The Sculptress

by Minette Walters

  ‘We were.’ The woman spoke with regret. ‘We bought in eighty-six when the economy was booming.’ She took a pair of glasses from her pocket and popped them on her nose, leaning forward to examine the photograph. ‘Oh, yes, I remember her very well. Big girl. She and her husband came most Sundays during that summer. Used to book the room for the day and go home in the evening.’ She sighed. ‘It was a wonderful arrangement. We were always able to let the room again for the Sunday night. Double pay for one twenty-four-hour period.’ She heaved another sigh. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing now. I wish we could sell, I really do, but what with so many of the small hotels going bankrupt we wouldn’t even get what we paid for it. Soldier on, that’s all we can do.’

  Roz brought her back to Olive by tapping the photograph. ‘What did she and her husband call themselves?’

  The woman was amused. ‘The usual, I should think. Smith or Brown.’

  ‘Did they sign in?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We’re very particular about our register.’

  ‘Could I take a look?’

  ‘Don’t see why not.’ She opened a cupboard under the desk and sorted out the register for 1987. ‘Now, let me see. Ah, here we are. Mr and Mrs Lewis. Well, well, they were more imaginative than most.’ She twisted the book so that Roz could look at it.

  She gazed at the neat script and thought: Got you, you bastard. ‘This is the man’s handwriting.’ She knew already.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said the woman. ‘He always signed. She was a lot younger than he was and very shy, particularly at the beginning. She gained in confidence as time passed, they always do, but she never put herself forward. Who is she?’

  Roz wondered if the woman would be so keen to help once she knew, but there was no point in keeping it from her. She would learn all the details the minute the book appeared. ‘Her name’s Olive Martin.’

  ‘Never heard of her.’

  ‘She’s serving a life sentence for murdering her mother and sister.’

  ‘Good lord! Is she the one who—’ She made chopping motions with her hands. Roz nodded. ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘Do you still want the Belvedere mentioned?’

  ‘Do I heck!’ She beamed broadly. ‘Of course I do! A murderess in our hotel. Fancy! We’ll have a plaque put up in the bedroom. What are you writing exactly? A book? A magazine article? We’ll provide photographs of the hotel and the room she stayed in. Well, well, I must say. How exciting! If only I’d known.’

  Roz laughed. It was a cold-bloodedly ghoulish display of pleasure at another’s misfortune but she couldn’t find it in her heart to criticize. Only a fool would look a gift horse in the mouth. ‘Before you get too excited,’ she warned, ‘the book probably won’t be published for another year and it will be an exoneration of Olive, not a further condemnation. You see, I believe she’s innocent.’

  ‘Better and better. We’ll have the book on sale in the foyer. I knew our luck had to turn eventually.’ She beamed at Roz. ‘Tell Olive she can stay here free of charge for as long as she likes the minute she gets out of prison. We always look after our regulars. Now, my dear, anything else I can help you with?’

  ‘Do you have a photocopying machine?’

  ‘We do. Every mod. con. here, you know.’

  ‘Then may I have a copy of this entry in the register? And perhaps you could also give me a description of Mr Lewis.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘He wasn’t very memorable. Early fifties. Blond, always wore a dark suit, a smoker. Any good?’

  ‘Maybe. Did his hair look natural? Can you remember?’

  The woman chuckled. ‘There now, I’d forgotten. It never occurred to me till I took them in some tea one day and surprised him adjusting his wig in the mirror. I laughed afterwards, I can tell you. But it was a good one. I wouldn’t have guessed just by looking at him. You know him then?’

  Roz nodded. ‘Would you recognize him from a photograph?’

  ‘I’ll try. I can usually remember a face when I see it.’

  ‘Visitor for you, Sculptress.’ The officer was in the room before Olive had time to hide what she was doing. ‘Come on. Get a move on.’

  Olive swept her wax figures into one hand and crushed them together in her palm. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘The nun.’ She looked at Olive’s closed fist. ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Just plasticine.’ She uncurled her fingers. The wax figures, carefully painted and clothed in coloured scraps, had merged into a multi-coloured mash, unidentifiable now as the altar candle they had sprung from.

