Two Women Page 14

  Carver gave himself more wine, accepting so much – too much but not enough – of what Alice said, like their not being good enough or clever enough. ‘I told you I am not sure what we have is sufficient for an FBI investigation. What you got illegally hacking into IRS offices and company registration records can’t be the basis for an investigation: a defence from people this good would have it ruled inadmissible before it got anywhere near a court or a grand jury. What I got from Litchfield – although explaining your inadmissible findings – isn’t sufficient by itself. Whatever – whichever – way an FBI investigation went, the firm would be destroyed. Whatever deal you cut with the Bureau, your career and reputation would be wiped out …’

  ‘I’d be alive, for fuck’s sake! You’d be alive.’

  ‘I don’t want to say the rest.’

  ‘You don’t have to say the rest. OK, Jane would be devastated but she’d be alive!’

  ‘All three of us with different identities, living – existing – in some godforsaken country, never sure when they might find us.’

  ‘We’re not sure now, for Christ’s sake! We’re totally unsure and terrified. I am, at least.’

  ‘The five companies we know about were all George kept, in the last six months.’

  Alice sat, empty glass in hand, waiting.

  ‘So there aren’t any more,’ continued Carver.

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘I severed the firm’s connection with the five today.’

  There was another moment of silence. Then Alice said: ‘How?’

  ‘Official letters.’

  She regarded him with further disbelief. ‘You think that’s it, if Janice told them about a valise you brought back from Litchfield, where they clearly found nothing! What are you saying – trying to say – John?’

  ‘I’ll give it to them.’

  More silence, longer than any before.

  Spacing her words Alice said: ‘Give them what?’

  ‘What they were looking for at Litchfield but which I found first.’

  ‘Was that all you found, just rough calculations? What about George’s bank?’

  ‘I haven’t been to his personal bank. You know I went to the Chase this morning. There was …’ Carver stopped, shaking his head.

  ‘What?’ she demanded.

  ‘Nothing that helps. Just some personal things.’

  ‘What personal things?’ she insisted.

  ‘Photographs. No one I recognized. They were old.’

  ‘Maybe it’s someone the FBI would recognize!’

  ‘It was a woman. Her name was Anna, Anna Simpson. That’s all I know.’ Why had he told her that, if keeping things from her was her protection? He was flaking, coming apart.

  ‘I want us to get help, John. Proper, official, professional police help.’

  ‘Let me think.’ He actually had an idea but decided against sharing it with Alice. She knew too much already.

  ‘There’s nothing to think about, apart from staying alive!’

  ‘What’s an Internet protocol?’ he suddenly demanded.

  ‘The address – the trace – of whoever’s got into your system. The fingerprint, if you like.’

  ‘I don’t like,’ said Carver, turning her expression. ‘What are the chances of them finding you – where you worked from – through the English place they bombed?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Alice, honestly.

  ‘Out of ten, give me a figure.’

  ‘A two.’

  ‘That’s good. And even then it wouldn’t get them to you, personally, would it? Just to the cafe. And no one there knew what you were doing, did they?’

  Alice felt a sweep of nausea. ‘They’ve got to be warned.’

  ‘No one knew what you were doing?’ insisted Carver.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘How did you pay?’

  ‘Cash.’

  ‘No credit cards or cheques?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So no one ever knew your name?’

  The memory echoed in her mind. I’m Bill, by the way. And her automatic response. Alice. She said: ‘No.’

  ‘Then there’s no way you can be identified, even if they did trace back to Manhattan.’

  ‘What about a warning?’ said Alice.

  ‘I’ll think of something.’

  ‘There’s nothing to think about. An anonymous call’s all it’ll take.’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ demanded Carver. ‘And I really mean that. Leave – it – to – me!’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I don’t feel hungry,’ he announced.

  ‘No.’ She paused. ‘We could go to bed.’

  They did and there was the aphrodisiac of fear for both of them and for a long time afterwards they lay silently, exhausted, together.

