Brian Freemantle - Two Women

She couldn’t risk ending up dead, Alice told herself. She wasn’t simply saving herself any more, either. She had to save – protect forever – the baby she was having by John. She’d done all that she could, all that was humanly possible, to help Jane. Protect Jane. From now on Jane was on her own. Whatever Jane announced tomorrow didn’t matter, because she wouldn’t be part of it, part of anything. She had to go with the best she had, some criminally incriminating printouts, and bargain as best she could. And she had a satchel full of money, more than sufficient to pay for a cab or a hire car from here – wherever here was back to Manhattan if Jane insisted upon taking the Volkswagen. To which she was welcome, as she was welcome to whatever else. Alice had more than she’d ever wanted, ever dreamed of. She thought she felt a movement, although she knew it was far too early, but she smiled, enjoying the phantom sensation. What name would John have wanted? That was very important, to get right the name that John might have wanted. Everything was important, getting it right for John.

Since the case began being taken seriously Gene Hanlan had slept in a mess-room cot at Federal Plaza, Barbara Donnelly behind an inadequate separating screen, which was totally unimportant to both, all thoughts of gender discarded. The advantage was that they were both together, able to move at once after Geoffrey Davis made his call.

The now permanently assigned Bureau plane ferried duplicate originals of the documents on the five companies for the financial directorate to investigate and returned to Manhattan with additional agents. Because at last there was a positive development within NYPD jurisdiction Barbara Donnelly and her team shared in every aspect of the planning. Together the two of them personally toured the Northcote building on Wall Street, with Davis their guide, ending totally satisfied that once the mystery emissary crossed the threshold escape would be impossible. Davis provided complete plans of the premises, from which Hanlan and Barbara jointly briefed their combined squads, and by midnight additional CCTV and audio equipment had been installed and tested in Davis’s office, where the meeting was to take place.

Barbara said Scotch was fine, which was fortunate because that was all Hanlan had in his office at that time of night. He touched Barbara’s glass and said: ‘At last, something positive! This time tomorrow, we’re going to be properly in charge of the whole damned thing.’

The first edition of the following morning’s New York Daily News hit the streets around 12.30 a.m. The front page was dominated by a stock photograph of Jane Carver and the headline used the word kidnapped. There were also references to unnamed Mafia Families and organized crime and to a mystery woman, inevitably described as beautiful, who was identified as the intermediary who initiated the kidnap. Just as inevitably she was called the Mafia Madam. There were individual sidebar stories of all three deaths, now under FBI reinvestigation. An anonymous police spokesman predicted the biggest Mafia sensation of the decade.

‘Where the fuck…?’ exploded Hanlan, hurling the newspaper away from him.

‘We did well to cover it for so long,’ said Barbara Donnelly, philosophically.

‘And where did it get us?’ demanded Hanlan. ‘Nowhere. Which is where we still are, no-fucking-where!’

They were awake early, neither having properly slept. Alice said hi and Jane made a sound and there was the awkwardness of the previous night, after they’d both broken down and cried together. Alice needed to be sick and had to use her toothpaste-smeared finger to clean her teeth and her mouth afterwards. Turning from the basin she trod barefoot on a cockroach, which wasn’t crushed but whirled underfoot, and in jerking away Alice hit her stomach without any real force against the sink edge, tensing, motionless, for an internal injury pain that never came. She had to learn, Alice thought, happily: so very much to learn. The awareness stayed. She had to learn how to be a mother! To be a mother! It was going to be so marvellous.

As she went back into the room Alice said: ‘I left you the toothpaste. You’ll have to use your finger. The water’s only tepid, even if you’re thinking of showering, which I wasn’t. And didn’t.’

Jane made another sound that Alice didn’t make out to be a word. She was ready the moment Jane disappeared into the bathroom, letting herself out of the cabin to hurry to a parking-lot garbage can that had been overturned during the night by a forest scavenger, strewing its contents all around it. She very carefully threw the pharmacy sack holding the bright-blue proof of her pregnancy inside the upturned container.

It was a grey day, relentless rain soaking down from lowering clouds. Everywhere was deserted, unmoving. Alice could hear the wetness hissing against the surrounding trees. She was anxious to get away, now that it was light. Away to a new existence, just her and John jr. The name was instantly adhesive. Absolutely right.

She got back to the cabin before Jane emerged from the bathroom but when she did Jane said at once: ‘You’re wet. Where have you been?’

‘I thought I’d check the car. It’s raining.’

‘I guess that’s why you’re wet. And how’s the car?’ The tone was mocking.

‘OK.’ Alice hoped the car really was intact. ‘We’re going to call the FBI.’

‘I thought you wanted to go back to the cabin?’

‘I want to get us safe.’ She had a baby now, thought Alice: something – someone – far more precious and tangible than a photograph. She didn’t want to bounce for hours in a hard-sprung car back up a twisting mountain road. She’d ask the Bureau to get her case. Their son should know what his father looked like. She didn’t know how to fish. She’d have to learn, if she were going to teach him. So much to learn.

‘I’m not sure I want to go in yet,’ announced Jane.

‘I am!’ insisted Alice. ‘I’m through running.’

‘I want lawyers. Guarantees.’

‘We can get lawyers when we’re there, where no one can get to us.’ Jane was being sensible, objective, Alice acknowledged. But she didn’t want to wait any longer: risk anything further.

‘I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about my father and my husband and the firm. And me,’ listed Jane.

‘You’ve got lawyers: you spoke to them yesterday!’

‘Yesterday we hadn’t talked completely. I didn’t know what I know now.’

‘You know now you could be killed. Will be killed!’

‘I’m going to take proper advice. Go in to the FBI with lawyers, not bare-assed naked.’

‘What about the baby?’ demanded Alice, openly for the first time. ‘You’ve got the…’ She only just stopped short of calling it a boy. ‘… baby to think about now!’

Jane matched the hesitation before saying: ‘It’s the baby I’m properly thinking about.’

‘I’m going in now!’

There was another hesitation from Jane. ‘I already told you, you’re not involved.’

‘I understand,’ said Alice slowly, who belatedly did. Was there enough in the printouts to get her into a protection programme: to get an amnesty, or whatever the word was, for the deaths of three innocent people in England? Or did she really need Jane and whatever else it was John had hidden? ‘I could have gone in a long time ago. I stayed out to save you. For John.’

‘I’m grateful. Thanks.’ The mocking tone was still there.

Jane had the right, Alice told herself yet again. ‘I’m going to call Hanlan to come here and get me.’

‘OK.’

‘You want a head start, to find somewhere to meet your people, you can have the car. I guess I don’t need it any more. Just some things that are in the trunk.’ For you, John. Everything’s for you and our son.