Hilary Norman and The Murder Room

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The Murder Room

Where Criminal Minds Meet

themurderroom.com

No Escape

Hilary Norman

Contents

Cover

The Murder Room Introduction

Title page

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy-One

Chapter Seventy-Two

Chapter Seventy-Three

Chapter Seventy-Four

Chapter Seventy-Five

Chapter Seventy-Six

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Chapter Seventy-Eight

Chapter Seventy-Nine

Chapter Eighty

Chapter Eighty-One

Chapter Eighty-Two

Chapter Eighty-Three

Chapter Eighty-Four

Chapter Eighty-Five

Chapter Eighty-Six

Chapter Eighty-Seven

Chapter Eighty-Eight

Chapter Eighty-Nine

Chapter Ninety

Chapter Ninety-One

Chapter Ninety-Two

Chapter Ninety-Three

Chapter Ninety-Four

Chapter Ninety-Five

Chapter Ninety-Six

Chapter Ninety-Seven

Chapter Ninety-Eight

Chapter Ninety-Nine

Chapter One Hundred

Chapter One Hundred One

Chapter One Hundred Two

Chapter One Hundred Three

Chapter One Hundred Four

Chapter One Hundred Five

Chapter One Hundred Six

Chapter One Hundred Seven

Chapter One Hundred Eight

Chapter One Hundred Nine

Chapter One Hundred Ten

Chapter One Hundred Eleven

Chapter One Hundred Twelve

Chapter One Hundred Thirteen

Chapter One Hundred Fourteen

Chapter One Hundred Fifteen

Chapter One Hundred Sixteen

Chapter One Hundred Seventeen

Chapter One Hundred Eighteen

Chapter One Hundred Nineteen

Chapter One Hundred Twenty

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-One

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Two

Outro

By Hilary Norman

Dedication

Acknowledgements

About the author

Copyright page

Case No. 5/040573

BOLSOVER, L.F.

Study/Review

Pending

Action

Resolved

Chapter One

All through the last week of February, the body lay beneath a pile of sacking on the floor of a neglected shed on an allotment near Claris Green in the London borough of Barnet. Less than a year ago, this tiny plot of land had boasted plums, tomatoes, strawberries and seasonal flowers, but then the allotment holder had died, and in the lengthy wait for a new tenant the plants had withered, become choked by weeds and threaded with cobwebs, and one wall of the shed had been smashed by vandals using it for sport.

It being late winter, with no new holder yet in prospect, the body had thus far remained undiscovered for eight days, though one large, smooth, speckled pebble, chucked through the broken planks of wood by a hooligan with time on his hands, now rested on the sacking directly over the dead woman’s left thigh.

The discovery, when it was finally made, would horrify and sicken whoever had the misfortune to stumble upon it. However advanced the state of decomposition of the corpse by then, identification would swiftly be made, for Lynne Frances Bolsover had been reported as a missing person by her husband seven days before, and with no reported sightings since then or usage of her VISA card, concern for her safety had begun to mount. Besides which, while Mrs Bolsover’s black leather Marks & Spencer handbag (placed by her killer in a wheelie bin on Franklin Road, less than a mile from the allotment) would never be found, Lynne was still dressed in her Next red pullover and blue jeans with a Siamese cat patch on their right back pocket, and those clothes, supported by the missing woman’s dental records, would smooth the way for the police.

Though not, of course, the Bolsover family.

The pathologist would, in due course, confirm that the twenty-nine-year-old wife of John Bolsover and mother of Kylie, aged six, and Alex, aged four, had died from a massive brain haemorrhage after her skull had been fractured by three blows to her head. The murder investigation already launched by the Metropolitan Police’s Area Major Investigation Team, North West, would pick up a full head of steam – and would, in all probability, be rapidly solved. For the AMIT NW detectives would soon learn that, hoping to alleviate Lynne’s prolonged depression after an abortion a year earlier, her GP, Dr Deirdre Miller, had recently prescribed Prozac; that staff at a health shop half a mile from the Bolsovers’ semi-detached had often supplied the deceased with arnica for bruising; that, according to Pam Wakefield (Lynne’s sister) and Valerie Golding (her next-door-neighbour), Lynne had frequently been bullied, yelled at, and almost certainly hit by John Bolsover, her husband; and that – this from sister Pam – it had been John who had insisted on the termination that had so depressed his wife.

It was likely that Bolsover would be interviewed several times before being arrested and charged with her murder.

Though he would never confess.

