No Escape

by Hilary Norman

  ‘You smashed my computer,’ he said. ‘And then you said I’d been spying on you, and I want to know what the hell you were talking about.’

  ‘Hacking,’ Allbeury said, ‘or rather, cracking.’ He felt in his pocket for his car keys. ‘It’s going to have to wait till after we get to Clare.’

  ‘If anyone’s going to Clare,’ Novak said, ‘it’s me.’

  ‘Not without me,’ Allbeury said.

  ‘You’ve lost it.’ Novak turned his back.

  Allbeury caught hold of his arm. ‘Listen to me, Mike, just listen.’

  ‘Let go,’ Novak said.

  ‘Not unless you listen to me.’

  ‘Let go of my arm.’

  Allbeury let go. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘in fact, I’m almost sure, that Clare’s in a great deal of trouble.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  ‘Can we just find her?’ Allbeury said intensely. ‘Because if we don’t get to her very soon, Mike, I’m afraid of what might happen.’

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  Tower Bridge had been raised when Lizzie and Clare had left Shad Tower, and Lizzie had heard the tall, red-haired woman curse under her breath, but even as they hurried over the St Saviour’s footbridge, around the Design Museum and into Shad Thames, trying not to slip on the cobbles, heading for the steps that led up to the bridge, the tall ship for which it had been raised had already sailed beneath, and in moments it was lowered again.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better to take a taxi?’ Lizzie asked, peering through the dusk. ‘Where exactly are we going?’

  ‘Do you see any for hire?’ the other woman said, quite tersely.

  Lizzie looked around, already feeling drained again, but all the black cabs had their lights turned off. ‘I don’t think I can go too fast,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

  Clare Novak took her arm. ‘I’ll help you.’

  Lizzie didn’t much care for the closeness, but she didn’t argue, felt weak enough at this instant, out here in the wind, with people and traffic all around, to need support.

  ‘Why didn’t you phone,’ she asked, ‘instead of coming to get me?’

  ‘Robin’s machine was on,’ Clare Novak said, ‘and I didn’t want to just leave a message in case you didn’t pick it up.’

  Being drawn on, Lizzie felt perplexed, was not at all sure, now, if this was a clever thing to be doing, walking somewhere with this forceful woman who might well be a friend of Robin’s, but was still a total stranger to her – and everything was crowding in on her, Christopher and Jack, and she hadn’t phoned the children.

  They were over the bridge now, crossing at the lights into East Smithfield, and the street was clogged with cars and pedestrians, and Clare’s hand was still on her elbow, and Lizzie, on unfamiliar territory, felt disoriented again, and crowded by the other woman’s proximity.

  ‘Is it much further?’ she asked, already breathless.

  ‘Not too much.’

  ‘I still don’t know what’s happened.’

  ‘You’re worrying, aren’t you?’ Clare Novak said.

  ‘Of course I’m worrying.’

  ‘He’ll be all right,’ the other woman said. ‘I’m a nurse, I took care of him.’

  Lizzie extricated her arm, stopped walking.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Clare halted too, looked at her.

  ‘I have to slow down for a moment.’ She tried to catch her breath, felt the need to take control.

  ‘Okay,’ Clare said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Now tell me what happened, please.’

  ‘A fight,’ Clare said, bluntly.

  ‘A fight?’ Lizzie blinked. ‘Who with?’

  ‘If you must know,’ the other woman said, ‘with my husband, Mike.’

  Lizzie took another moment. She was sure she’d heard the name Mike Novak before – from Robin, she supposed – but she couldn’t remember what he’d said.

  ‘All right to go on now?’ Clare asked.

  A man and two women stepped around them to pass on the pavement, all chattering, their normality slightly reassuring.

  ‘Yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Only I don’t want to leave him for too long,’ Clare said. ‘Robin, that is.’ She smiled at Lizzie, a kindly smile. ‘You’re not feeling great, are you? Why don’t you just take my arm again?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Lizzie said, and began walking.

  ‘Closeness to strangers does make some people uncomfortable,’ Clare said, walking beside her. ‘I know, from nursing.’

