Two Women

Eight

Jack Jennings flew with them and as they began to descend over the Litchfield estate Carver gazed down at the assembled police vehicles with a feeling of deja vu. The impression was heightened by it being the same pilot in the same helicopter and of their landing almost in the same place as before, to avoid those on the ground being disturbed by the down draught. And as before Al Hibbert was already on his way towards them when they hurried from the machine.

The sheriff said: ‘This sure as hell isn’t what you needed, on top of everything else.’ When he saw Jane he said: ‘Sorry, Mrs Carver. Didn’t realize it was you.’

Jane shook her head impatiently and said: ‘How bad is it?’

‘As bad as I’ve ever seen around these parts. Worse,’ said Hibbert. ‘The place – the house as well as the outhouses, the pool house and all the staff quarters – hasn’t just been turned over, to get anything and everything that’s valuable. It’s been totally trashed.’

It had.

Very little furniture in any of the rooms remained intact. Seats and cushions were slashed apart and the frames and coverings of couches and formal and easy chairs dismembered. Every drawer of every desk and cabinet had been taken out, upended and then broken into pieces: Northcote’s antique study desk had been crowbarred apart into something close to matchwood and the heavy, button-backed desk chair disembowelled. Every book on the shelves had been taken down and its leaves torn out and strewn across the floor. The doors of the cupboards below had been wrenched off their hinges. The safe gaped open, empty. The drapes hung in shreds. Carver was glad he’d salvaged Northcote’s family photographs: every one that remained had been smashed. The devastation, through which protectively white-overalled forensic specialists were working, was repeated throughout the ground floor. It was only when they reached the sprawling, split-level drawing room that Carver realized through the mess that no antique ornament or any of the silver that Northcote had collected remained. Nor did any of the paintings, prints or original nineteenth-century photographs of early American settlers and native American tribes, a collection in itself unique if not antique.

The kitchen and staff accommodation had been overturned, in some instances literally. Three huge, free-standing fridge freezers had been thrown forward off their feet but only after the doors had been opened, for their contents to smash and now seep over the floor. The same destruction had been carried out on two separate, smaller refrigerators. Every single thing in every storage cupboard had been heaped, smashed, on the floor, to mix with the seepage from the freezers. What wine and spirits had not been taken from the cellar were smashed and soaked the floor.

Every room in the staff wing was demolished, apart from the shell itself, even to every article of clothing being slashed beyond repair and every personal item – photographs, ornaments, momentoes – smashed.

Because there was so much soft furnishing and bedding the havoc appeared worse upstairs because every piece – bed coverings, duvets, pillows, mattresses, couches and easy chairs – had been eviscerated. The carpet had even been lifted in Northcote’s bedroom and adjoining dressing room, where all his suits hung in tatters from their rails and in the middle of which were piled slashed shirts and sweaters.

Hibbert said: ‘It’s the same in the outhouses. Everything – cars, equipment – totally wrecked.’

Carver saw that Jennings was standing with a handkerchief to his face, silently crying. Jane was gazing around, face unmoving, quite emotionless. His voice muffled, the butler said: ‘Everything’s gone… there’s nothing left.’

‘This wasn’t local,’ insisted Hibbert, defensively. ‘I know the people around here, particularly the bad ones. They burglarize, sure. But not much. And when they do they don’t do this. Here’s how I see it. There’s a lot of publicity, in the city. It’s a professional gang. And got to be a heavy gang of four, five, maybe more, guys to do all this. Overturn things like the freezers downstairs and tear off doors as they did. They decide on a big hit. They drive up – it would need a truck, obviously – and see the staff go: it’s in the papers that everyone’s going to Manhattan for the funeral. With the staff gone, they’ve got the whole place to themselves, to do with what they want.’

Would they have found what he hadn’t? wondered Carver, impatiently uninterested in the country sheriffs failed theorizing. It would have been impossible for anything anywhere here to have remained undiscovered. Stirring himself, if only for another token protest, he said: ‘Why trash it? Why not do what you think your locals would have done, simply steal what’s valuable?’

‘Looking for something that wasn’t so obviously sitting around to be snatched,’ said Hibbert, with unwitting perceptiveness.

‘What about the burglar alarm?’ demanded Jane, speaking at last.

