Two Women (3 page)

‘It must be important, for you to be like this?'

‘I'm sorry,' he repeated, not knowing what else to say.

‘You want to tell me about it?'

‘I've gotten things out of proportion,' he said, shaking his head. ‘That's what I meant about making choices, which wasn't it at all. I'm trying to balance things.' He never compared Jane with Alice or Alice with Jane, because they were incomparable, but physically they were remarkably similar, except for the most obvious difference of Jane being naturally deep brunette against Alice's blondness, again natural. There was nothing to choose – a wrong word because he would never choose – between them in height nor in their small-busted slimness.

The difference was in their personalities: their imbued motivations. Jane had always been cared for: cosseted, accustomed from childhood to the best, although she had by no judgement or criticism – certainly not by him – grown from a spoiled child into a spoiled woman. Jane was someone grateful of her privileged upbringing, recognizing her advantages and working always to give back. Which she did sometimes with an almost relentless determination better fitted to a business environment than a charity organizer: indeed, Carver had occasionally wondered why Northcote had not groomed Jane to take over the firm upon his retirement. Carver's reflection stopped at the thought. Knowing what little he did now about George Northcote's criminal involvement was the most likely answer to that uncertainty.

Alice's character had come from a similar but cracked mould. As far as Carver understood, although it was not a biography he'd deeply explored, her parents had at one time – briefly – been even richer and she more indulgently cared for than Jane. But her father had been a bull-and-bear-market gambler whose fortunes appropriately rose and fell upon his prediction of which way the market would go. His disastrously misplaced switch, between bull and bear when the markets were going in the opposite direction – and not reversing, when he'd further invested in the expectation that they would – financially ruined Alice's family. Alice was left with a suicide note of apology, a final year at Harvard Business School, a roller coaster personal awareness that money was a buy-or-sell marketable commodity, not the green stuff in her purse, and a street savvy to invest her way extremely comfortably to her graduation ceremony. Unrecorded upon that graduation certificate – although an indication, perhaps, of how successfully she would later pursue her chosen heads-or-tails career – was that Alice Belling was not just a woman totally emancipated in mind, body and attitude but more inherently streetwise than her finally unable-to-cope father.

‘Hello, again!'

Shit, thought Carver. ‘It's not my best night, is it?'

‘Is it a big problem, whatever it is?'

‘I don't bring work home, remember?' That wasn't even true.

‘You just did.'

‘Let's forget it, Jane.'

She looked surprised at the tone in his voice. ‘It's nothing to do with us, is it?'

‘Absolutely not.'

‘Promise?'

‘I promise.' He should have handled everything better than this!

‘Did you see Dad today?'

‘Briefly.'

‘He's going back up to Litchfield tomorrow.'

‘I know.' It had been Jane's urging that they buy a weekend house less than five miles from her father in Litchfield County, both close to Woodridge Lake.

‘I thought I might drive up with him, for company.'

‘Why don't you do that?'

Manuel came enquiringly into the dining room and Jane said to Carver: ‘Do you want anything else? Dessert?'

He shook his head. ‘I'm full.'

‘That's a lie, but OK.' To the butler she said: ‘After you've cleared away we shan't need you any more tonight. Thank you. Tell Luisa it was a wonderful meal, as usual. But we weren't hungry.' Neither Manuel nor his wife, who cooked, lived in.

‘Den or where?' she asked Carver.

‘Den,' he decided, following her along the linking corridor. The eight-room duplex on East 62nd Street had been her father's wedding present.

‘You want a brandy?'

‘No thanks.'

‘I'm worried about Dad,' she announced.

‘Worried how?'

‘So often losing the thread of what he's saying. That's why I want to go up with him tomorrow: persuade him to see Dr Jamieson.'

‘It'll take some persuading.'

‘I want you to help me.'

‘How?'

‘I want him to stop work. Completely. That'll be twice as difficult as getting him to see a doctor. But I'm asking you to try.'

