The Sculptress

by Minette Walters

  Olive crooned quietly to herself as she worked. Behind the mother and child, a series of figures, like grey gingerbread men, lined the back of the table. Two or three had lost their heads.

  He sat slumped on the steps outside the front door of her block of flats, smelling of beer, his head buried in his hands. Roz stared at him for several seconds, her face blank of expression. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He had been crying, she saw. ‘We need to talk,’ he said. ‘You never talk to me.’

  She didn’t bother to answer. Her ex-husband was very drunk. There was nothing they could say that hadn’t been said a hundred times before. She was so tired of his messages on her answerphone, tired of the letters, tired of the hatred that knotted inside her when she heard his voice or saw his handwriting.

  He plucked at her skirt as she tried to pass, clinging to it like a child. ‘Please, Roz. I’m too pissed to go home.’

  She took him upstairs out of an absurd sense of past duty. ‘But you can’t stay,’ she told him, pushing him on to the sofa. ‘I’ll ring Jessica and get her to come and collect you.’

  ‘Sam’s sick,’ he muttered. ‘She won’t leave him.’

  Roz shrugged unsympathetically. ‘Then I’ll call a cab.’

  ‘No.’ He reached down and jerked the jackplug from its socket. ‘I’m staying.

  There was a raw edge to his voice which was a warning, if she had chosen to heed it, that he was in no mood to be trifled with. But they had been married too long and had had too many bruising rows for her to allow him to dictate terms. She had only contempt for him now. ‘Please yourself,’ she said. ‘I’ll go to a hotel.’

  He stumbled to the door and stood with his back to it. ‘It wasn’t my fault, Roz. It was an accident. For God’s sake, will you stop punishing me?’

  Eight

  ROZ CLOSED HER eyes and saw again the tattered, pale face of her five-year-old daughter, as ugly in death as she had been beautiful in life, her skin ripped and torn by the exploding glass of the windscreen. Could she have accepted it more easily, she wondered as she had wondered so many times before, if Rupert had died too? Could she have forgiven him, dead, as she could not forgive him, alive? ‘I never see you,’ she said with a tight smile, ‘so how can I be punishing you? You’re drunk and you’re being ridiculous. Neither of which conditions is any way out of the ordinary.’ He had an unhealthy and uncared-for look which fuelled her scorn and made her impatient. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she snapped, ‘just get out, will you? I don’t feel anything for you any more and, to be honest, I don’t think I ever did.’ But that wasn’t true, not really. ‘You can’t hate what you never loved,’ Olive had said.

  Tears slithered down his drink-sodden face. ‘I weep for her every day, you know.’

  ‘Do you, Rupert? I don’t. I haven’t the energy.’

  ‘Then you didn’t love her as much as I loved her,’ he sobbed, his body heaving to control itself.

  Roz’s lips curled contemptuously. ‘Really? Then why your indecent haste to provide her replacement? I worked it out, you know. You must have impregnated your precious Jessica within a week of walking away unscathed from the – accident.’ She larded the word with sarcasm. ‘Is Sam a good replacement, Rupert? Does he wind your hair round his finger the way Alice used to do? Does he laugh like her? Does he wait by the door for you and hug your knees and say: “Mummy, Mummy, Daddy’s home”?’ Her anger made her voice brittle. ‘Does he, Rupert? Is he everything Alice was and more? Or is he nothing like her and that’s why you have to weep for her every day?’

  ‘He’s a baby, for Christ’s sake.’ He clenched his fists, her hatred mirrored in his eyes. ‘God, you’re a fucking bitch, Roz. I never set out to replace her. How could I? Alice was Alice. I couldn’t bring her back.’

  She turned away to look out of the window. ‘No.’

  ‘Then why do you blame Sam? It wasn’t his fault either. He doesn’t even know he had a half-sister.’

  ‘I don’t blame Sam.’ She stared at a couple, lit by orange light, on the other side of the road. They held each other tenderly, stroking hair, stroking arms, kissing. How naïve they were. They thought love was kind. ‘I resent him.’

