Brian Freemantle: Two Women

It took Carver an hour to dictate the speech he’d imagined he had fixed in his mind and less than fifteen minutes to realize, when it was typed, that it wasn’t fixed at all. His difficulty, unsurprisingly, was the corporate scandal warning, which didn’t seem to fit logically wherever he tried to introduce it. After once removing it altogether he reinserted it where he’d slotted it in the first place.

Jane came on to his private, direct line just after lunch – which he hadn’t bothered to eat – to say she’d just heard she’d been unanimously elected the charity-fund organizer.

Carver said: ‘Congratulations.’

‘That was hardly effusive!’

‘It was pretty much a shoo-in, wasn’t it?’

‘I’ve just told Dad. He said it’s going to be great, our working together. He seemed very excited coming up yesterday: said you and he had talked and he was definitely going to quit. So thank you, darling. I didn’t think persuading him was going to be that easy.’

‘What about getting him to see Dr Jamieson?’

‘Another surprise. He went, this morning. Said he had a lot of tests and there should be some results next week.’

‘That’s good.’

‘What did you do last night?’

‘Worked on my speech, for Friday,’ lied Carver. That was certainly what he would have to do tonight. What he had at the moment wasn’t an address from the head of an international accountancy conglomerate. His first Harvard attempt at Keynesian philosophy – which had been rejected with the demand to try again – had been better than this. And this wasn’t Keynesian philosophy.

‘I’m coming down with Dad, obviously.’

‘Hilda’s got you a bunch of stuff.’

‘I could be in Manhattan by lunch time.’

‘Call me from the car. We could eat.’

‘Maybe I should look over what Hilda’s done first.’

‘I’ll leave it up to you.’

‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

Carver tried to rework his speech but wasn’t any better satisfied and decided he really would have to work on it that night, at home. There were enough excuses to call his father-in-law but Carver held back from telephoning, confronting another doubt. The conference organizing was his responsibility so there was absolutely no reason why Northcote shouldn’t have gone up to Litchfield. But Carver couldn’t remember the man ever doing so before with everyone arriving from all over the world. Which surely wasn’t the main consideration, in the circumstances. The people from whom Northcote was supposedly extricating himself – extricating himself and the firm and everyone else – were presumably here, in New York: this is where they’d met earlier in the week. So how could Northcote be so sure that by Friday it would all be over? Was he lying, avoiding, as he’d lied and avoided for so long: long enough to have become a world expert? Carver remained staring at the telephone but still made no effort to pick it up. If that’s what Northcote were doing there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Apart from one thing, the one thing he’d already decided against doing. Couldn’t do. Carver felt a wash of impotence, which was the word that came into his mind and he wished it hadn’t because of its reminder of his difficulty with Alice. Last night he hadn’t suggested going back to her apartment. Neither had she. Instead of calling Northcote he dialled Alice’s number but got the answering machine. He left a message that he’d call later, from home. As he went uptown he decided to see Alice, after polishing the Friday speech. They’d eat in the Village again if he reached her early enough, so he told Manuel he didn’t want dinner and that he and Luisa could leave early. Carver got Alice’s answering machine on his next two attempts, in between which he worked on the speech and decided it was getting better.

He knew it wasn’t Alice when the telephone rang, because she never called the apartment, so he was half expecting Jane’s voice but not the hysteria. ‘What is it?’ he said, trying to talk over her. ‘Jane! I can’t understand what you’re saying. Slower! Speak slower.’

‘Dad!’ she sobbed. ‘There’s been an accident…’ She choked to a stop. And then she wailed. ‘Dad’s dead.’

Murdered, thought Carver, at once: George W. Northcote had been murdered. Killed, for transgressing whatever code these bastards – these sons of bitches – obeyed. A code he didn’t know. Which clearly George Northcote hadn’t known or understood, either. Carver felt physically paralysed, his arms and legs incapable of movement. But they had to move: everything had to work. He had to… Had to what? He didn’t know, Carver accepted. He felt the acid of vomit – and fear – rise in his throat. And thought, please help me God, and hoped God was listening.

He brought forward one of the already chartered helicopters, which was waiting for him by the time he reached 34th Street. It was normally a familiar way of his getting up to Litchfield, so familiar that the procedure was virtually automatic. But this early evening it wasn’t normal. He read the cab driver’s displayed ID, trying to remember the number – actually comparing the photograph – and questioned the traffic-jam detour for what was a direct downtown drive and, while they were blocked, tried – and failed – to reach Jane from his cellphone. He tried Alice, too, and once more got the answering machine. He said George Northcote was dead and he’d call as soon as he could and wished that instead of a recording he could have heard Alice’s voice, from her own mouth.

And all the time couldn’t stop – couldn’t co-ordinate – the turmoil in his mind.

Carver had always had a problem with coincidence, which made it seem impossible George Northcote’s death could be anything but murder. There had to have been a reason (what the fuck reason!) for Northcote going up to Litchfield – risking Jane, for Christ’s sake! – but he didn’t know, would now never know, what it was. One of the eight trillion things he had to work out. The handing over of the incriminating documentation. That surely could be the only purpose. Or was it? Why? Why Litchfield? Why do it in the boondocks instead of in Manhattan, where this week’s meeting had been between Northcote and…? And who? Where – oh dear God where! – were the supposedly protective copies of all the incriminating evidence: very much supposedly, because they hadn’t protected Northcote. Had to have existed somewhere, he tried to reassure himself. But where? Northcote’s personal safe within the firm’s vault had to be the place. The place that had remained closed since that one time, which Carver knew because he’d gone into the vaults to check and if Northcote’s personal safe had been open, he would have gone far more intently through whatever was there than he had on the first discovery. He most definitely had to get back in. Go through everything that was there. Janice Snow would have access. And now he had the authority – the unarguable right – to insist she open it for him. That was the obvious place for it to be. The only place for it to be. What was he going to do with it, when he got it? He didn’t know, not yet. But from whatever there was, he’d be finally able to get names! What the fuck protection was that! It was an objective question but he didn’t have an objective answer, any more than he had to all – or any – of the rest. Why did you do it, George? Why did you leave me – so many others – exposed like this? You bastard! You absolute, pig-fucking bastard. Why? It would, Carver accepted, always remain the biggest question of all, which would never be resolved.

The flight only took half an hour and there was still sufficient light when they reached the lake-shore estate for Carver to look down upon the scene, which was additionally illuminated by emergency lighting rigged to a generator van.