Both men – the sheriff and the examiner – looked emptily back at Carver. Hibbert said: ‘I’m sorry, John. I just can’t quite get your point…’
It was a point he couldn’t make, Carver realized. He felt physically encased, as if his ribcage was being crushed by his impotence like that of the man lying, flat-chested, on the metal table in front of him. ‘George knew his land: knew where he couldn’t take his rig. Knew how to handle it, too. There must have been a reason for his going too close this time.’ Why was he saying this? In front of a law officer! What self-justification was he trying to make, to absolve himself from the self-recrimination of not having tried to have George Northcote’s death properly investigated? Which he well knew couldn’t be properly investigated.
‘It happened because he knew his land so well,’ said Hibbert. ‘He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t taking enough care because he’d done it a hundred times before. All it needed was inches to make the mistake he made. The engineers we had up there last night are professionals. I’ll show you the photographs: the way they’re sure it happened.’
The way it had been intended to be worked out, thought Carver. ‘There going to be an inquest?’
‘Into what, John?’ demanded Hibbert. ‘There’s nothing officially to inquire into.’
Carver felt the impotent straight-jacketed constriction again. ‘I can go ahead with the funeral arrangements then?’
‘As and when you wish,’ assured Hibbert, as if he were giving away a raffle prize. ‘It’s gotta be a shock, John. Hang in there.’
Carver’s feeling now was of burning irritation at the filedaway cliches. ‘That’s what I’ll do, Aclass="underline" hang in there.’ Hang in where, with whom?
Hibbert said: ‘I’m sorry but I officially need to hear the words. Is the body you’ve just seen that of George Northcote?’
Of course it was! But then again it wasn’t: wasn’t the bull-shouldered – most certainly not the bull-chested – lion’s-maned founder of the best known, most prestigious accountancy firm on Wall Street. ‘That’s the body of George Northcote.’
Hibbert said: ‘I hate this. Of all the things I have officially to do, I hate this the most.’
‘Me too,’ said Simpson.
‘I’m sorry to have put you through it,’ apologized Hibbert. ‘I tried to indicate last night…’
‘I know,’ stopped Carver. ‘It’s OK.’
‘We lost a good man here,’ said Simpson. ‘The best.’
‘That’s what he was,’ Hibbert hurried on. ‘The best. We’re sure as hell glad you and Jane are still here in the community, to carry on.’
Carry on what? wondered Carver. Near to cliche himself, he said: ‘We’re still here.’
‘How is Jane?’ asked Simpson. ‘Charlie told me there was pretty heavy shock.’
‘She was still sedated when I left,’ said Carver. ‘Charlie’s with her but I need to get back. Is there anything else?’
‘We’re through,’ declared Hibbert.
Simpson said: ‘I’ll tell my guys to expect a call from your funeral directors.’
‘It’ll come sometime today,’ promised Carver. An even-voiced, calm, conversational exchange, he thought. We’re talking about a murder, you fucking idiots! A murder committed by people professional enough to be able to skin a man alive but make it appear to these boondock boneheads a typical country mishap. I get a dozen accidents like this every year. Just another one of those accident stories, to go into the Litchfield folklore.
‘Anything I can do to help, John, you just call. That’s all it needs, a call.’
‘I appreciate that.’
‘I mean it.’
‘I know you do.’
The sheriff and the medical examiner both solicitously escorted Carver from the building and stood together as he drove away. Simpson said: ‘That guy’s suffering shock, just like his wife. Worse, maybe. His is delayed. It’ll properly hit him in a couple of days.’
‘I must admit I’ve never seen anyone quite so badly hurt as George from falling into mower blades,’ said Hibbert.
Simpson shook his head, a patronizing you-don’t-know gesture. ‘Happens all the time.’
Carver drove home by the longer, round-about route that took him by the bottom of the lake, a way they rarely used, intent upon landmarks when he approached Northcote’s estate and grunting with empty satisfaction when he identified what he was looking for. The hollow into which George Northcote had been tipped was invisible from the house but it was very much in view from this rarely used back road. In view and easily reached through the simple pale fencing. And from where he was standing the mow-line was distinctly marked, going from this boundary up the incline but stopping at the hollow into which it had tipped. Carver remembered quite clearly that when he’d been there the previous evening all the talk – all the indications – had been that the rig had come in the opposite direction, down the incline.
From the moment of entering financial journalism through a fluke of shall-I-shan’t-I timing, Alice Belling had recognized that the World Wide Web was the trampoline upon which to bounce anywhere she chose through cyberspace.
And had become a far more expert and adept surfer than any on Wakiki beach. There were few firewalls she could not electronically scale or burrow beneath or systems she couldn’t hack into. She justified the intrusion to her own satisfaction by only ever using what she discovered to expose financial wrongdoings, never valid business manoeuvrings. It was an operating integrity with which she had no difficulty and would have been uninterested in that of others had others known, which none did, not even John Carver, from whom she had no other secrets.
Normally she roamed the world and its Web from the comfort and convenience of her SoHo apartment on Princes Street. Today, persuaded by what Carver told her, she decided against working from home, even though she always avoided the possibility of inadvertently leaving her own electronic fingerprint on any detection equipment or device with which she was unfamiliar by never going direct into a target system but always hacking first into an unsuspecting intermediary business or organization to make her penetration via their site.
Alice set out early and was at the door of the Space for Space cybercafe on Canal and West Broadway when it opened, to ensure she didn’t have to queue for a station. She surfed and at random chose the European headquarters booking system of an international hotel chain based in the southern-English town of Basingstoke to be her cut-out host, isolating their password after just five attempted hits and within minutes established her Trojan Horse, her personal password-accessed site undetectable within the chain’s mainframe into which she could come and go without their having the slightest knowledge of her presence.
The obvious search was for the three names Carver had given her. Alice selected Mulder first, in a global sweep, and was startled by the number of immediate hits, just as quickly recognizing the names to be the parent company registration in Grand Cayman. She began the familiar password hunt and after thirty minutes became irritated, as well as impatient, at the repeated rejections from Grand Cayman. Frustrated, she scrolled through the other listings, which curiously covered a large number of the American states, with the addition of overseas subsidiaries in a matching number of European and Asian countries. Obeying the hackers’ lore when confronted with initial refusal, she closed down on Mulder, moving at once to Encomp, and got what appeared to be a virtually identical number of hits, with the same American state and worldwide spread. Innsflow International matched the preceding two. She spent more than an hour trying to get into Encomp and Innsflow in Grand Cayman and was consistently rejected.
‘Mystery upon mystery,’ she said, at once embarrassed at having spoken aloud, although she often did when upon such expeditions from her Princes Street apartment. She answered the manager’s enquiring look with a half wave and a gesture towards her empty coffee cup, genuinely needing a refill after being so effectively and irritatingly defeated.