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.
Jane still lay on her back but there weren’t any more sobs. He let his clothes lie where they fell and eased as carefully as he could into bed beside her, anxious to avoid movement or contact that might awaken her. There was no instinctive, automatic shift at his presence.
Who, wondered Carver, was Anna?
‘So what the hell happened!’ demanded Burcher, the soft voice unaccustomedly loud.
‘He wasn’t up to it. He croaked,’ said a crinkle-haired, heavily built man.
‘Who are you?’ said Burcher.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘I want to know because the Families want to know. Because they’re not happy.’ Burcher thought again how wise he’d been letting the people he represented know that he was strictly adhering to the pyramid procedure. There were far more people in the restaurant back room than when he’d last been there. The attitudes and atmosphere were bravado.
‘He’s my caporegime, Paulo Brescia,’ wheezed Emilio Delioci.
‘Were you there?’ Burcher asked the man and knew at once from the discomfited shift that he hadn’t been.
‘I sent people.’
Burcher let the silence build and when he spoke he was quiet-voiced again but sounded every word, as if he were tasting it as he wanted them to taste it. ‘Aren’t you aware of how important George Northcote was to the Families?’
‘He was ours,’ said Emilio Delioci.
Burcher shook his head. ‘You were allowed to believe that as a mark of respect. Northcote created a system that benefited not just New York but every other Family in this country and so every other Family in this country is going to be as sore as they are in New York and that’s as sore as hell. You’re close to being put out of business.’
‘You can’t threaten us like that, asshole!’ said Brescia.
‘You want to put that to the test, asshole?’ challenged Burcher. ‘Let’s all of us get something very straight and very clearly understood. What I say is what New York say: you insult me like some bit player in The Godfather, you insult New York and if they feel like it – if they feel you are not doing what you’ve been asked to do, then…’ Burcher extended his hand towards Brescia and snapped his fingers dismissively, ‘… you’re gone. History that no one remembers. Have I made that very straight and very clear to everyone here?’
‘I don’t want any misunderstandings,’ said Delioci.
‘Neither do I,’ said Burcher. ‘So I’ll ask again. What happened?’
‘My people told Northcote they wanted what he’d held back,’ said Brescia, all the truculence gone. ‘He said he’d given you the message: that that was how it was going to be. They tried to persuade him. He suddenly went stiff and died on them. They made it look like an accident: that’s how the local radio and newspapers are reporting it.’
‘So somewhere there’s a load of stuff that could cause us a lot of harm?’
The capo smirked and Burcher realized the man was playing to the rest of the audience in the room. Brescia said: ‘He was being persuaded. There’s a guy taking over the firm, married to Northcote’s daughter. Carver. He knows all about it. And a woman, Janice Snow, did the computer entries.’
It could all be turned into a coup, Burcher decided. And if it could be, it would be his coup, not that of these half-assed small-timers. ‘What about the material Northcote was holding back?’
‘I told you, he passed out before they could get that out of him.’
‘What about in the house?’
‘There’s staff. We couldn’t get near it.’
‘Here’s what you’re going to do,’ said Burcher. ‘You’re going to send people back to Litchfield, to find some way in. You’re going to find out everything I need to know about this Carver guy. Use a legitimate private detective agency in the city. And you’re going to find out how much the woman, Janice Snow, knows. All that very straight and very clear?’
‘I don’t enjoy disrespect, Mr Burcher,’ said Delioci.
‘I mean no disrespect to you,’ said the lawyer. ‘I was told very specifically to pass on the feelings of those to whom we are all answerable and most specifically of all to ensure that everybody understood there are to be no more mistakes.’
‘I think you have done that,’ said the old man.
‘Then it’s been a good meeting,’ said Burcher. How much more, to his personal benefit, could he manipulate it? He wondered.
Six
John Carver thought he’d prepared himself for what he had to do but he hadn’t. He gasped, aloud, and felt his legs begin to go at the sight of George Northcote’s body on the gurney. He instinctively snatched out for the table upon which the body actually lay, pulling further aside even more of the covering sheet and seeing more awfulness
