No Escape

by Hilary Norman

Shortly after eight-thirty on Wednesday morning, as Helen Shipley was eating a doughnut at her desk prior to seeing Trevor Kirby before he left for a meeting in Victoria, Geoff Gregory came into her office.

  ‘I’ve just heard something that might interest you.’

  Mouth still full, Shipley licked sugar off her fingers and raised her eyebrows in response.

  ‘About the Epping Forest murder,’ Gregory said.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Word is they’re looking hard at the husband, but—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘But another bloke got hauled into Theydon Bois yesterday for keeping watch on the victim’s house.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Geoff.’

  ‘Private investigator,’ Gregory said. ‘Name of Novak.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Shipley said.

  In the blue study at the eastern end of Allbeury’s apartment, sitting in one of the plush black leather armchairs, Novak decided that he’d never seen the lawyer look as grim as he did now.

  ‘I know it was my fault for getting myself picked up,’ Novak said, ‘but Clare’s really wound up about the little girl now her mother’s gone, and—’

  ‘You’d like her kept out,’ Allbeury finished for him.

  ‘Obviously, I want to help them nail the scum who did this, whether it’s the husband or not, but all Clare did was pass on some information, and—’

  ‘I get the picture, Mike,’ Allbeury cut in again. ‘And I can’t see any good being served by involving either Clare or her friend, and the police are already checking Irina’s hospital records as we speak, so . . .’ He picked up a gold pen, rolled it between his fingers. ‘The only shred of good news in this bloody awful mess is that at least now they know the child’s at risk, they’re bound to bring Patston in quite quickly.’

  ‘What if it isn’t him?’ Novak said. ‘What if his violence against Irina’s a red herring, and because of what I said, the police don’t bother looking for anyone else?’

  ‘They’re not fools, Mike,’ Allbeury said. ‘You know that better than most.’

  ‘They’re human,’ Novak said. ‘They like results.’

  ‘With a bit of luck,’ the solicitor said, ‘Patston will break down and confess.’

  Novak looked morose and said nothing.

  ‘Anyway,’ Allbeury added, ‘probably not the world’s greatest injustice if they do set their sights for a while on a man who hits his four-year-old daughter.’ He stood up, went over to the picture window behind the granite desk, gazed out at the river. ‘To be honest, I’ve my own reasons for hoping they prove Patston’s their man, and swiftly. I don’t want or need too many questions about how I might have been planning to help Joanne.’

  ‘My damned fault if they do ask questions.’ Novak was bleak.

  ‘You weren’t to know you’d parked your car slap bang in the middle of a murder enquiry.’ Allbeury turned back, sat down again. ‘It’s not just me, Mike. There are others involved in these operations.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ Novak said.

  ‘I’m not telling you what to say if MIS comes knocking – it’s your choice – but I can tell you that if they come to me, I’ll be keeping it simple. When I met Joanne, she was unsure of what to do, scared of divorce, and, as you said, I was concerned not to be able to reach her and asked you to take a look.’

  Novak came, finally, to what was most on his mind.

  ‘What if they remember your link to Lynne Bolsover?’

  The thought had not escaped Allbeury.

  ‘If – when – the time comes,’ he said, ‘I’ll deal with that.’

  Shipley, her eye on the clock on the wall, was on the phone to DC Pat Hughes at Theydon Bois, raising the possibility of a link between the Epping Forest murder and the Lynne Bolsover killing.

  ‘Two unhappy marriages and a private detective working for a divorce lawyer,’ DC Hughes summed up. ‘Sounds more like a coincidence to me.’

  ‘All the same—’ Shipley stood her ground ‘—I’d appreciate your raising it with your DI.’ She paused. ‘Please tell him my reason for raising it is because certain elements in the Bolsover case have troubled me from the outset.’

  ‘I thought the husband had been charged,’ Hughes said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Shipley said.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  ‘I’m feeling better, Mother.’

  When Jack called her that, Lizzie knew he meant business.

  ‘I’d like to go back to school.’

  ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘I’m fine today,’ Jack said. ‘Ed and Sophie have gone back.’

  ‘They started their colds earlier than you.’

