Two Women (16 page)

Carver nodded, pouring fresh drinks for them both, following the electronic footsteps through the printouts.

‘Here's how they do it,' Alice picked up. ‘Mulder Inc., Encomp and Innsflow International establish dozens of subsidiaries, here in America, state by state, internationally, country by country. The trick – and I think initially it's a quite legal trick – is trading only between each other, state by state and country by country. But never through their
own
subsidiaries. Mulder switches through Encomp, Encomp through Mulder and each through Innsflow. To do that, they need a conduit, again quite simply a very efficient, internationally established import-export organization. Which they've done with BHYF and NOXT, whose records and near-incalculable profits are also, ultimately, lost in the golden sand of the Cayman Islands, using the same shell-game technique. By constantly juggling the deals they avoid the legal requirement, particularly necessary in England, to record the tradings as a “related-party transaction”. Isn't that brilliant?'

The missing parts of his jigsaw, identified Carver, excitement moving through him: and interlocking perfectly with the handwritten, incomplete calculations from Northcote's night-stand. ‘Offshore is tax evasion and avoidance but they don't
care
about paying tax!'

‘Not in the process,' smiled Alice. ‘Virtually everything Mulder, Encomp and Innsflow – and their subsidiaries – trade in is consumer-orientated, cash-orientated …' She smiled again. ‘And all sharing two remarkable similarities. There are sky-high supply costs which continue to soar all the way along the state-by-state, country-by-country supply route. And matchingly high management, building and plant maintenance and depreciation costs.'

‘To account for the dirty money being pumped in?' anticipated Carver.

‘Exactly,' said Alice. ‘The genuine cost of what they're moving between subsidiaries and states and countries has to be a fraction of what the books show, on every record I've managed to get into. Take blank videos, for instance: they start
off
charging one dollar each for bulk orders of up to ten thousand cassettes. By the time it passes through BHYF or NOXT, it's up to seven dollars, sometimes even ten. No bona fide business could afford to buy or trade at supply costs like that: no bona fide business would accept supply costs like that. But Mulder, Encomp and Innsflow do …'

‘Buy for cents – fractions of cents – and pad it up into dollars and then tens of dollars and then hundreds of dollars, all the way along the chain,' accepted Carver. ‘They boost true costs of say ten thousand dollars up to an inflated hundred thousand, pay forty thousand in tax …'

‘And they've laundered fifty thousand dollars worth of dirty money,' completed Alice. ‘Multiply that by the number of subsidiaries throughout every state in this country and all the international locations – just those that we know about, by the way – and you've got your billions.'

‘Or more,' agreed Carver, reflectively. Until that moment he'd had no conception of how big, almost literally how cosmic, the operation was.

‘You think George devised the whole thing?'

Carver decided against a third Martini. ‘He said it had taken a long time to set up. But although it's simple, like you said, no one man could operate and control such a system. And there are different tax laws in different countries.'

‘It wouldn't take many,' suggested Alice. ‘Remember it's basically done in-house, by their own accountants. They only need to go outside for the legally required independent audits, to keep the wheels moving. And those wheels move damned fast. The subsidiaries never deal with each other
within
the states in which they're established. They're spread – oh so very cleverly spread – throughout the regional centres, none impacting in such a way to enable cross-referencing. So no one local tax authority sees a return that can be compared to show how the costs are being inflated with dirty money.'

Carver snorted a humourless laugh. ‘I wonder if they'll use what happened to George – what they did to George – as an example to any others who want to get out?'

‘Something else we'll never know,' said Alice. She left the desk and her printouts, leading Carver back to the couch. She nodded to the Martini pitcher. ‘You want any more?'

‘Yes, but I won't,' he said.

‘So where does all this take us?'

It takes you nowhere, decided Carver, positively. Where did it take him, coupled with everything else he'd assembled? The squaring of the circle. It was unquestionably enough to give to the FBI to initiate an investigation into off-sheet, double accounting. But as he'd known from the beginning, doing that would destroy in ignominy and disgrace the firm of George W. Northcote International. It would also mean Alice's arrest on countless charges, a second reason why the FBI was not an option. But he could meet the men who'd controlled and manipulated George – if such an encounter ever occurred – with the ground level, knowing enough to confront them, and if it got bad make the
threat
of going to the FBI. Create a stand-off, on his own terms. Could, that is, if he had the courage to do so. And he did have that courage and that determination. George had failed because George was old and failing and fallible. Not up to confronting anyone. But he was, Carver knew. It wasn't the arrogance that Alice – even Jane – sometimes accused him of. He was the only person who was up to it. Could do it.

He limited his answer to confirming that he'd found incomplete, out-of-date BHYF and NOXT spreadsheets, missing out any mention of the photographs of Anna.

‘If there was anything else at Litchfield, it would have been found?' she persisted.

‘Unquestionably.'

‘So everything could be all right? If they found whatever they forced George Northcote to disclose – lead them to – they've got no reason to pressure you or the firm?'

How many times had he tried to reassure himself with that thought? ‘They're still on the client list.'

‘Which you're having to adjust and reduce, because of George's death: you've had that as your out from the beginning.'

Would he really be able – brave enough, strong enough, convincing enough – to meet the situation if it came to a confrontation? Pre-empt it, he thought. There were the post office box numbers in Georgetown, on Grand Cayman, on the client list, against all five companies. He'd write that afternoon severing all and every connection. It didn't need to come down – or more accurately escalate – to confrontation and threats: just a simple business disassociation, the sort of thing that happened all the time. He said: ‘I want to take everything you've turned up.'

Alice looked back to the desk. ‘Why?'

To prevent you being a target, Carver thought. And then he thought, why not be honest? ‘You've stopped now, haven't you?'