  ‘Well, leave it there. The nun’s come to talk to you, not watch you play with plasticine.’

  Hal was asleep at the kitchen table, body rigidly upright, arms resting on the table, head nodding towards his chest. Roz watched him for a moment through the window, then tapped lightly on the glass. His eyes, red-rimmed with exhaustion, snapped open to look at her and she was shocked by the extent of his relief when he saw who it was.

  He let her in. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t come back,’ he said, his face drawn with fatigue.

  ‘What are you so frightened of?’ she asked.

  He looked at her with something like despair. ‘Go home,’ he said, ‘this is none of your business.’ He went to the sink and ran the cold-water tap, dowsing his head and gasping as the icy stream hit the back of his neck.

  From the floor above came a sudden violent hammering.

  Roz leapt a foot in the air. ‘Oh, my God! What was that?’

  He reached out and gripped her arm, pushing her towards the door. ‘Go home,’ he ordered. ‘Now! I don’t want to have to force you, Roz.’

  But she stood her ground. ‘What’s going on? What was that noise?’

  ‘So help me,’ he said grimly, ‘I will do you some damage if you don’t leave now.’ But in outright contradiction to the words, he suddenly put his hands on either side of her face and kissed her. ‘Oh, God!’ he groaned, smoothing the tumbled hair from her eyes. ‘I do not want you involved, Roz. I do not want you involved.’

  She was about to say something when over his shoulder she saw the door into the restaurant swing open. ‘Too late,’ she said, turning him round. ‘We’ve got company.’

  Hal, horribly unprepared, showed his teeth in a wolfish grin. ‘I’ve been expecting you,’ he drawled. With a proprietary arm he eased Roz behind him and prepared to defend what was his.

  There were four of them, large anonymous men in ski-masks. They said nothing, just weighed in indiscriminately with baseball bats, using Hal as a human target. It happened so fast that Roz was a spectator to their grisly sport almost before she realized it. She, it seemed, was too insignificant to concern them.

  Her first angry impulse was to catch out at a flailing arm but the battering she had had at the hands of Rupert two weeks before persuaded her to use her brain instead. With trembling fingers she opened her handbag and removed the three-inch hatpin she had taken to carrying with her, thrusting it upwards into the buttock of the man nearest her. It drove in up to its ornate jade head and a soft groan issued from his mouth as he stood, completely paralysed with shock, the baseball bat slipping to the floor from his slackening fingers. No one noticed, except her.

  With an exclamation of triumph she dived on it and brought it up in a swinging arc to smash against the man’s balls. He sat on the floor and started to scream.

  ‘I’ve got one, Hal,’ she panted. ‘I’ve got a bat.’

  ‘Then use it, for Christ’s sake,’ he bellowed, going down under a rain of blows.

  ‘Oh God!’ Legs, she thought. She knelt on one knee, swiped at the nearest pair of trousers and crowed with triumph when she made contact. She took another swipe only to have her head jerked up as a hand seized her by the hair and started to pull it out by the roots. Shock and pain flooded her eyes with stinging tears.

  Hal, on his hands and knees on the floor, his head protected by his shoulders, was only vaguely aware that the rapidity of the blows beating against his back had
lessened. His brain was concentrated on the high-pitched screaming which he thought was coming from Roz. His anger was colossal, triggering such a surge of adrenalin that he exploded to his feet in an all-consuming fury and threw himself at the first man he saw, bearing him back against the gleaming ovens where a saucepan of fish stock bubbled gently. Oblivious to the blow which crashed with the force of a bus between his shoulder blades he bent his victim in an arc over the rings, grabbed the saucepan and upended the boiling liquid over the masked head.

  He swung round to face the fourth man and fended off another blow with his forearm before smashing the cast-iron base of the saucepan into the side of an unprotected jaw. The eyes behind the mask registered the briefest glimmer of surprise before rolling helplessly into their sockets. The man was unconscious before he hit the floor.

  Exhausted, Hal looked about for Roz. It was a moment or two before he found her, so disorientated was he by the noise of screaming which seemed to be filling the kitchen from every side. He shook his head to clear the fog and looked towards the door. He saw her almost immediately, her neck trapped in the hooked arm of the only man left with any fight in him. Her eyes were closed and her head lolled alarmingly to one side. ‘If you make a move,’ the man told Hal between jerky breaths, ‘I’ll break her neck.’

