The Sculptress
Authors: Minette Walters
| The Sculptress |
| Minette Walters |
| 1992 : UK |
The Sculptress
PAN BOOKS
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE
to see her approach without a
shudder of distaste. She was a grotesque parody of
a woman, so fat that her feet and hands and head
protruded absurdly from the huge slab of her body
like tiny disproportionate afterthoughts. Dirty blonde
hair clung damp and thin to her scalp, black patches
of sweat spread beneath her armpits. Clearly, walking
was painful. She shuffled forward on the insides of
her feet, legs forced apart by the thrust of one gigantic
thigh against another, balance precarious. And with
every movement, however small, the fabric of her
dress strained ominously as the weight of her flesh
shifted. She had, it seemed, no redeeming features.
Even her eyes, a deep blue, were all but lost in the
ugly folds of pitted white lard.
Strange that after so long she was still an object of
curiosity. People who saw her every day watched her
progress down that corridor as if for the first time.
What was it that fascinated them? The sheer size of a woman who stood five feet eleven and weighed over
twenty-six stones? Her reputation? Disgust? There
were no smiles. Most watched impassively as she
passed, fearful perhaps of attracting her attention. She
had carved her mother and sister into little pieces and
rearranged the bits in bloody abstract on her kitchen
floor. Few who saw her could forget it. In view of the
horrific nature of the crime and the fear that her huge
brooding figure had instilled in everyone who had sat
in the courtroom she had been sentenced to life with
a recommendation that she serve a minimum of
twenty-five years. What made her unusual, apart from
the crime itself, was that she had pleaded guilty and
refused to offer a defence.
She was known inside the prison walls as the Sculptress.
Her real name was Olive Martin.
Rosalind Leigh, waiting by the door of the interview
room, ran her tongue around the inside of her
mouth. Her revulsion was immediate as if Olive’s evil
had reached out and touched her.
My God
, she was
thinking, and the thought alarmed her,
I can’t go
through with this
. But she had, of course, no choice.
The gates of the prison were locked on her, as a
visitor, just as securely as they were locked on the
inmates. She pressed a shaking hand to her thigh
where the muscles were jumping uncontrollably.
Behind her, her all but empty briefcase, a testament
to her lack of preparation for this meeting, screamed
derision at her ill-considered assumption that conversation with Olive could develop like any other. It had
never occurred to her, not for one moment, that fear
might stifle her inventiveness.
Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty
whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her
father forty-one
. The rhyme churned in her brain, over
and over, numbingly repetitive.
Olive Martin took an
axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw
what she had done she gave her sister forty-one
. . .
Roz stepped away from the door and forced herself
to smile. ‘Hello, Olive. I’m Rosalind Leigh. Nice to
meet you at last.’ She held out her hand and shook
the other’s warmly, in the hope, perhaps, that by
demonstrating an unprejudiced friendliness she could
quell her dislike. Olive’s touch was token only, a brief
brush of unresponsive fingers. ‘Thank you.’ Roz spoke
to the hovering prison officer briskly. ‘I’ll take it from
here. We have the Governor’s permission to talk for
an hour.’
Lizzie Borden took an axe
. . . Tell her you’ve
changed your mind.
Olive Martin took an axe and
gave her mother forty whacks
. . . I can’t go through
with this!
The uniformed woman shrugged. ‘OK.’ She
dropped the welded metal chair she was carrying carelessly
on to the floor and steadied it against her knee.
‘You’ll need this. Anything else in there will collapse
the minute she sits on it.’ She laughed amiably. An
attractive woman. ‘She got wedged in the flaming toilet last year and it took four men to pull her out
again. You’d never get her up on your own.’
Roz manoeuvred the chair awkwardly through the
doorway. She felt at a disadvantage, like the friend of
warring partners being pressured into taking sides.
But Olive intimidated her in a way the prison officer
never could
. ‘You will see me using a tape-recorder
during this interview,’ she snapped, nervousness clipping
the words brusquely. ‘The Governor has agreed
to it. I trust that’s in order.’
There was a short silence. The prison officer raised
an eyebrow. ‘If you say so. Presumably someone’s
taken the trouble to get the Sculptress’s agreement.
Any problems, like, for example, she objects violently’
– she drew a finger across her throat before tapping
the pane of glass beside the door which allowed the
officers a clear view of the room – ‘then bang on
the window. Assuming she lets you, of course.’ She
smiled coolly. ‘You’ve read the rules, I hope. You
bring nothing in for her, you take nothing out. She
can smoke your cigarettes in the interview room but
she can’t take any away with her. You do not pass
messages for her, in or out, without the Governor’s
permission. If in doubt about anything, you refer it
to one of the officers. Clear?’
Bitch, thought Roz angrily. ‘Yes, thank you.’ But
it wasn’t anger she felt, of course, it was fear. Fear of
being shut up in a confined space with this monstrous creature who stank of fat woman’s sweat and showed
no emotion in her grotesquely bloated face.
‘Good.’ The officer walked away with a broad wink
at a colleague.
Roz stared after her. ‘Come in, Olive.’ She chose
the chair furthest from the door deliberately. It was a
statement of confidence. She was so damn nervous
she needed a wee.
The idea for the book had been delivered as an ultimatum
by her agent. ‘Your publisher is about to wash
his hands of you, Roz. His precise words were, “She
has a week to commit herself to something that will
sell or I shall remove her from our lists.” And, though
I hate to rub your nose in it, I am within a whisker
of doing the same thing.’ Iris’s face softened a little.
Berating Roz, she felt, was like beating your head
against a brick wall, painful and completely ineffective.