  At last he said: ‘I’ve got to go up to Litchfield tomorrow. I’m not sure yet what time I’ll be back.’ When he’d telephoned to tell Jane of Janice’s death she’d been trying to fix the realtor’s inspection visit for noon. He should have called her again before now.

  ‘I’ll wait to hear from you.’

  After Carver had gone Alice stood with her wine in her hand, staring out over the bustle of SoHo in the direction of the cybercafe. The risk was minimal. But she hadn’t believed they’d locate her Trojan Horse in the hotel chain’s booking system.

  The telephone was picked up at once and the voice said: ‘Here we are, ready and waiting to help you!’

  ‘Is that Space for Space?’

  ‘It is and it’s Bill and I know that’s you Alice ’cos I got an ear for voices. Tell me we’re going to have that drink at last, Alice?’

  Alice hurried the receiver back on its rest, the feeling of nausea again blocking her throat.

  Stanley Burcher extended his hand towards Enrico Delioci and said: ‘I’d like the phone.’

  The Don’s son frowned, in feigned misunderstanding. ‘What?’

  ‘The cellphone you called me on from the woman’s apartment.’

  The fuck you talking about?’

  ‘The phone,’ insisted Burcher, soft-voiced as always and as always hating being on this Queens film set. ‘I want the phone you called me on, from Brooklyn.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded the younger man, truculently.

  Burcher turned away from him, towards the father. ‘Don Emilio, this isn’t going well for any of us. I appeal to you!’

  ‘Do you not trust us, Mr Burcher?’

  ‘I trust you and your son and your Family totally and implicitly,’ lied Burcher. ‘What we can’t trust – predict – is the use the law would make of whatever is stored within the phone’s memory.’ He slowly reached into his pocket, to produce a new cellphone, a very recent introduction on to the market, from which it was possible to transmit photographs, and offered it to Enrico. ‘There! A replacement.’

  ‘We’ll destroy the old one,’ said Paolo Brescia.

  ‘I want it now, its memory card or battery or whatever it’s called, intact.’

  There was total silence within the room. Alert though he was, Burcher did not detect the gesture from father to son. Enrico Delioci rose, left the room and returned again within minutes, offering the instrument in a hand shaking with fury. Burcher said: ‘Thank you.’ There was no guarantee that what he’d been given was the telephone upon which he’d been called from Brooklyn and upon which he’d given the order to dispose of Northcote’s assistant. The silence stretched on. Burcher said: ‘Now tell me what I need to know about John Carver.’

  It came, tight-lipped, from Brescia again. Burcher listened dispassionately, wishing there were more but conceding there was enough for his intended confrontation with the accountant. It wouldn’t be the only confrontation, Burcher decided at that moment. When he’d established his personal control over John Carver, he’d enjoy telling these people that their usefulness was over.

  There hadn’t been any prior telephone call, which there always had been before, so Burcher’s
surprise was tinged with alarm at finding Charlie Petrie waiting for him at the Algonquin.

  ‘You come about Brooklyn?’ Burcher anticipated.

  Petrie shook his head. ‘You seen Carver yet?’

  ‘Going to surprise him tomorrow.’

  ‘We thought you should hear about the hacking first.’

  Thirteen

  It was more practical – his decision, about which there was later some ironic, even irritated, reflection – to meet Jane at her father’s estate, which is what Carver did rather than put down at their own country home to drive the ten miles around the separating lake. Jane hadn’t arrived but Jack Jennings was already there and together they toured the house. There wasn’t the slightest trace of damage anywhere. All the jack-hammered doors had been replaced and those torn off their hinges rehung. New refrigerators and freezers gleamed in the recesses. Cracked or too badly stained tiles had been relaid and overbalanced wine racks rebuilt and re-labelled, although there was obviously no wine. George Northcote’s bedroom and dressing room had been re-carpeted. The only hint of the work that had gone into redecoration was the faintest smell of paint and a lot of windows open to dispel that.

