No Escape (30 page)

‘Nor me.’ Keenan waited as the solicitor sat too. ‘What makes you so sure your connection has no relevance?’

‘I’ve thought about it long and hard, naturally,’ Allbeury answered. ‘And yes, I suppose it is remotely feasible that both women’s husbands found out that their
wives were in contact with a solicitor, and became enraged enough to kill them.’

‘Maybe that’s exactly what did happen,’ Shipley said.

‘Unlikely, at least in
both
cases, surely?’ Allbeury was sceptical.

Shipley said nothing.

Allbeury regarded her for a moment longer, then turned to Keenan. ‘So how exactly can I help you, Detective Inspector Keenan?’

‘First,’ Keenan said, ‘by remembering where you were at the times of both deaths. Second, by telling us precisely what your involvement was with the victims.’

‘I’ll need to consult the diary on my computer for the first,’ Allbeury said. ‘As to the second, I’ve already told DI Shipley about my one encounter with Lynne
Bolsover.’

Again, Shipley made no response.

‘As I recall,’ Keenan said, ‘you told DI Shipley that you offered Mrs Bolsover some sort of legal advice gratis, but outside the legal aid system.’

‘Correct,’ Allbeury said. ‘But she didn’t want my advice.’

‘Probably a bit convoluted, from her point of view,’ Keenan said. ‘When all she had to do was go to Citizens Advice or open the Yellow Pages for one of the firms who do freebie
first-times.’

‘But she didn’t do either of those things,’ Allbeury said, unruffled. ‘That’s exactly the point. Mrs Bolsover was too afraid of her husband finding out, to risk
that kind of visit.’

‘You mentioned,’ Shipley said, ‘an “escape route.” ’

Allbeury thought for a moment. ‘I believe what I said to you was that many unhappy women seem unable to see that they might
have
an escape route.’

‘Because they have no money,’ Keenan added.

Allbeury nodded. ‘That’s often the primary stumbling block.’

‘So how would you have helped Lynne Bolsover to “escape?” ’ Shipley asked. ‘If she hadn’t said no to your offer.’

‘I can’t answer that,’ Allbeury said.

‘Can’t, or won’t?’ Shipley asked.

He smiled. ‘Can’t, Detective Inspector. Each case is different, and clearly, any advice or help I might have given Mrs Bolsover would have depended upon her specific circumstances or
needs.’

‘What about—’ Jim Keenan leaned forward slightly ‘—Joanne Patston’s needs?’

‘I’m sorry to say,’ Allbeury replied, ‘that I can’t be very much more helpful to you there either.’ He paused. ‘Mrs Patston and I had only one meeting,
at her local library.’

‘The branch in Hall Lane?’ Keenan asked.

‘That’s right.’ Allbeury paused. ‘She brought her daughter, Irina, and we talked while the little girl looked at books – her mother kept an eye on her the entire
time.’

‘What did you talk about?’ Keenan asked.

‘Mrs Patston was afraid for Irina,’ Allbeury said, ‘because her husband had been hitting the child. We spoke about that, and about the possibility of my being able to help her
find some way out of the marriage.’

‘What kind of way?’ Keenan asked. ‘Divorce?’

‘Divorce might not have been a clean enough break,’ the solicitor said. ‘Too long a process, too great a risk of Patston losing his temper, becoming violent, any number of
times along the way.’

‘She could have applied for an injunction,’ Shipley said.

‘Of course,’ Allbeury said, ‘though I’m not sure if she would have been up to coping with all that would have entailed.’ Allbeury paused. ‘In any case, as you
know, violent men don’t always heed injunctions.’

‘Why didn’t she report him?’ Keenan asked.

‘Fear,’ Allbeury replied simply.

‘How did you come to hear about Joanne Patston?’ Shipley asked. ‘Another anonymous tip-off?’

‘Yes,’ Allbeury replied. ‘Though not a letter, this time.’ He looked straight at Keenan as he told the small lie. ‘A telephone call.’

‘Untraceable, I suppose?’ Shipley said.

‘I didn’t attempt to trace the source of the call,’ Allbeury said. ‘I was more interested in the subject.’

‘Joanne Patston,’ Keenan said.

‘And the risk to her daughter,’ Allbeury said.

‘Why didn’t you report that risk?’ Shipley asked.

‘I wanted Mrs Patston to feel she could trust me,’ he answered. ‘Calling social services or the police might simply have made her life, and the child’s,
harder.’

