Sculptress

by Minette Walters

  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 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 5,000 If E H prosecution successful 5,000 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 exsoldier. I like fall-back positions. Let’s just say it came into my possession and, realising 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 sa
ying 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.”

  Geon 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 Geon 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, emphasising 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, Geon. 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.”

  “But if he’s convicted-‘ she began.

  “You’re being naive again,” he cut in gently, smoothing the hair from her face.

  “Even if he is convicted, which I doubt ex-Army, first offence, hearsay evidence, Crew denying everything he won’t go to jail for any length of time. The worst that will happen will be twelve months for conspiracy to defraud, of which he’ll serve six. More likely he will be given a suspended sentence. It wasn’t Stewart who broke into the Poacher with a baseball bat, remember, it was his brother, and you will have to stand up in court and say that.” His eyes were insistent.

  “I’m a realist, Roz. We’ll go for Crew and raise enough doubts to get the Health charges lifted. After that’ he shrugged “I’ll gamble that Hayes can be trusted to leave the Poacher alone.”

  She was silent for a moment or two.

  “Would you act differently if you’d never met me and I wasn’t involved?

  And don’t lie to me, Hal, please.”

  He nodded.

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  “I would act differently. But you are involved, so the question doesn’t arise.”

  “OK.” She relaxed her hands under his and smiled.

  “Thank you. I feel much happier now.”

  “You agree.” Relieved, he lessened his pressure slightly and she seized the opportunity to snatch the Tampax box out of his grasp.

  “No,” she said,”I don’t.” She opened the box, removed some truncated cardboard tubes and upended it to disgorge a miniature voice-activated dictaphone.

  “With luck’ she turned to Geon Wyatt ‘this will have enough on it to convict Hayes. It was at full volume, sitting on his desk, so it should have caught him’ She rewound the tape for a second or two and then pressed ‘play’. Hal’s voice was muffled by distance:’… another way of saying we must keep our mouths shut about your involvement with the Poacher?”

  Hayes’s, clear as a bell. Of course. Because next time, the fire won’t be confined to the chip pan, and you 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.”

  Roz switched it off and pushed it across the table towards Wyatt. ‘win it do any good?”

  “If there’s more like that, it will certainly help with Hal’s prosecution, as long as you’re prepared to give evidence to support it.”

  “I am.”

  He cast a glance at his friend, saw the tension on the other’s face and turned back to Roz.

  “But Hal’s right in everything he’s said, assuming I’ve understood the gist correctly. We are talking abstract justice here.” He picked up the dictaphone.

  “At the end of the day whatever sentence this man gets if he still wants to revenge himself on you, he will. And there’s nothing the police will be able to do to protect you. So? Are you sure you want me to take this?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Wyatt looked at Hal again and gave a helpless shrug.

  “Sorry, old man. I did my best, but it looks like you’ve caught a tigress this time.”

  Hal gave his baritone chuckle.

  “Don’t say it, Geon, because I already know.”

  But Wyatt said it anyway.
>
  “You lucky, bloody sod.”

  Olive sat hunched over her table, working on a new sculpture.

  Eve and her faces and her baby had collapsed under the weight of a fist, leaving the pencil pointing heavenward like an accusing finger.

  The Chaplain regarded the new piece thoughtfully. A bulky shape, roughly human and lying on its back, seemed to be struggling from its clay base. Strange, he thought, how Olive, with so little skill, made these figures work.

  “What are you sculpting now?”

  “MAN.”

  He could, he thought, have predicted that. He watched the fingers roll a thick sausage of clay and plant it upright on the base at the figure’s head.

  “Adam?” he suggested. He had the feeling she was playing a game with him. There had been a surge of sudden activity when he entered her room, as if she had been waiting for him to break hours of stillness.

  “Cain.” She selected another pencil and laid it across the top of the clay sausage, parallel with the recumbent man, pressing it down till it was held firmly.

  “Faustus. Don Giovanni. Does it matter?”

  “Yes, it does,” he said sharply.

  “Not all men sell their souls to the devil, any more than all women are two-faced.”

  Olive smiled to herself and cut a piece of string from a ball on the table. She made a loop in one end and fastened the other round the tip of the pencil so that the string hung down over the figure’s head. With infinite care, she tightened the loop about a matchstick.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  The Chaplain frowned.

  “I don’t know. The gallows?”

  She set the matchstick swinging.

  “Or the sword of Damocles.

  It amounts to the same thing when Lucifer owns your soul.”

  He perched on the edge of the table and offered her a cigarette.

  “It’s not Man in general, is it?” he said, flicking his lighter.

  “It’s someone specific. Am I right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who?”

  She fished a letter from her pocket and handed it to him. He spread the single page on the table and read it. It was a standard letter, personalised on a word processor, and very brief.

  Dear Miss Martin, Please be advised that unforeseen circumstances have obliged Mr. Peter Crew to take extended leave from this practice.