“Is that a miracle, Hawksley, or is it a miracle? Sister Bridget’s prayers must be working.”
She sat at her kitchen table and watched Hal work his magic on the meagre contents of her fridge. He had sloughed off his frustration like a used-up skin and was humming contentedly to himself as he interleaved bacon between thin slices of chicken breast and sprinkled them with parsley.
“You’re not planning to stick my hat ping into Mr. Hayes, are you?” she asked him.
“I’m sure he hasn’t a clue what his beastly son’s been up to. He’s a dear old thing.”
Hal was amused.
“I shouldn’t think so.” He covered the dish with silver foil and put it in the oven.
“But I’m damned if I can see at the moment how the jigsaw fits together. Why did Hayes Junior suddenly up the pressure on me if all he had to do was sit tight and wait for my prosecution?”
“Have him arrested and find out,” said Roz reasonably.
“If it was me, I’d have driven straight down, demanded an address off his father, and sent in the fuzz.”
“And you’d have got precisely nowhere.” He thought for a moment.
“You said you made a tape of your conversation with the old man. I’d like to listen to it. I can’t believe it’s coincidence. There has to be a stronger link. Why did they all get so twitched suddenly and start wielding baseball bats? It doesn’t make sense.”
“You can listen to it now.” She brought her briefcase in from the hallway, located the tape, and set the recorder running on the table.
“We were talking about Amber’s illegitimate son,” she explained as the old man’s voice quavered out.
“He knew all about him, even down to the child’s adopted name and what country he’s in. Robert Martin’s entire estate is his if they can find him.”
Hal listened with rapt attention.
“Brown?” he queried at the end.
“And living in Australia? How do you know he’s right?”
“Because Olive’s shitty solicitor threatened me with injunctions when I let on I knew.” She frowned.
“Mind you. I’ve no idea how Mr. Hayes found out. Crew won’t even give Olive the child’s name. He’s paranoid about keeping it secret.”
Hal removed a saucepan of rice from the cooker and drained it.
“How much did Robert Martin leave?”
“Half a million.”
“Christ!” He gave a low whistle.
“Christ!” he said again.
“And it’s all on deposit waiting for the child’s appearance?”
“Presumably.”
“Who’s the executor?”
“The solicitor, Peter Crew.”
Hal spooned the rice into a bowl.
“So what did he say when you tackled him about it? Did he admit they were on the child’s track?”
“No. He just kept threatening me with injunctions.” She shrugged.
“But he wrote to Olive and told her the chances were minimal. There’s a time limit, apparently, and if the child doesn’t turn up the money goes to charity.” She frowned.
“He wrote that letter himself in longhand. I thought he was saving money but, you know, it’s far more likely that he didn’t want his secretary reading it. She would know if he was telling lies.”
“And meanwhile,” Hal said slowly, ‘he is administering the estate and has access to the sort of capital that would be needed to buy up bankrupt businesses.” He stared past her head, his eyes narrowed.
“Plus, he’s a solicitor, so probably has inside information on development plans and proposals.” He looked at Roz.
“It would amount to indefinite free credit, as long as no one turned up to claim Robert’s money. When did you first go and see Crew?”
She was ahead of him.
“The day before you were beaten up.”
Her eyes gleamed excitedly.
“And he was very suspicious of me, kept accusing me of jumping to unfavourable conclusions about his handling of Olive’s case. I’ve got it all on tape.” She scrabbled through her cassettes.
“He said Olive couldn’t inherit because she would not be allowed to benefit from Gwen and Amber’s death. But, you know, if Olive were innocent’ she pounced triumphantly on the tape ‘it would be a whole new ball game. She could get leave to appeal against the will. And I remember saying to him at the end of the interview that one explanation for the discrepancies between the abnormality of the crime and the normality of Olive’s psychiatric tests was that she didn’t do it.
God, it fits, doesn’t it? First he learns that Amber’s son is likely to surface and then I turn up, aggressively taking Olive’s side. The Poacher must be awfully important to him.”
Hal took the chicken from the oven and put it on the table with the rice.
“You do realise your dear old man must be in it up to his neck? Crew would never have given him chapter and verse on Amber’s child unless Hayes has some kind of hold on him.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then removed the Svengali photographs from her briefcase.
“Perhaps he knows Crew is using Robert’s money. Or perhaps,” she said slowly, ‘he knows who really murdered Gwen and Amber Either or both could ruin Crew.” She fanned the pictures across the table.
“He was Olive’s lover,” she said simply, ‘and if I could find out so easily then so could anyone else. Including the police.
You let her down, Hal, all of you. It’s a betrayal of justice to assume someone’s guilt before it’s proved.”
Watery blue eyes regarded Roz with undisguised pleasure.
“Well, well. You came back. Come in.
Come in.” He peered past her, frowning at Hal in half-recognition.
“Surely we’ve met before. What shall I say? I never forget a face.
Now when could that have been?”
Hal shook the old man’s hand.
“Six years ago,” he said pleasantly.
“I was on the Olive Martin case. Sergeant Hawksley.” The hand fluttered weakly in his, like a tiny bird, but only from old age and decrepitude, Hal thought.
Mr. Hayes nodded vigorously.
“I remember now. Unhappy circumstances.” He fussed ahead of them into the sitting room.
“Sit down. Sit down. Any news?” He took a firm chair and sat bolt upright his head cocked enquiringly to one side. On the sideboard behind him his violent son smiled disarmingly into the camera.
Roz took her notebook from her handbag and switched on her recorder again. They had reached a mutual decision that Roz should ask the questions. For, as Hal had pointed out: “If he knows anything, he’s more likely to let it slip while talking to a what shall I say? charming young lady about Olive.”
“In fact,” she said in a gossipy voice which grated on Hal but clearly appealed to Mr. Hayes, ‘there’s quite a bit of news one way and another. Where would you like me to begin? With Olive? Or with Amber’s baby?” She gave him an approving look.
“You were quite right about them finding traces, you know, in spite of there being thousands of Browns in Australia.”
“Ah,” he said, rubbing his hands, “I knew they were close.
That mean the lad will get the money? What shall I say? It’s what Bob wanted. Fair upset him, it did, to think the government would get it all.”
“He made alternative provisions, you know, in case the boy wasn’t found. It’ll go to various children’s charities.”
The old man’s mouth compressed into a split of disgust.
“And we all know what sort of children they’ll be. The worthless sort.
The sort as are never going to make anything of their selves but live off the rest of us till they drop. And you know who I blame. The social workers. They’re namby-pamby when it comes to telling a woman she’s had more children than’s good for her.”
“Quite,” Roz interrupted hurriedly, reining in the inevitable hobby horse. She tapped her pencil on her notepad.
“Do you remember telling me that your wife thought Olive committed the murders because of hormones?”