The Sculptress (9 page)

She stood up hurriedly.

“I’ll wait outside.”

He dropped his jacket on to the floor and unbuttoned his shirt.

“Just don’t be sick all over my carpets,” he called after her.

“There’s a sink in the kitchen. Use that.” He was easing the shirt carefully off his shoulders, unaware that she was still behind him, and she stared in horror at the blackened scabs all over his back.

“What happened to you?”

He pulled the shirt back on.

“Nothing. Scoot.

Make yourself a sandwich. There’s bread on the side and cheese in the fridge.” He saw her expression.

“It looks worse than it is,” he said prosaically.

“Bruising always does.”

“What happened?”

He held her gaze.

“Let’s just say I fell off my bike.”

With a contemptuous smile, Olive extracted the candle from its hiding place. They had given up body searches after a woman haemorrhaged in front of one of the Board of Visitors following a particularly aggressive probing of her vagina for illicit drugs. The Visitor had been a MAN. (Olive always thought of men in capital letters.) No woman would have fallen for it. But MEN, of course, were different.

Menstruation disturbed them, particularly if the blood flowed freely enough to stain the woman’s clothes.

The candle was soft from the warmth of her body and she pulled off the end and began to mould it. Her memory was good.

She had no doubt of her ability to imbue the tiny figure with a distinct individuality. This one would be a MAN.

Roz, preparing sandwiches in the kitchen, looked towards the bathroom door. The prospect of questioning Hawksley about the Olive Martin case unnerved her suddenly. Crew had become very annoyed when she questioned him; and Crew was a civilised man in so far as he did not look as if he’d spent half an hour in a dark alley having the shit beaten out of him by Arnold Schwarzenegger. She wondered about Hawksley.

Would he be annoyed when he learnt that she was delving into a case he had been involved with? The idea was an uncomfortable one.

There was a bottle of champagne in the fridge. On the rather naive assumption that another injection of alcohol might make Hawksley more amenable, Roz put it on a tray with the sandwiches and a couple of glasses.

“Were you saving the champagne?” she asked brightly too brightly? placing the tray on the lavatory seat lid and turning round.

He was lying in a welter of foam, black hair slicked back, face cleaned and relaxed, eyes closed.

“Fraid so,” he said.

“Oh.” She was apologetic.

“I’ll put it back then.”

He opened one eye.

“I was saving it for my birthday.”

“And when’s that?”

“Tonight.”

She gave an involuntary laugh.

“I don’t believe you. What’s the date?”

“The sixteenth.”

Her eyes danced wickedly.

“I still don’t believe you. How old are you?” She was unprepared for his look of amused recognition and couldn’t stop the adolescent flush that tinged her pale cheeks. He thought she was flirting with him.

Well dammit! maybe she was. She had grown weary of suffocating under the weight of her own misery.

“Forty. The big four-o.” He pushed himself into a sitting position and beckoned for the bottle.

“Well, well, this is jolly.” His lips twitched humorously.

“I wasn’t expecting company or I’d have dressed for the occasion.” He unbound the wire and eased out the cork, losing only a dribble of bubbly into the foam before filling the glasses that she held out to him. He lowered the bottle to the floor and took a glass.

“To life,” he said, clinking hers.

“To life. Happy birthday.”

His eyes watched her briefly, before closing again as he leant his head against the back of the bath.

“Eat a sandwich,” he murmured.

“There’s nothing worse than champagne on an empty stomach.”

“I’ve had three already. Sorry I couldn’t wait for the sirloin. You have one.” She put the tray beside the bottle and left him to help himself.

“Do you have a laundry basket or something?” she asked, stirring the heap of stinking clothes with her toe.

“They’re not worth saving. I’ll chuck ‘em out.”

“I can do that.”

He yawned.

“Bin bags. Second cupboard on the left in the kitchen.”

She carried the bundle at arm’s length and sealed the lot into three layers of clean white plastic. It took only a few minutes but when she went back he was asleep, his glass clasped in loose fingers against his chest.

She removed it carefully and put it on the floor.

