No Escape (26 page)

‘No,’ Sandra said, quickly. ‘No doctors. I’m all right.’

‘With respect,’ Keenan said, gently, ‘you’re not all right at all.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘I think you should get someone,’ Tony said, thinking he’d never seen her look so old. ‘You might need something to help you sleep.’ He knew he would, though what
he thought he really wanted,
needed
, now, more than anything, was a bloody massive drink, preferably a whole row of drinks, anything to block out what he’d seen in that place.

Don’t think about it.

Karen Dean, in a navy suit and white blouse, her long dark hair fastened in a thick plait, looked in to ask if they wanted their tea brought in. Keenan thanked her, then contrived, with her
help, to get Sandra Finch out of the living room and into the kitchen while he remained with Patston.

‘All right now, sir, if we get these questions out of the way?’

‘Of course,’ Tony said. ‘Anything I can tell you to help.’

‘Thank you.’ Keenan glanced down at the tray on the table. ‘Don’t forget your tea. I’m sure you could use a cup.’

‘I’m all right.’ Tony didn’t like to ask for a drink.

‘If you change your mind, just tell me.’

‘If I change my mind,’ Tony couldn’t help saying, ‘I’ll help myself.’

‘Of course,’ Keenan said.

As the questions got underway, however sympathetic his tone, there was no mistaking the thinking behind them. Jim Keenan wanted to know as much about the last time Tony had seen Joanne as he
could tell him, and he clearly found it strange that Tony could not remember the name of the friend his wife was going to meet.

‘I never heard it,’ Tony explained for the second time. ‘She just said it was a woman she’d met at the library who wanted to meet her for a cup of coffee.’

‘And she’d never mentioned her to you before?’

‘No.’ Tony shrugged. ‘I’m not the kind of husband who’s got to know every last thing his wife gets up to.’

‘Gets up to?’ Keenan echoed.

‘I don’t mean like that,’ Tony said.

‘Like what?’

‘Nothing.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t do this, not now. It’s too much.’

‘All right, sir.’ Keenan was soothing. ‘Just a few more questions and then we’ll let you have some peace.’ He paused. ‘Still sure about that cuppa?’

‘Couldn’t face it,’ Tony said. ‘Wouldn’t say no to something stronger though.’ He gave a grimace of a smile. ‘If that’s allowed?’

‘Why shouldn’t it be?’ Keenan said. ‘You’re not the one on duty.’

‘I wish I was,’ Tony said.

There was no whisky in Sandra’s cabinet, but there was a bottle of brandy, and Tony’s first swallow, drunk deliberately rapidly, designed to burn, did just that and released a few
tears. He wiped them roughly away, drank the rest of what was in his glass, poured a little more and sat down again.

‘Which library did your wife go to?’ Keenan asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Tony said. ‘One near here, I suppose.’ He nodded towards the kitchen. ‘Her mum might know which one.’

The DI paused. ‘Were you still at home yesterday morning when Joanne left to meet her friend?’

‘No,’ Tony answered. ‘I’d gone to work.’

‘How was she when you left her?’

‘Fine. She was fine.’

‘Your mother-in-law told DC Dean you said you had to encourage her to go.’

‘Yeah.’ Tony nodded. ‘I told her it would do her good.’

‘Why did you say that? Wasn’t she well?’

‘No, she was fine. I told you.’

‘Only “do her good” seems to imply that she might have been under the weather in some way,’ Keenan went on.

Tony shook his head, then shrugged. ‘PMS. I remember now that’s what she said. I told her she’d been a bit wound up, and she said she had PMS.’

‘Get that badly, did she?’

‘Not too bad.’

‘My wife used to get it,’ the older man said confidentially, and pulled a face. ‘I love her, but she could drive me round the twist.’

‘Joanne wasn’t that bad,’ Tony said.

‘So she wasn’t exactly upset before you left for work that morning?’

‘She wasn’t upset at all. I told you, she was fine.’

‘But you said she had PMS.’

‘I said
she
said she had it.’

‘Why would she have said it if it wasn’t true?’ Keenan asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Tony said exasperatedly. ‘Maybe she did, how should I know? I just said she wasn’t upset, just fussing about not being able to go out because she
had ironing to do. I told her it would do her good to get out. End of story.’

‘Unfortunately not.’ Keenan saw Patston’s tears coming again, a few escaping down his cheeks, one into a crack in the corner of his mouth. ‘So you didn’t have a
row?’

