‘We will go forward,’ declared Enrico, looking at the lawyer. ‘But without you. Northcote was ours. The operation was ours. We’ll put it right.’
Burcher didn’t have to force the derisive laugh. ‘That’s not a decision for you or for this Family. Don Emilio has quite rightly identified the potential risk that exists, to every Family in this country. It is they – in the form of the New York ruling Families – who should decide upon who should resolve the problem…’ He staged the pause. ‘… and who should not. Which is why, before coming here tonight, I requested a meeting with those Family representatives. You will do nothing until you hear from them. Through me.’
No one was patronizing him any more, Burcher recognized. Just as he recognized that having made the challenge he had to survive it.
Eighteen
Jane Carver knew they were talking about her, could hear most of what they were saying and recognized from it that the stranger was irritated with Paul Newton but it didn’t seem to matter, although she wished they weren’t doing it as if she wasn’t there, non-existent despite being propped up between them against supporting pillows. She’d never liked being ignored. She disliked even more how their faces kept receding, blurring like their words, and then coming back so that she could properly see and hear them again. It was important to hear what they were saying because it was about her.
‘Mrs Carver?’
Jane turned towards the stranger, who’d sat by the bed. It was one of her clear moments and she could see he had a heavy, drooping moustache and very thick black-rimmed glasses. He was bald at the front but his hair was long at the back.
‘Mrs Carver? Jane?’
‘Yes?’
‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yes.’ What sort of stupid question was that? Of course she could hear him now: she hoped the words wouldn’t drift off, making it difficult to hear them again.
‘My name’s Mortimer, Peter Mortimer. I’m a psychiatrist.’
Jane smiled but didn’t bother to say anything. She couldn’t think of anything to say. Why was there a psychiatrist, as well as Paul Newton? He was their doctor in Manhattan, not somebody with a drooping moustache and long hair.
‘What did I say my name was?’
Jane frowned. ‘Mortimer.’ Then she smiled. ‘Cat’s name.’
The man smiled back. ‘That’s good. I want to talk to you about something. Will you talk with me?’
‘What about?’
‘An accident. There’s been an accident.’
Jane’s face creased, briefly. ‘I know.’
From the other side of the bed Newton said: ‘I told her last night: tried to tell her.’
‘What do you know?’ asked Mortimer, ignoring the intervention.
‘My father.’
‘No, Jane. Another accident.’
‘What other accident?’
‘John. John’s had a very bad accident.’
She shook her head against the pillow. ‘No. It was my father. He’s dead.’
‘John’s dead, Jane. A street accident.’
She shook her head again, wishing his face would come back so that she could see and hear him properly. ‘It was Dad. Dad died. It was his tractor.’ Where was John? She couldn’t remember seeing him last night. Just the nurses fussing, holding her hand, stroking her hand, talking in low voices that she couldn’t hear, giving her pills to take. She hadn’t liked it. ‘Where’s John?’
‘Dead,’ insisted Mortimer. ‘It was a bad traffic accident. A truck.’
‘You’re not listening to me!’ Jane insisted back. ‘It’s Dad. He’s dead. What time is it?’
‘Quarter of ten,’ said Paul Newton, from the other side of the bed.
‘John’s at the office,’ said Jane. ‘That’s where he’ll be. Get him there if you want him.’
The man with the moustache stood and went to the end of the bed. Newton followed. Mortimer said: ‘You see! She’s blocked. Chlorpromazine was too strong.’
‘I thought it was what she needed, in the short term,’ said Newton.
‘I can’t hear you!’ protested Jane. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Your father,’ avoided Mortimer. To Newton he said: ‘Everything I’ve read in her file and that you’ve told me indicates Jane’s a strong-willed, self-reliant woman. Chlorpromazine is entirely the wrong medication. On a strong-willed person it’s like a medical lobotomy. I don’t think Jane needs medication, apart perhaps from the mildest of tranquillizers. What she needs is counselling.’
‘After losing her father and her husband!’ demanded Newton, resenting the professional criticism, although it was he who’d called the psychiatrist in, as worried as the nurses at Jane’s near-catatonic reaction to the drug. ‘My diagnosis was that her grief needed to be suppressed.’
‘It didn’t,’ rejected Mortimer. ‘It needed to be faced, with the help of counselling. We should have talked first.’
‘Now we are talking,’ said the doctor, still hostile. ‘What’s your suggestion?’
‘Getting her off chlorpromazine right away, which of course we can’t,’ said Mortimer. ‘We’ve got to wean her off, gradually reducing the dosage.’ He spoke now looking at the duty nurse. ‘Make sure everyone on your twenty-four-hour roster knows. Reduce by a quarter each day. That understood?’
‘Completely,’ said the woman.
‘I’ll come in, every day, to monitor the withdrawal. I want to judge the time when she’ll comprehend. Which she’s obviously got to do by the time of the funeral.’
‘I’ll come in every day, too,’ said the family physician.
‘Anything else we need to do, apart from reduce the chlorpromazine?’ asked the nurse.
‘Get her out of bed,’ said Mortimer. ‘She’s not an invalid, just mentally closed-down. Maybe take her for a walk in the park, introduce her to the outside world she’s got to get back into.’
‘There’re no relatives,’ said Newton. ‘She’s by herself now.’
‘So are thousands of people in this city,’ said Mortimer. ‘Adjusting isn’t going to be easy: I don’t know – no one knows – how long it might take. But however long, that’s what it’s got to take. Adult, strong-willed adjustment, not chemical barriers. That’s the way to dependency and irrational fixations. As closed-off as she is – and it’s a judgement at this early stage largely based upon your case notes – I don’t have Jane Carver in my book as a dependent person.’
She wasn’t, decided Jane, who’d only heard snatches of the exchange and therefore didn’t properly understand what they were talking about. Except that it was about her and that she wasn’t included and that not including her was very definitely rude. She’d complain to John when he got home.
‘So how’d it go?’ greeted Patrick McKinnon as Hanlan entered the Federal Plaza office, forewarned it hadn’t gone well because Hanlan hadn’t called before leaving Washington officially to establish a formal investigation.
The agent-in-charge slumped down into his chair, his back to the cacophony of Broadway, seeking explanations and maybe justifications for himself. Hopefully, Hanlan said: ‘Our girl called?’
‘No,’ said McKinnon, shortly.
Hanlan looked at Ginette. ‘Washington is with you. She’s a crazy, got lucky with coincidence. No sanction to proceed any further, unless she comes in with a whole bunch of incontrovertible evidence. No bullshit with newspaper cuttings or conversations with people she can’t identify; the usual crazy stuff. Total refusal of any legal warrant application to look into the activities of George W. Northcote International. Washington counsel say a firm with Northcote’s clout would sue us from here to China, with tollbooths on the way.’ He paused. ‘It’s political and it sucks.’