“But he thought she was innocent,” she protested with some indignation, ‘and he paid her legal bills.
Why wouldn’t he see her? That was very cruel, wasn’t it?”
There was a sharp gleam in the man’s eyes.
“Very cruel,” he agreed, ‘but not on Robert’s part. It was Olive who refused to see him. It drove him to his death, which, I think, was her intention all along.”
Roz frowned unhappily.
“You and I have very different views of her, Mr. Crew. I’ve only experienced her kindness.”
The frown deepened.
“She did know he wanted to see her, I suppose.”
“Of course. As a prosecution witness he had to apply to the Home Office for special permission to visit her, even though she was his daughter. If you contact them they’ll verify it for you.” He moved on again and Roz had to run to keep up with him.
“What about the inconsistencies in her statement, Mr. Crew?
Did you ask her about them?”
“What inconsistencies?”
“Well, for example, the fact that she doesn’t mention the fight with her mother but claims Gwen and Amber were dead before she started to dismember them.”
He cast an impatient glance at his watch.
“She was lying.”
Roz caught at his arm again and forced him to stop.
“You were her solicitor,” she said angrily.
“You had a duty to believe her.”
“Don’t be naY ve Miss Leigh. I had a duty to represent her.”
He shook himself free.
“If solicitors were required to believe everything their clients told them there would be little or no legal representation left.” His lips thinned in distaste.
“In any case I did believe her. She said she killed them and I accepted it. I had to. In spite of every attempt I made to suggest she said nothing, she insisted on making her confession.” His eyes bored into hers.
“Are you telling me now that she denies the murders?”
“No,” Roz admitted, ‘but I don’t think the version she gave the police is the correct one.”
He studied her for a moment.
“Did you talk to Graham Deedes?” She nodded.
“And?”
“He agrees with you.”
“The police?”
She nodded again.
“One of them. He also agrees with you.”
“And doesn’t that tell you anything?”
“Not really. Deedes was briefed by you and never even spoke to her and the police have been wrong before.” She brushed a curl of red hair from her face.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have your faith in British justice.”
“Obviously not.” Crew smiled coolly.
“But your scepticism is misplaced this time. Good day to you, Miss Leigh.” He loped away up the wind-swept street, the absurd toupee held in place under his hand, his coat-tails whipping about his long legs.
He was a comical figure, but Roz did not feel like laughing. For all his idiotic mannerisms he had a certain dignity.
She telephoned St. Angela’s Convent from a payphone but it was after five o’clock and whoever answered said Sister Bridget had gone home for the evening. She called Directory Enquiries for the DSS number in Dawlington, but, when she tried it, the office had closed for the night and there was no answer. Back in her car she pencilled in a rough timetable for the following morning, then sat for some time with her notebook propped against the steering- wheel, running over in her mind what Crew had told her. But she couldn’t concentrate. Her attention kept wandering to the more attractive lure of Hal Hawksley in the Poacher’s kitchen.
He had an unnerving trick of catching her eye when she wasn’t expecting it, and the shock to her system every time was cataclysmic. She thought ‘going weak at the knees’ was something invented by romantic authoresses. But the way things were, if she went back to the Poacher, she’d need a Zimmer frame just to make it through the door! Was she mad? The man was some sort of gangster. Whoever heard of a restaurant without customers? People had to eat, even in recessions. With a rueful shake of her head, she fired the engine and set off back to London. What the hell, anyway! Sod’s law predicated that because thoughts of him filled her mind with erotic fantasies his thoughts of her (if he thought about her at all) would be anything but libidinous.
London, when she reached it, was fittingly dogged and oppressive with Thursday night rush-hour traffic.
