The Sculptress
Page 32
He stared at her with dislike. ‘Because, Miss Leigh,’ he said, ‘she is a monster. Worse, she’s a clever monster. Doesn’t it worry you that this wretched woman you’ve set up to take Olive’s place is the only one who’s not mentally fit to fight the accusation? And doesn’t it worry you that Olive waited till her father died before she would talk to anyone? Mark my words, he was the one she intended to smear with her guilt – because he was easy. He was dead. But you gave her Mrs Clarke instead.’ He thrust his face angrily into hers. ‘The evidence you’ve unearthed raises doubts, but no more. Computer-enhanced photography is as open to interpretation as the nature of psychopathy.’ He shook his head. ‘Olive will get out because of it, of course. The law has become very flabby in the last few years. But I was there when she told her story and, as I made clear to you at the start, Olive Martin is a dangerous woman. She’s after her father’s money. You’ve been led by the nose, Miss Leigh.’
‘She’s not half as dangerous as you, Mr Crew. At least she’s never paid to have people’s businesses destroyed and their lives threatened. You’re a cheap crook.’
Crew shrugged. ‘If that appears in print, Miss Leigh, I shall sue you for defamation, and it will cost you considerably more in legal fees than it will cost me. I suggest you remember that.’
The journalist watched him walk away. ‘He’s doing a Robert Maxwell on you.’
‘That’s the law for you,’ said Roz in disgust. ‘It’s nothing but a big stick if you know how to use it or you’re rich enough to employ someone else to use it for you.’
‘You don’t think he’s right about Olive, do you?’
‘Of course not,’ said Roz angrily, sensing his doubt. ‘But at least you know now what she was up against. This country is mad if it assumes that the presence of a solicitor during an interview will automatically protect a prisoner’s rights. They are just as fallible, just as lazy, and just as crooked as the rest of us. It cost the Law Society millions last year to compensate clients for their solicitors’ misdeeds.’
*
The book was scheduled to come out within a month of Olive’s release. Roz had finished it in record time amidst the peace and seclusion of Bayview, which she bought on impulse when she discovered it was impossible to work above the continuous noise of people enjoying their food in the restaurant downstairs. The Poacher had been relaunched in a whirl of somewhat exaggerated publicity featuring Hal as the heroic underdog fighting the evil of organized crime. His association with the Olive Martin case, particularly his latter efforts to help in securing her release, had only added to the hype. He applauded Roz’s decision to buy Bayview. Making love against the back-drop of the ocean was a vast improvement on the metal bars at the Poacher.
And she was safer there.
Hal had discovered within himself a capacity for caring that he hadn’t known existed. It went deeper than love, encompassing every emotion from admiration to lust, and, while he would never have described himself as an obsessive man, the stress of worrying about Stewart Hayes, free on bail, slowly became intolerable to him. He was prompted finally to make Hayes a surprise visit at home one day. He found him playing in the garden with his ten-year-old daughter and it was there that he made Hayes an offer Hayes couldn’t refuse. A life for a life, a maiming for a maiming, should anything happen to Roz. Hayes recognized such compelling purpose in the dark eyes, perhaps because it’s what he would have done himself, that he agreed to an indefinite truce. His love for his daughter, it seemed, was matched only by Hal’s love for Roz.
Iris, claiming almost more credit for the book than Roz – ‘if it hadn’t been for me it would never have been written’ – was busy selling it around the world as the latest example of British justice reeling under the body blows of its own inflexibility. A small, rather ironic footnote to the story was that the boy Crew’s firm had located in Australia proved not, after all, to be Amber’s lost child and the search for him was promptly abandoned. The time limit, set in Robert Martin’s will, had run out and his money, swollen by Crew’s investments – which were now out of his reach – continued in limbo while Olive sought leave to contest her right to it.
The Sculptress
With her debut, The Ice House, Minette Walters won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Award for the best first crime novel of 1992. Rapidly establishing a reputation as one of the most exciting crime novelists writing today, her second novel, The Sculptress, was acclaimed by critics as one of the most compelling and powerful novels of the year and won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for the best crime novel published in America in 1993. In 1994 Minette Walters achieved a unique triple when The Scold’s Bridle was awarded the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year. Her following five novels, The Dark Room, The Echo, The Breaker, The Shape of Snakes and Acid Row, were also published to further critical acclaim throughout the world and her ninth novel, Fox Evil, won the 2003 CWA Gold Dagger for Fiction. Her short novel Chickenfeed was written for World Book Day to encourage emergent readers and was voted the 2006 Quick Reads Readers’ Favourite.
