No Escape (45 page)

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 from 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.’

‘You can,’ Sandra said. ‘Help me get Irina back.’

‘I don’t think I can do that,’ Keenan said.

‘Surely
someone
could help.’ The grandmother’s eyes were tormented. ‘How can anyone believe it could possibly be better for her to be with strangers, let alone be
sent back to Romania?’

‘I don’t know,’ Keenan had said.

Novak felt wrecked, at a total loss, directionally and emotionally.

Trying to go on, keeping the agency running, because that was what well-intentioned people kept telling him he needed to do, both for therapeutic and financial reasons.

And perhaps work might have been some sort of remedy, he accepted, had he felt he were doing something worthwhile. If he had not, via the agency, via Robin Allbeury, helped to draw two innocent
women to their deaths.

If he were not reminded, each time he walked into the office and saw Clare’s unoccupied desk, and his own gleaming new computer, of
everything.

Allbeury had paid for Winston Cook to help extract all the non-evidential data from their old hard disk, and having the young man around in the office was helping to distract him just a little.
But though it was tedious, painstaking work that would take Cook weeks, ultimately Novak knew that he would be alone again, waiting for Clare to allow him to come and visit her, for ever since she
had been taken into custody his rights as her husband seemed to have been brutally cut off.

Most people, he knew, might not understand why he should
want
to see her. But then they couldn’t know that the woman he’d first met, the one who’d stitched the head
wound for him in A&E more than five years ago – the compassionate nurse who’d found her daily routine of other people’s sufferings too much to bear – was not the same
woman who had done those monstrous things, been cold-blooded enough, in one case, to go back and plant the murder weapon in her victim’s husband’s garage, had then logged it all with
such clarity and precision on her computer.

Novak wished he could hate that Clare. Maybe he would, eventually, when the time came for him to endure all the facts at the trial. If she was found fit to
face
trial.

If he became certain that the old Clare was never going to find her way back through all that hate and torment to the surface.

Maybe then he would be able to hate her.

Allbeury found himself thinking about Lizzie and her children for too much time every day.

He had rung Susan Blake once to ask if she had seen her, and Susan had told him that she’d visited twice, that they spoke quite regularly and that Lizzie’s plan was to stay close to
home for the present.

‘She can’t cook properly until everything heals,’ she had said, ‘which is bugging her quite a bit, I’d say.’

‘What about writing?’ Allbeury had asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Susan had said. ‘I haven’t asked, because I don’t want her to feel under pressure, not professionally, at least.’

He waited another week before returning to Marlow.

She welcomed him with a degree of reserve, but still, he was glad to note, with warmth. Her arm was in a lighter cast, which was making life somewhat easier, and only two of her fingers remained
bandaged, though the hands were by no means back to normal.

There was a Christmas tree in the drawing room, cards on the mantel and a fire blazing in the hearth.

‘We look the part, anyway,’ Lizzie said.

‘Have you managed any gift shopping?’ Allbeury asked.

‘Some, thanks to my mum and Gilly.’ She paused. ‘Gilly’s out with the children now, doing just that, I think.’

‘How are they all?’

‘A little better, I think.’ Lizzie paused. ‘Inquest still to come, of course.’

‘They won’t have to be there, will they?’

‘No,’ Lizzie said. ‘But they’ll know about it.’

Allbeury shook his head.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Just that everything I seem to want to say is a cliché.’

‘The resilience of children, you mean,’ she said. ‘Time, and all that.’

‘I’ll shut up,’ Allbeury said.

‘No,’ Lizzie said. ‘Don’t do that.’ She paused. ‘I’m much too pleased to see my rescuer again.’

‘Except I didn’t,’ he said. ‘Rescue you.’

‘You tried.’

‘I’ve a confession,’ he said.

‘Yes?’ She waited.

‘You asked me, that day, if I was a scout,’ he said. ‘And I wasn’t.’

For a moment she looked blank, and then she remembered. ‘The knot,’ she said. ‘You mean, if the lift had crashed . . .?’

‘It might have held,’ he said. ‘With luck.’

‘Were you just trying to keep my spirits up?’ Lizzie asked.

‘And my own,’ he said.

He came, a while after that, to one of his main reasons for coming.

‘Jim Keenan’s been to see me. To ask for my help, off-the-record.’

‘What sort of help?’

‘It’s about Irina Patston,’ he said.

‘How did you know,’ Lizzie asked, ‘that she’s been on my mind?’

‘I wasn’t sure you knew much about her,’ Allbeury said.

‘DI Keenan told me the whole story.’

‘When?’

‘He came again last week.’ She smiled. ‘He really is very nice, isn’t he?’

‘Knows what he wants, too,’ Allbeury said.

Lizzie had, even before Keenan’s second visit, begun to feel a kinship with both murdered women, strangers as they were. But the case of little Irina, swallowed up in the general horror
and in danger of being forgotten, had begun to haunt her.

‘What,’ she asked now, ‘does Keenan think you can do?’

‘I think he was hoping,’ Allbeury said, ‘that I could perform some not-strictly-legal magic trick and spirit Irina back to her grandmother.’

‘Which you can’t?’

‘Unfortunately not.’

Lizzie waited a moment.

‘Why are you here, Robin?’ she asked finally.

‘Because I think this is one for the media,’ Allbeury said.

‘I’m not a journalist,’ Lizzie said.

‘But you are a TV personality,’ he said. ‘And a writer.’

She held up her hands. ‘Not doing much of either just yet.’

‘You could manage some two-finger typing, couldn’t you?’

Lizzie wiggled her fingers. ‘Bit better than that, maybe.’

‘Good physio, probably,’ Allbeury said.

‘What am I supposed to be writing?’

‘You’re the best judge of that, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Letters to MPs, perhaps?’

‘Articles, too,’ Allbeury said. ‘The bigger and splashier and noiser the better.’

‘Thought you were leaving it up to me,’ Lizzie said.

He leaned forward in his armchair. ‘So you will help?’

‘Of course I will,’ she said. ‘Or at least, I’ll give it a bloody good try.’

‘Thank you,’ Allbeury said.

‘Haven’t done anything yet.’ She thought about it. ‘We are quite sure that Irina’s still in the country, aren’t we? That they haven’t already sent her
back to Romania?’

‘From what Keenan says, they don’t even seem to be all that certain now that she necessarily
came
from Romania in the first place. Tony Patston’s told them all he can
– hoping it’ll help when his case comes up – about the woman who sold Irina to them.’

‘Sold,’ Lizzie echoed, softly.

‘Joanne Patston was desperate to be a mother,’ Allbeury said. ‘If it hadn’t been for her bastard of a father, Irina would have been very lucky to have her.’

‘Presumably there’s no hope that they’d let the grandmother adopt her legally?’

‘Too old,’ Allbeury said.

‘What about fostering?’

‘Exactly what Mrs Finch suggested to Keenan.’

‘Good.’ Lizzie nodded. ‘Seems like the best approach, don’t you think?’

‘Whatever you think.’

‘You’ll help too, won’t you?’ Lizzie asked.

‘Try stopping me,’ Allbeury said.

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