The Sculptress Part 25

"And please impress on her that it's desperately important I talk to someone who knew her at the time. So far I've only managed to trace one old school friend and a teacher."

She walked to the door.

"I'll wait outside."

True to his word, he was five minutes. He joined her in the corridor and gave her a piece of paper with a name and address on it.

"Her name's Lily Gainsborough. She was the cleaner c.u.m-tea-lady in the good old days before privatised cleaning and automatic coffee machines.

She retired three years ago at the age of seventy, lives in sheltered accommodation in Pryde Street." He gave her directions.

"She's expecting you." Roz thanked him.

"Give my regards to Olive when you see her," he said, shaking her hand.

"I had more hair and less flab six years ago, so a description won't be much use, but she might remember my name. Most people do."

Roz chuckled. His name was Michael Jackson.

"Of course I remember Olive. Called her "Dumpling", didn't I, and she called me "Flower". Get it, dear? Because of my name, Lily. There wasn't an ounce of harm in her. I never believed what they said she done and I wrote and told her so when I heard where they'd sent her.

She wrote me back and said I was wrong, it was all her fault and she had to pay the penalty." Old wise eyes peered shortsightedly at Roz.

"I understood what she meant, even if no one else did. She never did it but it wouldn't have happened if she'd not done what she shouldn't have. More tea, dear?"

"Thank you." Roz held out her cup and waited while the frail old lady hefted a large stainless steel teapot. A relic from her job on the tea trolley? The tea was thick and charged with tannin, and Roz could hardly bring herself to drink it. She accepted another indigestible scone.

"What did she do that she shouldn't have?"

"Upset her mum, that's what. Took up with one of the O'Brien boys, didn't she?"

"Which one?"

"Ah, well, that I'm not too sure about. I've always thought it was the baby, young Gary mind, I only saw them together once and those boys are very alike. Could have been any of them."

"How many are there?"

"Now you're asking." Lily pursed her mouth into a wrinkled rosebud.

"It's a big family. Can't keep track of them. Their mum must be a grandmother twenty times over and I doubt she's reached sixty yet.

Gyppos, dear. Bad apples the lot of them. In and out of prison that regular you'd think they owned the place.

The mum included. Taught them to steal soon as they could walk. The kids kept being taken off her, of course, but never for very long.

Always found their way home. Young Gary was sent to a boarding school approved schools, they was called in my day did quite well by all accounts." She crumbled a scone on her plate.

"Till he went home, that is. She had him back on the thieving quicker than you can say knife."

Roz thought for a moment.

"Did Olive tell you she was going out with one of them?"

"Not inso many words." She tapped her forehead.

"Put two and two together, didn't I? She was that pleased with herself, lost some weight, bought some pretty dresses from that boutique her sister went to work in, dabbed some colour on her face.

Made herself look quite bonny, didn't she? Stood to reason there was a man behind it somewhere. Asked her once who it was and she just smiled and said, "No names no pack drill, Flower, because Mummy would have a fit if she ever found out." And then, two or three days later, I came across her with one of the O'Brien boys. Her face gave her away, as sunny as the day is long it was. That was him all right the one she was soppy over but he turned away as I pa.s.sed, and I never did know exactly which O'Brien he was."

"But what made you think it was an O'Brien anyway?"

"The uniform," said Lily.

"They all wore the same uniform."

"They were in the Army?" asked Roz in surprise.

"Leathers, they call them."

"Oh, I see. You mean they're bikers, they ride motorbikes."

"That's it. h.e.l.l's Angels."

Roz drew her brows together in a perplexed frown. She had told Hal with absolute conviction that Olive was not the rebellious type. But h.e.l.l's Angels, for G.o.d's sake! Could a convent girl get more rebellious than that?

"Are you sure about this, Lily?"

"Well, as to being sure, I don't know as I'm sure about anything any more. There was a time when I was sure that governments knew better how to run things than I did. Can't say as I do these days. There was a time when I was sure that if G.o.d was in his heaven all would be right with the world. Can't say as I think that now. If G.o.d's there, dear, He's blind, deaf, and dumb, far as I'm concerned. But, yes, I am sure my poor Dumpling had fallen for one of the O'Briens. You'd only to look at her to see she was head over heels in love with the lad."

She compressed her lips.

"Bad business. Bad business."

Roz sipped the bitter tea.

"And you think it was the O'Brien lad who murdered Olive's mother and sister?"

"Must have been, mustn't it? As I said, dear, bad apples."

"Did you tell the police any of this?" asked Roz curiously.

"I might have done if they'd asked, but I didn't see no point in volunteering the information. If Dumpling wanted them kept out, then that was her affair. And, to tell you the truth, I wasn't that keen to run up against them. Stick together, they do, and my Frank had pa.s.sed on not many months before. Wouldn't have stood a chance if they'd come looking, would I?"

