Two Women (12 page)

What – in which direction – was her way, the way she needed to go to find the all-important, so-far missing conduit? Which there had to be, a pathway along those black alleys through which those millions were carried to be untraceably lost in the sunshine of the Caribbean.

England. It was a logical choice, because Alice didn't speak any of the languages of the other European or Asian countries, although she was more than able to interpret their figures and hopefully the patterns they made.

In England Mulder Inc. was registered, ironically, in Cheapside, London, and predictably she was defeated attempting to break into their Caribbean system using their local password. She found English subsidiaries for Mulder, Encomp and Innsflow spread throughout the country, from Brighton and Bristol in the south to Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle in the north. It was in Liverpool that she penetrated the local tax office and pulled up the returns for the previous seven years, which – predictably again – showed a rising after-tax profit. In the last full financial year, it had been £2,700,000. But, at last, there was more. The Liverpool company, Mulder Enterprises, was listed as a video and CD supply company, owned again by the Cayman parent company, but also recorded on the tax return was importation from the Alabama supply company through an import-export company named as BHYF International. The Companies Register recorded a branch office in London, with headquarters in Toronto, Canada. There were subsidiaries in Paris, Berlin, Rome and Tokyo. It took Alice four further hours to penetrate every relevant British tax office and in every case their overseas trade was conducted through BHYF International.

Alice hadn't realized it was dark until the cafe manager, who'd provided her with coffee and offered sandwiches – which she'd declined – appeared at her elbow and said: ‘We're closing in an hour. You seemed kind of engrossed. It happens, once you get caught up in the Web.'

It was a line he'd used before, she guessed. She said: Thanks. I guess I'll need the hour. Maybe a lot more.'

Which she almost at once realized she would. For that last hour she computed every password she could think of for Encomp and was consistently rejected, which by now was not an unfamiliar experience. As she paid the manager said: ‘I've seen some concentration: you're way up at the top.'

Alice said: ‘I don't like being at the bottom.'

The man, whom she guessed to be around thirty, said: ‘That's not my speed either: hurts too much. But maybe you'd get the cramp out if I bought you a drink?'

That most definitely was a line he'd used before, she decided, at the same time as accepting that she was cramped, over her back and shoulders. Thanks, but no. It's been a long day that a drink won't fix.'

‘Another time maybe?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Am I going to see you tomorrow?'

‘Don't be late opening up.'

‘I'm Bill, by the way,' he said, invitingly.

‘Alice.'

‘Look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Alice.'

Jane was the superlative hostess at the welcoming cocktail party. People arrived protectively en masse, with obvious preplanning, and in the first minutes remained respectfully subdued. Jane quickly put people at their ease, circulating among the couples as easily as she had earlier moved among the overseas executives, chatting – laughing occasionally – and towards the end making the briefest of announcements that she would regard the following night's dinner as a tribute to her father, not his wake.

Carver was anxious for the reception to end and the moment it did announced there were things he had to do and locked himself into his study, hesitating before picking up the telephone to call Alice, never before having called her from the apartment while Jane was there. Alice picked up the telephone on its second ring and the moment she recognized his voice she said: ‘Where are you?'

‘At the apartment.'

‘Where's Jane?'

‘Here.'

‘It isn't a good idea.'

‘Just listen,' he insisted, which she did without interruption as he told her about the ransacking of Northcote's Litchfield house.

Her reaction was not what he expected. Instead of expressing surprise she said, quiet-voiced: ‘We need to meet.' It would mean finally disclosing her hacking but things were happening too fast – too dangerously – for that any longer to be a consideration.

‘You know I can't!'

‘Now you listen. I think I've got something.'

‘What!'

‘About those companies.'

‘I told you not to do anything.' Why had he been stupid enough to tell her in the first place!

‘It's quite safe.'

‘You know damned well it's not.'

‘You'll understand when I explain.'

‘Stop it, whatever it is you're doing.'

‘I think I know how it's done. Maybe even how George set it up. It's brilliant.'

‘Alice, darling! Please don't do anything else – anything more – until we meet.'

‘When?'

‘Not until after the funeral.'

It gave her a lot of time, Alice calculated.

Although he was the liaison between all five New York Families, Stanley Burcher reported directly to the
consigliere
of the Genovese organization. Charlie Petrie was a non-Italian, like Burcher, and like Burcher a qualified lawyer. There was no regular pattern of contact between them but Petrie always knew when Burcher was in Manhattan and where to find him if there was a need. Burcher liked the Algonquin, both for its history and for its discretion. Burcher's automatic thought, when Petrie's call came, was that there had been a complaint against him from the Delioci people and he was early for their appointment in the lounge, mentally rehearsing his responses to the expected accusations. Petrie was early, too, a conservatively dressed, undistinguished man but unlike Burcher someone who occasionally attracted the sort of attention Burcher shunned, exuding the confidence that came from being imbued with power. It occurred now in the quickness with which a waiter was at their side, before they'd finished shaking hands. They ordered coffee. Burcher had selected a table and chairs beyond the hearing of anyone else in the lounge.

Petrie said: ‘We're getting some worried calls, from around the country.'

‘The Deliocis made a total mess,' said Burcher, deciding upon attack for defence. ‘Their
capo
didn't even go personally to make the collection from Northcote.'

‘Do you tell him to?'

Careful, thought Burcher. And then, quickly, came up with the perfect response. ‘I didn't have the authority to
tell
them, when I arranged the collection … that would have been disrespectful.' He was sure the smile was properly apologetic. ‘Which I'm afraid I was, when I heard what happened.'

Petrie shook his head, dismissively. ‘How's it all going to be sorted?'

