Brian Freemantle: Two Women

‘Of course. And it’s a promise about the cabin.’

She shifted slightly, looking beyond him to the bedside table. ‘It’s gone three already.’

‘These business lunches get longer and longer.’

‘You should be going. And I should be working.’

‘I’m sorry… I…’

‘Stop it!’

‘I’ve got a feeling that there’s a serious problem,’ he suddenly blurted.

Alice pulled away from him. ‘What?’

‘I want to be sure first.’

‘You’re not making sense.’

‘That’s the problem: it doesn’t make sense.’

She separated from him entirely, going up on one elbow. The sheet fell away from her but she didn’t try to cover herself. ‘Has George made a bad mistake?’ She’d eulogized him in the profile, put her own judgement on the line.

‘He could have done.’

‘Then you’ve got to talk to him today.’

‘I know.’

He had chosen to talk it through with her, decided Alice, feeling a warm intimacy again. ‘Can you put it right?’

‘I don’t know, not yet.’

‘It might help if you told me about it and we tried to think of a way together.’

‘I can’t involve you.’

‘Darling! What is it?’

He shook his head, not speaking.

‘So it’s bad?’

‘It could be.’

‘Could you be in serious trouble?’

‘It depends what I do.’

‘You know the answer to that – you’ve got to do the right thing. That’s all you can do.’

‘It might not be that simple.’

‘Please let me help!’

‘I won’t involve you any more than I already have,’ he refused again. He twisted abruptly out of the bed but stayed sitting on its edge, his back towards her again. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘But you did. Now it’s stupid to stop.’

‘I’ve got to speak to George.’

‘Then will you speak to me?’

‘I don’t know. It depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Too many things that even I don’t know about, not yet.’

‘You’ve frightened me.’ That wasn’t true. She was irritated at his refusal.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… oh shit!’

‘We are going to talk about it,’ Alice insisted. ‘If not now then soon. Talk about it and fix it.’

‘I’d like to think we could: that I could.’

‘We can.’

‘I have to go.’

‘Talk to him this afternoon.’

‘Yes.’

‘Call me later, if you can?’

‘If I can.’

Alice remained in bed, watching him dress, loving him. As he moved to leave she said: ‘Whatever it is, it can’t be the end of the world.’

Carver kissed her, holding her tightly against him for several moments, but left without replying.

With the concentration upon the annual conference it was easier than usual for Carver to plan his days to include Alice, leaving himself with only two, easily satisfied clients and the morning’s dictated letters to sign.

When he called his father-in-law, George Northcote said: ‘You just caught me. Got a meeting here in town tonight: staying over.’

‘We need to talk, George.’

‘Tomorrow. My meeting’s at six, so we’ll talk tomorrow. Lunch maybe?’

‘Now, George!’ insisted Carver. ‘It’s important.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘You. Me. The firm. Everything. That’s what I think I’m talking about. Everything.’

‘There’d better be a hell of a good reason for this!’ greeted Northcote. The voice was big, like everything about the man. He remained seated at the antique desk, hunched over it, bull-shouldered beneath a mane of white hair. It was a familiar, confrontational pose Carver had seen the other man adopt dozens of times with IRS inspectors and company tax lawyers and opposition, challenging accountants.

‘I think there is,’ said Carver. Or was he over-interpreting, imagining an aggressive defensiveness about the older man? Maybe. Or maybe not. There was enough for him to question this man who had always been unquestionable. Again the qualification came. The problem was that there wasn’t enough. There was a huge, gaping black hole that had to be filled with something he could understand.

‘What?’

Carver lowered himself into a facing, button-backed chair. ‘I happened upon some current working figures for three of our oldest clients… your oldest clients… Companies that for years have made up the bedrock of our business…’ He hesitated at the moment of commitment. ‘Mulder Incorporated… Encomp… Innsflow International…’

A flush began to suffuse Northcote’s face, accentuated by the pure whiteness of his hair, but when he spoke the loudness had gone from his voice. ‘None of your business… How…?’

‘In the vaults. Your safe was open. And it is my business, because I’m taking over this business, which I intend to do as a memorial to you.’

‘Spy!’ accused the other man.

‘I went to close it properly. Which you hadn’t done.’

‘My personal clients…’ The unaccustomedly subdued voice trailed away.

‘Yes, George,’ picked up Carver. ‘Always your personal clients. And still your personal clients, whom no one else had anything to do with.’

‘Retained with the full agreement of the partners. Yourself, my successor as senior partner, included. In signed minutes.’

Why, wondered Carver, had Northcote felt it necessary to remind him of his succession to the chairmanship upon his father-in-law’s semi-retirement? Or of the minutes acknowledging Northcote’s continued handling of the three accounts being officially signed and recorded? ‘They never went through general audit: haven’t done for years. Always your personal audit and you always personally signed them off.’

‘There is no regulation – Security Exchange Commission or otherwise – requiring that they should go through general audit. Everything was perfectly legal.’

Carver decided that Northcote wasn’t sufficiently outraged – offended – at his having gone into a safe to which he officially had no right: wasn’t even asking the proper questions. ‘All three are offshore.’

‘Which is declared. There is no contravention of any regulation.’

‘They’ve all grown, since their formation all those years ago.’

‘Well-run – well-audited and well-accounted companies – all grow and return profits.’

‘Mulder Inc. has a seven hundred and fifty million dollar entertainment investment, worldwide. Encomp has five hundred and fifty million dollars of utilities supply portfolios, again worldwide. Innsflow International is diversified into publishing, hotels and entertainment in Europe, the Far East and even Russia.’

‘You’ve spent a lot of time checking on me.’ There was still no outrage.

‘I did check, George. In-house. Called them up, on the computer. They’re on the client list. But that’s all, just listed as names and holdings. There aren’t any details, apart from that.’

‘They’re offshore. There don’t need to be computer records – any records – on file for offshore countries.’

Carver sighed heavily, feeling like an irritating fly bouncing from impenetrable window to impenetrable window. ‘You’re a legend on Wall Street, George. I want it to stay that way. You deserve for it to stay that way.’

‘I’m still waiting for you to make your point.’

‘The figures don’t add up, not the ones you left in your open safe. They do, on what’s been submitted by their accountants for independent audit by you. And which you’ve signed off. But they don’t if they’re audited properly. You’ve legally attested their accuracy. And by doing so exposed this firm, your firm, to criminal investigation! You’ve sanctioned a massive profit-inflating operation. On a scale that I haven’t been able yet to calculate: am frightened to calculate. They’re being floated, right? Blown up to suck in the punters: open at ten, finish the week at two hundred, insider traders getting out with enough to buy the villa in the Caribbean or South of France before the bubble pops.’