"Where do they live?"

"The Barrow Estate, back of the High Street. Council likes to keep *em together, under their eye so to speak. It's a shocking place. Not an honest family there, and they're not all O'Briens neither. Den of thieves, that's what it is."

Roz took another thoughtful sip from her cup.

"Are you prepared to let me use this information, Lily? You do realise that if there's anything in it it could help Olive."

"Course I do, dear. Why would I tell you otherwise?"

"The police would become involved. They'd want to talk to you."

"I know that."

"In which case your name would be out, and the O'Briens could still come looking for you."

The old eyes appraised her shrewdly.

"You're only a slip of a thing, dear, but you've survived a beating by the look of it.

Reckon I can too. In any case," she went on stoutly, "I've spent six years feeling bad about not speaking up, and I was that glad when young Mick phoned and said you was coming, you wouldn't believe. You go ahead, dear, and don't mind about me.

It's safer here, anyway, than my old place. They could have set the whole thing alight and I'd have been dead long before anyone'd have thought of phoning for help."

If Roz had expected to see a chapter of h.e.l.l's Angels rampaging about the Barrow Estate she was disappointed. At lunchtime on a Friday it was an unexceptional place, where only the odd dog barked and young women, in ones and twos, pushed babies in prams piled high with shopping for the weekend. Like too many council estates there was a naked and un cared for look about it, a recognition that what it offered was not what its tenants wanted. If individuality was present in these dull uniform walls then it was inside, away from view. But Roz doubted its existence. She had a sense of empty s.p.a.ces marking time where people waited for somebody else to offer them something better.

Like her, she thought. Like her flat.

As she drove away she pa.s.sed a large school, advertising itself with a tired sign beside the gate. Parkway Comprehensive.

Children milled about the tarmac, the sound of their voices loud in the warm air. Roz slowed the car to watch them for a moment. Groups of children played the same games whichever school they went to, but she could see why Gwen had turned her nose up at Parkway and had sent her girls to the convent. Its close proximity to the Barrow Estate would worry even the most liberal of parents, and Gwen certainly wasn't that.

But it was ironic, if what Lily and Mr. Hayes had said was true, that both Gwen's daughters had succ.u.mbed to the attractions of this other world. Was that in spite of or because of their mother? she wondered.

She told herself she needed a tame policeman to give her the low-down on the O'Briens, and her road led inevitably to the Poacher. Being lunchtime the door to the restaurant was unlocked, but the tables were as empty as ever. She selected one well away from the window and sat down, her dark gla.s.ses firmly in place.

"You won't need those," said Hawksley's amused voice from the kitchen doorway.

"I don't intend to put the lights on."

She smiled, but did not remove the gla.s.ses.

"I'd like to order some lunch."

"OK." He held the door wide.

"Come into the kitchen. It's more comfortable in there."

"No, I'll have it in here." She stood up.

"At the table in the window. I'd like the door open and' she looked for amplifiers and found them *some loud music, preferably jazz. Let's liven the place up a bit. n.o.body wants to eat in a morgue, for G.o.d's sake." She seated herself in the window.

"No," he said, an odd inflexion in his voice.

"If you want lunch, you eat it in here with me. Otherwise, you go somewhere else."

She studied him thoughtfully.

"This has nothing to do with the recession, has it?"

"What hasn't?"

"Your non-existent customers."

He gestured towards the kitchen.

"Are you going or staying?"

"Staying," she said, standing up. What was this all about? she wondered.

"It's really none of your concern, Miss Leigh," he murmured, reading her mind.

"I suggest you stick to what you know and leave me to deal with my affairs in my own way." Geof had phoned through the results of his check the previous Monday.

"She's kosher," he had said.

"A London-based author. Divorced.

Had a daughter who died in a car accident. No previous connections with anyone in the area. Sorry, Hal."

"OK," Roz said mildly, *but you must admit it's very intriguing. I was effectively warned off eating here by a police man when I went to the station to find out where you were. I've been wondering why ever since. With friends like that you don't really need enemies, do you?"

His smile didn't reach his eyes.

"Then you're very brave to accept my hospitality a second time." He held the door wide.

She walked past him into the kitchen.

"Just greedy," she said.

"You're a better cook than I am. In any case, I intend to pay for what I eat unless, of course' her smile didn't reach her eyes either *this isn't a restaurant at all, but a front for something else."

That amused him.

"You've an overactive imagination." He pulled out a chair for her.

"Maybe," she said, sitting down.

"But I've never met a restaurateur before who barricades himself behind bars, presides over empty tables, has no staff, and looms up in the dark looking like something that's been fed through a mincing machine."

She arched her eyebrows.

"If you didn't cook so well, I'd be even more inclined to think this wasn't a restaurant."

He leaned forward abruptly and removed her dark gla.s.ses, folding them and laying them on the table.