No Escape

by Hilary Norman

  Allbeury said nothing, his mind ticking over.

  ‘Don’t be so fucking ridiculous,’ Novak said.

  Allbeury wasn’t listening, was too busy remembering.

  Other files on his hard disk. On Lizzie and Christopher Wade.

  Diary entries too. Logging dinner at the Wades’ flat. And drinks at the Savoy with Lizzie.

  And, just like Joanne Patston and Lynne Bolsover, Lizzie Piper Wade was the victim of a violent husband.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ he said.

  ‘What now?’ Novak shook his head in disgust. ‘What’s next, Robin? What’s Clare supposed to have done now, joined the fucking Mafia?’

  Allbeury took his mobile from his jacket pocket, called home again, heard the recorded message begin and cut the call.

  ‘We have to leave,’ he told Novak.

  ‘I’m going nowhere.’

  ‘You need to come with me,’ Allbeury said. ‘Right now.’

  ‘You’re not paying for my services now, Robin.’

  Allbeury picked up his keys. ‘Do you love Clare, Mike?’

  ‘Don’t ask such fucking stupid questions,’ Novak said.

  Allbeury was already at the door.

  ‘If you love her,’ he said, ‘you’d better come with me now.’

  Chapter One Hundred

  Lizzie came round, dazed, dizzy, sick with pain.

  In the dark.

  Almost dark.

  There was some light, from above.

  And a curious sound.

  It all came back to her, swiftly, terrifyingly. The other woman – mad – pushing her into the lift shaft. No accident – oh, dear God, no accident. Calculated and cold-blooded.

  She heard the sound again.

  She started to tilt her face towards it, up towards the light, then stopped, afraid suddenly, in case she’d injured her neck or back, in case movement worsened it.

  Assess yourself, Lizzie.

  Lying on her side – on a hard, cold floor – thick dark cabling near her face.

  Tentatively she moved her hands, found that they hurt badly, felt swollen, and she knew why, remembered why – the madwoman slamming the iron gate on her fingers – and her left arm, twisted under the side of her ribcage, felt bad too, maybe – probably – broken.

  The ache in her abdomen had gone – broken bones’ll do that every time – and at least she could feel her arm and hands – and her legs and feet too. Bruised, of course, maybe cut, but not broken. Most mercifully of all, her back seemed okay.

  Thank you, God.

  The sound came again. A soft groaning.

  Clare.

  Lizzie shifted a little, managing not to yelp with pain, but then the steel floor beneath her creaked and swayed a little – not a floor, the lift roof – and even as she froze, the terror sucked a cry out of her.

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’

  Not her voice.

  Clare Novak’s voice, from above.

  Lizzie turned her face carefully upwards.

  The madwoman was staring down at her, framed in the light coming through the half-open lift gate two floors up. She was on her knees, clutching at her abdomen.

  ‘Still with us then?’ Clare said, her voice strange.

  Lizzie licked her dry mouth.

  ‘Help me,’ she said.

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’ Clare Novak asked, then gasped in pain. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ she said again, and her voice, for a moment, was strangled. ‘It’s the baby,’ she said. ‘I’m losing the baby.’

  The struggle, Lizzie thought, the heaving on the heavy gate.

  The effort of pushing her into the shaft.

  Not the baby’s fault.

  ‘If you help me get out of here—’ Lizzie couldn’t believe how calm she sounded ‘—then I can help you, Clare.’

  The other woman groaned again.

  ‘Clare, listen to me,’ Lizzie said. ‘Go and phone for an ambulance.’ She felt sweat break out on her forehead, felt sick, suddenly, with the pain in her hands and arm. ‘Clare, please, just listen to me. If you phone now, get help now, the baby will probably be all right.’

  Two floors up, on the edge of the lift shaft, Clare Novak began to laugh.

  The sound jarred in Lizzie’s head, made her feel dizzy.

  ‘Clare, please,’ she said again. ‘You must get help.’

