No Escape (31 page)

And then, suddenly, Sandra
knew
why, and once she had seen it, she couldn’t understand why she had never done so before.

For the longest time, when they’d first tried to adopt, Tony and Joanne hadn’t been able to make the system work for them, and then, out of nowhere, they’d found a way and
after that, in a matter of months, Irina had been theirs.

She waited until her granddaughter was asleep and Dean was in the kitchen making spaghetti for their dinner, to go in search of Tony.

He was in the garage, doing something under the bonnet of his car.

‘Dinner ready?’ he asked, seeing her coming through the side door.

‘Soon.’ Sandra closed the door behind her, drew a breath and plunged straight in. ‘Tony, I’ve worked out why you’ve been so odd with the police and not wanting to
talk about the adoption or even go on TV.’

He straightened up, his face a mask. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘It wasn’t legal, was it?’ Her voice was hushed. ‘Getting Irina.’

‘Sandra—’

‘I just wish you and Joanne had told me,’ she said, having to get it out. ‘I’d have understood – how could you think I wouldn’t? I’d have helped, done
anything—’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Tony hissed, cutting her off, ‘keep your voice down.’

‘It’s all right,’ Sandra said. ‘Karen’s cooking and Irina’s asleep, and I
am
keeping my voice down, and that’s just what I’m trying to tell
you. You can trust me, Tony. I’d never do anything to—’

‘Bloody hell, Sandra, just shut
up
about it.’ Tony slammed down the bonnet, cheeks red. ‘If you want to help, just keep it to yourself and don’t talk about it. God
knows I’ve lived to regret the whole bloody thing.’

Sandra stared at him. ‘Not having Irina, surely?’

‘No, of
course
not having her, and if you’d just shut up and
listen
for once.’ His eyes were desperate. ‘Don’t you understand, it’s all going
round and round in my head, and I don’t know what to
do
.’ He turned on the last word, slapped both hands on the roof of the car. ‘I’m beginning to think it
might
be better to tell them about Irina, because it’s got to be a sodding sight better getting done for illegal adoption than for
murder
, hasn’t it?’

Speechless, his mother-in-law went on staring at his back, and in the silence Tony felt the stare and turned around, his own expression horrified.

‘You don’t think, for one second, that I did that to Joanne?’

‘No,’ Sandra said. ‘Of course not, it isn’t that.’ And it was true, she didn’t believe he could have done it, not
that.
‘But don’t you
realize that if you tell them the truth about Irina, they might take her away?’

‘Of course I do,’ Tony said.

‘Don’t you care?’ Sandra asked, disbelieving.

‘Won’t make much difference to me, will it,’ he answered, ‘if I get life for killing her mother?’

The side door opened again, and Karen Dean popped her head around it.

‘Pasta’s ready,’ she told them. ‘If you are.’

Shipley got to Theydon Bois early on Thursday morning hoping for the chance of another chat with Keenan.

He’d got in just ten minutes after her, holding a bag containing a jam doughnut and a capuccino.

‘Would have got two of each,’ he said as they walked up the stairs together, ‘if I’d known you were coming.’

‘Sorry to land on you like this,’ Shipley said.

‘No, you’re not,’ Keenan said.

She waited till they were in his office, taking in the framed photos of a dark-haired woman she assumed to be his wife and three children photographed at various ages, none much seeming to
resemble the thin, worn-looking DI, while he put the breakfast on his desk and hung up his raincoat.

‘Yours?’ She felt a swift, surprising prick of envy.

Keenan nodded, smiled. ‘Afraid I’m not gentleman enough to give you my capuccino, but I’ll fetch you a cup of machine stuff if you want it.’

‘I’ll pass, thanks.’

Keenan removed the plastic lid from his coffee cup, drank a little, then wiped the trace of froth from his top lip. ‘You compared the reports?’

‘I did.’ She ran efficiently through her own analysis.

Keenan listened attentively, waited till she was finished, then compressed his lips for a second before speaking. ‘I think – I hope – I’m an open-minded copper, DI
Shipley.’

‘Helen,’ she said. ‘But?’

‘But everything, so far, in my case, still points to Patston.’

‘With no signs of violence at the home or garage, and the crime scene being miles away? And the fact that Joanne really
did
go out when he said she did, left Irina with her grandma,
also like he said?’