‘Proof that they’re professionals, like their being able to open the safe,’ said the sheriff, at once. ‘Place as remote from any utilities as this has to be an individual electricity supply, a pole-mounted cable coming off the main supply, way down in the lane by the lake. And then carried here through two other pole mountings, with transformer boosting. Forensics have already found the gizmo. A bypass clamp between the input cable and the transformer on the last pole. The cable’s cut in between, immobilizing the system, but the alarm that should go off precisely when the cable is cut doesn’t operate because it’s still got a local battery supply.’

‘A system like that has to be at least thirty years old!’ exclaimed Jane. ‘Maybe more.’

‘At least,’ agreed Hibbert, shaking his head. ‘Litchfield’s a peaceful place, most times. Folks around here don’t think much of updating their equipment, once it’s in.’

Northcote hadn’t bothered to hide the still unstudied BHYF and NOXT documents that had been in the night-stand, remembered Carver. Carelessness, like not bothering about an out-of-date alarm system? Or complacency, Northcote’s belief after so many unthreatened, unendangered years that he had mob protection far more effective than anything electrical. Carver said: ‘Perhaps now they will.’

‘Forensics are going through the place as minutely as the burglars did,’ promised the sheriff. ‘They couldn’t have done all this without leaving something behind. We’ll find it.’

‘That kitchen floor’s a mess,’ reminded Carver. ‘Difficult not to have left a footprint, I would have thought?’ Why was he bothering, he asked himself again.

‘Now maybe,’ agreed Hibbert. ‘It would have taken time for it all to leak out like it has. By then they would have moved on. I already thought about it.’

He deserved that put-down for attempting to play Sherlock Holmes, Carver accepted. ‘If there was no burglar alarm, how come you discovered the break-in?’

The big-bellied man nodded towards Jane. ‘Mrs Carver’s call, yesterday. Telling me that the staff were all going early into the city. Told one of my car patrols to drive by every so often. When one did, first time this morning, the front door was wide open. He didn’t need to go in and see the state of the place to work out what had happened.’

There’s nothing left to steal,’ declared Jane, decisively. ‘We’ll go back to New York, do what we have to do there. I’ll tell the insurance people and perhaps you’ll come back directly after the funeral, to be here, Jack…?’ She paused, looking around the destroyed bedroom. ‘When you come back you’ll need to bring a sleeping bag.’

‘You got any idea what might be missing, Mrs Carver?’ asked Hibbert. ‘It’s important for the crime report.’

‘Absolutely none at all,’ said Jane, uncaringly. ‘It could be listed on the insurance details. I’ll get the underwriters to contact you.’

‘I’d appreciate it.’

In the helicopter on the way back yet again to the city, Carver said: ‘Hibbert was right. We didn’t need that.’ So much was crowding in on him that Carver found it difficult to get his thoughts in sequence: in any order at all. He needed space, an uninterrupted hour, to think.

‘It’s a decision reached for us,’ announced Jane, conclusively. ‘The house would have been sold anyway: I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to keep it, after what happened. Now we just throw everything out for garbage and call in the realtor.’

‘If that’s what you want,’ said Carver.

Jane said: ‘I wonder what they were looking for?’

As he unlocked the door the cybercafe manager said: ‘Here again, bright and early,’ and Alice remembered that during her interview with George Northcote he’d told her his work adage had always been that the early bird caught the fattest worms and hoped he was right in her case. She said: ‘I told you yesterday I’ve got a lot to do.’

She set out to work alphabetically, state by state, through her American subsidiary company listings for Mulder Inc., Encomp and Innsflow International, which started her in Alabama, where Mulder Supplies Inc. was headquartered in Birmingham, with ten outlets throughout the state. She spent a firewall-blocked hour password-probing, which by hacking standards was hardly any time at all, but which Alice calculated against the number of sites she wanted to penetrate would take her two months, working eight hours a day, seven days a week and then only if she allowed herself two hours successfully to get into each one. It was far easier – taking just ten minutes – getting into Alabama’s state tax records. There were filed-ahead-of-time returns for Mulder Supplies Inc. for the past five years, each showing a rising, after-tax profit. The first had been $250,000, the last $1,800,000. It took Alice less time – just five minutes – to find the password into the local Companies Register to confirm the trading designation for Mulder Supplies Inc. was as a blank video tape provider to Mulder’s entertainment division, the history of which was in the so far impenetrable Grand Cayman parent company files. She tried again – and failed – to get into Mulder Supplies headquarters before, strictly according to her alphabetical schedule, moving as far north as it was possible to get, to Anchorage, Alaska. She gave herself another hour to get undetected into Mulder Marine and was again defeated, but got into the state tax files just as easily as she had in Alabama, and they were again immaculate. Once more – although this time for only three of the last trading years – they showed an ever-increasing after-tax profit, that of the last year $2,750,000. The Companies Register listed the business, with five separately managed companies, listed as seafood providers to Mulder’s restaurant and hotel division, once more disappearing into the Cayman parent company.