  ‘I don’t need help,’ Clare said. ‘And you aren’t getting any. Not from me.’

  ‘Why not?’ Lizzie knew, even as she asked it, what a foolish question it was, because the other woman had pushed her, fought with her till she’d fallen. Yet it was the question she wanted answered now, almost more than anything. ‘Why not, Clare?’

  ‘I’ve killed before, you know,’ Clare Novak said.

  Down in the dark, more fear crawled into Lizzie’s chest, lay there.

  ‘Women like you,’ Clare said.

  ‘You don’t know me,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘I know about you,’ Clare said.

  ‘What do you know?’ Lizzie asked, bewildered.

  ‘I know what kind of man your husband is,’ Clare Novak said.

  The fear in Lizzie’s chest crawled higher, spread itself around. ‘How do you know?’ The question was out before she could stop it.

  ‘Ask your friend,’ Clare said. ‘Ask Robin.’

  ‘Why Robin?’ For a moment, fresh confusion muddied the fear. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The last time,’ Clare said, ‘I was far more thorough, I had time to plan, time to make it right, for the children. That’s why I’m doing it, you see. For the children.’

  The word cut through Lizzie like an axe.

  ‘What do you mean?’ She tried to sit up, but the pain was overwhelming, made her feel faint. ‘What about the children?’

  Two floors up, Clare groaned again as another cramp hit her.

  Lizzie gritted her teeth. ‘Clare,’ she called.

  There was no answer.

  ‘Clare.’ Her chest was tight with fresh panic, the dizziness getting worse. ‘Go and phone for help.’ Her head began to spin. ‘For your baby.’

  ‘I told you,’ Clare Novak said, and her voice had grown much harder. ‘I don’t need any help.’

  Chapter One Hundred One

  In the Jaguar again, back in the stranglehold of Friday’s late rush-hour, Allbeury looked at Novak, hunched in the passenger seat, fists clenched, face unreadable.

  ‘Do something for me.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself,’ Novak said.

  ‘Christ, Mike, will you grow up.’ For the first time, Allbeury felt real anger with the other man. ‘Whether you believe it or not, I’m trying to help.’

  ‘Then tell me where the hell we’re going and why.’

  ‘Just do this first,’ Allbeury said, ‘and then I’ll tell you.’ He took Novak’s silence as assent. ‘Take my mobile and find me a number – I think it’s in the memory.’

  Novak took the phone off the hands-free. ‘Name?’

  ‘Shad Tower,’ Allbeury said. ‘I want the doorman.’

  Novak went through the functions, found the phone book.

  ‘Or it might be under Doorman,’ Allbeury said.

  Novak keyed his way back through the alphabetical list. ‘Neither.’

  ‘Ring 192, see if they have a listing.’

  The traffic began to shift.

  ‘Forget it,’ Allbeury said. ‘We’ll probably be there before we ever get through.’

  ‘I may as well try,’ Novak said.

  ‘I said forget it.’

  Novak slammed the phone back on the hands-free. ‘So now tell me,’ he said, ‘what’s going on in your head.’

  Allbeury flashed his lights, hit his horn and changed lanes.

  ‘And why the hell,’ Novak added, ‘are we going to Shad Tower?’

  Chapter One Hundred Two

  Helen Shipley, in considerable discomfort, lying on a trolley in A&E at St Thomas’s Hospital, waiting for her leg to be X-rayed, was, above everything,
pissed as hell at being out of it now.

  Now, of all times.

  Should tell Keenan.

  Except that Shipley had an idea – bizarre, in the circumstances, and certainly ironic – that at this precise moment Robin Allbeury might possibly be doing a better job than either she or DI Keenan had been.

  She had been off-duty when all this had started, and God knew Keenan hadn’t really wanted to listen to her before.

  Right, wasn’t he, as it happens?

  Half right, anyway.

  A nurse hurried past.

  ‘Okay, love?’

  ‘Do you think,’ Shipley said, ‘I could have—’

  The nurse had already gone.

