No Escape

by Hilary Norman

  ‘That Lynne Bolsover was a deeply unhappy woman, whose husband, John, was in the habit of beating her. That they had two young children, that Lynne would like very much to leave their father, but that she was too bullied and too defeated to seek a way out.’ Allbeury’s brow creased, remembering. ‘And that, in any case, because she had no money of her own, she felt she had no option but to stay.’

  ‘Was this letter handwritten, typed?’

  ‘Typed. Inkjet printing, Arial font, on white copier paper. No fingerprints, central London postmark – no way of tracing that I or Mike Novak could easily come up with.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that I was especially concerned with who’d written the letter.’

  ‘Your concern was with Lynne,’ Shipley said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Allbeury tilted his head slightly to one side. ‘Isn’t it obvious? A woman in such difficulties, unable to see her escape route.’

  ‘Thousands just like her,’ Shipley said.

  ‘I can’t help thousands.’

  ‘But you do help some.’

  ‘I have helped several women, yes.’

  ‘Just women?’ Shipley asked.

  ‘I do my best to help both men and women in my capacity as a solicitor.’

  ‘But we’re not talking about you as a solicitor, are we, Mr Allbeury?’

  ‘Not in this instance.’ He paused. ‘I have the letter in question, Detective Inspector, if you would like to see it or have it examined.’

  Shipley said that she would, then asked about the first letter he’d been sent. Same format, Allbeury said, and offered to make that available to her also. Shipley asked if it, too, had concerned an unhappy woman. Allbeury said that it had, and that, after hearing what had happened to Lynne Bolsover, he’d asked Mike Novak to make some enquiries into the current status of the first woman too.

  ‘Alive and well, I’m glad to say, and happily separated.’

  ‘With no help from you?’ Shipley checked.

  ‘Correct,’ Allbeury said. ‘Just to satisfy any curiosity you might have, I did offer my assistance to that first lady, and she rejected my offer, told Mike Novak she didn’t need my help.’

  ‘Apparently true,’ Shipley said.

  ‘Yes. I’m glad to say.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Allbeury replied, then went on, rather more crisply. ‘You wanted to know about my meeting with Mrs Bolsover.’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ Shipley said.

  ‘As you already know,’ the solicitor said, ‘I asked Mr Novak to make the initial contact. Mostly because Mike’s a gentle person and possesses a greater ability to blend into different surroundings.’

  ‘More ordinary,’ Shipley said, remembering the private investigator.

  ‘I don’t find Mike at all ordinary,’ Allbeury said. ‘But he tells me I tend to stick out like a sore thumb in some surroundings.’

  ‘You said you met Lynne Bolsover last August.’

  ‘In the McDonald’s near Tottenham Court Road Underground station. Her choice,’ he added. ‘It was too crowded and noisy, so we moved to a big, rather badly lit pub nearby – I’m afraid I can’t remember its name, but I don’t suppose that matters.’

  ‘Not really,’ Shipley said.

  ‘I don’t have a great deal to tell you, I’m afraid,’ Allbeury continued. ‘Mrs Bolsover was very nervous, and I thought she seemed depressed. Not ready to trust me. Perhaps – though I had no way of knowing – not ready to trust anyone, let alone a stranger.’

  ‘Easier, sometimes, with strangers,’ Shipley commented.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Allbeury agreed. ‘Not that time, unfortunately.’

  ‘Did she tell you anything about herself? About her unhappiness with her husband?’

  ‘Only in response to my questions,’ Allbeury said. ‘I asked if she was afraid of John, and she said that she was, but that it wasn’t too bad, and that there was really no need for anyone else to be concerned for her.’

  ‘Did she know about the letter?’

  ‘Mike Novak had told her about it. I asked her if she knew who might have written it, and she seemed perplexed about it, appeared to have no idea.’ He paused. ‘I tried to ascertain if there might be any risk to the children in her situation, but she said there was no risk of that kind. She seemed very definite about that, though less so, I felt, about herself.’

