No Escape

by Hilary Norman

  Allbeury frowned. ‘Since you’re anything but stupid, DI Shipley, you must have some reason I don’t understand for asking such an absurd question.’

  ‘Do you feel that you failed or succeeded in that case, Mr Allbeury?’

  ‘Obviously,’ he said, ‘I did not succeed.’

  ‘Yet the man who caused Lynne’s misery is now in prison.’

  Allbeury said nothing.

  ‘Some might call that a result, don’t you think?’

  ‘I can’t speak for anyone else,’ he said, ‘but I certainly would not call it that.’

  ‘Because Lynne had to die to achieve it?’

  ‘Obviously,’ he said.

  ‘What do you think of John Bolsover or Joanne Patston’s husband?’

  ‘I’ve never met either of them.’

  ‘But you think them despicable men, surely?’

  ‘Probably,’ he admitted.

  Shipley got up, walked to the telescope, turned at the parapet to face him – still sitting there so calmly, one leg crossed over the other, watching her, waiting for her next question. Behind Shipley, beyond the terrace and fifteen floors below, pedestrians on the riverside walk and traffic on the Thames flowed back and forth.

  She knew that she was running out of time, had achieved nothing at all.

  Last-ditch.

  ‘I still don’t know,’ she said, ‘if you really are an altruist or a very evil man.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Allbeury said, and stood up. ‘Some solicitors enjoy game playing,’ he said coldly, ‘but I never really have.’ He paused. ‘I leave that to your kind.’

  ‘What kind’s that?’

  ‘I would not presume to guess,’ he said.

  ‘Are you going,’ Shipley asked, ‘to report me for harassment?’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to.’

  ‘I think,’ Shipley said, ‘most men in your position might do just that.’

  ‘Innocent men, you mean?’ Allbeury said.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  On Monday afternoon in Newcastle, Lizzie was having fun at one of the nicest events Susan had ever dreamed up, with a team of sales people from most of the bookshops in town competing against each other in the kitchen of a charming French restaurant, each cooking up their favourite recipes from Pure Bliss.

  With nothing but good, calm news from Christopher and Gilly, and only Glasgow and Edinburgh – one of her most beloved cities – to go before they turned south again and headed for the Lake District, Lizzie was in fine spirits.

  At four-thirty on Tuesday afternoon, having found himself so unable to settle to work at Bedford Row that he’d given up and come home, Allbeury was sitting at the computer in the study adjacent to his bedroom, doing something he seldom did.

  Brooding.

  Not about Helen Shipley’s intrusive and insulting visit on Sunday. Not much he could do about her opinion of him.

  He was brooding about two other matters.

  The first concerned Lizzie. Or, more accurately, Christopher Wade.

  If the dirt was there, Allbeury had learned, and if you dug deep enough, used the right resources, the right people, you tended to find it. So he had dug. And found.

  Christopher Edward Julian Wade had a conviction, almost sixteen years old, for possession of cocaine. Two years after that, he had been arrested and cautioned for kerb crawling in King’s Cross.

  And now there was the second thing.

  His computer had just crashed twice in a row, and, prior to that – yesterday and again first thing this morning – it had displayed a series of strange, inexplicable glitches.

  Not that he actually knew exactly what made a computer glitch odd as opposed to commonplace. He might have learned a good deal from young Adam Lerman and gone on learning since, but what Allbeury truly understood about the inner workings of his amazing box of tricks could have been balanced on the pointed end of a pin.

  He did, on the other hand, possess instincts that he had learned, over the years, to trust. And it was those instincts which were by now starting to gnaw at him in a manner he found troubling.

  Troubling enough, he decided, to call Adam at his Los Angeles home, and hope that he was there.

  ‘Not too early, I hope.’

  Adam, a well-brought up young man, said, rather blearily, that it was not.

  ‘I think someone may be hacking into my PC. I need to know if I’m right and who it is.’

  ‘What exactly are we talking about here?’ Adam asked. ‘Someone snooping – gaining access just to read your files? Very hard to track, by the way.’

  ‘Great,’ Allbeury said. ‘I’m not sure yet exactly what’s going on, just that something is.’

