No Escape

by Hilary Norman

  ‘Poor choice of word, Robin,’ her voice said.

  At eight-fifteen, Keenan was stuck in traffic near Fenchurch Street, and he didn’t know what the hell was going on in the city tonight, and maybe he’d just been influenced by the over-intense Helen Shipley, but his own gut was telling him that something bad was going to happen if he didn’t get the fuck moving.

  And he was just beginning to wonder if he’d been very wrong trying to deal with this on his own, and if maybe he ought, after all, to try and rustle up some local help, when, miracle of miracles, the jam ahead of him cleared away, and he put his foot down hard.

  ‘I can’t come with you now.’

  Standing in Curlew Street, Novak read the faces of the two paramedics as he said that just after they’d put Clare into the ambulance, and he knew they thought him callous, and Clare, her face half hidden by an oxygen mask, eyes open again, made no further attempt to speak.

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ he told her.

  As they closed the ambulance doors, Clare was looking straight at him, and Novak had a great urge to howl.

  Instead, he turned and ran.

  Chapter One Hundred Fifteen

  Allbeury’s hands were shaking with tension and effort, but he had completed the knotting, working near the lift shaft, talking to Lizzie as he laboured, filling her in on what he was doing, and now he was back in the office seeking something more solid than himself to which to tie one end of his makeshift rope.

  ‘Filing cabinets are heavy,’ he called to Lizzie, ‘but they’re a bit far in, and anyway, they’d probably tip over.’

  ‘What about the office door?’ Lizzie, glad of the diversion, had been trying to work things out too. ‘That must be reasonably solid.’

  He went to take a look. ‘Not sure about the hinges.’

  ‘Right,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘I’ll just have to use my weight,’ he said, ‘find some way to anchor myself. It’ll be fine, and anyway, the fire people should be here any second now.’

  He found one end of his cable rope and tied it around his waist, realized that if it were actually to be used it would rip through his shirt and flesh, but that was just too bad.

  The lift gave another groan. Despite herself, Lizzie whimpered.

  ‘Right.’ Allbeury crouched beside the open shaft. ‘I’m going to lower this contraption to you now, Lizzie. I’ve attached my belt at your end, cut a few more holes in it so it’ll fit.’

  ‘It’ll still need pulling though, won’t it?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I could manage that with one arm and my fingers the way—’

  ‘God, I’m a bloody idiot,’ Allbeury exclaimed. ‘Of course you can’t manage that.’ He stood up again, began untying the rope around his own waist. ‘It’s okay, though, I just need another minute or two.’

  The cable-rope thudded to the floor at his feet and he fumbled with the belt, and it wasn’t easy, even for him, with the cumbersome heavy lengths attached to it, and he was sweating now, silently cursing the emergency services for taking so long.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Lizzie’s voice enquired from below.

  ‘I’m making a kind of harness that we should, with a bit of luck, be able to get over your head and shoulders, and if I get this knot right . . .’ He grimaced with concentration. ‘I’m hoping it’ll tighten automatically if need be.’

  ‘If the lift crashes,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘Shut up, Lizzie,’ Allbeury said.

  ‘Were you ever a scout?’

  Lizzie remembered that Jack had once said he wished he could join the movement after hearing his brother talking about it, but then the very next day Edward had changed his mind, and Lizzie and Christopher had both known it was only because he hated Jack feeling left out of anything. Lizzie smiled now, tried to lift her right hand to wipe the tears away, but her fingers were too painfully swollen.

  ‘I asked if you were ever a scout, Robin,’ she said.

  ‘Shush,’ his voice said.

  She heard it then, too.

  Footsteps on the staircase, then a muffled curse.

  ‘Is it them?’ she called.

  ‘Up here!’ Allbeury shouted. ‘Top floor, and get a move on!’

  ‘It’d help if the damned lift was working.’

  Allbeury recognized the voice even before he saw him.

  ‘DI Keenan,’ he said. ‘Hoped you were the fire brigade, but you’ll have to do.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’ Keenan, out of breath, arrived on the landing, stared at Allbeury and the coils of cable in his hands. ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’

  ‘Short version,’ Allbeury said. ‘Woman trapped in lift shaft with broken arm and fingers.’