Alice had drunk her way through five cups of coffee by midday and was hot with the frustration of not being able to get where – and what – she wanted. What she did have were the immaculately kept financial records of a pyramid of seemingly superbly managed companies which never suffered financial setback and whose profits climbed each year to new heights. It was far too soon to reach even ballpark conclusions but calculated against the minimum after-tax returns she’d so far accessed, Alice estimated that if every subsidiary of Mulder Inc. showed annually cleared profits of $2,000,000, the yearly income into the tax exempt Grand Cayman was in excess of a billion dollars. And conceivably could – if she worked her way through all the subsidiaries and their associated companies – be double, even treble, that.

All legal. Except that it wasn’t legal. If what she believed she was seeing had been true for God knows how many years, millions – trillions – had been laundered sparkling white. But there was no proof: no evidence. Why, for fuck’s sake, hadn’t John Carver demanded Northcote’s personal files straight away? But John always expected rectitude, or something close. She, always, expected the wrong, the sly, the manipulative and the questionable. The dichotomy hadn’t arisen between them before. But now John, financially brilliant but… Alice hesitated at continuing the judgement but then did, because it needed to be continued… naive in the back alleys of the professional money netherworld, was potentially being sucked down into a blackness he’d never known. And one from which he was going to need help to find his way out. Her help.

What – in which direction – was her way, the way she needed to go to find the all-important, so-far missing conduit? Which there had to be, a pathway along those black alleys through which those millions were carried to be untraceably lost in the sunshine of the Caribbean.

England. It was a logical choice, because Alice didn’t speak any of the languages of the other European or Asian countries, although she was more than able to interpret their figures and hopefully the patterns they made.

In England Mulder Inc. was registered, ironically, in Cheapside, London, and predictably she was defeated attempting to break into their Caribbean system using their local password. She found English subsidiaries for Mulder, Encomp and Innsflow spread throughout the country, from Brighton and Bristol in the south to Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle in the north. It was in Liverpool that she penetrated the local tax office and pulled up the returns for the previous seven years, which – predictably again – showed a rising after-tax profit. In the last full financial year, it had been ?2,700,000. But, at last, there was more. The Liverpool company, Mulder Enterprises, was listed as a video and CD supply company, owned again by the Cayman parent company, but also recorded on the tax return was importation from the Alabama supply company through an import-export company named as BHYF International. The Companies Register recorded a branch office in London, with headquarters in Toronto, Canada. There were subsidiaries in Paris, Berlin, Rome and Tokyo. It took Alice four further hours to penetrate every relevant British tax office and in every case their overseas trade was conducted through BHYF International.

Alice hadn’t realized it was dark until the cafe manager, who’d provided her with coffee and offered sandwiches – which she’d declined – appeared at her elbow and said: ‘We’re closing in an hour. You seemed kind of engrossed. It happens, once you get caught up in the Web.’

It was a line he’d used before, she guessed. She said: Thanks. I guess I’ll need the hour. Maybe a lot more.’

Which she almost at once realized she would. For that last hour she computed every password she could think of for Encomp and was consistently rejected, which by now was not an unfamiliar experience. As she paid the manager said: ‘I’ve seen some concentration: you’re way up at the top.’

Alice said: ‘I don’t like being at the bottom.’

The man, whom she guessed to be around thirty, said: ‘That’s not my speed either: hurts too much. But maybe you’d get the cramp out if I bought you a drink?’

That most definitely was a line he’d used before, she decided, at the same time as accepting that she was cramped, over her back and shoulders. Thanks, but no. It’s been a long day that a drink won’t fix.’

‘Another time maybe?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Am I going to see you tomorrow?’

‘Don’t be late opening up.’

‘I’m Bill, by the way,’ he said, invitingly.

‘Alice.’

‘Look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Alice.’

Jane was the superlative hostess at the welcoming cocktail party. People arrived protectively en masse, with obvious preplanning, and in the first minutes remained respectfully subdued. Jane quickly put people at their ease, circulating among the couples as easily as she had earlier moved among the overseas executives, chatting – laughing occasionally – and towards the end making the briefest of announcements that she would regard the following night’s dinner as a tribute to her father, not his wake.

