Stewart Hayes replaced the receiver.

“I gather from Lisa that you have a minder, Mr. Hawksley. Would he be a policeman by any chance?”

“He would.”

“Ah.” He clasped his hands on his desk, apparently unconcerned.

“Sit down, please.” He smiled at Roz and gestured towards a chair.

Fascinated by him, she took it. This was not the man who had tried to strangle her. He was younger, better looking, bluff and friendly like his voice. The brother, she thought, recalling the photographs on the sideboard. He had his father’s smile, with all its sincerity, his father’s old-world charm, and under different circumstances she would have found him easy to like.

Only his eyes, pale and carefully guarded, implied he had something to hide. Hal remained standing.

The smile embraced them both.

“OK, now perhaps you’d like to explain what you said over the telephone. I’ll be honest with you’ his tone suggested he was about to be the exact opposite “I don’t understand why I’ve been given half an hour to buy a restaurant from someone I’ve never met, someone I’ve never heard of, and all because a self-confessed murderess wants to contest her father’s will.”

Hal glanced about the well-appointed office.

“Expensive,” he said.

“You and your brother are doing well.” He fastened speculative eyes on Hayes.

“Your father thinks you’re on the bread line Hayes gave a slight frown but didn’t say anything.

“So how much does Crew pay for the baseball-bat treatment?

It’s risky so it won’t come cheap.”

The pale eyes showed faint amusement.

“You’ve lost me, I’m afraid.”

“Your brother was very easy to identify, Hayes. Photographs of him litter your father’s sideboard. But then Crew obviously never warned you about the loose cannon on board. Or perhaps you should have warned him. Does he know your father lived next door to Olive Martin?” He saw the other’s incomprehension and nodded to Roz.

“This lady is writing a book about her. Crew was Olive’s solicitor, I was her arresting officer, and your father was her neighbour. Miss Leigh has visited us all and she recognised your brother from his snapshot.

It is a much smaller world than you ever imagined.”

There was a tiny shift in the pale eyes, a flicker of annoyance.

“Mistaken identity. You’ll never prove anything. It’s your word against his and he was in Sheffield all last week.”

Hal shrugged well-feigned indifference.

“The window is closing. I came with a genuine offer.” He placed his hands on the desk and leaned forward aggressively.

“I think it runs something like this. Crew has been using Robert Martin’s money to buy up bankrupt businesses cheap while he waits for the market to recover, but time’s running out on him. Amber’s child is not as dead and buried as he thought, and Olive is about to become a cause when Miss Leigh proves her innocent. Either she or her nephew, whoever gets in first, will demand a reckoning of Robert Martin’s executor, namely Crew. But the recession has dragged on rather longer than he thought it would and he’s in danger of being caught with his hands in the till. He needs to shift some property to make up the shortfall in his books.” He raised an eyebrow.

“What plans are there for the corner of Wenceslas Street, I wonder? A supermarket? Flats? Offices? He needs the Poacher to clinch the deal. I’m offering it to him.

Today.”

Hayes wasn’t so easily intimidated.

“The way I hear it, Hawksley, your restaurant is about to close anyway.

When it does, it will become a liability to you. At which point it will not be you who dictates terms, but whoever is willing to take it off your hands.”

Hal grinned and backed off.

“I’d say that rather depends on who goes down the chute first. Crew faces total extinction if his misappropriation of the Martin money comes to light before my bank decides to foreclose on the Poacher.

Crew’s taking a hell of a risk if he’s backing me to lose.” He nodded to the telephone.

“He can save himself by clinching a deal on the Poacher today.

Talk to him.”

Hayes pondered for a moment, then transferred his gaze to Roz.

“I presume you have a tape-recorder in your handbag, Miss Leigh. Would you oblige me by letting me have a look?”

Roz glanced up at Hal, and he nodded. She placed the bag with a bad grace on the desk in front of her.

“Thank you,” said Hayes politely. He opened it and removed the tape-recorder, making a cursory examination of the remaining contents of the handbag before snapping the recorder open and removing the cassette. He pulled the tape from between the rollers and cut it into pieces with a pair of scissors, then he stood up.

“You first, Hawksley. Let’s just make sure there are no other little surprises.” He ran expert hands over Hal, then did the same with Roz.

“Good.” He gestured towards the door.

“Tell your minder to move his chair back to Reception and wait there.”

He resumed his seat and waited while Hal relayed the message. After three minutes he used the telephone to establish that Wyatt was out of earshot.

“Now,” he said thoughtfully, ‘there seem to be various courses open to me. One is to take you up on your offer.” He picked up a ruler and flexed it between his hands.

