She pointed to Crew's signature.

"That's the director. He listened to the tape we made and liked what he heard. He'll be disappointed if you back out now."

Ma O'Brien, presented with written evidence, was impressed. She frowned intelligently at the unintelligible words.

"Well," she said, *a contract makes a difference. You should of shown me this last time." She folded it, preparatory to putting it in her pocket.

Roz smiled.

"Unfortunately," she said, whisking it from Ma's fingers, *this is the only copy I have and I need it for tax and legal purposes. If it's lost, none of us will get paid. May I come in?"

Ma compressed her lips.

"No reason not to, I suppose." But suspicion died hard.

"I'm not hanswering hanything fishy, mind."

"Of course not." She walked into the sitting room.

"Is any of your family at home? I'd like to include them if possible.

The more rounded the picture the better."

Ma gave it some thought.

"Mike!" she yelled suddenly.

"Get yourself down. There's a lady wants to talk to you. Nipper! In *ere."

Roz, who was only interested in talking to Gary, saw fifty pound notes flying out the window by the bucket-load. She smiled with resignation as two skinny young men joined their mother on the sofa.

"Hi," she said brightly, *my name's Rosalind Leigh and I represent a television company which is putting together a programme on social deprivationa"

"I told them," said Ma, cutting her short.

"No need for the sales pitch. Fifty quid per *cad. That's right, isn't it?"

"As long as I get my money's worth. I'll need another good hour of chat and I'm only really prepared to pay fifty apiece if I can talk to your eldest son, Peter, and your youngest son, Gary.

That way I get the broadest viewpoint possible. I want to know what difference it made to your older children being fostered out."

"Well, you've got Gary," said Ma, prodding the unprepossessing figure on her left, *young Nipper *ere. Pete's in the nick so you'll *ave to make do with Mike.

"E's number three and spent as much time being fostered as Pete did."

"Right, let's get on then." She unfolded her list of carefully prepared questions and switched on her tape-recorder. The two *boys', she noticed, had perfectly proportioned ears.

She spent the first half-hour talking to Mike, encouraging him to reminisce about his childhood in foster homes, his education (or, more accurately, lack of it through persistent truanting) and his early troubles with the police. He was a taciturn man, lacking even elementary social skills, who found it hard to articulate his thoughts.

He made a poor impression and Roz, containing her impatience behind a forced smile, wondered if he could possibly have turned out any worse if Social Services had left him in the care of his mother. Somehow she doubted it. Ma, for all her sins and his, loved him, and to be loved was the cornerstone of confidence.

She turned with some relief to Gary, who had been listening to the conversation with a lively interest.

"I gather you didn't leave home till you were twelve," she said, consulting her notes, *when you were sent to a boarding school. Why was that?"

He grinned.

"Truanting, nicking, same as my brothers, only Parkway said I was worse and got me sent off to Chapman "Ouse. It was OK. I learnt a bit. Got two CSEs before I jacked it in."

She thought the truth was probably the exact opposite, and that Parkway had said he was a cut above his brothers and worth putting some extra effort into.

"That's good. Did the CSEs make it easier to find a job?"

She might have been talking about a trip to the moon for the relevance a job seemed to have in his life.

"Inever tried.

We were doing all right."

She remembered something Hal had said.

"They simply don't subscribe to the same values that the rest of us hold."

"You didn't want a job?" she asked curiously.

He shook his head.

"Did you, when you left school?"

"Yes," she said, surprised by the question.

"I couldn't wait to leave home."

He shrugged, as perplexed by her ambition as she was perplexed by his lack of it.

"We've always stuck together," he said.

"The dole goes a lot further if it's pooled. You didn't get on with your parents then?"

"Not enough to want to live with them."

"Ah, well," he said sympathetically, *that would explain it then."

Absurdly, Roz found herself envying him.

"Your mother told me you worked as a motorbike courier at one point.

Did you enjoy that?"

"So-so. It was all right at the beginning but there's no fun driving a bike in town and it was all town work. It wouldn't *ave been so bad if the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who ran it *ad paid us enough to cover the cost of the bikes." He shook his head.

"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 amus.e.m.e.nt, *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. b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.i.t.c.h 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. b.i.t.c.h, b.i.t.c.h, b.i.t.c.h, all the time." She looked thoroughly indignant.

"Can't think *ow I kept my *ands offer but I did, for Chris's sake.

Besotted, *e was, poor lad.

"Er mother didn't know, of course. Put a stop to it straight away the minute she found out."

Roz hoped her expression was less revealing than it felt. Did that make Chris...o...b..ien the father of Amber's illegitimate child? It made sense. Mr. Hayes had referred to a lad from Parkway Comprehensive being responsible, and if Gwen had put a stop to the relationship then she would have known who to blame when a baby appeared. It would also explain the secrecy surrounding Robert Martin's efforts to trace his grandchild.

Presumably the O'Briens had no idea that Chris had fathered a son nor that the son, if he could be found, was worth half a million pounds.

"It's fascinating," she murmured, searching desperately for something to say.

"I've never met anyone so closely a.s.sociated with a murder. Was Chris upset when Amber was killed?"