Minette Walters lives in Dorset with her husband and two children.
By the same author
The Ice House
The Scold’s Bridle
The Dark Room
The Echo
The Breaker
The Shape of Snakes
Acid Row
Fox Evil
Disordered Minds
The Devil’s Feather
The Chameleon’s Shadow
and
The Tinder Box
Chickenfeed
(Quick Reads)
Praise for Minette Walters
The Ice House
‘Terrific first novel with a high Rendellesque frisson count’
The Times
The Sculptress
‘A devastatingly effective novel’
Observer
The Scold’s Bridle
‘A gothic puzzle of great intricacy and psychological power’
Sunday Times
The Dark Room
‘A marvellous, dramatically intelligent novel. It shimmers with suspense, ambiguity and a deep unholy joy’
Daily Mail
The Echo
‘It grips like steel . . . Passion, compassion, intelligence and romance are what Walters offers with no quarter for squeamish cowards’
Mail on Sunday
The Breaker
‘Stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of crime novels . . . Existing fans will love The Breaker, new readers will be instant converts’
Daily Express
The Shape of Snakes
‘Breaking all the rules of popular fiction, Minette Walters asks as much of her readers as many literary novelists, and yet she offers them a book as gripping as any thriller’
Times Literary Supplement
Acid Row
‘Humane intelligence enables Walters to twist and turn her plot . . . Acid Row is a breathtaking achievement’
Daily Telegraph
Fox Evil
‘Fox Evil is the work of a writer at the peak of her confidence and supreme ability’
The Times
Disordered Minds
‘A powerful, acute and vivid work from a staggeringly talented writer’
Observer
The Tinder Box
‘If there wasn’t a recognised school of crime writing called Home Counties noir before, there is now. Minette Walters invented it and remains the undisputed Head Girl’
Birmingham Post
The Devil’s Feather
‘One of the most powerful yet nuanced practitioners of the psychological thriller . . . always keeps the narrative momentum cracked up to a fierce degree’
Daily Express
Chickenfeed
‘A marvellous little story, thoroughly intimate with human nastiness’
Evening Standard
The Chameleon’s Shadow
‘No wo
nder Minette Walters is the country’s bestselling female crime writer. But even this label does not exactly do justice to the scope and breadth of her gripping, terrifying novels . . . The Chameleon’s Shadow is another classic’
Daily Mirror
For Roland and Philip
Prologue
Southern Evening Herald, January, 1988
Twenty-Five Years for
Brutal Murders
At Winchester Crown Court yesterday, Olive Martin, 23, of 22 Leven Road, Dawlington, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the brutal murders of her mother and sister, with a recommendation that she serve twenty-five years. The judge, who referred to Martin as ‘a monster without a grain of humanity’, said that nothing could excuse the savagery she had shown to two defenceless women. The murder of a mother by her daughter was the most unnatural of crimes and demanded the strongest penalty that the law could impose. The murder of a sister by a sister was no less heinous. ‘Martin’s butchery of the bodies,’ he went on, ‘was an unforgivable and barbarous desecration that will rank in the annals of crime as an act of supreme evil.’ Martin showed no emotion as sentence was passed. . .
Ground-floor plan of Number 22 Leven Road, Dawlington, Southampton, as it was at the time of the murders. Drawn by the present owner for Miss Rosalind Leigh.
Epilogue
AT 5.30 ON a dark and frosty winter morning the Sculptress walked free from the gates of her prison, two hours earlier than the time announced to the press. She had sought and obtained permission to slip back into society well away from the glare of publicity that had surrounded the release of other celebrated cases of wrongful imprisonment. Roz and Sister Bridget, alerted by telephone, stood outside in the lamplight, stamping their feet and blowing on their hands. They smiled in welcome as the Judas door opened.
Only Hal, sheltering ten yards away in the warmth of the car, saw the look of gloating triumph that swept briefly over Olive’s face as she put her arms around the two women and lifted them bodily into the air. He recalled some words that he’d had stencilled on his desk when he was still a policeman. ‘Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.’
For no apparent reason, he shivered.
First published 1993 by Macmillan
First published in 1994 by Pan Books
This edition published in 2008 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2010 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-0-330-52877-1 PDF
ISBN 978-0-330-52875-7 EPUB
Copyright © Minette Walters 1993
The right of Minette Walters to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc, for permission to quote from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, 1992, 12:535
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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