"Yes."

"G.o.d!" She didn"t know what else to say. She watched while he found a broom and started to sweep the mess towards one corner.

"Shouldn"t you leave that?"

"What for?"

"The police."

He eyed her curiously.

"You said you hadn"t called them."

She digested this in silence for several seconds, then put her gla.s.s on the floor beside her.

"This is all a bit heavy for me."

She took the twenty-pound note from her pocket, but left the letter where it was.

"I only came back to give you this." She held it out as she stood up.

"I"m sorry," she said with an apologetic smile.

"What for?"

"Making you angry. I seem to have a knack for making people angry at the moment." He moved towards her to take the money, but stopped abruptly at her look of alarm.

"G.o.dd.a.m.nit, woman, do you think I did this?"

But he was speaking to thin air. Roz had taken to her heels down the alleyway and the twenty-pound note, once again, fluttered to the ground.

THIRTEEN.

Roz"s sleep that night was intermittent, fitful dozing between turbulent dreams. Olive with an axe, hacking chen tables to pieces.

I didn"t think you woulda it"s not as easy as it looks on the aaa Hal"s fingers on her wrist, but his face the gleeful face of her brother as he gave her Chinese burns as a child.

G.o.dd.a.m.nit, woman, do you think I did thisa Olive hanging from the gallows, her face the slimy grey of wet day. Have you no qualms about releasing someone like her back into societya A priest with the eyes of Sister Bridget. It"s a pity you"re not a Catholica You could go to confession and feel better immediatelya You keep offering me moneya The law is an a.s.sa Have you called the police? She woke in the morning to the sound of the phone ringing in her sitting room. Her head was splitting. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the receiver to shut off the noise.

"Who is it?"

"Well, that"s a nice welcome, I must say," remarked Iris.

"What"s eating you?"

"Nothing. What do you want?"

"Shall I phone off," said Iris sweetly, *and call you back again in half an hour when you"ve remembered that I"m your friend and not some piece of dog"s dirt that you"ve just sc.r.a.ped off your shoe?"

"Sorry. You woke me. I didn"t sleep very well."

"M"m, well, I"ve just had your editor on the phone pressing me for a date and I don"t mean an invitation to dinner. He wants a rough idea of when the book will be ready."

Roz made a face into the receiver.

"I haven"t started writing it yet "Then you"d better get a move on, my darling, because I"ve told him it will be finished by Christmas."

"Oh, Iris, for Heaven"s sake. That"s only six months away and I"m no further forward than the last time I spoke to you. Olive clams up every time we get to the murders. In fact I-* "Seven months," Iris cut in.

"Go and grill that dodgy policeman again. He sounds absolutely frightful and I"ll bet you anything you like he framed her. They all do it. It boosts their quotas. The buzz word is productivity, darling, something that is temporarily absent from your vocabulary."

Mrs. Clarke listened to Roz"s introductory speech about her book on Olive with an expression of complete horror.

"How did you find us?" she asked in a quavering voice. For no particular reason, Roz had pictured her in her fifties or early sixties. She was unprepared for this old woman, closer in age to Mr.

Hayes than to the age Robert and Gwen Martin would have been if they were still alive.

"It wasn"t difficult," she hedged.

"I"ve been so afraid."

It was an odd reaction but Roz let it pa.s.s.

"Can I come in? I won"t take up much of your time, I promise."

"I couldn"t possibly speak to you. I"m alone. Edward is shopping."

"Please, Mrs. Clarke," she begged, her voice catching under the strain of her tiredness. It had taken two and a half hours to drive to Salisbury and locate their house.

"I"ve come such a long way to see you."

The woman smiled suddenly and held the door wide.

"Come in. Come in. Edward made some cakes specially. He"ll be so thrilled you found us."

With a puzzled frown, Roz stepped inside.

"Thank you."

"You remember p.u.s.s.y, of course" she waved at an ancient cat curled beneath a radiator *or was she after your time? I forget things, you know. We"ll sit in the lounge. Edward," she called, "Mary"s here."

There was no response.

"Edward"s gone shopping," said Roz.

"Oh, yes." She looked at Roz in confusion.

"Do I know you?"

"I"m a friend of Olive"s."