‘I'll do my best,' said Carver. ‘I really will.'

Stanley Burcher was unique and knew it and was not concerned that no one else ever would, because fame – or rather notoriety – held no interest for him. The total opposite, in fact. Stanley Burcher prided himself upon being the person no one ever saw or noticed. He was a totally asexual bachelor whose only sensuality came from his association with the people for whom he practised and the knowledge of their criminality. Total evilness – and the people he acted for in such an unusual way were totally evil – fascinated him, as anthropologists are fascinated by unknown species. Which Burcher recognized himself to be too, because he was not revulsed by anything they did. Burcher maintained a small house on the unfashionable north side of Grand Cayman, in the Caribbean, and a box-numbered office in the capital, Georgetown, because Grand Cayman was the tax-avoidance haven in which the people he represented hid their vast fortunes. However, he lived for the majority of the time in distinguished but discreet hotels throughout the world, ensuring that the affairs of his exclusive clients never attracted public attention, most particularly from any law-enforcement authority.

The Harvard Club, in which he waited that night, just off New York's Fifth Avenue, represented an unaccustomed luxury, as did most of his regular meeting places with George Northcote. Burcher liked the meetings and he liked Northcote. Northcote was a man who, like himself, had been presented long ago with an opportunity, taken it and prospered. He was surprised at Northcote's lateness: Northcote had never before delayed an appointment and was now running later than the rescheduled time. But at that moment he appeared at the maître d's station.

‘Sorry I'm so damned late,' apologized Northcote, approaching with his hand outstretched in greeting.

‘Not a problem,' insisted the quietly spoken Burcher, who represented – through their combined
consigliori
– the five Mafia Families of New York.

Three

G
eorge Northcote was a meticulous dawn starter (‘I originated the early-worm philosophy') but when Carver made his first attempt at nine thirty he was told Northcote hadn't arrived: there'd been no warning of a delay, either. Carver was told the same when he called fifteen minutes later and again at ten. Carver telephoned Northcote's apartment on West 66th Street to be told by Jack Jennings, the butler, that he'd missed Northcote by minutes but that he was on his way.

Northcote came on to Carver's inter-office phone at ten thirty. ‘Sorry I'm late.'

‘What's the problem?'

‘There isn't one.'

‘George! You know damned well there is a problem, a big one! Why are you signing off double-accounted figures if the companies aren't going public?'

‘It's totally the opposite to what you think: what you imagine you've worked out. Which isn't important. I've said I'm resolving it.'

‘I'm looking forward to hearing how it went.'

There was a pause in the still subdued, no-longer hectoring voice. ‘I think it would be a good idea to postpone lunch.'

‘I don't. Nothing's being postponed, George. I've made the reservation and we're going to keep it. And you're going to tell me what the hell's going on.'

‘You think
you
can talk to
me
like this!'

‘In these circumstances, yes.'

‘You feel good?'

The rumble-voiced belligerence, too long in coming, momentarily silenced Carver before giving him his platform. ‘No, George. I don't feel good about any of this. You know how I feel? I feel so sick so deep in my stomach that any moment I might physically throw up.'

‘You watch – and listen – to too much television.'

‘Stop it, George! We're not talking television. We're talking one great heap of shit you've gotten this firm, yourself – us all – into …' Carver stopped as the thought came to him. ‘And gotten Jane into, as well. The booking's for one o'clock, at the club.'

‘I've things to do. I'll see you there.'

Carver gave way to his anger. ‘Don't be late, George. I don't want anything to be too late.'

Northcote wasn't late. The meticulous timekeeper was actually early but Carver was intentionally ahead of him by more than thirty minutes, ensuring their table was beyond overhearing, nursing his mineral water until his father-in-law arrived, trying to rehearse himself for a scene for which there was no script. Too late acknowledging the emptiness of the gesture to be just that, empty, he matched Northcote's previous day's refusal to stand. Northcote compounded Carver's belated embarrassment by pointedly standing beside their table, refusing the chair withheld as an invitation to sit from the frowning maître d'.

