Brian Freemantle: The Namedropper

‘A smokescreen,’ dismissed Reid. ‘She’s mostly down here on the estate just outside the city. Best place to be if she wants to hide, which she does. And she can fly in and out when she wants from the airstrip they’ve got there.’

‘You speak to her a lot?’

‘Not a lot. No reason to, now it’s all over.’

‘If you do, will you do me a favour? Tell her I’ve tried to call, to see if she’s OK. That I’d like to hear from her.’

There was a pause from the other end of the line. ‘I’ll pass it on, if we speak again.’

Jordan’s phone rang two days later.

‘I’ve tried to call,’ said Jordan.

‘Bob told me.’

‘And before I came back.’ He thought her voice was flat, as if she were depressed.

‘Stephen told me that, too.’

‘How are you?

‘Pissed off with all the media hanging around again, since Alfred’s arrest.’

‘I guess he’s in deep trouble.’

‘I guess,’ she agreed, disinterestedly.

‘I’m thinking of coming across.’

‘What for?’

‘Just a trip,’ Jordan pressed on. ‘I thought maybe we could meet up?’

‘I told you, I’m under siege again down here.’

‘Bob said you could get in and out by air when you wanted to. We could get together in New York, if they haven’t found your apartment there.’

Alyce didn’t respond.

‘Alyce?’

I am going up for a foundation meeting next week. It’ll be the first time since my re-establishment on the board.’

‘It was next week I was thinking of coming over,’ improvised Jordan. ‘When will you be there?’

‘Tuesday onwards.’

‘I’ll be at the Carlyle again. I’ll call you from there.’

‘Wednesday,’ said Alyce. ‘Make it Wednesday.’

‘Wednesday,’ agreed Jordan.

Remembering his jetlag Jordan caught a weekend flight. The Sunday edition of the New York Times reported in a front page story that the FBI had encountered some ‘unusual features’ in the Appleton investigation.

Jordan didn’t once leave his Carlyle suite on the Sunday -eating from room service – and only walked as far as Central Park the following day. It was in the park that he read that day’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal, both of which reported, without much more detail, that the Justice Department were possibly convening a Grand Jury to investigate the Appleton affair.

He reached only Alyce’s answering service on his two Tuesday calls, asking her on both occasions where she wanted to eat, to enable him to make the reservation, but it wasn’t until the Wednesday morning that she finally answered, personally, suggesting lunch, not dinner, and at the hotel.

‘What’s wrong?’ Jordan finally asked. She was as flat voiced as she had been when she’d called him in London the previous week and since then he’d thought about little else but her obvious lassitude.

‘You really do sometimes have the strangest aptitude for asking the most stupid questions!’

‘As you sometimes have the strangest aptitude for responding with the most confusing answers.’

‘You want to call it off?’

‘No!’ said Jordan, urgently. ‘The last thing I want to do is call anything off. I want to see you. Talk to you.’

‘At lunch,’ Alyce insisted.

‘I’ll make the reservation; we can have a drink first. I’ll be waiting in the lobby again.’

Which he was, a table booked in the bar as well as the restaurant, the half bottle of champagne already in its cooler. Alyce came into the hotel with the same commanding confidence as before, attracting the same attention as before, although Jordan judged it to be because of how she was dressed – a long coated white trouser suit with a floppy-brimmed matching white hat – and so perfectly made up, the too bright red lipstick replaced by paler pink, the colour to her face more natural than applied. She accepted the champagne and extended the flute for the glass-touching toast and said, ‘I almost didn’t come again but now I have I’m glad and it’s good to see you.’

‘And I’m even more confused than ever,’ said Jordan.

‘Which I guess I am, too. And don’t want to be, not any longer.’

‘Then I’m glad I made the trip here because I don’t want any more confusion or misunderstandings,’ said Jordan. ‘From this moment on I want both of us to understand everything, know everything about the other, although I’m not sure it’s going to come out as straight as I want it to.’

‘You sure about that, my darling?’

Jordan smiled at the word, the relief surging through him. ‘I think so… I think I know so.’

‘And I think I should speak first, before-’ started Alyce.

‘No!’ refused Jordan. ‘You spoke ahead of me when we said goodbye in France and I stupidly agreed because I didn’t understand… didn’t know… and I’m not going to let it happen again. Nothing’s going to be easy, because of what and who you are and because of what I am, although what I am – really am – isn’t going to be any barrier because I’m all set for another career change that’s going to get that out of the way. I love you, which is something I never thought I’d ever tell anyone again. I want us to be together. Married together, although God knows how that’s going to happen but I’ll make it happen. I guess you’ll want to continue living here – working here -which is fine. And I don’t want you to imagine I want to live off you and your money and your position. I’ve got a lot of money… enough money… and we can give all yours to yet another charity. And-’

‘Stop!’ insisted Alyce. ‘Please stop! I don’t want you to go on misunderstanding… saying things I don’t want to hear you say, although I do want to hear you say them-’

‘You’re not making sense,’ halted Jordan, in turn.

‘Then let me,’ pleaded Alyce. ‘Let me talk, try to explain as best I can, without stopping me. Without stopping me and hating me because I never want you to hate me, not now and not ever. I know who you are, Harvey. Know what you are. Which means I know what you’ve done to Alfred. How I guessed you paid all the bills and didn’t want my money

…’ She stopped, gulping too deeply at her drink and having to cough when it caught her breath.

‘I tricked you, my darling,’ she started again. ‘Tricked you and now I am so very, very sorry. I never intended it to happen, none of it. I never imagined Alfred would invoke that stupid fucking criminal conversation claim; never thought I’d ever see you again, which made everything worse, because I wanted to, so much, after France.’

‘You’re not-’ Jordan started again but sharply she interrupted him.

‘No! I’ve got to finish because I don’t think I can say it all a second time. Of course I knew Alfred was having me watched here because I was having him watched long before he put his private detectives on to me. I knew all about Sharon Borowski and Leanne Jefferies, and had two other women if I needed to cite them. But here, in America, he was getting too close. He had to be diverted, get the co-respondent he needed for the divorce. Which is why I went to France and found you. You were only ever supposed to be a necessary name to get him to pull his people off. I didn’t even know of something called criminal conversation. Or guess in a million years that you would fight it. Never thought I’d ever see you again although by the time I flew back I wanted to, so very much…’

Jordan took advantage of another gulped drink. ‘How do you know what I do?’

‘That extra week, when I extended the vacation? That was to get my own enquiry people to France: those I’d personally employed to watch Alfred, not the DKK agency that Bob engaged.’ She sniggered a humourless laugh. ‘You know why I did it? I did it because I really didn’t want you to get in the situation you ended up in. But you confused us so much, back in England. Changing from Harvey Jordan to Peter Thomas Wightman. It didn’t take long to work out why, though. Then we thought you’d caught us out, all those evasion tricks when you went back to your own apartment…’ She raised her hand towards him. ‘Don’t worry, darling. What you did when you got back to England wasn’t breaking any American law, not that I’d have blown the whistle on you if it did. And I’m certainly not going to tell anyone about what you’ve done to Alfred.’