Trust No One

Chapter 17

Each time she’d met Jake over the preceding months, things seemed to have moved on. The first drink had turned out to be both less complicated and more successful than she’d really expected. They’d met in some upmarket bar-cum-restaurant just off Deansgate, shared a bottle of wine and eaten a pretentious sandwich. Jake had pitched it perfectly, she thought. Slightly more than just a drink, but nothing as significant as a dinner date. And Jake himself had been the perfect gentleman – almost disappointingly so, she’d thought later. She’d half-expected that he’d try it on at some point and had wondered how she’d react if he did. But the question never arose, not then at least. He’d organized her a taxi back to her flat and seen her off with an entirely decorous kiss on the cheek, but not before she’d agreed to another date.

He was a smooth operator, there was no question of that. Not remotely pushy, but with each step neatly judged. She had no problem with that. After all, her job was to get closer to Jake, in order to get closer in turn to Kerridge’s operation. It looked like Jake intended to make the first part of her task relatively easy. The challenge was to make sure that her judgement remained as sound as Jake’s.

On a personal level, she’d enjoyed the evening. Jake was good company – relaxed, personable, good humoured, an easy conversationalist but also a good listener. All the kinds of qualities, it struck her, that had first attracted her to Liam not so very long ago. She had pushed that thought from her mind. This was just work.

The second dinner felt somehow more significant, though, as if she were taking a step into a new territory. As if, at least in her own head, she’d already crossed a line and knew there was no going back. Once again, she’d had to admire Jake’s perfect pitch. She’d somehow expected that he’d invite her to one of the swanky hotel restaurants adorned with the name of some celebrity chef. Instead, he took her to a small, French-style restaurant tucked away in some dark corner of the Northern Quarter, where the decor initially seemed a little rough and ready, but the atmosphere was relaxed and intimate. The food was unpretentious but excellent, and the wine flowed a little more freely than she’d intended. She still didn’t feel that she was being actively wined and dined. This was nothing more than a pleasant supper between friends, Jake’s manner suggested. But she recognized that the laidback ambiance probably would make her more susceptible to Jake’s charms than if she’d had a starched waiter standing at either shoulder.

Nevertheless, she kept a careful watch on her tongue even as they moved on to a second bottle of wine. She was getting better at this now, chatting amiably about her fictitious life, steering clear of the danger areas. Even so, it required concentration. At one point, she almost found herself talking about one of Liam’s paintings. She bit back the words, shifted the conversation on to safer ground, and felt a sharp stab of guilt at her silent disloyalty.

Jake, she suspected, was treading equally warily, though she could detect no obvious signs of caution in his relaxed demeanour. He talked cheerfully about his work in Kerridge’s empire, but gave no hint that their activities were anything other than entirely legitimate.

‘What’s his main business, then?’ she’d asked at one point, taking the risk of at least a gentle prod into the machinations of Jake’s working life.

‘Like I say, import-export stuff, mainly,’ Jake said, pouring them both another inch or two of wine.

‘All a mystery to me,’ she said. ‘What sort of import-export? I mean, what sort of goods?’

He shrugged. ‘If there’s a market for it, Jeff’ll try to get his finger in the pie. He’s the ultimate middleman, really. Does his bit to facilitate the trade, and creams off a nice slice for himself in the process.’

This sounded like a prepared line, she thought. Jake’s skilful way of deflecting further enquiry.

‘What sort of stuff is it, though? Typically, I mean,’ she prompted.

He regarded her for a moment, as if even this kind of query might be too intrusive. Then he smiled.

‘Oh, God knows. Anything and everything. Brings in a lot of cheap plastic crap from China. Stuff they give away at funfairs or that you see market traders trying to offload on an unsuspecting public. Can be surprisingly lucrative, that stuff. And then there’s electrical goods – again, especially the stuff from China that can undercut the big brands . . .’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘Christ, Marie, I’m even beginning to bore myself now. Under Jeff ’s tutelage, I can talk about this stuff till the cows come home. But you really don’t want to hear it.’

If only you knew, she’d thought at the time. But there was no way that she could convincingly protest that, no, she’d like nothing more than to hear every last detail of Kerridge’s business. Instead, she was forced to change the subject.

‘So what about you, then, Mr Morton? How come a fine figure of a man like you’s still unattached?’

Even as she’d spoken the words, she’d half-regretted them. She didn’t even know for sure that Jake really was unattached, though he’d certainly gone out of his way to give that impression. Mind you, she was acutely conscious that she’d done the same. And even if he really was, she wasn’t sure that she’d really wanted to send out quite such an obvious signal. Not quite so soon, anyway.

Jake seemed unfazed by the question. ‘Just the way it is,’ he said. ‘There’ve been a couple of serious relationships. One of them I’d really thought was – well, the one. But it wasn’t. Just fizzled out. My fault, probably. Bit too ambitious in those days. Couldn’t think of anything but work.’