  ‘If she wasn’t ready to trust you,’ Shipley said, ‘why do you think she agreed to meet you?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Allbeury replied, ‘she felt very desperate when she agreed to the meeting, then found it all too frightening. The prospect of her husband finding out, I mean, rather than our meeting itself.’ He recalled something. ‘She wanted a brandy, I remember, then changed to white wine in case he detected it on her breath.’

  Shipley shook her head slightly.

  ‘What is Bolsover like?’ Allbeury asked quietly. ‘If you feel you can tell me.’

  ‘He’s held up well in interviews, maintained his shock and grief.’ She paused. ‘I have no doubt he’s a probably violent bully, but I don’t know if he’s a killer.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Allbeury paused. ‘Mrs Bolsover had a little of her wine, stayed with me in the pub for no more than fifteen minutes, then told me that she didn’t know why she’d come, that she was grateful for my interest, but that there was nothing I could, or needed, to do for her. And then she left.’

  ‘You made no further attempt to contact her?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I had to respect her wishes, and she knew how to get hold of me again if she chose to.’

  ‘But she never did.’

  Allbeury shook his head.

  ‘You’ve told me you found her nervous and depressed,’ Shipley said. ‘Anything else? Difficult, I realize, on such a brief meeting.’

  ‘Difficult to know her, obviously,’ Allbeury said. ‘But first impressions are often dangerously easy to form, don’t you find?’

  Shipley wasn’t sure if she saw, in the solicitor’s rather warm brown eyes, the element of a tease behind those words. ‘What was your impression of her?’

  ‘I found her desolate,’ he replied.

  ‘In fear of her life?’ the detective asked. ‘So far as you could tell?’

  ‘Not so far as I could tell.’ Allbeury paused. ‘She was ground down and afraid, certainly. But more of pain, I thought, both physical and emotional, rather than of being killed.’

  Shipley declined a second cup of tea, though she did accept another finger biscuit as well as the two anonymous letters which the solicitor fetched for her, carefully enclosed in separate plastic sleeves.

  ‘I imagine you’ll want my fingerprints, for elimination,’ he said. ‘Will you ask them to contact me to arrange it?’

  ‘I will,’ Shipley said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Allbeury said.

  ‘Do you know,’ Shipley asked as they walked back towards the lift, ‘why this anonymous letter writer should have chosen you?’

  ‘Hard to say, since I don’t know who they are,’ Allbeury said.

  ‘Clearly someone,’ Shipley said, ‘who knows about your penchant for helping unhappy wives.’

  Allbeury stopped about five yards from the lift. ‘You’re sceptical.’

  ‘A little, yes.’

  ‘Perhaps I ought to reassure you.’

  ‘Can you?’

  His smile was regretful. ‘I can tell you that all I’ve actually done – for an all-too-small handful of women – is give them the benefit of my legal experience free of charge, but without the convolutions of the legal aid system.’

  ‘And is that really all you offer them?’ asked Shipley quietly.

  Robin Allbeury stepped forward, pressed a button beside the lift door, and it slid open, smoothly and almost silently.

  ‘What else could there be?’ he asked, and smiled.

  Shipley had already had Ally King ask for both Allbeury and Novak to b
e run through HOLMES, the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, but nothing had surfaced linking either man to any known crime. One a successful man, renowned in his field, the other less remarkable, neither with convictions or even arrests to their name.

  Mike Novak seemed, to Shipley, on reflection, as open a book as any private investigator was likely to be. He’d been a PC in the Met for just two years, record unblemished though bearing remarks that while Novak was eager and intelligent, he had been both overly critical of bureaucracy and, at times, overly sensitive. Which tallied with the impression Novak had given Shipley at their brief meeting: fairly open, glad to help, upset about Lynne Bolsover – lucky, with Clare as his wife, in love.

