Brian Freemantle - Two Women

Jane Carver stood regarding Alice for several moments. ‘OK.’

‘But I’d rather you stayed with me. That we went in together.’

‘I’m looking after myself now. It’s about time.’

‘Everything I told you was the truth. About John. And you.’

‘You keep telling me,’ said Jane.

‘I want you to understand.’

‘I do. Finally I understand it all.’

‘You do hate me, don’t you?’

‘I’ m learning.’

‘I’m sorry. That you hate me, I mean. And that you’re not waiting for them to come and get us.’

‘You want to get your stuff out of the car?’

‘You don’t have any money,’ said Alice, going into her satchel. ‘You’ll need money.’ Her hand came out clutching fifties, six of them.

‘Three hundred,’ accepted Jane. ‘It’s a loan.’

Alice said: ‘You think we’re ever likely to meet again?’

‘I’ll get it to you.’

They walked, unspeaking, through the drizzle to the back of the single-storey building. Jane started the engine and ran the wipers before popping the bonnet trunk for Alice to retrieve the canvas bag in which she’d packed the printouts. Despite the rain Alice didn’t move at once, watching the Volkswagen disappear, knowing it would be the last she’d ever see of it. The beginning of her new life, she guessed: everything of the old discarded, abandoned.

Alice went back to the room and shook as much rain off her coat as she could and dialled reception, impatiently waiting what seemed an age for a reply. She thought she recognized the voice of the man who had booked them in the previous day. Before she could speak he said: ‘You owe for telephone calls,’ and Alice wondered how much he had listened in to the conversations.

She said: ‘I’m coming to settle. I need some help. I think we got a little confused on the map yesterday. Where, exactly, are we here?’

The man laughed. ‘Just two miles east of Long Valley, New Jersey.’

Alice had never heard of it. ‘Where’s the nearest town of any size?’

‘That would be Morristown.’

‘I’ll be by in a minute, to settle the charges. Just one more call to make.’

‘I’ll be in the office.’

‘Where the hell are you two?’ exploded Hanlan, the moment Alice was connected.

‘In a truck-stop motel two miles east of a place called Long Valley, New Jersey. I don’t…’

‘Why’d you run?’

‘Come and get me. I’ll explain everything when you take me in.’

There was a pause, of half awareness. ‘Where’s Jane?’

‘Gone. She won’t come in without her lawyers.’

‘Mary Mother of Christ!’ moaned Hanlan, who wasn’t Catholic.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Everything’s blown. In all the newspapers, on every television channel. Her picture’s everywhere!’

‘What about mine!’

‘Name. The picture’s bad.’

‘Jane’s got my car! It’s…’

‘I know what it is and I know the license. I’m frightened they do, too.’

‘They?’ There was a deja vu about the question.

‘They got to the cabin before we did, yesterday.’

‘How? How’d they know?’

‘I don’t know. We’ll find her, in your car. You just stay…’

‘Like you wanted me to stay in the cabin yesterday, where I would have been trapped when they got there before you! Go kiss my ass, Gene. I’ll make my own way in, so no one knows where I’m coming from.’

‘Wait…’ tried Hanlan, but Alice didn’t.

She stayed in the room until the man called from the desk to say the taxi she’d ordered had arrived and managed to remain expressionless looking at the photograph of Jane Carver that filled the TV screen behind the man as she paid the telephone bill. The one of her was bad, a blurred thumbnail from a feature she’d written more than a year before. There was a stills photograph of her vintage Volkswagen, too. The sound was mute, preventing her hearing the commentary.

‘You guys have a fight?’ asked the man, who definitely was the one who had booked them in.

‘Kind of.’

‘Guess it’s difficult?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Stop by the next time you’re passing, you hear?’

‘Bet on it,’ promised Alice.

Jane Carver did finally understand and believed she had everything thought out and balanced in her mind, although leaving the filthy motel and Alice Belling like that hadn’t been part of her overnight mental preparation. It was a spur-of-the-moment gesture, like hijacking the car the previous day. Irrational, without any positive intention. But she had one now, spur-of-the-moment or not, driving without particular direction back along the still deserted, rain-slicked road that had to be the way they’d come but along which, so far, she hadn’t recognized any landmarks.

She had to have Burt Elliott and Geoffrey Davis with her when she met the FBI. Needed them with her before meeting the FBI, to talk everything through, maybe discuss it with other more specialized attorneys. Certainly go through in detail whatever it was John had hidden, to assess its importance. No, not its importance. Its potential illegality. That’s what had to be examined and assessed, how much and how badly it implicated her father and John and the firm to protect and save them as much as she could.

A logging truck growled by in the opposite direction, spraying water and mud all over the Volkswagen and the splash of it startled Jane, as if waking her up. Why? she suddenly demanded of herself. There was every practical reason for trying to spare the firm, where according to Alice none of the partners had known what was going on. But what did she owe her father or John? They were the two men whom she’d totally loved and totally trusted and whom she’d believed loved and trusted her in return. The two men, these two strangers, whom she now accepted she’d known not at all. So why was she worrying about protecting them and their reputations? she asked herself again. Shouldn’t she hate and despise them, like she should hate and despise Alice Belling, for all their total deceits and all their total betrayals? How did you hate? Was it a feeling, a physical sensation, like a pain or an ache? Or a mental determination to hurt back, to cause as much pain and suffering as they caused you, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? Jane didn’t know: didn’t think she wanted to know. Or did she? What did she want? The memory, she supposed. As many memories as she could conjure and keep.

Abruptly Jane confronted the hardest, most scourging reality of all. John had loved another woman. Been happy with another woman, shared everything – more than with her – with another woman. Had he done with Alice Belling the special bedroom things he’d done with her? Practised with Alice Belling? Learned from her even? Was it as Alice Belling had tried to convince her, a bizarrely unthreatening menage a trois of which she was always intended to remain the unwitting third part? Or would…? Jane didn’t let the question run because she wasn’t unwitting any more. A lot of questions she couldn’t answer. But a lot more that she could. Most important of all she knew how important she was to Alice’s protection, as Alice had been to hers. Into her mind, unprompted, echoed her own voice: It’s the baby I’m properly thinking about. But she wasn’t: not thinking properly at all.

Jane waited for a widening of the still empty, early morning road to swing around into an almost complete U, only needing to reverse once, which she managed easily, without any grating of the gears. Very soon the traffic began picking up against her, although she wasn’t held up by slow-moving trucks, like yesterday. Jane hoped she would get back to the motel before the FBI. Persuade Alice to come with her, until she’d got hold of attorneys. That would be the way, convince Alice she needed the help and protection of lawyers more than that of the FBI, because of what had happened in England.