What now? she wondered. She might have been his sister, so unaroused was he by her presence. Go or stay? She had an absurd longing to sit quietly and watch him sleep but she was nervous of waking him. He would never understand her need to be at peace, just briefly, with a man.

Her eyes softened. It was a nice face. No amount of battering and bruising could hide the laughter lines, and she knew that if she let it it would grow on her and make her pleased to see it. She turned away abruptly. She had been nurturing her bitterness too long to give it up as easily as this. God had not been punished enough.

She retrieved her handbag from where she’d dropped it beside the lavatory and tiptoed down the stairs. But the door was locked and the key was missing. She felt more foolish than concerned, like the embarrassed eavesdropper trapped inside a room whose only object is to escape without being noticed. He must have put the wretched thing in his pocket. She crept back up to the kitchen to scrabble through the dirty clothes bundle but the pockets were all empty. Perplexed, she stared about the work surfaces, searched the tables in the sitting-room and bedroom. If keys existed, they were well hidden. With a sigh of frustration, she pulled back a curtain to see if there was another way out, a fire escape or a balcony, and found herself gazing on a window full of bars. She tried another window and another.

All were barred.

Predictably, anger took over.

Without pausing to consider the wisdom of what she was doing, she stormed into the bathroom and shook him violently.

“You bastard!” she snapped.

“What the hell do you think you’re playing at! What are you? Some kind of Bluebeard. I want to get out of here. Now!”

He was hardly awake before he’d smashed the champagne bottle against the tiled wall, caught her by the hair, and thrust the jagged glass against her neck. His bloodshot eyes blazed into hers before a sort of recognition dawned and he let her go, pushing her away from him.

“You stupid bitch,” he snarled.

“Don’t you ever do that again.” He rubbed his face vigorously to clear it of sleep.

She was very shaken.

“I want to go.”

“So what’s stopping you?”

“You’ve hidden the key.”

He looked at her for a moment, then started to soap himself.

“It’s on the architrave above the door. Turn it twice. It’s a double lock.”

“Your windows are all barred.”

“They are indeed.” He splashed water on his face.

“Goodbye, Ms Leigh.”

“Goodbye.” She made a weak gesture of apology.

“I’m sorry.

I thought I was a prisoner.”

He pulled out the plug and tugged a towel off the rail.

“You are.

“But you said the key-‘ “Goodbye, Ms Leigh.” He splayed his hand against the door and pushed it to, forcing her out.

She should not be driving. The thought hammered in her head like a migraine, a despairing reminder that self-preservation was the first of all the human instincts. But he was right. She was a prisoner and the yearning to escape was too strong. So easy, she thought, so very, very easy. Successive headlamps grew from tiny distant pinpoints to huge white suns, sweeping through her windscreen with a beautiful and blinding iridescence, drawing her eyes into the heart of their brilliance. The urge to turn the wheel towards the lights was insistent. How painless the transition would be at the moment of blindness and how bright eternity. So easy… so easy… so easy…

Olive took a cigarette and lit it greedily.

“You’re late. I was afraid you wouldn’t come.” She sucked down the smoke.

“I’ve been dying for a bloody fag.” Her hands and shift were ifithy with what looked like dried clay.

“Aren’t you allowed cigarettes?”

“Only what you can buy with your earnings. I always run out before the end of the week.” She rubbed the backs of her hands vigorously and showered the table with small grey flakes.

“What is that?” Roz asked.

“Clay.” Olive left the cigarette in her mouth and set to work, plucking the smears from her bosom.

“Why do you think they call me the Sculptress?”

Roz was about to say something tactless, but thought better of it.

“What do you make?”

“People.”

“What sort of people? Imaginary people or people you know?”

There was a brief hesitation.

“Both.” She held Roz’s gaze.

“I made one of you.”

Roz watched her for a moment.

“Well, I just hope you don’t decide to stick pins into it,” she said with a faint smile.

“Judging by the way I feel today, somebody else is at that already.”

A flicker of amusement crossed Olive’s face. She abandoned the smears and fixed Roz with her penetrating stare.

“So what’s wrong with you.”