  ‘—a phone?’

  Pissed as hell.

  Chapter One Hundred Three

  Lizzie woke, out of an ugly, painful sleep that might, she supposed as she came to, have been another faint.

  Clare.

  She looked up quickly, saw only the rectangle of light two floors above.

  No one framed in it now.

  Gone.

  The place felt empty, no sound anywhere, nothing.

  No one.

  Lizzie looked at the thick cabling nearest her, thought about leaning against it for support, then, going on instinct, edged away from it instead. The pain in her arm and hands was sickening and the lift beneath her groaned like an aged, arthritic beast.

  Keep still and wait.

  She wondered how long it would be before someone came – Robin, maybe. But Clare had said that he’d been hurt.

  Clare pushed you down a lift shaft.

  But maybe he was hurt, maybe she’d done something to him too.

  I know what kind of man your husband is, Clare had said. And when Lizzie had asked her how she knew, she’d said: Ask Robin.

  I’ve killed before.

  For the children.

  Jack flew into Lizzie’s mind, and Edward and Sophie, and then, almost an afterthought, the shocking mess of her marriage, and Lizzie began to cry, just bawled her eyes out for a moment or two.

  Until the lift groaned again.

  Making her stop.

  Chapter One Hundred Four

  Christopher was in Holland Park, in his study.

  The telephone had rung a few minutes earlier, but he hadn’t answered it, had let the machine pick up, neither had he checked to see if he had any messages, because they would no longer matter, might only muddy his thinking, which was, at present, very clear.

  He’d already assembled what he needed: a good combination, one that would take him pleasantly on his way. Better than he deserved, he supposed, but then again he had never understood why some people felt the need to torture themselves on the way to oblivion.

  He had, on the other hand, decided not to do it here – in comfort, but also the place in which his wife and children would probably continue to live; did not want to inflict that kind of ineradicable connection on any of them.

  Done enough – still doing – more than enough to them without that.

  And besides, there was also the possibility that someone – the police or Lizzie herself, or perhaps Allbeury, now, after the appalling fiasco in that dismal office – might come here looking for him, and he had no intention of being interrupted.

  He had already written letters to Edward and Sophie, and had managed a shamefully short, entirely inadequate letter of regret and love for Lizzie.

  Now he had begun to write the hardest of all.

  Don’t think, for a single second – he wrote to Jack – that you were in any way wrong to go for me as you did. Even while you were battering away at me, all that fury in your face, I felt so proud of you, admired you for your strength and courage, as I always have.

  I need you to go on helping the others to take care of your mother for as long as you can, and to let her take care of you when things get worse. Don’t fight her too much, make things easier for her.

  I know I’m being a dreadful coward, but I’m not nearly as brave as you, Jack, and I am trying to do the right thing for you all now, at the end. I have done some terrible things, over the years, very stupid things too, and if I were to stay I’d probably have to face a trial, maybe even go to prison. Knowing your loving, generous heart, there’s a chance you might forgive me in time, perhaps want to come to court to support me, even visit me in prison, and I couldn’t bear that, am much too selfish for that. Unlike your wonderful, magical mother, who might have seen me punished long ago, but stayed with me, put up with me, instead.

  All of you, all my precious children, but you especially, my brave-hearted son, have taught me so much, and I wish with all my heart that I could stay with you always, but that just isn’t possible now. I will love you forever, Jack, and I pray that you may, in time, find it possible not to think of me too badly. But if you can’t forgive me, I understand that I’ve forfeited any right to expect otherwise.

  He signed the letter, sealed the envelope, feeling a little calmer, but then the sound of a siren from the streets startled him and he dropped the letter and his pen and felt compelled to wait, frozen in suspense, until the sound had vanished into the distance.

  Not for him yet, but time marching on.

  He was trembling again as he went into Lizzie’s study and placed all the envelopes on her desk, so that it would be she who found them, no one else.

