Brian Freemantle - Two Women

Jane could see the Manhattan skyline and the Hudson river from the top-floor window of the warehouse office in which they’d locked her, thirty minutes before. It was bare, clearly unused – a blank desk without a telephone, three upright chairs and a cabinet – but there was an adjoining toilet, for which she was grateful. Having sat for so long, she was ignoring the chairs, standing at the window gazing down at the car park. There were a lot of lorries bearing the BHYF logo.

What was she going to do? Co-operate, obviously. Tell them whatever they wanted to know, but she didn’t know anything more than Alice had told her. Would they hurt her? Do something like maiming her, if they asked something she couldn’t answer? Of course they would. It had to be the safe deposit. If they…

Jane’s thoughts were broken by the sound of the door opening behind her and she turned to face the two men who entered. One was the polite front-seat passenger who’d done the talking in the Mercedes, the other slightly taller, bespectacled, fair hair just beginning to recede. The eyes were unusually – upsettingly – pale, grey more than blue.

‘Please sit down, Mrs Carver,’ said Charlie Petrie. ‘Can we get you anything? Coffee? Water?’

Still the overwhelming courtesy. ‘No. Thank you.’ Jane sat.

So did the two men, on chairs facing her.

Petrie nodded sideways. ‘My colleague has spoken to you about co-operation?’

‘Yes.’ It was a croak, dry-throated. She should have asked for water. Too late now. She shouldn’t do anything to upset them.

‘Are you going to co-operate, Mrs Carver?’

‘Yes.’ Better this time. The fear was taking the feeling from her body. She pushed herself very slightly against the chair but could scarcely feel it against her back.

There was a smile, the teeth very even. ‘That’s good.’

What could she do or say to protect herself, help herself? ‘I don’t know about Alice Belling! We split up! She’s going to the FBI!’

Petrie smiled to Caputo and then at Jane. ‘No, she’s not,’ he improvised, immediately realizing how he could improvise further. ‘Alice is quite safe, with us.’

‘You found her in Morristown?’

‘Yes,’ said Petrie.

‘She knows more than I do! What’s she told you?’

‘We’re asking the questions, Mrs Carver.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She mustn’t annoy them. They were asking the questions: all the questions. And she had to get the answers right. What had Alice told them? Alice was streetwise, better able to look after herself.

‘Do you know what’s in your husband’s safe deposit?’

‘I know you want it.’

‘Do you know what’s in the deposit?’ persisted Petrie.

‘Not the details. I know it’s something that my father did for you … for your people.’ They couldn’t get it without her! Why hadn’t she realized that before! Because she was too frightened to think of anything. But now she had.

‘We do want what’s in the safe deposit. All of it.’

‘I understand.’

‘That’s what I want you to do, Mrs Carver. Understand. You and I are going to the bank, now. You are going to authorize my coming into the vault with you, along with the bank’s securities person with the duplicate key. It’ll be just the two of us after it’s been unlocked. You don’t open the box. I do. And I retrieve the material that belongs to us. Then we leave. It’s all got to be done very quickly, no hold-ups. If anyone asks about your being kidnapped you say you are all right. Safe. That it’s over and that I am your lawyer. Do you understand all that?’

‘What happens then?’

Petrie smiled. ‘You go back to East 62nd Street.’

‘What about Alice Belling?’

‘There’s something else you must understand,’ said Petrie, his second improvisation perfectly thought out. ‘If you don’t do exactly what I say – exactly what I’ve spelled out – Alice Belling will die. Die very badly. You must understand that most of all.’

‘I do,’ said Jane. She was dry-throated again.

‘You’re going to do everything you’re told, aren’t you, Mrs Carver?’

‘Yes. Are we going now?’

‘Right now,’ confirmed Petrie.

‘Can I have a glass of water first?’

As it always appeared to be, the Manhattan traffic was close to gridlock when they came out of the tunnel and Petrie told the driver not to turn immediately but to try the next downtown to Wall Street. He was in the passenger seat now, two different men on either side of Jane, both still giving her leg room. Petrie felt better than he had at first, when he’d finally accepted that Stanley Burcher had run and the other consigliere had insisted he take Jane Carver to the bank. But not that much better. Petrie had already initiated the search for Burcher, whose proper function this was and for which he’d been paid so much money for so many profitable, untroubled years. Burcher would be found, in whatever rat-hole he was hiding. And made to suffer for this, suffer more than the motherfucker had ever imagined in his wildest nightmares it was possible to suffer. But that was later. Petrie’s concern was now. He calculated he had only fifteen minutes to do all that he had to do at the bank. He had the benefit of surprise but someone would raise some sort of alarm after all the publicity about Jane Carver’s disappearance. Just fifteen minutes.

They turned on Broadway and Petrie twisted round and said to Jane: ‘You got it right?’

‘Yes,’ Jane said. She was sure she had.

‘You worried about your daddy’s firm?’

‘That’s the only thing there’s left to worry about, isn’t it?’ Jane hoped she hadn’t sounded too challenging.

‘It’s over now. The moment I get what I want, it’s all over. The firm’s safe, your daddy’s reputation is safe. Everything’s all over.’

‘I’d like to think so.’

‘Think so.’

She was riding downtown with people who cut out other people’s tongues, Jane thought. Did God knows what else. People who held Alice hostage. How much more convoluted – who was hostage to whom or for what – could this kidnap be! ‘You – the people you work for – entrapped my father, didn’t you? Blackmailed him into doing what he did?’

‘I wasn’t involved in the beginning,’ denied Petrie, who hadn’t been.

The traffic was, strangely, easier going downtown. They joined Wall Street and Jane thought how familiar – how safe – it all seemed. How many times had she come this way, past these buildings, with her father? This was her father’s place, her father’s territory. Everyone on Wall Street knew her father, respected her father: George W. Northcote, the king, the Colossus. Jane saw the Northcote building, the far-away monument, the Citibank closer. Petrie, in the front seat, said something to the driver she didn’t hear before turning to her. He said: ‘You tell them I’m your lawyer, coming into the vault with you.’

Jane said: ‘I know what I’ve got to say.’

‘You know what happens, you get anything wrong.’ For the first time, ever, Petrie was frightened. He wanted to be there, watching, when they found Burcher.

The car stopped directly outside Citibank. The unspeaking man to her left got out to open the door to Jane, even offering his hand, which she didn’t need. Petrie was already on the sidewalk, coming in close beside her. He said: ‘Remember!’

Jane didn’t reply.

It was an expansive, crowded lobby, the teller area beyond, the securities area even further back, deep inside the building. Until that moment Jane had forgotten her crumpled, slept-in appearance and the television coverage of her supposed kidnap and actually looked around to be recognized. She wasn’t, not until they got to the floor managers’ desks and even there, initially, the man at the one they approached frowned up at the way she was dressed, not identifying her.