Brian Freemantle: Two Women

Northcote snorted a laugh. ‘You want my advice, on that assessment don’t try to calculate anything.’

‘It’s not advice I want. It’s explanation. I told you we were talking about you, me and the firm. About everything. And that’s precisely it. If this ever became public: if…’ Carver actually just stopped himself from saying that if it ever became an innuendo in the sort of financial commentary Alice Belling was so adept at compiling. ‘The house – this house, all our houses – would come tumbling down.’

‘You think…’ started Northcote, lost his way and then managed: ‘… believe I haven’t worked all that out!’

‘I’d like to know exactly – very exactly – what you have worked out. And where you – where we all – are going from here?’

‘Nowhere,’ declared Northcote. ‘That’s precisely and exactly where we’re going. Nowhere. At the annual meeting I am going to announce the reluctant severing with this firm of Mulder Incorporated, Encomp and Innsflow International. Their choosing alternative, independent auditing accountants will be based upon their long-standing personal relationship with me, which the partners already know about and recognize. And which is being brought to an end by my finally – and fully – retiring…’ Northcote smiled at last. ‘Which is what I am going to do. Live in the country, cut my grass, help Jane with her charity fundraising and start playing with my new golf clubs.’

‘Just like that!’ said Carver, snapping his fingers.

‘Just like that,’ echoed Northcote, mocking the finger snap with one of his own.

‘What’s it all about, George?’

‘You don’t need to know that.’

‘I do, if I am going to protect this firm: keep it safe.’

‘I’m protecting the firm.’

‘Who are they?’

‘You don’t need to know that, either.’

‘They know what you’re going to do?’

‘That’s why I stayed on, for the extra year. To tidy things up and to bring it all to an end. You think I…’ There was another familiar hesitation. ‘It’s all going to be resolved.’

‘Going to be,’ seized Carver, at once. ‘Hasn’t it been, yet?’

‘It’s my problem. I’m sorting it out.’

Carver gazed around Northcote’s mahogany-panelled, leather-Chesterfielded office with its corner-window glimpse of Battery Park City and the intervening pillared monuments to wealth and power and corporate cunning, for once – for the first time – not feeling the comfort, and the pride, of being part of it. He said: ‘I’m aware of a possible criminal activity. There are regulations governing that. Quite a lot, in fact.’

Northcote looked blankly at him. Then indignantly – close to being big-voiced again – he said: ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘I’m being professional. In everything you’ve said – every inference you’ve made – you’ve assumed I’ll go along with what you’ve got in mind: everything you’ve got in mind but won’t tell me.’

Northcote held up a hand. ‘A long time ago, when I was first starting out and needed every break I could get…’ The block came but he made jerky gestures with the still raised hand against Carver intruding. ‘I got caught up in a situation which developed as it did… innocently caught up, with no idea what was happening until I was involved. Couldn’t get out. I’ve lived with it, all these years. Now it’s over: I’m promising you that it’s over. I’m leaving you with one of the foremost accountancy firms in the financial world. You’re already a rich man and you’re going to become richer. You’ve got it all and not just because I’m handing it over to you: because you’re good – the successor I hoped you would be – and because you deserve it

… I… you…’ he stumbled once more to a halt. ‘You earned it. You trying to tell me you’re now going to tear it all down – pull all the houses down, to use your words – by going to the SEC or whoever to put the gun into your own mouth and pull the trigger?’

At that moment Carver wasn’t sure what he was telling anyone and certainly not what he was being told. ‘We’re involved with organized crime! The Mafia!’

Northcote took a long time to reply. Finally he said: ‘I’m handling it.’

‘You going to be able to give me an unbreakable assurance that by Friday it’ll all be over?’ What was he saying? Why was he accepting it?

‘Dead and buried,’ insisted Northcote, at once. ‘Who I’m seeing tonight is their representative…’ He looked at his watch. ‘And I’m already late.’ There was another brief smile. ‘I telephoned, to warn him. He’ll be waiting.’

‘I want to come with you,’ announced Carver.

Northcote snorted yet another dismissive laugh. ‘It began and it ends with me. Only me. The protection for this firm – and for you – is your knowing nothing, your meeting no one.’

‘I do know!’

‘You’re staying away. Out of it.’

‘You said you were staying over tonight?’

‘Yes?’

‘We have to talk tomorrow. I need a lot more guarantees.’

‘You’ve got them.’

‘Tomorrow,’ insisted Carver. ‘Tomorrow we talk specifics.’

‘Lunch,’ agreed Northcote. ‘It’ll be our own farewell celebration.’

Nothing had emerged the way it should have done. The way he’d wanted. What he’d wanted – fervently hoped for – was booming-voiced offence and a provable, point-by-point, figure-by-figure denunciation of his every suspicion. What he’d got instead amounted to a confirmation – a near-immediate admission – of fraud and false accounting and involvement in organized crime – which meant Mafia – and criminal conspiracy and criminal complicity and probably a lot more indictments he couldn’t, and most certainly didn’t want, to think of. It was all too much, too overwhelming, to contemplate. What did he want to think of? The best answer. Or was it the right answer? And was the best and right answer the easiest way out? Or the most difficult? He’d examined George Northcote’s argument from every which way and from every which way what the older man had said about bringing the house down around him – throwing his own words back at him – made the only logical sense. Of course he would prove his professional integrity and rectitude by disclosing the indications of crime to the SEC – to every governing authority – but in so doing he’d bring about the collapse of one of Wall Street’s most prestigious and internationally trusted financial names. Every sort of criminal and governing-body investigation would take months, during which they would most likely be suspended and during which any proper work would in any case be impossible. And there would also be the personal fallout. No matter how right and correct his actions, he would publicly be seen – and despised – as a man totally destroying his own father-in-law by exposing the man at the age of sixty-seven to inevitable imprisonment and an inevitable multimillion-dollar fine. And even if George Northcote accepted every responsibility, in Wall Street – in the global financial village – the mud would stick and those clients who didn’t despise him personally would rush to wash their hands of all and every association. George W. Northcote International would be relegated as another greed-driven, illegally operating financial pariah.

‘Hello. My name’s Jane and I’m your wife.’

So engrossed was he that Carver physically started at his wife’s voice, smiling apologetically across the dinner table. ‘Sorry. I was thinking.’

‘Darling, you were so deep in thought you were out of sight! You haven’t said a word for at least the last thirty minutes. Or eaten a thing!’

Carver sipped his wine, setting his knife and fork aside. ‘I ate a big lunch,’ he lied. How would their marriage withstand his blowing the whistle on her father? Her mother had died when Jane was fourteen and practically from the time she was sixteen until their marriage – and even after – Jane had been at her father’s side at all the charity events he’d sponsored and hosted, which were literally beyond count. The feeling – the bond – between father and daughter was umbilical. Jane, whom Carver sometimes thought to be even stronger than her father, would be the person to despise him the most.