Brian Freemantle: Two Women

She said: ‘I’m Jane Carver. Get me the securities manager please.’ She was aware of Petrie, so close beside her she could feel his tension.

He said: ‘Don’t forget what will happen to Alice.’

She said: ‘No.’

‘Or what to say.’

‘No.’

The door behind the desk flurried open and a prematurely balding man hurried out. He said: ‘Mrs Carver! What…?’

Jane said: ‘Don’t let this man get out of the building! He’s kidnapped me! He’s going to kill me.’

For the briefest moment no one moved. Spoke. Petrie appeared frozen. Then, instinctively, he turned to run. The man at whose desk they were standing pressed the attack button. The alarms screamed out, the tellers’ shutters slammed down and the metal gates slid closed in front of all the exit doors. Petrie zigzagged in total panic, going first in the direction of the main, already sealed door, then to a side exit, then back towards the way out into Wall Street. It was at that door he was seized by the uniformed security guards. One, unnecessarily, had his weapon out. Petrie didn’t struggle.

Jane actually walked from where she was standing, towards the arresting group. Very quietly she said to Petrie: ‘She will die, won’t she?’

With only two blocks to cover, the combined FBI and NYPD task force arrived from the Northcote building within minutes. Geoffrey Davis was with them. As soon as he saw Jane he said: ‘Thank God you’re both safe!’

‘Both?’

‘Alice Belling gave herself up to the FBI maybe three hours ago.’

It was Jane Carver’s adamant insistence that they retrace the two blocks to the Northcote building, where symbolically she took over the office of her dead father over which officially she had no right or authority. There she spent almost an hour – refusing Hanlan’s repeated telephone calls and then the FBI man’s demand to see him upon his arrival with Detective Lieutenant Barbara Donnelly – while she talked through with Geoffrey Davis and Burt Elliott everything Alice Belling had warned her might be found in her husband’s personal security facilities.

‘We’re into damage limitation, if that’s possible,’ was Davis’s opinion.

Elliott said: ‘I agree. But I don’t know how. What I do know is that it’s out of my league. We need a major, big-time trial lawyer.’

‘Find one. The best,’ instructed Jane.

‘We can explore, though,’ suggested Elliott. ‘Find out what we might be up against.’

‘That’s what I want to do,’ said Jane. ‘What’s first?’

‘Establishing the awareness, if any, of each and every one of the senior partners,’ said Davis, at once. ‘God knows – I certainly don’t – if it’s possible to save the firm. It certainly won’t be if even just one other partner was involved. If so, we’ve got criminal conspiracy. And that’s before we know what’s in the deposit box. Which we need to find out right now.’

‘Nothing’s going to happen to it where it is,’ calmed Jane. ‘I want to work to an order of priority and that’s not my first priority.’

Jane much later reflected, as she much later reflected on many things, that there was inherited proof of her father’s total autocratic control in how, still without challenge, she was able to summon the senior partners, for which she had even less authority. There was no objection, either, to Burt Elliott accompanying Geoffrey Davis. Her kidnap, Jane insisted, was not the point or focus of her gathering them all together. It was, instead and inadequately – because she could not compromise them – to advise of a situation that could have serious repercussions upon the firm and therefore logically upon their careers.

The concentration upon Jane Carver was absolute and she liked it, totally in control and totally in charge, which she hadn’t been for far too long. Her only discomfort was looking like a bag lady without a cart but from her command of the meeting she didn’t think that was a disadvantage. She was going to recite the names of five companies, she told them. If any of them, before this moment, had any awareness of the firm’s involvement with those companies, they were to tell her. They would be asked again, very soon, the same question she was posing. And more. If any lied – to her questions, not to subsequent ones – they would be abandoned to legal process. Their professional integrity, their very future, depended upon their replies.

Spacing the presentation, allowing silently echoing gaps between each, Jane recounted the names of the incriminating companies – even spelling them out, letter by letter – and then let further space into the demand.

Finally she said: ‘I am going around this room, person by person, for your individual answers.’

Which she did, even more adamantly insisting upon a positive, verbal denial, not a head shake. Bewildered denials came from every one of them and when she received the final refusal Jane warned: ‘You are, in the coming days, going to be questioned by the FBI. I believe my father failed you. I believe he failed me…’ She had to stop, to recover from the admission. ‘… and he failed John,’ she managed to continue. ‘It won’t matter a damn to any of you, after what might happen in the next weeks and months, but I personally want to apologize.’ Jane looked nostalgically around the heavy room. ‘This can’t be a time for questions because at this precise moment I don’t have any answers. I hope to have, very soon…’ The emotion surged up again, blocking any more words, and Jane was angry at the breakdown, believing she had steeled herself against it.

‘No!’ refused a heavy-bodied, heavy-featured man directly in front of her. ‘This is ridiculous! Nothing you’ve said is acceptable. What the hell is this all about?’

She still didn’t properly know, Jane accepted. ‘A situation I never imagined myself ever being in. All I can ask you to do – hope you will do – is to trust me over the next few days.’ No one was culpable if no one had known! So they were personally, individually, safe even if the firm was not. She no longer had any feelings about her father’s reputation.

‘Where does that leave us?’ demanded another accountant, a designer-suited black man whom Jane remembered her father describing as brilliant and wished she could recall his name.

‘Uninvolved. Exonerated,’ responded Jane, looking invitingly at Geoffrey Davis.

‘I know this is bizarre,’ came in the firm’s lawyer, at once. ‘That’s exactly what it is, totally and utterly bizarre. You must believe me that all you can do – all any of us can do – is hang in there with Jane.’

Could she remain in charge, for – and of – everything she wanted to do? Had to do? She should feel drained, traumatized, from what she’d already gone through that day, but unaccountably she didn’t. Even more unaccountably she felt energized, sure she could go on and resolve everything. At last she was in a position, in a role, in which she knew how to perform. She was in charge. In charge of herself and her surroundings and of what was going to happen today. She wished she knew about tomorrow. And the day after that.

The full-featured man said: ‘What do we do?’

Jane said: ‘Wait! Say nothing, to anybody outside the office. Certainly not the media. But tell the FBI what you’ve told me. Open all your accounts to them. Co-operate in every way. You’ve got nothing to hide.’

‘Well?’ demanded Jane, when the door closed after the last departing partner.

‘I know them all,’ said Davis. ‘I believe them all.’

‘They sounded convincingly honest to me,’ endorsed Elliott.

‘They would, wouldn’t they?’ said Jane.

‘You gave them their chance,’ said Davis.