Two Women

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘When my periods became easier I found I didn’t need it,’ said Jane.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d stopped,’ intruded Carver.

  ‘You didn’t talk to John about that?’ demanded Rosemary.

  ‘No,’ Jane admitted.

  ‘And you didn’t tell me, either, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  Everyone lies – or avoids the truth – with everyone else, thought Carver. Until now he wouldn’t have believed it from Jane or Alice but now he knew both had avoided the complete truth. The rushed awareness of his own hypocrisy – at least towards Jane – surged through him. What had he been doing, for the past eighteen months? Not lying, certainly, because the question had not been put to him. Nor avoiding the truth, he supposed, because again there had been no challenge. But he was certainly morally guilty of lying to Jane by having the affairs with Alice. Or was the moral lie the one to Alice, prepared though she insisted she was to live with their arrangement? Another to join the never-ending list of unanswerable questions.

  ‘Do you properly know what in vitro fertilization involves, beyond what you’ve read in newspapers?’ asked Rosemary.

  ‘No,’ managed Carver, just ahead of Jane, who almost as quickly said: ‘Yes.’ Anxious to cover the awkwardness – genuinely to help Jane – Carver said: ‘I’d certainly like to know.’

  ‘The first – the most important thing – you’ve both got to understand is that IVF is not the absolute guarantee of pregnancy,’ said the specialist. ‘Despite all the claims, only one in ten women successfully becomes pregnant at the first attempt, by which I mean actually having a baby. My personal experience – success rate – is that just a quarter of my patients ever achieve a full pregnancy that produces a healthy child …’

  ‘What’s it involve?’ demanded Carver. He had to find an escape, not from ever having a baby – a dilemma he had until now refused to contemplate – but from even considering it at this time.

  ‘For you, a series of tests,’ replied the woman. ‘Neither of you have undergone fertility exploration, have you?’

  ‘No,’ said Carver, quickly again.

  ‘A sperm count for you is the most obvious. For you, Jane, a fallopian-tube examination and ovulation monitor …’ She hesitated, looking directly at Jane. ‘At this moment – maybe for some time in the future – I’m not convinced you two can’t create a baby in the normal, unaided way. And until I am, I’m not even going to begin to consider IVF. Doctors don’t fix arms and legs before they’re broken …’

  ‘If John and I were able naturally to have a baby, I’d have become pregnant by now,’ insisted Jane.

  ‘There’s no logic in that whatsoever,’ dismissed Rosemary. ‘You’ve a history of menstrual difficulty. Simply coming off the Pill, for however long you have, doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to become pregnant. We’ll run the tests, on both of you. If there’s a problem that we can’t fix, then we’ll move on to IVF.’

  ‘When?’ demanded Jane.

  ‘When we’ve discovered if there is a problem. Rushing into IVF if there’s not could actually lessen rather than increase your chances of becoming pregnant.’

  ‘When can we start the tests?’ persisted Jane.

  ‘All we initially need from John is a specimen. I could start with you, Jane, next week.’

  ‘It’s fixed then,’ decided Jane.

  ‘We’re beginning a procedure,’ said the gynaecologist. ‘We don’t yet know there’s anything to fix.’

  ‘When next week?’ said Jane, rising.

  ‘Tuesday, ten,’ said Rosemary. ‘And Jane …’

  ‘What?’ said Jane, already on her way to the door, Carver following.

  ‘I am a psychologist, as well as a gynaecologist. Why don’t you and John really talk this through?’

  Jane held back until they got outside. Then she whirled on Carver and said: ‘Thanks a whole lot!’

  ‘Don’t blame me for what happened back there! You fouled it up, not me!’

  ‘You didn’t help!’

  ‘You heard what she said – why don’t we really talk this through? Which we didn’t. And haven’t. This is irrational, Jane. I know your grief and I know your loss. But this isn’t the way to compensate.’ He was aware of curiosity from people having to manoeuvre around them on the sidewalk. Aware, too, that this wasn’t the time to ask her about any safe-deposit facilities in her father’s private bank, Carver’s last hope of a more complete dossier.