  ‘So you do agree it was just a cold.’

  Lizzie looked at him. ‘You’re turning into a real point-scorer.’

  ‘But do you get it?’ he asked. ‘My point.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Lizzie said.

  Jack sighed.

  Christopher, who’d spent the night alone in Holland Park, arrived at the clinic at nine-fifteen to find that Jane hadn’t come in yet, but that Alicia Morgan, his head of administration, was hovering in the corridor outside his office.

  ‘Morning, Alicia.’ Christopher took off his battered tweed Rex Harrison hat. ‘Waiting for me?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ Alicia looked very nervous.

  ‘Something wrong?’ He opened the door, let her go ahead of him, caught a whiff of discreet perfume, put down his briefcase and looked at her expectantly.

  ‘There’s been a minor security breach,’ Alicia said, ‘in the computer system.’

  Christopher frowned. ‘Surely that’s your province?’ He took off his Burberry.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The anxious look was still there, a crease between her finely-plucked eyebrows. ‘And I’ve followed all the appropriate procedures, naturally, but . . .’

  The pause irritated Christopher, who’d been hoping for a quiet cup of coffee and a call home to Jack before his first rhinoplasty. ‘Get on with it, Alicia.’

  Alicia Morgan, unaccustomed to being spoken to that way by Wade, lifted her chin. ‘My reason for troubling you with it,’ she went on, ‘is that one of the files accessed without authority was Mrs Wade’s patient file.’

  ‘Lizzie’s file?’ Christopher was taken aback. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ Alicia forged on. ‘I’ve taken all measures within reason to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again—’

  ‘Within reason?’ Christopher’s eyes were sharp with annoyance.

  ‘I simply mean that in the very unlikely event of one of these horribly sophisticated hackers – not that there could be any reason for them wanting to access our files, not unless we had, say, a huge pop star or a footballer—’

  ‘I don’t know about footballers,’ Christopher said crisply, ‘but the Beauchamp’s certainly had more than its share of big names. And in case you’ve forgotten, Alicia, my wife is quite well-known herself.’

  ‘That’s why I thought you might want to bring in a security firm,’ Alicia said. ‘Someone to make sure we’ve got the very best protection.’

  Christopher made his way slowly round to the other side of his elegant mahogany desk and sat down. ‘How many other patient files were accessed?’

  ‘None.’ Alicia grew a little pink. ‘That’s what’s so odd. All the files appear to have been linked to the departments involved with Mrs Wade’s stay.’

  ‘Departments?’ His irritation was growing by the second.

  ‘Anaesthesia,’ she explained. ‘Recovery, nursing—’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ he snapped. ‘I get the picture.’

  ‘I was wondering,’ Alicia ventured, ‘if you might want to call in the police?’

  ‘Good God, no,’ Christopher said.

  She looked surprised. ‘I just thought, it seemed so personal, such an invasion of privacy. In the old days, if they’d broken in and got into the filing cabinets . . .’
r />   ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see your point.’

  ‘What would you like me to do, Christopher?’

  ‘Let me think about getting in these security people.’

  ‘Not the police?’

  ‘No.’ He paused. ‘I’m thinking of Lizzie. She’s only just got over all that, and I believe this might upset her.’ He managed a smile. ‘She’s got a new book out any minute, and one of these publicity tours – more than enough on her plate.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Alicia considered. ‘Do you think it might have been some scurrilous journalist? Scouting for something for a slack news day?’ She shook her well-coiffed head. ‘In which case, they’d have been disappointed, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ Christopher said. ‘Much too dull.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ Alicia said.

  ‘Indeed,’ Christopher agreed.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  The night had been unbearable for Sandra.

  She had finally gone to bed, relieved to have some time alone, to know that Irina was sound asleep so that she could cease the grotesque parody of semi-normality she’d been forced into. But exhausted as she was, rest was out of the question, and lying in bed, truths descending on her with such agonizing weight that she felt torn into pieces, she had hardly slept, and when she had, it had been a shallow, dreadful kind of twilight sleep from which she’d woken with a jerking horror, her heart pounding.

  Reality clamping down again.

  Joanne was not here, would never be here again.

