increasing after-tax profit, that of the last year $2,750,000. The Companies Register listed the business, with five separately managed companies, listed as seafood providers to Mulder’s restaurant and hotel division, once more disappearing into the Cayman parent company.
Alice had drunk her way through five cups of coffee by midday and was hot with the frustration of not being able to get where – and what – she wanted. What she did have were the immaculately kept financial records of a pyramid of seemingly superbly managed companies which never suffered financial setback and whose profits climbed each year to new heights. It was far too soon to reach even ballpark conclusions but calculated against the minimum after-tax returns she’d so far accessed, Alice estimated that if every subsidiary of Mulder Inc. showed annually cleared profits of $2,000,000, the yearly income into the tax exempt Grand Cayman was in excess of a billion dollars. And conceivably could – if she worked her way through all the subsidiaries and their associated companies – be double, even treble, that.
All legal. Except that it wasn’t legal. If what she believed she was seeing had been true for God knows how many years, millions – trillions – had been laundered sparkling white. But there was no proof: no evidence. Why, for fuck’s sake, hadn’t John Carver demanded Northcote’s personal files straight away? But John always expected rectitude, or something close. She, always, expected the wrong, the sly, the manipulative and the questionable. The dichotomy hadn’t arisen between them before. But now John, financially brilliant but… Alice hesitated at continuing the judgement but then did, because it needed to be continued… naive in the back alleys of the professional money netherworld, was potentially being sucked down into a blackness he’d never known. And one from which he was going to need help to find his way out. Her help.
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
