No Escape

by Hilary Norman

  ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘it might help.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Lizzie asked. ‘Isn’t it private?’

  ‘I think I’d like you to see it,’ Jack said. ‘If you don’t mind.’

  Her tears came again while she was reading it, holding the paper between the two good fingers of her right hand.

  ‘It’s rather beautiful, isn’t it?’ she said when she’d finished. ‘Just very, very sad.’ She looked at Jack. ‘Did it help you at all?’

  ‘A bit.’

  She had the sense, then, that he wanted, at last, to talk to her.

  ‘It’s terribly hard, isn’t it, my darling?’

  Jack nodded, hesitated. ‘It’s all of it,’ he said.

  She knew he was remembering the last night, waited for him to go on.

  ‘I keep feeling . . .’ He stopped.

  ‘What, my love?’

  ‘That it’s my fault.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t,’ Lizzie said, appalled.

  ‘But he left because of me.’ His mouth worked. ‘I made him go.’ He shut his eyes, and tears squeezed between his lashes and rolled down his cheeks. ‘If I hadn’t gone for him like that . . .’

  ‘No.’ All Lizzie’s anger with Christopher returned full force. ‘Absolutely not, Jack, do you hear me?’

  He opened his eyes. ‘But it’s true, Mum.’

  ‘It is not true,’ she told him, hating Clare Novak for depriving her of the ability to properly hold her son when he needed her most. ‘Jack, you have to listen to me on this, you have to believe me.’

  ‘But don’t you blame me?’ he asked her.

  ‘How could I possibly blame you for trying to protect me?’ Lizzie picked up the letter again. ‘Even your father felt proud of you for it – he knew you were right.’

  ‘But that’s only because of how I am,’ Jack said. ‘Because of this.’ He looked down at the chair, at his useless legs, and the tears were angrier now, fiercer.

  ‘Please tell me you don’t mean that,’ Lizzie said quietly, all her pain gathering in a hot ball in her chest. ‘Jack, please, I mean it – tell me you know that isn’t true.’

  ‘He said he supposed it wasn’t,’ Lizzie told her mother later that night. ‘But I think he was saying that just to make me feel better.’ She paused. ‘I get the feeling that Jack wants to know, to really try to understand what happened that night.’

  ‘And all the other nights,’ Angela said quietly, still shattered by what Lizzie had finally, after so many years, shared with her about Christopher, her perfect son-in-law.

  ‘I won’t tell him that,’ Lizzie said decisively. ‘Not now, or ever.’

  ‘What about Edward?’

  ‘I don’t think Edward will want to know,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘But if he does?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Lizzie paused. ‘Perhaps, if he asks me when he’s older.’ She looked at her mother. ‘Jack’s only ten years old,’ she said. ‘God knows he’s been robbed of so much already, has more than enough suffering ahead of him.’

  ‘I know,’ Angela said, gently.

  ‘I’ll be damned if I’ll allow every last fragment of childhood to be stolen from him,’ Lizzie said passionately.

  ‘No,’ Angela said.

  ‘You do agree with me, don’t you, on this?’ Lizzie asked.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Angela said.

  Chapter One Hundred Nineteen

  Christopher’s funeral, on the third Monday in November, a day that dawned foggy, then cleared into an almost perfect late autumn afternoon, was small and private, but deeply moving, having been arranged by Lizzie and Guy Wade, in consultation with the children. ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, chosen by Sophie; ‘Jerusalem’, by Jack, because he knew his father had loved it; and a reading by Guy, of ‘Funeral Blues’ – Edward’s choice, because he and Christopher had both wept right through it in Four Weddings.

  ‘I expect you’ll be organizing a memorial service in a while,’ Dalia Weinberg said afterwards, back at the house.

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘I think you may have to,’ Dalia pressed. ‘So many people are going to want a chance to pay their last respects.’

  ‘They’ll have to wait—’ Guy came to her aid ‘—depending on the children.’

  Guy had been a rock to Lizzie after she had, at last, decided to confide in him over his brother’s weaknesses.