  With the search at the house in Chingford Hatch apparently concluded, they had all returned at lunchtime.

  Irina had been happy to be back, had run through the house as soon as they’d arrived, and Sandra and Tony had both known, with shared flashes of pain – and all the pain was worse now, in Joanne’s house, much worse – that the pleasure would be brief, because the person for whom the child was searching was not there. And for once, Tony was ready for his daughter’s tears, ready to give consolation, but when Irina came back to them in the sitting room, it was her grandmother to whom she went for comfort.

  ‘We’re going to have to tell her,’ Tony had said, earlier, still in Edmonton.

  ‘I know,’ Sandra had said.

  ‘Is it all right, d’you think,’ he’d asked, almost like a kid himself needing adult approval, ‘if we leave it a bit longer?’

  The longer the better, Sandra had thought. Ten, twenty years, if possible.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ she had said.

  The moment would come soon enough. She’d lain in bed the previous night imagining it, trying to think of the best way to tell Irina, but there were no good ways to tell a four-year-old that her mother had died, let alone been murdered.

  ‘I don’t want her to know that,’ she had said to Karen Dean some time before that, during Tuesday evening. ‘I don’t want her to know about how her mummy died till there’s absolutely no choice left.’

  ‘I can see that,’ the attractive officer had said gently. ‘Except one day, someone else might say something to her, or just in earshot, maybe at school, and that would be much worse for her.’

  Sandra had sat for a moment, then said: ‘She doesn’t go to school yet.’

  ‘I meant nursery school.’

  ‘Not that either.’

  ‘Really?’ Dean’s slightly slanted, dark eyes had shown surprise.

  ‘I know,’ Sandra had agreed. ‘I didn’t understand myself, but Joanne wanted to keep Irina close for as long as possible.’ The ever-present tears had threatened again. ‘Maybe . . .’ She’d turned her head away for a moment, brought herself back under control. ‘Maybe she had some instinct.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she did,’ Dean had said. ‘But anyway, it’ll be nice, later on, for Irina to know how much her mum loved her.’

  ‘If she remembers her.’ It was one of the multitude of dreads that had begun plaguing Sandra. ‘How much do you remember from when you were her age?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Dean had said. ‘Quite a bit, I think.’

  ‘I don’t seem to be able to remember much of anything,’ Sandra had said.

  ‘Anyway,’ the younger woman had said, gently, ‘you’ll keep Joanne’s memory alive for her, won’t you? You and her daddy.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sandra said wearily. ‘But it’s not supposed to be like that, is it?’

  ‘Nothing useful from the victim’s handbag, sir,’ DS Reed told Jim Keenan during their first morning briefing in the incident room at Theydon Bois. ‘Outside wiped clean, and the only prints on the inside – on the purse, powder compact and lipstick – were Joanne’s and a set of really tiny smudged prints that have to be the little girl’s.’

  ‘Nothing in the diary?’

  ‘Nothing helpful.’

  ‘We’re contacting all numbers and addresses, sir,’ Karen Dean said.

  ‘Nothing on door-to-door,’ Reed said. ‘The neighbours they’re supposed to be friends with aren’t due back from Cyprus for a month, and no one seems to know exactly where they are. Do you want them located?’

  ‘They weren’t here at the time in question,’ Keenan said, ‘so let’s hold off on that.’ He looked at Dean. ‘CRIS, CRIMINT and Community Support all checked?’

  ‘No results,’ Dean answered. ‘And nothing on Patston since the ABH.’

  ‘One thing,’ Reed said. ‘She had her passport with her.’

  ‘Someone checking airlines, travel agencies, the usual?’ Keenan asked.

  ‘I’m onto that, sir,’ DC Pat Hughes, an earnest young woman who never wore make-up and kept her rather wispy fair hair pinned up in something close to an old-fashioned bun, said. ‘Nothing yet.’

  ‘Just her passport?’ Keenan asked Reed. ‘Not Irina’s?’

  ‘No,’ Reed said. ‘And we didn’t find one for her at the house.’

  ‘I’ll check applications, sir.’ Hughes paused to make a note. ‘Apparently it’s going to be a while before they get round to the Fiesta.’