‘Doesn’t mean she didn’t see Patston later,’ Keenan said. ‘Drop by at the garage, or meet him for lunch. She had her passport with her – maybe he said he was
going to book them a holiday.’

‘You’re reaching,’ Shipley said.

‘I know,’ Keenan said.

One of the phones on his desk rang and he picked up, listened for several seconds, scribbling a few notes on a pad, thanked the person at the other end and put the phone down.

‘Joanne’s GP prescribed diazepam for her several months ago,’ he told Shipley. ‘And since there are no pills at home now, she either finished them some time back, or
threw them out – or maybe Patston slipped them in her morning cuppa or juice.’ He glanced down at the notepad. ‘We’ve got a librarian and another woman at South Chingford
Library who both remember Joanne being there a few weeks ago talking to a man while her daughter looked at books.’

‘Allbeury?’ Shipley said.

‘Middle-aged, well-dressed, dark hair, greying.’ Keenan smiled. ‘Corroborates his story.’

‘I still don’t trust him.’

‘I’ve had a good look at him since yesterday afternoon, as you’ve undoubtedly done before me. The man’s squeaky clean.’

‘At the very least,’ Shipley said, ‘I don’t trust his motivations.’

‘People’s motivations for all kinds of things often seem strange to others. Doesn’t make them deranged, or evil killers.’ Keenan shrugged. ‘Maybe Robin Allbeury
really does like helping women, no strings attached.’

‘Maybe,’ Shipley said dubiously.

Keenan unwrapped his doughnut, laid it on top of its paper bag.

Shipley took the hint. ‘I’ll leave you in peace.’

‘Mind a word of advice from a bloke who’s been around a while?’

‘Not at all,’ she said, standing up.

‘Hunches have their uses,’ he said. ‘I believe in them, always have. But they’re only useful so long as we don’t let them become obsessions.’

‘Think I’m obsessed with Allbeury and Novak?’

Keenan looked up, saw it was a genuine question.

‘Not quite yet,’ he said.

Nick Parry had finished the laborious business of showering and drying, most of which he could manage solo these days, though when Clare or one of his other carers was on the
scene the process was unquestionably easier, and he’d got past the worst of his humiliation a long while ago – though that, too, varied depending upon exactly who was helping him. Clare
Novak was his favourite, he thought, overall, partly because she was efficient and gentle, matter-of-fact but sensitive about the uglier essential procedures he still hated; partly because he
always felt she genuinely liked being with him, talking to him.

And she gave far and away the best aromatherapy massages.

She was doing that now, and professionally detached and expert as she was about what she did with her hands, Parry couldn’t help remembering a couple of other great massages he’d had
before
, when he’d been a normal, active, inquisitive young male. In one way, of course, those memories were acutely painful, leaving him depressed as hell, but on the other hand, he
had decided a while back that having memories had to be better than never having had the experiences in the first place.

‘Go on telling me about last night,’ he said now.

‘Relax,’ Clare told him.

‘I need you to talk to stop me thinking horny.’

‘Nothing stops you thinking horny, Parry,’ she said lightheartedly.

‘Come on, Novak,’ he countered. ‘You know I’m a safe pair of ears.’

She had been talking until a few moments before, but then she’d stopped, quite abruptly, feeling disloyal because she’d been telling him about the previous evening’s dinner
with Mike, who’d wanted to take her out to celebrate. She’d chosen instead to cook a stir-fry at home, and Mike had wanted her to open up about her fears for the new pregnancy, had
tried convincing her yet again that last time had not been in any way her fault, that it had been timing and fate, that if she hadn’t been alone, if he’d been with her, it would have
been different.

‘He says it won’t happen again,’ she told Parry now. ‘That they told us there was no reason for anything like that to ever go wrong again. He says that anyway, this time
he’s going to stick so close, he’ll probably drive me nuts.’

‘You’re lucky,’ Parry said.

‘I know,’ Clare said, and put more neroli and apricot kernel oil onto her palms. ‘He thinks maybe I ought to take it easier, cut down my hours.’

‘But you love working.’

‘He said he wasn’t saying I shouldn’t work, just do less.’ Clare paused, worked some oil into his left calf muscle.

‘Did he want you to stop coming here?’

Clare smiled. ‘He suggested it.’

‘Maybe he’s right,’ Parry said.

‘He’s not right at all,’ Clare said, ‘which I told him.’

‘Was he okay with that?’