  And then he picked up his collection of drugs, his favourite photographs of Lizzie and the children, and left the flat.

  Chapter One Hundred Five

  Clare had come to the river.

  She was sitting on a bench seat close to the water a few yards from one of the restaurants on Butler’s Wharf.

  It was colder than she had expected, and she was very tired, and the hike back across the bridge and along Shad Thames in the dark had almost finished her, but she had known roughly where she wanted to get to, where she wanted to sit and wait.

  For them to find her.

  Or for it to end.

  Whichever came first.

  She was trying to ignore the pain, breathing through it, gazing into the river, imagining the darkness beneath the surface.

  She felt the blood trickling out of her. Let it go. Neither laughing now, nor weeping.

  Just letting it all go.

  Chapter One Hundred Six

  ‘Damn it,’ Allbeury said, standing in his living room at Shad Tower, ‘where’s she gone? No note, no message.’

  ‘Always looking for notes.’ Novak was wry. ‘Explanations.’

  Allbeury ignored him, tried to think where else he might try looking for Lizzie, had already called Holland Park and Marlow, where he’d lied to Gilly, told her it was unimportant.

  He thought of Susan Blake, then dismissed that notion, and went to his house phone to speak to the doorman.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ the man told him, ‘I’ve only just come on duty, but if it’s urgent, I know where Dermot’s gone.’

  ‘It’s urgent,’ Allbeury said. ‘Call me back.’ He took a breath, trying to compose himself, saw the anger and fear still etched on Novak’s normally affable face. ‘Have a seat, Mike.’

  Novak started to shake his head, then slouched down in an armchair, looking like a boxer without a fight.

  ‘Drink?’ Allbeury offered.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No.’

  Allbeury looked at the house phone, glanced at his watch. Almost seven. Where the hell was she?

  He began to pace, over by the expanse of glass doors, back and forth, looking out as he did so, gazing into the half dark at nothing in particular.

  Suddenly he stopped pacing, stood very still for one more instant, then opened the doors, stepped out onto the terrace and grasped the telescope, training it down onto the walk below and then left, scanning the little electrically operated stainless steel footbridge across St Saviour’s Dock, moving on along the riverside walk.

  There.

  He fastened on a small fig
ure, adjusted the focus.

  A woman was sitting, alone, on one of the bench seats on Butler’s Wharf outside the Gastrodome.

  ‘Clare,’ he said, loudly, sharply.

  In the room, Novak sprang to his feet.

  ‘Down there,’ Allbeury said.

  Both men ran.

  Chapter One Hundred Seven

  Lizzie had managed, as well as she could with her bad arm and throbbing fingers, to get herself into a huddled position, knees drawn up, right arm around them.

  She felt increasingly cold.

  And scared.

  She’d tried telling herself that there was no need to feel so afraid, because the worst had already happened – she’d fallen down a lift shaft and survived. It was just a matter of waiting now, for help to come. As it would.

  The children.

  Clare had said that she’d done it for the children.

  Killed.

  But her children were safe with Gilly, and Christopher – wherever he was – would not go back to Marlow, not after last night, and Clare Novak, wherever she might have gone, was surely still in London, and ill, perhaps having a miscarriage, so there was no reason to be afraid for Jack and Edward and Sophie now.

  What if no one comes?

  They would, she told herself fiercely. It was self-indulgent to allow herself to think otherwise, because Mike Novak worked in this building, and even if it was late on a Friday, the agency had been left in too much chaos for it to be abandoned for the whole weekend. Even if Novak didn’t come back, or Robin – she wished it would be Robin – eventually someone would come: the cleaner, or maybe the police.

  Or Clare.

  Chapter One Hundred Eight

  Novak reached Clare first, sat down beside her in silence, put his arms around her, gently, protectively. There was a sheen of perspiration on her face, clearly visible in the lamplight, but she was shivering.

  ‘You’re cold,’ he said, took off his leather jacket, put it around her.

  She began to smile at him – and then a cramp distorted her face.