door and opened it to Ginette Smallwood.
She said: ‘Mrs Carver’s lawyer wants to speak with you. Line three.’
Dutton depressed the blinking button, listened and then, to ensure he hadn’t misheard, he said: ‘Do I have any objection to Mrs Carver meeting Ms Belling?’
‘That’s what Mrs Carver wants,’ confirmed Burt Elliott.
Dutton at once saw the path open up before him. Covering the mouthpiece with his hand he said to Alice: ‘She wants to see you.’
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know. But I want you to agree. It’s important.’
‘Will it help me?’ asked Alice.
‘It could, a lot,’ promised Dutton.
‘All right then,’ agreed the woman.
Dutton took away his covering hand and said: ‘Right now is fine.’ The moment they met he had unarguable grounds for a mistrial. His unblemished record wasn’t in danger any more.
Thirty
The two women looked at each other, Jane just inside the door, Alice at the interview table, head low although not quite slumped. Alice straightened slightly at Jane’s entry. Neither initially spoke. It was Alice who finally did, pushing herself further back in her chair as she did so. ‘We do meet again, after all.’ Somehow, irrationally, she’d expected Jane to be freshly bathed and groomed, as she’d been in the TV photograph, and was glad that she wasn’t but instead as dishevelled and crumpled as she was.
Jane came further into the room, her hand outstretched. ‘Here’s your three hundred dollars back. I got a ride, so I didn’t need it.’
When Alice made no attempt to take the money, Jane put it on the table.
‘I heard. I’m glad you’re safe.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Was it bad?’
‘It could have been. But it wasn’t.’ Jane sat on the facing chair, on the other side of the table.
‘That’s good.’ What did she want, wondered Alice.
‘Your car’s OK. The police or the FBI have got it. I don’t know which.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘No, I guess it doesn’t.’ This was like the strange politeness of the men who’d snatched her.
There was a long silence.
Alice said: ‘You wanted to see me?’
‘Hanlan isn’t impressed: doesn’t believe you.’
‘He told you?’
‘Enough.’ Jane hadn’t expected Alice to look so beaten.
‘It’s true! You know it’s true! Tell them!’
‘That’s what I want to talk about. Want to tell them.’
‘Thank you!’ Alice smiled, the relief moving through her.
‘What have they told you about protection?’ lured Jane.
‘Nothing, not yet. It’ll be all right when you tell them.’ Alice knew Hanlan hadn’t believed her, not completely. Thought maybe that she was holding something back, which of course she was, about England.
‘At the moment they’re ready to charge you with kidnap,’ announced Jane, bluntly. ‘They want a statement from me.’
Alice frowned. ‘I know. That’s why you’ve got to tell them the truth.’
‘You haven’t told them the entire truth, have you, Alice?’ This was the moment when she had to get it absolutely right, not give Alice the slightest indication she was bluffing.
‘Yes!’ Alice was tensed now, fully upright in her chair, both hands firmly against the table between them, as if needing its support, even seated.
‘What did you tell them about the hacking? Come on! Come on! Give me the guide I want!
‘I admitted it was illegal. Why I did it.’ Alice was frightened, the uncertainty churning through her.
‘That wasn’t the question,’ said Jane, relentlessly.
‘What is the question?’
Jane was as sure as she needed to be. She had to take the chance. ‘What about how you hacked? The self- protective route you took that wasn’t so protective for other people?’
‘What do you want, Jane?’ Why had she told her! Been so honest about everything!
‘What I’m due,’ declared Jane, flatly.
‘What’s that?’
‘Quite a lot.’
‘You would have been dead if it wasn’t for me!’ tried Alice.
‘I saved myself, all by myself. The FBI have got three of them and through them they’re going to get a lot more. Break Families. I’m very important to the Bureau. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. And I’m guaranteed the Witness Protection Programme. You’re not though, are you?’
‘I asked you what you wanted.’
‘The baby. John’s baby.’
Alice stared across at the other woman, not comprehending. ‘What!’
‘I want what you have: what you’re carrying. John’s baby.’
‘But you’re…?’
‘Not pregnant. I might have been, if John had left a specimen for the tests he’d agreed to have – we were both going to have – but he died before that was possible. You any idea of the noise you made, throwing up all the time? I didn’t need the confirmation but I got it in that truck-stop shithole, while you were throwing up again. Found the tester you hid under your coat, showing positive. I was glad then that I’d pretended to be pregnant: convinced you. I couldn’t have let you beat me that way, like you beat me in every other way. And then as I drove away I realized how you wouldn’t beat me, not at all.’
Alice couldn’t think, find the words. Only one. ‘NO!’
‘Yes,’ said Jane, even-voiced, completely sure of herself. ‘If I tell the FBI about Trojan Horses and England – which you haven’t done – you’ll face murder charges there. Or some indictment, it doesn’t matter what. That’s as well as the kidnapping when I swear a deposition how you tricked me into leaving the apartment with you. Fed me more drugs to keep me at the cabin… threatened to kill me for not giving John a divorce so that he could marry you…’
‘No!’ protested Alice again, although it was a moan, not a shout. ‘You can’t do this. You can’t hate me this much.’
‘Yes I can. And I do,’ said Jane again. ‘I got snatched in Morristown, where your car was found and where you told Gene Hanlan you’d come from, to get here. How’d you imagine the Mafia knew I was there? And here’s another question, the real kicker. How high would you put your chances of getting into the Witness Protection Programme with all that coming down on you? I don’t think you’d stand a chance in hell, do you?’
‘If I get killed the baby dies too.’
‘Right,’ agreed Jane, easily. ‘Think of it as the judgement of Solomon.’
‘I won’t let you,’ said Alice, weakly.
‘I know you won’t have a termination. You won’t destroy John’s baby yourself. And let’s be realistic. It’ll be born, before all the Grand Jury hearings and court appearances are over. And go for adoption. This way the adoption is already properly and legally fixed – we’re surrounded by lawyers – and you get to live. I don’t tell Hanlan about England but I do tell him I came with you willingly from the apartment: that I truly believe you saved my life and that I wouldn’t have known about safe-deposit boxes – known about anything – if you hadn’t told me. I’ll even insist you get into the protection programme. We just got split up in Morristown and I’m as glad as I can be that