  ‘Probably broken,’ Lizzie added from below.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Keenan said again.

  ‘I second that,’ Lizzie agreed.

  ‘That’s Lizzie Piper,’ Allbeury said.

  Keenan scratched the back of his head. ‘The cook?’

  ‘That’s me,’ Lizzie said.

  The policeman went gingerly to the open shaft. ‘You sound in good spirits.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘Or I would be if this lift would stop shaking.’

  ‘Christ,’ Keenan said.

  ‘It’s probably sounder than it seems,’ Allbeury told the DI, ‘but just in case . . .’

  Keenan looked at the cable rope. ‘You were planning on getting that down to her?’ He took a look. ‘Good idea.’

  ‘With two of us to anchor it,’ Allbeury said, ‘it should do the job.’

  Keenan nodded. ‘Streets are gridlocked – probably why the brigade’s not here yet.’ He bent to check that the belt end, around the other man’s waist, was secure. ‘The Novaks not here, I take it?’

  ‘Last I saw of them,’ Allbeury said, ‘they were by the river below my place.’ He paused, looked into the DI’s face. ‘Just so you know, it was Clare Novak who did this to Lizzie.’

  ‘She said she’d killed other people,’ Lizzie called up. ‘She told me.’

  ‘But she wasn’t, I gather,’ Keenan said, still absorbing the information, ‘the one who shoved DI Shipley down the staircase.’

  ‘What staircase?’ Lizzie asked.

  ‘Nothing to do with this,’ Allbeury said, and raised a finger to his lips.

  Keenan got the message, nodded.

  ‘Fill you in later,’ Allbeury said quietly. ‘How is DI Shipley?’

  ‘Broken leg.’ Keenan checked the knots on the harness end. ‘St Thomas’s.’

  ‘Who’s DI Shipley?’ Lizzie asked.

  The lift groaned.

  ‘Do you think,’ she said, ‘you could hurry?’

  ‘Any minute now,’ Allbeury said.

  ‘Back up,’ Keenan told him. ‘Other side of the door, and hang on tight – hook your legs round something if you can.’ He watched as the other man backed away. ‘Tell me when you’re secure.’

  Allbeury vanished into the office, the cable-rope stretching behind him.

  ‘Ready,’ he called.

  ‘Good.’ Keenan approached the lift shaft again. ‘Lizzie, I’m going to try getting this thing down to you now, all right?’

  He glanced sideways, put out his right hand, gripped the gate firmly, stood with his feet apart and not too near the edge, then lowered the noose-like harness, grunting loudly as it dropped.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Allbeury called, hearing the grunt.

  ‘Nothing,’ Keenan said. ‘Just heavier than I expected.’

  ‘You okay, Lizzie?’ Allbeury called.

  ‘So far.’

  She looked up, saw the thing hanging, swinging.

  ‘Think you’ll be able to get it over your head and shoulders?’ Keenan asked.

  ‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘You still secure, Allbeury?’ Keenan called.

  ‘Okay this end.’

  Keenan lowered more rope.

  ‘That’s eno
ugh,’ Lizzie said. ‘Let me see if I can reach it, hook my wrist through it, maybe . . .’

  She lifted her right arm, stretched a little, cried out in pain and then fear as the lift shifted again, groaned again.

  ‘It’s moving,’ she said warily.

  They all heard it then – another sound.

  The door down below crashing open, feet on the way up, running feet.

  ‘Don’t touch the cables!’ Mike Novak’s voice bellowed frantically.

  Keenan, Lizzie and Allbeury all froze.

  ‘The power’s on!’ Novak yelled.

  In the distance, coming swiftly, mercifully, closer, they all heard sirens.

  Chapter One Hundred Sixteen

  The power, they later learned, had not been on.

  That had just been Clare, almost at the end of herself, twisting the knife in Novak one last time. Lizzie, extricated by the firemen with relative ease, had been taken to St Thomas’s, temporarily euphoric from pain relief and the sheer joy of being alive, Allbeury beside her in the ambulance, holding her hand.

