The Sculptress

by Minette Walters

  ‘You’ve never mentioned it.’

  ‘You’ve never asked me.’

  Roz digested this for some moments in silence, then let out a long sigh. ‘I’ve been realizing recently how dependent I’ve become on him.’ She touched her sore lip. ‘His dependence hasn’t changed, of course. It’s the same as it always was, a constant demand for reassurance. Don’t worry, Rupert. It’s not your fault, Rupert. Everything will be all right, Rupert.’ She spoke the words without emphasis. ‘It’s why he prefers women. Women are more sympathetic.’ She fell silent.

  ‘How does that make you dependent on him?’

  Roz gave a slight smile. ‘He’s never left me alone long enough to let me think straight. I’ve been angry for months.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s very destructive. You can’t concentrate on anything because the anger won’t go away. I tear his letters up without reading them, because I know what they’ll say, but his handwriting sets my teeth on edge. If I see him or hear him, I start shaking.’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘You can become obsessed by hatred, I think. I could have moved a long time ago but, instead, I stay here waiting for Rupert to make me angry. That’s how I’m dependent on him. It’s a prison of sorts.’

  Iris wiped her cigarette end round the rim of an ashtray. Roz was telling her nothing she hadn’t worked out for herself a long time ago, but she had never been able to put it into words for the simple reason that Roz had never let her. She wondered what had happened to bring the barbed wire down. Clearly, it was nothing to do with Rupert, however much Roz might like to think it was. ‘So how are you going to break out of this prison? Have you decided?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Perhaps you should do what Olive has done,’ said Iris mildly.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Let someone else in.’

  Olive waited by her cell door for two hours. One of the officers, wondering why, paused to talk to her. ‘Everything all right, Sculptress?’

  The fat woman’s eyes fixed on her. ‘What day is it?’ she demanded.

  ‘Monday.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ She sounded angry.

  The officer frowned. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’

  ‘There’s nothing.’

  ‘Were you expecting a visitor?’

  ‘No. I’m hungry. What’s for tea?’

  ‘Pizza.’ Reassured, the officer moved on. It made sense. There were few hours in the day when Olive wasn’t hungry, and the threat of withholding her meals was often the only way to control her. A medical officer had tried to persuade her once of the benefits of dieting. He had come away very shaken and never tried again. Olive craved food in the way others craved heroin.

  In the end Iris stayed for a week and filled the sterile waiting room of Roz’s life with the raucous baggage of hers. She ran up a colossal telephone bill phoning her clients and customers at home and abroad, piled the tables with magazines, dropped ash all over the floor, imported armfuls of flowers which she abandoned in the sink when she couldn’t find a vase, left the washing-up in tottering stacks on the kitchen work-tops, and regaled Roz, when she wasn’t doing something else, with her seemingly inexhaustible flow of anecdotes.

  Roz said her farewells on the following Thursday afternoon with some relief and rather more regret. If nothing else, Iris had shown her that a solitary life was emotionally, mentally, and spiritually deadening. There was, after all, only so much that one mind could encompass, and obsessions grew when ideas went unchallenged.

  Olive’s destruction of her cell that night took the prison by surprise. It was ten minutes before the duty governor was alerted and another ten before a response was possible. It required eight officers to restrain her. They forced her to the ground and brought their combined weight to bear on her, but as one remarked later: ‘It was like trying to contain a bull elephant.’

  She had wreaked complete havoc on everything. Even the lavatory bowl had shattered under a mighty blow from her welded metal chair which, bent and buckled, had been discarded amongst the shards of porcelain. The few possessions which had adorned her chest of drawers lay broken across the floor and anything that could be lifted had been hurled in fury against the walls. A poster of Madonna, ripped limb from limb, lay butchered on the floor.

  Her rage, even under sedation, continued long into the night from the confines of an unfurnished cell, designed to cool the tempers of ungovernable inmates.

  ‘What the hell’s got into her?’ demanded the duty governor.

  ‘God knows,’ said a shaken officer. ‘I’ve always said she should be in Broadmoor. I don’t care what the psychiatrists say, she’s completely mad. They’ve no business to leave her here and expect us to look after her.’

  They listened to the muffled bellowings from behind the locked door. ‘BI-ITCH! BI-ITCH! BI-ITCH!’

  The duty governor frowned. ‘Who’s she talking about?’

  The officer winced. ‘One of us, I should think. I wish we could get her transferred. She puts the wind up me, she really does.’

