Two Women (28 page)

She hadn't been thinking properly, completely. Just selfishly, knowing that she was being pursued for her computer intrusion and desperate only to save herself. What about Jane? Jane was the one – the only one – who could get to whatever John had in the safe deposit at Citibank. And therefore the one at risk, as Northcote and John and Janice Snow had been at risk. All of whom were now dead.

Twenty

‘I
'm all right,' insisted Jane, relieved her voice hadn't wavered, because she wasn't, not as all right as she would have liked to be. But she didn't want anyone around her to realize it. There were still too many moments when her mind blanked, mid-sentence, and others when she suffered the audible and visual receding sensation that was the most disconcerting of all.

But she was sufficiently in control of herself and her surroundings to comprehend what she had been told the previous day and to prepare herself for what was going to happen today. John was dead. Today there was to be his funeral, in the same cathedral in which the ceremony for her father had been conducted, and after that the wake at the same hotel in which her father's had been held. And John's burial, later, when she'd decided upon where the interment was to be.

But most important of all she believed herself sufficiently free of the drug, now down to its one dose a day minimum, to understand – although perhaps not properly, fully, to comprehend – that she didn't have John any more. Didn't have anyone any more. That she was all alone. She'd never imagined being entirely by herself. Not having anyone to turn to, rely upon. She'd sat on charity committees – chaired some of them – and raised money to help people bereaved by tragedy or catastrophe and believed she'd had some conception of their loss. But now, despite the response-dulling effects of the medication, Jane accepted that she had no conception whatsoever. At this precise moment – probably for some time to come – it was too overwhelming for her to conceive, to rationalize in any way. Which was the easiest explanation for why she hadn't collapsed and wept the previous day or wept today, although she had awakened early, before it was fully light, with total recall of the conversation with Paul Newton and Peter Mortimer, and lain there for more than an hour, trying to envisage a future. And failed, remaining there mummified, thoughts, images, feelings, tears, refusing to come. It went blank again at that moment, so that she was not immediately aware of Geoffrey Davis talking to her.

‘I said we could do away with the formal receiving line,' repeated the firm's lawyer.

‘I don't want that,' said Jane, freshly insisting. ‘Everything will be done properly, as it should be done.' John would have wanted that, for everything to be done properly. It was important to remember what John would have wanted. Expected. He would have come round soon enough to wanting a baby as much as she did.
Had wanted
, she corrected herself. Robbed of John and robbed of having his baby. Or was she robbed? Had he provided the specimen Rosemary Pritchard had asked for? She couldn't remember – there was still too much she couldn't remember – but if he had there was surely a possibility of it being used, to impregnate her, once the gynaecologist had corrected her problem. Something she had to call Rosemary about as soon as possible: today even, when she got back from the wake.

‘We'll be there with you,' reassured Newton.

‘I don't
want
everyone around me!' exclaimed Jane irritably, sweeping her hand to encompass the overcrowded East 62nd Street drawing room. ‘I want you all to understand that I can manage by myself.'

‘Jane, you can't stand there entirely alone,' protested Davis.

She couldn't, Jane at once conceded: it wouldn't be the proper thing to do. ‘You,' she decided, looking at the lawyer. ‘You should represent the firm, with the most senior partner …?'

‘Fred Jolly,' identified the lawyer, indicating a balding, stooped man beside him whom Jane did not recognize, although she knew that she should.

‘Sorry. Of course, with you, Fred.' She continued looking around the room. ‘If my having some personal support is so important, Hilda can stay close to me: tell me whom I'm meeting, as often as possible. That all right, Hilda?'

‘Of course,' said Carver's matronly personal assistant, who had organized this second funeral and who hoped at the actual service she'd manage the control Jane was showing. The reflection reminded her of the sobbing Janice Snow and she had to swallow heavily, tensed against breaking down.