‘And did she trust you?’ Keenan asked.

‘I believe she was coming round to thinking that she could.’

‘Yet you never saw her again?’ Shipley’s question.

‘No.’

‘Did you speak to her?’ Keenan asked.

‘Not after the meeting in the library,’ Allbeury said.

‘What about Michael Novak?’ Shipley asked.

‘I believe he spoke to her twice after the meeting,’ Allbeury replied.

‘About?’ Keenan again.

‘She was making up her mind,’ the solicitor said.

‘What about?’ Shipley asked.

‘About whether she wanted me to help her leave the marriage.’

‘You still haven’t told us,’ Keenan said, ‘what
kind
of way out you were suggesting, Mr Allbeury.’

‘I was waiting for her answer.’

‘You must have had something in mind,’ Shipley said.

‘Of course,’ Allbeury agreed.

‘Which was?’ Keenan pushed, still politely.

Allbeury was silent for a moment. ‘If Mrs Patston had told me she wanted to go,’ he said, at last, slowly, ‘I would have done all I could to enable her to take her daughter to
a place where they would have felt secure.’

‘Long-term?’ Keenan asked.

‘Yes,’ Allbeury answered. ‘Nothing else would have helped her feel safe.’

‘But you were still waiting for her final response?’ Keenan asked.

‘When Mike Novak told me she was dead,’ Allbeury said.

He took them into his blue study, invited both detectives to look over his shoulder as he brought up the diary on his PC and scrolled back to the twentieth of February, the day
of Lynne Bolsover’s disappearance and killing.

‘If essential,’ Allbeury said, ‘both those morning appointments could be verified.’

‘Not the one in the afternoon?’ Shipley asked, standing on his left side.

‘It was with a client who appreciates confidentiality and is, at present, overseas.’ He looked up at her. ‘I was under the impression that John Bolsover was in Belmarsh
awaiting trial for his wife’s murder.’

‘He is,’ she said.

Allbeury returned his attention to his diary, scrolled on eight months to October, then glanced up at Keenan, standing to the right of his chair.

‘Monday,’ Keenan said. ‘The seventh.’

‘The office.’ Allbeury leaned back for them to see. ‘Allbeury, Lerman, Wren in Bedford Row.’ He looked at Keenan again. ‘If you’re going to check, Detective
Inspector, I would appreciate discretion.’

‘Goes without saying, sir,’ Keenan said.

‘Were you there all day?’ Shipley asked.

Allbeury looked back at her, and half smiled. ‘I had a great deal to attend to on Monday. One of the juniors fetched me a sandwich – I don’t know where from, but it was
thick-cut ham with relish and very good.’

‘You seem very lighthearted,’ Shipley said, ‘considering you said you were wretched about these two deaths.’

‘Forgive me,’ Allbeury said. ‘I suppose I’m not accustomed to being asked for alibis, Detective Inspector.’

‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr Allbeury,’ Jim Keenan said.

‘Is that all?’

‘I think so,’ Keenan said.

Allbeury stood up. ‘If you do need anything further, don’t hesitate to call.’

‘We won’t,’ Shipley said.

‘Thank you very much,’ Keenan said.

‘Not quite the whole story, obviously,’ he said as they rode down in the gleaming lift.

‘Lying through his teeth,’ Shipley said, looking up at the camera.

‘More a case of gentle evasion, I’d say,’ Keenan said. ‘Probably reluctance to have his affairs looked at too closely, rather than anything to do with the
killings.’

‘Did you like him?’ Shipley sounded curious.

The doors opened, and they walked out through the marbled lobby, past the doorman and out onto the riverside walk. A stiff, chilly wind was blowing off the river.

‘I didn’t
dis
like him,’ Keenan replied. ‘Certainly not as much as you clearly do.’

‘It’s not just him,’ Shipley said. ‘It’s the whole set-up I don’t trust.’ She turned with him away from St Saviour’s Dock and Butler’s
Wharf, into the side road where they’d left their cars. ‘Novak out there, maybe – I don’t know –
pimping
for the guy in the tower.’ She shook her head.
‘I certainly don’t believe in coincidences.’

‘Yet they do happen.’ Keenan fished in his coat pocket for his keys. ‘And logically, if Allbeury wanted to kill anyone, it would have been the husbands.’

