The Sculptress (37 page)

He resumed his seat and waited while Hal relayed the message. After three minutes he used the telephone
to establish that Wyatt was out of earshot.

‘Now,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘there seem to be various
courses open to me. One is to take you up on
your offer.’ He picked up a ruler and flexed it between
his hands. ‘I’m not inclined to do that. You could
have put the Poacher on the market at any time in
the last six weeks but you didn’t, and this sudden
urge of yours to sell makes me nervous.’ He paused
for a moment. ‘Two, I can leave things to follow their
natural course. The law is a joke and a slow joke at
that, and there’s only a fifty-fifty chance that Peter
Crew’s manipulations of Robert Martin’s estate will
surface before you sink.’ He bent the ruler as far as it
would go without breaking, then released it abruptly.
‘I’m not inclined to do that either. Fifty-fifty is too
close to call.’ The pale eyes hardened. ‘Three, and in
many ways this is the most attractive, I can wish an
unfortunate accident on the pair of you, thereby killing
two birds with one stone.’ He flicked a glance at
Roz. ‘Your death, Miss Leigh, would put Olive and
this book you’re writing, temporarily at least, on a
back burner, and yours, Hawksley, would ensure the
Poacher coming on the market. A neat solution, don’t
you think?’

‘Very neat,’ agreed Hal. ‘But you’re not going to
do that either. There’s still the child in Australia, after
all.’

Hayes gave a faint laugh. An echo of his father.

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Give you what you came for.’

Hal frowned. ‘Which is?’

‘Proof that you were framed.’ He pulled open a
drawer in his desk and removed a transparent polythene
folder. Holding it by its top corners he shook
the contents – a page of headed notepaper, showing
creases where it had once been crumpled – on to his
desk. The printed address was a house in one of the
more expensive parts of Southampton and written
across the page in Crew’s handwriting were a series
of short notes:

‘It’s genuine,’ said Hayes, seeing Hal’s scepticism.
‘Crew’s home address, Crew’s handwriting’ – he
tapped the side of the note with his ruler – ‘and his
fingerprints. It’s enough to get you off the hook but
whether it’s enough to convict Crew I don’t know.
That’s your problem, not mine.’

‘Where did you get it?’

But Hayes merely smiled and shook his head. ‘I’m
an ex-soldier. I like fall-back positions. Let’s just say
it came into my possession and, realizing its importance,
I passed it on to you.’

Hal wondered if Crew knew the sort of man he
had hired. Had this been intended for later blackmail?
‘I don’t get it,’ he said frankly. ‘Crew is bound to
implicate you. So will I. So will Miss Leigh. One way
or another you and your brother will get done. Why
make it easy for us?’

Hayes didn’t answer directly. ‘I’m cutting my
losses, Hawksley, and giving you your restaurant back.
Be grateful.’

‘Like hell, I’ll be grateful,’ said Hal angrily. His eyes
narrowed suspiciously. ‘Who’s behind this foreclosure
racket? You or Crew?’

‘There’s no racket. Foreclosures are a fact of life at
the moment,’ said the other. ‘Anyone with a little
capital can acquire property cheaply. Mr Crew was
part of a small perfectly legal syndicate. Unfortunately,
he used money that didn’t belong to him.’

‘So you run the syndicate?’

Hayes didn’t answer.

‘No racket, my arse,’ said Hal explosively. ‘The
Poacher was never going to come on the market yet
you still bought up the properties on either side.’

Hayes flexed the ruler again. ‘You’d have sold eventually.
Restaurants are appallingly vulnerable.’ He gave
a slight smile. ‘Consider what would have happened
if Crew had kept his nerve and sat it out till after
your prosecution.’ His eyes hardened. ‘Consider what
would have happened if my brother had told me about
the approach Crew made to him. You and I would
never have had this conversation for the simple reason
that you would not have known who to have it with.’

The flesh crept on Hal’s neck. ‘The hygiene scam
was going to happen anyway?’

The ruler, bent beyond endurance, snapped
abruptly. Hayes smiled. ‘Restaurants are appallingly
vulnerable,’ he said again. ‘I repeat. Be grateful. If
you are, the Poacher will flourish.’

‘Which is another way of saying we must keep our
mouths shut about your involvement.’