  ‘She’ll be fine again tomorrow.’

  ‘Which is why she puts the wind up me. You never know where you are with her.’ She tucked her hair back into place. ‘You noticed none of her clay figures were touched except the ones she’s already mutilated?’ She smiled cynically. ‘And have you seen that mother and child she’s working on? The mother’s only smothering her baby, for God’s sake. It’s obscene. Presumably it’s supposed to be Mary and Jesus.’ She sighed. ‘What do I tell her? No breakfast if she doesn’t calm down?’

  ‘It’s always worked in the past. Let’s hope nothing’s changed.’

  Nine

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, a week later than planned, Roz was shown through to a clerical supervisor at the Social Security office in Dawlington. He regarded her scabby lip and dark glasses with only mild curiosity and she realized that for him her appearance was nothing unusual. She introduced herself and sat down. ‘I telephoned yesterday,’ she reminded him.

  He nodded. ‘Some problem that goes back over six years, you said.’ He tapped his forefingers on the desk. ‘I should stress we’re unlikely to be able to help. We’ve enough trouble chasing current cases, let alone delving into old records.’

  ‘But you were here six years ago?’

  ‘Seven years in June,’ he said without enthusiasm. ‘It won’t help, I’m afraid. I don’t remember you or your circumstances.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘I was a little economical with the truth on the telephone. I’m not a consumer. I’m an author. I’m writing a book about Olive Martin. I need to talk to someone who knew her when she worked here and I didn’t want a straight refusal down the phone.’

  He looked amused, glad perhaps that he was spared an impossible search for lost benefits. ‘She was the fat girl down the corridor. I didn’t even know what her name was until it appeared in the paper. As far as I remember, I never exchanged more than a dozen words with her. You probably know more about her than I do.’ He crossed his arms. ‘You should have said what you wanted. You could have saved yourself a drive.’

  Roz took out her notebook. ‘That doesn’t matter. It’s names I need. People who did speak to her. Is there anyone else who’s been here as long as you?’

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

  Roz felt his distrust. ‘And who can blame them?’ she said cheerfully. ‘Presumably it was the gutter press looking for a juicy headline. I HELD THE HAND OF A MONSTER or something equally tasteless. Only publicity seekers or idiots allow themselves to be used by Wapping to boost their grubby profits.’

  ‘And your book won’t make a profit?’ There was a dry inflection in his voice.

  She smiled. ‘A very modest one by newspaper standards.’ She pushed her dark glasses to the top of her head, reve
aling her eyes and the yellow rings around them. ‘I’ll be honest with you. I was dragooned into this research by an irritable agent demanding copy. I found the subject distasteful and was prepared to abandon it after a token meeting with Olive.’ She looked at him, turning her pencil between her fingers. ‘Then I discovered that Olive was human and very likeable, so I kept going. And almost everyone I’ve spoken to has given a similar answer to you. They hardly knew her, they never talked to her, she was just the fat girl down the corridor. Now, I could write my book on that theme alone, how social ostracism led a lonely, unloved girl to turn in a fit of frenzied anger on her teasing family. But I’m not going to because I don’t think it’s true. I believe there’s been a miscarriage of justice. I believe Olive is innocent.’

  Surprised, he reassessed her. ‘It shocked us rigid when we heard what she’d done,’ he admitted.

  ‘Because you thought it out of character?’

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

  She nodded. ‘Boring but dependable.’

  ‘In a nutshell, yes.’

  ‘Did she tell you anything about her private life?’

  He shook his head again. ‘It was true what I said at the beginning. Our paths rarely crossed. Any contact we had was work related and even that was minimal. Most of what I’ve just told you was synthesized from the amazed reactions of the few who did know her.’

  ‘Can you give me their names?’

  ‘I’m not sure I can remember.’ He looked doubtful. ‘Olive would know them better than I do. Why don’t you ask her?’

  Because she won’t tell me. She won’t tell me anything. ‘Because,’ she said instead, ‘I don’t want to hurt her.’ She saw his look of puzzlement and sighed. ‘Supposing doors get slammed in my face and I’m given the cold shoulder by Olive’s so-called friends. She’s bound to ask me how I got on, and how would I answer her? Sorry, Olive, as far as they’re concerned you’re dead and buried. I couldn’t do that.’

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

  ‘Was she fond of Olive?’