‘Maybe—’ Shipley retrieved her keys from her shoulder bag ‘—he despises women he sees as too weak to stand up for themselves.’

‘Maybe he does,’ Keenan said.

They came to her old Mini first. ‘You don’t really believe that though, do you?’

‘Not really.’ The wind billowed his coat. ‘As I’ve already told you, my team’s money’s on Patston.’

Shipley ground the heel of her right shoe into the pavement.

‘Sorry,’ Keenan said.

‘Could I see the pathologist’s report on Joanne?’ she asked suddenly.

‘I’ll fax it to you tomorrow.’

‘Not going back to your office now?’

Keenan smiled again. ‘I’ll fax it when I get back.’

Christopher, staying overnight in Holland Park again, could not get the computer incursion at the Beauchamp out of his head.

Lizzie’s uncharacteristic snappishness earlier on the phone had exacerbated his anxiety. He was beginning to wonder, in fact, if Lizzie herself, or some sharp-practising lawyer, might have
been behind the hacking – if that
was
the right word for it – possibly trying to gather grounds for divorce.

More
grounds, he reminded himself – the thought making him no happier – since surely she already had more than enough.

All the same, the idea that she – normally so straight from the shoulder – might be doing something so underhand, was making him very upset and, indeed, quite angry.

He poured himself a very large malt whisky.

Nothing in those files to help her in a divorce, he was sure of that. Just more evidence, really, of the loving husband taking care of his wife.

And he
was
a loving, if not completely ideal, husband.

And a perfect father.

Christopher took a large swallow of whisky, and shuddered.

The notion of Lizzie even
thinking
about divorce made him ill.

By nine that evening, Shipley was home, eating KFC drumsticks and drinking Coke – she’d had a couple of beers with Jackson and Gregory after work, and if she had
any more, she mightn’t be able to make sense of the reports on the coffee table in front of her.

Jim Keenan, true to his word, had faxed not only the pathologist’s report on Joanne Patston’s death, but also the scene-of-crime report.

‘For your evening’s entertainment,’ Shipley muttered.

She wiped her greasy hands and picked up the new report, having pretty much committed Dr Patel’s to memory.

Reading did little to boost her spirits, not that she’d expected anything glaringly useful. A mention of the skin that had been found beneath Joanne Patston’s fingernails having been
her own, which Shipley knew must have dashed a few hopes in Theydon Bois. And more differences than similarities between the two killings. Joanne Patston had been full of tranquillizers, but
toxicology on Lynne Bolsover had shown no drugs in her system. Lynne’s body had shown signs of past beatings; no such indications on Joanne Patston. If the rock and rag found by young Kylie
Bolsover in their garage had, as she’d always personally believed, been planted – presumably by the killer – they hadn’t, at least as yet, delivered the same blow to Tony
Patston.

‘Okay,’ Shipley said softly, a few minutes later.

There was, after all, one quite striking similarity.

Stephanie Patel had reported that the first blow inflicted on Bolsover would have been enough to kill her, and according to Dr Collins, Joanne Patston’s first stab wound would have
finished her too. Yet in both cases, the killers had gone on striking: twice more in the first instance, three more wounds in the second.

Not exactly a pattern, but
something.

She made a note, then mulled over the other, weaker, parallels between the cases. The husbands, obviously, both allegedly violent, though Patston’s aggressions apparently directed at the
child rather than his wife. No overtly sexual element to either attack.

She turned to the crime scene report, and found another possibly significant detail from the Patston crime scene report that tallied with her recollection of the older case. Both bodies had been
poorly concealed.

‘Which means what?’ she murmured, and drained the rest of her Coke.

That the person who’d killed them had wanted them found? Or that they’d been unable to bury the bodies properly for some reason.

Or maybe that was simply another coincidence. Maybe both killers had just been nervous of passers-by happening on the scene.

No more parallels presenting themselves.

Except, of course, Allbeury and Novak.

Sandra had been wondering – in between the endless cups of tea, and taking care of Irina, and talking to Karen Dean, to whom, just now, she found it easier to talk than
her son-in-law or any of the well-meaning friends who called – why Tony now seemed so set against talking to anyone about Irina’s adoption, when he had, at the outset, been so proud of
it.

It kept creeping back into her mind, she kept on brooding over it, perhaps because it was one way of trying to keep her mind off Joanne, because not thinking about her was the only way to keep
sane, to keep going for Irina’s sake.