Carver was anxious for the reception to end and the moment it did announced there were things he had to do and locked himself into his study, hesitating before picking up the telephone to call Alice, never before having called her from the apartment while Jane was there. Alice picked up the telephone on its second ring and the moment she recognized his voice she said: ‘Where are you?’

‘At the apartment.’

‘Where’s Jane?’

‘Here.’

‘It isn’t a good idea.’

‘Just listen,’ he insisted, which she did without interruption as he told her about the ransacking of Northcote’s Litchfield house.

Her reaction was not what he expected. Instead of expressing surprise she said, quiet-voiced: ‘We need to meet.’ It would mean finally disclosing her hacking but things were happening too fast – too dangerously – for that any longer to be a consideration.

‘You know I can’t!’

‘Now you listen. I think I’ve got something.’

‘What!’

‘About those companies.’

‘I told you not to do anything.’ Why had he been stupid enough to tell her in the first place!

‘It’s quite safe.’

‘You know damned well it’s not.’

‘You’ll understand when I explain.’

‘Stop it, whatever it is you’re doing.’

‘I think I know how it’s done. Maybe even how George set it up. It’s brilliant.’

‘Alice, darling! Please don’t do anything else – anything more – until we meet.’

‘When?’

‘Not until after the funeral.’

It gave her a lot of time, Alice calculated.

Although he was the liaison between all five New York Families, Stanley Burcher reported directly to the consigliere of the Genovese organization. Charlie Petrie was a non-Italian, like Burcher, and like Burcher a qualified lawyer. There was no regular pattern of contact between them but Petrie always knew when Burcher was in Manhattan and where to find him if there was a need. Burcher liked the Algonquin, both for its history and for its discretion. Burcher’s automatic thought, when Petrie’s call came, was that there had been a complaint against him from the Delioci people and he was early for their appointment in the lounge, mentally rehearsing his responses to the expected accusations. Petrie was early, too, a conservatively dressed, undistinguished man but unlike Burcher someone who occasionally attracted the sort of attention Burcher shunned, exuding the confidence that came from being imbued with power. It occurred now in the quickness with which a waiter was at their side, before they’d finished shaking hands. They ordered coffee. Burcher had selected a table and chairs beyond the hearing of anyone else in the lounge.

Petrie said: ‘We’re getting some worried calls, from around the country.’

‘The Deliocis made a total mess,’ said Burcher, deciding upon attack for defence. ‘Their capo didn’t even go personally to make the collection from Northcote.’

‘Do you tell him to?’

Careful, thought Burcher. And then, quickly, came up with the perfect response. ‘I didn’t have the authority to tell them, when I arranged the collection… that would have been disrespectful.’ He was sure the smile was properly apologetic. ‘Which I’m afraid I was, when I heard what happened.’

Petrie shook his head, dismissively. ‘How’s it all going to be sorted?’

Burcher accepted he was going to have to commit himself. ‘Before he died, Northcote told them his successor knew all about it. Which is perfect. He just carries on where Northcote literally stopped. Everything goes on uninterrupted.’

Petrie smiled. ‘That’s good. This is why I called you, to hear how it goes on. We’ve got other outside accountants, sure, but no one with Northcote’s overview. You think Northcote trained the new guy up?’

Now it was Burcher who shook his head. ‘No. As we’ve already said, when we met that last time he was stupid. Said he’d held things back that would be embarrassing for everybody and that it was his insurance against the firm being involved any more. I told him not to be ridiculous and that he had to return everything he’d kept. He said he was going up to the country, so I told him we’d pick it up there.’

‘Our accountants inside should have picked up what he was doing,’ conceded Petrie.

‘It was too sweet for too long,’ said Burcher. ‘Everyone got sloppy.’

‘How you going to bring the new guy into line, if he thinks he can say no?’

‘Working on it,’ said Burcher.

‘There’s another problem,’ announced Petrie. ‘Doesn’t involve you but you should know about it. Like you said, people were getting sloppy. There’s been a tightening up. One of our electronic whizz-kids picked up someone trying to hack into our subsidiaries. Happens a lot but this seems to have happened too much, like they were being targeted.’

‘Where’s the hacking from?’

‘England. But our guys don’t think that’s the origin.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t understand what the hell they’re talking about. They say they can find out where, though.’

‘I thought there were ways of making that impossible?’

‘So did I. It’s a problem, people not doing the job they’re paid to do.’