The Sculptress (22 page)

It also means and this is peculiarly relevant to you that she cannot be cured because there is nothing to cure. Under similar circumstances unhappiness, low self-image, betrayal, in other words whatever triggers her anger she would do the same thing again with the same disregard for the consequences because, in simple terms, having weighed them up, she would consider the consequences worth the action.

I would add, and again this is peculiarly relevant to you, that the consequences are far less daunting to her now than they would have been six years ago. On the whole Olive enjoys being in prison. She has security, she has respect, and she has people to talk to. Outside, she would have none of them. And she knows it.”

It was like being up before her old headmistress. The confident voice of authority.

“So what you’re saying is that she would have no qualms about taking a swipe at me because an additional sentence would only mean a longer stay here? And she would welcome that?”

“In effect, yes.”

“You’re wrong,” said Roz bluntly.

“Not about her sanity. I agree with you, she’s as sane as you or I.

But you’re wrong about her being a danger to me. I’m writing a book about her and she wants that book written. If it is me she’s angry with, and I stress again that I don’t think it is, then her interpretation of my nonappearance last week may be that I’ve lost interest, and it would be very poor psychology to let her go on thinking it.” She composed her arguments.

“You have a notice at the gate, presumably all prisons do. It’s a dedaration of policy. If I remember right, it includes something about helping prison inmates to lead law-abiding lives both inside prison and outside. If that has any meaning at all, and isn’t simply a piece of decorative wallpaper to appease the reformers, then how can you justify provoking further punishable outbursts from Olive by denying her visits which the Home Office has already approved?” She fell silent, worried about saying too much.

However reasonable the woman might be, she could not afford to have her authority challenged. Few people could.

“Why does Olive want this book written?” asked the Governor mildly.

“She hasn’t sought public notoriety before and you’re not the first author to show an interest in her. We had several applications in the early days. She refused them all.”

“I don’t know,” said Roz honestly.

“Perhaps it has something to do with her father’s death. She claimed that one of her reasons for pleading guilty was to avoid putting him through the mill of a trial.” She shrugged.

“Presumably she felt a book would have been just as devastating to him, so waited till he died.”

The Governor was more cynical.

“Alternatively, while he was alive, her father was in a position to contest what she said; dead, he cannot. However, that is no concern of mine. My concern is with the ordered running of my prison.” She tapped her fingers impatiently on her desk. She had no desire at all to be drawn into a three-cornered dispute between herself, the Home Office, and Roz, but time-consuming correspondence with civil servants would pale into insignificance beside the murder of a civilian inside her prison. She had hoped to persuade Roz to abort the visit herself. She was surprised and, if the truth be told, rather intrigued by her own failure. What was Rosalind Leigh getting right in her relationship with Olive that the rest of them were getting wrong?

“You may talk to her for half an hour,” she said abruptly, ‘in the Legal Visits room, which is larger than the one you are used to. There will be two male officers present throughout the interview. Should either you or Olive breach any regulation of this prison, your visits will cease immediately and I will personally ensure that they will never resume. Is that understood, Miss Leigh?”

“Yes.”

The other nodded.

“I’m curious, you know. Are you raising her expectations by telling her your book will get her released?”

“No. Apart from anything else, she won’t talk to me about the murders.” Roz reached for her briefcase.

“Then why are you so confident you’re safe with her?”

“Because as far as I can make out I’m the only outsider she’s met who’s not frightened of her.”

Privately, she retracted that statement as Olive was ushered into the Legal Visits room by two large male officers who then retreated to the door behind Olive’s back and stationed themselves on either side of it.

The woman’s look of dislike was chilling, and Roz recalled Hal saying to her that she might think differently about Olive if she ever saw her in a rage.

“Hi.” She held Olive’s gaze.

“The Governor has allowed me to see you, but we’re on trial, both of us. If we misbehave today my visits will be stopped. Do you understand?”

BITCH, Olive mouthed, unseen by the officers. FUCKING BITCH. But was she referring to Roz or the Governor? Roz couldn’t tell.

