Two Women Read online

  With the financial director he went through the country-by-country performance of each of their overseas divisions before analysing their own twelve-month growth and underscoring New York’s 15 per cent increase over the previous year – 5 per cent higher than any of the subsidiaries – for particular mention in his speech, which was to be the expanded global overview immediately following George Northcote’s now limited farewell keynote address. Carver physically shifted in flushed discomfort at the director’s urging him to include instructions to all their overseas divisions to take particular care – essentially with new clients – against inadvertently becoming caught up, even by accident or inference, in the sort of financial manipulation that had so disastrously tainted Wall Street, hurriedly insisting it was already his intention, which it hadn’t been until that moment, to close the discussion with that imperative warning.

  Carver personally checked the boardroom seating arrangements – which put Northcote for the last time in the ultimate position of authority – and had the technician test the projection equipment for the visual presentation to accompany what he had to say, which he still only had in draft form but which was already fairly well established in his mind. Corporate and accountancy fraud warning was the only addition and he made a mental note to alert Northcote in advance, to avoid any wrong interpretation – but more importantly wrong reaction – from the other man.

  His personal assistant, a grey-haired spinster named Hilda Bennett whose English accent had survived thirty years in Manhattan, as had her demeanour of a public-school matron, met him there, clipboard and itineraries in hand. All the hotel suite reservations had already been doubly checked and confirmed: the floral displays were predominantly roses. She had already established there were no cultural difficulties in the choice of flowers for the Tokyo manager’s Japanese wife, for whom floral tributes might have had unintended connotations: roses were good flowers. Also doubly checked were the already approved seating plans – as well as the special dietary requests – for Thursday’s welcoming dinner and Friday’s formal gala. The gold gift pins for the wives and cufflinks for the men – the cufflinks in the shape of the Northcote logo – were being delivered from Tiffany’s that afternoon. She’d personally gone through every detail of the Sunday brunch party at Mr Northcote’s Litchfield estate with Janice Snow. Helicopters had been laid on from the East 34th Street helipad. Every guest had guaranteed they had no difficulty with helicopter travel. Both she and Janice would be on hand throughout to handle any unexpected problems. She had made up a personalized dossier, with details of every arrangement, for Mrs Carver when she got back from the country the following day to host the arrival cocktail party. Seven limousines were on permanent standby to chauffeur wives on shopping expeditions while their husbands were in conference.

  It took Carver an hour to dictate the speech he’d imagined he had fixed in his mind and less than fifteen minutes to realize, when it was typed, that it wasn’t fixed at all. His difficulty, unsurprisingly, was the corporate scandal warning, which didn’t seem to fit logically wherever he tried to introduce it. After once removing it altogether he reinserted it where he’d slotted it in the first place.

  Jane came on to his private, direct line just after lunch – which he hadn’t bothered to eat – to say she’d just heard she’d been unanimously elected the charity-fund organizer.

  Carver said: ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘That was hardly effusive!’

  ‘It was pretty much a shoo-in, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve just told Dad. He said it’s going to be great, our working together. He seemed very excited coming up yesterday: said you and he had talked and he was definitely going to quit. So thank you, darling. I didn’t think persuading him was going to be that easy.’

  ‘What about getting him to see Dr Jamieson?’

  ‘Another surprise. He went, this morning. Said he had a lot of tests and there should be some results next week.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘What did you do last night?’

  ‘Worked on my speech, for Friday,’ lied Carver. That was certainly what he would have to do tonight. What he had at the moment wasn’t an address from the head of an international accountancy conglomerate. His first Harvard attempt at Keynesian philosophy – which had been rejected with the demand to try again – had been better than this. And this wasn’t Keynesian philosophy.

  ‘I’m coming down with Dad, obviously.’

  ‘Hilda’s got you a bunch of stuff.’

  ‘I could be in Manhattan by lunch time.’

  ‘Call me from the car. We could eat.’

  ‘Maybe I should look over what Hilda’s done first.’

  ‘I’ll leave it up to you.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  Carver tried to rework his speech but wasn’t any better satisfied and decided he really would have to work on it that night, at home. There were enough excuses to call his father-in-law but Carver held back from telephoning, confronting another doubt. The conference organizing was his responsibility so there was absolutely no reason why Northcote shouldn’t have gone up to Litchfield. But Carver couldn’t remember the man ever doing so before with everyone arriving from all over the world. Which surely wasn’t the main consideration, in the circumstances. The people from whom Northcote was supposedly extricating himself – extricating himself and the firm and everyone else – were presumably here, in New York: this is where they’d met earlier in the week. So how could Northcote be so sure that by Friday it would all be over? Was he lying, avoiding, as he’d lied and avoided for so long: long enough to have become a world expert? Carver remained staring at the telephone but still made no effort to pick it up. If that’s what Northcote were doing there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Apart from one thing, the one thing he’d already decided against doing. Couldn’t do. Carver felt a wash of impotence, which was the word that came into his mind and he wished it hadn’t because of its reminder of his difficulty with Alice. Last night he hadn’t suggested going back to her apartment. Neither had she. Instead of calling Northcote he dialled Alice’s number but got the answering machine. He left a message that he’d call later, from home. As he went uptown he decided to see Alice, after polishing the Friday speech. They’d eat in the Village again if he reached her early enough, so he told Manuel he didn’t want dinner and that he and Luisa could leave early. Carver got Alice’s answering machine on his next two attempts, in between which he worked on the speech and decided it was getting better.