  A hatred, so primeval that he couldn’t control it, erupted like hot lava in Hal’s brain. His actions were instinctive. He lowered his head and charged.

  Fifteen

  ROZ SWAM UP to a strange twilight world between oblivion and consciousness. She knew she was there in the room but she felt apart from it as if she were watching what was going on from behind thickened glass. Sound was muted. She had a vague memory of fingers clamping round her throat. And afterwards? She wasn’t sure. It had, she thought, been very peaceful.

  Hal’s face loomed over her. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked from a great distance.

  ‘Fine,’ she murmured happily.

  He smacked her on the cheek with the flat of his hand. ‘That’s my girl,’ he told her, his voice muffled by cotton wool. ‘Come on, now. Snap out of it. I need some help.’

  She glared at him. ‘I’ll be up in a minute,’ she said with dignity.

  He hauled her to her feet. ‘Now,’ he said firmly, ‘or we’ll be back where we started.’ He thrust a baseball bat into her hand. ‘I am going to tie them up but you’ve got to protect my back while I’m doing it. I don’t want one of these bastards surprising me.’ He looked into her dazed eyes. ‘Come on, Roz,’ he said savagely, shaking her. ‘Pull yourself together and show a bit of character.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Has anyone ever told you what a complete and utter turd you are? I nearly died.’

  ‘You fainted,’ he said unemotionally, but his eyes were twinkling. ‘Hit anything that moves,’ he instructed her, ‘except the one with his head under the tap. He’s in enough agony already.’

  Reality came rushing in on wings of sound. Moans and groans and running water. There was a man with his head under the tap. She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and swung the baseball bat in terrified reaction, ramming home the hatpin that its unfortunate recipient was gingerly plucking from his bottom. His screams of reawakened agony were pitiful.

  ‘Oh God!’ she cried. ‘I’ve done something awful.’ Tears sprang into her eyes.

  Hal finished trussing her putative killer, who had been knocked cold by his frenzied charge, and moved on to the other unconscious figure, winding twine expertly about the wrists and ankles. ‘What’s he yelling for anyway?’ he demanded, tethering his victim to the table for good measure.

  ‘He’s got a pin in his bottom,’ said Roz, her teeth chattering uncontrollably.

  Hal approached the man warily. ‘What sort of pin?’

  ‘My mother’s hatpin.’ She gagged. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

  He saw the green ornamental head protruding from the man’s Levis and felt a tiny twinge of sympathy. It didn’t last. He left it there while he bound the man’s wrists and ankles and tethered him, like his friend, to the table. It was almost as an afterthought that he gripped the jade and yanked the hatpin, grinning, from the quivering buttock. ‘You arsehole,’ he murmured cheerfully, tucking the pin into the front of his jumper.

  ‘I feel ill,’ said Roz.

  ‘Sit down, then.’ He took a chair and pressed her into it before moving to the back door and flinging it open. ‘Out,’ he ordered the man at the sink. ‘Get yourself to hospital as fast as you can. If your friends have an ounce of decency they’ll keep your name to themselves. If they haven’t’ – he shrugged – ‘you’ve got about half an hour to get yourself admitted before the police come looking for you.’

  The man needed no persuading. He launched himself into the fresh air of the alleyway and took to his heels.

  With a groan of exhaustion, Hal shut the door and slithered to the floor. ‘I need a rest. Do me a favour, sweetheart, and take off their masks. Let’s see what we’ve got.’

  Roz’s head was aching intolerably where the roots of her hair had been loosened. She looked at him with burning eyes in a pasty white face. ‘For your information, Hawksley,’ she said icily, ‘I’m just about out on my feet. It may have escaped your notice, but if it hadn’t been for me you wouldn’t have got anything.’

  He gave a mighty yawn and winced as pain seared around his chest and back. Fractured ribs, he thought tiredly. ‘I’ll tell you this for free, Roz. As far as I’m concerned you are the most wonderful woman God ever made and I’ll marry you if you’ll have me.’ He smiled sweetly. ‘But at the moment I’m bushed. Be kind. Get off your high horse and take their ski-masks off.’