  ‘Hackers are the guys who usually do it for the challenge, remember, for fun.’ Adam was waking up properly now, warming to his favourite topic. ‘If their intentions are malicious, then they’re called crackers.’

  ‘Whatever you say,’ Allbeury said.

  ‘I do.’ Adam paused. ‘I know a guy who can help you.’

  ‘In London?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘Will you call him, or should I?’ Allbeury asked.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Adam said. ‘How soon do you want him, if he’s free?’

  ‘Sooner the better.’

  ‘If you don’t hear from me again,’ Adam Lerman said, ‘assume he’ll be with you some time tomorrow.’ He paused. ‘This is at your place, is it, not the office?’

  Allbeury told him it was, and that he was very grateful.

  ‘This guy looks a bit weird,’ Adam said, ‘but believe me, he’s a genius. And – though obviously it’s your call – you can trust him.’

  ‘If he’s such a genius, how come you think he’ll be available?’

  ‘Because he loves me,’ Adam said.

  Chapter Eighty

  By noon on Wednesday, Lizzie had completed an interview with one of her favourite broadcasters, Alex Dickson at Radio Clyde, had done two rushed signings in Glasgow and then jumped with Susan onto the Edinburgh train to make her lunch appointment with John Gibson from the Evening News, when her mobile rang, and it was Christopher calling to tell her that Jack had come down with another bug and was rather poorly.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Susan told her as soon as she heard. ‘At least not about the book side of things. We’ll get you back as fast as humanly possible.’

  Lizzie, sitting opposite her, stared out of the window, seeing nothing. ‘I hope we get hold of John. I don’t want to leave him just sitting.’

  ‘At least he’ll be sitting at the Caley,’ Susan said. ‘And anyway, he’s much too lovely to mind when he knows the reason.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘Thank you.’ She could think of nothing more to say.

  ‘I’m calling the office.’ Susan’s mobile was already pressed against her ear. ‘Easier for them to organize flights, cancel arrangements.’

  ‘Again.’ Lizzie turned from the window. ‘Running out on you all again.’

  ‘Not your fault,’ Susan said, then, raising a finger to signal that she was through to the office, she began to talk.

  Lizzie leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, knowing that Christopher would never have pushed that alarm button were he not sufficiently concerned. What worried her most was that she’d asked if Jack wanted to speak to her, and Christopher had said he was sleeping.

  ‘Sleeping, or too poorly?’ she’d asked, and he’d replied, quite sternly, that as she very well knew, honesty when it came to Jack’s health was something she could trust him on.

  Yet still, Lizzie also knew that being aware she was in Scotland, he might have seen no purpose in frightening her any more than he already had.

  ‘Next available flight’s at three-fifteen,’ Susan said, gently. ‘You’re on it.’

  Lizzie opened her eyes, looked at her friend. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t you dare apologize,’ Susan said.

  Lizzie reached the house to find th
at Angela was on the way to help Gilly and generally bolster Sophie’s and Edward’s spirits because Christopher and Hilda Kapur had arranged a bed for Jack in the private hospital near Windsor he’d been in several times before.

  ‘Tell me,’ Lizzie said to Christopher quietly, after she’d given Edward a hug and Sophie a cuddle and before she went upstairs to Jack.

  ‘He’s all right.’ Christopher was clear, firm. ‘This is just to be on the safe side. He needs fluids and antibiotics and monitoring, and Hilda’s fairly certain a couple of days should see him well enough to come home.’

  ‘You said a bug. What kind?’

  ‘His throat’s sore and he’s got a fairly nasty cough.’ He paused. ‘A little worse than last time.’

  ‘Did you speak to someone at the Centre?’

  ‘I did,’ he said. ‘They seemed to feel we were being sensible.’

  Lizzie started towards the stairs, then stopped. ‘Why did you call Mum?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Christopher said. ‘Angela happened to phone just after Jane had called about a serious burns case and I’d told her to pass it on.’

  ‘But?’ Lizzie was tired, frightened and irritable. ‘Christopher, do you want to go, is that it?’

  ‘Jack got wind of it, and practically ordered me to go.’