‘Of course.’ He looked almost surprised, as if the
question went without asking. ‘Because next time,
the fire won’t be confined to a chip pan, and you’ –
his pale eyes rested on Roz – ‘and your lady friend
won’t be so lucky. My brother’s pride was hurt. He’s
itching to have another go at the pair of you.’ He
pointed to the piece of notepaper. ‘You can do what
you like with Crew. I don’t admire men without principle. He’s a lawyer. He had a duty to a dead
man’s estate and he abused it.’

Hal, rather shaken, picked up the page by its corner
and tucked it into Roz’s handbag. ‘You’re no better,
Hayes. You abused Crew’s confidence when you told
your father about Amber’s child. But for that we’d
never have put Crew in the frame.’ He waited while
Roz stood up and walked to the door. ‘And I’ll make
damn sure he knows that when the police arrest him.’

Hayes was amused. ‘Crew won’t talk.’

‘What’s to stop him?’

He drew the broken ruler across his throat. ‘The
same thing that will stop you, Hawksley. Fear.’ The
pale eyes raked Roz from head to toe. ‘But in Crew’s
case, it’s his grandchildren he loves.’

Geoff followed them out on to the pavement. ‘OK,’
he ordered, ‘give. What the hell’s going on here?’

Hal looked at Roz’s pale face. ‘We need a drink.’

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ said Geoff aggressively. ‘I’ve
paid my dues, Hal, now you pay yours.’

Hal gripped him fiercely above the elbow, digging
his fingers into the soft flesh. ‘Keep your voice down,
you cretin,’ he muttered. ‘There’s a man in there who
would take out your liver, eat it in front of you, and
then start on your kidneys. And he’d smile while he
was doing it. Where’s the nearest pub?’

Not until they were settled in a tight corner of the saloon, with empty tables all around them, was Hal
prepared to speak. He delivered the story in clipped,
staccato sentences, emphasizing Crew’s role but referring
to the intruders at the Poacher only as hired
thugs. He finished by removing the note from Roz’s
handbag and laying it carefully on the table between
them. ‘I want this bastard screwed, Geoff. Don’t even
think about letting him worm his way out of it.’

Wyatt was sceptical. ‘It’s not much, is it?’

‘It’ll do.’

Wyatt slipped the page into his notebook and
tucked it into his jacket pocket. ‘So where does STC
Security fit in?’

‘It doesn’t. Hayes got hold of that note for me.
That’s the extent of his firm’s involvement.’

‘Ten minutes ago he was going to eat my liver.’

‘I was thirsty.’

Wyatt shrugged. ‘You’re giving me precious little
to work with. I can’t even guarantee you’ll win the
Environmental Health prosecution. Crew’s bound to
deny having anything to do with it.’

There was a silence.

‘He’s right,’ said Roz abruptly, removing a packet
of Tampax from her bag.

Hal grasped the hand holding the box and pressed
it firmly to the table. ‘No, Roz,’ he said softly.
‘Believe it or not, I care more about you than I do
about the Poacher or about abstract justice.’

She nodded. ‘I know, Hawksley,’ Her eyes smiled into his. ‘The trouble is, I care about
you
, too. Which
means we’re in a bit of a fix. You want to save me
and I want to save the Poacher, and the two would
seem to be mutually exclusive.’ She started to ease
her hands from under his. ‘So one of us must win this
argument, and it’s going to be me because this has
nothing to do with abstract justice and everything to
do with my peace of mind. I shall feel much happier
with Stewart Hayes behind bars.’ She shook her head
as his hands moved to smother hers again. ‘I won’t be
responsible for you losing your restaurant, Hal. You’ve
gone through hell for it, and you can’t give it up now.’

But Hal was no Rupert to be browbeaten or cajoled
into doing what Roz wanted. ‘No,’ he said again.
‘We’re not playing intellectual games here. What
Hayes said was
real
. And he’s not threatening to kill
you, Roz. He’s threatening to maim you.’ He lifted
one hand to her face. ‘Men like him don’t kill because
they don’t need to. They cripple or they disfigure,
because a live, broken victim is a more potent encouragement
to others than a dead one.’

‘But if he’s convicted—’ she began.

