No Escape

by Hilary Norman

  ‘There’s a bathroom through that door. And a phone here—’ he motioned to the bedside table ‘—if you want it. And if you happen to want me, I’ll be around, so either call, or come looking, whichever you prefer.’

  ‘You’re so kind,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘Not kind at all,’ Allbeury said. ‘I just want you to feel safe.’

  ‘I do,’ she said.

  ‘Sleep well,’ he said, and went to the door.

  The clock on the bedside table read 14.10. ‘All right if I set this for four?’ Lizzie asked. ‘I need to speak to the children when they get home.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  In the blue study, Winston Cook was pacing in a state of high excitement.

  ‘I’ve got it all now,’ he said. ‘I told you I was nearly there.’

  ‘That’s great.’ Allbeury’s mind was too filled with Lizzie to care. ‘Do me a favour and write me a report and leave your bill and I’ll settle with you tomorrow, if that’s okay.’

  ‘I don’t mind sending you my bill,’ Cook said. ‘I trust you, man.’

  ‘Good,’ Allbeury said. ‘Thank you, Winston.’

  ‘But you still need to take a look at this now.’

  ‘I don’t have the time now to—’

  ‘You really need to.’ Cook was adamant. ‘There’s an IP address come up here that I think belongs to someone you know pretty well, and if I’m right – and I’m always right, just ask Adam – then I reckon they’ve been cracking your files for a long time.’

  ‘Who?’ Allbeury ran an irritated hand through his hair.

  ‘Take a look,’ Winston Cook insisted.

  He paid Cook cash, twenty per cent more than he’d asked for, showed him out and then went, very quietly, to check on his guest.

  Lizzie was fast asleep, on her side, her forehead puckered, looking a little, he thought, like a child in the midst of a disturbing dream.

  Allbeury took a long look at her, pulled the duvet a little higher over her, and then he took a small leather-bound notepad and a pen from his pocket and wrote her a note, leaving it propped against the clock where she’d be sure to see it when she woke. And then he left the room.

  He took the private lift down to the underground garage.

  Where he sat, in the Jaguar, for several more moments, thinking about what Winston Cook had shown him, before taking a card from his wallet, keying one of the numbers on it into his mobile, and driving out of his space and up to street level.

  ‘This is a message,’ he said, ‘for DI Shipley from Robin Allbeury.’

  He went on speaking as he exited the building.

  Unaware, as he spoke and drove, that just across the street, standing in a doorway, half-concealed, someone was watching him go.

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Shipley had just emerged from a root canal session at her dentist’s surgery in Chalk Farm and had got into her old Mini when she rang the office and heard from Ally King that Robin Allbeury had left a message for her.

  ‘He said to tell you it’s urgent,’ King said.

  Shipley’s anaesthetised jaw began tingling.

  ‘He wants you to meet him.’

  ‘Where?’

  King gave her the address. ‘Do you need any back-up?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Shipley started the engine, slipped into gear, and put her foot down.

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Novak was still alone at the agency at two forty-five, the ancient Bush radio on his desk switched on to a play on Radio 4, more for company than content, when the door opened and Allbeury marched in.

  ‘Robin, hi.’ Novak reached for the radio’s off switch. ‘I wasn’t expecting—’

  Without a word, Allbeury walked around Novak’s desk, bent and yanked his computer’s main plug out of the wall.

  ‘What the hell?’ Novak was on his feet, amazed.

  Allbeury wound the cord around his wrist and fist, pushed Novak out of the way and with a single, ferocious motion, punched a hole in the monitor’s screen.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Robin! What are you doing?’

  Allbeury unravelled the cord, let it drop to the floor, headed over to Clare’s immaculate desk.

  ‘That’s enough!’ Novak got between the other man and his wife’s PC. ‘What the hell has got into you?’

  Allbeury’s eyes were hard and very cold. ‘I have just one question for you.’

  ‘You have one for me?’ Novak was incredulous.

  ‘Why the fuck have you been spying on me?’

