The Sculptress (41 page)

“I found it when we moved,” he said.

“She’d hidden it at the bottom of one of her drawers. I swear I never knew how she got it, but I’ve always been afraid that Amber must have taunted her with it. She talks about Amber a lot.” He washed his hands in mimicry of Pontius Pilate.

“She calls her the Devil.”

Hal peeled away the tissue paper and looked at what was revealed. A silver bracelet with a tiny silver-chair charm and a tag on which U. R. N. A. R. N. I. A. was barely discernible through a welter of deep angry scratches.

It was almost Christmas before the scales of justice had tipped enough in Olive’s favour to allow her to leave the confines of her prison.

There would always be doubters, of course, people who would call her the Sculptress till the day she died. After six years the evidence in support of her story was desperately thin. A silver bracelet where it shouldn’t have been. Tiny fragments of a burnt floral overall, identified by a senile woman’s bitter husband. And, finally, the painstaking reappraisal of the photographic evidence, using sophisticated computer enhancement, which had revealed a smaller, daintier shoe print in the blood beneath a huge ribbed rubber sole mark left by Olive’s trainer.

No one would ever know what really happened that day because the truth was locked inside a brain that no longer functioned, and Edward Clarke could not, or would not, shed any light from statements his wife had made in the past. He maintained his complete ignorance of the whole affair. asserting that any qualms he might have had had been put to rest by Olive’s confession and that the onus for any mistakes lay with her and with the police. The most probabable scenario and the one generally accepted, was that Amber waited until Edward and Robert had left for work and then invited Mrs. Clarke into the house to taunt her with the bracelet and the abortion. What happened then was a matter for guesswork but Roz, at least, believed that Mrs. Clarke had set about the murders in cold blood and with a dear mind. There was something very calculating about the way she must have donned gloves to perform her butchery and by carefully stepping around the blood to avoid leaving footprints. But most calculating of all was the clever burning of her bloodstained overall amidst Gwen and Amber’s clothes and her cool identification of the pieces afterwards as the overall worn by Gwen that morning. Roz even woondered sometimes if the intention all along had been to implicate Olive. There was no telling now why Mrs. Clarke had drawn attention to herself outside the kitchen window, but Roz culdn’t help feeling that, had she not done so, Olive might heve had enough presence of mind to phone the police before she ran amok in the kitchen and obliterated the evidence that might have exonerated her. There were to be no disciplinary charges against the police team involved. The chief constable issued a press release, pointing to the recent tightening of police procedure, partiailarly in relation to confession evidence, but he stressed that as far as Olive’s case was concerned the police had taken all available steps to ensure her rights were fully protected. In the circumstances it had been reasonable to assume that her confession was genuine. He took the opportunity to reiterate forcefully the duty imperative on the public never to disturb evidence at the scene of a crime.

Peter Crew’s association with the case, particularly in view of his subsequent mishandling of Robert Martin’s estate, had attracted considerable and unwelcome interest. At worst he was accused of deliberately engineering Olive’s conviction in order to gain access to unlimited funds, and, at best, of bullying an emotionally disturbed young woman at a time when he had a responsibility to safeguard her interests. He denied both accusations strenuously, arguing that he could not have foreseen Robert Martin’s success on the stock exchange nor his early death; and claiming that because Olive’s story had been remarkably consistent with the forensic evidence he, in the absence of any denials on her part, had, like the police, accepted it as a true statement of fact. He had advised her to say nothing and could not be held liable for her confession.

Meanwhile, he remained at liberty on bail, facing the sort of charges that for most of his clients would have resulted in a remand to prison, bullishly declaring his mnnoce rice on all counts.

Roz, when she heard what he was saying, was angry enough to waylay him in the street with a local journalist in tow.

“We could argue about liability for ever, Mr. Crew, but just explain this to me. If Olive’s statement was as consistent with the forensic evidence as you maintain, then why did she claim there was no mist on the mirror at a time when Gwen and Amber were still alive?” She caught his arm as he tried to walk away.

“Why didn’t she mention that the axe was too blunt to cut off Amber’s head? Why didn’t she say she had struck her four times before resorting to the carving knife? Why didn’t she describe her fight with her mother and the stabbing incisions she’d made in her mother’s throat before cutting it? Why didn’t she mention burning the clothes? In fact, try quoting me one detail from Olive’s statement that does accord fully with the forensic evidence.”

He shook her off angrily.

“She said she used the axe and the carving knife,” he snapped.

“Neither of which had her fingerprints on them. The forensic evidence did not support her statement.”

“She had their blood all over her.”

“All over is right, Mr. Crew. But where does it say in her statement that she rolled in it?”

He tried to walk away but found the journalist blocking his path.

“Footprints,” he said.

“At the time, there were only her footprints.”

“Yes,” said Roz.

“And on that one piece of evidence, which was at odds with all the rest, you made up your mind she was a psychopath and prepared a defence on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Why did you never brief Graham Deedes on the lifelines her poor father was trying to throw her?

Why didn’t you question your own judge merit when she was pronounced fit to plead guilty? Why the hell didn’t you treat her like a human being, Mr. Crew, instead of a monster?”

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 organised 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 backdrop 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 recognised 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.

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.

The End

Minette Walters lives in Hampshire with her husband and two children.

She has worked as a magazine editor but is now a full-time writer.

With her debut, The Ice House, she 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 fourth novel, The Dark Room (1995), was published to further critical acclaim, as was her most recent title The Echo (1997).

In 1996 The Sculptress was adapted as a major BBC1 drama series, starring Pauline Quirke, and became the most successful television drama of recent years.

This success was repeated in 1997 with the BBC’s adaptation of The Ice House. The Scold’s Bridle, starring Miranda Richardson, Sian Phillips and Bob Peck, is currently in production.