No Escape

by Hilary Norman

  ‘Do you think we’re being wicked?’ she asked Tony one night. ‘Doing this?’

  ‘No, I bloody don’t.’ He’d been angry at the suggestion. ‘We’re saving that baby, Jo. We’re helping Irina.’

  Any lingering doubts disappeared the instant they saw Irina being carried towards them by Marie Jenssen at King’s Cross Station on the last Friday of the following April – though Joanne had experienced one final thrill of terror, imagining a horde of policemen descending the instant Marie handed the baby over.

  No police.

  Just a little girl, by then just over three months old. With immense dark eyes that had gazed, with intensity, up at her new mother and father.

  ‘Hello, princess,’ Tony had said softly to her.

  Joanne, beyond words, had held her breath.

  And Irina had smiled.

  ‘Happy, Joanne?’ Marie had asked, gently.

  ‘Not the word for it.’ Joanne’s voice had sounded almost strangled.

  ‘Tony?’ Marie had looked at him.

  ‘Same.’ Tony had shaken his head. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Marie told him.

  She’d taken her leave just moments later, throwing Joanne into fresh panic.

  ‘I need to know more,’ she’d said. ‘Learn more about her.’

  ‘You know all you ever will,’ Marie had answered. ‘You know that, Joanne. It’s the way of these adoptions. Better for you all.’

  ‘Marie’s right, love,’ Tony had backed Marie up. ‘Irina’s ours now. That’s all we need to know.’

  ‘What if she gets ill?’ The baby squirmed in her arms. ‘Surely we need to be able to find out her family history.’ She already knew the answer, had broached the question before.

  ‘Irina’s a healthy little child, Joanne,’ Marie reassured her. ‘Your child now, as Tony said.’

  ‘Stop worrying, Jo.’ Tony had stroked the baby’s cheek. ‘Enjoy her.’

  Joanne had bent her head, closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of her new baby daughter.

  By the time she had raised her face again, Marie Jenssen had gone.

  Chapter Seven

  Within an hour of the body on the allotment being found, Helen Shipley, a thirty-three-year-old, currently hung-over, detective inspector with AMIT NW – having responded to her pager while picking up her dry-cleaning during her lunch hour – had been taking her first long, sickening look inside the white Incitent with her boss DCI Trevor Kirby, and not long after that the Home Office duty pathologist, Stephanie Patel, had joined them.

  Less than three hours later, John Bolsover, an assistant supermarket manager who had reported his wife missing over a week earlier, had assisted with the identification. As grief-stricken and distraught for his children as he appeared, once Lynne’s sister and neighbour had both declared him a first-class bully, Bolsover had rapidly become prime suspect. Depressed and under her husband’s thumb as her sister had been, Pam Wakefield said, Lynne had, now and again, summoned the strength to fight back to a point where he would bellow at and frequently punch her.

  ‘What exactly are you telling me, Pam?’ Shipley had asked in the shattered woman’s living room.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘I need to hear it in your words,’ Shipley said.

  ‘I’m saying I think he probably went too far.’ Pam Wakefield had stared with harsh, tearful openness at the grey-eyed, cropped haired policewoman. ‘I’m saying that John Bolsover’ – she spoke his name as if the words were poison in her mouth – ‘probably bashed my sister’s head in and then dumped her in that place and threw sacks onto her.’

  Probably. The rub.

  ‘Nail this one smartish,’ DCI Kirby, a stout, grey-haired bachelor from Wolverhampton, had told Shipley.

  Easier said, Shipley felt, with not the slightest sign of wavering by Bolsover, let alone confession, after three long interviews at AMIT NW’s temporary housing in a drab brick building a mile from Claris Green (temporary, like the unit itself, for more than a year now, but feeling increasingly like home), and the insistence of the suspect’s solicitor that his client should now either be charged or allowed to go home and grieve with his family.

  ‘We’re still nowhere,’ Shipley told the team, five days into the enquiry, assembled in the incident room. ‘I’ve got a brief telling me to shit or get off the pot, and not a bloody shred of real evidence. No witness, no forensics, no murder weapon, not a damned thing.’