  ‘ “Words, words, mere words”,’ she murmured, but she did as he asked. The side of his face was already thickening where a baseball bat had split the skin. What the hell sort of state must his back be in? Covered in weals, probably, like the last time. ‘Do you know any of them?’ She studied the slack features of the unconscious man by the door. She had a fleeting impression she knew him, but his head moved and the impression vanished.

  ‘No.’ He’d seen her frown of brief recognition. ‘Do you?’

  ‘I thought I did,’ she said slowly. ‘Just for a moment.’ She shook her head. ‘No. He probably reminded me of someone on the telly.’

  Hal pushed himself to his feet and padded over to the sink, his stiffening body protesting at every step. He filled a bowl with water and sloshed it into the gaping mouth, watching the eyes flicker open. They were instantly alert, wary, guarded, all of which told Hal he wasn’t likely to get anywhere by asking questions.

  With a shrug of resignation, he looked at Roz. ‘I need a favour.’

  She nodded.

  ‘There’s a phonebox about two hundred yards down the main road. Take your car to it, dial 999, tell them the Poacher’s been broken into, and then go home. Don’t give your name. I’ll call you the minute I can.’

  ‘I’d rather stay.’

  ‘I know.’ His face softened. She was wearing her lonely look again. He reached out and ran the back of a finger down the line of her cheek. ‘Trust me. I will call.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘How long do you want?’

  He’d make it up to her one day, he thought. ‘Fifteen minutes before you phone.’

  She retrieved her handbag from the floor, cramming the contents inside and zippering it closed. ‘Fifteen minutes,’ she echoed, pulling the door open and stepping outside. She stared at him for a long moment then shut the door and walked away.

  Hal waited until her footsteps faded. ‘This,’ he said gently, reaching for the hatpin, ‘is going to be extremely painful.’ He grasped the man’s hair and forced him down until his face was flat against the floor. ‘And I haven’t got time for games.’ He placed the weight of one knee across the man’s shoulders then prised a finger straight in one of the bound fists and pushed the point of the hatpin between the flesh and the nail. He felt the finger flinch. ‘Y
ou’ve got five seconds to tell me what the hell is going on before I push it home. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.’ He breathed deeply through his nose, closed his eyes and shoved.

  The man screamed.

  Hal caught ‘Foreclosures. You’re costing money on the foreclosures’ before a ton weight descended on the back of his head.

  Sister Bridget, as imperturbable as ever, ushered Roz into her sitting room and sat her in a chair with a glass of brandy. Clearly Roz had been in another fight. Her clothes were filthy and dishevelled, her hair was a mess, and splotchy red marks on her neck and face looked very like the imprint of fingers. Someone, it seemed, was using her as a target for his spleen, though why she chose to put up with it Sister Bridget couldn’t begin to imagine. Roz was as far removed from Dickens’ Nancy as anyone could be, and had quite enough independence of spirit to reject the degrading life that a Bill Sykes offered.

  She waited placidly while wave after wave of giggles spluttered from Roz’s mouth.

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ she asked at last, when Roz had composed herself enough to dab at her eyes.

  Roz blew her nose. ‘I don’t think I can,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t at all funny.’ Laughter welled in her eyes again and she held the handkerchief to her mouth. ‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance but I was afraid I’d have an accident if I tried to drive home. I think it’s what’s known as an adrenalin high.’

  Privately, Sister Bridget decided it was a product of delayed shock, the natural healing process of mind over traumatized body. ‘I’m pleased to have you here. Tell me how you’re progressing on the Olive front. I saw her today but she wasn’t very communicative.’

  Grateful for something to take her mind off the Poacher, Roz told her. ‘She did have a lover. I’ve found the hotel they used.’ She peered at the brandy glass. ‘It was the Belvedere in Farraday Street. They went there on Sundays during the summer of eighty-seven.’ She took a sip from the glass then placed it hurriedly on the table beside her and slumped back into the chair, pressing shaking fingers to her temples. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said, ‘but I don’t feel at all well. I’ve got the mother and father of all headaches.’