Two Women (7 page)

He said: ‘I've some names I want to put to you. Do you know where the files are on a company named Mulder Inc.?'

Janice gave time for her answer. ‘No.'

‘Have you ever handled accounts on behalf of George for Mulder Inc.?'

‘I've typed completion letters to them, in the Caymans, after an audit.'

To go with the returns?'

There was another hesitation. ‘They were sent separately.'

‘So how were the returns made?'

‘I don't know.'

‘You don't know!'

‘Mr Northcote had a special way of working, with some clients. Mulder was one of them. There were a lot of personal meetings.'

‘You know the names of some Mulder executives: their in-house accountants?'

‘No.'

She had to be part of it, thought Carver. ‘Did George ever have you computerize any details of Mulder?'

‘No.'

‘What about anyone else on his personal staff? Other girls?'

‘I did all that.'

‘What about a company named Encomp?'

There was a further pause. ‘I've typed some sign-off letters, to Grand Cayman again.'

‘But no returns?'

‘No.'

‘What about Innsflow?'

‘The same.'

There was no purpose in continuing this long-distance conversation. With the passwords he could make a computer check of his own, despite what Janice had told him. ‘I want you to help Hilda, like I said. We'll talk some more about George's personal files when I get back.'

‘OK.'

If the woman were involved his asking about them would give her all the time in the world to hide or destroy everything.

‘Is there something wrong?' demanded Janice, openly.

‘Nothing wrong at all,' said Carver. ‘With everyone here in New York – with meetings and discussions to be held – I'm trying to bring myself as fully up to date as possible, as quickly as possible.'

‘I'll have it done by the time you get here tomorrow,' promised the woman.

Now with increasing impatience Carver endured fifteen minutes going through what the firm's lawyer thought important to emphasize in the death notices and obituaries, which mostly concerned the assurance that Carver's already agreed succession would ensure the uninterrupted business continuity of George W. Northcote International. Manuel said he and his wife would return to East 62nd Street that night, to ensure that everything would be ready before anyone arrived. He was very sorry about Mr George. It was terrible.

Alice started lightly: ‘I thought you'd forgotten me …' But at once became subdued when he talked over her to tell her what had happened. She said: ‘Shit,' and then: ‘An accident?'

‘That's what it's going to be described as.'

‘Do you really think he was killed?'

‘The doctor says he could have suffered a stroke, from high blood pressure: that it could have been the cause of his falling into the blades.'

‘I asked what you thought,' persisted Alice.

‘I don't want to, but I think he was killed,' said Carver, hearing the casual, conversational tone of his own voice. He was talking of murder as if it was a normal topic, like the weather or some commuter gridlock and wasn't Manhattan a shitty place to try to get around in.

‘This doesn't seem real: sound real,' said Alice, matching his thinking, which she often did.

‘No.'

‘What are you going to do?'

‘I can't think of anything to do.'

‘He didn't give you what you asked for?'

‘No. But it should be here somewhere.' Carver was impatient to get off the line.

‘How's Jane?'

‘Sedated.'

‘It won't be easy for us to meet?'

Now it was Alice who sounded remarkably sanguine: unmoved. But then although she'd been impressed by the man – wrongly as it transpired – she'd only met George Northcote two or three times. ‘Not over the next few days,' he agreed.

‘Call me, when you can.'

‘When I can.'

‘And be careful, darling.'

‘I will,' said Carver, wishing he knew how to be.

Carver pushed the chair slightly back with the same motion of replacing the telephone, momentarily looking between the desk and the workstation before deciding he couldn't wait for Janice's search the following morning: that he had to look – try to look – for himself. The moment he booted up he recognized the duplication with the Manhattan office, curious that Northcote had required the copies here in the country in view of his operating difficulties. Carver scrolled his way through every one of Northcote's personal files and accessed every password and entry code, each time carefully entering the names of the three hovering, criminal and incriminating companies. None registered.

He turned, hurriedly, to the desk. The top left-hand drawer contained receipted bills, each annotated with the number and date of the cheque that had settled it, the one below that cheque books with the stubs meticulously completed and coordinated with the invoices above. The bottom drawer held only stationery. The diary, a duplicate of the appointments book from which they all worked in Wall Street, was in the top right-hand drawer. Carver momentarily hesitated before picking it up, aware as he did so of the shake in his hand, reminding himself how important it was going to be when he reached the office the following day to retrieve Northcote's office copy.

Carver initially held it up by its spine, hopefully shaking it, but it concealed nothing loose. After that he turned at once to the day Northcote had been in New York for the supposedly severing encounter with his mob controllers. The entry read: ‘S–B. Dinner. Harvard.' There was a dash between the two letters and against the name of the club there was an asterisk. There was also an asterisk against today's entry, which simply read: ‘J. 2.30.' When, according to Jennings, Northcote was on his tractor, hauling across a field completely hidden from anyone's view the cutting machine beneath which he'd fallen.

It took Carver more than an hour painstakingly to go through every entry, which Northcote appeared always to do by initials, never recording a name. Those of S–B appeared a total of six times, always marked by asterisks, and by carefully going back through the marked pages Carver calculated the meetings were regularly once a month, nearly always the last Tuesday. They were always for lunch and never at the same restaurant. This week had been the first time the Harvard club was mentioned. Where would Northcote's diaries for the previous years be? Carver wondered. The man's personal safe in the vault? Another check, for the following day.

In another right-hand drawer Carver found a cuttings book of newspaper and magazine articles on Northcote. The long, admiring feature by Alice was quite near the top. Even more recent was a
Wall Street Journal
interview in which Northcote had urged tighter financial supervision by the SEC and all the other authorities governing accountancy, both locally in New York as well as federally.