  Jane began, at last, to cry. But silently and, unlike the first day, with no racking sobs. She let the tears run, unchecked. Her nose, too, and Carver gently wiped her face, angry at the now greater curiosity of passing people. She said: ‘I’m trying to hang on, John, I’m looking for something to hang on to.’

  ‘How about me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘How about hanging on to you?’

  Carver had the cab detour to East 62nd Street, glad Jane changed her mind about returning with him to the office. Having tried three times to call Alice he didn’t understand why the message on her answering machine had changed. Or why, even more worryingly, she hadn’t replied. He tried a fourth time from the back of the taxi and got the same strange-voiced reply – strange-voiced but to him easily identifiable as her – and couldn’t comprehend why she didn’t confirm her name or number in her message: she was a working journalist to whom the telephone was a major source of commissions.

  He was even more unsettled by Jane’s kerb-side collapse and her unarguing acceptance of the nurses’ help when they’d got to the apartment. How close was Jane to a much more severe breakdown? By finally acknowledging the need for nurses, Jane was acknowledging a problem. Would she also acknowledge the need for a psychiatrist? He could talk to Dr Newton, from the office. Have Newton make a visit to the apartment and, if he considered it necessary, the doctor could broach the idea, to put the thought into Jane’s mind ahead of his suggesting it.

  If there was some mental condition, could he risk talking to Jane about safe-deposit boxes? Not that there was a risk in talking about such boxes. The danger, in Jane’s fragile state, was what those boxes, if they existed, might hold. And Carver wasn’t thinking at that precise moment of incriminating evidence of long-term and massive money laundering. He was thinking about photographs of a beautiful, laughing girl named Anna. If Northcote had left the photographs so easily discovered at Litchfield and at West 66th Street – needing nostalgically to remind himself, Carver presumed – or in the firm’s vault, what was there likely to be where Northcote would have believed only he would ever have access? But he had to get to it, if it existed. And for precisely that reason. The more he thought about it the more logical it was that a personal safe deposit was the only place Northcote would have believed secure and secret from everyone except himself. And there had to be one, Carver decided, letting his speculation run on. He knew from the Chase Manhattan ledger that Northcote had been to the firm’s vault on the day of his Harvard Club encounter. And if he’d handed over then what he’d retrieved he – and Janice Snow – might well still be alive. So where else but to his own bank would he have gone, in between the Chase Manhattan at 11.30 a.m. and the Harvard Club, at 1 p.m.?

  So engrossed was he that Carver physically jumped at the sound of his own cellphone, almost dropping it as he fumbled it from his pocket.

  ‘Mrs Carver told me you would both be coming back,’ said Hilda.

  ‘She’s not, after all,’ said Carver. ‘I’m on my way, though. Five blocks maybe but the traffic’s like it always is.’

  ‘I took it upon myself to arrange something, knowing you’d be here around this time.’

  ‘What?’ demanded Carver, apprehensively.

  ‘There was a call from a lawyer, representing those companies Mr Northcote kept on,’ replied Hilda.

  ‘What’s the name?’ demanded Carver, hearing the crack in his own voice.

  ‘He didn’t give one, although I asked, obviously. He said it was extremely im
portant that he talk to you as soon as possible but that he was leaving New York tomorrow. So I gave him an appointment at five this afternoon. You’ll be here well in time for that.’

  Run, instinctively thought Carver. Then, delay: delay at least until he could prepare himself. Get to Northcote’s personal box. ‘He leave a number: a way to contact him?’

  ‘I asked him for one, of course. Just in case. He said he was moving around the city and couldn’t be reached.’

  Carver looked at his watch. He had just twenty-five minutes, he saw. Abruptly, ahead, the traffic cleared.

