No Escape (7 page)

‘Of course. That’s why I brought it.’

Shipley stood, leaned over to take a better look, taking care not to touch.

‘It’s all right,’ Mrs Wakefield said. ‘It’s not evidence or anything.’

It was a business card belonging to a Michael Novak of a firm named Novak Investigations with an address in New Smithfield, E.1.

‘Any idea who Michael Novak is?’

‘None. Like I said, I found it in a bag of Lynne’s – actually, not really hers, it was one she borrowed from me a long time ago.’

Shipley sat down again. ‘Take your time, Mrs Wakefield.’

Pam Wakefield shook her head. ‘Nothing else to say. I lent Lynne this canvas shopper ages ago – months, I think, I’m not sure – and I’ve used it since she gave it
back, but I can’t ever have emptied it out properly till last night, and that was in it, right at the bottom, wedged in the seam in a corner.’ She paused. ‘I phoned Novak
Investigations, and it is a detective agency, which is obvious, I suppose. The woman I talked to asked why I wanted to know, how I knew about them, but I put the phone down. I shouldn’t have
done that.’

‘No reason why not,’ Shipley said easily. ‘If you didn’t feel like talking.’

‘I don’t like people who do that when they’ve dialled the wrong number. I usually say I’m sorry for bothering them, then hang up.’

‘Do you have any idea why Lynne might have been in touch with a private detective?’ Shipley asked.

‘No idea at all. Except the obvious, I mean.’

‘What’s that?’ Shipley wanted it to come from her.

‘Maybe Lynne was checking up on John.’

‘But you’ve said you didn’t think she was suspicious of John in that way?’

‘If she was, she never told me.’ Pam Wakefield paused. ‘Then again, she never really told me about John hitting her, not in so many words. I just knew.’

‘Yes,’ Shipley said, and waited.

‘Maybe someone just gave her this card. Maybe she never called them.’

‘Maybe,’ Shipley said. ‘I’ll certainly be trying to find out.’

‘So this could be useful?’

Shipley saw the naked appeal in the older woman’s eyes.

‘You never know,’ she said carefully, not wishing to arouse false hope. ‘The small things sometimes are.’

In an area in which so much striking new development had taken place, New Smithfield, a narrow, dark little cobbled cul-de-sac of disused warehouses, felt to Shipley forgotten
and almost decrepit.

There it was. Number twenty-nine, with, to the right of its front door, a rusted brass plate bearing six push-bell buttons, and a small plaque beside that – well-polished by comparison
– bearing the name
Novak Investigations Ltd.

Shipley rang the bell, heard no buzz, and pushed at the door, which opened at her touch, heavily and creakily. The entryway was poorly lit and dingy, with a wide, aged-looking lift that had
once, presumably, carried freight and passengers, but now bore only an Out of Service sign and large padlock on its iron gate.

‘Fifth floor.’ A voice, female, clear and lightly Scots, rang out from above. ‘Sorry about the stairs.’

‘That’s okay.’

Shipley regretted, as she regularly did starting up arduous staircases, having let her gym membership lapse two years ago. Only a block and a half from her flat in Finsbury Park, it could hardly
have been more convenient, but Shipley, struggling for excuses at the time, had said that what she actually needed was a club near work, since she spent most of her life there.

‘All right?’ the voice called as she reached the third floor.

‘Bit dark, isn’t it?’ Shipley said, already breathless.

‘Sorry.’ The woman sounded cheery. ‘We keep meaning to brighten it up.’

Shipley was on the final approach. ‘Isn’t that the landlord’s job?’

‘Huh,’ came the reply.

Shipley reached the top floor, was met by almost dazzling brightness in the shape of three working light-bulbs and a warm, welcoming smile from a woman with jaw-length curly red hair.

‘Clare Novak.’ The woman extended her hand, shook Shipley’s firmly. ‘DI Shipley, I presume?’

Shipley, who had telephoned a little more than an hour earlier, took out her warrant card and showed it to Clare Novak, who took a moment over checking it before stepping aside to show Shipley
into the office.

‘Not much, but we like it.’

It was one room, large enough for two desks, a wall-long run of filing cabinets, a tall, fully-laden book-case, a biscuit-coloured couch and a cheap coffee table. One of the desks was densely
cluttered with papers and folders stacked on three sides of the computer and keyboard, a telephone barely visible in the jumble; the second desk the antithesis, perfectly organized, paperwork
divided in trays. The whole room, even the messy part, looked and felt clean.