Neatly arranged in a multi-sectioned tray in the bottom right-hand drawer was a selection of keys, some – the country-club locker and spare sets for the cars, for instance – clearly labelled, others not. The age and model – and insecurity – of the safe surprised Carver when he found it. It was floor-mounted inside one of the cupboards beneath the bookcase and was key, not combination, locked. It took Carver less than fifteen minutes to find the key that fitted from among those unmarked in the bottom drawer.

The safe was only about a quarter full, all of it easily carried in a single trip back to the desk. Carver began to go through the contents in the order in which they had been stored, which was with the money on top of the pile. He didn't bother to count but guessed there were several thousand dollars in newly issued, uncreased one-hundred-dollar bills. There were three personal insurance policies, in total with a face sum of $3,000,000 but in the one he glanced through there was an endorsement increasing the value in the event of accidental death. There was a stock portfolio of perhaps twenty certificates, which Carver scanned through not even registering their valuations, interested only in any possible mention of the three companies. Once more there was none. George Northcote's will was unexpectedly brief. Apart from bequests to the staff – $50,000 for Jack Jennings – the bulk of Northcote's entire estate went to Jane, passing to Carver if she predeceased him in Northcote's lifetime. The only exception was a single legacy of $100,000 to Carver if she did inherit. In the event of their both predeceasing Northcote, the estate was to be divided equally between any surviving children. The will had been made soon after their marriage, Carver saw from its date, long before the difficulty of Jane conceiving had been realized. There was a codicil, attested just one week after the partners' meeting at which Carver had been proposed by Northcote and unanimously approved by the partners as Northcote's successor, appointing Carver the sole and absolute executor of the will.

The only things remaining in front of Carver when he put the portfolio aside were a small selection of photographs, the first easily identifiable as Northcote with Jane, when she was a child, and with his wife – one showing Muriel actually on their wedding day, in her wedding dress – which had to have been taken at least thirty if not more years ago.

Carver didn't recognize the woman in the last four photographs, although it was very clearly not Muriel Northcote. Each was inscribed on the back with a date – a two-week period in 1983 when Carver knew Northcote to have been married and Muriel to be still alive – and locations, Capri and Madrid. There was also a name, Anna. One showed she and Northcote openly embracing, two more with their arms entwined, the fourth holding hands.

Each was a picture of two very happy people, very much in love.

George Northcote's bedroom was once again heavily furnished, the bed and dressing-room wardrobes thick, dark wood, although Carver didn't think it was mahogany. He imagined he could detect the smell of the man, a musky cologne mixed vaguely with cigars, but decided in the pristine surroundings that was what it had to be, imagination. He supposed the neatness was not Northcote's but one of the staff, maybe even Jennings. There was what was clearly pocket contents in a segregated tray on the nightstand, house keys, a cigar cutter and lighter, a wad of money, hundred-dollar notes on the outside, in a silver clip and a snakeskin wallet. One half of the wallet was a personalized, week-by-week diary. The entries for that week were identical to those in the larger version downstairs, even to the entry for this day simply reading ‘2.30'. There was a selection of credit and business cards in their separate pockets at the top of the opposing side, with a slim jotting pad at its bottom. It was blank.

Carver felt a quick flare of hope when he opened the nightstand door and saw the bundle of fine-lined accountancy sheets, lifting them all out and laying them on the bed to hurry through. His first awareness was that they were old files, all dated five years earlier. His second was that none contained any references to Mulder, Encomp or Innsflow. They were the accounts of two companies – BHYF and NOXT – neither of which Carver could remember discussing personally with Northcote, nor more generally at partners' meetings. And he was sure they hadn't shown on the computer search he'd attempted downstairs of Northcote's personally handled accounts. More mob companies? His unavoidable question. Which prompted another. Why left like this, not in the downstairs safe? Because, incredibly, unbelievably, Northcote had believed
he
was safe: that there was no need
for
security. Could they be, even, part – maybe even all – of what Northcote had planned to give him, the insurance against the firm's destruction? Carver wanted to believe it: wanted to believe it more than anything he'd wanted to believe in his life. Whatever, they were potentially the most important discovery he'd made that night. There was a bedside table on the opposite side from the nightstand, free of anything except a biography of Maynard Keynes, and Carver carefully stacked the sheets there to go downstairs with everything else he'd already set aside to take back to Manhattan.

Carver went painstakingly through all the drawers in Northcote's dressing room, discovering nothing more in any of them but the expected underwear, linen and shirts. He actually explored every pocket of every one of the twelve suits that hung from the dressing-room rails, as well as the two topcoats. Carver had half hoped for another, better-hidden safe but he didn't find one, despite looking behind every picture for something wall-mounted, checking every cupboard and recess for an upright model to match that downstairs, and finally scuffing his feet across the carpet, as he had in the study, searching for a security vault sunk into the floor. There was no tell-tale unevenness wherever he looked or felt.

Enough, Carver decided. He ached with tiredness: ached so much he couldn't think straight, could hardly see straight. It had to be BHYF and NOXT. He didn't know how or where to take it forward from here, but there had to be some significance. Would Janice Snow know? Or rather, would Janice Snow show him a way forward? At that moment he thought of one himself, feeling another spurt of self-criticism that it hadn't occurred to him before. Northcote's bank. That had to be a source, whatever the importance of BHYF and NOXT. It was unimaginable – like so much else was unimaginable – that Northcote didn't have a safe-deposit facility: several safe-deposit facilities, in Manhattan banks. What better place – what more obvious place – to hide secrets but in a bank safe-deposit box?

Carver was so tired he had literally to force himself to move, simply to walk back into the dressing room, where he found by feel more than sight the valise, in which he packed the five-year-old files from the nightstand and stumbled back downstairs into the study to add the will, diary and the four photographs of the laughing, dark-haired girl named Anna.