“E was a mean sod. We ‘ad ‘em took off us after six months and that was it. No bikes, no work.”
Roz had now heard three different versions of how the O’Brien boys had lost their jobs at Wells-Fargo. Were any of them true, she wondered, or was it that they were all true, but seen from different perspectives? Truth, she thought, was not the absolute she had once believed it to be.
“Your mother told me,” she said with a look of innocent amusement, ‘that you had a brush with a murderess while you were doing that job.”
“You mean Olive Martin?” Whatever qualms he had had on the matter at the time of the murders had obviously disappeared.
“Funny business, that. I used to deliver letters to her on a Friday evening from some bloke she was keen on, then -wham! she did her folks in. Bloody shocked me to tell you the truth.
“Ad no idea she was a nutter.”
“But she must have been to hack her mother and sister to pieces.”
Yeah.” He looked thoughtful.
“Never did understand it. She was all right. I knew eras a kid. She was all right then, as well. It was the bloody mother who was the cow and the stuck-up sister. Christ, she was a ‘orrible little swine.”
Roz hid her surprise. Everyone loved Amber. How often had she heard that said?
“Maybe Olive had had enough and just snapped one day. It happens.”
“Oh,” he said with a dismissive shrug, ‘that’s not the bit I don’t understand. It’s why she didn’t just go off wither fancy man instead.
I mean, even if ‘e was married, ‘e could’ve set her up in a flat somewhere.
“E wasn’t short of a bob or two judging by what ‘e paid to have the letters delivered. Twenty quid a throw.
“E must have been bloody rolling in it.”
She chewed her pencil.
“Maybe she didn’t do it,” she mused.
“Maybe the police got the wrong person. Let’s face it, it wouldn’t be the first time.”
Ma compressed her lips.
“They’re all corrupt,” she said.
“Nick anyone for any think these days. You don’t want to be Irish in this country. You’ve no ‘ope if you’re Irish.”
“Still,” said Roz, looking at Gary, ‘if Olive didn’t do it, who did?”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t ‘er,” he said sharply.
“She went guilty so she must of done it. All I’m saying is she didn’t need to do it.”
Roz gave a careless shrug.
“Just lost her temper and didn’t think. You’ll probably find the sister provoked her. You said she was horrible.”
Surprisingly, it was Mike who spoke.
“Street angel, ‘ouse devil,” he said.
“Like our Tracey.”
Roz smiled at him.
“What does that mean?”
Ma elucidated.
“A bitch to your family, a perfect darling to everybody else. But our Tracey’s nothing like Amber Martin. I always said that child would come a cropper and I was right.
You can’t face two ways all your life and expect to get away with it.”
Roz showed her curiosity.
“You really did know the family quite well then. I thought you only worked there a short while.”
“So I did, but Amber took a fancy to one of the boys later’ she paused ‘though I’m blowed if I can remember at the moment which one. Was it you, Nipper?”
He shook his head.
“Chris,” said Mike.
“That’s right,” agreed Ma, ‘took a real shine to ‘im and ‘im toer She’d sit in this room, pleased as punch with herself, making sheep’s eyes at ‘im and she can’t ‘ave been more than twelve or thirteen.
“E was what? fifteen, sixteen but, of course, any attention at that age is flattering and she was a pretty girl, I’ll say that for ‘er, and looked older than she was.
Anyway, we saw the real Amber then. She treated Chris like a king and the rest of us like something the cat’d brought in. She had a tongue on ‘er like I’ve never heard. Bitch, bitch, bitch, all the time.” She looked thoroughly indignant.