  ‘I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about!’

  The office door opened again, and Novak swung around in time to see a tall, middle-aged stranger with a vaguely familiar face that looked as if it had taken a recent beating, make straight for Allbeury, ignoring him.

  ‘You’re a bastard.’ He shoved the solicitor in the chest, hard enough to send him sideways into the wall beside Clare’s desk.

  ‘What is going on here?’ Novak demanded.

  ‘Good question.’ Allbeury, recovering his balance, dusted off his jacket. ‘What are you doing here, Wade?’

  ‘I’m here—’ the other man’s words were slurred ‘—to tell you to stay the fuck away from my wife.’

  Novak moved away from the other two men, back to his own half-wrecked desk. ‘I don’t know what’s happening here,’ he said to Wade, whose eyes, behind his spectacles, looked wild, drunk, maybe, or drugged, ‘but I’d like you to get out of my office before I call the police.’

  ‘I don’t give a stuff who you call,’ Christopher said.

  ‘Why don’t we take this outside,’ Allbeury said, cooler now, ‘unless you’d like Mr Novak to know what kind of husband Lizzie really has?’

  ‘You scum.’ Christopher lunged at Allbeury, missing him and sending the lamp on Clare’s desk flying, and this time Allbeury retaliated, grabbed his right arm and pushed him away with enough force to knock him down.

  ‘For God’s sake, Robin,’ Novak yelled.

  Shipley saw the Jaguar, illegally parked in the narrow cobbled road, a shiny black BMW practically on its bumper, and left her Mini ten yards behind the other two cars.

  The front door was ajar, and she started up the stairs.

  The sounds of fighting were audible by the second floor.

  She accelerated up the next two flights, paused outside the door, heard Novak’s voice yelling something, and went straight in.

  A man she didn’t recognize was charging at Robin Allbeury, roaring something indistinguishable as the two men collided and fell to the floor, grappling, while Novak struggled to separate them.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Shipley said.

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ Novak said from the floor.

  She swore again, wished she had some, any kind of a weapon to threaten the men with. ‘Police,’ she said, loudly, and weighed in.

  The stranger with the messed-up face bellowed as she grabbed at his arms to pull him off Allbeury, then swung at her, and she saw that he was high as a kite.

  ‘You’re under arrest,’ she said, panting.

  ‘Jesus, Inspector,’ Allbeury said, as Wade’s weight was removed from his chest, ‘your timing’s improving.’

  Christopher Wade, blind with rage and dope, threw another punch at Shipley, connected this time with her shoulder, making her shout with pain and anger. Novak went for him, grabbed him by the sleeve of his jacket, but Christopher jerked out of his grasp and ran to the still open door.

  ‘No, you bloody well don’t!’ Shipley caught him at the top of the staircase, got hold of his right arm and yanked it behind him in a half-nelson.

  ‘Bitch,’ Wade yelled, and twisted away from her.

  She knew it was going to happen before it did, knew he had her totally off-balance, and it shouldn’t have been so easy for him, but she was still full of fucking novocaine or whatever they used these days, and her feet went from under her and she tried to grab hold – of him, first, and then
the handrail, and then the iron outer cage of the lift, but nothing stopped her–

  Until the hard stone floor of the landing beneath.

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ Edward asked, joining Jack and Sophie in the Range Rover outside his school and finding Gilly at the wheel.

  ‘In London.’

  Gilly’s stomach was clenched tight as she glanced first at Edward, then back at Jack’s face – still registering nothing at all. He had asked the same question half-an-hour earlier when she’d collected him and Sophie at their school, and his sister had asked when Lizzie would be back, then simply accepted it, accustomed to her parents’ comings-and-goings, and Jack had looked at Gilly for a second, then looked away and kept silent.

  ‘Will she be back later?’ Edward asked now.

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ Gilly said.

  ‘I’ve got homework,’ Edward said, as soon as they got into the house.

  ‘What about some tea?’ Gilly asked.