  Three massive blows had been struck in the fatal attack, but Dr Patel had informed Shipley that the first blow inflicted had been sufficiently violent to have caused death, suggesting that the two subsequent blows might perhaps have been struck in rage or frenzy. The murder weapon, the pathologist felt, had probably been a small rock picked out of a garden or park in an area of London clay, perhaps not too far from where the victim had been found, but the fingertip search at the crime scene had found nothing but a handful of broken beer bottles – smudged prints only – a litter of empty, kicked-about soft drink cans – likewise – crumpled crisp wrappers, a couple of discarded syringes and no usable prints from shoes or boots.

  That was the hell of it. As strong a suspect as Bolsover was, that search and those of his house, his Honda and his desk and locker at work had all proven fruitless. And so much time having passed between Lynne’s death and the discovery of her body, the chances of retrieving any potentially damning evidence from Bolsover’s clothing or person had of course been long gone by the time Shipley and her team had first spoken to him.

  ‘Nothing yet on door-to-door,’ said DS Geoff Gregory now.

  ‘And still no one to disprove that Bolsover was home,’ said Ally King, a pretty black detective constable on loan from CID.

  At the time of Lynne’s murder – a Tuesday, while the children had been at school – her husband, off work because of a bad back, claimed to have been snoozing in front of the TV at home, and even Valerie Golding, who admitted that she’d have liked nothing better than to be able to discredit her neighbour’s tale, had said she’d been out at Brent Cross herself for much of that day.

  Shipley sighed and looked, for the hundredth time, at the whiteboard with its dearth of alternative suspects. No lovers – either John’s or Lynne’s – unearthed. No one with a bitter grudge against Lynne. No scraps with other parents at the children’s school, no complaints of being stalked, no recent robberies at the house.

  Not even any report of an argument heard that day between husband and wife. Though even if the neighbours had heard yelling or screaming, it would not have been conclusive proof that John Bolsover had killed her.

  Lynne’s face smiled at Shipley from one photograph.

  Another face, dreadful in its bloody death mask, but still hers.

  Lynne Frances Bolsover. Twenty-nine years old. Mother of two young kiddies.

  Wiped out by person or persons unknown.

  ‘We do know it was him, though, don’t we?’ DC King said.

  ‘We know sod all, Ally,’ Shipley said.

  DS Gregory, middle-aged and overweight, stood up. ‘Better get back out there, then, find something to nail the bastard with.’

  ‘Sooner the better,’ Shipley said.

  Chapter Eight

  For the first month after her new parents had brought her home, Irina had smiled an amazing amount of the time, hardly ever crying. But then, as if she had perhaps not previously comprehended her power to demand anything from life, the baby had begun not just to cry, but to scream, piercingly, whenever she wanted either milk or a clean nappy or to be held or to be put down.

  ‘Can’t you stop her doing that?’ Tony had asked his wife.

  ‘Of course I can’t stop her,’ Joanne had said distractedly. ‘If I could, she wouldn’t still be crying, would she?’ She’d looked at Irina’s bright red cheeks. ‘I’m getting worried about her, Tony. We’re going to have to take her to a doctor.’

  ‘I thought we were going to wait,’ he
r husband had said.

  They had agreed that, with the exception of normal check-ups and vaccination visits at their local GP’s surgery, they would, if the need arose, go to a private paediatrician rather than take any potential risks with the NHS. One more bill or two, Tony had said blithely at the time, wouldn’t make much difference with all he’d forked out already.

  Now that the moment was here, he wasn’t quite so convinced.

  ‘No point overreacting, Jo.’

  ‘We don’t want to take chances, though, do we?’

  ‘You said she hasn’t got a temperature.’

  ‘She’s very warm.’

  ‘You’d be warm if you were bawling like that.’

  ‘She isn’t just bawling,’ Joanne had said. ‘Something’s upsetting her.’

  ‘Maybe it’s you?’

  ‘Me?’

  Tony looked at his wife’s appalled, anxious eyes.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Take her privately?’ Joanne had looked at him expectantly.

  ‘Yeah, why not?’ He’d paused. ‘Just this once, Jo, okay?’