“I’m not inclined to do that. You could have put the Poacher on the market at any time in the last six weeks but you didn’t, and this sudden urge of yours to sell makes me nervous.” He paused for a moment.

“Two, I can leave things to follow their natural course. The law is a joke and a slow joke at that, and there’s only a fifty-fifty chance that Peter Crew’s manipulations of Robert Martin’s estate will surface before you sink.” He bent the ruler as far as it would go without breaking, then released it abruptly.

“I’m not inclined to do that either. Fifty-fifty is too close to call.” The pale eyes hardened.

“Three, and in many ways this is the most attractive, I can wish an unfortunate accident on the pair of you, thereby killing two birds with one stone.” He flicked a glance at Roz.

“Your death, Miss Leigh, would put Olive and this book you’re writing, temporarily at least, on a back burner, and yours, Hawksley, would ensure the Poacher coming on the market. A neat solution, don’t you think?”

“Very neat,” agreed Hal.

“But you’re not going to do that either. There’s still the child in Australia, after all.”

Hayes gave a faint laugh. An echo of his father.

“So what are you going to do?”

“Give you what you came for.”

Hal frowned.

“Which is?”

“Proof that you were framed.” He pulled open a drawer in his desk and removed a transparent polythene folder. Holding it by its top corners he shook the contents a page of headed notepaper, showing creases where it had once been crumpled on to his desk. The printed address was a house in one of the more expensive parts of Southampton and written across the page in Crew’s handwriting were a series of short notes: Re: Poacher Cost s Pre-culture bad meat, rat excrement etc 1,000 Key b/door + guaranteed exit France 1,000 Advance for set-up 5,000 If E H prosecution successful 5,000 Poacher foreclosure 80,000?

SUB-TOTAL 92,000

Site offer 750,000

Less Poacher 92,000

Less 1 Wenceslas St .60,000

Less Newby’s 73,000

TOTAL 525,000

“It’s genuine,” said Hayes, seeing Hal’s scepticism.

“Crew’s home address, Crew’s handwriting’ he tapped the side of the note with his ruler ‘and his fingerprints. It’s enough to get you off the hook but whether it’s enough to convict Crew I don’t know. That’s your problem, not mine.”

“Where did you get it?”

But Hayes merely smiled and shook his head.

“I’m an exsoldier. I like fall-back positions. Let’s just say it came into my possession and, realising its importance, I passed it on to you.

Hal wondered if Crew knew the sort of man he had hired.

Had this been intended for later blackmail?

“I don’t get it,” he said frankly.

“Crew is bound to implicate you. So will I. So will Miss Leigh. One way or another you and your brother will get done. Why make it easy for us?”

Hayes didn’t answer directly.

“I’m cutting my losses, Hawksley, and giving you your restaurant back.

Be grateful.”

“Like hell, I’ll be grateful,” said Hal angrily. His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Who’s behind this foreclosure racket?

You or Crew?”

“There’s no racket. Foreclosures are a fact of life at the moment,” said the other.

“Anyone with a little capital can acquire property cheaply. Mr. Crew was part of a small perfectly legal syndicate. Unfortunately, he used money that didn’t belong to him.”

“So you run the syndicate?”

Hayes didn’t answer.

“No racket, my arse,” said Hal explosively.

“The Poacher was never going to come on the market yet you still bought up the properties on either side.”

Hayes flexed the ruler again.

“You’d have sold eventually.

Restaurants are appallingly vulnerable.” He gave a slight smile.

“Consider what would have happened if Crew had kept his nerve and sat it out till after your prosecution.” His eyes hardened.

“Consider what would have happened if my brother had told me about the approach Crew made to him. You and I would never have had this conversation for the simple reason that you would not have known who to have it with.”

The flesh crept on Hal’s neck.

“The hygiene scam was going to happen anyway?”

The ruler, bent beyond endurance, snapped abruptly. Hayes smiled.

“Restaurants are appallingly vulnerable,” he said again.

“I repeat. Be grateful. If you are, the Poacher will flourish.”

“Which is another way of saying we must keep our mouths shut about your involvement.”

“Of course.” He looked almost surprised, as if the question went without asking.

“Because next time, the fire won’t be confined to a chip pan, and you’ his pale eyes rested on Roz - ‘and your lady friend won’t be so lucky.

My brother’s pride was hurt. He’s itching to have another go at the pair of you.” He pointed to the piece of notepaper.

“You can do what you like with Crew. I don’t admire men without principle. He’s a lawyer.

He had a duty to a dead man’s estate and he abused it.”

Hal, rather shaken, picked up the page by its corner and tucked it into Roz’s handbag.

“You’re no better, Hayes. You abused Crew’s confidence when you told your father about Amber’s child. But for that we’d never have put Crew in the frame.” He waited while Roz stood up and walked to the door.

