‘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.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-One
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.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Two
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?’
&nbs
p; ‘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.
››› If you’ve enjoyed this book and would like to discover more great vintage crime and thriller titles, as well as the most exciting crime and thriller authors writing today, visit: ›››
The Murder Room
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themurderroom.com
By Hilary Norman
(titles that appear in bold are published by The Murder Room)
Sam Becket Mysteries
Mind Games (1999)
Last Run (2007)
Shimmer (2009)
Caged (2010)
Hell (2011)
Eclipse (2012)
Standalone Novels
In Love and Friendship (1986)
Chateau Ella (1988)
Shattered Stars (1991)
Fascination (1992)
Spellbound (1993)
Laura (1994)
If I Should Die (1995) (originally published under the pen name Alexandra Henry)
The Key to Susanna (1996)
Susanna (1996)
The Pact (1997)
Too Close (1998)
Blind Fear (2000)
Deadly Games (2001)
Twisted Minds (2002)
No Escape (2003)
Guilt (2004)
Compulsion (2005)
Ralph’s Children (2008)
For Bernhard Grünwald
As always, my gratitude to all those who’ve taken time and trouble to help, with special thanks to:
Sarah Abel; Koula Antoniou; Howard Barmad; Jennifer Bloch; Ros Chinosky; Sara Fisher; Gillian Green; Peter Johnston; Jonathan Kern; Aleksandar Lazarevic; Herta Norman; Judy Piatkus; Helen Rose; Ann Ryan, South Chingford Library; and Dr Jonathan Tarlow.
Hilary Norman
Hilary Norman was born and educated in London. After working as an actress she had careers in the fashion and broadcasting industries. She travelled extensively throughout Europe and lived for a time in the United States before writing her first international bestseller, In Love and Friendship, which has been translated into a dozen languages. Her subsequent novels have been equally successful. She lives in North London, where she has spent most of her life, with her husband and their beloved RSPCA rescue dog.
An Orion ebook
Copyright © Hilary Norman 2003
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This ebook first published in Great Britain in 2013
by Orion
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4719 0837 8
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