Burcher accepted he was going to have to commit himself. ‘Before he died, Northcote told them his successor knew all about it. Which is perfect. He just carries on where Northcote literally stopped. Everything goes on uninterrupted.'

Petrie smiled. ‘That's good. This is why I called you, to hear how it goes on. We've got other outside accountants, sure, but no one with Northcote's overview. You think Northcote trained the new guy up?'

Now it was Burcher who shook his head. ‘No. As we've already said, when we met that last time he was stupid. Said he'd held things back that would be embarrassing for everybody and that it was his insurance against the firm being involved any more. I told him not to be ridiculous and that he had to return everything he'd kept. He said he was going up to the country, so I told him we'd pick it up there.'

‘Our accountants inside should have picked up what he was doing,' conceded Petrie.

‘It was too sweet for too long,' said Burcher. ‘Everyone got sloppy.'

‘How you going to bring the new guy into line, if he thinks he can say no?'

‘Working on it,' said Burcher.

‘There's another problem,' announced Petrie. ‘Doesn't involve you but you should know about it. Like you said, people were getting sloppy. There's been a tightening up. One of our electronic whizz-kids picked up someone trying to hack into our subsidiaries. Happens a lot but this seems to have happened too much, like they were being targeted.'

‘Where's the hacking from?'

‘England. But our guys don't think that's the origin.' He shrugged. ‘I don't understand what the hell they're talking about. They say they can find out where, though.'

‘I thought there were ways of making that impossible?'

‘So did I. It's a problem, people not doing the job they're paid to do.'

Nine

T
he entire Litchfield staff, under the autocratic command of Jack Jennings, was already assembled at the lawyer's office when Carver and Jane arrived, also early, for the reading of the will. The atmosphere in the shuffling, near-silent ante-room was palpably a mixture of uncertainty, self-recrimination and embarrassment.

At once Jane said: ‘Let's get a few things out of the way, before we go in. Firstly, the robbery – what's happened – up at Litchfield is not anybody's fault or responsibility. I brought you back here and I am glad I did: people who did what they did to Dad's home would have badly hurt anyone who had been there, in their way …'

Not hurt, thought Carver.
Killed
. If there'd been a caretaker – despite whatever had been published in the newspapers – who'd emerged at whatever period of the invasion, he or she would have been killed. Feeling he should contribute, Carver said: ‘That's absolutely right: we – you've – been lucky, by not being there …'

‘Like I said,' Jane cut him off. ‘That's the first thing. Here's the second. It gets rid of the place, which I would obviously have done anyway …' The pause was perfectly, theatrically, timed. ‘You're here to hear my father's gratitude, which I want to extend. Thank you for looking after him as well and as faithfully as you did, for so many years. He loved you all as much as you loved and cared for him …' The next pause was just as well staged. ‘Now we come to the third point I want to make. No one's job goes. You're all going to be absorbed between our place here, in Manhattan, and our place in Litchfield. We all stay together, OK …?'

The relieved acceptance was as palpable as the earlier ambience.

‘That's how it's going to be. But if any of you wish to leave, after today, then of course you go with our love and best wishes. And with the best references it's possible for me to give you …'

Before there could be any response Burt Elliott's secretary appeared to usher them into a room in which chairs were already set out in rows. The lawyer came forward at once to greet Carver and Jane and personally led them towards two larger, wide-armed and high-backed chairs which segregated them from everyone else. Carver sat self-consciously. Jane showed no discomfort.

Elliott, a large, bulbous-featured man, began with the prepared expressions of sympathy and regret, to which Carver closed himself off, not hearing the words but watching the man and his attitude, particularly towards Jane. Burt Elliott could be the person with whom Northcote had deposited the firm's escape. Nothing Elliott could read, obviously. A discreet sealed envelope or package. That's what lawyers were for, discreet exchanges of discreet information. Jane would demand to know what it was if he were handed something today. There would be an evasion of sorts in his dismissing it as something involving the firm, although logically that would have been deposited with the firm's lawyer, not Burt Elliott. Personal insurance that protected the company, mentally snatched Carver: it wasn't good – hardly good enough at all, confronted by Jane's newly emerged attitude – but he arranged such schemes every week and he was sure he could talk convincingly enough to satisfy Jane's curiosity.

Elliott had got to the bequests now, itemizing the individual legacies. The housekeeper and the cook were already crying and Jennings broke down too when the amount of his gift was declared.

‘There are individual, personal letters of gratitude to each of you, from Mr Northcote,' said the lawyer, offering envelopes to each. There were still some remaining when he finished and the lawyer said to Carver: ‘There are also some bestowals for his personal staff at the firm, with instructions that they should be handed to you to be dispersed.'

‘Of course,' accepted Carver, needing physically to stop himself grabbing out for the envelopes and further restraining himself from at once searching through for one addressed to him. He delayed until a disruption was caused by the staff withdrawing, at Elliott's suggestion, to the ante-room while the family details of the will were read. There were envelopes for Janice Snow and Northcote's secretarial staff but nothing in Carver's name.

The rest of the meeting was brief. Jane, who already knew, accepted without any reaction whatsoever that she was a millionairess in her own right. Carver's instinctive thought at the declaration of his gift was that Northcote, the consummate accountant, had taken every measure to prevent either he or Jane paying more than the absolute minimum in tax.

Carver seized his opportunity when Jane preceded him out into the ante-room, to more tears and individual thanks from the still-assembled staff. He stopped at the communicating door of the office, blocking the escorting Elliott, and said: ‘Wasn't there anything else for me?'

‘Anything else?' frowned the lawyer.

‘A package maybe? An envelope?'

Elliott shook his head. ‘You've got all there was. What were you expecting?'

‘Something to do with the firm,' said Carver, using the avoidance he'd planned for Jane.

Elliott shook his head again. ‘Sorry.'