“And I’ll make damn sure he knows that when the police arrest him.”

Hayes was amused.

“Crew won’t talk.”

“What’s to stop him?”

He drew the broken ruler across his throat.

“The same thing that will stop you, Hawksley. Fear.” The pale eyes raked Roz from head to toe.

“But in Crew’s case, it’s his grandchildren he loves.”

Geon followed them out on to the pavement.

“OK,” he ordered, ‘give. What the hell’s going on here?”

Hal looked at Roz’s pale face.

“We need a drink.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Geon aggressively.

“I’ve paid my dues, Hal, now you pay yours.”

Hal gripped him fiercely above the elbow, digging his fingers into the soft flesh.

“Keep your voice down, you cretin,” he muttered.

“There’s a man in there who would take out your liver, eat it in front of you, and then start on your kidneys. And he’d smile while he was doing it. Where’s the nearest pub?”

Not until they were settled in a tight corner of the saloon, with empty tables all around them, was Hal prepared to speak.

He delivered the story in clipped, staccato sentences, emphasising Crew’s role but referring to the intruders at the Poacher only as hired thugs. He finished by removing the note from Roz’s handbag and laying it carefully on the table between them.

“I want this bastard screwed, Geon. Don’t even think about letting him worm his way out of it.”

Wyatt was sceptical.

“It’s not much, is it?”

“It’ll do.”

Wyatt slipped the page into his notebook and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

“So where does STC Security fit in?”

“It doesn’t. Hayes got hold of that note for me. That’s the extent of his firm’s involvement.”

“Ten minutes ago he was going to eat my liver.”

“I was thirsty.”

Wyatt shrugged.

“You’re giving me precious little to work with. I can’t even guarantee you’ll win the Environmental Health prosecution. Crew’s bound to deny having anything to do with it.”

There was a silence.

“He’s right,” said Roz abruptly, removing a packet of Tampax from her bag.

Hal grasped the hand holding the box and pressed it firmly to the table.

“No, Roz,” he said softly.

“Believe it or not, I care more about you than I do about the Poacher or about abstract justice.”

She nodded.

“I know, Hawksley,” Her eyes smiled into his.

“The trouble is, I care about you, too. Which means we’re in a bit of a fix. You want to save me and I want to save the Poacher, and the two would seem to be mutually exclusive.”

She started to ease her hands from under his.

“So one of us must win this argument, and it’s going to be me because this has nothing to do with abstract justice and everything to do with my peace of mind. I shall feel much happier with Stewart Hayes behind bars.” She shook her head as his hands moved to smother hers again.

“I won’t be responsible for you losing your restaurant, Hal. You’ve gone through hell for it, and you can’t give it up now.”

But Hal was no Rupert to be browbeaten or cajoled into doing what Roz wanted.

“No,” he said again.

“We’re not playing intellectual games here. What Hayes said was real.

And he’s not threatening to kill you, Roz. He’s threatening to maim you.” He lifted one hand to her face.

“Men like him don’t kill because they don’t need to. They cripple or they disfigure, because a live, broken victim is a more potent encouragement to others than a dead one.”

“But if he’s convicted-‘ she began.

“You’re being naive again,” he cut in gently, smoothing the hair from her face.

“Even if he is convicted, which I doubt ex-Army, first offence, hearsay evidence, Crew denying everything he won’t go to jail for any length of time. The worst that will happen will be twelve months for conspiracy to defraud, of which he’ll serve six. More likely he will be given a suspended sentence. It wasn’t Stewart who broke into the Poacher with a baseball bat, remember, it was his brother, and you will have to stand up in court and say that.” His eyes were insistent.

“I’m a realist, Roz. We’ll go for Crew and raise enough doubts to get the Health charges lifted. After that’ he shrugged “I’ll gamble that Hayes can be trusted to leave the Poacher alone.”

She was silent for a moment or two.

“Would you act differently if you’d never met me and I wasn’t involved?

And don’t lie to me, Hal, please.”

He nodded.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“I would act differently. But you are involved, so the question doesn’t arise.”

“OK.” She relaxed her hands under his and smiled.

“Thank you. I feel much happier now.”

“You agree.” Relieved, he lessened his pressure slightly and she seized the opportunity to snatch the Tampax box out of his grasp.

“No,” she said,”I don’t.” She opened the box, removed some truncated cardboard tubes and upended it to disgorge a miniature voice-activated dictaphone.

“With luck’ she turned to Geon Wyatt ‘this will have enough on it to convict Hayes. It was at full volume, sitting on his desk, so it should have caught him’ She rewound the tape for a second or two and then pressed ‘play’. Hal’s voice was muffled by distance:’… another way of saying we must keep our mouths shut about your involvement with the Poacher?”