  Carver said: ‘In the time you’ve had you’ve worked miracles, Jack.’

  ‘Mr Northcote was well liked around here. I called, things got done right away. The outhouses are the same. Everything fixed, all the damaged machinery gone …’ The man gestured in the direction of the hollow into which the tractor and cutters had flipped. ‘There was …’ He stopped, seeking the acceptable words. ‘… some stuff, mess, there. We cleaned that up, too.’

  What might there have been for a proper forensic examination to find, wondered Carver. ‘You’ve still done damned well. Thank you.’

  ‘I heard about Mr Northcote’s PA. It’s terrible, poor woman.’

  ‘Terrible,’ echoed Carver. He wished Jane would arrive, so they could get it over with and he could get back to New York. In the circumstances he supposed he had to be here, supporting her, but he’d had again to reschedule his already rearranged appointments – which actually took away the need for any hurried return - but he felt cut-off here, too far away from things. Wasn’t that what – and where – he wanted to be, he asked himself at once: away from it all, where no one could find him? In truth – truth which he forced upon himself – Carver didn’t properly know any more where he wanted to be or what he wanted to be doing. There wasn’t a road that wasn’t blocked, no half-formed hope that stood up to examination. There was the one hope he hadn’t explored, he corrected himself: the one that had come to him the previous night, when he had been with Alice. Which wasn’t new. It was the one, the last one, that he’d inexplicably forgotten but which to pursue, as he had to, could be as destructive as everything else closing in around him.

  ‘Here they come,’ announced Jennings, from the newly restored front door.

  Barry Cox was the senior partner in the real-estate firm that bore his name, a squat, quickly moving man able to smile and talk at the same time, which he did constantly. He, not Jane, led the tour of the property, making quick entries in a small notebook and frequently having Jennings secure one end of a long, spool-retracting tape to measure the main rooms.

  As they followed the man around, Jane said: ‘I’m coming back to New York with you. I had Barry drive me over, so we can leave right away.’

  ‘You didn’t say, last night.’ He’d somehow make time to see Alice. He was glad after all that his diary was clear for the afternoon.

  ‘It hadn’t been fixed then.’

  ‘What hadn’t been fixed?’

  ‘Our first meeting with Rosemary. She got a cancellation so she called me. I tried to catch you at the office but you’d already left to come here. Hilda said she thought it would be all right. And there’s some more replies to condolence letters I need to sign, apparently.’

  ‘In future will you personally clear things with me first?’

  She looked at him curiously, frowning. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I haven’t done any worthwhile work since I can’t remember when, in a firm I have now to run. I intended trying to fit some things in later today.’

  ‘I tried calling you! You weren’t there!’ she said, stiffly.

  ‘You knew I was coming here. You should have waited.’ There was no purpose in exacerbating it into an argument but he was irritated by her increasingly taking him for granted. It occurred to him to tell her that he was in charge of the firm now, not her, but decided against it.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ she said, in a voice that didn’t sound it.

  ‘Let’s leave it.’

  ‘All done,’ declared Cox, emerging from the main living room at the opportune moment. ‘Time to talk.’

  Jane said to Jennings, who was already withdrawing, ‘Will you transfer my stuff from Barry’s car to the helicopter?’ and then to the realtor, ‘How long will it take to sell?’

  The man gave a professional non-committal shrug and went into a well-rehearsed speech about market difficulties in an economic recession, concluding that it was a very valuable property, in the three-to-five-million band, which was a big commitment for a person to make.

  ‘Not for a person with five million,’ said Carver. ‘And people who haven’t got that sort of money don’t look at this sort of property. You’re going to concentrate upon the city?’ Cox had three offices there and the reputation of being the best country-house salesman operating out of Manhattan, which was why Jane was employing him.

  ‘I’m going to offer it to as wide an audience as possible, Mr Carver,’ said Cox. ‘The Net, with a picture display and digital viewing, major prominence in the housing mags all along the East Coast right down as far as Florida. Might even consider the Caribbean: lot of money in places like Antigua and the Caymans.’