  ‘I remember him telling me once,’ he’d said one afternoon while Moira was rehearsing for a concert in London, ‘about some dope-induced romps at university. But I never guessed for a second that he had any kind of real problem.’

  ‘It’s all just conjecture now, isn’t it?’ Lizzie said.

  ‘I do know one thing for certain,’ Guy said. ‘His love for you and the children was utterly real, Lizzie. Knowing he was hurting you must have tormented him.’

  ‘Maybe if I’d left him long ago,’ Lizzie said, ‘it might have been better for him.’

  ‘I’m not sure he could have stood that,’ Guy said. ‘And we both know why you felt you had to stay.’

  ‘Yet now the children have to go on without their father anyway.’

  ‘His fault,’ Guy said. ‘Not yours, Lizzie.’

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘You do believe that, don’t you?’ Guy asked her.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Lizzie said, and smiled at him.

  Ten days after the funeral, at lunchtime on a school day, Allbeury came to call. Others had visited in the past few days; Susan Blake and Howard Dunn, and the Szells, and a couple of the children’s friends, and, on official business, Jim Keenan.

  But Allbeury had stayed away till now.

  They spoke, for a while, in the drawing room filled with memories of life with Christopher, about the children and how they were coping, and Lizzie told him it had been Jack’s eleventh birthday at the weekend, and Allbeury said that he couldn’t begin to imagine how rough that must have been for him.

  ‘Beyond rough,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘How are you doing?’

  She raised her plastered arm and fingers. ‘Not easily.’

  ‘And otherwise?’

  ‘Thinking about the children helps a lot,’ she said.

  He asked, a while later, how much she had been told about Clare Novak and the prequel to what had sent her plunging into that lift shaft.

  ‘Not too much,’ Lizzie said, ‘because I may have to testify against her – if they feel she’s fit to stand trial.’ She paused. ‘Detective Inspector Keenan came to see me. With a woman detective.’

  ‘Helen Shipley?’

  ‘No,’ Lizzie said, with a wry smile. ‘No broken leg.’

  She knew now, of course, how close her brush with death had been, knew at least a little more about the two women with whose murders Clare Novak had now been charged. And she knew, also just a little, about Allbeury’s links with those women.

  ‘DI Keenan said you’d been trying to help them.’

  ‘Much good I did them,’ Allbeury said quietly.

  ‘He said they were both in marriages with violent men,’ Lizzie said. ‘Marriages they felt trapped in.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Like me, she thought, but did not say.

  ‘He said he thought you were trying to help them escape.’ She paused. ‘He’s under the impression it’s something you’ve already done for other women.’

  The room was silent but for the faint ticking of the carriage clock on the mantel.

  ‘Why?’ She knew this was one of the questions she needed answered, if their friendship was to continue. ‘Why do you do that, Robin? Why do you want to do it?’

  Allbeury sat for a moment or two, then took a breath. ‘A number of people have asked me that over the years,’ he said. ‘But you’re the first I’ve wanted to answer.’

  Lizzie said nothing, just waited.

  ‘My mother committed suicide when I was twelve,’ All
beury said. ‘Because she felt she had no alternative. She thought she was beyond help, that because most people thought my father a decent man – which he was not – no one would believe she had a right to be unhappy.’ He paused. ‘She had no real life of her own, no career, no money to speak of. No escape.’

  Still, Lizzie did not speak.

  ‘She told me all about it in a letter. She left me feeling that I ought to have known, to have found a way to stop her, help her.’

  ‘You were twelve,’ Lizzie said. ‘You couldn’t have helped.’

  ‘I know that now, but not then.’ He paused. ‘It did some damage, I suppose, perhaps even stopped me marrying. I’m not like my father, thankfully, but that hasn’t prevented me from being afraid I might possess the potential to wound, as he did.’ He shrugged. ‘It did some good, too, I hope. Years after my mother’s death, after I’d become successful, made more money than I needed and learned a few things about power and influence, I found myself in a position to try and help women like her.’

  Lizzie sat very still for a second and then said: ‘Like me.’

  ‘In one sense, perhaps just a little like you.’

