TWENTY
Hal was dozing in the car outside, arms crossed, an old cap pulled over his eyes to block out the sun. He raised his head and surveyed Roz lazily from under the brim as she tugged open the driver’s door.
“Well?”
She dumped her briefcase on the back seat and slipped in behind the wheel.
“She shot my version down in flames.” She gunned the engine into life and reversed out of the parking slot.
Hal eyed her thoughtfully.
“So where are we going?”
“To tear strips off Edward,” she told him.
“He’s had nothing like the punishment he deserves.”
“Is that wise? I thought he was a psychopath.” Hal pulled the cap over his eyes again and settled down for another snooze.
“Still, I’m sure you know what you’re doing.” His faith in Roz was unshakeable. She had more bottle than most of the men he knew.
“I do.” She inserted the tape she had just made into the deck and rewound it.
“But you don’t, Sergeant, so cock an ear to this.
I’m inclined to think it’s you I should be tearing strips off. The wretched child because let’s face it, that’s all she really is, even now was starving, and you promised her a “proper dinner” when she’d finished her statement. No wonder she couldn’t confess fast enough. If she’d told you she hadn’t done it you’d have kept her waiting for her food.” She turned the volume up full blast.
*
It took several rings of the doorbell before Edward Clarke finally opened the door to them on the burglar chain. He gestured angrily for them to go away.
“You have no business here,” he hissed at Roz.
“I shall call the police if you persist in harassing us.”
Hal moved into his line of sight, smiling pleasantly.
“Detective Sergeant Hawksley, Mr. Clarke. Dawlington CID. The Olive Martin case. I’m sure you remember me.”
A look of dejected recognition crossed Edward’s face.
“I thought we’d done with all that.”
“I’m afraid not. May we come in?”
The man hesitated briefly and Roz wondered if he was going to call Hal’s bluff and demand identification. Apparently not.
The ingrained British respect for authority ran deep with him.
He rattled the chain and opened the door, his shoulders slumped in weary defeat.
“I knew Olive would talk eventually,” he said.
“She wouldn’t be human if she didn’t.” He showed them into the sitting room.
“But on my word I knew nothing about the murders.
If I’d had any idea what she was like, do you really think I’d have befriended her?”
Roz took the chair she had sat in before and surreptitiously switched on the tape-recorder in her handbag. Hal walked to the window and looked out. Mrs. Clarke was sitting on the small patio at the back of the house, her face, vacant of expression, turned towards the sun.
“You and Olive were rather more than friends,” he said without hostility, turning back into the room.
“We didn’t harm anyone,” said Mr. Clarke, unconsciously echoing Olive.
Roz wondered how old he was. Seventy? He looked more, worn out by care of his wife perhaps. The rough wig she had painted on cellophane over his photograph had been a revelation. It was quite true that hair made a man look younger. He squeezed his hands between his knees as if unsure what to do with them.
“Or should I say we did not set out with the intention to harm anyone.
What Olive did was incomprehensible to me.”
“But you felt no responsibility for it?”
He stared at the carpet, unable to look at either of them.
“I assumed she had always been unstable,” he said.
“Why?”
“Her sister was. I thought it was a genetic thing.”
“So she behaved oddly before the murders?”
“No,” he admitted.
“As I say, I wouldn’t have pursued’ he paused ‘the relationship if I had known the kind of person she