  He knew it wasn’t Alice when the telephone rang, because she never called the apartment, so he was half expecting Jane’s voice but not the hysteria. ‘What is it?’ he said, trying to talk over her. ‘Jane! I can’t understand what you’re saying. Slower! Speak slower.’

  ‘Dad!’ she sobbed. ‘There’s been an accident …’ She choked to a stop. And then she wailed. ‘Dad’s dead.’

  Murdered, thought Carver, at once: George W. Northcote had been murdered. Killed, for transgressing whatever code these bastards – these sons of bitches – obeyed. A code he didn’t know. Which clearly George Northcote hadn’t known or understood, either. Carver felt physically paralysed, his arms and legs incapable of movement. But they had to move: everything had to work. He had to … Had to what? He didn’t know, Carver accepted. He felt the acid of vomit – and fear – rise in his throat. And thought, please help me God, and hoped God was listening.

  He brought forward one of the already chartered helicopters, which was waiting for him by the time he reached 34th Street. It was normally a familiar way of his getting up to Litchfield, so familiar that the procedure was virtually automatic. But this early evening it wasn’t normal. He read the cab driver’s displayed ID, trying to remember the number – actually comparing the photograph – and questioned the traffic-jam detour for what was a direct downtown drive and, while they were blocked, tried – and failed – to reach Jane from his cell
phone. He tried Alice, too, and once more got the answering machine. He said George Northcote was dead and he’d call as soon as he could and wished that instead of a recording he could have heard Alice’s voice, from her own mouth.

  And all the time couldn’t stop – couldn’t co-ordinate – the turmoil in his mind.

  Carver had always had a problem with coincidence, which made it seem impossible George Northcote’s death could be anything but murder. There had to have been a reason (what the fuck reason!) for Northcote going up to Litchfield – risking Jane, for Christ’s sake! – but he didn’t know, would now never know, what it was. One of the eight trillion things he had to work out. The handing over of the incriminating documentation. That surely could be the only purpose. Or was it? Why? Why Litchfield? Why do it in the boondocks instead of in Manhattan, where this week’s meeting had been between Northcote and …? And who? Where – oh dear God where! – were the supposedly protective copies of all the incriminating evidence: very much supposedly, because they hadn’t protected Northcote. Had to have existed somewhere, he tried to reassure himself. But where? Northcote’s personal safe within the firm’s vault had to be the place. The place that had remained closed since that one time, which Carver knew because he’d gone into the vaults to check and if Northcote’s personal safe had been open, he would have gone far more intently through whatever was there than he had on the first discovery. He most definitely had to get back in. Go through everything that was there. Janice Snow would have access. And now he had the authority – the unarguable right – to insist she open it for him. That was the obvious place for it to be. The only place for it to be. What was he going to do with it, when he got it? He didn’t know, not yet. But from whatever there was, he’d be finally able to get names! What the fuck protection was that! It was an objective question but he didn’t have an objective answer, any more than he had to all – or any – of the rest. Why did you do it, George? Why did you leave me – so many others – exposed like this? You bastard! You absolute, pig-fucking bastard. Why? It would, Carver accepted, always remain the biggest question of all, which would never be resolved.

  The flight only took half an hour and there was still sufficient light when they reached the lake-shore estate for Carver to look down upon the scene, which was additionally illuminated by emergency lighting rigged to a generator van.

  It was nearer the lake than the main, rambling house complex. A limp-rotored medivac helicopter was already on the ground, although at a distance from everything else. There were an ambulance and two police cars, their coloured bar lights still revolving and reflecting off other vehicles, which prompted Carver’s illogical – immediately embarrassed – impression of a funfair attraction: roll up, roll up and see what happens to someone who thinks he can stiff-middle-finger the Mafia. There were two other cars and a 4 × 4, completing the semicircle around a piece of equipment Carver couldn’t at first identify. But then he realized it was a small crane, its hawsers strained around what became visible as they descended further, Northcote’s familiar tractor mower. Carver didn’t bother to count the figures concentrated around it. There were certainly a lot but then George W. Northcote had been the leading figure – and a generous benefactor – in the community. Which deserved an unnecessary medivac helicopter, an ambulance, two police cars and a crane that appeared to have been designed like a crab with its legs splayed.

  Carver’s helicopter put down some way away, to avoid downdraught, and Carver was out in a crouched run before the rotors stopped. When he straightened he saw people already coming towards him and recognized Al Hibbert, the sheriff, in the lead with his hand already outstretched.

  ‘Bad business, John,’ greeted the bulge-bellied, balding man. ‘Damned bad business.’ He wore a holstered pistol and his badge of office on the shirt of his official uniform.

  ‘Where’s Jane?’

  ‘Up in the house. Dr Jamieson is looking after her.’ Hibbert turned to the second man. ‘You know Pete Simpson?’