Because he was not guilty.

Chapter Two

Everyone said, regularly, that Lizzie Piper Wade was a very lucky woman.

‘Except for poor Jack, of course—’ those who knew about her middle child’s Duchenne muscular dystrophy would quickly add ‘—though God knows even that has to be a little easier for her than for other women.’

‘Other women’ meaning those with the misfortune not to be married to Christopher Wade.

Life had taught Lizzie about counting blessings, and she had learned over the years, despite the cruelty of Jack’s diagnosis, to be grateful for many things. She was grateful for Jack’s courage and humour, for his intelligence and self-esteem, and, perhaps most vitally, for his unshakable confidence in his family’s great love for him. She was boundlessly grateful that twelve-year-old Edward and Sophie, seven in March, were both healthy – though time and testing, perhaps in her teens, would yet tell whether or not Sophie was a carrier of the gene defect that had afflicted ten-year-old Jack.

She was grateful for her work.

‘How important—’ a journalist interviewing her for one of the Saturday supplements had asked her a year ago ‘—would you say your career is to you, in the general scheme of things?’

‘I know I’m lucky to have it,’ Lizzie had answered. ‘Lucky to be able to cook and eat and drink, and write about it and get paid for it.’

She’d gone on, as she usually did, about her good fortune, saying that though she did actually work fairly hard, it was sometimes difficult to think of what she did as real ‘work’. But she had not given the answer that lay uppermost in her mind: the most truthful answer.

Work keeps me sane.

The journalist, knowing about Jack’s condition, would probably have assumed that Lizzie was thinking of that. But Lizzie had not spoken the words, neither to that person nor to any other. Not even to Angela Piper, her mother, nor to Gilly Spence, who helped with Jack and the other children and some of the housework – making Gilly another blessing.

Work keeps me sane.

None of them would have truly understood that statement. All of them would have believed that if Lizzie’s emotional strength did occasionally teeter a bit, it had to be because of Jack and the constant strain of balancing priorities – and even then, taking all that into account, they would still silently have added a waiver to their very real empathy: Easier for Lizzie than most.

Because all her family, friends and colleagues, and anyone who’d read about her in women’s magazines or tabloids, felt much the same way about one pivotal aspect of her life; that Lizzie’s greatest, head-and-shoulders-above-the-rest, blessing (especially, some privately thought, since though she was a nice enough-looking blue-eyed blonde, she was no great beauty) was that she had Christopher for her husband.

Christopher Edward Julian Wade.

The gifted, renowned, attractive plastic surgeon who regularly donated his services to the needy in European and Third World countries, as well as being the founder and lynchpin of HANDS, a charitable institution dedicated to the physical and psychological aid of disfigured men, women and children.

Dubbed ‘Saint Christopher’ by several tabloids.

The Wades divided their family life between a large, early Victorian, stucco-fronted house on the Thames near Marlow in Buckinghamshire, and a garden flat in London’s Holland Park; both homes having been virtually gutted and reconstructed some years back in order to be able to accommodate Jack’s special needs – ramps, a stairlift in the house, widened doorways, modified bathrooms – as they arose, as his strength and abilities gradually waned, and both also possessing working kitchens for Lizzie and studies for her and Christopher.

Add the blessing of wealth.

Lizzie had long ago lost count of how many fans had written to tell her how much they envied her – not so much because of her bestselling books and regular appearances as Lizzie Piper in cookery slots on This Morning and on the Food and Drink Channel, but because of her life with the fabulous Christopher.

Because none of them knew the truth about him.

They all knew only what Lizzie wished them to know, for knowing more would serve no purpose. She would not – could not – contemplate leaving Christopher, no matter what, because of her children. Because of Jack. Because, flawed as her husband was, he was also the most genuinely tender father imaginable.

And because Jack worshipped him.

So, for at least as long as Jack lived (and although Lizzie knew the statistics, knew that despite the hopes for gene and other therapies of the future, her beloved son might still be lucky to survive past his teens or early twenties, she seldom permitted herself to contemplate his death), Lizzie would tell no one. Would allow her family and the world beyond to go on believing, wholeheartedly, in the semi-myth of ‘Saint Christopher’ Wade.

For Jack.

Chapter Three

Some people found it hard to trust Robin Allbeury.

A prosperous, successful, Labour-supporting solicitor with offices in Bedford Row and a sumptuous penthouse home in Shad Tower, a sleek building on Bermondsey Riverside near St Saviour’s Dock and Butler’s Wharf on the south-east side of Tower Bridge, Allbeury was, on the whole, a contented man.

