“In what way?”
“At the risk of labouring the point, sir,” said Hal coldly, ‘your wife and daughter have been brutally murdered. I imagine you will want the perpetrator prosecuted?” He lifted an eyebrow in enquiry and Martin nodded.
“Then you may well want a solicitor yourself to ensure that the prosecution proceeds to your satisfaction, but if your own solicitor is already representing your daughter, he will be unable to assist you because your interests will conflict with your daughter’s.”
“Not if she’s innocent.” Martin pinched the crease in his trousers, aligning it with the centre of his knee.
“I am really not concerned with what Olive may have implied, Sergeant Hawksley. There is no conflict of interest in my mind. Establishing her innocence and representing me in pressing for a prosecution can be done by the same solicitor. Now, if you could lend me the use of a telephone, I will ring Peter Crew, and afterwards, perhaps you will allow me to talk to my daughter.”
Hal shook his head.
“I’m sorry, sir, but that won’t be possible, not until we’ve taken a statement from her. You will also be required to make a statement. You may be allowed to speak to her afterwards, but at the moment I can’t guarantee it.”
“And that,” he said, recalling the incident, ‘was the one and only time he showed any emotion. He looked quite upset, but whether because I’d denied him access to Olive or because I’d told him he’d have to make a statement, I don’t know.” He considered for a moment.
“It must have been the denial of access. We went through every minute of that man’s day and he came out whiter than white. He worked in an open-plan office with five other people and, apart from the odd trip to the lavatory, he was under someone’s eye the whole day. There just wasn’t time for him to go home.”
“But you did suspect him?”
“Yes.”
Roz looked interested.
“In spite of Olive’s confession?”
He nodded.
“He was so damn cold blooded about it all. Even identifying the bodies didn’t faze him.”
Roz thought for a moment.
“There was another conflict of interest which you don’t seem to have considered.” She chewed her pencil.
“If Robert Martin was the murderer, he could have used his solicitor to manipulate Olive into confessing. Peter Crew makes no secret of his dislike of her, you know. I think he regrets the abolition of capital punishment.”
Hal folded his arms, then smiled in amusement.
“You’ll have to be very careful if you intend to make statements like that in your book. Miss Leigh. Solicitors are not required to like their clients, they merely have to represent them. In any case, Robert Martin dropped out of the frame very rapidly. We toyed with the idea that he killed Gwen and Amber before he went to work and Olive then set about disposing the bodies to protect him, but the numbers didn’t add up. He had an alibi even for that. There was a neighbour who saw her husband off to work a few minutes before Martin himself left. Amber and Gwen were alive then because she spoke to them on their doorstep.
She remembered asking Amber how she was getting on at Glitzy.
They waved as Martin drove away.”
“He could have gone round the corner and come back again.”
“He left home at eight-thirty and arrived at work at nine. We tested the drive and it took half an hour.” He shrugged.
“As I said, he was whiter than white.”
“What about lunch? Could he have gone back then?”
“He had a pint and a sandwich in the local pub with two men from the office.”
“OK. Go on.”
There was little more to tell. In spite of Crew’s advice to remain silent, Olive agreed to answer police questions, and at nine-thirty, expressing relief to have got the whole thing off her chest, she signed her statement and was formally charged with the murder of her mother and sister.
Following her remand into custody on the morning of the next day, Hal and Geof Wyatt were given the task of detailing the police case against her. It was a straightforward collating of pathological, forensic, and police evidence, all of which, upon examination, supported the facts given in Olive’s statement.
Namely that, acting alone, she had, on the morning of the ninth of September, 1987, murdered her mother and sister by cutting their throats with a carving knife.
SEVEN
There was a lengthy silence. Hal splayed his hands on the scrubbed deal table and pushed himself to his feet.
“How about some more coffee?” He watched her industrious pen scribbling across a page of her notebook.
“More coffee?” he repeated.
“Mm. Black, no sugar.” She didn’t look up but went on writing.