Clare Novak invited Shipley to sit and offered her coffee. ‘We make quite decent stuff, so you might want to say yes.’

‘You sound like you’ve tasted ours.’

‘No, but I worked in hospitals for a while.’

‘Even worse,’ Shipley said. ‘I’d love some. Black, no sugar.’

The red-haired woman opened a door just beyond the cabinets, vanished for a few moments, then reappeared holding two blue pottery mugs which she set on the table before sitting beside Shipley on
the couch. Her movements, the detective observed, were lithe, her legs slim and long. Shipley had gained more than breathlessness when she’d stopped going to the gym; the semi-sedentary
nature of her work, too many doughnuts on the run and pints with the lads at the end of the working day had added a stone to her weight. She was far from fat, had her dad’s fair hair –
cut very short, but in no way mannish – and her mum’s nice grey eyes, but there was something about the nature of her job, about always feeling a need to be tough, physically and
mentally, that she sometimes felt might have taken more than the edge off her femininity.

Clare Novak was feminine, bordering on ethereal, clearly highly efficient and, at first meeting, probably nice into the bargain.

‘I’m really sorry Mike hasn’t made it back yet,’ she said. ‘He’s on a matrimonial job somewhere around Bayswater, but if there’s anything I can’t
help you with, he’s on his mobile.’

The coffee, Shipley found, sipping it as she gave the other woman a minimal explanation for her visit, was as good as promised. She watched Clare’s hazel eyes dull with dismay at the news
of the Bolsover murder, then clear again as she resolved to be of assistance.

‘I certainly remember the name,’ she said, already up on her feet, heading for the computer on the more organized desk. ‘Not much else, I’m afraid.’

‘But your husband did have dealings with her?’

‘We’ll soon see.’ Clare sat down, keyed in the name and waited. ‘Yes, he did.’ She scanned the entry on her monitor. ‘Briefly, last summer.’

Shipley stood up. ‘May I see?’

‘By all means.’ Clare got up again to make room. ‘Would you like me to print out what there is?’

‘Please.’ Shipley did not sit, just stooped to read the entry. ‘Not much.’

The printer was already humming, the single page print-out emerging. Clare handed it to Shipley. ‘Do you want me to try Mike?’

‘Please,’ Shipley said again. ‘Soon as possible.’

They met in a café in Queensway, close to Novak’s job, ordered two mineral waters, and Shipley sat, for a moment, sizing up the private detective. Informally
dressed in jeans, open-necked blue shirt and leather jacket, he was nice looking, gentle, she thought, despite the slightly roughed-up nose.

‘I wish I’d known about this,’ Novak said. ‘I’d have been in touch, obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ Shipley said.

He noted her dryness. ‘Was it reported?’

‘Only in the local press,’ Shipley allowed. ‘And there was a mention in one of the south-east TV news round-ups, but that was before the identification.’

‘Makes me feel a bit less guilty,’ Novak said.

‘Why should you feel guilty at all?’

‘Because I know how important it is to get as many facts as possible at the start of an enquiry like this.’ He shook his head, smiled slightly. ‘No other reason.’

‘Make up for it now,’ Shipley said.

‘Any way I can,’ Novak said.

He’d been asked, he told her, the previous summer, by a regular client of his to contact Lynne Bolsover on his behalf and to offer his assistance if she wanted it.

‘What kind of assistance?’ Shipley asked.

‘I can’t tell you that,’ Novak said.

‘This is a murder enquiry, Mr Novak.’

‘I can’t tell you, because I don’t know.’ He paused: ‘My client is a solicitor, but I don’t know if this was official business. All I can tell you is that I
did contact the lady back then, arranged to meet her in Asda in Southgate – it’s a big barn of a place, very anonymous, which was how she wanted it.’

‘And?’

‘And very little,’ Novak said. ‘I told her I understood she had some problems and that if she wanted any assistance, my client thought he might be able to help her. She was
very jittery about us being seen together – I remember her glancing around before she’d even take my card. She called a few days later, said that even if she did want help, she had no
money for fees. I said that as far as I knew, that wouldn’t be an issue. Then, after a moment, she said that if she were to talk to my client, it was vital her husband never find
out.’