  ‘Of course.’ She would have agreed to anything at that moment, with the awful sound of her baby’s crying reverberating in her head, and the feel of her warm little body stiffening with each wail, and she knew that Tony didn’t mean it, that if Irina ever needed to see a paediatrician again he wouldn’t mind a bit, not if their daughter’s health was at stake.

  Their daughter’s health, according to Dr Anna Mellor in Wimpole Street, was excellent.

  ‘She’s a lovely little girl,’ the doctor had declared after a thorough examination, during most of which Irina had demonstrated her talent for screaming. ‘Very vocal, I agree.’ She had beamed at Joanne and Tony. ‘But clearly, that’s simply her nature.’

  ‘You mean she’s going to go on like this?’ Tony had asked.

  Anna Mellor had twinkled at Joanne. ‘Bit of a shock to the system for father.’

  ‘It’s just that she was so quiet until a few weeks ago,’ Joanne said loyally.

  ‘Maybe she hadn’t discovered her voice,’ the doctor said. ‘Anyway—’ she went on briskly ‘—I certainly can’t see any nasty underlying problems, which is surely what you were both so concerned about. That’s the main thing.’

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ Joanne had said, hugely relieved.

  As if on cue, Irina had begun crying again.

  ‘She will grow out of it, won’t she, doctor?’ Tony asked.

  ‘Of course she will,’ the older woman told him, ‘eventually.’ She stood up, smiled again at Irina. ‘Clearly you have a little girl with a good, strong character.’

  ‘Great,’ Tony said.

  ‘Cheer up, Mr Patston. You’ll get used to it.’

  Bolstered by Dr Mellor’s reassurances, Joanne had begun to take Irina’s shrieking in her stride. It was, after all, what motherhood was all about, an integral part of what she had hungered after for so long.

  ‘I can’t stand it,’ Tony said, coming into the nursery two weeks after their visit to Wimpole Street.

  ‘She’ll stop soon.’ Joanne was sitting in the nursing chair her mother had bought them, rocking.

  ‘No, I mean it, Jo. I really can’t stand this bloody racket a second longer.’

  Joanne had looked up in surprise. ‘Take it easy, Tony.’

  ‘She’s doing my head in, Jo.’ He put both hands up to his temples, began pacing. ‘I’ve never heard a baby like this. It’s not normal.’

  ‘Of course she’s normal.’ Joanne felt defensive. ‘And you’ve only not heard it because you’ve never lived with a baby before.’

  ‘I’m beginning to wish I wasn’t living with one now,’ Tony said, stomping out.

  That was just the start of it. Irina’s wailing, her father claimed, went right through him and made his head bang, so as the weeks went on, as soon as the baby began to cry Tony left her almost entirely to her mother. If Irina cried at night, he stuffed cotton wool in his ears, pulled a pillow over his head and yelled at Joanne to shut the kid up. If the baby screamed in the evenings or at weekends, he went out into the garden, or next door to see Paul, or, failing that, to the Crown and Anchor.

  ‘You can’t just walk out every time your daughter cries,’ Joanne told him.

  ‘Watch me,’ he said, and did just that.

  One Sunday morning at the end of August, when Irina had been with them for four months, Joanne had just got into the bath when she heard Irina begin crying.

  ‘Joanne!’ Tony yelled from downstairs.

  She started to stand, then changed her mind, sat back down and leaned back instead, shutting her eyes. He’s her father, she told herself. Maybe she was making a mistake running to Irina each time she cried, maybe she ought to give Tony a real chance to take care of his daughter.

  Irina was still crying.

  ‘Joanne!’

  She opened her eyes. ‘I’m in the bath,’ she called.

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  Irina’s crying grew louder. Joanne heard Tony’s tread on the staircase, picked up the bar of soap and tried to relax.

  The crying became shrieking.

  Joanne put down the soap. ‘Tony?’

  The shrieking grew louder, like hysteria.

  ‘Oh, my God.’ Joanne lurched from the bath, sending water cascading over the side, grabbed her towel and ran to the nursery.

  Tony was inside, holding the baby.