  She lengthened her stride a little, and Lizzie had to speed up, and this weakness was so unlike her, she usually had so much energy, though perhaps, if she thought about it, she’d never got wholly back to her old self since the surgery.

  Surgery, she thought, savagely, feeling sick, and walked faster.

  ‘I think Robin’s upset as much as hurt—’

  ‘Why were he and your husband fighting?’ Lizzie interrupted.

  ‘—and I know he’s got a bit of a thing for you, Lizzie, which was, frankly, the real reason I came to get you, because I’m hoping he’ll listen to you and not press charges against Mike.’

  Clare turned left, moving very quickly now. Lizzie glanced at the street sign – Dock Street – and followed, caught up.

  ‘Mike’s such a good person.’ Clare was still talking rapidly. ‘And I need him so badly, especially now the baby’s coming, that’s why I want you to try to help.’

  ‘You’re pregnant?’

  ‘Yes,’ the other woman said. ‘Only our last child died.’

  Lizzie’s heart softened, went out to the stranger. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘So you do see?’

  ‘A little, I suppose.’ Lizzie wanted to be tactful now. ‘And if there’s some way I can help, I will, but I don’t see why Robin should listen to me – we hardly know each other.’

  ‘That can’t be quite true,’ Clare said, ‘surely. Or else you wouldn’t have been sleeping in his flat, would you?’

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  ‘Try your number again,’ Allbeury said, in Kingsway’s heavy traffic.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Novak said, belligerently, ‘if she’s sleeping.’

  He hadn’t wanted to come in the Jaguar either, had wanted to collect the Clio from the car park, but Allbeury’s urgency had persuaded him, and now, though his anger with the solicitor still lingered, Novak’s anxiety over Clare was taking over.

  ‘For the last time,’ Allbeury said, ‘I’m sorry about your computer.’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck about the computer, I just want to understand why you’ve turned into a bloody madman and what Shipley and that other lunatic were doing in my office.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that too.’ Allbeury braked hard as a van cut in front of him, then flashed his headlights in irritation. ‘And I will explain it all to you later, but I can’t right now, okay?’

  ‘Not okay,’ Novak said. ‘Not okay at all.’

  Allbeury shook his head, detached his thoughts from his angry passenger. He’d phoned the apartment twice since leaving the agency, but of course his machine had picked up, and he’d called Lizzie’s name a couple of times, in case she was awake, but she hadn’t picked up, and he hadn’t left a message since he was certain she wasn’t the type to listen to another person’s messages.

  ‘Any short cuts from here?’ he asked Novak now.

  ‘Nothing that’ll help at this time.’

  Allbeury set his mind back onto a different track, trying to avoid the temptation to put two and two together and make a thousand, and even now he knew he couldn’t be certain that it hadn’t been Mike Novak poking around in his PC, and just because the guy claimed not to know what the hell was going on, and just because he liked Novak didn’t mean anything.

  He glanced at the man, sitting tight-lipped and strained beside him.

  A gap in the traffic opened up just ahead to his right. Allbeury checked in his wing mirror, put
his foot down and filled it.

  Still going nowhere.

  Chapter Ninety-Six

  ‘Nearly there now,’ Clare told Lizzie.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Lizzie said, then saw the dead-end sign and the dark, narrow cobbled cul-de-sac, and hung back again.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Clare smiled and pointed. ‘That’s where we’re going.’

  Lizzie peered past a straggle of parked vehicles, looking for Robin’s Jaguar.

  ‘In the car park,’ Clare said, reading her mind.

  They reached the building, and Lizzie saw the sign – Novak Investigations Ltd – and of course, that was where she’d heard the name; Robin had mentioned the Novaks during their dinner in West Hampstead, the private detective and his wife who ran the agency together. ‘Nice people,’ she recalled him saying.

  ‘This is your agency,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I thought you said you were a nurse.’

  ‘Used to be. Still am, part-time.’ Clare opened the outer door. ‘Bit dilapidated, I’m afraid, and a bit of a hike up, so watch your step.’

  She was right, Lizzie saw. Not well lit, but adequately enough to show grubby white walls, a wide, archaic-looking lift with an Out of Service sign and a padlock attached to the kind of old-style gate that concertinaed when opened.

