everyone arriving from all over the world. Which surely wasn’t the main consideration, in the circumstances. The people from whom Northcote was supposedly extricating himself – extricating himself and the firm and everyone else – were presumably here, in New York: this is where they’d met earlier in the week. So how could Northcote be so sure that by Friday it would all be over? Was he lying, avoiding, as he’d lied and avoided for so long: long enough to have become a world expert? Carver remained staring at the telephone but still made no effort to pick it up. If that’s what Northcote were doing there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Apart from one thing, the one thing he’d already decided against doing. Couldn’t do. Carver felt a wash of impotence, which was the word that came into his mind and he wished it hadn’t because of its reminder of his difficulty with Alice. Last night he hadn’t suggested going back to her apartment. Neither had she. Instead of calling Northcote he dialled Alice’s number but got the answering machine. He left a message that he’d call later, from home. As he went uptown he decided to see Alice, after polishing the Friday speech. They’d eat in the Village again if he reached her early enough, so he told Manuel he didn’t want dinner and that he and Luisa could leave early. Carver got Alice’s answering machine on his next two attempts, in between which he worked on the speech and decided it was getting better.
He knew it wasn’t Alice when the telephone rang, because she never called the apartment, so he was half expecting Jane’s voice but not the hysteria. ‘What is it?’ he said, trying to talk over her. ‘Jane! I can’t understand what you’re saying. Slower! Speak slower.’
‘Dad!’ she sobbed. ‘There’s been an accident…’ She choked to a stop. And then she wailed. ‘Dad’s dead.’
Murdered, thought Carver, at once: George W. Northcote had been murdered. Killed, for transgressing whatever code these bastards – these sons of bitches – obeyed. A code he didn’t know. Which clearly George Northcote hadn’t known or understood, either. Carver felt physically paralysed, his arms and legs incapable of movement. But they had to move: everything had to work. He had to… Had to what? He didn’t know, Carver accepted. He felt the acid of vomit – and fear – rise in his throat. And thought, please help me God, and hoped God was listening.
He brought forward one of the already chartered helicopters, which was waiting for him by the time he reached 34th Street. It was normally a familiar way of his getting up to Litchfield, so familiar that the procedure was virtually automatic. But this early evening it wasn’t normal. He read the cab driver’s displayed ID, trying to remember the number – actually comparing the photograph – and questioned the traffic-jam detour for what was a direct downtown drive and, while they were blocked, tried – and failed – to reach Jane from his cellphone. He tried Alice, too, and once more got the answering machine. He said George Northcote was dead and he’d call as soon as he could and wished that instead of a recording he could have heard Alice’s voice, from her own mouth.
And all the time couldn’t stop – couldn’t co-ordinate – the turmoil in his mind.
Carver had always had a problem with coincidence, which made it seem impossible George Northcote’s death could be anything but murder. There had to have been a reason (what the fuck reason!) for Northcote going up to Litchfield – risking Jane, for Christ’s sake! – but he didn’t know, would now never know, what it was. One of the eight trillion things he had to work out. The handing over of the incriminating documentation. That surely could be the only purpose. Or was it? Why? Why Litchfield? Why do it in the boondocks instead of in Manhattan, where this week’s meeting had been between Northcote and…? And who? Where – oh dear God where! – were the supposedly protective copies of all the incriminating evidence: very much supposedly, because they hadn’t protected Northcote. Had to have existed somewhere, he tried to reassure himself. But where? Northcote’s personal safe within the firm’s vault had to be the place. The place that had remained closed since that one time, which Carver knew because he’d gone into the vaults to check and if Northcote’s personal safe had been open, he would have gone far more intently through whatever was there than he had on the first discovery. He most definitely had to get back in. Go through everything that was there. Janice Snow would have access. And now he had the authority – the unarguable right – to insist she open it for him. That was the obvious place for it to be. The only place for it to be. What was he going to do with it, when he got it? He didn’t know, not yet. But from whatever there was, he’d be finally able to get names! What the fuck protection was that! It was an objective question but he didn’t have an objective answer, any more than he had to all – or any – of the rest. Why did you do it, George? Why did you leave me – so many others – exposed like this? You bastard! You absolute, pig-fucking bastard. Why? It would, Carver accepted, always remain the biggest question of all, which would never be resolved.