  ‘Is that why you befriended me, Robin?’ she asked. ‘Did you think I might want to escape?’

  ‘I thought it, yes,’ he said. ‘But it wasn’t what drew me to you.’

  ‘Are you?’ Lizzie asked. ‘Drawn to me?’

  ‘Very much so,’ Allbeury replied.

  ‘I can’t help wondering,’ Lizzie said, ‘what you think of me, for staying in my marriage.’ Her head was aching, and she rubbed her right temple with her two good fingers. ‘I have enough money to be independent. I could have left.’

  ‘You stayed because of the children,’ he said.

  ‘I did,’ Lizzie agreed. ‘And see where it’s got them now.’

  ‘You couldn’t have known,’ Allbeury said.

  ‘Couldn’t I?’ she asked him painfully. ‘Clare Novak told me she’d killed other women “like me—” ’ that phrase again ‘—and isn’t this what she meant?’

  ‘Clare’s very sick,’ Allbeury said. ‘Very disturbed.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lizzie agreed. ‘But wasn’t it surely always on the cards that my children would find out the truth about their father one day, regardless of my lies?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Allbeury said. ‘But you were only hoping to protect them from the pain for as long as possible.’

  ‘I think,’ Lizzie said, ‘I’ve been a dreadful coward.’

  She waited until they were in the entrance hall as he prepared to leave before she asked one of the other questions gnawing at her.

  ‘Why were those things about us on your computer, Robin? For Clare to hack into, to steal?’

  ‘I did some research into you,’ Allbeury said simply, ‘because I liked you, and you intrigued me, and I’m a curious man, and I wanted to know more about you.’ He paused. ‘And then I found that I was worried about you. No other, more sinister reason.’

  ‘What about Christopher?’

  ‘That was different,’ Allbeury admitted. ‘I’d sensed that something was amiss with you both, and, frankly, I suddenly realized that I didn’t trust him.’

  Lizzie said nothing, still too shaken.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Lizzie,’ he said, softly. ‘I know very well that if I’d minded my own business, Clare might scarcely have known of your existence.’

  She had to wait another moment before she felt steady enough to speak.

  ‘If I hadn’t asked you that,’ she said, ‘would you have told me?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said, ‘in time.’ His smile was small, wry. ‘Maybe only because I knew it would probably all come out in due course, anyway.’

  ‘That’s honest of you, at least.’

  ‘I suspect,’ Allbeury said, ‘that if I weren’t honest with you, Lizzie, I could have no hope of any long-term friendship with you.’

  Lizzie looked straight into his face.

  ‘You’re right about that,’ she said.

  Chapter One Hundred Twenty

  Allbeury went to visit Shipley – still on sick leave – took her flowers, pleased by the warmth of her smile when she accepted them and somewhat touched by the rather embarrassed way she limped about her small, chaotic flat hunting out a vase in which to put them. Over a pot of tea and chocolate finger biscuits, he learned from her that John Bolsover had now been released, but that, however devoutly Shipley and Lynne’s sister, Pam Wakefield, might hope for him to be rearrested for his true crimes against Lynne, that would not now happen.

  ‘I gather,’ she told him, ‘he had a fairly grim time inside.’

  ‘Some small comfort for Lynne’s sister,’ Allbeury said.

  ‘She says she’s going to go on keeping a close eye on the kids,’ Shipley said. ‘And at least, from what she’s told me, it seems he never laid a finger on them.’

  He asked her what she had heard regarding Clare Novak.

  ‘Is that why you came?’ Shipley asked. ‘I did wonder.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Allbeury said. ‘I rather enjoyed our spats, your conspicuous dislike of me and your tenacity.’

  Shipley shrugged. ‘I can’t tell you much about Novak,’ she said. ‘You probably already know she’s being assessed in Rampton. Jim Keenan might know more.’ She smiled again. ‘Doubt he’ll tell you much though.’

  Keenan did know more, was still learning, most of the information coming his way via the specialists from the IT department at the forensic laboratory analysing both the computer at Novak Investigations, and the one belonging to Nick Parry, Clare’s patient, who had, it was now becoming clear, helped his carer – enjoying the challenge – to hack into any number of systems, and was, as things stood, more likely to face charges relating to computer security than Clare was, ultimately, for murder.

