Two Women by Brian Freemantle

Author:Brian Freemantle
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781453226605
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2002-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

‘Heads up,’ demanded Gene Hanlan. ‘What have we got?’ ‘A crazy,’ dismissed Ginette Smallwood, disillusioned from wasting the past four months investigating tip-offs from Federal Plaza walk-ins who’d turned out to be exactly that, initially convincing crazies who’d evolved good-sounding stories to get their fifteen minutes of fame. And to get her the reputation of someone who couldn’t differentiate fact from phoney if she’d had Pinocchio on her shoulder.

‘Doesn’t sit right,’ dismissed Hanlan. He twisted to the permanently displayed street map of Manhattan on the board behind his desk, upon which red marker flags were already displayed. ‘We start at the Port Authority terminal … maybe she’s an out-of-towner …’

‘Or maybe she’s an in-town, uptown girl who chose the terminal for good reason,’ interrupted Patrick McKinnon, the rotund, retirement-planning third field agent.

‘Maybe an in-town girl indeed,’ accepted Hanlan, still at the wall map. He tracked his finger along the electronically traced route that Alice Belling had taken. ‘Sure as hell knew the city’s transport system, according to the timings …’ He turned away from the wall chart, gesturing to the separately marked tapes: the only incomplete one was Alice’s first, before they’d been ready. ‘We need to get the official opinion from the mumbo-jumbo thumb-suckers at Quantico but I don’t hear any of that as a crazy. Stressed, sure. If I didn’t think that, I would mark her as a crazy and we wouldn’t be sitting around here now, talking about it.’

‘Let’s hold for a moment on Quantico,’ suggested Ginette. Among its several disciplines, Quantico was the FBI’s Maryland installation for offender profiling, where most of the psychological ancillaries were concentrated, including voice-print analysts.

‘We’re holding on everything for the moment,’ assured Hanlan. ‘But I’ve got a gut feeling. The Litchfield shit-kicking sheriff admits George Northcote’s death is odd, despite what the coroner says. The house gets invaded like Baghdad on open day. And anyone here remember a hanging suicide breaking so many arms and legs from a two-foot fall?’

Neither of the other two answered the question. The querulous woman said: ‘If mysterious Martha knows so much, how come she doesn’t have a Family name?’

‘Because she doesn’t have a Family name!’ threw back McKinnon, irritably. ‘You heard what she said. I read it that she knows some but not all. Which I also read as meaning we need to get involved here …’ He paused, for the effect. ‘Organized crime … murder … money laundering … You really need me to spell out the career advantages of having our names at the top of the list of this sort of investigation?’ His pension increased by $150 a month if he got promoted one more grade.

‘Not for a moment,’ grinned Hanlan, whose mind had begun to calculate that as early as Alice’s second telephone contact.

‘What’s the essential for the perfect con?’ challenged Ginette.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ exploded McKinnon, who’d spent an unconsummated month hitting on the girl – and his ex-wife’s entire month’s alimony on dinners and Broadway theatres – before she’d told him she was gay.

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