  ‘I’d better go ahead,’ Clare said. ‘You take your time.’

  Lizzie, feeling ragged, didn’t need telling twice.

  They passed the first floor, silent, doors closed, a dusty parcel leaning against a wall beside a Yellow Pages, then the second and third floors, just as unoccupied, and by the fourth, Lizzie could scarcely catch her breath.

  ‘Sorry about all the stairs,’ Clare called down. ‘You get used to it.’

  ‘Rather you than me,’ Lizzie gasped.

  The top floor was brighter, the single door bearing another, smaller, agency sign. Clare stood for a moment, looking at the door.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Lizzie asked breathlessly, her legs aching.

  ‘Nothing,’ Clare said. ‘I hope.’

  She pushed the unlocked door open and went through.

  Chapter Ninety-Seven

  ‘She’s not here.’

  Novak’s statement as he returned to the living room of the small Lamb’s Conduit Street flat, sent a signal of alarm through Allbeury.

  ‘No message?’ he asked. ‘Note?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Novak shook his head. ‘There’s no reason why she should have left a note. No reason for her to have stayed in all day either, just because she didn’t come into the office.’

  ‘So where do you think she is?’

  ‘She could be anywhere.’

  ‘Anywhere’s a little useless from the search point of view,’ Allbeury said.

  ‘That’s if I wanted to search for her,’ Novak said.

  ‘Take my word for it,’ Allbeury said. ‘You need to find Clare.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake stop telling me that, and start telling me why.’

  ‘All right,’ Allbeury said. ‘But you’d better sit down.’

  ‘Just tell me.’ Novak sat down anyway.

  Allbeury remained standing, conscious that he was taking a chance by going with his instincts, even if those instincts were almost always pretty fine-tuned. But Winston Cook’s trail had led him to Novak Investigations, and there were two Novaks working at the agency, and Mike was always hailing Clare as his in-house computer whiz.

  ‘I think,’ he began, very slowly, ‘that – though I have no idea why she should have done such a thing – Clare may have been breaking into my computer system.’ He saw the expression in the other man’s eyes, the colour rising in his cheeks, went on quickly, regardless. ‘Invading the files on my hard disk. Hacking.’ He paused. ‘Cracking.’

  ‘You bastard.’ Novak sprang to his feet. ‘You lousy piece of shit! Telling me Clare was in trouble, scaring me half to death just so you could come here and accuse her of such unmitigated balls!’

  Allbeury waited for Novak to take a swing at him, ready to let him have the one, at least, because he could well understand the anger – and his friend’s rage, in any case, was adding to his conviction that he wasn’t the one behind the hacking.

  Novak threw no punch, just stood there seething.

  ‘I’m very much afraid,’ Allbeury said, quietly, ‘that I do have proof, Mike. I wish to God I hadn’t, but I have.’

  ‘What proof?’ Novak spat contemptuously.

  ‘And I’m pretty sure that DI Shipley’s going to be reaching a few conclusions of her own as soon as she gets her head back together.’

  ‘What’s Shipley got to do with it?’ Fear and confusion were back in his eyes, mixing with the defiance.

  ‘Do you know where Clare could be, Mike?’

  ‘Answer my questions. What proof, and why should Shipley care?’

  ‘I had an expert work over my system – a friend of Adam Lerman’s. He traced the cracker to the agency.’ Allbeury paused. ‘Mike, do you have any idea where Clare is? Just so you can talk to her – so we can talk to her – maybe help her.’

  ‘Because you’re so great at helping women in trouble?’ Novak said.

  The images Allbeury lived with, much of the time lately, of Lynne Bolsover and Joanne Patston, loomed larger, made him shudder, but he pushed them away.

  ‘You need to find her, Mike,’ he said doggedly.

  Something came into Novak’s eyes then, and was promptly blanked out.

  ‘What?’ Allbeury asked. ‘Mike, what?’

  Novak took another second.

  ‘She has a patient,’ he said.

  Allbeury remembered Novak mentioning him. ‘The paraplegic?’