Jane accepted that she might have difficulty retaining some of her thoughts but hoped the receding, blurred images or words were diminishing. ‘But I don't think I need any support. Certainly not any further nursing, now that you've almost stopped those damned drugs.'

‘
I
do. I really do,' challenged Newton, too quickly.

‘What do
you
think?' Jane asked the psychiatrist, well enough aware of the bedside disagreement between the two men.

‘You're nearly off the chlorpromazine now,' agreed Mortimer. ‘You sure there aren't any lingering effects?'

‘You're watching me, listening to me. What's your professional opinion?' demanded Jane, as the faces of those looking at her blurred. She was only distantly aware – but aware, which was all that mattered – of the psychiatrist.

Mortimer said: ‘This isn't a consulting session.'

Jane's vision cleared. ‘I've got live-in staff. And they have all your numbers. This is how I want it to be. How it
will
be. I appreciate all your care and all your concern. From now on I want to handle things by myself. And by
now
I mean just that. Now.' It had been an effort to finish, but she was sure no one had detected her difficulty. She wasn't being stupid or arrogant. They'd weaned her off the medication because they'd decided she didn't need it, as she hadn't needed medication for her father's funeral. And if she didn't need medication she didn't need nurses to sit around and hold her hand. She didn't need anyone to hold her hand when she said goodbye to the best husband it had been possible to have. Which was the way to think, Jane told herself. Not to sink into a slough of self-pity but to think how lucky she'd been having him as a loving, caring husband for as long as she had. She'd need to spend a lot of time and effort having John's crypt designed: ensure it was a monument to him. And speak to Rosemary Pritchard. That was the first priority.

As they left the apartment Newton told Mortimer: ‘Now it's you who've made the mistake.'

‘We're going to be there, keeping an eye on everything,' said the psychiatrist. ‘There can't be any problems.'

Alice hadn't tried to download any more evidence of cross-border invoice padding. She'd filled the intervening day tidying the cabin, eating properly for the first time since she couldn't remember when – but shunning alcohol – and driving yet again into Paterson to buy what she thought she needed for the funeral. If those hunting her knew her name she had to assume that they also knew what she looked like: had a photograph, even. Which made the need for a disguise more practical than melodramatic. The thought of adopting one still embarrassed her. The dark wig to conceal her blondness scarcely amounted to a disguise anyway. She added to it a hat with a veil longer than that Jane had worn at her father's funeral and remained unsure about dark glasses beneath it, deciding to wait until she returned to the cabin to make up her mind. The black dress would have benefited from some minimal lifting at the shoulders but without time for alteration – and doubting she'd wear it ever again – Alice hid the problem beneath a black jacket that fitted better.

It was only when she was driving back from Paterson that Alice finally confronted what she had been refusing, until that moment, to bring into the forefront of her mind, where it should have been from the moment she'd acknowledged Jane to be in danger. The obvious, immediate and seemingly
only
resolution was to involve the police and the FBI protection. But upon what evidence, came the recurring, taunting question. She'd already decided the IRS printouts weren't sufficient, quite apart from how she'd obtained them. From the attitude she'd encountered the previous day, the FBI wouldn't respond without considerably more – which she didn't have – and she'd never get by the desk sergeant in any Manhattan precinct house with accounts of murder masked as accident and accident fulfilling doubtless intended murder.

Jane, unaware of any danger, was the only person who could produce what was necessary to protect herself … what John had been taken back to Citibank to retrieve. Unaware, yet, where – or what – the secrets were that risked further shattering her already shattered life, as Alice was finally reconciled to hers being shattered. Was she thinking only of Jane? Alice asked herself, at last demanding personal honesty. Of course she wasn't thinking only of Jane. What Jane had access to, as John's wife, would provide her salvation, too. Was it the most obscene, unimaginably amoral cynicism, even to think as she was thinking? No, refused Alice. Jane's marriage – Jane's security, the fulness and completeness of her marriage – had never once been threatened by her affair with John. She'd genuinely, totally honestly, never seen herself competing with Jane. Alice would never expect anyone to believe her: she found it difficult, with total objectivity, to believe it herself. But without ever knowing it, without there ever having been a challenge, Jane had been the one who won. So it wasn't amoral or obscene or contemptibly cynical to contemplate – although until now, climbing the low foothills at last, she hadn't allowed herself to contemplate – how she could properly guarantee her survival. Which was all she was thinking about. Survival, for herself and for Jane.