An elegant bachelor of forty-two, not handsome but undeniably attractive, with dark hair threading nicely with silver, and warm brown eyes, he supported the arts but, in his personal taste rankings, placed cinema above theatre, thrillers above literature, jazz above opera. Silence above jazz. Quiet dinners above parties. Friendships with women above men. And his single status above marriage.

‘You don’t know what you’re missing,’ David Lerman, one of his partners, blissfully happy with his second wife, had told him more than once. ‘Julia’s transformed my life.’

‘Julia’s wonderful,’ Allbeury had agreed, ‘but you were a miserable sod before you met her, whereas I’m a happy man.’

‘So you claim.’ Lerman had remained dubious.

‘I do.’ Allbeury had smiled.

His speciality in law was matrimony, though these days, as head of his own firm, he tended to be highly selective about which cases he took on, leaving either Lerman or one of their associates to deal with the bulk of marital matters, while he supervised and allowed himself time for his ‘other’ work.

What he did in that spare, private time, was to help rescue women trapped in deeply unhappy marriages; women who, either for financial or other reasons, saw no way out. They seldom came to him. It was usually Allbeury who, learning of their circumstances in any number of ways, volunteered his services to them.

He had built up a grapevine of trusted informants over the years, a disparate bunch spread over Greater London. A telephone operator working for the emergency services, a disillusioned social worker, a probation officer, a police constable, a paramedic, a publican and one west London vicar.

‘Anyone finds out I’ve passed this on to you,’ the social worker had agitated at one of his early meetings with Allbeury, ‘and I’m fucked.’

‘No one’s going to find out from me,’ Allbeury had told him.

The case in question had concerned a woman suffering from her husband’s extreme mental cruelty. Social services had been alerted by neighbours because of the wife’s constant loud sobbing, but with no visible bruises or blood, and in the face of her refusal to make any complaint, the social worker had had little choice but to withdraw.

‘I feel I’ve abandoned someone in darkest despair.’

‘No chance of her leaving?’ Allbeury asked.

‘She’s sunk too deep to even try,’ the young man had said. ‘He’s a complete control freak. Won’t let her cash a cheque without his signature, won’t let her have an ATM card, tells her who she can or can’t see.’

‘Suicide risk, do you think?’ Allbeury asked.

‘I’d say it’s a distinct likelihood.’

Allbeury had been quiet for a moment.

‘Tell me all you know.’

He generally worked that way, extracted whatever his informant could offer, then used his own methods to verify the woman’s circumstances, after which, if he felt he might be able to help, he made contact via a third party to arrange a first meeting, usually in a public place outside their own environment. Some of the women shied away in alarm, but often they were sufficiently intrigued and bleak enough to take at least that first step.

They tended, in general, to like and to have faith in Allbeury, who was a gentle, diplomatic interrogator, though some were suspicious, especially when he told them there was no need to concern themselves about money.

‘I can’t pay you any other way either,’ more than one had said.

‘Nor do I expect you to.’

All he was offering, he told them, was a way out. An escape. An end to their marriage, if that was what they decided they ultimately wanted. An end to intimidation or raw vulnerability or actual fear.

‘But why?’ one distrustful wife had asked. ‘If you say you don’t want money, and I won’t risk applying for Legal Aid, why on earth do you want to help?’

He had smiled. ‘Call it my missionary complex.’

‘Missionaries convert people, don’t they?’

‘The only thing I want to convert you to,’ Robin Allbeury had told her, ‘is freedom.’

Chapter Four

Mike Novak, a private investigator with a struggling agency operating out of a run-down former warehouse in New Smithfield, a grungy undeveloped cul-de-sac off Dock Street near the old Royal Mint, had first hooked up with Robin Allbeury five years ago after Allen Keith, at that time a junior partner in the Bedford Row practice, had hired Novak to check out the allegedly adulterous wife of a wealthy client. Novak had learned that the shoe had been firmly on the other foot, and had reported as much. The client had been enraged and ordered Allen Keith to fire Novak and withhold payment, but two days later senior partner Robin Allbeury had come to the agency to apologize.

‘I’d rather have my fee,’ Novak had told him.

The solicitor with the beautifully-cut hair and suit, and the younger man with rumpled fair hair, pugnacious nose and mouth and hostile blue eyes, had taken a good look at one another.

