was the one she intended to smear with her guilt because he was easy. He was dead. But you gave her Mrs. Clarke instead.”
He thrust his face angrily into hers.
“The evidence you’ve unearthed raises doubts, but no more.
Computer-enhanced photography is as open to interpretation as the nature of psychopathy.” He shook his head.
“Olive will get out because of it, of course. The law has become very flabby in the last few years. But I was there when she told her story and, as I made clear to you at the start, Olive Martin is a dangerous woman.
She’s after her father’s money. You’ve been led by the nose, Miss Leigh.”
“She’s not half as dangerous as you, Mr. Crew. At least she’s never paid to have people’s businesses destroyed and their lives threatened.
You’re a cheap crook.”
Crew shrugged.
“If that appears in print, Miss Leigh, I shall sue you for defamation, and it will cost you considerably more in legal fees than it will cost me. I suggest you remember that.”
The journalist watched him walk away.
“He’s doing a Robert Maxwell on you.”
“That’s the law for you,” said Roz in disgust.
“It’s nothing but a big stick if you know how to use it or you’re rich enough to employ someone else to use it for you.”
“You don’t think he’s right about Olive, do you?”
“Of course not,” said Roz angrily, sensing his doubt.
“But at least you know now what she was up against. This country is mad if it assumes that the presence of a solicitor during an interview will automatically protect a prisoner’s rights. They are just as fallible, just as lazy, and just as crooked as the rest of us. It cost the Law Society millions last year to compensate clients for their solicitors’ misdeeds.”
The book was scheduled to come out within a month of Olive’s release.
Roz had finished it in record time amidst the peace and seclusion of Bayview, which she bought on impulse when she discovered it was impossible to work above the continuous noise of people enjoying their food in the restaurant downstairs.
The Poacher had been relaunched in a whirl of somewhat exaggerated publicity featuring Hal as the heroic underdog fighting the evil of organised crime. His association with the Olive Martin case, particularly his latter efforts to help in securing her release, had only added to the hype. He applauded Roz’s decision to buy Bayview.
Making love against the backdrop of the ocean was a vast improvement on the metal bars at the Poacher.
And she was safer there.
Hal had discovered within himself a capacity for caring that he hadn’t known existed. It went deeper than love, encompassing every emotion from admiration to lust, and, while he would never have described himself as an obsessive man, the stress of worrying about Stewart Hayes, free on bail, slowly became intolerable to him. He was prompted finally to make Hayes a surprise visit at home one day. He found him playing in the garden with his ten- year-old daughter and it was there that he made Hayes an offer Hayes couldn’t refuse. A life for a life, a maiming for a maiming, should anything happen to Roz. Hayes recognised such compelling purpose in the dark eyes, perhaps because it’s what he would have done himself, that he agreed to an indefinite truce. His love for his daughter, it seemed, was matched only by Hal’s love for Roz.
Iris, claiming almost more credit for the book than Roz - ‘if it hadn’t been for me it would never have been written’ was busy selling it around the world as the latest example of British justice reeling under the body blows of its own inflexibility. A small, rather ironic footnote to the story was that the boy Crew’s firm had located in Australia proved not, after all, to be Amber’s lost child and the search for him was promptly abandoned. The time limit, set in Robert Martin’s will, had run out and his money, swollen by Crew’s investments -which were now out of his reach continued in limbo while Olive sought leave to contest her right to it.
EPILOGUE
At 5.30 on a dark and frosty winter morning the Sculptress walked free from the gates of her prison, two hours earlier than the time announced to the press. She had sought and obtained permission to slip back into society well away from the glare of publicity that had surrounded the release of other celebrated cases of wrongful imprisonment.
Roz and Sister Bridget, alerted by telephone, stood outside in the lamplight, stamping their feet and blowing on their hands. They smiled in welcome as the Judas door opened.
Only Hal, sheltering ten yards away in the warmth of the car, saw the look of gloating triumph that swept briefly over Olive’s face as she put her arms around the two women and lifted them bodily into the air.
He recalled some words that he’d had stencilled on his desk when he was still a policeman.
“Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.”
For no apparent reason, he shivered.
The End
Minette Walters lives in Hampshire with her husband and two children.