  Fourteen

  By the time Carver reached the office he had fifteen minutes left and the only precaution upon which he had decided took just five of them, because everything was already set up. All that was left for him to do was wait and try to anticipate, which he initially did but quickly gave up because he wasn’t anticipating he was imagining and the image upon which his mind settled was the near-faceless body of George Northcote. Carver forced the panic back, consciously breathing deeply as if pulling the courage into himself. He could do it, if he didn’t panic: if he didn’t conjure up mental horror pictures. His stomach churned, physically, and a few times audibly. There was no visible shake when he looked down at his hands, lying before him on the desk. He lifted them, holding them out straight in front of him. Still no shake. He felt his face. He wasn’t sweating, either, although he felt hot. He wiped a handkerchief across his face all the same, knowing he wouldn’t be able to do so later. He didn’t know – which was the root of his fear – what he was going to be able to do later.

  The lawyer who hadn’t left a name arrived precisely on time and as Hilda ushered him into Carver’s room Carver thought at once of his memorial service reflection about professionally invisible people. In a crowd this man would have been practically see-through. He was medium height and slightly built and everything about him was muted: muted grey, single-breasted suit, grey-on-grey patterned tie, a white shirt. It was impossible to gauge the man’s age from the expressionless, unlined face. There was a strange, oddly unmoving smoothness in the manner in which he walked, a progress rather than an actual walk, the glide of an invisible, ghostlike – or was it ghost-making? – man. Carver had intended to remain seated, as Northcote had shown his superiority at their confrontation, but had hurriedly to scramble to his feet totally losing the planned impression – when the inconspicuous man stopped the offered handshake halfway over the desk, making Carver rise to it. He at once turned to examine available chairs, to take the one that put himself directly – confrontationally – across the desk from Carver, and said: ‘It’s good of you to see me at such short notice.’ The polite, ingratiating voice was soft, worryingly close to being inaudible, with no discernible accent.

  ‘Particularly as you weren’t able to leave a name.’ Carver was pleased at his own hopefully forceful tone, evenly pitched but demanding, someone unaccustomed to being treated inconsiderately.

  A reasonable attempt at playing the affronted man, Burcher decided. But only just. He rose, taking a prepared card from his top pocket, but offered it across the desk in such a way that Carver had once again to stand to accept it.

  He was going up and down like the other man’s marionette, accepted Carver. The two-line inscription on the plain pasteboard read Stanley Burcher, Attorney at Law. There was no address or contact details. Carver at once remembered the regular entries in Northcote’s diary, S–B. Could he have misread the intervening squiggle as an ampersand to mean Northcote was meeting two people when it had only been this man, Stanley Burcher?

  The lawyer said: ‘The name wouldn’t have meant anything. I knew the company names would.’ He was unsure how long to permit the accountant to imagine his superiority. It was important not to begin wrongly. They were going to have to deal with each other for a long time, years, so there had at least to be an amicable working relationship, if not friendship. Until the very end Burcher had imagined something approaching friendship between Northcote and himself. Mutual respect, certainly.

  What, Carver wondered, was the other man’s real name? And how many other people had ever posed themselves the same query? Impossible, probably, to guess: as so much else – everything else – in which he was so suddenly and so unwillingly caught up was impossible to guess or to comprehend. The thought was abruptly replaced by another, far more relevant. There had not been time for his severance letters to have reached Grand Cayman. So what had brought this man here today? ‘How can I help you, Mr Burcher?’ Bullshit politeness to bullshit politeness – we’re quietly talking murder, you know, your murders, yes I know, good of you to put it so discreetly.

  Burcher allowed a momentary but perceptible hesitation, for Carver’s benefit, and Carver was pleased, misconstruing it as he was intended to. Then Burcher said: ‘I don’t think either of us needs to perform, do we, Mr Carver?’

  ‘I don’t understand that remark.’

  ‘I know we can speak openly,’ declared Burcher. ‘George Northcote told my clients just before he died that you knew everything in which he and my clients were involved. Which is convenient for us all: it involves you. Makes you complicit.’ After softball comes hardball, to let the man know how irrevocable, inescapable, his position was.