‘A row?’ Tony was startled. ‘No, of course not.’

‘Why of course not? People have rows all the time.’

‘We didn’t, not that morning.’

‘But you did row, sometimes?’

‘Of course. Who doesn’t? Like you said.’

‘But not that morning? No harsh words?’ Keenan didn’t wait for another answer. ‘Nothing you know of – not necessarily anything to do with you – that might
have led to Joanne going out and not coming back?’

‘But that’s not what happened, is it?’ Tony said bitterly.

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Obviously not,’ Tony said. ‘Now you’ve
found
her.’ This time he made no effort to contain the tears, just let them come, put down his drink on the floor
beside his chair, covered his face with both hands and sobbed noisily into them. ‘Oh, God,’ he wept. ‘Oh, Jo.’

‘All right,’ Keenan said.

‘But it’s
not
bloody all right, is it?’ Tony’s hands left his face, his cheeks red. ‘And what I don’t understand is why you’re sitting here
asking me these
stupid
questions instead of getting out there trying to find the scum who did that to her.’

‘There are plenty of people out there,’ Keenan said reassuringly, ‘all doing their very best to do exactly that, Mr Patston. And I’m very sorry for what may seem like
stupid questions to you at this minute – and I can understand that they must seem that way, and cruel too, probably.’

Tony nodded at that, was unable, for a moment, to speak.

‘But this is a vital part of our enquiry, sir. Even the tiniest details can make a huge difference. We need to know how Joanne was feeling when you last saw her, the kind of mood she was
in, because it might have made a difference to where she went, who she saw, what she did.’ Keenan paused. ‘If, say, she’d had a headache and no pills in the house, she might have
gone to a chemist. If she’d been bored and fed up, she might have gone to, say, a hairdresser, or to buy a new dress.’

‘She went to meet a friend,’ Tony said, very wearily. ‘The friend who phoned her.’ He sighed, picked up his glass, drank some more brandy.

The door opened, and Karen Dean looked in.

‘Sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘There’s a call for you.’

Keenan stood up. ‘You’ll excuse me?’

Tony nodded, said nothing, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes.

Keenan went out into the hall.

‘Mrs Patston’s car’s been found in Hall Lane Car Park,’ Dean told him quietly. ‘That’s the shoppers’ car park next to Sainsbury’s in
Chingford.’

‘Near the library?’

‘Practically opposite,’ Dean said. ‘Nothing at first glance in or around the car, sir.’ She paused. ‘And no joy yet from fingertip search on a weapon.’

Keenan nodded, started to turn away, then stopped. ‘I’m going to ask you to act as family liaison on this one, Karen, if you’ve no objection.’

‘I’d like to keep working on the enquiry too, sir, if that’s possible.’

Keenan nodded again. ‘We’ll get a uniform to stay around the Patston house when you’re out in the field, but I do want you as liaison.’

Dean’s eyes, dark, slightly slanted and sharp, betrayed fleeting disappointment, mixed with a dread Keenan readily sympathized with.

‘Of course,’ she said.

At ten past five, Clare telephoned Allbeury to see if he knew where Novak was.

‘He did call me a while back,’ she said, ‘then had to go suddenly and said he’d phone back, but he hasn’t, which isn’t like him, and now he’s turned his
phone off, and he usually keeps it on silent.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t help you, Clare,’ Allbeury said. ‘I’m waiting to hear too.’

‘If you do hear first,’ she said, ‘please ask him to call me.’

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘You said murder,’ Mike Novak said to DS Reed when he finally came back into the interview room at MIS headquarters in Theydon Bois, carrying two polystyrene cups
of coffee. ‘Who’s been murdered?’

‘What were you doing hanging around that road?’ Reed set down Novak’s coffee in front of him, took the lid off his own. ‘You said black, no sugar, didn’t
you?’

Novak knew there was no point now in prevaricating.

Not too much anyway.

‘Is it Joanne Patston?’ he asked.

‘Do you know Mrs Patston?’ Reed asked.

‘I’ve met her once,’ Novak answered. ‘Briefly.’

‘Why were you sitting outside her mother’s house, Mr Novak?’

‘Has Joanne Patston been murdered?’ Novak persisted.

DS Reed stared at him for a long moment.

‘Yes,’ he said at last.

‘Christ.’ He remembered the nervous woman hanging her husband’s shirts on the line in her back garden while her child played with a red ball. ‘Oh, dear Christ.’