‘And now you’re different?’

‘Feels like it to me,’ he said. ‘But I’m not the one to judge.’ He left the comment hanging in the air, suggesting that perhaps before long she might have the chance to decide for herself.

As it happened, that evening had ended innocently enough as well. An early finish for a school night, and separate taxis home for the two of them. Another chaste kiss on the cheek, perhaps lingering just a little longer this time. She found herself feeling both relieved and yet disappointed. She wanted to keep this just as it was, she told herself. A friendship with Morton, and no more. But she no longer knew whether that was true.

There was a third date, another dinner, this time just a little more upmarket, a restaurant named after a chef-proprietor whose name she was presumably supposed to recognize. Jake had been in a good mood. Kerridge had just paid all his senior managers a hefty bonus based on the previous year’s business performance.

‘Let’s push the boat out,’ Jake had said. ‘Spend some of the old bugger’s money. It’s not often he gives much away.’

To Marie, the evening felt as if everything had been pushed up a notch or two. Not just in expense, but also in significance. Almost without her noticing, Jake had started to behave as if they were an item. That little bit closer. That little bit more intimate.

They’d duly indulged themselves. Cocktails, a better than usual bottle of wine, brandies. A meal with much greater ambitions than anything they’d enjoyed previously. Then, at the end of the evening, he’d invited her back to his flat for coffee. She’d almost laughed at the cliché, feeling that Jake ought to have been able to come up with something more original. But despite that – despite everything – she knew that she would say yes. And she knew that, from there, it was inevitable that she would stay the night.

She couldn’t fool herself now that she was just doing her job. This was really stepping over the line. She was going well beyond anything the Agency – beyond anything even Welsby, for Christ’s sake – would expect of her. It wasn’t just that she was attracted to Jake. It wasn’t even that she was looking for someone, something, different from Liam. As the weeks went by, her life with Liam was feeling increasingly remote, already slipping into history. Life up here, life with Jake, simply seemed more real.

A couple of weeks after she’d first spent the night with Jake, she’d had another of her regular liaison meetings with Salter. Salter had been his usual self – bumptious, cynical, clearly keen to get the meeting over and done with. But there had been something in his manner that told her he’d detected something, perhaps some change in her manner, some hesitation in the way she responded to his questions. She could feel him verbally prodding her, a covert bully searching for his victim’s vulnerability.

‘What about Morton?’ he’d said. ‘You getting anywhere?’

She tried to detect any edge in his tone, but there was no way to be sure.

‘Maybe,’ she said. She was standing by the window, staring out at the rainy morning, trying to avoid any need to catch Salter’s eye. It was another anonymous suburban hotel, with a panoramic view of the M60 and a retail park beyond.

‘Like you, does he?’ This time, there was a definite leer in Salter’s voice. But that was hardly unusual.

‘I suppose so. We’ve been for a drink a couple of times.’

‘Well done,’ Salter said. ‘Morton keen to . . . make your acquaintance, I imagine.’

She suspected that Salter had bitten back some lewder phrase. ‘I wouldn’t know, Hugh. I lack your masculine insight. He seems to enjoy my company.’

‘And you his?’

She moved from the window and sat down opposite Salter, determined to look him directly in the eye. ‘Well, it’s probably more fun than this, Hugh. I’m just doing a job. Like you asked me to. Remember?’

It helped that, in fact, she was making some progress in that direction. As far as she could tell, Jake had no suspicions about her. He’d begun to acknowledge openly that she was in pretty much the same line of business as he was, running a legit front for a series of criminal services. Quite quickly, once his initial caution had faded, he’d begun to speak to her with surprising openness. It was as if, she thought, he’d been looking for some way of telling the truth, of coming clean about who he was and what he was doing. Well, she could empathize with that. More than once, as Jake had been talking to her, she’d found herself having actively to resist the temptation to respond in the same terms.

She knew that Jake’s account of Kerridge’s business was still heavily sanitized, presumably because Jake thought he was protecting her own interests. He’d begun to talk openly about Kerridge’s dodgy accounting practices – and his own complicity in them – and about the ways in which Kerridge fiddled duty and VAT. He’d even talked about Kerridge’s smuggling operations – the apparently legitimate containers that came in through various British ports full of undeclared goods. But he hadn’t yet touched on any of the seedier aspects of Kerridge’s business. The drugs, the porn. The illegal immigrants. Maybe that was just as well, she’d thought, as she wrestled with her own conscience. She knew these things were part of Kerridge’s business, and she couldn’t believe that Jake wasn’t aware of them. But as long as he said nothing, she could salve her own conscience by giving Jake the benefit of her limited doubt.

