to West Side Highway. She hoped Jane would sleep until they got to the cabin. She’d run into the first of her uncertainties, Alice realized. And still wasn’t safe.
Gene Hanlan and the FBI became involved so quickly through a coincidental sequence of events. Geoffrey Davis didn’t raise the alarm by dialling 911 but called Sergeant P. David Hopper direct, with a lawyer’s recall that the man had been in charge of John Carver’s accident investigation. And Hopper remembered Hanlan’s unusual visit to the precinct house and called Federal Plaza after alerting his own detective division. Kidnapping is a federal offence and kidnapping had been the word Davis had used, in their conversation. And because it was the word Hopper continued to use, the NYPD detectives were led by a lieutenant, a short-cropped, trouser-suited woman whose ID badge said Barbara Donnelly. From the way in which they were trying to assemble people, with no interviews started, Hanlan guessed he was only five minutes behind the detectives.
‘I didn’t call you,’ the woman greeted Hanlan, walking away from her team, physically separating him from everyone.
‘So we’re saving time,’ said Hanlan. Sergeant Hopper had indeed been a rarity. This was the sort of instant and instinctive resentment to which he was accustomed.
‘How’d you find out so quick?’ The voice had a smoker’s hoarseness.
The Bureau already has an interest.’ Hanlan felt he was due the exaggeration. If Jane Carver had indeed been kidnapped there should be a lot of people in the J. Edgar Hoover building eating crow within the next twenty-four hours.
‘You want to explain that?’
Hanlan looked at the people now waiting on the far side of the apartment, close to the balcony window, and wondered if they could detect the antagonism between him and the woman in the exchange. It would worsen if he reminded her he didn’t have to explain anything. Lowering his voice and putting his back towards them, Hanlan said: ‘You know about the death of George Northcote, Carver’s father-in-law, up in Litchfield? And of Northcote’s personal assistant, out in Brooklyn?’
‘Read something about it, after Carver got killed,’ allowed the woman. ‘So?’
‘We’ve got an informant talking organized crime, money laundering and murder.’
‘Shit!’ she said, the hostility going from the manner in which she was confronting him.
‘It’s federal,’ he pointed out.
‘We’ve got pretty effective murder divisions here in the city.’
‘If they were murdered – they’ve been officially accepted as accidents: Carver’s most certainly was – they’re out of NYPD jurisdiction.’
‘We going to work together?’ The woman was retreating further.
‘I don’t see any benefit in working against each other. Never did,’ said Hanlan.
The detectives with Barbara Donnelly were shifting impatiently, knowing what was going on. There was some uncertain movement from near the window, too. She said: ‘Let’s just run through it, see how it goes.’
Hanlan turned to the waiting group, recognizing the two men and the woman who had stood in the receiving line with Jane Carver. There was one other woman, in a severely tailored suit, and three other men, one with a heavy moustache, another in the sort of black suit that staff often wore, and the third in a red blazer that also looked like a uniform. Hanlan introduced himself and asked for the general picture and at once Geoffrey Davis identified himself by name and position, taking control of the group as Hanlan hoped he was going to be able to take control of the law enforcement.
‘Jane became very tired by the end of the reception: under a lot of stress. She asked to come back, so Hilda brought her. Arrangement was that we’d give her time to settle down, get rested, and then we’d come by to see she was OK. There’s a few things I’ve got to see to. Will-readings, firm insurances and pensions that automatically revert to her…’
‘I’m not getting a clear picture here,’ protested Barbara, looking to one of the women. ‘You Hilda?’
Carver’s PA nodded.
‘If you came back with her, how come you didn’t stay until the others arrived?’
Hilda said: ‘Jane told me she wanted to rest. That there was something she had to do later. She’d asked several times earlier about Rosemary Pritchard…’ She hesitated, smiling towards the severely suited woman. ‘This is Dr Pritchard. Jane wanted to know whether she’d been at the funeral. I told her that while she was resting I’d go back to the cathedral and pick up the condolences books…’ She nodded to two bound volumes on a coffee table. ‘We’re going to need them, for the letters. When I got back, she’d gone.’
‘With someone who pretended to be Dr Pritchard,’ supplied a man in a blazer. ‘Tom Reynolds, downstairs security. The woman said she was Rosemary Pritchard and when I called up, Manuel told me to let her on past.’
‘But I was…’ began the swarthy man in the black suit but Hanlan cut him off. ‘OK, let’s hold it there. Everyone can make their own contributions later but for the moment, let’s get some continuity into this. You,’ he insisted, pointing to Davis.
It came with a lawyer’s precision and only took minutes. Davis finished by gesturing towards the gynaecologist and saying: ‘Dr Pritchard was obviously the first person I called when I heard what had happened…’
‘And I felt I should come straight over,’ said the woman.
‘We appreciate that very much. Thank you,’ said Barbara. ‘You had no appointment with Jane this afternoon?’
‘No.’
‘Nor arranged to be at the funeral: see her there?’
‘No,’ repeated the doctor.
‘Were you treating her, for anything specific?’
‘We’re into patient confidentiality here,’ refused the other woman.
‘Dr Pritchard,’ said the detective lieutenant, level-voiced. ‘The way it looks, someone who knows you – or knows that Jane is a patient of yours – impersonated you and kidnapped her. We’re not asking you to break any patient confidentiality. What we are asking is that you do all you can to help us find her and get her back safely.’
‘I understand that: that’s why I came as soon as I got the call.’
‘Jane knew you: the woman couldn’t have impersonated you,’ said Hanlan.
‘I asked her if she was Rosemary Pritchard,’ intruded Manuel. ‘She said she was a friend.’
‘A friend of mine? Or of Jane?’ demanded the gynaecologist.
Manuel shrugged and shook his head, unknowing.
‘How was she?’ asked Hanlan. ‘She look frightened, as if this other woman was threatening her?’
Manuel considered the question. ‘Not really.’
‘What’s not really mean?’
‘She got angry, when I asked her not to leave until Dr Mortimer and the others got here. She didn’t usually get angry.’
‘Was Jane Carver under treatment by you, Dr Pritchard?’ asked Barbara.
Rosemary Pritchard hesitated. ‘I had recently seen her. And John.’
‘How recently?’ demanded Hanlan.
‘A few days ago.’
‘Let’s try to get around this confidentiality problem by how I phrase my question,’ suggested the detective. ‘Because I’ve got a problem with Jane Carver coming home to rest after the ordeal of her husband’s funeral then suddenly getting up and leaving, if she wasn’t under any obvious pressure. Could whatever you were treating Jane for make her vulnerable? Behave in a way out of the ordinary?’
‘Chlorpromazine could,’ declared Peter Mortimer.
‘What’s that?’ asked Barbara.
‘What she was being given – wrongly given – to help her over the shock of her father’s death,’ said Mortimer. ‘It can have bad side effects on certain people and in my professional judgement Jane was one such person. It had been stopped but there was clearly a residue.’
‘What sort of bad side effects?’ asked Hanlan.
The psychiatrist shrugged. ‘Vulnerability, to repeat an already used word. Emotional dependency upon others.
