‘Why couldn’t you go today?’ demanded Petrie.
‘He couldn’t make today. I’m approaching him, remember?’
Petrie hesitated. He didn’t want to frighten further the obviously already frightened man but it would be ridiculous sending him in unprepared. He said: ‘There’s a complication.’
‘What?’ demanded Burcher, brandy bowl suspended in front of him.
‘Alice Belling somehow snatched Jane Carver… got the Carver woman to go with her. I don’t know how. They’re together, somewhere in the Catskills.’
For several moments Burcher’s mind refused to assimilate what he was being told and what the consequences were. Then he said: ‘But there’s no point… no purpose in my seeing the Northcote lawyer. Even if he accepted my argument about returning property no longer theirs to keep, Jane Carver is the only person who could legally get it out of her husband’s personal deposit box.’
‘I want you to make the meeting,’ insisted Petrie. ‘We’ve got to be ready.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘We didn’t know there was a relationship between the two women,’ said Petrie. ‘There obviously is and they obviously know what’s in the box. The FBI are looking for them, but for kidnap, according to conversations we’ve intercepted. We’ve got some inside tracks. We’re going to end this Thelma and Louise shit by tomorrow. Maybe even tonight. We know the car they’re driving, the plate number even. We get them, we hold Alice while Jane co- operates, meets the lawyer you’re going to meet and gets our stuff back.’
‘What about the FBI?’
‘Alice Belling is our insurance the FBI don’t get told, by anyone, that Jane’s back until we’ve got our stuff. When we’ve got that, all the Feds have is a kidnap that’s nothing to do with us. No proof of anything else.’
‘What’s Alice Belling going to tell them?’
‘Nothing,’ said Petrie. ‘Alice Belling isn’t going to tell anyone anything. She won’t be able to. Neither will Jane Carver, after she’s done what she’s told.’
It was madness, Burcher decided. He didn’t want to get involved in madness.
Neither of them undressed nor got beneath the covers, reluctant to have the sheets anywhere around them. Both spread their jackets over their pillows to keep their faces away from the physical contact and there wasn’t much talk after the near argument that erupted when they’d got back to the cabin, Alice now demanding that they go at once against Jane’s insistence that they were staying.
‘I need time to think… to think about everything,’ was Jane’s repeated refusal.
‘Please, Jane! We’ve had this conversation!’
‘The morning will be soon enough. I’m the one with the car keys, remember?’
Now, in the darkness, Alice’s feelings switchbacked again. There was, she conceded, a peculiar, womb-like comfort in being in a place even as disgusting as this instead of outside in the unknown blackness of the night, hunted by the law and the lawless. The morning would be soon enough. And she was exhausted, not just from this day but from all the days – how many days? – that had gone before. In a surprising self-revelation, Alice admitted to herself that she was content for Jane to make the decisions, for the moment at least. Maybe, even, that Jane was the stronger, more forceful personality. There was only one thing she wanted to do now, was determined to do now, and tired though she was she was going to do it now, although she was sure she already knew. She wanted to feel the excitement, the euphoria. And to be equal with Jane? The question intruded abruptly, surprising Alice. That was a jealous question. And she wasn’t jealous of Jane.
Alice lay for a long time, waiting for Jane to go to sleep before telling herself there was no need for Jane to be asleep. Why shouldn’t Jane be awake when she went to the bathroom? Alice didn’t put the bedroom light on, though, feeling her way to where she knew the door to be, closing and bolting it behind her. There was more black scurrying when she turned the bathroom light on and she flinched away, shuddering. She’d never imagined such filthy places existed: were allowed to exist by sanitation authorities. Not much longer: just a few hours.
The booklet instructions were very simple – illustrated even – and there was a specimen cup, the need for which was obvious but which she had difficulty filling, so she had thoroughly to wash her contaminated hands afterwards. Alice’s fingers were shaking as she immersed the double-windowed, absorbent tester tube, brown for no, blue for yes. The blue was very bright, much brighter than she’d expected, and at once she thought of the symbolism and thought how fitting – how right – it would be if John’s baby was a son, the heir he would have wanted.
Alice flushed away what could be dispersed and returned what couldn’t to the pharmacy bag and carefully carried it back into the darkened room to put beneath her jacket on the pillow. And then, even more carefully, lay on her back with her arms wrapped around herself, low and protectively around herself because she had so much to protect now. She was going to have John’s baby! John’s own, real, biological baby! To take with her, to love and to guard and to raise to be the most perfect child there was ever likely to be and whom one day she’d tell all there was to tell about its most perfect father.
Alice became aware of Jane’s heavy breathing from the adjoining bed, reminding her of her concern at Jane’s delaying insistences. Jane was going to do something stupid: try to protect her father’s name and John’s name and the Northcote firm’s future and risk ending up dead. And not just risk herself. Her baby now.
She couldn’t risk ending up dead, Alice told herself. She wasn’t simply saving herself any more, either. She had to save – protect forever – the baby she was having by John. She’d done all that she could, all that was humanly possible, to help Jane. Protect Jane. From now on Jane was on her own. Whatever Jane announced tomorrow didn’t matter, because she wouldn’t be part of it, part of anything. She had to go with the best she had, some criminally incriminating printouts, and bargain as best she could. And she had a satchel full of money, more than sufficient to pay for a cab or a hire car from here – wherever here was back to Manhattan if Jane insisted upon taking the Volkswagen. To which she was welcome, as she was welcome to whatever else. Alice had more than she’d ever wanted, ever dreamed of. She thought she felt a movement, although she knew it was far too early, but she smiled, enjoying the phantom sensation. What name would John have wanted? That was very important, to get right the name that John might have wanted. Everything was important, getting it right for John.
Since the case began being taken seriously Gene Hanlan had slept in a mess-room cot at Federal Plaza, Barbara Donnelly behind an inadequate separating screen, which was totally unimportant to both, all thoughts of gender discarded. The advantage was that they were both together, able to move at once after Geoffrey Davis made his call.
The now permanently assigned Bureau plane ferried duplicate originals of the documents on the five companies for the financial directorate to investigate and returned to Manhattan with additional agents. Because at last there was a positive development within NYPD jurisdiction Barbara Donnelly and her team shared in every aspect of the planning. Together the two of them personally toured the Northcote building on Wall Street, with Davis their guide, ending totally satisfied that once the mystery emissary crossed the threshold escape would be impossible. Davis provided complete plans of the premises, from which Hanlan and Barbara jointly briefed their combined squads, and by midnight additional CCTV and audio equipment had been installed and tested in Davis’s office, where the meeting was to take place.
Barbara said Scotch was fine, which was fortunate because that was all Hanlan had in his office at that time of night. He touched Barbara’s glass and said: ‘At last, something positive! This time tomorrow, we’re going to be properly in charge of the whole damned thing.’
The first edition of the following morning’s New York Daily News hit the streets around 12.30 a.m. The front page was dominated by a stock photograph of Jane Carver and the headline used the word kidnapped. There were also references to unnamed Mafia Families and organized crime and to a mystery woman, inevitably described as beautiful, who was identified as the intermediary who initiated the kidnap. Just as inevitably she was called the Mafia Madam. There were individual sidebar stories of all three deaths, now under FBI reinvestigation. An anonymous police spokesman predicted the biggest Mafia sensation of the decade.
‘Where the fuck…?’ exploded Hanlan, hurling the newspaper away from him.
‘We did well to cover it for so long,’ said Barbara Donnelly, philosophically.
‘And where did it get us?’ demanded Hanlan. ‘Nowhere. Which is where we still are, no-fucking-where!’
Twenty-Seven
