No Escape (41 page)

Clare.

She looked up quickly, saw only the rectangle of light two floors above.

No one framed in it now.

Gone.

The place felt empty, no sound anywhere, nothing.

No one.

Lizzie looked at the thick cabling nearest her, thought about leaning against it for support, then, going on instinct, edged away from it instead. The pain in her arm and hands was sickening and
the lift beneath her groaned like an aged, arthritic beast.

Keep still and wait.

She wondered how long it would be before someone came – Robin, maybe. But Clare had said that he’d been hurt.

Clare pushed you down a lift shaft.

But maybe he
was
hurt, maybe she’d done something to him too.

I know what kind of man your husband is
, Clare had said. And when Lizzie had asked her how she knew, she’d said:
Ask Robin.

I’ve killed before.

For the children.

Jack flew into Lizzie’s mind, and Edward and Sophie, and then, almost an afterthought, the shocking mess of her marriage, and Lizzie began to cry, just bawled her eyes out for a moment or
two.

Until the lift groaned again.

Making her stop.

Christopher was in Holland Park, in his study.

The telephone had rung a few minutes earlier, but he hadn’t answered it, had let the machine pick up, neither had he checked to see if he had any messages, because they would no longer
matter, might only muddy his thinking, which was, at present, very clear.

He’d already assembled what he needed: a good combination, one that would take him pleasantly on his way. Better than he deserved, he supposed, but then again he had never understood why
some people felt the need to torture themselves on the way to oblivion.

He had, on the other hand, decided not to do it here – in comfort, but also the place in which his wife and children would probably continue to live; did not want to inflict that kind of
ineradicable connection on any of them.

Done enough
–
still doing
–
more than enough to them without that.

And besides, there was also the possibility that someone – the police or Lizzie herself, or perhaps Allbeury, now, after the appalling fiasco in that dismal office – might come here
looking for him, and he had no intention of being interrupted.

He had already written letters to Edward and Sophie, and had managed a shamefully short, entirely inadequate letter of regret and love for Lizzie.

Now he had begun to write the hardest of all.

He signed the letter, sealed the envelope, feeling a little calmer, but then the sound of a siren from the streets startled him and he dropped the letter and his pen and felt
compelled to wait, frozen in suspense, until the sound had vanished into the distance.

Not for him yet, but time marching on.

He was trembling again as he went into Lizzie’s study and placed all the envelopes on her desk, so that it would be she who found them, no one else.

And then he picked up his collection of drugs, his favourite photographs of Lizzie and the children, and left the flat.

Clare had come to the river.

She was sitting on a bench seat close to the water a few yards from one of the restaurants on Butler’s Wharf.

It was colder than she had expected, and she was very tired, and the hike back across the bridge and along Shad Thames in the dark had almost finished her, but she had known roughly where she
wanted to get to, where she wanted to sit and wait.

For them to find her.

Or for it to end.

Whichever came first.

She was trying to ignore the pain, breathing through it, gazing into the river, imagining the darkness beneath the surface.

She felt the blood trickling out of her. Let it go. Neither laughing now, nor weeping.

Just letting it all go.

‘Damn it,’ Allbeury said, standing in his living room at Shad Tower, ‘where’s she
gone
? No note, no message.’

‘Always looking for notes.’ Novak was wry. ‘Explanations.’

Allbeury ignored him, tried to think where else he might try looking for Lizzie, had already called Holland Park and Marlow, where he’d lied to Gilly, told her it was unimportant.

He thought of Susan Blake, then dismissed that notion, and went to his house phone to speak to the doorman.

‘I’m afraid,’ the man told him, ‘I’ve only just come on duty, but if it’s urgent, I know where Dermot’s gone.’

‘It’s urgent,’ Allbeury said. ‘Call me back.’ He took a breath, trying to compose himself, saw the anger and fear still etched on Novak’s normally affable
face. ‘Have a seat, Mike.’

Novak started to shake his head, then slouched down in an armchair, looking like a boxer without a fight.

‘Drink?’ Allbeury offered.

‘No.’

‘Coffee?’

‘No.’

Allbeury looked at the house phone, glanced at his watch. Almost seven. Where the hell
was
she?

He began to pace, over by the expanse of glass doors, back and forth, looking out as he did so, gazing into the half dark at nothing in particular.

Suddenly he stopped pacing, stood very still for one more instant, then opened the doors, stepped out onto the terrace and grasped the telescope, training it down onto the walk below and then
left, scanning the little electrically operated stainless steel footbridge across St Saviour’s Dock, moving on along the riverside walk.

There.

He fastened on a small figure, adjusted the focus.

A woman was sitting, alone, on one of the bench seats on Butler’s Wharf outside the Gastrodome.

‘Clare,’ he said, loudly, sharply.

In the room, Novak sprang to his feet.

‘Down there,’ Allbeury said.

Both men ran.

Lizzie had managed, as well as she could with her bad arm and throbbing fingers, to get herself into a huddled position, knees drawn up, right arm around them.

She felt increasingly cold.

And scared.

She’d tried telling herself that there was no need to feel so afraid, because the worst had already happened – she’d fallen down a lift shaft and survived. It was just a matter
of waiting now, for help to come. As it would.

The children.

Clare had said that she’d done it for the children.

Killed.

But her children were safe with Gilly, and Christopher – wherever he was – would not go back to Marlow, not after last night, and Clare Novak, wherever she might have gone, was
surely still in London, and
ill
, perhaps having a miscarriage, so there was no reason to be afraid for Jack and Edward and Sophie now.