Shipley waited a second. ‘And?’ she said again.

‘I told her that was understood and gave her my client’s number. So far as I know, she did meet with him once, but nothing more came of it.’ Novak sipped his water, gazed out
of the window for a second, then back at Shipley. ‘I remember her as seeming a nice, very nervous person, with a big bruise that she’d tried to cover with make-up, on the left side of
her face and neck.’

‘Did you ask her about it?’

‘No.’

‘So what kind of solicitor’s this client of yours? Divorce lawyer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does he have a name?’

Novak smiled. ‘Robin Allbeury.’ He paused. ‘I called him before you got here. He’s in Brussels right now, but he said to tell you whatever I could and that he’ll be
glad to answer any questions himself when he gets back.’

‘When’s that?’ Irritation kicked in.

‘End of the week.’ Novak preempted her next question. ‘He said he’d appreciate your waiting till then, because he might need to refer to his notes.’

‘Does Mr Allbeury make a habit of offering unofficial “help” to strangers in trouble? Or is it only to women?’

Mike Novak smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, he does.’

Lizzie had spent the rest of the night – after Christopher had bitten and half-choked her in the name of sexual pleasure – sleepless, fully dressed in a tracksuit
lying on the bed, debating whether or not to leave, unsure if he’d gone to his dressing room and left the flat, or if he was waiting for her, and neither the prospect of that kind of
encounter, nor of driving aimlessly around or maybe checking into a hotel, had appealed to her.

She certainly couldn’t have driven to Marlow at that hour without risking questions from the children or Gilly.

At seven, she’d found him in the kitchen, wearing navy cords and a white T-shirt, a cafetière and mug on the table, unread folded newspapers beside them. He’d risen as
she’d come in, had offered her coffee, which she had refused, before filling the jug kettle at the sink to make her own.

Say something
.

She’d returned the kettle to its base and switched it on.

Now.

‘I can’t live with this.’

Christopher sat down. ‘Oh, God.’

‘You’ve given me no choice,’ Lizzie said.

‘Oh,
God
.’ His eyes filled.

‘You can “oh, God” me all you like.’ She felt strengthened by his weakness. ‘And you can cry your eyes out, but it won’t change what you did to me.’

‘What did I do?’ He took off his spectacles, dropped them on the table, his eyes now aghast. ‘Lizzie, darling, what did I do to you?’

‘You know exactly what you did.’

‘No.’ He shook his head, gripped the edge of the table with both hands. ‘
No
.’

Lizzie’s fear altered, grew to different levels, for the children as well as herself, and she sat down opposite him. ‘Are you claiming not to remember what you did to me less than
six hours ago?’

He waited before answering. ‘Not exactly.’

‘So you do remember?’ Disgust filled her, and she began to rise.

‘No, wait, Lizzie. Please. You don’t understand.’

‘No,’ she had agreed. ‘I don’t.’

‘I don’t always,
entirely
, know what happens when I feel that way.’ He shook his head again. ‘I don’t mean black-outs, just. . . details.’

‘Like putting your hand around my neck and—’

‘But I stopped.’ Christopher fumbled with his spectacles, put them on again.

‘Only after I threatened to call the police.’ Lizzie felt sick at the memory. ‘It was
assault
, Christopher. You hurt me, and you frightened me.’

‘What can I say,’ he said helplessly, ‘except that I’m truly sorry?’

‘Sorry won’t cut it,’ she said, ‘not this time.’ She took a breath. ‘Nor will lying about not remembering
details
.’

‘You don’t understand,’ he said again. ‘How can you? And you can’t begin to understand that, in a way, my coming to you like that is a kind of
compliment.’

‘
Compliment
?’ Outrage made Lizzie feel quite dizzy. ‘You must be mad.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know it’s hard to see what I mean. I don’t suppose you’ll accept it even after I try to explain.’

Lizzie had ceased to speak then, had sat there silently at their kitchen table, saved just a little, she decided later, by a sense of being somehow outside herself, as if none of it was entirely
real.

It was a compliment, Christopher said, because it meant that at long last he was doing what he had always wanted to do: trusting her with his deepest secrets.

‘I thought, you see,’ he said, ‘that I might never be able to do that, that I had no alternative but to keep on taking that side of myself – those needs – to
strangers.’