  ‘Then go, for heaven’s sake.’

  She turned her back on him, ran up the stairs and into Jack’s bedroom.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  ‘Hi, yourself.’

  She bent to kiss him.

  ‘You’ll catch it,’ Jack said.

  ‘I never catch your bugs,’ Lizzie said.

  She sat on the edge of his bed and surveyed him. He was pale and flushed, and she could hear a slight wheeze, but he seemed fairly typically Jack.

  ‘I really want Dad to go to the clinic, Mum.’ He was earnest. ‘If some poor sod needs him, he should go.’

  ‘I think you have first claim, my darling,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Jack allowed, ‘if I was really ill, but this isn’t anything.’

  ‘There are other surgeons, you know. Your dad’s not the only one.’

  ‘But he is the best,’ Jack said.

  Lizzie looked at him, saw that he was adamant.

  ‘Are you quite, quite sure you don’t mind just having me?’ she asked.

  ‘Cross my heart,’ he said, then managed a grin. ‘You may not be a hot-shot surgeon, Mum, but you’re not too bad – so long as you don’t fuss.’

  Lizzie stood up. ‘I’d better go and tell him to go then.’

  ‘Cool,’ Jack said.

  ‘And you,’ Lizzie said, ‘are one in ten million, Jack Wade.’

  Allbeury got home to find Winston Cook – the young man so highly recommended by Adam Lerman – still working at the computer in the blue study, where he’d been ensconced since ten that morning. He was very young, Allbeury reckoned, a handsome black kid with spiked hair, green eye shadow and an unshakable conviction in his own ability.

  ‘If someone’s been cracking your system,’ Cook had announced on his arrival, ‘unless he’s some kind of guru, I’ll track him.’

  Even if Adam hadn’t already sung his praises so enthusiastically, Allbeury thought he would have believed him.

  ‘Did you eat lunch?’ he asked him now.

  ‘Your man downstairs sent someone out for a Big Mac,’ Winston told him. ‘I took it out on the balcony. Hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Not in the least,’ Allbeury said. ‘Though as I told you, my fridge is yours.’

  ‘Wicked view out there,’ Winston said.

  ‘How’re you doing?’

  ‘Slow but sure,’ the young man said.

  ‘Have you at least stopped the rot?’

  Cook shook his head. ‘Can’t track him down if I lock all the doors.’ He looked at the solicitor’s face, saw his frustration. ‘It’s like bait – we need them to keep coming back so we can track them.’

  ‘Makes sense, I suppose,’ Allbeury supposed, and looked at his watch. ‘Shouldn’t you be calling it a day about now?’

  ‘Soon, maybe,’ Cook said.

  Allbeury left him, and went into the living room to fix himself a drink.

  And thought, as was now becoming quite habitual, about Lizzie.

  On her tour at present, away from home – and Wade. Which meant that a former kerb crawler and cocaine user was currently in charge of their three vulnerable children, which made Allbeury feel almost physically ill.

  Lizzie seemed convinced that as a father, her husband was the greatest show on earth, so that, at least, was probably okay. Probably.

  But the thought of Lizzie returning home after her tour and climbing back into the kerb crawler’s bed made Allbeury shudder.

  Not your place to shudder.

  He wondered if she knew about Wade’s past.

  Chapter Eighty-One

  On Thursday afternoon, the consultant in charge of Jack’s case in the hospital near Windsor told Lizzie that he thought Jack should be transferred either to the Radcliffe or to Hammersmith, for assessment and specialist treatment.

  ‘I said Hammersmith, if they had a bed,’ Lizzie told Angela on the phone, ‘since Christopher’s already in London.’

  ‘How bad is he?’ Angela asked.

  ‘His breathing’s a bit worse,’ Lizzie said, ‘but nothing he can’t cope with, so don’t worry too much.’

  ‘Pot calling kettle comes to mind,’ her mother said.

  ‘Has Christopher phoned? Only he’s not at the Beauchamp and Jane doesn’t seem to know where he is, which is unlike her.’

  ‘We haven’t heard from him, darling, but if he calls, I’ll tell him what’s happening and get him to phone you right away.’ Angela took a deep breath, bent on staying calm for her daughter’s sake. ‘When are you leaving Windsor?’