  She heard him blunder against her coffee table. ‘That’s just bloody spite,’ he slurred.

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly, more to herself than to him, her breath misting the glass, ‘but I don’t see why you should be happy when I am not? You killed my daughter but you got away with it because the law said you’d suffered enough. I’ve suffered far more and my only crime was to let my adulterous husband have access to his daughter because I knew she loved him and I didn’t want to see her unhappy.’

  ‘If you’d only been more understanding,’ he wept, ‘it would never have happened. It was your fault, Roz. You’re the one who really killed her.’ She didn’t hear his approach. She was turning back into the room when his fist smashed against her face.

  It was a shabby, sordid fight. Where words had failed them – the very predictability of their conversations meant they were always forearmed – they hit and scratched instead in a brutish desire to hurt. It was a curiously passionless exercise, motivated more by feelings of guilt than by hate or revenge, for at the back of both their minds was the knowledge that it was the failure of their marriage, the war they had conducted between themselves, that had led Rupert to accelerate away in frustrated anger with their daughter, unstrapped, upon the back seat. And who could have foreseen the car that would hurtle out of control across a central reservation and, under the force of its impact, toss a helpless five-year-old through shards of broken glass, smashing her fragile skull as she went? An act of God, according to the insurance company. But for Roz, at least, it had been God’s final act. He and Alice had perished together.

  Rupert was the first to stay his hand, aware, perhaps, that the fight was an unequal one or because, quite simply, he had sobered up. He crawled away to sit huddled in a corner. Roz fingered the tenderness round her mouth and licked blood from her lips, then closed her eyes and sat for several minutes in restful silence, her murderous anger assuaged. They should have done this a long time ago. She felt at peace for the first time in months, as if she had exorcised her own guilt in some way. She should, she knew, have gone out to the car that day and strapped Alice into the seat herself, but instead she had slammed the front door on them both and retreated to the kitchen to nurse her hurt pride with a bottle of gin and an orgy of tearing up photographs. Perhaps, after all, she had needed to be punished too. Her guilt had never been expiated. Her own atonement, a private rending of herself, had brought about her disintegration and not her redemption.

  Enough, she saw now, was enough. ‘We are all masters of our fate, Roz, including you.’

  She pushed herself gingerly to her feet, located the jackplug and inserted it back into its socket. She glanced at Rupert for a moment, then dialled Jessica. ‘It’s Roz,’ she said. ‘Rupert’s here and he needs collecting, I’m afraid.’ She heard the sigh at the other end of the line. ‘It’s the last time, Jessica, I promise.’ She gave a hint of a laugh. ‘We’ve declared a truce. No more recriminations. OK, half an hour. He’ll be waiting for you downstairs.’ She replaced the receiver. ‘I mean it, Rupert. It’s over. It was an accident. Let’s stop blaming each other and find some peace at last.’

  Iris Fielding’s insensitivity was legendary but even she was shocked by the sight of Roz’s battered face the next day. ‘God, you look awful!’ she said bluntly, making straight for the drinks cabinet and pouring herself a brandy. As an afterthought she poured one for Roz. ‘Who did it?’

  Roz closed the door and limped back to the sofa.

  Iris drained her glass. ‘Was it Rupert?’ She proffered the second glass to Roz who shook her head to the brandy and the question.

  ‘Of course it wasn’t Rupert.’ She lowered herself carefully on to the sofa, half lying, half sitting, while Mrs Antrobus stalked across the soft fluff of her dressing-gowned
chest to butt her chin with an affectionate head. ‘Could you feed Mrs A. for me? There’s an opened tin in the fridge.’

  Iris glowered at Mrs Antrobus. ‘Horrible flea-bitten creature. Where were you when your mistress needed you?’ But she disappeared into the kitchen and rattled a saucer anyway. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t Rupert?’ she asked again when she re-emerged.

  ‘No. Not his style at all. The fights we have are entirely verbal and infinitely more bruising.’

  Iris looked thoughtful. ‘You’ve always told me how supportive he’s been.’

  ‘I lied.’

  Iris looked even more thoughtful. ‘So who was it?’