  Keenan had driven Novak to the hospital to see Clare, talking to him as they drove, working to sort facts out in his own mind in order to pass them on with a degree of clarity to the local boys.

  ‘She’s ill,’ Novak said. ‘The Clare I know would never, ever have hurt anyone.’ He paused, shaking his head. ‘She’s a nurse, the gentlest person I’ve ever known.’

  ‘She told you about it, did she?’ Keenan asked gently.

  Novak nodded.

  ‘What exactly did she tell you?’

  ‘About Robin’s friend, Lizzie,’ Novak said. ‘About trying to hurt her.’

  ‘Lizzie Piper,’ Keenan said. ‘Mrs Wade.’ One bit of confusion, at least, that had already been tidied for him by Allbeury.

  ‘And others,’ Mike Novak said, softly.

  ‘Yes,’ Keenan said, still gently. ‘She told Mrs Wade about them too.’

  He could only begin to imagine Novak’s agony at that confirmation, wondered exactly how much he did know – very little, he suspected – and knew that now was not the moment for pushing, that it would all come soon enough.

  ‘I’ll see what I can find out about your wife,’ he said when they reached the hospital.

  He returned soon after, sat beside the shattered man, and added fresh grief to his load. ‘She lost the baby,’ he told him gently. ‘I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Novak asked.

  ‘In theatre, having a D&C.’ Keenan paused. ‘They said she’ll be fine.’

  Novak nodded.

  They let Novak see her afterwards, when she was out of recovery and in a side ward, allowed him to go in first, before the police alerted by Keenan went in to formally arrest Clare on suspicion of the attempted murder of Elizabeth Wade.

  Her face was very white.

  ‘Clare?’ He put out his hand, covered hers with it, and she didn’t pull away, just lay still and silent, not looking at him. ‘They told me about the baby.’

  She went on looking at the ceiling.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Novak said.

  He thought, was not certain, that she shook her head, very slightly, but after that, again, there was no response.

  ‘Clare, I still love you,’ he told her in despair.

  She looked at him then, no expression in her eyes.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said.

  Allbeury had stayed with Lizzie through admission, waited while they X-rayed her arm and hands, then sat with her in a cubicle during the next bout of waiting, gave her his mobile phone to use when she felt sufficiently composed, so that she could call Gilly and ask her to tell the boys and Sophie that she’d had a minor fall, but was fine and would speak to them in the morning.

  ‘I need to tell you something,’ Allbeury said when she’d finished.

  He told her about Christopher apparently following him to the agency, about his terrible, uncontrolled rage, about his knocking Helen Shipley down the stairs and subsequent escape.

  ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘I should wait till after you’d called home before I told you, in case one of the children asked you about their father and you weren’t much good at telling lies.’ He smiled. ‘But after hearing you call that nightmare a “minor fall”, I’m not quite so sure.’

  ‘Practice,’ Lizzie said, very quietly and wearily. ‘Years of it.’

  Chapter One Hundred Seventeen

  Christopher was found, late that evening, by a dentist collecting his car after a night out from the multi-storey garage below Cavendish Square.

  The news of his death was not brought to Lizzie till next morning, after she’d phoned Gilly again, confessing that she was in St Thomas’s with one broken arm and several fingers. She thought, at the time, that Gilly sounded strange, but then Edward came on the line, followed by Sophie, then Jack, desperate to know if she was really okay, and Gilly left her mind.

  It was Angela who brought her the news.

  Who sat with her, ready to help with tissues when she wept, but was confronted only by her daughter’s white and stony face.

  ‘Better,’ she said, from long-ago but bitter experience, ‘to let it out, if you can.’

  ‘I expect I will,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ Angela said, red-eyed.

  Lizzie nodded.

  ‘The children don’t know,’ her mother said, ‘obviously.’

  ‘No,’ Lizzie said. ‘I spoke to them earlier.’

  ‘We thought,’ Angela continued, unnerved by the continuing calmness, ‘Gilly and I, that you would want to tell them yourself.’ She shook her head, impatient with herself. ‘Not want,’ she said. ‘Stupid thing to say.’