  ‘What?’ broke in Carver, sharply.

  Jane and the realtor looked at him with matching frowns.

  ‘I’m sorry …?’ questioned Cox.

  ‘Why did you suggest the Ca …?’ Carver only just managed to switch to Caribbean and knew he sounded as stupid as he looked.

  ‘There’s a lot of money there,’ repeated the man. ‘It’s a good marketplace.’

  ‘Advertise it wherever you judge the most likely places to get a sale,’ instructed Jane, impatiently. ‘Put it on for three.’

  Now the realtor frowned at her. ‘That was my bottom figure, Mrs Carver. I think we should begin higher. People like to bargain, think they’re getting a deal. Starting at three-seven-five would build in the drop to make a buyer think he’d got his deal and cover your costs and fees.’

  ‘Three,’ insisted Jane. ‘Thanks for your time, Mr Cox. I look forward to hearing from you.’

  In the helicopter, their conversation unheard by the earphone-wearing pilot, Jane said: ‘What was all that about back there?’

  ‘Just clarifying some things,’ said Carver, inadequately.

  ‘Sounded more like confusing some things.’

  ‘You’re giving the place away, you know.’

  ‘It’s mine to give away, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ accepted Carver. He didn’t like the new Jane, he decided. At once he contradicted himself. He loved her as much and as deeply as he’d ever done. What he didn’t like was the new attitude. Perhaps his own wasn’t much better.

  Rosemary Pritchard was a diminutive, sharp-featured woman with the sort of commanding presence that reminded Carver of the matronly, no-nonsense Hilda Bennett. The clipped voice fitted, too.

  Jane said: ‘Thanks for fitting me in.’

  ‘Fitting you and John in,’ qualified the gynaecologist.

  ‘OK,’ said Jane, with a touch of renewed impatience. ‘Can you help me …’ The break was a speed bump. ‘… help John and I, to have a baby?’

  ‘Does John want a baby?’

  Rosemary’s quiet-voiced question startled both of them. Jane began: ‘Of course John …’ before Rosemary in turn, but much more definitel
y, blocked the response.

  ‘It wasn’t your question, Jane. It was John’s.’

  No! thought Carver, at once, and was just as quickly surprised at his reaction. Of course he wanted a child: children. He and Jane had talked about it – planned it or thought they were planning it – until the months had stretched into years, sixteen in fact. But he didn’t want a baby now: not at this precise moment with so much hanging over them. Jane had insisted – arranged without discussing it with him – that he should be here. Invited him, in fact, to have his own voice even if she hadn’t anticipated what he would say. ‘I think we’re rushing things. Because of what’s happened.’

  He was conscious of Jane twisting towards him. He didn’t look back at her. She moved to speak but before she could Rosemary said: ‘What do you think of that, Jane?’

  Strangely, for someone who’d been about to respond so quickly, Jane didn’t answer.

  The gynaecologist said: ‘How long have you both been thinking about in vitro fertilization?’

  Hurrying ahead of her husband again, Jane said: ‘A year, at least.’

  Once more Carver ignored her demanding look. He said: ‘The question was both. We haven’t both been thinking about it for a year, at least.’

  ‘Jane?’ prompted Rosemary.

  There was still a hesitation before Jane said: ‘It’s time we started a family!’ And maintained the bloodline of a wonderful man, she thought.

  ‘Is this the time?’ demanded the other woman.

  ‘I came here to talk about having a baby!’ said Jane. ‘Not to be psychoanalysed!’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Rosemary. ‘It’s easy to cross boundaries, in this job.’

  ‘Can we just talk about IVF?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Sure,’ agreed the other woman, easily. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘How quickly – easily – can I become pregnant?’

  The gynaecologist let some silence come between them before, straightening and picking up her pen, she said: ‘I put you on the Pill to regularize your periods: hopefully to make them more comfortable for you?’