She was, she knew, the woman’s best friend – her
only
friend, she thought sometimes. The barrier of barbed
wire that Roz had erected around herself had deterred
all but the most determined. People rarely even asked
after her these days. With an inward sigh, Iris threw
caution to the winds. ‘Look, sweetheart, you really
can’t go on like this. It’s unhealthy to shut yourself
away and brood. Did you think about what I suggested
last time?’
Roz wasn’t listening. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, her eyes maddeningly vacant. She saw the irritation
on Iris’s face and forced herself to concentrate. Iris,
she thought, had been lecturing again. But really,
Roz wondered, why did she bother? Other people’s
concern was so exhausting, for her and for them.
‘Did you ring that psychiatrist I recommended?’
Iris demanded bluntly.
‘No, there’s no need. I’m fine.’ She studied the
immaculately made-up face, which had changed very
little in fifteen years. Someone had once told Iris
Fielding that she looked like Elizabeth Taylor in
Cleopatra
.
‘A week’s too short,’ Roz said, referring to her
publisher. ‘Tell him a month.’
Iris flicked a piece of paper across her desk. ‘You’ve
run out of room to manoeuvre, I’m afraid. He’s not
even prepared to give you a choice of subject. He
wants Olive Martin. Here’s the name and address of
her solicitor. Find out why she wasn’t sent to Broadmoor
or Rampton. Find out why she refused to offer
a defence. And find out what made her commit the
murders in the first place. There’s a story there somewhere.’
She watched the frown on Roz’s face deepen
and shrugged. ‘I know. It’s not your sort of thing,
but you’ve brought this on yourself. I’ve been pressing
you for months to produce an outline. Now it’s
this or nothing. To tell you the truth, I think he’s
done it on purpose. If you write it, it will sell, if you
refuse to write it because it’s pure sensationalism, then
he’s found a good excuse to drop you.’
Roz’s reaction surprised her. ‘OK,’ she said mildly,
taking the piece of paper and tucking it into her
handbag.
‘I thought you’d refuse.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of the way the tabloids sensationalized
what happened to
you
.’
Roz shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s time someone showed
them how to handle human tragedy with dignity.’ She
wouldn’t write it, of course – she had no intention of
writing anything any more – but she gave Iris an
encouraging smile. ‘I’ve never met a murderess
before.’
Roz’s application to visit Olive Martin for the purposes
of research was passed on by the Prison Governor
to the Home Office. It was several weeks before
permission was given in a grudging processed letter
from a civil servant. While Martin had consented to
the visits, she reserved the right at any time to withdraw
consent, without reason and without prejudice.
It was emphasized that the visits had been authorized
only on the understanding that there would be no
breaches of the prison regulations, that the Governor’s
word would be final in all circumstances, and
that Ms Leigh would be held liable should she contribute
in any way to an undermining of prison
discipline.
Roz found it hard to look at Olive. Good manners
and the woman’s ugliness precluded staring and the
monstrous face was so flat, so unresponsive, that her
eyes kept sliding off it like butter off a baked potato.
Olive, for her part, watched Roz greedily. Attractive
looks put no such limitations on staring – quite the
reverse, they invite it – and Roz was, in any case, a
novelty. Visitors were rare in Olive’s life, particularly
ones who came without the reforming baggage of
missionary zeal.
After the cumbersome business of getting her
seated, Roz gestured towards the tape-recorder. ‘If
you remember, I mentioned in my second letter that
I’d like to record our chats. I presumed when the
Governor gave permission for it that you’d agreed.’
Her voice was pitched too high.
Olive shrugged a kind of acquiescence.
‘You’ve no objections, then?’
A shake of the head.
‘Fine. I’m switching on now. Date, Monday, April
twelve. Conversation with Olive Martin.’ She consulted
her all too sketchy list of questions. ‘Let’s start
with some factual details. When were you born?’
No answer.
Roz looked up with an encouraging smile, only to
be confronted by the woman’s unblinking scrutiny.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I think I have that detail already.
Let’s see. Eighth of September, nineteen sixty-four,
which makes you twenty-eight. Am I right?’ No response. ‘And you were born in Southampton General,
the first of Gwen and Robert Martin’s two
daughters. Your sister, Amber, came along two years
later on the fifteenth of July, nineteen sixty-six. Were
you pleased about that? Or would you rather have
had a brother?’ Nothing.
Roz did not look up this time. She could feel the
weight of the woman’s eyes upon her. ‘Your parents
liked colours, obviously. I wonder what they would
have called Amber if she’d been a boy?’ She gave a
nervous giggle. ‘Red? Ginger? Perhaps it was a good
thing the baby was another girl.’ She listened to herself
in disgust.
Goddamnit, why the hell did I agree to
this!
Her bladder was hurting.
A fat finger reached out and switched off the tape-recorder.
Roz watched it with a horrible fascination.
‘There’s no need to be so frightened,’ said a deep,
surprisingly cultured voice. ‘Miss Henderson was teasing
you. They all know I’m completely harmless. If I
wasn’t, I’d be in Broadmoor.’ A strange rumbling
noise vibrated the air. A laugh? Roz wondered. ‘Stands
to reason, really.’ The finger hovered over the
switches. ‘You see, I do what normal people do when
I have objections to something. I express them.’ The
finger moved to
Record
and gently pushed the button.
‘Had Amber been a boy they would have called him
Jeremy after my mother’s father. Colour didn’t come
into it. In actual fact, Amber was christened Alison. I
called her Amber because, at the age of two, I couldn’t get my tongue round the “
l
” 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.’