  Novak nodded. ‘Nick Parry.’

  ‘Call him,’ Allbeury said. ‘See if she’s there.’ He saw uncertainty in Novak’s face. ‘At least you’ll know she’s safe.’

  ‘I’m not going to interrogate her on the phone.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Allbeury said.

  Novak half turned, then stopped. ‘Nick Parry plays chess and poker on the Internet.’ He paused. ‘Clare’s told me he considers his PC a friend.’

  ‘See if she’s there, Mike.’

  ‘Maybe this is his doing, Robin.’ Hope flared.

  ‘Or maybe he’s been teaching Clare a thing or two.’

  ‘It’s probably the other way around,’ Novak said agitatedly. ‘Young guy trapped in his wheelchair, bored out of his mind – it makes more sense than Clare.’

  ‘Just make the call, Mike,’ Allbeury said.

  Chapter Ninety-Eight

  Entering the office behind Clare Novak, Lizzie looked around, took in the lamp on the floor on one side, and, on a second desk, a smashed-up computer monitor.

  A fight, it seemed, had certainly taken place.

  ‘Where are they?’ Lizzie’s voice was tense, her weariness almost gone in the presence of a new clenching in her stomach that she recognized as fear.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Clare said, uneasily, and walked past the desks, past the couch and coffee table to the door beyond a row of filing cabinets, opened it, shook her head. ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’

  She turned, moving slowly around the room, looking at the smashed monitor; then, passing Lizzie, a frown wrinkling her forehead, she walked back out into the stone hallway.

  Lizzie heard the sound of metal scraping, screeching, and turned around.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Clare’s voice exclaimed.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Lizzie went swiftly to the door.

  The lift gate was open and Clare was standing beside the broad open shaft. ‘You’d better see for yourself.’

  Her heart starting to thump, Lizzie went out, saw the other woman’s shocked face, her own fear heightening.

  ‘Just look,’ Clare said. ‘And be careful.’

  Lizzie approached the dark, gaping mouth of the lift cautiously, put out her right hand to grip the handle of the open iron g
ate – no padlock on it, she noticed, with a slight stir of something – and leaned slightly forward over the edge.

  The shove in her back was violent and uncompromising.

  Lizzie gave a cry, felt her legs going, felt a massive surge of terror and adrenalin kick in, hung on to the gate with both hands, feet scrabbling to stay on solid ground.

  Another shove, against her shoulders.

  ‘My God,’ she screamed. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Helping,’ Clare said, and began unhooking Lizzie’s fingers from the metal gate.

  ‘Clare, no!’

  She twisted and grabbed at Clare’s left arm, and the other woman yelped, and for a moment Lizzie felt she might win, but then Clare pulled clear, and suddenly she was heaving at the gate, dragging out the concertina, and Lizzie’s right foot lost its hold first, and now only her hands, still gripping the iron, were keeping her from falling.

  ‘Clare, for God’s sake, help me!’

  ‘I told you.’ Breathless now with effort. ‘I am helping you.’

  She changed angles, heaved at the gate again, slammed the concertinaed metal tighter, trapping Lizzie’s fingers, and Lizzie screamed again.

  ‘Just one more little push,’ Clare said.

  And pushed.

  Lizzie plunged into the dark, her wounded fingers clawing vainly at the wall, no hope of gripping now, her right leg scraping something hard, abrasive, as she fell, struck the roof of the lift two floors down, and passed out.

  Chapter Ninety-Nine

  ‘Parry says she’s not there,’ Novak said, putting down the phone.

  ‘You believe him?’ Allbeury asked.

  ‘I think so,’ Novak said. ‘I don’t know.’ He sat down on his sofa. ‘You didn’t answer my question about Shipley,’ he said. ‘About why she should care about anyone hacking into your computer.’

  Allbeury’s hesitation was partly for Novak’s sake. Partly because something else had just struck him.

  ‘Shipley would care,’ he said slowly, ‘for a number of reasons. Mostly, I’d say, she’d care because of my files on Lynne Bolsover and Joanne Patston.’

  Novak was silent for an instant, and then rage flared again. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’