The Sculptress (31 page)

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. ‘You’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.’

‘I should imagine you have,’ said Sister Bridget,
rather more tartly than she had intended.

Roz massaged her aching temples. ‘This ape tried
to pull my hair out,’ she murmured. ‘I think that’s
what’s done it.’ She pressed an experimental hand to
the back of her head and winced. ‘There’s some
codeine in my handbag. You couldn’t find them for
me, could you? I think my head is about to explode.’
She giggled hysterically. ‘Olive must be sticking pins
into me again.’

Tut-tutting with motherly concern, Sister Bridget
administered three with a glass of water. ‘I’m sorry,
my dear,’ she said severely, ‘but I’m really very
shocked. I can’t forgive any man who treats a woman
like a chattel and, harsh though it may sound, I find
it almost as difficult to forgive the woman. Better to
live without a man at all than to live with one who is
only interested in the degradation of the spirit.’

Roz squinted through one half-closed eyelid,
unable to take the glare of light from the window.
How indignant the other woman looked, puffing her
chest like a pouter pigeon. Hysteria nudged about
her diaphragm again. ‘You’re very harsh all of a
sudden. I doubt Olive saw it as degradation. Rather
the reverse, I should think.’

‘I’m not talking about Olive, my dear, I’m talking about you. This ape you referred to. He isn’t worth
it. Surely you can see that?’

Roz shook with helpless laughter. ‘I’m so sorry,’
she said at last. ‘You must think me incredibly rude.
The trouble is I’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster
for months.’ She dabbed at her eyes and blew her
nose. ‘You must blame Olive for this. She’s been a
godsend. She’s made me feel useful again.’

She saw the polite bewilderment on the other’s
face and sighed inwardly. Really, she thought, it was
so much easier to tell lies. They were one dimensional
and uncomplicated. ‘
I’m fine . . . Everything’s fine . . .
I like waiting rooms . . . Rupert’s been very supportive
over Alice . . . We went our separate ways amicably . . .
’
It was the tangled web of truth, woven deep into the
fragile stuff of character, that made life difficult. She
wasn’t even sure now what was true and what wasn’t.
Had she really hated Rupert that much? She couldn’t
imagine where she had found the energy. All she could
really remember was how stifling the last twelve
months had been.

‘I’m completely infatuated,’ she went on wildly as
if that explained anything, ‘but I’ve no idea if what I
feel is genuine or just pie in the sky hoping.’ She
shook her head. ‘I suppose one never really knows.’

‘Oh, my dear,’ said Sister Bridget, ‘do be careful.
Infatuation is a very poor substitute for love. It withers
as easily as it flourishes. Love –
real
love – takes time to grow, and how can it do that in an atmosphere of
brutality?’

‘That’s hardly his fault. I could have run away, I
suppose, but I’m glad I didn’t. I’m sure they’d have
killed him if he’d been alone.’

Sister Bridget sighed. ‘We seem to be talking at
cross purposes. Do I gather the ape is not the man
you’re infatuated with?’

With streaming eyes, Roz wondered if there was
any truth in the phrase
to die laughing
.

‘You’re very brave,’ said Sister Bridget. ‘I’d have
assumed he was up to no good and run a mile.’

‘Perhaps he is. I’m a very poor judge of character,
you know.’

Sister Bridget laughed to herself. ‘Well, it all sounds
very exciting,’ she said with a twinge of envy, taking
Roz’s dress from the tumble-drier and laying it on
the ironing board. ‘The only man who ever showed
any interest in me was a bank clerk who lived three
doors away from my parents. He was skin and bone,
poor chap, with an enormous Adam’s apple that crawled
about his throat like a large pink beetle. I simply
couldn’t bear him. The Church was far more attractive.’
She wet her finger and tapped it against the
iron.

Roz, wrapped in an old flannelette nightie, smiled.
‘And is it still?’

‘Not always. But I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t
have regrets.’

‘Have you ever been in love?’

‘Good Heavens, yes. More often than you have, I
expect. Purely platonically, of course. I meet some
very attractive fathers in my job.’

Roz chuckled. ‘What sort of fathers? The cassocked
variety or the ones in trousers?’

Sister Bridget’s eyes danced wickedly. ‘All I will say,
as long as you promise not to quote me, is that I’ve
always found cassocks a little off-putting and, with all
the divorces there are these days, I spend more time
talking to single men than, frankly, is good for a nun.’

‘If things ever work out,’ said Roz wistfully, ‘and I
have another daughter, I’ll put her in your school so
fast you won’t know what hit you.’

‘I shall look forward to it.’

‘No. I don’t believe in miracles. I did once.’

‘I’ll pray for you,’ said Sister Bridget. ‘It’s time I
had something to get my teeth into. I prayed for
Olive and look what God sent me.’

‘Now you’re going to make me cry.’

She woke in the morning with brilliant sunlight bathing
her face through a gap in Sister Bridget’s spare-room
curtains. It was too bright to look at so she
cuddled down into the warmth of the duvet and listened
instead. Ripples of birdsong swelled in glorious chorus from tiny feathered throats in the garden, and
somewhere a radio murmured the news, but too low
for her to make out the words. The smell of grilled
bacon drifted tantalizingly from the kitchen downstairs,
urging her to get up. She tingled with half-remembered
vitality and wondered why she had
allowed herself to stumble for so long through the
blind fog of her depression. Life, she thought, was
fabulous and the desire to live it too insistent to be
ignored.