  Robin Allbeury intrigued her far more. His qualifications and career were well-documented, but the rest was fuzzier. Forty-two, never married but almost certainly heterosexual; plenty of sightings – even reported in tabloids at a time in the early nineties when he’d been involved in society litigation and very much the lawyer of the hour – of him out on the town with women. No particularly glamorous females, Shipley noted, and definitely no bimbo types; all the women attractive but also either brainy or highly successful, usually independent. Aside from that, Allbeury appeared to keep himself to himself, liked his privacy and was in a position to pay through the nose for it.

  ‘On the face of it then,’ she said to Ally King on the Monday after her appointment at Shad Tower, ‘just two men aware – made aware, which still bugs me – of this woman’s miserable marriage, trying to help her and failing.’ She shrugged. ‘Not their fault, probably. Unusual, even odd kind of involvement, but more than likely innocent.’

  ‘Nothing from FSU on the letters yet,’ King said. ‘I’ll chase them up.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The DC gone again, Shipley returned her mind to John Bolsover. Three years older than his wife, a man with hair razored so short its mousey colour was almost undetectable. A physically strong man, judging by appearance, overweight but muscled, his wife’s name tattooed on his left arm and prominent veins at both temples. A man Shipley had no difficulty picturing in a state of rage; a man she knew she’d have found easy to dislike even if she had not known of his predilection for hitting and bullying his wife.

  The kind of preconceptions a police detective working on a murder enquiry needed to beware of. Though that was not the only reason Shipley was still not ready to charge Bolsover. It wasn’t even because, like most homicide investigators all over the world, she badly wanted a smoking gun to make her case unassailable.

  It was another maddeningly, unreliably reliable element. Instinct.

  There was something wrong about this case, Shipley felt, and a great deal more to be learned. And maybe it was just the absence of the smoking gun, of the piece of evidence that would enable her to push Bolsover all the way into a life sentence, or maybe it was something else entirely, but either way, she was just not ready yet to try to make do.

  Despite what she had just said to Ally King, Robin Allbeury was still sticking right slap-bang at the forefront of her consciousness, and she hoped, with critical self-analysis, that it had nothing to do with his being an unusual and attractive man.

  Christ knew her own life had been devoid of interesting men – any men – for so long now, and like it or not, she was only human.

  Yet it wasn’t that. She didn’t think it was that.

  If not though, what?

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘How is everything, my darling?’ Angela Piper asked her daughter on the telephone one Sunday afternoon near the end of April.

  ‘Everything’s lovely,’ Lizzie told her, and, leaning back in her leather working chair and stretching out her legs, she realized that she was, for once, speaking the absolute truth.

  ‘Jack not fretting too much?’

  ‘Jack’s feeling pretty good, actually.’ Lizzie knew as well as her mother that in general when Christopher was away – as he currently was, lecturing in Germany – Jack did tend to mooch around, impatient for his father to get back. ‘He had some physio yesterday, and it went very well.’

  ‘Sophie’s cold?’

  ‘Better,’ Lizzie replied. ‘And neither of the others getting it.’

  ‘Good,’ Angela said.

  ‘And Edward’s gone out with Mark’ – his best friend – ‘for the day, but Gilly’s here for the weekend, which means I’ve actually managed to get some work done on the new project.’

  ‘I’m disturbing you,’ her mother said.

  ‘Not really,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’m ready for a break.’

  ‘You do sound very content,’ Angela remarked.

  ‘I am,’ Lizzie agreed. ‘How about you? How’s William?’

  ‘We had a tiff last night.’

  ‘Serious?’ Lizzie hoped not. Her mother had been so happy since their engagement. Even if no date had been set – which had struck both her and Christopher as slightly odd given their ages – romance definitely agreed with Angela.

  ‘Not a bit.’ Her mother was cheery. ‘We made it up at bedtime.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘All thanks to Christopher,’ Angela said.

  ‘What is?’ Lizzie asked.

  ‘You know what, darling. Giving me back my life.’

  ‘Long time ago now, Mum,’ Lizzie said. ‘And you got it back yourself.’

  ‘Still down to him,’ Angela insisted.

  Lizzie gritted her teeth till the end of the call, but when she put down the phone, some of the loveliness had gone out of the day.