  ‘Some creep I picked up at a wine bar. He was more fanciable with his clothes on than off, so I told him to get stuffed and he took exception.’ She saw a question in Iris’s eyes and smiled cynically through her split lip. ‘No, he didn’t rape me. My virtue is intact. I defended it with my face.’

  ‘Hm. Well, far be it from me to criticize, my love, but wouldn’t it have been more sensible to defend your face with your virtue? I’m not a great believer in fighting over lost causes.’ She drank Roz’s brandy. ‘Did you call the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A doctor?’

  ‘No.’ She put a hand on the telephone. ‘And you’re not calling them either.’

  Iris shrugged. ‘So what have you been doing all morning?’

  ‘Trying to work out how I could get by without calling anyone. At midday, I realized I couldn’t. I’ve used all my aspirin, I’ve no food in the house, and I’m not going out looking like this.’ She raised bruised and suspiciously bright eyes. ‘So I thought of the least shockable and the most egocentric person I know and I telephoned her. You’ll have to go out shopping for me, Iris. I need enough to last me a week.’

  Iris was amused. ‘I would never deny that I’m egocentric but why is that important?’

  Roz bared her teeth. ‘Because you’re so wrapped up in yourself you’ll have forgotten all about this by the time you get home. Plus, you’re not going to pressure me into doing the right thing and nailing the little bastard. It wouldn’t reflect well on your agency if one of your authors was in the habit of bringing home pick-ups from wine bars.’ She clenched both hands over the telephone and Iris watched her knuckles whiten under the strain.

  ‘True,’ she agreed calmly.

  Roz relaxed a little. ‘I really couldn’t bear it, you know, if this got out, and it will if doctors or the police are involved. You know the bloody press as well as I do. Any excuse, and they’ll plaster their front pages all over again with pictures of Alice in the wreckage.’ Poor little Alice. Malign providence had put a freelance photographer beside the dual carriageway when she was tossed like a rag doll from Rupert’s car. His dramatic shots – published, according to the tabloid editors, as a tragic reminder to other families of the importance of wearing seat belts – had been Alice’s most lasting memorial. ‘You can imagine the sordid parallels they’ll draw. MOTHER DISFIGURED LIKE DAUGHTER. I couldn’t survive it a second time.’ She fished in her pocket and produced a shopping list. ‘I’ll write you a cheque when you come back. And whatever you do, don’t forget the aspirin. I’m in agony.’

  Iris tucked the shopping list into her bag. ‘Keys,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘You can go to bed while I’m out. I’ll let myself back in.’

  Roz pointed to her keys on a shelf by the door. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘and, Iris—’ She didn’t finish.

  ‘And, Iris, what?’

  She made an attempt at a wry grimace but abandoned it because it was too painful. ‘And, Iris, I’m sorry.’

  ‘So am I, old thing.’ She gave an airy wave and let herself out of the flat.

  For reasons best known to herself, Iris returned a couple of hours later with the shopping and a suitcase. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she said severely, administering aspirin in a glass of water. ‘I intend to keep an eye on you for a day or two. For entirely mercenary purposes, of course. I like to guard my investments closely. And anyway,’ she scratched under Mrs Antrobus’s chin, ‘someone’s got to feed this revolting moggy for you. You’ll only start howling if it dies of starvation.’

  Roz, depressed and very lonely, was touched.

  Detective Sergeant Geoff Wyatt toyed unhappily with his wine glass. His stomach was playing up, he was very tired, it was Saturday, he would rather have been at a Saints’ football match, and the sight of Hal tucking into a plateful of rare steak needled him. ‘Look,’ he said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice, ‘I hear what you’re saying but evidence is evidence. What are you expecting me to do? Tamper with it?’

  ‘It’s hardly evidence if it was tampered with at the outset,’ Hal snapped. ‘It was a frame, for Christ’s sake.’ He pushed his plate away. ‘You should have had some,’ he said acidly. ‘It might have improved your temper.’

