Hal had mended the back door and the kitchen table, which stood in its customary place once more in the middle of the room. The floor was scrubbed clean, wall units repaired, fridge upright, even some chairs had been imported from the restaurant and placed neatly about the table. Hal himself looked completely exhausted.
“Have you had any sleep at all?” she asked him.
“Not much. I’ve been working round the clock.”
“Well, you’ve performed miracles.” She gazed about her.
“So who’s coming to dinner? The Queen? She could eat it off the floor.”
To her surprise he caught her hand and lifted it to his lips, turning it to kiss the palm. It was an unexpectedly delicate gesture from such a hard man.
“Thank you.”
She was at a loss.
“What for?” she asked helplessly.
He released her hand with a smile.
“Saying the right things.”
For a moment she thought he was going to elaborate, but all he said was: “The photographs are on the table.”
Olive’s was a mug-shot, stark and brutally unflattering. Gwen and Amber’s shocked her as he had said they would.
They were the stuff of nightmares and she understood for the first time why everyone had said Olive was a psychopath. She turned them over and concentrated on the head and shoulders’ shot of Robert Martin. Olive was there in the eyes and mouth, and she had a fleeting impression of what might lie beneath the layers of lard if Olive could ever summon the will-power to shed it. Her father was a very handsome man.
“What are you going to do with them?”
She told him about the man who sent letters to Olive.
“The description fits her father,” she said.
“The woman at Wells Fargo said she’d recognise him from a photograph.”
“Why on earth should her father have sent her secret letters?”
“To set her up as a scapegoat for the murders.”
He was sceptical.
“You’re plucking at straws. What about the ones of Gwen and Amber?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m tempted to show them to Olive to shock her out of her apathy.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I’d think twice about that if I were you. She’s an unknown quantity, and you may not know her as well as you think you do. She could very easily turn nasty if you present her with her own handiwork.”
She smiled briefly.
“I know her better than I know you.” She tucked the photographs into her handbag and stepped out into the alleyway.
“The odd thing is you’re very alike, you and Olive.
You demand trust but you don’t give it.”
He wiped a weary hand around his two-day growth of stubble.
“Trust is a twoedged sword, Roz. It can make you extremely vulnerable. I wish you’d remember that from time to time
FOURTEEN
Mamie studied the photograph of Robert Martin for several seconds then shook her head.
“No,” she said, ‘that wasn’t him. He wasn’t so good looking and he had different hair, thicker, not swept back, more to the side. Anyway, I told you, he had dark brown eyes, almost black. These eyes are light.
Is this her father?”
Roz nodded.
Mamie handed the photograph back.
“My mother always said, never trust a man whose earlobes are lower than his mouth. It’s the sign of a criminal. Look at his.”
Roz looked. She hadn’t noticed it before because of the way his hair swept over them, but Martin’s ears were almost unnaturally out of symmetry with the rest of his face.
“Did your mother know any criminals?”
Marine snorted.
“Of course she didn’t. It’s just an old wives’ tale.” She cocked her head to look at the picture again.
