The book was scheduled to come out within a month of Olive’s release.
Roz had finished it in record time amidst the peace and seclusion of Bayview, which she bought on impulse when she discovered it was impossible to work above the continuous noise of people enjoying their food in the restaurant downstairs.
The Poacher had been relaunched in a whirl of somewhat exaggerated publicity featuring Hal as the heroic underdog fighting the evil of organised crime. His association with the Olive Martin case, particularly his latter efforts to help in securing her release, had only added to the hype. He applauded Roz’s decision to buy Bayview.
Making love against the backdrop of the ocean was a vast improvement on the metal bars at the Poacher.
And she was safer there.
Hal had discovered within himself a capacity for caring that he hadn’t known existed. It went deeper than love, encompassing every emotion from admiration to lust, and, while he would never have described himself as an obsessive man, the stress of worrying about Stewart Hayes, free on bail, slowly became intolerable to him. He was prompted finally to make Hayes a surprise visit at home one day. He found him playing in the garden with his ten-year-old daughter and it was there that he made Hayes an offer Hayes couldn’t refuse. A life for a life, a maiming for a maiming, should anything happen to Roz. Hayes recognised such compelling purpose in the dark eyes, perhaps because it’s what he would have done himself, that he agreed to an indefinite truce. His love for his daughter, it seemed, was matched only by Hal’s love for Roz.
Iris, claiming almost more credit for the book than Roz - ‘if it hadn’t been for me it would never have been written’ was busy selling it around the world as the latest example of British justice reeling under the body blows of its own inflexibility. A small, rather ironic footnote to the story was that the boy Crew’s firm had located in Australia proved not, after all, to be Amber’s lost child and the search for him was promptly abandoned. The time limit, set in Robert Martin’s will, had run out and his money, swollen by Crew’s investments -which were now out of his reach continued in limbo while Olive sought leave to contest her right to it.
EPILOGUE
At 5.30 on a dark and frosty winter morning the Sculptress walked free from the gates of her prison, two hours earlier than the time announced to the press. She had sought and obtained permission to slip back into society well away from the glare of publicity that had surrounded the release of other celebrated cases of wrongful imprisonment.
Roz and Sister Bridget, alerted by telephone, stood outside in the lamplight, stamping their feet and blowing on their hands. They smiled in welcome as the Judas door opened.
Only Hal, sheltering ten yards away in the warmth of the car, saw the look of gloating triumph that swept briefly over Olive’s face as she put her arms around the two women and lifted them bodily into the air.
He recalled some words that he’d had stencilled on his desk when he was still a policeman.
“Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.”
For no apparent reason, he shivered.
The End
Minette Walters lives in Hampshire with her husband and two children.
She has worked as a magazine editor but is now a full-time writer.
With her debut, The Ice House, she won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Award for the best first crime novel of 1992. Rapidly establishing a reputation as one of the most exciting crime novelists writing today. Her second novel, The Sculptress, was acclaimed by critics as one of the most compelling and powerful novels of the year and won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for the best crime novel published in America in 1993. In 1994 Minette Walters achieved a unique triple when The Scold’s Bridle was awarded the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year. Her fourth novel, The Dark Room (1995), was published to further critical acclaim, as was her most recent title The Echo (1997).
In 1996 The Sculptress was adapted as a major BBC1 drama series, starring Pauline Quirke, and became the most successful television drama of recent years.
This success was repeated in 1997 with the BBC’s adaptation of The Ice House. The Scold’s Bridle, starring Miranda Richardson, Sian Phillips and Bob Peck, is currently in production.
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Minette Walters
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