She waved goodbye to Sister Bridget, pointed the
car towards the Poacher and switched on her stereo,
feeding in Pavarotti. It was a very deliberate laying of
a ghost. The rich voice surged in the speakers and she
listened to it without regret.

The restaurant was deserted, no answer front or
back to her knocking. She drove to the payphone she
had used the night before and dialled the number,
letting it ring for a long time in case Hal was asleep.
When he didn’t reply, she replaced the receiver and
returned to her car. She wasn’t concerned – frankly,
Hal could look after himself rather better than any
other man she had known – and she had more urgent
fish to fry. From the dashboard pocket she took an
expensive automatic camera with a powerful zoom
lens – a legacy of the divorce – and checked it for film. Then, switching on the ignition, she drew out
into the traffic.

She had to wait two hours, crouched uncomfortably
on the back seat of her car, but she was well rewarded
for her patience. When Olive’s Svengali finally
emerged from his front door he paused for a second
or two and presented her with a perfect shot of his
face. Magnified by the zoom lens, the dark eyes bored
straight through her as she took the picture before
they turned away to glance down between the avenue
of trees to check for oncoming traffic. She felt the
hairs pricking on the back of her neck. He couldn’t
possibly have seen her – the car was facing away from
him with the camera lens propped on her handbag in
the back window – but she shivered none the less.
The photographs of Gwen and Amber’s mutilated
bodies, lying on the seat beside her, were a terrible
reminder that she was stalking a psychopath.

She arrived back at her flat, hot and tired from the
sweltering heat of unheralded summer. The wintry
feel of three days before had melted into brilliant blue
skies with a promise of more heat to come. She
opened the windows of the flat and let in the roar of
London traffic. More noticeable than usual, it made her think with a brief wistfulness of the peace and
beauty of Bayview.

She checked her answerphone for messages while
she poured a glass of water, only to find the tape
as she had left it, blank. She dialled the Poacher and
listened, this time with mounting anxiety, to the vain
ringing at the other end. Where on earth was he? She
chewed the knuckle of her thumb in frustration then
phoned Iris.

‘How would Gerry react if you asked him nicely to
put on his solicitor’s hat’ – Gerald Fielding was
a partner in a top London legal practice – ‘ring
Dawlington police station and make some discreet
enquiries before everything winds down for the
weekend?’

Iris was never one to beat about the bush. ‘Why?’
she demanded. ‘And what’s in it for me?’

‘My peace of mind. I’m too twitched at the
moment to write anything.’

‘Hmm. Why?’

‘I’m worried about my shady policeman.’

‘
Your
shady policeman?’ asked Iris suspiciously.

‘That’s right.’

Iris heard the amusement in her friend’s voice. ‘Oh,
my God,’ she said crossly, ‘you haven’t gone and fallen
for him? He’s supposed to be a source.’

‘He is – of endless erotic fantasy.’

Iris groaned. ‘How can you write objectively about corrupt policemen if you’ve got the hots for one of
them?’

‘Who says he’s corrupt?’

‘He must be, if Olive’s innocent. I thought you
said he took her confession.’

‘
It’s a pity you’re not a Catholic. You could go to
confession and feel better immediately . . .’

‘Are you still there?’ demanded Iris.

‘Yes. Will Gerry do it?’

‘Why can’t you make the call yourself?’

‘Because I’m involved and they might recognize
my voice. I made them a 999 call.’

Iris groaned again. ‘What on earth have you been
up to?’

‘Nothing criminal, at least I don’t think so.’ She
heard the grunt of horror at the other end. ‘Look, all
Gerry has to do is ask a few innocent questions.’

‘Will he have to lie?’

‘A white lie or two.’

‘He’ll have a fit. You know Gerry. Breaks out in a
muck sweat at the mere mention of falsehoods.’ She
sighed loudly. ‘What a pest you are. You realize I shall
have to bribe him with promises of good behaviour.
My life won’t be worth living.’

‘You’re an angel. Now, these are the only details
Gerry needs to know. He’s trying to contact his client,
Hal Hawksley of the Poacher, Wenceslas Street, Dawlington.
He has reason to believe the Poacher has been broken into and wonders if the police know where
Hal can be contacted. OK?’

‘No, it’s not OK, but I’ll see what I can do. Will
you be in this evening?’

‘Yes, twiddling my thumbs.’

‘Well, try twiddling them round your keyboard,’
said Iris acidly. ‘I’m fed up with being the only one
who does any meaningful work in this lopsided
relationship of ours.’

She had had the film developed at a one-hour booth
in her local High Street while she did some shopping.
Now she spread the prints over her coffee table and
studied them. She put the ones of Svengali, the two
close-ups of his face and some full-length shots of his
back as he walked away, to one side and smiled at the
rest. She had forgotten taking them. Deliberately, she
thought. They were of Rupert and Alice playing in
the garden on Alice’s birthday, a week before the
accident. They had declared a truce that day, she
remembered, for Alice’s sake. And they had kept it,
up to a point, although as usual the responsibility for
refusing to be drawn had been Roz’s. As long as she
could keep her cool and smile while Rupert let slip
his poisoned darts about Jessica, Jessica’s flat, and
Jessica’s job, everything was hunky-dory. Alice’s joy
in having her parents back together again shone from
the photographs.