‘I’ll slow down when everything’s done. We should leave now if we’re going to be on time for tonight.’
He’d forgotten the rescheduled dinner, Carver realized. ‘I’m ready when you are.’
As they got into the elevator Jane said: ‘Janice told me you’re keeping all Dad’s office staff on.’
‘They can be absorbed through the firm easily enough.’
‘I’m glad you’ve done that.’
It was almost as if Jane saw herself with a place in the firm. Carver said: ‘I thought you would be.’
Jane came to an abrupt stop at the door to their car that the driver held open on the pavement outside the Northcote office block. ‘I forgot! Janice said she didn’t know what to do with the valise you’d left in Dad’s office. I told her to put it in her own office safe. Was that right?’
Carver’s sensation was of his stomach being hollowed out. ‘Fine,’ he managed.
‘That the one you brought back from Litchfield?’
‘Yes.’
‘You never did tell me what was in it.’
‘Some stuff he’d taken home to work on.’ Would it still be there if Janice Snow was involved in it all?
Alice Belling didn’t have it all – didn’t think she had half of it – but she had the exhausted satisfaction of believing that she had almost enough to understand. And the other linked companies. She’d abandoned the repeated efforts to get into the Mulder Inc. subsidiaries spread throughout America, instead using the local tax offices and local company registers in twenty-six of the states she’d so far covered. In Abilene, Kansas, she’d found another reference to the Rome-based BHYF International. Independence, Missouri, had given her NOXT, again headquarters in Cheapside, London, England. And as with BHYF it defeated her attempts to hack into it.
As she paid, the persistent manager said: ‘Changed your mind about that drink, Alice?’
She shook her head, smiling. ‘Got a big day tomorrow.’
‘More to do here?’
‘A funeral.’ She had every reason to go. She’d met George Northcote. And liked him. She supposed she should have warned John, but she hadn’t decided when he’d called from East 62nd Street and now there was no way she could call him back.
‘Anyone close?’
She shook her head again. ‘Someone I thought I knew.’
‘Thought you knew?’ queried the man, frowning.
‘Mis-spoken,’ she said. It actually wasn’t mis-spoken at all, she thought.
Stanley Burcher decided it was time to identify John Carver, who shortly was to become his obedient marionette, dancing whenever he pulled a string. And what better – and more unobtrusive – way than becoming a mourner at a funeral that would be attended by so many. It was even right that he should attend. Burcher decided he had known – properly known – George Northcote better than anyone who would be there.
Ten
Alice was at the rear of the cathedral and Carver saw her the moment he entered, Jane at his side disdaining his supporting arm as she’d rejected Dr Newton’s offer of tranquillizers, either for the earlier private entombment or for this very public ceremony. Alice smiled faintly. Carver showed no recognition, although he could have done: they’d officially – publicly – met, more than once, during her article preparation on Northcote. He realized it was the first time that the two women he loved had been together in the same place. The first time, also, that Alice had seen Jane, although that might be difficult, through Jane’s dark veil. Despite the rationalizing, he waited for the discomfort. There wasn’t any. He wished he’d responded to Alice’s smile but it was too late now. He was long past her pew, more than halfway along the nave. An estimate was difficult but Carver guessed there were at least a thousand mourners. Maybe more. Maybe among them were…
He hadn’t paused, at seeing Alice: hadn’t needed to. But he came close now, the briefest, easily hidden, stumble. Of course they would be here, somewhere: whoever they were. What did they look like, mob guys? Did they wear five-hundred – a thousand – dollar suits? Permanent dark glasses? Not move without 3001b bodyguards around them? Or were they – or those who represented them – quite ordinary, the sort of people you never noticed on the streets or on the subway: never saw anywhere, anywhen, because they were professionally and physically so inconspicuous as to be invisible? Carver actually looked around, more intently at the crowd than he’d looked at Alice. And saw no one, no face he could have remembered, no thousand-dollar suits, no dark glasses. Nothing. But he was sure they’d be there.
He was so enclosed in his own thoughts that there was almost another stumble when he momentarily failed to recognize their pew, from which he only recovered by ushering Jane in ahead of him. But so engrossed did Carver remain that everything – the service and the hymns and the eulogy – seemed to be on a suspended, out-of-body level until it was his moment to give the second of the readings, from Corinthians.
It was as if his steps, ascending to the pulpit, awoke him, although it was only when he started reading that he appreciated the hypocrisy of the passage. He began: ‘Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due…’ The cough was disguisable, like everything else. ‘Fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour…’ Carver managed to complete the full text without any further hesitation, wondering as he spoke how many sharks out there in the sea of unseen faces were recognizing, as he was recognizing, the irony of the meaningless words he was mouthing. When he got back to his place Jane felt across and squeezed his hand and whispered: ‘That was wonderful, darling. Thank you.’
There was a second eulogy from the bishop, in which he referred to Northcote’s financial support for a drug rehabilitation centre in Harlem of which until that moment Carver had been unaware, and two more hymns before the procession out of the cathedral. As he passed where Alice stood Carver smiled at her. Now she remained expressionless towards him.
Stanley Burcher stood, anonymous as always, within the crush of people, watching the man he now knew to be John Carver caringly although not touchingly escort his wife from the cathedral. Not as dominantly commanding as George Northcote, not as physically big, but certainly imposing, tailored to illustrate the broad-shouldered, straight-backed stature. Tight, crinkled hair like a tight cap, heavy-nosed face, no jewellery, not even a wedding band. In closer proximity Burcher guessed Carver would emanate the same instinctive ambience of power that came from Charlie Petrie. Burcher was turning, with the existing procession, and intently studied the congregation to try to locate whoever it was to whom Carver had so briefly smiled. If the Deliocis had done as they were told there should be somewhere among this train of people someone preparing for him as full a profile as possible upon John Carver. He hoped he was wrong, about his impression that the man had the arrogance of power. He’d declared himself – and his idea for continuity – now. He’d lose face if he didn’t come through. But then how could he fail to come through, with the backing he had. He didn’t need to go to the wake. He’d shown sufficient respect for George Northcote’s passing. If the stupid bastard hadn’t behaved in the totally unexpected way that he had, he’d still be cutting the grass of his Litchfield pastures.
The receiving line at the Plaza was so interminable that Carver decided he’d miscalculated his one thousand mourners estimate by at least half and he stood, constantly, surreptitiously, looking beyond the person he was immediately greeting and introducing to Jane for the initial sight of Alice, for the first time – at last – experiencing a discomfort he expected to become guilt, which he knew – although he didn’t want to accept – was a feeling he deserved. But never felt, because Alice never appeared in the line. Discomfited though he was, Carver still felt a lurch of disappointment, which increased his discomfort even more.
He and Jane split, to circulate, which Carver realized he would normally have accepted as a necessary duty – which it still was, because the majority of the people with whom he exchanged empty pleasantries were existing clients – but now his concentration was absolute, entirely different from what it once would have been. He was intent upon every name, trying to remember it from the client list, and when he didn’t know one he stopped longer, waiting for one of the company names constantly echoing in his mind, not knowing what he would do if he heard it. Which he didn’t.