  Wyatt looked away. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my temper and I ate before I got here.’ He lit a cigarette and glanced towards the door into the restaurant. ‘I’ve never felt comfortable in kitchens, not since seeing those women on Olive’s floor. Too many murder weapons and too much bloody meat about the place. Couldn’t we go next door?’

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Hal curtly. ‘Damn it, Geoff, you owe me a few one way and another.’

  Wyatt sighed. ‘How’s it going to help you if I get suspended for doing dodgy favours for an ex-copper?’

  ‘I’m not asking for dodgy favours. Just get the pressure taken off. Give me a breathing space.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You could start by persuading the Inspector to back off.’

  ‘And that’s not dodgy?’ His mouth turned down. ‘Anyway, I’ve tried. He’s not playing. He’s new, he’s honest, and he doesn’t like anyone who bends the rules, particularly policemen.’ He tapped ash on the floor. ‘You should never have left the Force, Hal. I did warn you. It’s very lonely outside.’

  Hal rubbed his unshaven face. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if my erstwhile colleagues didn’t keep treating me like a criminal.’

  Wyatt stared at the remains of the steak on Hal’s plate. He felt very queasy. ‘Well, if it comes to that, you shouldn’t have been so damn careless, then they wouldn’t have to.’

  Hal’s eyes narrowed unpleasantly. ‘One of these days you’re going to wish you hadn’t said that.’

  With a shrug, Wyatt ground his cigarette against his shoe and tossed the butt into the sink. ‘Can’t see it, old son. I’ve been shitting my backside off ever since the Inspector rumbled you. It’s made me ill, it really has.’ He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Why the hell did you have to cut corners instead of doing it by the book the way you were supposed to?’

  Hal nodded towards the door. ‘Out,’ he said, ‘before I rip your two-faced head off.’

  ‘What about that check you wanted me to run?’

  Hal fished in his pocket and removed a piece of paper. ‘That’s her name and address. See if there’s anything on her.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Hal shrugged. ‘Anything that will give me a lever. This book she’s writing is too well timed.’ He frowned. ‘And I don’t believe in coincidence.’

  One of the few advantages of being fat was that it was easier to hide things. Another bulge here or there passed unnoticed and the soft cavity between Olive’s breasts could accommodate itself to almost anything. In any case, she had noticed very early on that the officers preferred not to search her too diligently on the rare occasions when they thought it necessary. She had assumed at first that they were frightened of her, but she soon came to recognize that it was her fatness that inhibited them. Politically correct thinking within the prison service meant that while they were free to say what they liked about her behind her back they had to guard their tongues in her presence and treat her with a modicum of respect. Thus the helpful legacy of her anguished tears during strip-searches at the beginning, when her huge, repulsive bod
y shook with distress, was a reluctance on the part of the screws now to do anything more than a perfunctory running of their hands down the sides of her shift.

  But she had problems. Her small family of wax figures, absurdly cheerful in their painted cottonwool wigs and strips of dark material which she had wound around them like miniature suits, kept softening against the warmth of her skin and losing their shape. With infinite patience, she set her awkward fingers to remoulding them, first removing the pins which skewered the wigs to each of the heads. She wondered idly if the one of Roz’s husband looked anything like him.

  ‘What a ghastly place this is,’ said Iris, gazing critically about the bleak grey walls of Roz’s flat from her place on the vinyl sofa. ‘Haven’t you ever felt the urge to liven it up a bit?’

  ‘No. I’m just passing through. It’s a waiting room.’

  ‘You’ve been here twelve months. I can’t think why you don’t use the money from the divorce and buy yourself a house.’

  Roz rested her head against the back of her chair. ‘I like waiting rooms. You can be idle in them without feeling guilty. There’s nothing to do except wait.’

  Thoughtfully, Iris put a cigarette between her brilliant red lips. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She flicked a lighter to the tip of her cigarette while her penetrating eye-lined gaze fixed uncomfortably on Roz. ‘One thing does puzzle me,’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t Rupert, then why did he leave another tearful message on my answerphone, telling me he had behaved badly?’

  ‘Another?’ Roz stared at her hands. ‘Does that mean he’s done it before?’

  ‘With tedious regularity.’