Was it the husband
? That was what he wanted to ask, come right out with, no time-wasting. But unless it became unavoidable, Allbeury didn’t want the police knowing about his
involvement.

‘I need to make a call,’ he said. ‘To my client.’

‘Client?’ the policeman queried.

‘I’m a private investigator.’ Novak paused. ‘I was there on a job.’

‘Who’s your client?’

Novak disliked getting stroppy with the police, but he had no choice. ‘I’m not under arrest for anything, am I?’

‘Should you be?’ Reed asked.

‘No,’ Novak said, ‘so I’d appreciate a couple of minutes to make the call.’

‘Be my guest.’

Novak took out his phone, turned it on. ‘Alone?’ he said to Reed.

‘Don’t push it,’ the other man said, but stood up.

Novak waited till he’d left the room, saw there were several missed calls, ignored them and dialled Allbeury’s mobile.

He picked up right away. ‘What’s happening, Mike?’

Novak gave him the news.

‘Murdered?’ Allbeury’s shock was audible. ‘Christ almighty, Mike.’

‘I know.’ Novak hesitated, hoping for direction. ‘Thing is . . .’

‘What have you told them?’

‘Nothing. That I’m an investigator and that I had to phone my client.’ Novak heard the silence. ‘I didn’t have much choice, Robin, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about that now.’ Allbeury was already regrouping. ‘Mike, don’t get yourself in difficulties on my account. Tell the truth.’ He paused, choosing
his words carefully. ‘Namely that Mrs Patston was in an unhappy marriage and had asked me for help, hence your surveillance. The usual – I’m a divorce lawyer, but this was
off-the-record.’

‘And if they want more?’

‘You don’t have any more.’ Allbeury paused. ‘If they need to speak to me, I will, of course, get in touch right away.’

The door opened and Reed came back in.

‘DS Reed’s just come back,’ Novak said.

‘Take it easy, Mike,’ Allbeury said, ‘and find out what you can.’

‘I will,’ Novak said. ‘And Robin, could you tell Clare I’m okay?’

He ended the call, turned the phone off again and told Reed – already sitting down again opposite him – what Allbeury had asked him to pass on.

‘So it was Mrs Patston you’ve been watching?’

‘Not so much watching,’ Novak said. ‘Looking for. At her home and her mother’s.’

‘Was Mrs Patston wanting a divorce then?’ Reed asked.

‘I don’t know any details,’ Novak said.

‘But your client is a divorce lawyer?’

‘He is, but he takes other cases too, sometimes, I think.’

‘You think.’ Reed paused. ‘You said Mrs Patston had asked for help.’

‘That’s what Mr Allbeury told me.’

‘And when you met her?’ Reed asked.

‘That was just to arrange a meeting,’ Novak said.

‘Why not just phone?’

Novak shrugged. ‘I was in the neighbourhood. It seemed easier. Friendlier.’

‘And did you just see Mrs Patston? Or was her husband there?’

‘Just her. And her little girl. Poor kid.’

‘Yes,’ Reed agreed. ‘So you don’t know why the lady was unhappy? You did use that word, didn’t you?’

Novak was about to claim ignorance, but then the memory came back again. She’d looked so nice, so vulnerable, pegging up those shirts, and then the little girl had run to her, huddled
close to her mummy. And now her mother was gone, forever, and they were going to find out about Tony Patston anyway, and if he didn’t at least
start
them off on the right track . .
.

‘All I know,’ he said, abruptly, ‘is that there was some question of possible violence – unproven, so far as I know – in the family.’

‘Against Mrs Patston?’ The beady eyes were sharper.

‘Against the daughter,’ Novak said.

He tensed against further questions, for Clare’s sake, and Maureen Donnelly’s, too, as the source of the information; didn’t relish getting a well-meaning nurse into trouble
because of his flapping mouth.

Not to mention Robin. Because this wasn’t the first time a client of his had been murdered, was it? And Novak didn’t know what, if anything, he was supposed to make of that. All he
wanted, right now, was to get this interview sorted and to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible.

‘And who is alleged to be using violence against Irina Patston?’ DS Reed asked.

‘Her father. The husband,’ Novak answered. ‘That’s why I’ve been hanging around. Keeping a bit of an eye on the situation.’

‘Have you been inside the Patstons’ house?’

‘Never.’

‘How long has this surveillance been going on?’

‘Not really surveillance,’ Novak said.

‘What would you call it?’

‘Keeping an eye, like I said.’

‘How long?’ Reed repeated.