The Sculptress

by Minette Walters

  ‘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.

  Geoff 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.’

  Geoff 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 Geoff’s face. ‘They will. Trust me.’

  Hal tipped a finger at Wyatt. ‘Now you know why I brought her.’

  ‘You’re both bloody mad.’ Geoff 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 efficientlooking receptionist behind an efficient-looking desk. Someone, she thought, had spent a great deal of money on STC Security. 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 Geoff. ‘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 for 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 breadline.’

  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 recognized 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 célèbre 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 5000

  If E H prosecution successful 5000

  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 ex-soldier. I like fall-back positions. Let’s just say it came into my possession and, realizing 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.’

  Geoff 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 Geoff 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, emphasizing 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, Geoff. 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.’