As he finally sat Northcote said to the man: ‘I'll have Macallan. Large. With a water back.'

Carver said: ‘Gin Martini. Large. Straight up with a twist.'

Father-in-law and son-in-law remained looking at each other, unspeaking, for several minutes before Carver said: ‘So tell me.'

‘There's a few things that still need sorting out. Not a problem.'

‘I'm getting a little tired of being told there isn't a problem.'

‘And I'm getting tired of telling you there isn't one.'

‘What are the few things still needing to be sorted out?'

‘Understandings.'

They pulled back for their drinks to be served.

Carver said: ‘What's understandings mean?'

‘Agreements.'

‘With whom? About what?'

‘The dissolution.'

‘For fuck's sake, George: talk in words that make sense! Are you – the firm – out?'

‘There are still some things that need to be agreed.'

There was another long silence.

Carver said: ‘They don't let you go, these people, do they?'

‘They're going to.'

‘I don't believe you. You don't believe yourself!'

Without knowing what it was, they both disinterestedly ordered that day's special when the head waiter returned and at the same time nodded to the house claret.

‘They don't have a choice.'

‘George! I've got to know!'

Northcote shook his head, gesturing for another whisky. There was a tremble in his hand of which Carver hadn't been aware before. Don't over-interpret, Carver told himself. ‘George?'

‘They know it's all over,' insisted Northcote. ‘They want all the files and records …' The block came. ‘The … the …'

‘Evidence,' finished Carver. He nodded again in acceptance of the wine, without tasting it.

‘It solves the problem. That's how it was always going to be. Separating the firm. No evidence, either way.'

For a moment Carver could not respond, silenced by the other man's seemingly easy acceptance of what he considered a disaster threatening – even impending.

‘So you give them all our records dating back …' Carver paused, stopped by an abrupt question. ‘Dating back how long, George? When did it all start …?'

‘A long time ago,' said Northcote. ‘And it took a lot more years to build up to what it became. There aren't many records with us any longer. But enough.'

‘Where?' demanded Carver, remembering his fruitless computer search.

‘Safe.'

What was missing from the older man's voice, Carver asked himself. Guilt? Remorse? Embarrassment? Acknowledgement of wrongdoing? All of them, Carver decided. If there was an intonation, it was of pride, in whatever it was he had created. He'd always accepted that his father-in-law was self-confident to the point of overwhelming arrogance, which Alice had more than once accused him of being as well, but this went beyond that. But then, Carver further asked himself, how could Northcote be otherwise, after the unstoppable international success he'd achieved, now with offices in every one of the world's financial capitals? But this … Carver was stopped again by another numbing, unthinkable uncertainty. ‘You told me you were trapped into it … that you didn't realize it was criminal?'

‘That's what it was … how it happened.'

‘When – remember we're talking precisely, exactly – did you realize what you were into?'

‘It wasn't like that.'

‘George! For fuck's …' Carver abruptly stopped with the arrival of their food, which they discovered to be rack of lamb. As soon as the waiter was out of earshot Carver said: ‘George. Tell me true. Don't tell me things weren't like I imagine them to be or that I'm misunderstanding or that I shouldn't be as pig-sick worried as I'm worried at this moment. How long ago?'

‘Maybe twenty years.'

‘How long ago?' persisted Carver. ‘Precisely. Exactly.'

‘Twenty-two. But it was a longer evolving process, to get everything set up.' The attitude reflected in the voice now was truculence.

Carver recognized it was a different story from that Northcote had first offered, of a struggling accountant, just starting out. ‘How'd they keep you in line? They blackmail you: tell you how you'd be debarred if you didn't go along with everything?'

Northcote moved his meat around his plate, eating none of it. Saying nothing.