  ‘Not hungry,’ he said, and went upstairs.

  ‘Chops for supper,’ Gilly called after him. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ve got maths,’ Sophie said to Jack. ‘Will you help me?’

  ‘Later,’ Jack said.

  He waited while his sister carried her bag upstairs, then looked at Gilly.

  ‘Have you talked to Mum?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Not yet,’ Gilly said. ‘She was gone by the time I got back from the school run.’

  ‘So how do you know she went to London?’

  ‘She left a note.’

  She went to fetch it for Jack, and to check for messages, but found none. ‘I’m sure she’ll call later, or maybe she’s already on her way back.’

  Jack’s expression was closed, only his hands, clenched in fists, betraying him.

  Gilly took a quick breath.

  ‘Would you like me to try and reach your father?’

  ‘No,’ Jack said.

  Gilly forced a smile. ‘Cup of tea then?’

  ‘And if he phones,’ Jack added, ‘I don’t want to talk, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Gilly said.

  ‘I’m going for a rest,’ he said.

  ‘Are you all right, Jack?’

  He nodded, began to wheel himself towards the stair lift, then paused.

  ‘I definitely want to talk to Mum,’ he said, ‘if she calls.’

  ‘I promise,’ Gilly said.

  Chapter Ninety

  Christopher was gone, sidestepping frantically past Shipley’s body, stumbling down the next two flights of steps and out into the street.

  ‘I’ve called an ambulance,’ Novak said from above to Allbeury, kneeling beside the fallen officer.

  ‘I don’t need an ambulance,’ Shipley said. ‘Just help me get up.’

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Allbeury told her. ‘I think your ankle’s—’

  ‘Help me.’ She began heaving herself off the ground, then cried out with pain and sank back again. ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Oh, bloody shit.’

  ‘You’ll be okay.’ Gently, Allbeury took her hand.

  Novak came down, holding a raincoat. ‘Ought to be a blanket, but this is all I could find.’ He crouched on Shipley’s other side, laid it gently over her.

  ‘Who the hell was that lunatic?’ she asked, hating her sudden vulnerability.

  ‘Just someone who seems not to like me,’ Allbeury said. ‘Which you ought, I suppose, to sympathize with.’

  ‘You’ve got a point,’ Shipley said.

  ‘That’s Lizzie Piper’s husband, right?’ Novak said to Allbeury, having realized a few moments back why Wade’s face had seemed familiar. ‘The surgeon?’

  ‘Lizzie Piper, the cookery woman?’ Shipley asked.

  Allbeury’s smile was grim. ‘The very one.’

  ‘Tell her from me,’ Shipley said, ‘she can do better.’

  ‘I may do just that,’ he said.

  Shipley looked at him for a long moment, then turned to Novak. ‘Could you do me a favour? Get me a cup of tea. This raincoat isn’t quite doing it for me.’

  ‘No problem,’ Novak said, glad of something to do.

  She waited till he’d gone, then looked back at Allbeury. ‘I’m assuming,’ she said, very softly, ‘that your message was connected with the killings?’ She moved her leg, and winced.

  ‘Don’t worry about that now,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me,’ she hissed. ‘I have been right, haven’t I? There is a link?’

  Allbeury’s mind was travelling now, moving back and forth, putting things together, things he’d far sooner not have been able to put together.

  ‘Allbeury,’ Shipley said, impatiently. ‘I’m not wrong, am I?’

  ‘No,’ he told her. ‘I’m beginning to think you may not be.’

  She stared at him, trying to read his expression, heard Novak coming out of the office above, began to mouth a question at Allbeury.

  ‘I’ve made it sweet and strong.’ Novak was beside them, handed the mug carefully to Shipley. ‘It’s very hot, mind.’

  Allbeury thought about Lizzie, hoped she was still sleeping.

  And abruptly, one more piece of the puzzle clicked horribly into place.

  Shipley, raising the mug to her lips, caught the expression in Allbeury’s eyes, then looked at Novak on her other side.