“I’m sorry I didn’t make it last Monday.” She touched her lip where the ugly scab still showed.

“I got thrashed by my miserable husband.” She forced a smile.

“I couldn’t go out for a week, Olive, not even for you. I do have some pride, you know.”

Olive examined her stolidly for a second or two then dropped her eyes to the cigarette packet on the table. She plucked greedily at a cigarette and popped it between her fat lips.

“I’ve been on the block,” she said, flaring a match to the tip.

“The bastards wouldn’t let me smoke. And they’ve been starving me.”

She threw a baleful glance behind her.

“Bastards! Did you kill him?”

Roz followed her gaze. Every word she and Olive said would be reported back.

“Of course not.”

Olive smoothed the limp, greasy hair from her forehead with the hand that held the cigarette. A streak of nicotine staining along her parting showed she had done it many times before.

“I didn’t think you would,” she said contemptuously.

“It’s not as easy as it looks on the telly. You’ve heard what I did?”

“Yes.”

“So why have they let you see me?”

“Because I told the Governor that whatever you had done was nothing to do with me. Which it wasn’t, was it?” She pressed one of Olive’s feet with hers under the table.

“Presumably somebody else upset you?”

“Bloody Chaplain,” said Olive morosely. A bald eyelid drooped in a wink.

“Told me that God would do the rock’ n’roll in heaven if I got down on my knees and said: “Alleluiah, I repent.” Stupid sod. He’s always trying to make religion relevant to modern criminals with low IQs. We can’t cope with “There will be much rejoicing in heaven over one sinner that repenteth”, so we get God will do the fucking rock’n’roll instead.” She listened with some satisfaction to the snorts of amusement behind her, then her eyes narrowed. I TRUSTED YOU, she mouthed at Roz.

Roz nodded.

“I assumed it was something like that.” She watched Olive’s meaty fingers play with the tiny cigarette.

“But it was rude of me not to phone the prison and ask them to pass on a message. I had the mother and father of all headaches most of last week. You’ll have to put it down to that.”

“I know you did.”

Roz frowned.

“How?”

With a ifick of her fingers Olive squeezed the glowing head from the cigarette and dropped it into an ashtray on the table.

“Elementary, my dear Watson. Your ex gave you two black eyes if all that yellow round them isn’t some weird sort of make-up.

And headaches usually accompany black eyes.” But she was bored with the subject and fished an envelope abruptly from her pocket. She held it above her head.

“Mr. Allenby, sir. Are you going to let me show this to the lady?”

“What is it?” asked one of the men, stepping forward.

“Letter from my solicitor.”

He took it from her raised hand, ignoring the two-fingered salute she gave him, and skimmed through it.

“I’ve no objections,” he said, placing it on the table and returning to his place by the door.

Olive prodded it towards Roz.

“Read it. He says the chances of tracing my nephew are virtually nil.”

She reached for another cigarette, her eyes watching Roz closely. There was a strange awareness in them as if she knew something that Roz didn’t, and Roz found it disturbing. Olive, it seemed, now held the initiative in this unnatural glasshouse relationship of theirs but why and when she had taken it, Roz couldn’t begin to fathom. It was she, wasn’t it, who had engineered this meeting against the odds?

Surprisingly, Crew had handwritten his letter in a neat, sloping script, and Roz could only assume he had composed it out of office hours and decided not to waste company time and money by having it typed. She found that oddly offensive.

Dear Olive, I understand from Miss Rosalind Leigh that you are acquainted with some of the terms of your late father’s will, principally those concerning Amber’s illegitimate son. The bulk of the estate has been left in trust to the child although other provisions have been made in the event of failure on our part to trace him. Thus far, my people have met with little success and it is fair to say that we are increasingly pessimistic about our chances. We have established that your nephew emigrated to Australia with his family some twelve years ago when he was little more than a baby but, following their move from a rented flat in Sydney where they remained for the first six months, the trail goes cold. Unfortunately the child’s adopted surname is a common one and we have no guarantee that he and his family remained in Australia. Nor can we rule out the possibility that the family decided to add to their name or change it entirely. Carefully worded advertisements in several Australian newspapers have produced no response.