"I"m a friend of Olive"s," mimicked the old lady.

"I"m a friend of Olive"s."

She lowered herself on to the sofa.

"Sit down. Edward"s made some cakes specially. I remember Olive. We were at school together. She had long pigtails which the boys used to pull. Such wicked boys. I wonder what happened to them." She looked at Roz again.

"Do I know you?"

Roz sat awkwardly in an armchair, weighing the ethics of questioning a vulnerable old woman with senile dementia.

"I"m a friend of Olive Martin," she prompted.

"Gwen and Robert"s daughter." She studied the vacant blue eyes but there was no reaction. She was relieved. Ethics became irrelevant when asking questions was a nonsense. She smiled encouragingly.

"Tell me about Salisbury. Do you like living here?"

Their conversation was an exhausting one, filled with silences, chanting repet.i.tion, and strange inconsequential references that left Roz struggling to follow the thread. Twice, she had to divert Mrs.

Clarke from a sudden realisation that she was a stranger, fearing that if she left she would find it impossible to get back in to talk to Edward. With part of her mind she wondered how he coped. Could you go on loving an empty sh.e.l.l when your love was neither reciprocated nor appreciated? Could there ever be enough flashes of lucidity to make the loneliness of caring worthwhile?

Her eye was drawn again and again to the wedding photograph above the mantelpiece. They had married comparatively late, she thought, judging by their ages. He looked to be in his forties, with most of his hair already missing. She looked a little older. But they stood shoulder to shoulder, laughing together out of the frame, two happy, healthy people, with not a care in the world, unaware and how could they be? that she carried the seeds of dementia. It was cruel to make a comparison but Roz couldn"t help herself.

Beside the celluloid woman, so alive, so vivid, so substantial, the real Mrs. Clarke was a colourless, trembling shadow. Was this, Roz wondered, why Edward and Robert Martin had become lovers? She found the whole experience immensely depressing and when, at last, the sound of a key grated in the lock, it came like the welcome patter of rain on drought hardened earth.

"Mary"s come to see us," said Mrs. Clarke brightly as her husband entered the room.

"We"ve been waiting for cakes."

Roz stood up and handed Mr. Clarke one of her cards.

"I did tell her who I was," she said quietly, *but it seemed kinder tobeMary."

He was old, like his wife, and entirely bald, but he still carried himself erect with shoulders squared. He towered above the woman on the sofa who shrank away from him in sudden fear, muttering to herself.

Roz wondered if he ever lost his temper with her.

"I really don"t leave her alone very often," he answered defensively, as if she had accused him of it, *but the shopping has to be done.

Everyone"s so busy and it"s not fair to keep asking the neighbours." He ran a hand across his bald head and read the card.

"I thought you were Social Services," he said, this time accusing her.

"Author? We don"t want an author. What good would an author be to us?"

"I was hoping you could help me."

"I don"t know the first thing about writing. Who gave you my name?"

"Olive did," said Mrs. Clarke.

"She"s a friend of Olive"s."

He was shocked.

"Oh, no!" he said.

"No, no, no! You"ll have to leave. I"m not having that dragged up again. It"s an outrage.

How did you get hold of this address?"

"No, no, no!" chanted his wife.

"It"s an outrage. No, no, no!"

Roz held her breath and counted to ten, not sure if her sanity or her control would slip first.

"How on earth do you cope?" The words tumbled out as involuntarily as Mrs. Clarke"s did.

"I"m sorry." She saw the strain in his face.

"That was unforgivably rude."

"It"s not so bad when we"re alone. I just switch off." He sighed.

"Why have you come? I thought we"d put all that behind us. There"s nothing I can do for Olive. Robert tried to help her at the time but it was all thrown back in his face. Why has she sent you here?"

"It"s an outrage," muttered the old woman.

"She hasn"t. I"m here off my own bat. Look," she said, glancing at Mrs. Clarke, *is there somewhere we can talk privately?"

"There"s nothing to talk about."

"But there is," she said.

"You were a friend of Robert"s. You must have known the family better than anyone. I"m writing a book" she remembered belatedly that her explanations had been given to Mrs. Clarke *and I can"t do it if no one will tell me about Gwen and Robert."

She had shocked him again.