So how was she going to achieve it? How was she going to get to Jane and talk to Jane in such a way – in such words – that Jane would not dismiss her as the FBI had so far dismissed her? Alice didn't know. She could think of no plan, no approach, that was halfway feasible. Jane would be in shock, grieving to breaking point.
Hello Jane, you don't know about me but I know everything about you. Your father, who worked for the Mafia, was murdered. John was going to be murdered and we've only got one chance to stop it happening to you and me. Oh, and by the way, Janice Snow was murdered, too. Now here's what we've got to do
…

As she turned off down the track, towards the cabin totally hidden in the riverside trees, Alice sniggered aloud at the sheer absurdity of it. But it wasn't – couldn't be – absurd. Somehow to keep them both safe she had to produce what John had hidden: to guarantee both their survival.

At the cabin Alice modelled her complete outfit in front of the full-length mirror, with and without dark glasses beneath the veiled hat, and remained undecided, glad of the hat because it lessened what she thought to be the artificiality of the ready-made wig, although after practice and careful pinning, again hidden by the hat, she became satisfied that it didn't look as artificial as she'd first imagined.

When she left the cabin, early on the morning of the funeral, Alice still hadn't thought of an approach to Jane that she considered remotely practicable and felt sick with the effort of trying.

Alice accepted she couldn't use the garage space reserved in her own name and it took her longer than she'd anticipated to find a spot in one on East 40th, although she still had time to walk to the cathedral. It was a bright day, which justified the dark glasses. She arrived with the bulk of the mourners and was grateful for their concealment. The two books of condolences, on either side of the entrance, created a congestion that stretched back to the outer steps but in which it was easy for Alice to mingle to avoid signing, although she couldn't isolate anyone standing too obviously close to either, checking names. Unwittingly echoing Carver's thoughts at Northcote's funeral, Alice told herself that those searching for her would be here somewhere, watching, looking. Would they have an identifying photograph of her, be comparing every woman coming in? The crush of people at that moment would make that impractical, she tried to reassure herself, although once past the condolence book bottleneck there was almost an immediate thinning-out in the vastness of the cathedral. She edged into a half-filled pew, relieved it was immediately filled behind her by other mourners, and at once bowed her head in cupped hands, further hiding herself in feigned prayer. She waited until she guessed from the noise that the pew behind her was occupied before raising her head. She stared directly ahead until she realized that the red cloth-covered stand in front of the altar was for the coffin and abruptly looked down at the order of service, her fogged eyes unable to focus on anything.

She sensed the family arrival from the movements of heads in front of her and turning with them she saw Jane, dressed as she'd been dressed for her father's funeral, upright and unaided by those around her, whom she recognized from her research visits to the Northcote building, although she couldn't remember the men's names. The other woman in the group was Hilda Bennett, John's PA. And then she saw the coffin following and her mind emptied and her eyes filmed and there was the rustle of everyone around her opening their service sheets and she automatically opened hers.

So did Jane. Who couldn't see the words either. All she could see – nothing receding and returning, receding and returning – in crystal clear, unwanted clarity was a flower-festooned box with burnished brass fixtures containing the body of the man to whom she had given herself completely, whom she loved completely, and whom she could not conceive being without. Not having. Any more than she had been able – was able – to conceive not having her always-commanding, always-controlling father. Two indomitable supermen to whom nothing was insurmountable. Leaving her alone. Bereft. She didn't know what she was going to do. How she was going to do it.