John Carver was up by seven, too, so he was fully awake when Al Hibbert telephoned from Litchfield. Hibbert said: ‘Everything’s wrecked, John. I’ve never seen a place stripped like it. It’s terrible. Bastards!’
Stanley Burcher was irritated at the need constantly to cross the river to meet the Deliocis but acknowledged that he had to show the respect of going to them, on their territory. He also acknowledged that he’d gone too far, confronting the old man as he had, at the last encounter. He knew the New York Families would back him, if Emilio Delioci protested. But they’d be unsettled by the way he’d spoken to a Don, even a minor one. It was essential that he recover by replacing Northcote with Carver to keep the system working smoothly.
The Thomson Avenue restaurant wasn’t open but they were waiting for him in the back room, the old man, the elder son and Family heir, Enrico Delioci, and Paolo Brescia. Burcher wondered idly if they had cots in a closet somewhere, so that they were able to sleep in the damned place. He said: ‘So what did you find?’
‘Nothing.’ It was Enrico who replied, to spare his father the embarrassment.
‘Nothing!’ echoed Burcher, disbelieving. ‘There must have been something.’ It would be he who switched the operation to John Carver, so there wouldn’t be any need in the future to deal with this amateur crew who believed muscle was the answer to everything: in future it would just be he and Carver and all the power-by-association that the arrangement would give him.
‘I was there,’ said Brescia. ‘We took the place apart, everything. Kept the cash and valuables, to make it look like a burglary. But there was none of the documentation or the names you gave us.’
‘Then who’s got it?’ demanded Burcher.
‘Maybe it wasn’t there,’ wheezed Emilio Delioci.
Burcher looked at the son. ‘You made the call, telling him you were sending collectors, right?’
‘Right,’ agreed the darkly saturnine man.
‘What did he say… the exact words?’
‘That he’d talked it all out with you. That there wasn’t any point in our coming because there was nothing to collect.’
‘What about when your people were trying to persuade him?’
Brescia said: ‘He died without saying anything about documents. But Carver knows. That’s what Northcote said – Carver knows.’
‘Let’s not forget the woman, the personal assistant,’ said Enrico. ‘You want we should ask her?’
A trick, Burcher instantly realized. They were putting the responsibility on to him, covering themselves if anything went wrong as it had up in Litchfield. ‘Not like you asked Northcote. Looks like you got away with it but I don’t want to stretch coincidence unless we have to.’
‘What then?’ demanded the old man.
Another trick, thought Burcher. It really hadn’t been a mistake insisting his word was the word of the Families. Burcher said: ‘I guess I – and the people I speak for – have to get personally involved.’ As much as he wanted to do that and pick up the recognition, Burcher felt a stir of uncertainty as he spoke.
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.’