‘Yes,' said Alice, only just avoiding the hesitation.

‘There are some things I haven't had time properly to look at – assess – yet. It might interface with what you've accessed and downloaded: make everything complete. I won't know if it does unless I have your stuff.'

‘Why not bring what you've got back here and we'll go through all of it together?' Alice attempted to bargain.

‘You know why.'

‘I
am
involved!'

‘Not any longer. People this clever, they've got ways.'

‘That's ridiculous!'

Their first argument, about anything, recognized Carver. He wondered if Alice recognized it, too. He said: ‘I want to take away with me everything you've got. We've already agreed – at least I've decided – that we can't count the number of laws you've broken, getting what you have, let alone the other risks there could be. I don't want any arguments about no one ever being able to find out and trace you …' He hesitated, deciding to continue the honesty. ‘I'm not angry or disappointed. I'm frightened. Very, very frightened and I don't even know completely what I'm frightened about. At the moment all I can think of is containing things. And containing – taking away from you – all that's on that desk over there is the most important containment there is at this precise moment.'

She could get it all again, thought Alice. That and more. It would be tiresome and time consuming but she knew the electronic doors through which she could go in and out as she pleased. And just to allay his fears – not that he'd ever know – when she finished she'd leave behind a trigger word to self-destruct her hidden presence when it was entered into the machine. She got up, gathered together everything from the desk and silently handed it to him. Then she said: ‘That was our first row.'

‘I already worked that out.'

‘I'm glad it wasn't a serious one.'

‘So am I.'

‘Can you stay longer?'

‘Tonight. We'll eat somewhere in the Village.'

‘Tonight then.'

‘Leave it alone now, darling. I thank you – love you – for helping. For working it out when I was approaching from entirely the wrong direction. But now I don't want you to do anything more.'

‘I already promised,' said Alice. When she was a child and made a promise she knew she wouldn't keep she'd crossed her fingers behind her back, because then broken promises didn't count. She crossed her fingers now.

Carver walked back to the office, glad he was on foot because as usual SoHo was virtually gridlocked. It still took him almost half an hour, because the sidewalks weren't much better.

The ground-floor receptionist said: ‘People are looking for you, Mr Carver,' and Hilda, red-eyed, was waiting outside the elevator doors when it reached his floor. ‘Your cellphone's off.'

‘What?' he demanded.

‘Janice hanged herself,' said the woman.

There
wasn't
any risk of her being discovered, which meant there was no reason for John to be frightened. She hadn't liked his admitting being frightened. She'd recognized he'd been overwhelmed by George Northcote but George Northcote had been a physically overwhelming man. And being overwhelmed wasn't being frightened. It was still only one fifteen: more than enough time to duplicate what she'd surrendered and carry on pricking at the sites and their local tax and company registration offices, to colour in more of the incomplete picture.

‘Thought you'd deserted me,' protested the Space for Space manager.

‘Never,' Alice flirted back.

‘Feeling thirsty yet?'

‘You never know. Depends how hard I have to work.'

Her favourite station, the one at the end of the line where there was least chance of her screen being read over her shoulder, was empty. She logged on, dialled the hotel reservation chain, fingers poised to complete her entry with her Trojan Horse password. And was confronted on the screen by the message ‘Remote-Requested Access Refused'. No problem, she told herself: inexplicable glitches happened all the time. But rarely four more times. She tried one more time before quickly disconnecting. Their mainframe could have crashed. Or there could have been a power interruption, although in the past she'd found the English grid system more reliable than American electricity suppliers. The screen glowed at her, invitingly.

From his counter the manager called out: ‘You gotta problem?'

‘No,' denied Alice.

She used the Google search engine to find that the local newspaper was the
Basingstoke Gazette
and accessed its website in seconds. Its front page was dominated by a photograph of a fire-blackened shell. Police were treating as murder the deaths of a caretaker and two early-shift cleaners in the arson attack that had totally destroyed the European headquarters of the hotel chain's reservations site. There had been four different seats of fire, all caused by explosions of what forensic experts had already established to be incendiary material, most likely phosphorous. The possibility of terrorism had not been ruled out, although there was nothing to explain why the building or the hotel corporation had been targeted.

Alice turned off the machine and fumbled for her user's fee.

The manager said: ‘What's the problem here?'

‘Something unexpected came up,' said Alice.

Throughout his journeying up and down town Carver had been unaware of the two men alternating their surveillance, but then they were professionals, both former policemen. It only cost one of them $50 to learn the name of Alice Belling from the janitor at Princes Street. Their instructions were to pursue Carver, which meant neither followed Alice to the cybercafe to get a visual identification.

Twelve

C
arver waited two hours and was about to follow Geoffrey Davis and James Parker, the personnel director, out to Janice's Brooklyn apartment when the lawyer called to say they were on their way back into Manhattan. It was another thirty minutes before they arrived. Davis's normally florid face was pale. Parker's was ashen.

As he came into Carver's office Parker, a thin, bespectacled man, said as if he needed to explain: ‘I've never seen a dead body before … not dead like that.'

Davis said: ‘We stayed on to identify the body, to save Janice's mother. Although it was she who found Janice.'

‘From the beginning …' insisted Carver.

Parker looked to the older man and Davis said: ‘Janice didn't come in this morning, as Hilda told you. Hilda kept calling and getting no reply. Then she got a call from Janice's mother. She'd gone around to Janice's apartment when she didn't get a reply either. She let herself in with her own key and found Janice dead …'

‘Dead how?' broke in Carver.

‘Strangled, according to the medical officer. Although it's obvious she tried to hang herself, from some loft-bed stairs.'

‘The rope broke,' said Parker. ‘That's how she got injured.'