  She was, Keenan was reasonably certain, insane, though the disturbingly cool calculation of her crimes and, until the end, her sheer efficiency, might yet speak against that insanity. Clare had been highly manipulative, using Mike and the agency, first and foremost, and their client Robin Allbeury (of whom she had written in a password-protected file that she considered him a user of women, possibly sick and probably perverted). She had used her own skills plus Nick Parry’s isolation and passion for computers to invade hospital systems and, when that had been inadequate, she had wheedled facts out of Maureen Donnelly or visited A&E departments where she was known and trusted, scooping up titbits of information on cases that interested her.

  ‘Cases.’ DC Karen Dean noted the plural at one of their meetings.

  ‘So there could be more victims,’ Terry Reed said.

  ‘She’d certainly shown interest in many more women than Patston and Bolsover,’ Keenan confirmed.

  Dating back to her breakdown, it seemed that Clare’s PC had become her only truly trusted confidant. In it, she had kept detailed, regularly updated records relating to her targets, her cases (including Lizzie Wade) – all neatly referenced with what seemed to be partially dates of birth – all of whom, Clare wrote, had lacked moral courage. They had all married brutes, yet they, she claimed, were the really guilty parties for remaining with their husbands and perpetuating the risk to their children because they were too afraid of what leaving might entail.

  ‘And,’ Keenan said, ‘in Lynne Bolsover’s case, the husband had bullied her into having an abortion.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Dean said, visiting the possible motivation that Helen Shipley had previously ascribed to Allbeury, ‘she believed she was giving the children a chance. Getting rid of their weak mothers, then getting the men put away.’

  ‘You should be a shrink,’ Reed said disparagingly.

  No one had, as yet, been able to dredge up any deep-rooted motivation for the crimes. Malcolm Killin, her father, a tired, sick man, had no tales of trauma to offer, other than the death of his own wife when Clare was still a young girl. They had her history of breakdown and depression, her premature departure fr
om nursing and, most significantly, the loss of her first baby.

  Keenan had unearthed the newborn infant’s post-mortem report and the transcript of the inquest into the death, both making it clear that, whatever Clare had told Mike Novak about killing their child, it had to have been a lie.

  ‘How she must have hated him,’ Dean said, sickened, ‘to lie about that.’

  ‘Unless,’ Keenan had said, ‘she was doing her best to make him hate her.’

  ‘What a fucking fruitcake,’ Reed said.

  ‘What a bloody tragedy,’ Keenan said.

  Another tragedy had been exercising Keenan’s mind – a nightmare replaying over and over in his memory – that of little Irina Patston being taken away from Sandra Finch.

  He’d seen Joanne’s mother several times since that day. Tony Patston was awaiting trial for offences relating to the illegal adoption, and the file regarding his probable assaults on the child had been sent to the CPS, but Sandra’s anguish continued undiminished.

  She had pleaded with Keenan to tell her what he could about Joanne’s death, and he had, since it was just a matter of time till she heard it at the inquest, shared with her, off the record, some of the details they had gleaned from Clare Novak’s PC.

  That it had been Clare who had phoned Joanne that last morning, identifying herself as Novak’s partner, telling Joanne that Allbeury urgently needed her to sign last-minute papers relating to her escape with Irina. That after Joanne had left Irina with Sandra, she had gone to meet Clare on the green outside the library in Hall Lane, where Clare had suggested it might be safer if Joanne filled out the forms in the privacy of her car and away from passers-by. That Clare had brought a flask with her, from which she had poured Joanne a cup of coffee laced with diazepam. That the tranquillizers had acted swiftly enough for Clare to drive Joanne into Epping Forest, then drag her to the spot where she had stabbed her – using her own medical expertise by piercing the jugular first, then covering that skill by inflicting the other wounds.

  ‘Thank you for telling me,’ Sandra Finch had said, when Keenan had finished.

  ‘I wish,’ he had said, ‘there was something more I could do for you.’