Brian Freemantle - Two Women

It was nearer the lake than the main, rambling house complex. A limp-rotored medivac helicopter was already on the ground, although at a distance from everything else. There were an ambulance and two police cars, their coloured bar lights still revolving and reflecting off other vehicles, which prompted Carver’s illogical – immediately embarrassed – impression of a funfair attraction: roll up, roll up and see what happens to someone who thinks he can stiff-middle-finger the Mafia. There were two other cars and a 4? 4, completing the semicircle around a piece of equipment Carver couldn’t at first identify. But then he realized it was a small crane, its hawsers strained around what became visible as they descended further, Northcote’s familiar tractor mower. Carver didn’t bother to count the figures concentrated around it. There were certainly a lot but then George W. Northcote had been the leading figure – and a generous benefactor – in the community. Which deserved an unnecessary medivac helicopter, an ambulance, two police cars and a crane that appeared to have been designed like a crab with its legs splayed.

Carver’s helicopter put down some way away, to avoid downdraught, and Carver was out in a crouched run before the rotors stopped. When he straightened he saw people already coming towards him and recognized Al Hibbert, the sheriff, in the lead with his hand already outstretched.

‘Bad business, John,’ greeted the bulge-bellied, balding man. ‘Damned bad business.’ He wore a holstered pistol and his badge of office on the shirt of his official uniform.

‘Where’s Jane?’

‘Up in the house. Dr Jamieson is looking after her.’ Hibbert turned to the second man. ‘You know Pete Simpson?’

‘What happened?’ demanded Carver, shaking the medical examiner’s hand as he walked towards the brightly lighted scene.

‘Still piecing it together with Jack here,’ said Hibbert, as they got to the vehicles.

Jack Jennings had been George Northcote’s major-domo for fifteen years, controlling a staff of eight between the Litchfield estate and the Manhattan apartment. He was a tall white-haired black man whom Carver couldn’t ever remember seeing in anything but striped trousers, black jacket and white shirt. It was the uniform he was wearing now. The man said: ‘So sorry, Mr Carver. So very, very sorry.’ His voice was thick.

‘Let’s start again, shall we, Jack?’ said the sheriff.

Jennings coughed. ‘After lunch Mr Northcote said he was going to drive the mower a little…’ He smiled at Carver. ‘You know how he used to like to do that. Haul the cutters around the lower paddocks: said it relaxed him and that he needed to relax with what was coming up this week.’

‘What’s that mean?’ broke in the sheriff.

‘We’ve got the annual conference: people flying in from all over,’ supplied Carver. Which is what I am going to do. Live in the country, cut my grass… He remembered Northcote’s statement, as clearly as he remembered the photograph that accompanied Alice’s profile.

‘That’s what he said,’ agreed Jennings, his voice still thick despite the constant coughing. ‘He was in the study all morning, working on his speech.’

He had to see that speech, as soon as possible, Carver decided. And go through the study with a toothcomb. There’d be a safe. Would Jennings know the combination? Or where the key was kept?

‘Go on,’ urged Hibbert.

‘It wasn’t unusual for him to stay out all afternoon,’ picked up the man. ‘I looked out for him around five: that’s about the time he likes a Macallan when he’s up here in the country. When he wasn’t back by five thirty I came out looking, in the golf buggy. Here’s where I found him…’ The man choked to a halt. ‘God, it was awful.’

‘What?’ persisted Carver.

‘See that dip there?’ Hibbert took over, moving closer to the rim of the depression and the crane with its legs spidered to support the dangling tractor mower.

Carver did see it. And saw for the first time, too, that hanging down from the tractor itself was the separate multi-bladed attachment that cut a swathe at least six feet wide on each traverse.

‘The way it looks, he took the tractor too close to the edge, so it tilted. That threw him backwards, into the blade, and then the whole rig turned over, on top of him…’ Hibbert nodded to a photographer of whom Carver had until that moment been unaware, taking shots of the suspended machine. ‘We got pictures…’

‘He was trapped underneath the tractor itself,’ said Jennings. ‘Crushed. I tried to get to him but I thought it all might topple further, on to me. I called out but he didn’t say anything. I couldn’t hear him breathing. I went back to the house and called emergency. Then I called Mrs Carver.’

‘The injuries are bad,’ threw in the medical examiner. ‘I won’t know until I complete the autopsy whether he died from blood loss, from going into those sharp-as-hell blades. Or from being crushed by the tractor. His chest is virtually gone.’

‘It took a time to get the lifting gear here, to get it off him,’ said Hibbert, as if in apology.

‘Where’s the body now?’ asked Carver.

‘On the way to the morgue,’ said Hibbert. ‘Jane wanted to see him but I said no. I didn’t know how long it was going to take you to get here… didn’t think of the helo… so I decided it was better to get the body away.’

‘Thank you,’ said Carver.

‘There’s supposed to be an official identification, but I know…’ began Hibbert but Carver talked over him.

‘I’ll do it. Tomorrow OK?’

‘Just give me a call,’ said Hibbert. He shook his head. ‘One hell of an accident.’

‘One hell of an accident,’ echoed Carver. If only you knew, he thought. If only you knew that George Northcote had been murdered by people who wouldn’t let him go.

But what people? And what were they going to do next? John Carver supposed what he was feeling was fear: total, numbing, skin-tingling, stomach-emptying fear.

Jane was cried out of tears but dry sobs still shuddered through her and the first time it happened Carver was frightened she wouldn’t catch her breath and would choke. Which wasn’t his only fear. She sat stiffly upright on the very edge of the lounge chair, her eyes blinking but unfocused, seemingly unaware of anything or anyone around her. Charles Jamieson, the Litchfield family doctor, called it deep shock and asked where they would be staying that night and before Carver could reply Jane said, so loudly and unexpectedly that both men jumped: ‘Here, with Dad.’

‘Then we’ll put you to bed,’ announced the doctor, recovering before Carver.

Jane let herself be led upstairs to the room she and Carver always occupied when they stayed over, which they often did. Carver and the doctor undressed her between them and obediently she took the sedatives Jamieson gave her but remained staring up at the ceiling, still occasionally racked by a breath-snatching sob. Carver felt the doctor’s pressure on his arm and followed the man from the bedroom.

In the downstairs lounge Jamieson, a fat, haphazardly dressed man, said: ‘It’s not going to be easy for her. They were very close. It’s most likely she won’t accept it at first: talk as if he’s still alive.’

‘What should I do?’

‘Let it go, for a little while. You going to stay up here?’

Carver hesitated. ‘I can’t. I have to go back to the city.’

There were a lot of calls he had to make, so much he had to do: so much, somehow, somewhere, he had to find or discover. What Northcote had promised to give him had to be here somewhere because the intention had been for the man to come direct from here for their meeting. But what? Where?