  Should be used to it by now.

  Lord knew she’d grown used to so many things. Like cherishing the times when her husband had to travel (Jack’s concerns notwithstanding), and the awareness that she often nowadays used her own work to block out her problems rather than for its own pleasure.

  ‘The Lizzie Piper Roadshow’, as the forthcoming project had now been named, was, however, starting to thoroughly absorb her. Once the contracts had all been signed, Lizzie had begun feeling better about it. Both Howard Dunn and the television series producer, Richard Arden, had voiced their thoughts as to how she might deal with the idea over a string of lunch meetings, but then they’d left it to her to come up with her own outline, which was the way Lizzie preferred it. She’d toyed with a number of concepts, some conventional, others more inventive and complex, but then, during a meeting at the Vicuna offices in Chancery Lane, Howard Dunn had persuaded her to return to the precept she usually worked by: simplicity was best, whenever and wherever possible.

  The fact was, she was being given virtual carte blanche to pick and choose seven locations, provided they were colourful, European, and would inspire her, her readers and viewers.

  ‘You don’t actually need a gimmick, Lizzie,’ Dunn told her in his office, a charmingly crooked room with sloping ceiling and beams.

  ‘Not a gimmick as such,’ she’d agreed, ‘but I thought a hook of some sort to hang it all on, to drag in the audience.’

  ‘You’re the hook, darling,’ her editor said. ‘Why else do you imagine they’re prepared to put so much money into this thing?’

  ‘Really?’ She was dubious.

  ‘Of course, really.’

  ‘But why? I’m not dependable like Delia, or dishy like Jamie, and I’m certainly not gorgeous like Nigella.’

  ‘You’re gorgeous like Lizzie,’ Howard Dunn pointed out.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Don’t be coy.’ Dunn smiled. ‘Anyway, it’s not just your looks, it’s your personality.’

  ‘I’m just me,’ Lizzie had said.

  ‘Which is precisely what we and the TV people are paying you to be. Just Lizzie Piper.’

  Even the research was fun after that, wandering through travel books and histories and browsing her atlas in search of places that would most pleasurably tickle her own tastebuds.

  ‘I feel a bit of a fraud,’ she’d told Christopher one evening. ‘This should be harder, less fun.’
/>   ‘Give it time,’ he’d said astutely.

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  She had smiled at him, knowing that he was, of course, absolutely right, that as the book ran its course she would become subject to panics, become fed up with it and with herself and her lack of talent or inspiration or application. And Christopher would listen to her, let her take her mood swings out on him and would seldom object, though he would often, calmly and rationally, set her back on track. And at times like that, Lizzie would see again exactly why she had married him, and part of the reason she had stayed with him, and if only it could have been like that all the time.

  If only.

  More than six years had passed since Jack’s diagnosis and her subsequent decision to put up with Christopher’s ‘other’ side, and the shock that had enabled Lizzie to accept his behaviour had long since faded, natural repugnance soon returning with a vengeance.

  Not that it had made any real difference. She had begun to object again, to protest or even threaten him when it all became too much, but the threats were empty and Christopher knew it. The man who found fulfilment through using violence against his wife while he fucked her, who used foul language while fucking her – and that was what it was, that was how Lizzie thought of it, for it had nothing whatsoever to do with lovemaking – who regularly still bit and hurt her and frightened her, the bites and other marks always now in places no one else would see, and he had enough self-control for that, Lizzie, in distress and anger, had pointed out more than once. That man, that Christopher Wade, knew she would not leave him, or take the children, or report him.

  ‘Anyway,’ he had said to her one night at the flat, ‘you like it.’

  ‘I hate it. It disgusts me.’

  ‘You’re a strong woman,’ Christopher said. ‘If you hated it so much, you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘You know why I’m here.’

  ‘You’re here,’ he said, ‘because of our children, but not only because of them. You’re here because you still love me, and this is a part of me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘That’s true enough. But it’s the part I loathe.’

  ‘Yet you’re party to it, you acquiesce to it.’