  ‘Where’s that bloody ambulance?’ she said.

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Christopher, stuck in traffic on the Embankment, knew he was in no condition to be driving, but he was also aware, as he battled the thick fuzz in his head in order to face the truth, that he’d left himself with very few choices.

  He had just pushed a police officer down a flight of stairs. He had blown it – totally and irrevocably – with Lizzie. And, worst of all by far, he had forever destroyed his beloved Jack’s image of him, and probably all the children knew by now, but Jack, oh, God, Jack was the one who needed him most.

  Needed.

  In the past. All over now.

  Behind him, someone sounded their horn and, blinking to clear his vision, he saw that the cars ahead had moved on.

  He lifted his right hand in apology, drove on.

  Nothing ahead for him but disgrace, shame, perhaps even prison, and isolation.

  Only one choice left for him to make, and that was which way to die.

  Lucky for him, he supposed, in that at least he could choose.

  Though if he didn’t do it quickly, they might find him, stop him, ruin that too.

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Lizzie was still sleeping when the sound woke her.

  Buzzing.

  She opened her eyes, stared around at the now semi-dark and unfamiliar room, disoriented for a moment, then, remembering everything – everything – she sat up and fumbled with the clock.

  The buzzing continued. Not in the room, but from a distance.

  ‘Robin?’ she called.

  She pushed away the duvet, saw the note propped up against the clock and reached for the switch on the bedside lamp.

  I’ve had to go out for a while – shouldn’t be too long. Help yourself to anything and everything you want. Love, Robin.

  Lizzie found her shoes and went in search of the buzzing, out of the bedroom, along a corridor, turning on lights as she went, passing more beautiful paintings, into the entrance hall.

  Near the lift was a videophone system, source of the buzzing.

  She lifted the handset, looked at the screen, saw, in monochrome, a young woman with curly hair, pressed one of the buttons to speak to her.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘Are you Mrs Wade?’ the woman asked in a light Scots accent.

  ‘I am,’ she said, surprised.

  ‘Robin told me you were here.’ The woman paused. ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Lizzie said. ‘Come up.’

  ‘There’s no time. I need you to come with me.’
/>   ‘I don’t understand,’ Lizzie said, bewildered.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ the woman said. ‘Robin’s been hurt.’

  ‘My God – what kind of accident?’ Lizzie hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are – I can’t just come without—’

  ‘My name’s Clare Novak,’ the young woman said. ‘I’m a friend of Robin’s, and can you please, please come now, because Robin’s asking for you.’

  Lizzie’s confusion mounted – she fought for commonsense. ‘Where is he? Is he in hospital?’

  ‘It isn’t far,’ Clare Novak said. ‘Please come – it’s in walking distance.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Please,’ the other woman said. ‘Robin needs you.’

  Lizzie thought of his kindness.

  ‘I’ll be right down.’

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  The ambulance had arrived in New Smithfield, and Shipley was being carried down the stairs by the paramedics, who wanted to know if either Allbeury or Novak would be coming to St Thomas’s.

  ‘Police’ll want a word with one of you, I should think,’ one of the men said.

  ‘I am the police,’ Shipley said.

  ‘Even so, love,’ the paramedic said kindly, as if he thought her delusional.

  ‘She is,’ Novak told him. ‘She’s a detective inspector.’

  Allbeury stooped to speak softly against Shipley’s ear. ‘I’ll come to the hospital later,’ he said, ‘tell you everything I can, I swear it. But right now, Mike and I have to go, really have to.’

  Shipley looked into his face and, as forcefully as this man had exerted a hold on her suspicions over the past few months, she felt the hold twist suddenly now, flip half-circle, pushing her, compelling her to run with him.

  ‘You go,’ she told him.

  Allbeury waited till the ambulance was out of sight and turned to Novak.

  ‘We have to go and find Clare, Mike,’ he said.

  Novak stared at him, his bizarre entrance – before Wade and Shipley had hijacked the show – coming back into his mind.