‘He was fine.’ She switched to his right leg. ‘Mike never tries pushing me into things I’m not happy with.’

‘But?’ Parry waited.

‘I asked him if he wasn’t scared, too.’ She paused. ‘He thought I meant just about the baby.’

‘But you didn’t mean just about that, did you?’ Parry said.

Clare shook her head, stopped massaging. ‘There are so many things to be scared of in this world, if you let yourself.’

‘You’re thinking about the little girl, aren’t you?’ Parry asked. ‘Irina.’

‘Yes,’ Clare said. ‘I am.’

‘And her mother.’

‘Of course,’ Clare said.

‘Poor cow,’ Parry said.

Joanne’s car having offered up nothing of interest or use, and blanks still being drawn on all other lines of enquiry, Keenan waited until Saturday morning to turn up a
little more heat under Tony Patston’s already agitated backside, by telephoning to ask if he’d mind coming to Theydon Bois for another chat.

‘What kind of a chat?’ Tony asked, defensively.

‘We’d just like to clarify a few points.’

Something beneath Keenan’s pleasantness chilled Tony to the marrow.

‘If I wanted,’ he asked, carefully, ‘to bring someone with me—’

‘What kind of someone, Mr Patston?’

‘A lawyer,’ Tony said. ‘Just to keep an eye on things, you know.’ He was sweating, knowing how it had to be sounding to the policeman. ‘It’s not what you
think,’ he said, quickly.

‘By all means,’ Keenan said smoothly, ‘bring your solicitor along.’ He paused. ‘Would you like to make your own way to us, Mr Patston, or would you like us to pick
you up?’

Tony said that he would drive.

‘This isn’t going to take too long, is it?’ he asked about three hours later, seated in an interview room opposite Keenan and Reed.

It had taken him more than ninety minutes to find anyone – scrabbling frantically through the Yellow Pages for solicitors quoting 24-hour emergency numbers – free and willing to meet
him at Theydon Bois on a Saturday morning.

The man who sat beside him now, Richard Slattery, was, if nothing else, solid, in that there was a great deal of him, but beyond that and the fact that he’d been available and, for a fat
fee, prepared to come along at a moment’s notice, Tony had no idea if he was any shakes at all as a lawyer.

Better than nothing. Hopefully.

‘You’re not under arrest, Mr Patston,’ Keenan said clearly, ‘and you’re free to leave.’

‘It’s all right,’ Tony said, his stomach churning. ‘Only—’

‘You’re entitled to legal advice,’ Keenan went on, ‘but it’s clear you’ve made your own arrangements.’ He nodded at Slattery.

‘Only,’ Tony said, ‘I don’t want to leave Irina for too long, you see.’

‘She’s with your mother-in-law, isn’t she?’ Keenan asked.

‘Yes,’ Tony said, ‘but she’s fretting for her mum, obviously.’

There were three plastic cups of coffee on the table. Slattery was drinking his, making tiny lapping sounds as he did so, like a little cat, which Tony found odd for a man of his size. Neither
Keenan or Reed had picked up their cups yet, and Tony hadn’t dared touch his because he was scared his hand would shake.

‘I’m now going to switch on the tape recorder,’ Keenan said.

Terry Reed unwrapped two cassette tapes, inserted them into the recorder at the wall edge of the table, and Keenan reached across and turned it on.

‘You love your little girl, do you?’ DS Reed asked.

‘Of course I do,’ Tony said, thinking again about the strangeness of the fact that since Joanne’s death he had been discovering that he really did love Irina much more than
he’d realized.

‘If you love her,’ Keenan asked, quietly, ‘why do you hit her?’

‘I don’t,’ Tony said, reddening. ‘Who says I do?’

‘We have reason to believe,’ Keenan went on, ‘that Irina has been punched, or worse, on several occasions, her injuries sufficiently serious to necessitate her being taken to
Waltham General hospital.’

‘I wonder,’ Richard Slattery said, leaning forward, his large balloon stomach rubbing the edge of the table, ‘if I could have a few moments alone with my client?’

‘No,’ Tony said, rather loudly and abruptly.

‘Mr Patston,’ Slattery said.

‘No,’ Tony said. ‘We don’t need to be alone.’

He’d always prided himself on recognizing a golden opportunity when it was dangled right under his nose, and the way things were looking this might be the only one for a bloody long time,
and, Christ forgive him, Joanne couldn’t be any more hurt than she had been.