Brian Freemantle: Two Women

Gene Hanlan hadn’t expected such an early and certainly not such a sensational breakthrough, any more than Barbara: unlike her, he hadn’t expected any confession at all. Although it kept Jane pivotal to the investigation and eventual prosecution, it took the immediate concentration away from her, and took Hanlan on to the conveniently retained FBI plane to Washington and the J. Edgar Hoover building for a conference that included the Director himself. It was Hanlan’s assessment of the career potential of what he found himself in charge of that caused him that night to utilize every safe house and apartment available in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens to accommodate, under permanent armed guard, not only Alice and Jane but their lawyers, as well. He also installed armed protection upon the Northcote building, Citibank and East 62nd Street.

As he left Federal Plaza he told Barbara Donnelly: ‘We got the chance to nuke the New York Mafias.’

‘If they don’t nuke us first,’ cautioned the detective lieutenant.

Alone in the sterile Manhattan apartment assigned to her, tauntingly just two blocks from Princes Street, Alice Belling lay weeping on a cold bed, properly experiencing for the first time what life was going to be like in a protection programme.

Jane had always been instinctively aware of power and authority: of possessing it through her father. Now it emerged to be no longer subconscious and certainly no longer inherent but hers in her own right. So sure of herself did Jane feel – after Alice’s legal surrender of John’s unborn child – she refused to let Peter Mitchell, the trial lawyer whose fame had further escalated the overnight media sensation, accompany her into the Citibank vaults.

‘Why?’ he demanded, although without emotion, because Peter Mitchell never allowed anything he felt to show in how he spoke or looked, no matter how irritated, as he was now. He was a silver-haired, urbane man who calculated representing Jane Carver was worth $1,000,000, for which she’d receive every conceivable legal guidance. For $1,000,000 Jane Carver could be as demanding as she chose.

Jane didn’t know why, just that after so much and so long – in drama, not in time – she wanted to be by herself, quite alone, when she finally saw what it had all been about. Careless of the inadequacy, she said: ‘Because that’s how I want it to be.’

She had obviously agreed, though, to his going with her to Citibank, along with Gene Hanlan and Barbara Donnelly amid the permanent FBI guard which, despite acknowledging their necessity, at this early stage still made her feel more amused than grateful. Part of that protection was to arrange the deposit-box examination at night, after the bank was officially closed, with no one inside apart from vetted officials and bank security and uniformed and plainclothes police inside as well as at every exit and with every kerbside approach cordoned off.

The bank president himself, escorted by his three most senior vice presidents, awaited them. The man, silver-haired like Mitchell, assured the trial lawyer there was an office available for him privately to examine whatever there was in the security vault. There was no surprise from any of the bank officials to Jane’s announcement that she was making the initial examination alone. One of the senior vice presidents accompanied her and the securities manager. No one spoke as they descended. After the duplicate-key opening the vice president asked if there was anything else she needed and Jane said no: she’d ring when she wanted the door to be unlocked.

Jane remained for several moments before the numbered box, its narrow rectangular door ajar, looking too small, too insufficient, to have caused so much. She reached out positively with her newly realized command, although aware as she did so that her hands were shaking. The box slid out easily, but was heavy from its contents when she finally lifted it free, and she had to grab it and use two hands to get it to the table. So tightly was it packed that the lid came up by itself when she unclasped it. The printouts she recognized from what Alice had duplicated at the cabin were uppermost, neatly folded in what appeared to be some order, and beneath them were what Jane supposed to be accountancy spreadsheets. There were names she recognized from what Alice had told her, Mulder Inc. and Innsflow, and addresses throughout the United States, but the calculations meant nothing. Nor did the other figures on other spreadsheets, in handwriting she recognized to be John’s.

It was beneath them that the other documentation lay, written words she could read and understand, even though they were legal. And photographs, ten in all, of her laughing father with a laughing woman whose name was Anna, from the annotations on the backs in her father’s handwriting, with dates and places, Madrid and Capri. There were names, too, on the birth certificate. The mother’s name was Anna Simpson. The father’s was George Northcote and the child, a girl, was named Jane Northcote. So it was on the adoption papers – the sort of adoption papers to which Alice had that day attested and sworn – and here for the first time appeared the name Muriel Northcote, as well as Jane legally getting the Northcote surname.

Jane wasn’t aware she was crying, not until she felt the wetness, but didn’t bother to wipe her eyes or her nose, wanting to cry unchecked at the sadness, but most of all – most bitterly – at the matching irony. Nothing left, she thought. Nothing that she’d believed and trusted and loved…’ – wanted to believe and trust and love – was left. Everything she had known, everything by which she’d felt secure and safe, was untrue, lies built on lies, deceit upon deceit. She had John’s surrogate baby but she wasn’t continuing the bloodline she’d cheated and lied to preserve. And it was too late now to undo what she’d turned herself into a monster to achieve.

Jane wiped her face, finally, and repacked the box with the photographs and the legal documents of her birth and formal adoption and put it back into the safe-deposit slot before ringing the bell for the security official and his duplicate key.

As she got back into the elevator, clutching everything referring to the five Mafia companies, Jane wondered how the person she’d believed to be – and loved as – her mother had felt about the laughing, beautiful Anna Simpson. That question inevitably prompted another. How or what did she feel about Alice Belling? Angry at the deception and humiliation, perhaps. Disbelief, at the idea that the woman had never represented a danger to her marriage. But not hatred, which she’d expected – waited – to feel. What then? Sadness, Jane decided. Sadness about too much to examine every reason for it. Too late to undo, she thought again. There was one thing – one further sadness – she could prevent, Jane realized. She wouldn’t keep the birth certificate and adoption papers of John’s baby where one day his son might find them. Nothing could be left for John’s son to discover that his father hadn’t been the most perfect man, which was how she planned always to describe him.

When Jane handed what she’d collected to Peter Mitchell the lawyer said: ‘I’ve got your word this is it? All there is?’

‘Yes,’ said Jane. ‘There’s nothing left.’

But there was, Jane corrected herself at once. She was going to have John’s baby.