multi-bladed attachment that cut a swathe at least six feet wide on each traverse.
‘The way it looks, he took the tractor too close to the edge, so it tilted. That threw him backwards, into the blade, and then the whole rig turned over, on top of him…’ Hibbert nodded to a photographer of whom Carver had until that moment been unaware, taking shots of the suspended machine. ‘We got pictures…’
‘He was trapped underneath the tractor itself,’ said Jennings. ‘Crushed. I tried to get to him but I thought it all might topple further, on to me. I called out but he didn’t say anything. I couldn’t hear him breathing. I went back to the house and called emergency. Then I called Mrs Carver.’
‘The injuries are bad,’ threw in the medical examiner. ‘I won’t know until I complete the autopsy whether he died from blood loss, from going into those sharp-as-hell blades. Or from being crushed by the tractor. His chest is virtually gone.’
‘It took a time to get the lifting gear here, to get it off him,’ said Hibbert, as if in apology.
‘Where’s the body now?’ asked Carver.
‘On the way to the morgue,’ said Hibbert. ‘Jane wanted to see him but I said no. I didn’t know how long it was going to take you to get here… didn’t think of the helo… so I decided it was better to get the body away.’
‘Thank you,’ said Carver.
‘There’s supposed to be an official identification, but I know…’ began Hibbert but Carver talked over him.
‘I’ll do it. Tomorrow OK?’
‘Just give me a call,’ said Hibbert. He shook his head. ‘One hell of an accident.’
‘One hell of an accident,’ echoed Carver. If only you knew, he thought. If only you knew that George Northcote had been murdered by people who wouldn’t let him go.
But what people? And what were they going to do next? John Carver supposed what he was feeling was fear: total, numbing, skin-tingling, stomach-emptying fear.
Five
Jane was cried out of tears but dry sobs still shuddered through her and the first time it happened Carver was frightened she wouldn’t catch her breath and would choke. Which wasn’t his only fear. She sat stiffly upright on the very edge of the lounge chair, her eyes blinking but unfocused, seemingly unaware of anything or anyone around her. Charles Jamieson, the Litchfield family doctor, called it deep shock and asked where they would be staying that night and before Carver could reply Jane said, so loudly and unexpectedly that both men jumped: ‘Here, with Dad.’
‘Then we’ll put you to bed,’ announced the doctor, recovering before Carver.
Jane let herself be led upstairs to the room she and Carver always occupied when they stayed over, which they often did. Carver and the doctor undressed her between them and obediently she took the sedatives Jamieson gave her but remained staring up at the ceiling, still occasionally racked by a breath-snatching sob. Carver felt the doctor’s pressure on his arm and followed the man from the bedroom.
In the downstairs lounge Jamieson, a fat, haphazardly dressed man, said: ‘It’s not going to be easy for her. They were very close. It’s most likely she won’t accept it at first: talk as if he’s still alive.’
‘What should I do?’
‘Let it go, for a little while. You going to stay up here?’
Carver hesitated. ‘I can’t. I have to go back to the city.’
There were a lot of calls he had to make, so much he had to do: so much, somehow, somewhere, he had to find or discover. What Northcote had promised to give him had to be here somewhere because the intention had been for the man to come direct from here for their meeting. But what? Where?
‘You got staff in Manhattan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Live in?’
‘No,’ frowned Carver. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means you should take her with you but that for a few days I don’t think she should be left by herself.’
‘You mean she might harm herself?’
‘No,’ said Jamieson, impatiently. ‘Just that she shouldn’t be alone.’
‘I’ll get nurses in.’
‘That would be good. Manhattan would be good. It’ll get her away from here. What time are you leaving tomorrow?’
He had to make the formal identification of the body, remembered Carver. ‘Late morning. We’ll fly.’ He should have arranged it before dismissing the helicopter. He was going to have to speak to Hilda shortly. It could be added to the list of all the other things that had to be done.
‘I’ll call by around nine: see how she is.’
‘Jane told me you’d examined George.’
The doctor nodded. ‘He told me he was giving up entirely and I told him it was a damned good idea. His blood pressure was sky high. I put him on immediate medication. It could even have been a stroke that made him fall off the tractor…’ He was slowed by a thought. ‘Maybe I should mention it to Pete Simpson.’
‘Maybe you should,’ agreed Carver. He had to end this conversation and this encounter: get on with all the other things. But at the same time, irrationally, he didn’t want the doctor to go. Although it was a tragedy – a tragic accident in everyone’s opinion except his – there was a normality about talking with the other man. But when Jamieson went it wouldn’t be normal any more. What he had to do – the calls he had to make, the arranging and rearranging that had to be done – would be normal in the circumstances of a tragedy but in this case he would be involved – was involved – in murder. Mob murder; organized crime murder; once-you’re-in-you’re-never-out murder. Or was he? Could, despite everything he knew – or thought he knew – George Northcote have genuinely suffered a stroke because of sky-high blood pressure and toppled backwards into the multiple spinning blades of a mowing machine? Could a stroke be, even, why Northcote went too close to the depression in the ground he would have known all too well to be there, and to be dangerous, because he was unconscious in those last few, badly steered seconds? Only George Northcote had known that he knew the firm’s – Northcote’s – link with organized crime. And George Northcote was dead and that knowledge would have died with him. He knew the names of the companies that had to be divested and that could be – would be – easily achieved by the excuse of Northcote’s death. The words and the phrases began to move through Carver’s mind. Retrenchment, necessary reorganization after the death of such a dominant, leading corporate figure, no one any longer available to provide the personalized service that George W. Northcote provided, with obvious regret… It fitted. Fitted perfectly. They’d all be out. Out, home free: no connection, no association, no danger. If…
‘I’ll just look in now, before I go,’ said Jamieson and so lost was he in thought that Carver was actually startled although he didn’t think it showed.
‘Let’s both look in,’ he said.
Jane was lying as they’d left her, on her back, but was deeply asleep, snuffling soft occasional snores, although once another sob shuddered through her. At Jamieson’s gesture they backed out of the bedroom, without speaking until they got outside in the hallway. Jamieson said: ‘That’s good. I didn’t want to have to give her anything stronger.’
Carver met Jennings as he turned from seeing Jamieson out, anticipating the man before he spoke. ‘I don’t want anything to eat. There’s too much to do. I’ll be in the study.’
‘Everyone’s together in the kitchen, if you want anything.’
‘I’ll let you know,’ said Carver, already walking towards what he considered the most obvious place to find what it was essential he locate.
Carver pressed the door closed behind him but remained against it, confronting his first awareness, which was not within the room at all. The windows looked directly out in the direction of the depression in which the tractor and mower had overturned. It was dark now but beyond the slope there was still a glow from the generator lights illuminating the lifting of the unseen machinery on to an equally unseen removal truck and the word unseen