Hayes’s, clear as a bell. Of course. Because next time, the fire won’t be confined to the chip pan, and you and your lady friend won’t be so lucky. My brother’s pride was hurt. He’s itching to have another go at the pair of you.”

Roz switched it off and pushed it across the table towards Wyatt. ‘win it do any good?”

“If there’s more like that, it will certainly help with Hal’s prosecution, as long as you’re prepared to give evidence to support it.”

“I am.”

He cast a glance at his friend, saw the tension on the other’s face and turned back to Roz.

“But Hal’s right in everything he’s said, assuming I’ve understood the gist correctly. We are talking abstract justice here.” He picked up the dictaphone.

“At the end of the day whatever sentence this man gets if he still wants to revenge himself on you, he will. And there’s nothing the police will be able to do to protect you. So? Are you sure you want me to take this?”

“I’m sure.”

Wyatt looked at Hal again and gave a helpless shrug.

“Sorry, old man. I did my best, but it looks like you’ve caught a tigress this time.”

Hal gave his baritone chuckle.

“Don’t say it, Geon, because I already know.”

But Wyatt said it anyway.

“You lucky, bloody sod.”

Olive sat hunched over her table, working on a new sculpture.

Eve and her faces and her baby had collapsed under the weight of a fist, leaving the pencil pointing heavenward like an accusing finger.

The Chaplain regarded the new piece thoughtfully. A bulky shape, roughly human and lying on its back, seemed to be struggling from its clay base. Strange, he thought, how Olive, with so little skill, made these figures work.

“What are you sculpting now?”

“MAN.”

He could, he thought, have predicted that. He watched the fingers roll a thick sausage of clay and plant it upright on the base at the figure’s head.

“Adam?” he suggested. He had the feeling she was playing a game with him. There had been a surge of sudden activity when he entered her room, as if she had been waiting for him to break hours of stillness.

“Cain.” She selected another pencil and laid it across the top of the clay sausage, parallel with the recumbent man, pressing it down till it was held firmly.

“Faustus. Don Giovanni. Does it matter?”

“Yes, it does,” he said sharply.

“Not all men sell their souls to the devil, any more than all women are two-faced.”

Olive smiled to herself and cut a piece of string from a ball on the table. She made a loop in one end and fastened the other round the tip of the pencil so that the string hung down over the figure’s head. With infinite care, she tightened the loop about a matchstick.

“Well?” she demanded.

The Chaplain frowned.

“I don’t know. The gallows?”

She set the matchstick swinging.

“Or the sword of Damocles.

It amounts to the same thing when Lucifer owns your soul.”

He perched on the edge of the table and offered her a cigarette.

“It’s not Man in general, is it?” he said, flicking his lighter.

“It’s someone specific. Am I right?”

“Maybe.”

“Who?”

She fished a letter from her pocket and handed it to him. He spread the single page on the table and read it. It was a standard letter, personalised on a word processor, and very brief.

Dear Miss Martin, Please be advised that unforeseen circumstances have obliged Mr. Peter Crew to take extended leave from this practice.

During his absence his clients’ affairs will be covered by his partners. Please be assured of our continued assistance.

Yours etc.

The Chaplain looked up.

“I don’t understand.”

Olive inhaled deeply then blew a stream of smoke towards the matchstick. It spiralled wildly before slipping from the noose and striking the day forehead.

“My solicitor’s been arrested.”

Startled, he looked at the day figure. He didn’t bother to ask if she was sure. He knew the efficiency of the cell telegraph as well as she did.

“What for?”

“Wickedness.” She stubbed her cigarette into the clay.

“MAN was born to it. Even you, Chaplain.” She peeped at him to watch his reaction.

He chuckled.

“You’re probably right. But I do my best to fight it, you know.”

She took another of his cigarettes.

“I shall miss you,” she said unexpectedly.

“When?”

“When they let me out.”

He looked at her with a puzzled smile.

“That’s a long way off. We’ve years yet.”

But she shook her head and mashed the clay into a ball with the dog end in the middle.

“You never asked me who Eve was.”

The game again, he thought.

“I didn’t need to, Olive. I knew.”

She smiled scornfully to herself.

“Yes, you would.” She examined him out of the corner of her eye.

“Did you work it out for yourself?” she asked.

“Or did God tell you? Look, my son, Olive strikes her reflection in the clay. Now help her to come to terms with her own duplicity. Well, don’t worry, either way I shall remember what you did for me when I get out.”

What did she want from him? Encouragement that she would get out, or rescuing from her lies? He sighed inwardly. Really, it would all be so much easier if he liked her, but he didn’t.

And that was his wickedness.