  Shaking the baby.

  ‘Tony!’ She ran to him, let the towel fall, grabbed Irina from him, saw that his face was red with anger. ‘What are you doing?’ She held the baby close, felt her small body clenching, vibrating with distress, little arms slippery against her own wet body. ‘What were you thinking of?’

  ‘Shutting her up,’ he said. ‘That’s what I was thinking of.’

  ‘You were shaking her – it’s dangerous to do that, you know that!’

  ‘You didn’t come,’ he said. ‘I had to do something.’

  From then on, the more impatient Tony became with Irina, the more she wailed when he so much as came near her. Aggrieved, he either ignored her altogether or picked her up in a challenging manner which fuelled her distress. Disappointment and irritation turned into resentment.

  ‘She’s not nearly as pretty as she was,’ he told Joanne.

  ‘I think she’s beautiful.’

  ‘Not as bright, either.’

  ‘Just because she cries doesn’t mean she isn’t bright.’

  ‘I hope that bloody Jenssen woman didn’t land us with a dud.’

  ‘She’s not a used car, Tony,’ Joanne protested. ‘She’s our daughter. And if she ever did have problems, I’d only love her more.’

  ‘You’re such a romantic,’ he ridiculed.

  ‘I’m a mother,’ she said.

  ‘Not a real one,’ Tony said.

  Joanne’s greatest fear, all through that first year of motherhood, had been that Tony might decide he wanted to get rid of Irina, but, consoling herself with the knowledge that that would hardly be feasible, she had determined to take the best possible care of the baby without provoking her husband or leaving him alone with her. If Irina so much as whimpered, Joanne flew to her side. If she had to go somewhere without Irina, she took her to her mother’s house in Edmonton.

  While Tony was at Patston Motors, Joanne’s time with Irina passed contentedly, and then, of course, there were several more hours of peace most evenings when he was at the Crown and Anchor. Except that because alcohol had always tended to feed Tony’s aggressive side, Joanne had begun to dread his return from the pub, and her own tension had transmitted itself to Irina, so that invariably, when the front door banged on his arrival, Irina was already crying.

  The first time Tony actually hit Irina (three days after her first birthday, a day on which he’d bought presents and fussed around her like any doting daddy) he wept afterwards with mortification, swore he’d never do such a terrible thing again, but the b
aby’s screams heightened soon after, and his anger returned.

  ‘If you ever, ever hit her again,’ Joanne warned, ‘I swear I’ll report you.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ he jeered. ‘Who to?’

  ‘The police, social services, whoever.’

  ‘And then what?’ he said. ‘Even if you don’t care about getting into trouble, the first thing they’ll do is take her away, and you’ll never see her again – which quite frankly wouldn’t bother me all that much.’

  ‘It’ll bother you all right—’ Joanne’s voice trembled ‘—if you end up inside and they get to find out what you’ve done.’

  ‘Shut up, Joanne!’ Tony yelled.

  She stood her ground for once. ‘Everyone knows what happens in prison to men who hurt little kids,’ she said.

  He’d settled down a bit after that. ‘No need to blow everything out of proportion.’

  ‘You hit our daughter.’

  ‘It was just a little smack.’

  ‘She’s a baby.’

  ‘I know,’ he’d said. ‘And I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again.’

  ‘Better not,’ Joanne had told him.

  ‘It’s down to you too,’ Tony had said. ‘You keep her under better control, and I’ll do the same with my temper.’

  Joanne had wanted to believe him.

  Chapter Nine

  One night in the sixth year of their marriage, while Lizzie and Christopher had been making love in the bedroom of their Holland Park flat, Christopher had ducked his head suddenly, and bitten her left breast, bitten it so violently that Lizzie had cried out in shock as well as pain.

  ‘My God, Christopher!’ She put out both her hands and pushed him away, shoved him so hard that he almost fell off the bed. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  It was two or so hours since they had left the Groucho Club where Vicuna Books had thrown a launch party to celebrate the publication of Fooling Around . . . In the Kitchen, an evening during which Christopher had stayed modestly in the background, stepping forward only to speak of his great pride in his beautiful, clever wife.