Your father was most insistent that we should be circumspect in how we traced the child. His view, which I endorsed wholeheartedly, was that great damage could be done if there was any publicity associated with the bequest. He was very conscious of the shock his grandson might suffer if he learnt through an incontinent media campaign of his tragic association with the Martin family. For this reason, we have kept and will continue to keep your nephew’s name a closely guarded secret. We are pressing on with our enquiries but, as your father stipulated a limited period for searches, the likelihood is that I, as executor, will be obliged to adopt the alternative provisions specified.

These are a range of donations to hospitals and charities which care entirely for the needs and welfare of children.

Although your father never instructed me to keep the terms of his will from you, he was very concerned that you should not be distressed by them. It was for this reason that I thought it wiser to keep you in ignorance of his intentions.

Had I known that you were already in possession of some of the facts, I should have corresponded sooner.

Trusting you are in good health, Yours sincerely, Peter Crew Roz refolded the letter and pushed it back to Olive.

“You said last time that it mattered to you if your nephew was found, but you didn’t enlarge on it.” She glanced towards the two officers, but they were showing little interest in anything except the floor. She leaned forward and lowered her voice.

“Are you going to talk to me about it now?”

Olive jammed her cigarette angrily into the ashtray. She made no attempt to keep her voice down.

“My father was a terrible MAN.” Even in speech the word carried capital letters.

“I couldn’t see it at the time but I’ve had years to think about it and I can see it now.” She nodded towards the letter.

“His conscience was troubling him. That’s why he wrote that will. It was his way of feeling good about himself after the appalling damage he’d done. Why else would he leave his money to Amber’s baby when he never cared shit for Amber herself?”

Roz looked at her curiously.

“Are you saying your father did the murders?” she murmured.

Olive snorted.

“I’m saying, why use Amber’s baby to whitewash himself?”

“What had he done that needed whitewashing?”

But Olive didn’t answer.

Roz waited a moment, then tried a different tack.

“You said your father would always leave money to family if he could.

Does that mean there’s other family he could have left it to? Or did you hope he’d leave it to you?”

Olive shook her head.

“There’s no one. Both my parents were only children. And he couldn’t leave it to me, could me?”

She slammed her fist on the table, her voice rising furiously.

“Otherwise everyone would kill their fucking families!” The great ugly face leered at Roz. YOU WANTED TO, mouthed the sausage lips.

“Keep the volume down, Sculptress,” said Mr. Allenby mildly, ‘or the visit finishes now.”

Roz pressed a finger and thumb to her eyelids where she could feel her headache coming back. Olive Martin took an axe she tried to thrust the thought away, but it wouldn’t go -and gave her mother forty whacks.

“I don’t understand why the will makes you so angry,” she said, forcing her voice to sound steady.

“If family was important to him who else is there except his grandson?”

Olive stared at the table, her jaw jutting aggressively.

“It’s the principle,” she muttered.

“Dad’s dead. What does it matter now what people think?”

Roz recalled something Mrs. Hopwood had said.

“I’ve always assumed he must have had an affair…” She took a shot in the dark.

“Do you have a half-brother or sister somewhere? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

Olive found this amusing.

“Hardly. He’d have to have had a mistress for that and he didn’t like women.” She gave a sardonic laugh.

“He did like MEN though.” Again the strange emphasis on the word.

Roz was very taken aback.

“Are you saying he was a homosexual?”

“I’m saying,” said Olive with exaggerated patience, ‘that the only person I ever saw make Dad’s face light up was our nextdoor neighbour, Mr. Clarke. Dad used to get quite skittish whenever he was around.”

She lit another cigarette.

“I thought it was rather sweet at the time, but only because I was too bloody thick to recognise a couple of queens when I saw them. Now I just think it was sick. It’s no wonder my mother hated the Clarkes.”