  ‘I know what you mean, Mum.’

  ‘The thing is though,’ her mother went on, ‘with you stuck here . . . We can’t risk waiting too long in case it gets out.’ She snatched a breath. ‘Gilly’s doing all the right things, keeping them busy, keeping the TV off and the boys away from their computers, and there’s nothing in the papers yet, thank goodness—’

  ‘I’ll go to them now,’ Lizzie said abruptly.

  ‘You can’t,’ Angela said. ‘Look at you.’ She paused. ‘I was thinking, perhaps, I should go and fetch them, drive them into town.’

  ‘No.’ Lizzie was adamant. ‘Absolutely not.’

  Her surgeon disapproved, but finally gave in, making Lizzie sign a release, then telling her, quite paternally, that she should keep in mind her own physical and emotional ordeal, and that while she might temporarily find the strength she needed for her children, at some later point this was all bound to take its toll on her.

  Robin Allbeury arrived with a bouquet while she was waiting for the private ambulance that the surgeon had advised for her journey.

  ‘Dear God,’ he said, visibly appalled by the news about Christopher.

  Lizzie saw something very like guilt in his eyes.

  ‘Not your fault,’ she told him, almost crisply. ‘Don’t think that for a second.’

  ‘He came after me,’ Allbeury said quietly. ‘The thing with DI Shipley was wholly accidental, but he must have—’

  ‘He didn’t do this because of DI Shipley,’ Lizzie said. ‘And certainly not because of you.’ She turned her face towards the door. ‘You know, better than anyone else, why he did it.’

  They sat for a few moments, in silence.

  ‘Anything you need,’ he told her. ‘Any time, day or night.’

  ‘You’ve done more than enough for me,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘Not as far as I’m concerned,’ Allbeury said.

  Chapter One Hundred Eighteen

  Both Angela and Gilly were on hand when Lizzie broke the news to Edward, Jack and Sophie.

  Each so different in their reactions. Sophie sobbing, letting out her heartbreak, wanting to be held, to be comforted, and then, several times, like a much younger child, wanting to be told that it was not really true, that her daddy would come home again. Edward wholly bereft but
struggling for courage, finding, if not consolation, then a degree of spurious control in anger, lashing out when Lizzie tried to embrace him with her good arm.

  And Jack, utterly silent, wheeling himself into his bedroom, remaining there for hours. Neither hostile when Lizzie or his grandmother or Gilly came to check on him, nor crying. Just sitting.

  Angela came upon Lizzie, early on Saturday evening, at the bottom of the garden, finally weeping.

  ‘That’s good,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I’m not crying for me,’ Lizzie said. ‘Or for Christopher.’

  ‘For the children,’ Angela said.

  ‘God, yes,’ Lizzie said.

  Her mother held out her arms, and Lizzie came into them.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘if Jack will bear this.’

  ‘I think he will,’ Angela said. ‘He is a remarkable person.’

  The letters were not found for several more days. Lizzie agonized about whether or not to give the children theirs, since to both Edward and Jack, and probably Sophie too, they would be clear proof of their father’s suicide, a fact which had not, to date, been discussed.

  ‘It’s too much,’ she said to Angela.

  ‘I think the boys already know, more or less,’ her mother said.

  ‘It’s too big a burden,’ Lizzie said. ‘We could invent something credible.’

  ‘More lies,’ Angela said, without condemnation. ‘Catch up with you eventually.’

  Sophie, presented with her letter, appeared afraid to touch it, asked her mother to read it to her, then snatched it from Lizzie and ran sobbing to her room.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Edward said, a bit later, to Lizzie, ‘if I’m going to read mine yet.’

  ‘When you’re ready,’ she said. ‘It’s up to you, my darling.’

  ‘Have you read yours?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Lizzie replied.

  ‘Was it awful?’ Edward asked.

  ‘No,’ she answered. ‘Not awful at all. Filled with love.’

  ‘Like Dad,’ he said.

  Jack, who had by then emerged from his self-imposed isolation, found Lizzie in her study and offered her his letter.