  ‘In the next couple of hours.’ Lizzie struggled to unscramble her brain. ‘I may not be allowed to keep my mobile on once we leave – can you tell Christopher that too, please, Mum?’

  ‘I’ll make sure he’s at Hammersmith, waiting for you.’

  ‘Bless you, Mum,’ Lizzie said. ‘And kiss the others for me, please.’

  ‘Big hugs from us,’ Angela said.

  Travelling in the ambulance with Jack, Lizzie felt her spurious calm shredding by the minute in the face of her son’s unusually palpable nervousness and worsening wheeze. Yet after their arrival at Hammersmith, with the admissions palaver dealt with and Jack tucked up in bed, he rallied – despite the absence of or any word from his father – and told her he didn’t need her to stay.

  ‘Of course I’m going to stay,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘There’s no need. You can stay at the flat.’

  ‘I know I can,’ she said, ‘but I’d much rather stay here.’

  ‘I’m not bloody dying, Mum,’ Jack said.

  ‘I never said you were,’ she said, feeling her insides shrivelling.

  ‘Then why do you want everyone to think I’m a baby?’

  ‘No one would ever think that,’ Lizzie told him.

  ‘If Dad was here, he’d understand how I feel,’ Jack said.

  She had no answer to that.

  ‘You win,’ she said. ‘I’ll go to the flat.’

  There were no lights on as her taxi deposited her outside the flat, no signs of life at all, though at least there was no newspaper sticking out through the letter box nor any milk bottles on the step.

  Lizzie sighed as she fished for her front door key and put it into the lock, too exhausted now, and too preoccupied by Jack to worry about where Christopher might have got to.

  She came into the dark entrance hall, turned on the lights, shut and locked the front door behind her, and walked slowly towards the kitchen, in need, she decided as she went, of tea and chocolate biscuits, over and above anything stronger.

  The sound, coming, she thought, from the living room, was faint, but enough to stop her in mid-step. She froze, listening.

  It
came again.

  Like a soft groan.

  Wide awake suddenly, feeling more bewildered than afraid, Lizzie walked to the living room door and pushed it open.

  There were no lights on, but the curtains weren’t drawn, and as her eyes quite quickly accustomed themselves to the dimness, a shape, on the sofa, moved.

  Lizzie put up her hand and turned on the light.

  ‘God,’ she said. ‘What happened to you?’

  Christopher was sitting, or rather leaning, against one end of their sofa, an almost empty bottle of Johnnie Walker and another – not empty – of aspirin beside him.

  ‘Lizzie,’ he said, with difficulty.

  His face was badly bruised, one eye almost panda black and three-quarters shut, a smear of crusted blood at the right corner of his mouth.

  ‘Christopher, what happened?’

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ he said, very weakly.

  She knew, even before he spoke, as she was halfway to the sofa, en route to offering him help, that he was going to tell her something bad, that this was not the result of some ordinary accident.

  She stopped, stood still. ‘Tell me, please.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, Lizzie.’ He sat up a little way, wincing, sending the whisky bottle rolling off the cushions and onto the rug. ‘Oh, God, that hurts.’

  Still, Lizzie remained where she was.

  ‘I could lie to you—’ his voice was slurred ‘—tell you it was a car accident or a hit-and-run, but then you’d ask what the police were doing about it, so I might as well come clean right away.’ His mouth quirked wryly. ‘Clean,’ he echoed.

  Lizzie sat down, away from him, in one of the armchairs.

  ‘I’ve been beaten up,’ Christopher said, his eyes veering from hers, ‘by a pimp who objected to what I was doing to one of his girls.’

  Lizzie felt her head start to spin a little, felt sick.

  ‘No more Lizzie for me.’ Christopher held up both hands for a moment in a confessional kind of shrug. ‘So it’s back to where I was, doing it with prossies.’ He got to his feet with difficulty and looked down at her. ‘And what are you going to do about it now that you know? Your worst?’

  She stared up at him for several seconds, then shook her head, looked away from him, into the bleak, empty fireplace.