The flight only took half an hour and there was still sufficient light when they reached the lake-shore estate for Carver to look down upon the scene, which was additionally illuminated by emergency lighting rigged to a generator van.
It was nearer the lake than the main, rambling house complex. A limp-rotored medivac helicopter was already on the ground, although at a distance from everything else. There were an ambulance and two police cars, their coloured bar lights still revolving and reflecting off other vehicles, which prompted Carver’s illogical – immediately embarrassed – impression of a funfair attraction: roll up, roll up and see what happens to someone who thinks he can stiff-middle-finger the Mafia. There were two other cars and a 4? 4, completing the semicircle around a piece of equipment Carver couldn’t at first identify. But then he realized it was a small crane, its hawsers strained around what became visible as they descended further, Northcote’s familiar tractor mower. Carver didn’t bother to count the figures concentrated around it. There were certainly a lot but then George W. Northcote had been the leading figure – and a generous benefactor – in the community. Which deserved an unnecessary medivac helicopter, an ambulance, two police cars and a crane that appeared to have been designed like a crab with its legs splayed.
Carver’s helicopter put down some way away, to avoid downdraught, and Carver was out in a crouched run before the rotors stopped. When he straightened he saw people already coming towards him and recognized Al Hibbert, the sheriff, in the lead with his hand already outstretched.
‘Bad business, John,’ greeted the bulge-bellied, balding man. ‘Damned bad business.’ He wore a holstered pistol and his badge of office on the shirt of his official uniform.
‘Where’s Jane?’
‘Up in the house. Dr Jamieson is looking after her.’ Hibbert turned to the second man. ‘You know Pete Simpson?’
‘What happened?’ demanded Carver, shaking the medical examiner’s hand as he walked towards the brightly lighted scene.
‘Still piecing it together with Jack here,’ said Hibbert, as they got to the vehicles.
Jack Jennings had been George Northcote’s major-domo for fifteen years, controlling a staff of eight between the Litchfield estate and the Manhattan apartment. He was a tall white-haired black man whom Carver couldn’t ever remember seeing in anything but striped trousers, black jacket and white shirt. It was the uniform he was wearing now. The man said: ‘So sorry, Mr Carver. So very, very sorry.’ His voice was thick.
‘Let’s start again, shall we, Jack?’ said the sheriff.
Jennings coughed. ‘After lunch Mr Northcote said he was going to drive the mower a little…’ He smiled at Carver. ‘You know how he used to like to do that. Haul the cutters around the lower paddocks: said it relaxed him and that he needed to relax with what was coming up this week.’
‘What’s that mean?’ broke in the sheriff.
‘We’ve got the annual conference: people flying in from all over,’ supplied Carver. Which is what I am going to do. Live in the country, cut my grass… He remembered Northcote’s statement, as clearly as he remembered the photograph that accompanied Alice’s profile.
‘That’s what he said,’ agreed Jennings, his voice still thick despite the constant coughing. ‘He was in the study all morning, working on his speech.’
He had to see that speech, as soon as possible, Carver decided. And go through the study with a toothcomb. There’d be a safe. Would Jennings know the combination? Or where the key was kept?
‘Go on,’ urged Hibbert.
‘It wasn’t unusual for him to stay out all afternoon,’ picked up the man. ‘I looked out for him around five: that’s about the time he likes a Macallan when he’s up here in the country. When he wasn’t back by five thirty I came out looking, in the golf buggy. Here’s where I found him…’ The man choked to a halt. ‘God, it was awful.’
‘What?’ persisted Carver.
‘See that dip there?’ Hibbert took over, moving closer to the rim of the depression and the crane with its legs spidered to support the dangling tractor mower.
Carver did see it. And saw for the first time, too, that hanging down from the tractor itself was the separate
