The Sculptress

by Minette Walters

  ‘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 façade. ‘I’m glad it’s you who bought it. I should think it feels lived in now. 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 it was 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’ll 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’ll sit in the car. I’ve some notes 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 mangetout, 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 naïve.’ 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 naïve 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 naïve’ – 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 b
lew 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 clear 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 cafetière. ‘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 draft 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, absent-mindedly 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 cafetière 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 windup?’

  ‘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. ‘D.S. 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. Je-sus! 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 a
fter 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.’