What if no one comes
?

They would, she told herself fiercely. It was self-indulgent to allow herself to think otherwise, because Mike Novak worked in this building, and even if it was late on a Friday, the agency had
been left in too much chaos for it to be abandoned for the whole weekend. Even if Novak didn’t come back, or Robin – she wished it would be Robin – eventually
someone
would
come: the cleaner, or maybe the police.

Or Clare.

Novak reached Clare first, sat down beside her in silence, put his arms around her, gently, protectively. There was a sheen of perspiration on her face, clearly visible in the
lamplight, but she was shivering.

‘You’re cold,’ he said, took off his leather jacket, put it around her.

She began to smile at him – and then a cramp distorted her face.

Realization hit him.

‘The baby?’ he said, and fought off panic.

She didn’t answer, just rocked with the pain.

Novak looked back at Allbeury, standing, waiting. ‘Can you phone for an ambulance? I’ve left my mobile somewhere.’

‘In a moment,’ Allbeury said.

‘Now,’ Novak said. ‘Go into one of the restaurants.’

‘One moment.’ Allbeury came around the bench seat and sat on Clare’s other side. ‘Where’s Lizzie?’ he asked her.

‘Robin, she needs to get to hospital,’ Novak said, holding her more tightly.

Clare smiled again.

‘Where is she, Clare?’ Allbeury asked.

‘Leave her alone, you son-of-a-bitch,’ Novak said, ‘and get us some
help
.’

Clare tilted her face towards Allbeury.

‘Lizzie’s at the office,’ she said.

‘Which office?’ Allbeury asked.

‘Our office,’ she said.

Allbeury stood up, his mobile in his right hand, keying 999.

‘I’ll tell them on the way to the car,’ he said and began to move away.

Novak looked back towards Shad Tower, glittering in the dark, dwarfing the warehouse conversions, then glanced towards Tower Bridge, saw brake lights, motionless, cars still bumper to
bumper.

‘Faster walking,’ he called out.

Allbeury lifted a hand in assent, turned into Curlew Street and was gone.

Jim Keenan had only reached St Thomas’s ten minutes earlier – had been fortuitously close, inside Waterloo Station, when Shipley had called him – and
she’d just got out of X-ray and what she was telling him was a wild-sounding jumble, but he was doing his best to make sense of it.

‘You’re going to have to slow down,’ he told her. ‘So far, I have someone knocking you down a flight of stairs—’

‘Please pay attention,’ Shipley said impatiently. ‘His name is Christopher Wade, but that’s not important now.’

‘Assaulting a police officer’s important enough,’ Keenan said.

‘But not
now
.’

‘So you’re still saying what? That Allbeury is connected to the killings, but not
directly
?’

‘I’m saying that he was trying to tell me something he didn’t want Novak to hear, and I’m assuming it was because he thought Novak, and maybe his wife, were
involved.’

‘So this is still mostly hunch, is it?’ Keenan asked.

‘I suppose so,’ Shipley said, ‘except now, apparently, it isn’t just
my
hunch, it’s Allbeury’s too. And if you’d seen his face, you’d know
that something bad was going on – something
new
, okay?’

They’d put her in a cubicle, had given her something for her pain, and her eyelids were beginning to droop.

‘By “bad”,’ Keenan pressed before she fell asleep, ‘you think someone’s in danger?’

‘Maybe.’ Shipley nodded. ‘And if it was me, if I wasn’t lying here with this bloody leg, I’d be on my way to the Novaks’ flat, and then I’d be going
back to the agency, and if those places came up empty, I’d be tracking down Allbeury again.’

Keenan took out his notebook. ‘Addresses?’

Shipley’s eyes were closing. ‘Then again,’ she said, with a smile on her lips, ‘it’s your call now, and this stuff is starting to give me quite a nice buzz,
and—’

Keenan laid a hand on her arm.

‘Give me the addresses, Helen.’

‘We should get you inside,’ Novak told Clare, ‘into the warm.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘It’s too cold out here.’ He began to rise, to try to draw her to her feet.

‘
No
,’ she said again. ‘I want to stay here.’

‘Okay.’ He gave in, cuddled her close. ‘The ambulance will be here soon,’ he told her gently, ‘and you’ll be fine, both of you, you and our baby, and
there’s no need to be scared, okay, sweetheart?’

‘The baby won’t be all right,’ she said.

‘Yes, it will. You mustn’t worry.’

‘The baby’s dying,’ Clare said. ‘Or maybe it’s already dead. And I’m not worrying, Mike, because it’s what I want.’

He thought – was sure – he had misheard. But then she laughed.

Delirium
, he told himself, hung on to that thread.

The laugh was harsh, though. Brittle.

‘That’s right.’ She glanced at his face, went on leaning against him. ‘I do mean it, Mike. I meant it last time, too, when I killed our baby.’

‘You didn’t kill him,’ Novak said. ‘I’ve told you and told you, sweetheart, it wasn’t your fault.’

‘Yes, it was.’ The fingers of Clare’s left hand hooked around the edge of his shirt, between two buttons, grasped at the fabric as a child might, clinging on. ‘Our son
didn’t just
die
, Mike, didn’t have problems breathing – not the kind you thought, anyway—’

‘Clare, darling, stop it.’ He twisted around, still holding her, but trying to see up the narrow side street, looking for blue flashing lights, though he’d heard no sirens.