  He had to tread – but more importantly, to speak – with extreme care, Carver reminded himself. ‘I have learned certain things, in the last few days: things that greatly concern me. That knowledge, in itself, in no way involves me. Nor makes me complicit, with anyone or in any way, in anything.’ He felt good, equal in this confrontation: stupid to have hollowed himself out, near mentally as well as physically. His stomach most definitely wasn’t in turmoil any more: all his arguments were ready, logical. There was an immediate lurch – a twitch – of contradiction. How far from the whirling blades had Northcote’s face been when he’d talked – screamed in the frantic terror of realization – of long-kept secrets no longer being secret?

  Too obviously rehearsed but not a bad attempt, allowed Burcher. ‘We both know what we are talking about, Mr Carver.’

  ‘We do indeed, Mr Burcher.’

  ‘I hope this is not going to become a difficult situation,’ said Burcher, the voice still politely soft, perfectly modulated. Surely this man wasn’t going to be stupid!

  ‘I see no reason why it should,’ said Carver. He was driving, choosing the route.

  ‘There is no reason.’

  Carver recognized the beginning of a who’s-going-to-blink-first contest. ‘You’re obviously not aware of my letters.’

  Burcher was put off balance by a remark he did not understand but he betrayed no reaction. ‘No. Tell me about your letters. And what they said.’

  ‘I yesterday sent letters officially severing all connection between George W. Northcote International and Mulder Incorporated, Encomp, Innsflow International, BHYF and NOXT,’ enumerated Carver, with what he judged to be the necessary formality.

  ‘I most certainly didn’t know about those letters,’ easily admitted Burcher. ‘It would have been far better if we’d talked before they were sent.’ It looked as if moulding Carver as the man had to be moulded was going to be more difficult than he’d imagined. It had been a mistake to imagine otherwise and Burcher didn’t like conceding mistakes.

  He was still in charge, decided Carver. ‘I don’t see any benefit in my having done that. I didn’t, after all, have any idea we were going to meet. But why, not already knowing of my firm’s disassociation from your clients, are you here today?’

  Very definitely not as easy as he had imagined, Burcher recognized. Those whom I represent no longer appear on your computerized client list. I was asked to find out why,’ Burcher improvised.

  Now it was Carver who was tilted, hesitating, unsure which way to take the conversation. Cautiously he said: ‘I’ve just told you I’ve ended my firm’s involvement with your clients.’

  ‘And immediately – before any discussion – erased them from your records?’r />
  ‘I don’t see any point – any purpose – in our discussing it further. The decision has been made. It’s irrevocable.’

  ‘I think there is need for further discussion, Mr Carver.’

  ‘I repeat that I don’t, Mr Burcher.’

  ‘There could be some resentment from my clients.’ He had to hear Carver out, fully discover the reason for the man’s confidence, knowing as he clearly would what had really happened to Northcote and to the woman in Brooklyn.

  ‘As I have some resentment at learning that your clients have been illegally monitoring my firm’s computer system.’

  ‘Learning that is most definitely a cause for concern,’ picked up Burcher, heavily.

  ‘I’m glad you agree with me.’

  ‘I’m not agreeing with you, Mr Carver.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand.’

  ‘My clients regard their security – the security of their affairs – as extremely important.’

  ‘As I do, with my firm. Hence my irritation.’

  ‘My clients are more than irritated – far more than irritated – at discovering that very concerted attempts have been made illegally to enter their computerized records both in this country and elsewhere.’

  There was an echoing thunder of words in Carver’s mind – no reaction, facial or verbal, no reaction, facial or verbal … Even-voiced, sure he remained as expressionless as the man facing him, Carver said: ‘Then they’ll understand how I feel about their illegal entry here. I obviously need to update security.’

  Burcher let a silence grow between them, staring directly at Carver, who stared directly back. The lawyer broke it. He said: ‘Are you surprised to hear that efforts were made to intrude into my clients’ affairs, following George Northcote’s death?’

  Carver was chilled – physically cold – but sure he gave no indication. ‘As surprised as I was to learn that your clients have been intruding into mine.’