The Sculptress Part 38

"I can't remember," he said again.

"But if Robert did it, then why didn't he kill Olive as well? And why didn't she try and stop him? There must have been a h.e.l.l of a row going on. She couldn't possibly have avoided hearing something. It's not that big a house."

"Perhaps she wasn't there.

The Chaplain made his weekly visit to Olive's room.

"That's good," he said, watching her bring curl to the mother's hair with the point of a matchstick.

"Is it Mary and Jesus?"

She looked at him with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"The mother is suffocating her baby," she said baldly.

"Is it likely to be Mary and Jesus?"

He shrugged.

"I've seen many stranger things that pa.s.s for religious art. Who is it?"

"It's Woman," said Olive.

"Eve with all her faces."

He was interested.

"But you haven't given her a face."

Olive twisted the sculpture on its base and he saw that what he had taken to be curls at the side of the mother's hair was in fact a crude delineation of eyes, nose and mouth. She twisted it the other way and the same rough representation stared out from that side as well.

"Two-faced," said Olive, *and quite unable to look you in the eye." She picked up a pencil and shoved it between the mother's thighs.

"But it doesn't matter. Not to MAN." She leered unpleasantly.

"MAN doesn't look at the mantelpiece when he's poking the fire."

Hal had mended the back door and the kitchen table, which stood in its customary place once more in the middle of the room. The floor was scrubbed clean, wall units repaired, fridge upright, even some chairs had been imported from the restaurant and placed neatly about the table. Hal himself looked completely exhausted.

"Have you had any sleep at all?" she asked him.

"Not much. I've been working round the clock."

"Well, you've performed miracles." She gazed about her.

"So who's coming to dinner? The Queen? She could eat it off the floor."

To her surprise he caught her hand and lifted it to his lips, turning it to kiss the palm. It was an unexpectedly delicate gesture from such a hard man.

"Thank you."

She was at a loss.

"What for?" she asked helplessly.

He released her hand with a smile.

"Saying the right things."

For a moment she thought he was going to elaborate, but all he said was: "The photographs are on the table."

Olive's was a mug-shot, stark and brutally unflattering. Gwen and Amber's shocked her as he had said they would.

They were the stuff of nightmares and she understood for the first time why everyone had said Olive was a psychopath. She turned them over and concentrated on the head and shoulders' shot of Robert Martin. Olive was there in the eyes and mouth, and she had a fleeting impression of what might lie beneath the layers of lard if Olive could ever summon the will-power to shed it. Her father was a very handsome man.

"What are you going to do with them?"

She told him about the man who sent letters to Olive.

"The description fits her father," she said.

"The woman at Wells Fargo said she'd recognise him from a photograph."

"Why on earth should her father have sent her secret letters?"

"To set her up as a scapegoat for the murders."

He was sceptical.

"You're plucking at straws. What about the ones of Gwen and Amber?"

"I don't know yet. I'm tempted to show them to Olive to shock her out of her apathy."

He raised an eyebrow.

"I'd think twice about that if I were you. She's an unknown quant.i.ty, and you may not know her as well as you think you do. She could very easily turn nasty if you present her with her own handiwork."

She smiled briefly.

"I know her better than I know you." She tucked the photographs into her handbag and stepped out into the alleyway.

"The odd thing is you're very alike, you and Olive.

You demand trust but you don't give it."

He wiped a weary hand around his two-day growth of stubble.

"Trust is a twoedged sword, Roz. It can make you extremely vulnerable. I wish you'd remember that from time to time

FOURTEEN.

Mamie studied the photograph of Robert Martin for several seconds then shook her head.

"No," she said, *that wasn't him. He wasn't so good looking and he had different hair, thicker, not swept back, more to the side. Anyway, I told you, he had dark brown eyes, almost black. These eyes are light.

Is this her father?"

Roz nodded.

Mamie handed the photograph back.

"My mother always said, never trust a man whose earlobes are lower than his mouth. It's the sign of a criminal. Look at his."

Roz looked. She hadn't noticed it before because of the way his hair swept over them, but Martin's ears were almost unnaturally out of symmetry with the rest of his face.

"Did your mother know any criminals?"

Marine snorted.

"Of course she didn't. It's just an old wives' tale." She c.o.c.ked her head to look at the picture again.

"Anyway, if there was something in it he'd be a Category A by now."

"He's dead."

"Perhaps he pa.s.sed the gene on to his daughter. She's Category A all right."

She got busy with her nail file.

"Where did you get it, as a matter of interest?"

"The photograph? Why do you ask?"

Mamie tapped the top right-hand corner with her finger.

"I know where it was taken."

Roz looked where she was pointing. In the background beyond Martin's head was part of a lampshade with a pattern of inverted ys round its base.

"In his house, presumably."

"Doubt it. Look at the sign round the shade. There's only one place anywhere near here has shades like that."

The ys were lambdas, Roz realised, the international symbol of h.o.m.os.e.xuality.

"Where?"

"It's a pub near the waterfront. Goes in for drag acts." Mamie giggled.

"It's a gay knocking-shop."

"What's it called?"

Mamie giggled again.

"The White c.o.c.k."

The landlord recognised the photograph immediately.

"Mark Agnew," he told her.

"Used to come here a lot. But I haven't seen him in the last twelve months. What happened to him?"

"He died."

The landlord pulled a long face.

"I shall have to go straight," he said with weary gallows humour.

"What with AIDS and the recession I've hardly any customers left."

Roz smiled sympathetically.

"If it's any consolation I don't think he died of AIDS."

"Well, it is some consolation, lovey. He put himself about a bit, did Mark."

Mrs. O'Brien regarded her with deep displeasure. Time and her naturally suspicious nature had persuaded her that Roz was nothing to do with television but had come to worm information out of her about her sons.

"You've got a flaming cheek, I must say."

"Oh," said Roz with obvious disappointment, *have you changed your mind about the programme?" Lies, she thought, worked if you kept repeating them.

"Programme, my a.r.s.e. You're a b.l.o.o.d.y snooper. What you after? That's what I want to know."

Roz took Mr. Crew's letter out of her briefcase and handed it to the woman.

"I explained it as well as I could last time, but these are the terms of my contract with the television company.

If you read it, you'll see that it sets out quite clearly the aims and objectives of the programme they want to make."