  ‘What happened?’ demanded Carver, shaking the medical examiner’s hand as he walked towards the brightly lighted scene.

  ‘Still piecing it together with Jack here,’ said Hibbert, as they got to the vehicles.

  Jack Jennings had been George Northcote’s major-domo for fifteen years, controlling a staff of eight between the Litchfield estate and the Manhattan apartment. He was a tall white-haired black man whom Carver couldn’t ever remember seeing in anything but striped trousers, black jacket and white shirt. It was the uniform he was wearing now. The man said: ‘So sorry, Mr Carver. So very, very sorry.’ His voice was thick.

  ‘Let’s start again, shall we, Jack?’ said the sheriff.

  Jennings coughed. ‘After lunch Mr Northcote said he was going to drive the mower a little …’ He smiled at Carver. ‘You know how he used to like to do that. Haul the cutters around the lower paddocks: said it relaxed him and that he needed to relax with what was coming up this week.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’ broke in the sheriff.

  ‘We’ve got the annual conference: people flying in from all over,’ supplied Carver. Which is what I am going to do. Live in the country, cut my grass … He remembered Northcote’s statement, as clearly as he remembered the photograph that accompanied Alice’s profile.

  ‘That’s what he said,’ agreed Jennings, his voice still thick despite the constant coughing. ‘He was in the study all morning, working on his speech.’

  He had to see that speech, as soon as possible, Carver decided. And go through the study with a toothcomb. There’d be a safe. Would Jennings know the combination? Or where the key was kept?

  ‘Go on,’ urged Hibbert.

  ‘It wasn’t unusual for him to stay out all afternoon,’ picked up the man. ‘I looked out for him around five: that’s about the time he likes a Macallan when he’s up here in the country. When he wasn’t back by five thirty I came out looking, in the golf buggy. Here’s where I found him …’ The man choked to a halt. ‘God, it was awful.’

  ‘What?’ persisted Carver.

  ‘See that dip there?’ Hibbert took over, moving closer to the rim of the depression and the crane with its legs spidered to support the dangling tractor mower.

  Carver did see it. And saw for the first time, too, that hanging down from the tractor itself was the separate multi-bladed attachment that cut a swathe at least six feet wide on each traverse.

  ‘The way it looks, he took the tractor too close to the edge, so it tilted. That threw him backwards, into the blade, and then the whole rig turned over, on top of him …’ Hibbert nodded to a photographer of whom Carver had until that moment been unaware, taking shots of the suspended machine. ‘We got pictures …’

  ‘He was trapped underneath the tractor itself,’ said Jennings. ‘Crushed. I tried to get to him but I thought it all might topple further, on to me. I called out but he didn’t say anything. I couldn’t hear him breathing. I went back to the house and called emergency. Then I called Mrs Carver.’

  ‘The injuries are bad,’ threw in the medical examiner. ‘I won’t know until I complete the autopsy whether he died from blood loss, from going into those sharp-as-hell blades. Or from being crushed by the tractor. His chest is virtually gone.’

  ‘It took a time to get the lifting gear here, to get it off him,’ said Hibbert, as if in apology.

  ‘Where’s the body now?’ asked Carver.

  ‘On the way to the morgue,’ said Hibbert. ‘Jane wanted to see him but I said no. I didn’t know how long it was going to take you to get here … didn’t think of the helo … so I decided it was better to get the body away.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Carver.

  ‘There’s supposed to be an official identification, but I know …’ began Hibbert but Carver talked over him.

  ‘I’ll do it. Tomorrow OK?’

  ‘Just give me a call,’ said Hibbert. He shook his head. ‘One hell of an accident.’

  ‘One hell of an accident,’ echoed
Carver. If only you knew, he thought. If only you knew that George Northcote had been murdered by people who wouldn’t let him go.

  But what people? And what were they going to do next? John Carver supposed what he was feeling was fear: total, numbing, skin-tingling, stomach-emptying fear.

  Five

  Jane was cried out of tears but dry sobs still shuddered through her and the first time it happened Carver was frightened she wouldn’t catch her breath and would choke. Which wasn’t his only fear. She sat stiffly upright on the very edge of the lounge chair, her eyes blinking but unfocused, seemingly unaware of anything or anyone around her. Charles Jamieson, the Litchfield family doctor, called it deep shock and asked where they would be staying that night and before Carver could reply Jane said, so loudly and unexpectedly that both men jumped: ‘Here, with Dad.’

  ‘Then we’ll put you to bed,’ announced the doctor, recovering before Carver.

  Jane let herself be led upstairs to the room she and Carver always occupied when they stayed over, which they often did. Carver and the doctor undressed her between them and obediently she took the sedatives Jamieson gave her but remained staring up at the ceiling, still occasionally racked by a breath-snatching sob. Carver felt the doctor’s pressure on his arm and followed the man from the bedroom.

  In the downstairs lounge Jamieson, a fat, haphazardly dressed man, said: ‘It’s not going to be easy for her. They were very close. It’s most likely she won’t accept it at first: talk as if he’s still alive.’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Let it go, for a little while. You going to stay up here?’