Olive Martin took an axe… Oh, God! No wonder Mr. Crew called her a psychopath. Three or four strikes with a blunted axe and Amber was still alive! Bile rose in her throat, nauseous, bitter, gagging. She must stop thinking about it. But she couldn’t, of course. The muffled thuds of metal bouncing off soft flesh boomed loudly in her brain. How dark and shadowy the flat was. She reached out abruptly and snapped on a table lamp but the light did nothing to dispel the vivid pictures that crowded her imagination, nightmare visions of a madwoman, frenzied by blood-lust. And the bodies… How far had she committed herself to writing this book? Had she signed anything? Had she received an advance. She couldn’t remember and a cold fist of panic squeezed her insides. She was living in a twilight world where so little mattered that day followed day with nothing to distinguish their passing. She thrust herself out of her chair and paced about the floor, cursing Iris for bouncing her, cursing herself for her own insanity, and cursing Mr.
Crew for not sending her the statement when she’d first written to him.
She seized the telephone and dialled Iris’s number.
“Have I signed anything on the Olive Martin book? Why? Because I damn well can’t write it, that’s why. The woman scares the bloody shit out of me and I am not visiting her again.”
“I thought you liked her.” Iris spoke calmly through a mouthful of supper.
Roz ignored this comment.
“I’ve got her statement here and the pathologist’s report, or his conclusions at least. I should have read them first. I’m not doing it. I will not glorify what she did by writing a book about it. My God, Iris, they were alive when she cut their heads off. Her poor wretched mother tried to ward off the axe. It’s making me sick just thinking about it.”
“OK.”
“OK what?”
“Don’t write it.”
Roz’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“I thought you’d argue at least.”
“Why? One thing I’ve learnt in this business is that you can’t force people to write. Correction. You can if you’re persistent and manipulative enough, but the result is always below par.”
Roz heard her take a drink.
“In any case, Jenny Atherton sent me the first ten chapters of her new book this morning. It’s all good stuff on the inherent dangers of a poor self-image, with obesity as number one confidence crippler.
She’s unearthed a positive gold mine of film and television personalities who’ve all sunk to untold depths since gaining weight and being forced off camera. It’s disgustingly tasteless, of course, like all Jenny’s books, but it’ll sell. I think you should send all your gen sorry about the pun to her. Olive would make rather a dramatic conclusion, don’t you think, particularly if we can get a photograph of her in her cell.”
“No chance.”
“No chance of getting a photograph? Shame.”
“No chance of my sending anything to Jenny Atherton.
Honestly, Iris,” she stormed, losing her temper, ‘you really are beneath contempt. You should be working for the gutter press. You believe in exploiting anyone just as long as they bring in the cash.
Jenny Atherton is the last person I’d allow near Olive.”
“Can’t see why,” said Iris, now chewing heartily on something.
“I mean if you don’t want to write about her and you’re refusing ever to visit her again because she makes you sick, why cavil at somebody else having a bash?”
“It’s the principle.”
“Can’t see it, old thing. Sounds more like dog in the manger to me.
Listen, I can’t dally. We’ve got people in. At least let me tell Jenny that Olive’s up for grabs. She can start from scratch.
It’s not as though you’ve got very far, is it?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Roz snapped.
“I will do it. Goodbye.” She slammed the receiver down.
At the other end of the line, Iris winked at her husband.
“And you accuse me of not caring,” she murmured.
“Now, what could have been more caring than that?”
“Hobnailed boots,” Gerry Fielding suggested acidly.
Roz read Olive’s statement again.
“My relationship with my mother and sister was never close.” She reached for her tape recorder and rewound the tape, flicking to and fro till she found the piece she wanted.
“I called her Amber because, at the age of two, I couldn’t get my tongue round the “1” or the “s”. It suited her. She had lovely honey-blonde hair, and as she grew up she always answered to Amber and never to Alison.
She was very pretty…”
It meant nothing of course, in itself. There was no unwritten law that said psychopaths were incapable of pretending. Rather the reverse, in fact. But there was a definite softening of the voice when she spoke about her sister, a tenderness which from anyone else Roz would have interpreted as love.
And why hadn’t she mentioned the fight with her mother?
Really, that was very odd. It could well have been her justification for what she did that day.
The chaplain, quite unaware that Olive was behind him, started violently as a large hand fell on his shoulder. It wasn’t the first time she had crept up on him and he wondered again, as he had wondered before, how she managed to do it. Her normal gait was a painful shuffle which set his teeth on edge every time he heard its approach.
He steeled himself and turned with a friendly smile.
“Why, Olive, how nice to see you. What brings you to the chapel?”
The bald eyes were amused.
“Did I frighten you?”
“You startled me. I didn’t hear you coming.”
“Probably because you weren’t listening. You must listen first if you want to hear, Chaplain.
Surely they taught you that much at theological college. God talks in a whisper at the best of times.”
It would be easier, he thought sometimes, if he could despise Olive.
But he had never been able to.
He feared and disliked her but he did not despise her.
“What can I do for you?”
“You had some new diaries delivered this morning. I’d like one.
“Are you sure, Olive? These are no different from the others. They still have a religious text for every day of the year and last time I gave you one you tore it up.”
She shrugged.
“But I need a diary so I’m prepared to tolerate the little homilies.”
“They’re in the vestry.”
“I know.”
She had not come for a diary. That much he could guess. But what did she plan to steal from the chapel while his back was turned? What was there to steal except Bibles and prayer books?
A candle, he told the Governor afterwards. Olive Martin took a six-inch candle from the altar. But she, of course, denied it, and though her cell was searched from top to bottom, the candle was never found.
THREE
Graham Deedes was young, harassed, and black. He saw Roz’s surprise as she came into his room, and he frowned his irritation.
“I had no idea black bannisters were such a rarity, Miss Leigh.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked curiously, sitting down in the chair he indicated.
“You looked surprised.”
“I am, but not by your colour. You’re much younger than I expected.”
“Thirty-three,” he said.
“Not so young.”
“No, but when you were briefed to appear for Olive Martin you can only have been twenty-six or twenty-seven. That is young for a murder trial.”
“True,” he agreed, ‘but I was only the junior. The QC was considerably older.”
“But you did most of the preparation?”
He nodded.
“Such as there was. It was a very unusual case.”
She took her tape-recorder from her bag.
“Have you any objections to being recorded?”
“Not if you intend to talk about Olive Martin.”
“Ido.”
He chuckled.
“Then I’ve no objections, for the simple reason that I can tell you virtually nothing about her. I saw the woman once, on the day she was sentenced, and I never even spoke to her.”