‘Your fee plus a bonus.’ Allbeury had smiled as he’d written out the cheque on the spot. ‘And my thanks for a job well done.’

‘Your client wouldn’t agree.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Allbeury had said.

When, some months later, Novak had read in the Mirror that the client’s divorce had been settled with particular fairness to the wife, he’d wondered if his report and, perhaps, Robin Allbeury himself, might have played a part in the deal.

The following afternoon, a pair of heavies had jumped Novak near his flat in Lamb’s Conduit Street, advising him that he’d be smart in future to keep his reports in the interests of those who paid his bills, then given him a kicking to ram home the point. Deciding later, nursing a stiff drink and his wounds, that the rather smoothly charming Robin Allbeury should be made aware of the kind of people he was dealing with, Novak had phoned him, and within hours the solicitor had come to the flat.

‘Christ,’ Allbeury had said, appalled by his face.

‘You didn’t need to come.’

The other man had ignored the bolshiness. ‘May I come in?’ In his left hand, he held a bottle of Jameson’s. ‘Better than aspirin.’

Novak had hesitated, then let him in and shown him where the glasses were.

‘Straight to the point,’ Allbeury had said, pouring for them both. ‘Okay?’

‘Why not?’

‘You have my word,’ Allbeury said, ‘which I hope, in time, you’ll come to see is worth something, that my firm will, as of tomorrow, sever all links with the client in question.’

‘Judging by this little lot—’ Novak felt his ribs gingerly ‘—he may not like it.’

‘Tough,’ Allbeury said.

‘What about Allen Keith?’

‘If Mr Keith has a problem with my decision, he can look for a partnership elsewhere.’

Novak had frowned. ‘You sound like you mean that.’

‘I never say things I don’t mean,’ Allbeury had said.

If those thugs had inadvertently helped to bring about the start of a long working relationship with Robin Allbeury, they had also introduced Mike Novak to the love of his life.

Clare Killin had been a nurse on duty in A&E when he’d limped in on the afternoon of his beating to have the nastiest of the gashes on his forehead stitched up. It was one thing, Novak had confessed to her, facing up to the odd angry fist or even boot, but needles were another matter altogether.

‘I’ll do my best,’ she’d assured him, her voice soft and Edinburgh-accented.

‘Aren’t you going to take the piss?’ he’d asked.

‘Would it help?’

‘Not a bit.’

‘Didn’t think so.’ She’d turned around. ‘Want to shut your eyes?’

Novak had checked out her calm hazel eyes, sweet mouth and curly red hair, tied off her face, a few stray hairs escaping. ‘Think I’ll keep them open,’ he’d said. ‘If you don’t mind.’

A fortnight after their first dinner together, Clare had moved into his flat, and three months later they had quietly, joyfully married. Neither had relatives in easy reach, Novak having lost both his Czech-born father and English mother in a plane crash seven years before, and Clare’s widowed father, Malcolm Killin, living up in Scotland, but neither had felt any need for family or for anyone else.

The nearest thing to tension Novak had experienced in those blissful early days had been the odd troublesome client or the ongoing challenge of trying to make Novak Investigations pay its way. Clare’s stresses, on the other hand, had been on a vastly different level, witnessing, as she did almost daily, the kinds of pain and distress that Novak preferred not even to imagine. When she had finally burned out because, according to a colleague at the hospital, she was too empathetic to survive long-term as an emergency care nurse, Novak feared that he might, in some way, have failed her.

The agency was relegated to second place and business suffered accordingly as he became determined to help Clare back to full strength, but she never went back to A&E, and Novak had backed her decision. The hospital, keen to help, had suggested the possibility of a transfer to another department, and Novak had mooted the idea that she might want to try her hand at private nursing, but Clare had rejected both notions.

‘It’s A&E or nothing for me,’ she’d said. ‘The things that made me unwell are the things I loved.’ And then she’d looked at him, strangely, searchingly.

‘What?’ Novak had found the look unsettling. ‘What is it, Clare?’

‘You must be very disappointed in me.’ It was a flat statement.

Dismay hit him hard. ‘For God’s sake, why would you think that?’

‘You married a nurse. A strong, capable woman who took care of people.’

‘I married a human being, Clare. A sensitive, caring woman.’

‘You still love me then?’

The flatness had gone, but the fragility was back, worrying him.

‘More than ever,’ he had told her, almost violently. ‘More than anything.’

