and torturing and killing. The chill became even more physically intense at a sudden new awareness. Would she have told them of the valise he’d brought back from Litchfield, before the burglary? Carver thought he would have done, if his fingers and arms and legs were being broken. Forcing himself on, he said: ‘How old’s the mother?’
‘Old,’ judged Parker. ‘Mid eighties, I’d guess.’
‘Married or widowed?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Parker.
‘Find out,’ ordered Carver. ‘Find out if Janice financially supported her, too. Look after the funeral, everything…’ He looked to Davis. ‘If there’s a will, ensure it’s administered. If there isn’t, apply to administer what there is of Janice’s estate. We’ll switch Janice’s pension to the mother.’
‘That’s a very generous package,’ said Davis.
‘No reason why I can’t do it, is there?’ Carver was aware of the truculent bravado.
‘I think you might run it by the other partners,’ suggested the lawyer.
‘I will, but start on it right away,’ said Carver. ‘Can we get the medical report on Janice?’
Davis shook his head as much in a gesture of bewilderment as in refusal. ‘We’re not next of kin. And in these sort of circumstances I’m not sure that even next of kin are allowed access: few of them would want what you’re asking for.’
‘Try. I want to see it.’ Why, he asked himself: to what purpose? ‘Something else,’ he added, looking back to the personnel director. ‘I want to see Janice’s file. And that of her predecessor, if we still have it.’
‘I don’t think we would have it,’ said Parker.
‘Look, just in case,’ ordered Carver.
‘You sure there’s nothing you want to talk to me about, John?’ demanded Davis openly. ‘You imagining there’s some link with the Litchfield robbery? Because if you are, I can’t see where you’re getting the slightest connection from.’
No one was supposed to, thought Carver. ‘Just both see what you can do, OK.’
‘I’ll try,’ promised the lawyer, doubtfully.
‘So will I,’ undertook the younger man.
Shouldn’t he have told Geoffrey Davis? Set out all he knew – shown the man Alice’s printouts and the roughly worked inflated calculations from Litchfield – to explore all or any legal salvation there might be? I think you might run it by the other partners echoed in Carver’s mind. That would be the lawyer’s inevitable, responsible reaction. After going through and realizing and agonizing over – all the devastating implications of exactly what he was being told: seeing, and realizing, that there wasn’t any blinding light to mark an end to the tunnel but only that of the approaching train. To insist upon telling the partners would, in fact, be Geoffrey Davis’s personal and professional salvation. Initiating, in turn, the personal and professional salvation of them all. They provably didn’t know and were therefore provably, legally innocent of any misdemeanour or crime. Their recourse would be, could only be, to call in the police – and the FBI, he supposed and the Security Exchange Commission and anyone else they could think of. And then stand up dazzlingly white in the equally dazzling light of the hurtling train, having done the right thing as well as having exonerated themselves from any misconduct, guilt or censure.
Which he could still do, Carver thought. At that moment wanted to do, to walk away, to escape and start again. Could he – could any of them – start again? Wouldn’t there always be, despite any and every exoneration, the stain of association upon them? Did he, personally, need to start again? He was a millionaire, in his own right. Jane was a millionaire, in her own right. He could, quite literally, walk away from it all. The deafening warning bell sounded once more in his mind. Walk away with whom? Not with Jane. With Alice, certainly, easily, but not with Jane, who, as he’d decided when it had all first begun – seven days ago, seven years ago, seven hundred years ago? – would hate him and abandon him if he exposed the firm and her father. And he didn’t want to be hated or abandoned by Jane, as he didn’t want to be abandoned by Alice. Another circle squared. Why had he allowed himself the reflection, knowing its conclusion before he started? Desperation, he supposed. Not knowing – not properly, safely knowing where to look, where to go, what to do. Not being, not feeling, adequate. But that was how he had to be, adequate. Not with Geoffrey Davis’s involvement, help or advice, or the partners’ involvement, help or advice. Not with anyone’s involvement. Clang went the bell. Alice was involved. If she hadn’t involved herself as deeply, as cleverly, as she had, he wouldn’t have been able to confront an approach he hoped never to meet. But they didn’t know about Alice. Never would. So it came back, as it would always come back, to him. Back to how strong he was capable of being.
When she responded to his summons Carver let Hilda say what she wanted to say about death and tragedies and not knowing people at all when you believed you did, before dictating the severance letter already so well rehearsed and prepared in his mind to BHYF, NOXT, Mulder Incorporated, Encomp and Innsflow International. He said: ‘And erase them from the clients list.’
‘Today, you mean.’
‘Today,’ confirmed Carver.
‘My mother always said misfortune came in threes. I hope she was wrong.’
‘So do I,’ said Carver.
Alice said she didn’t want to go out to eat and was thinking of omelettes and Carver said there were things to talk about first.
Until that moment Alice had wavered, undecided. Now, abruptly, she blurted: ‘I’ve got something to tell you, too.’
‘You first.’
‘No, you,’ she refused, already regretting her decision, wanting to get out of it. But stood unmoving, wine unopened in her hand, as he told her. When he had finished she handed him the bottle and the corkscrew. She said: ‘You think she was murdered, like George?’
‘Of course she was,’ he said, almost impatiently. ‘Tortured to begin with.’
‘Jesus!’ It was right that she tell him about the bombing in England. She said: ‘They would have known who she was, from George. Seen her if they ever came to the office. They could have thought she knew more than she did.’
‘Perhaps she did know more than she admitted to me.’ He drank deeply. ‘There were some things I brought back from Litchfield, in a valise. Janice put it in her office safe one night…’
‘If she was tortured she would have told them,’ said Alice, at once understanding.
‘Yes.’ As well as telling them about his specifically asking about the five companies, he thought.
Alice momentarily couldn’t speak, her already existing terror doubled. She said: ‘Oh shit!’ and then she said, ‘What a stupid, ridiculous, thing to say!’
Carver said: ‘You had something to tell me?’
She did, as calmly as possible, but hearing the words reverberate in her ears and thinking, you caused it to happen, you caused it to happen.
He said: ‘Three people died?’
‘I killed them: caused them to be murdered.’
‘You said it couldn’t happen, for fuck’s sake! That no one would ever find you!’
‘Ordinarily they’re not supposed to be able to.’
‘What about extra ordinarily?’
‘You need to be brilliant to recover an Internet protocol.’
‘These people are brilliant! Absolutely fucking brilliant…’ There was a hesitation, of awareness. ‘How do you know?’
‘I wanted to find out more: to get through their firewalls.’
Carver looked at Alice, letting the silence widen between them, and when she finally looked away he said: ‘You gave me your word!’
With my fingers crossed, she thought, which now seemed – was – so fatuous. ‘There wasn’t enough.’
‘I have enough.’
‘So you lied to me, too!’ she seized.
‘I was trying to protect you: to keep you safe.’
‘I was trying to protect you: to keep you safe,’ she echoed.
‘We don’t know what we’re trying to do, do we?’ asked Carver, rhetorically. ‘They’re better – bigger – than we are. And I always thought there wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.’