Even so, she’d already got some good material from Jake. Not evidence in itself, but at least material that confirmed some of their suspicions or provided them with other channels to explore. She’d passed whatever she had on to Salter, with more than a twinge of guilt. She wondered quite how, with all her good intentions, she’d managed to get herself into this position. Stuck in the middle. Betraying both sides.

Most importantly, as she spent more time with Jake, her initial suspicions were increasingly confirmed. It probably wasn’t so surprising that he’d confided in her so readily. She could tell that he’d had enough. He’d had enough of Kerridge, of Boyle, of that whole world. He’d had enough of being the clean-up man, keeping things in order, maintaining the boundary between the legitimate business and everything that went on behind it.

She never heard him explicitly criticize Kerridge or Kerridge’s business. It was all in his tone, an edge in the way he described his activities. And the way he talked about the future.

‘I’m a chartered fucking accountant,’ he said once, when talking about some delegated task that had particularly infuriated him. ‘I don’t need this. One day, I’ll go off and do my own thing.’

They both knew why, for the moment, he didn’t. He was well paid for his multiple roles – much better than he would be for an equivalent position in any legitimate small business. In any case, leaving Kerridge’s employment wasn’t that simple. Kerridge had a polarized view of the world. You were with him or you weren’t. You didn’t just hand in your notice and waltz over to the competition.

‘So how’d you come to take the job in the first place?’ she’d asked once, as they sat over dinner. They’d been back in the small bistro where they’d enjoyed one of their first evenings together. It felt right, she thought. Dark, discreet. Vaguely clandestine.

‘Don’t think I did. Not knowingly. Just answered an ad. Joined as finance manager, fresh from my accountancy qualifications. Looked like a good deal at the time. Well, it was a good deal. Much better than I could have got anywhere else.’

‘But that was all legit?’

‘Oh, yes. It was a while before I went over to the dark side. But Jeff realized I was a bright boy. Ambitious. Began to use me for all kinds of stuff. I didn’t even know how dodgy some of it was. By the time I did, I was up to my neck in it.’ He stopped and looked at her. ‘What about you, then? How’d you end up doing this sort of stuff? Why not just stick to printing?’

It was first time he’d asked her that kind of question. Previously, he’d tended to maintain a gentlemanly silence about the more dubious aspects of her supposed business.

‘Doesn’t pay enough,’ she said simply. ‘Had a boyfriend who was into wheeling and dealing. He got me involved, and I discovered I was good at it. Better than he was, as it happened. I built up the contacts, and I’ve carried on from there. Why not?’

‘Because one day you’ll get caught,’ he said. ‘We’re both riding our luck. Trick is to get out before it’s too late.’

‘Easier said than done,’ she said.

He had paused, gazing into her eyes. ‘Maybe we can do it together. Somehow.’

‘Maybe. One day.’

She didn’t know what to think. She was just doing her job. And she was having a good time with Jake; she felt alive. But she knew there was no future here. She had tried to get back to Liam at least every second weekend, so her time with Jake had been, for the most part, a midweek affair, snatched evenings and nights with the inevitability of work the next day. If she was honest, her relationship with Jake had felt like more play-acting, a neat adornment to a life that was ultimately fictitious. It was all a game, even if, increasingly, she was aware Jake hadn’t seen it that way.

It was around this time that she’d formally recommended Jake as a potential informant. A Covert Human Intelligence Source, to use the jargon. She had felt uneasy, as if she were exploiting their relationship. But it was his choice, she told herself. All she was doing was opening a door. No one would compel him to walk through it. Salter had taken her recommendation back to the ranch and it had been processed officially, going through all the correct channels.

She had known how it would happen. The way that some skilled handler would make the approach to Jake. Subtle at first, delicate. Testing the ground. Checking whether Marie’s hunch had been correct, without exposing too much. She’d done it herself and she’d been good at it. It was a form of seduction, she supposed. Raising the target’s interest, highlighting all the positives, playing down the negatives. Assessing the target’s motivation so that you could press just the right buttons. Taking it step by step, knowing when to go in harder and when to leave well alone. Slowly, slowly, reeling him in.

She was told officially when Jake had finally gone over. But she knew anyway. Something in his manner changed. He became more closed, a little more wary. He told her less about work, about Kerridge. Another barrier erected between them – translucent, paper-thin, but ultimately impermeable.

It was a painful irony. Both working on the same side, but never able to speak about it. Each, for different reasons, knowing that their relationship was unsustainable, but not knowing how to end it. Continually talking about a future that both knew would never happen.

‘One day soon,’ he’d said, as they finished that last meal, ‘we can do something different. Get away from this.’

She’d sat for a while, her eyes fixed on the window beside their table, watching the eerily deserted streets of this part of the Northern Quarter. It was hard to believe that, barely a street away, there were bustling pubs and bars, a main road full of traffic.

For a second, it had been as if she hadn’t heard him. Then she’d said, her face still blank, ‘Yeah. One day, Jake. One day.’