  Keenan shook his head. ‘CCTV footage yet from the library?’

  ‘Problems with that, sir, I’m afraid,’ Hughes said. ‘Breakdown inside, vandalism outside.’

  ‘Great.’ Keenan shook his head again.

  ‘I’m going to Waltham General after this,’ Dean said. ‘Try and check out Irina’s and Joanne’s records, have a chat.’ She paused. ‘They’re not known to social services, by the way, sir.’

  Reed was going through a small sheaf of papers. ‘We’ve completed data protection and applied to BT for details at the house and Patston Motors.’

  Keenan turned to the pathology report. ‘Dr Collins says Joanne died where she was found. Four stab wounds, the first to the external jugular . . .’ He glanced around the room. ‘That’s buried quite deep in the neck, for anyone who doesn’t know, which implies considerable force behind the stabbing, or, possibly, anatomical know-how.’ He looked back at the report. ‘It also means the first wound was enough to kill, so if death was the only aim, the other three were gratuitous.’

  ‘So we’re looking at crazed?’ Reed said.

  ‘Or enraged,’ Dean said.

  ‘Don’t people sometimes carry on stabbing,’ Pat Hughes ventured, ‘because they’re too scared to stop?’

  ‘Joanne Patston must have been pumping arterial blood all over the shop,’ Reed said scathingly. ‘Not much to be frightened of.’

  ‘Could have been terrified of what they were doing,’ Keenan said, and gave Hughes a nod. ‘Too terrified, or just too far gone to stop.’

  ‘But they did hit the jackpot first time.’ Reed felt in need of another point over the young DC. ‘And most frenzied attackers strike out blindly.’

  ‘Doesn’t make the jackpot impossible, Terry,’ Keenan said, then held up the report in his right hand to cut off the now aimless speculation. ‘Toxicology.’ He paused. ‘Mrs Patston had enough benzodiazepine in her system to have made her very sleepy, though probably not unconscious.
So someone please get on to the GP.’

  ‘Will do.’ Reed rummaged through his notes. ‘No tranks in the bathroom cabinet at home, sir.’

  ‘I’ll raise it with Mr Patston in our next chat.’ Keenan looked at DC Dean. ‘Witnesses, Karen?’

  ‘No one credible yet, sir,’ she told him.

  ‘There’s still this call outstanding,’ Pat Hughes reminded Keenan. ‘From DI Shipley at AMIT NW.’

  ‘Shipley’s going to come with me this afternoon,’ Keenan told Reed forty minutes later in his office, a drab slab of a room slightly humanized by family photographs and three small pots of red geraniums on the window sill, ‘for a chat with Robin Allbeury.’

  ‘When are you going to talk to Patston again?’ Reed asked.

  ‘I’m going to let him steam for a bit,’ Keenan said, ‘then drop by later.’

  ‘Not ready to bring him in then, sir, do I take it?’

  ‘Not till you give me something halfway solid.’

  ‘We already know he’s a brute,’ Reed said.

  ‘We know sod all,’ Keenan disagreed.

  ‘One for ABH.’

  ‘Long time ago,’ Keenan said.

  ‘But drink-related,’ Reed said. ‘And we know he still drinks.’

  ‘Not nearly enough. If Karen’s lucky at Waltham General, that’ll go some way, but if anything had been that cut and dried, social services would probably know.’ Keenan scratched his left ear. ‘As it is right now, we haven’t even got enough to hold him for hitting the child, let alone murdering his wife.’

  ‘It is him though, isn’t it?’ Reed tried doggedly to sort it in his head. ‘There’s the passport. Maybe Patston’s story’s half true; maybe she did say she was going to meet a friend, and maybe he saw her take the passport, found out she was leaving him, killed her in a rage.’ He grimaced. ‘Except she died in bloody Epping Forest.’

  ‘And full of pills,’ Keenan reminded.

  ‘He could have got them into her first, then taken her out there.’

  ‘Doesn’t strike me as much of a schemer,’ Keenan said. ‘More the type to lash out, then shed crocodile tears.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, we’re both ignoring the fact that Joanne did go out that morning just as he said, and left Irina with Sandra Finch.’