  ‘As much as anyone was.’

  ‘Then will you tell her that I don’t believe Olive murdered her mother and sister and that’s why I’m writing the book.’ She stood up. ‘And please impress on her that it’s desperately important I talk to someone who knew her at the time. So far I’ve only managed to trace one old school friend and a teacher.’ She walked to the door. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

  True to his word, he was five minutes. He joined her in the corridor and gave her a piece of paper with a name and address on it. ‘Her name’s Lily Gainsborough. She was the cleaner-cum-tea-lady in the good old days before privatized cleaning and automatic coffee machines. She retired three years ago at the age of seventy, lives in sheltered accommodation in Pryde Street.’ He gave her directions. ‘She’s expecting you.’ Roz thanked him. ‘Give my regards to Olive when you see her,’ he said, shaking her hand. ‘I had more hair and less flab six years ago, so a description won’t be much use, but she might remember my name. Most people do.’

  Roz chuckled. His name was Michael Jackson.

  ‘Of course I remember Olive. Called her “Dumpling”, didn’t I, and she called me “Flower”. Get it, dear? Because of my name, Lily. There wasn’t an ounce of harm in her. I never believed what they said she done and I wrote and told her so when I heard where they’d sent her. She wrote me back and said I was wrong, it was all her fault and she had to pay the penalty.’ Old wise eyes peered short-sightedly at Roz. ‘I understood what she meant, even if no one else did. She never did it but it wouldn’t have happened if she’d not done what she shouldn’t have. More tea, dear?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Roz held out her cup and waited while the frail old lady hefted a large stainless steel teapot. A relic from her job on the tea trolley? The tea was thick and charged with tannin, and Roz could hardly bring herself to drink it. She accepted another indigestible scone. ‘What did she do that she shouldn’t have?’

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

  ‘Which one?’

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

  ‘How many are there?’

  ‘Now you’re asking.’ Lily pursed her mouth into a wrinkled rosebud. ‘It’s a big family. Can’t keep track of them. Their mum must be a grandmother twenty times over and I doubt she’s reached sixty yet. Gyppos, dear. Bad apples the lot of them. In and out of prison that regular you’d think they owned the place. The mum included. Taught them to steal soon as they could walk. The kids kept being taken off her, of course, but never for very long. Always found their way home. Young Gary was sent to a boarding school – approved schools, they was called in my day – did quite well by all accounts.’ She crumbled a scone on her plate. ‘Till he went home, that is. She had him back on the thieving quicker than you can say knife.’

  Roz thought for a moment. ‘Did Olive tell you she was going out with one of them?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘Put two and two together, didn’t I? She was that pleased with herself, lost some weight, bought some pretty dresses from that boutique her sister went to work in, dabbed some colour on her face. Made herself look quite bonny, didn’t she? Stood to reason there was a man behind it somewhere. Asked her once who it was and she just smiled and said, “No names no pack drill, Flower, because Mummy would have a fit if she ever found out.” And then, two or three days later, I came across her with one of the O’Brien boys. Her face gave her away, as sunny as the day is long it was. That was him all right – the one she was soppy over – but he turned away as I passed, and I never did know exactly which O’Brien he was.’

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

  ‘The uniform,’ said Lily. ‘They all wore the same uniform.’

  ‘They were in the Army?’ asked Roz in surprise.

  ‘Leathers, they call them.’

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

  ‘That’s it. Hell’s Angels.’

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

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

  Roz sipped the bitter tea. ‘And you think it was the O’Brien lad who murdered Olive’s mother and sister?’

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

  ‘Did y
ou tell the police any of this?’ asked Roz curiously.

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

  ‘Where do they live?’

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

  Roz took another thoughtful sip from her cup. ‘Are you prepared to let me use this information, Lily? You do realize that if there’s anything in it it could help Olive.’

  ‘Course I do, dear. Why would I tell you otherwise?’

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

  ‘I know that.’

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

  The old eyes appraised her shrewdly. ‘You’re only a slip of a thing, dear, but you’ve survived a beating by the look of it. Reckon I can too. In any case,’ she went on stoutly, ‘I’ve spent six years feeling bad about not speaking up, and I was that glad when young Mick phoned and said you was coming, you wouldn’t believe. You go ahead, dear, and don’t mind about me. It’s safer here, anyway, than my old place. They could have set the whole thing alight and I’d have been dead long before anyone’d have thought of phoning for help.’

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