‘You’re being nai¨ve again,’ he cut in gently,
smoothing the hair from her face. ‘Even if he is convicted,
which I doubt – ex-Army, first offence, hearsay
evidence, Crew denying everything – he won’t go to
jail for any length of time. The worst that will happen
will be twelve months for conspiracy to defraud, of
which he’ll serve six. More likely he will be given a suspended sentence. It wasn’t Stewart who broke into
the Poacher with a baseball bat, remember, it was his
brother, and you will have to stand up in court and say
that.’ His eyes were insistent. ‘I’m a realist, Roz. We’ll
go for Crew and raise enough doubts to get the Health
charges lifted. After that’ – he shrugged – ‘I’ll gamble
that Hayes can be trusted to leave the Poacher alone.’

She was silent for a moment or two. ‘Would you
act differently if you’d never met me and I wasn’t
involved? And don’t lie to me, Hal, please.’

He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I would act differently.
But you
are
involved, so the question doesn’t
arise.’

‘OK.’ She relaxed her hands under his and smiled.
‘Thank you. I feel much happier now.’

‘You agree.’ Relieved, he lessened his pressure
slightly and she seized the opportunity to snatch the
Tampax box out of his grasp.

‘No,’ she said,‘I don’t.’ She opened the box,
removed some truncated cardboard tubes and
upended it to disgorge a miniature voice-activated
dictaphone. ‘With luck’ – she turned to Geoff Wyatt
– ‘this will have enough on it to convict Hayes. It was
at full volume, sitting on his desk, so it should have
caught him.’

She rewound the tape for a second or two and then
pressed ‘play’. Hal’s voice was muffled by distance:
‘
. . . another way of saying we must keep our mouths
shut about your involvement with the Poacher?
’

Hayes’s, clear as a bell. ‘
Of course. Because next
time, the fire won’t be confined to the chip pan, and you
and your lady friend won’t be so lucky. My brother’s
pride was hurt. He’s itching to have another go at the
pair of you
.’

Roz switched it off and pushed it across the table
towards Wyatt. ‘Will it do any good?’

‘If there’s more like that, it will certainly help with
Hal’s prosecution, as long as you’re prepared to give
evidence to support it.’

‘I am.’

He cast a glance at his friend, saw the tension on
the other’s face and turned back to Roz. ‘But Hal’s
right in everything he’s said, assuming I’ve understood
the gist correctly. We
are
talking abstract justice
here.’ He picked up the dictaphone. ‘At the end of
the day – whatever sentence this man gets – if he still
wants to revenge himself on you, he will. And there’s
nothing the police will be able to do to protect you.
So? Are you sure you want me to take this?’

‘I’m sure.’

Wyatt looked at Hal again and gave a helpless
shrug. ‘Sorry, old man. I did my best, but it looks
like you’ve caught a tigress this time.’

Hal gave his baritone chuckle. ‘Don’t say it, Geoff,
because I already know.’

But Wyatt said it anyway. ‘You lucky, bloody sod.’

*

Olive sat hunched over her table, working on a new
sculpture. Eve and her faces and her baby had collapsed
under the weight of a fist, leaving the pencil
pointing heavenward like an accusing finger. The
Chaplain regarded the new piece thoughtfully. A
bulky shape, roughly human and lying on its back,
seemed to be struggling from its clay base. Strange,
he thought, how Olive, with so little skill, made these
figures work. ‘What are you sculpting now?’

‘MAN.’

He could, he thought, have predicted that. He
watched the fingers roll a thick sausage of clay and
plant it upright on the base at the figure’s head.
‘Adam?’ he suggested. He had the feeling she was
playing a game with him. There had been a surge of
sudden activity when he entered her room, as if she
had been waiting for him to break hours of stillness.

‘Cain.’ She selected another pencil and laid it across
the top of the clay sausage, parallel with the recumbent
man, pressing it down till it was held firmly.
‘Faustus. Don Giovanni. Does it matter?’

‘Yes, it does,’ he said sharply. ‘Not all men sell their
souls to the devil, any more than all women are twofaced.’

Olive smiled to herself and cut a piece of string
from a ball on the table. She made a loop in one end
and fastened the other round the tip of the pencil so
that the string hung down over the figure’s head. With infinite care, she tightened the loop about a
matchstick. ‘Well?’ she demanded.