He’d asked her, soon after that, if she might like to consider joining him at the agency, had been both surprised and delighted by her eagerness to agree and, as time passed, greatly impressed by her contribution. Clare had turned out to be both a natural organizer and an ace at spotting flaws. In less than two weeks, she’d been confident enough to take over most administrative and bookkeeping tasks, leaving Novak free to focus on persuading at least a few of his formerly regular clients – two divorce lawyers, one of the big agencies who farmed out work, and Robin Allbeury – that he was back on track.

Enrolling in night school, Clare had completed courses in IT, bookkeeping and business administration. She liked learning, enjoyed using her new skills to reorganize and market the agency while managing to bring down overheads and, to Novak’s relief and gratitude, helping them to break even for the first time and, soon after that, to move into profit. Still eager, she had urged her husband into some extracurricular studies of his own so that he might become an ABI member.

‘Respectability and contacts,’ she’d said, ‘can’t hurt.’

‘That’s what Robin says,’ Novak told her.

‘Oh, well,’ Clare said wryly. ‘If Robin says so.’

She had never felt entirely certain about Robin Allbeury or convinced by his unusual, unorthodox and apparently altruistic activities, felt that he had to be concealing his true motives. If he was, Novak had told her, he hadn’t yet found out what they were, and, to be frank, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to find out so long as Allbeury went on helping people.

‘Women,’ Clare had said.

‘He helps us pay our bills,’ Novak had pointed out.

She’d had no argument with that.

‘And he thinks you’re a remarkable person.’

‘Why should he think that?’

‘Because he’s a clever man,’ Novak had said.

Two years after that, heartache had returned for them both with the death, at birth, of their longed-for first child. Clare, alone at home and taking a bath, had passed out before being able to summon help, and their son, born with frightening speed, had suffered breathing difficulties and had not survived. Grief had poleaxed them. For a week after Clare’s discharge from hospital, neither she nor Novak had moved from the flat, unable to eat or sleep. Robin Allbeury, concerned by the lack of response to his messages, had come to the flat and all but taken over, shopping and cooking, alerting Clare’s father to the tragedy (though Malcolm Killin had himself been ill with pneumonia at the time, and unable to help) and helping Novak to organize the small, sad funeral.

After the hideousness of the inquest, they’d picked themselves up with agonizing slowness, had forced themselves to visit a bereavement counsellor but found her of limited help. Work, predictably, had helped the most, and time. Months passed and they began to throw themselves more vigorously into the agency, to build again. But nothing was the same any more, everything felt contaminated by sorrow, shame or fear. If something made them laugh, they felt guilty because their child was in his grave. If they made love, they clung to each other like swimmers close to drowning. If they saw an infant in a pushchair, the force of their envy cut off their ability to breathe.

Yet even that had passed.

‘Would you mind,’ Clare asked one morning, almost a year after their loss, ‘if I took on a part-time nursing job? Just two or three evenings a week.’

Novak had been startled. ‘I didn’t know you were even thinking about nursing.’

‘I wasn’t, till Maureen phoned last week.’

Maureen Donnelly, a former colleague of Clare’s, had transferred to Waltham General in Essex two years before to be closer to her father, who had Parkinson’s disease. Mindful, in the past, not to overdo shop talk when she and Clare got together, Maureen had lately noticed her old friend becoming increasingly keen to listen to A&E news and was happy enough to oblige by talking her through some of the more interesting cases that had come through her department.

Nick Parry was one such case, a twenty-eight-year-old paraplegic who had come in the previous month after his adapted car had been involved in an accident on the North Circular. Struck by the young man’s courage and sense of humour, and upon hearing that one of his favourite part-time carers was about to be sent back to New Zealand by the Home Office, Maureen had promised to scout around for a replacement on his behalf.

‘Maureen thought we might get on,’ Clare told Novak, ‘so I went to visit him.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I thought you’d either get excited for me and then upset if it didn’t work out, or worried about it and upset if it did.’

‘Apparently it did,’ Novak said. ‘Work out.’

‘If you don’t mind.’

He’d looked at her for a moment. ‘Do you still not really know me? I’d never stop you doing anything you wanted to do.’ He had paused, then quickly asked the question suddenly uppermost in his mind. ‘Do you want to leave the agency?’

‘No,’ Clare had replied decisively. ‘Never. The agency’s what healed me.’ She had paused ‘And you, of course.’

‘You healed you,’ Novak had told her.

Clare had kissed him then, leaned very close and laid her lips gently against his mouth. ‘You’re the best, Mike,’ she said. ‘You know that?’

‘I just love you,’ he said.