Roz had spent a weekend in limbo, analysing and re analysing until her brain was on fire.

“Nothing. Just a head ache, that’s all.” And that was true as far as it went.

Her situation hadn’t altered. She was still a prisoner.

Olive screwed her eyes against the smoke.

“Changed your mind about the book?”

“No.”

“OK. Fire away.”

Roz switched on the tape-recorder.

“Second conversation with Olive Martin. Date: Monday, April nineteen.

Tell me about Sergeant Hawksley, Olive, the policeman who arrested you.

Did you get to know him well? How did he treat you?”

If the big woman was surprised by the question, she didn’t show it, but then she didn’t show anything very much. She thought for some moments.

“Was he the dark-haired one? Hal, I think they called him.”

Roz nodded.

“He was all right.”

“Did he bully you?”

“He was all right.” She drew on her cigarette and stared stolidly across the table.

“Have you spoken to him?”

“Yes.”

“Did he tell you he threw up when he saw the bodies?” There was an edge to her voice. Of amusement? Roz wondered. Somehow, amusement didn’t quite square.

“No,” she said.

“He didn’t mention that.”

“He wasn’t the only one.” A short silence.

“I offered to make them a pot of tea but the kettle was in the kitchen.”

She transferred her gaze to the ceiling, aware, perhaps, of having said something tasteless.

“Matter of fact, I liked him. He was the only one who talked to me. I might have been deaf and dumb for all the interest the others showed.

He gave me a sandwich at the police station. He was all right.”

Roz nodded.

“Tell me what happened.”

Olive took another cigarette and lit it from the old one.

“They arrested me.”

“No. I mean before that.”

“I called the police station, gave my address, and said the bodies were in the kitchen.”

“And before that?”

Olive didn’t answer.

Roz tried a different tack.

“The ninth of September, eighty seven was a Wednesday. According to your statement you killed and dismembered Amber and your mother in the morning and early afternoon.” She watched the woman closely.

“Did none of the neighbours hear anything, come and investigate?”

There was a tiny movement at the corner of one eye, a tic, hardly noticeable amidst the fat.

“It’s a man, isn’t it?” said Olive gently.

Roz was puzzled.

“What’s a man?”

Sympathy peeped out from between the puffy, bald lids.

“It’s one of the few advantages of being in a place like this. No men to make your life a misery. You get the odd bit of bother, of course, husbands and boyfriends playing up on the outside, but you don’t get the anguish of a daily relationship.” She pursed her lips in recollection.

“I always envied the nuns, you know.

It’s so much easier when you don’t have to compete.”

Roz played with her pencil. Olive was too canny to discuss a man in her own life, she thought, assuming there had ever been one. Had she told the truth about her abortion?

“But less rewarding,” she said.

A rumble issued from the other side of the table.

“Some reward you’re getting. You know what my father’s favourite expression was? The game is not worth the candle. He used to drive my mother mad with it. But it’s true in your case.

Whoever it is you’re after, he’s not doing you any good.”

Roz drew a doodle on her pad, a fat cherub inside a balloon.

Was the abortion a fantasy, a perverted link in Olive’s mind with Amber’s unwanted son? There was a long silence. She pencilled in the cherub’s smile and spoke without thinking.

“Not whoever,” she said, ‘whatever. It’s what I want, not who I want.”

She regretted it as soon as she’d said it.

“It’s not important.”

Again there was no response and she began to find Olive’s silences oppressive. It was a waiting game, a trap to make her speak. And then what? The toe-curling embarrassment of stammered apologies.

She bent her head.

“Let’s go back to the day of the murders,” she suggested.

A meaty hand suddenly covered hers and stroked the fingers affectionately.

“I know about despair.

I’ve felt it often. If you keep it bottled up, it feeds on itself like a cancer.”

There was no insistence in Olive’s touch. It was a display of friendship, supportive, undemanding.

Roz squeezed the fat, warm fingers in acknowledgement then withdrew her hand. It’s not despair, she was going to say, just overwork and tiredness.

“I’d like to do what you did,” she said in a monotone, ‘and kill someone.” There was a long silence. Her own statement had shocked her.