Trust No One

Chapter 6

She’d first met Jake Morton at one of Jeff Kerridge’s charity events. It had been during her first few months undercover, when she was working to build herself a network and some credibility, using all the contacts that Salter and her predecessor had passed on to her. It was hard work. She found herself parked endlessly on the phone, trying to set up meetings, pitch her wares, drum up some interest. In the end, she was little different from any other business start-up, struggling to get herself noticed in a market where everyone had a million better things to do than listen to her.

Slowly, though, she was making progress. Her persistence, along with a glowing recommendation from her predecessor, had secured her a meeting with Jeff Kerridge, supposedly to discuss his printing needs. Kerridge had ducked out at the last minute, presumably to demonstrate that he was far too busy for the likes of her. But she’d had a decent meeting with some not-too-junior underling and had come away with a trial print order and some heavy hints about other, less legitimate services that they might consider. More surprisingly, a week or so later, she’d received a lavishly printed invitation to a charity dinner that Kerridge was hosting at some country house hotel in deepest moneyed Cheshire.

‘You better go for it, sis,’ Salter had said. ‘It’ll be Kerridge’s first test. If you’re not generous enough towards his favoured bunch of disadvantaged kiddies, you can kiss any future orders goodbye. Just don’t go donating too much if you’re expecting to claim it on expenses.’

Even in less tense circumstances, this kind of event would have been her idea of hell in a posh frock. As it was, she was still finding her feet, working out where to pitch things. The first part of the evening was a charity auction, dominated by macho local businessmen trying to outdo each other to buy football shirts autographed by United or City players even Marie had vaguely heard of. Through a mix of boredom and embarrassment, she ended up bidding far too much for a designer dress donated by some local upmarket clothier. But no one seemed to mind, or even to notice much. By then the drink had been flowing freely and – as everyone kept reminding her – it was all in a good cause. The main good cause being, as far as she could make out, their own individual business interests.

At the formal dinner that followed, she was amused to find herself seated at the top table, just a few seats along from Kerridge himself. She had no illusions about why she’d been accorded this honour, or indeed why she’d been invited in the first place. In this world, unattached, semi-presentable women were always at a premium. She’d spent most of her time batting off half-hearted passes made by overweight businessmen whose wives were generally no more distant than the other side of the room.

‘Why do we put ourselves through it, eh?’ the man on her left said, as if echoing her thoughts. ‘All this crap.’

‘It’s all in a good cause,’ she said, echoing the mantra of the evening.

‘Oh, right,’ the man said. ‘Nearly forgot that. Surprised nobody mentioned it earlier. Jake Morton, by the way.’

He wasn’t exactly George Clooney, but he was an improvement on most of the men in the room. Trim with neat, slightly greying hair, an expression of amused tolerance on a slightly battered face. A former rugby player, from the look of it. A few years older than her, probably, but not enough to matter.

Jesus. She had to keep reminding herself that she wasn’t single. It was one of the problems of this job. You threw yourself wholeheartedly into a fictitious life, and soon it seemed more real than the world you’d left behind.

‘Marie Donovan,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘You bought the dress,’ he said. ‘Must have thought it was a bloody good cause to pay that much.’ He leaned back in his chair and eyed her body appraisingly. ‘Mind you, it’ll look great on you.’

She thought that she ought to feel offended, but his tone was good-natured, perhaps even slightly satirical, rather than straightforwardly lecherous. More to the point, he was attractive enough for her to feel mildly flattered.

‘At that price, I’d hope so,’ she said. ‘At that price, I’d expect it to look good on you.’

He laughed. Around them, bored-looking waitresses were serving the starter – some overdressed variant on a prawn cocktail.

‘I get the impression this isn’t your natural environment,’ he said.

‘Is it anybody’s?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He gestured towards the rows of tables in front of them. ‘Look at them. Enjoying every moment. Every mouthful of rubber chicken.’

‘Rubber prawn,’ she pointed out. ‘Rubber chicken’s next.’ She was beginning to find herself intrigued by this man. ‘So – why are you here?’

He pointed along the table. ‘Work for Jeff. Three-line whip for his top team.’

That was interesting, she thought. She hadn’t registered the name at first, but now she recalled her briefing notes, all the details that she’d painstakingly squirrelled away in her memory. James Morton. Apparently known as Jake. Director of finance for Kerridge’s legitimate holding company. But rumoured also to be a significant player in the other, more clandestine parts of Kerridge’s business. Definitely someone worth getting to know.

‘He does a lot of this, does he? This is my first time.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, that’s Jeff for you. Likes to do his bit for the community.’

‘Very commendable.’

‘Especially his own community. Local councillors. Business types. People he wants to get onside. Customers. The big customers. And a few suppliers like yourself, if you’re very good.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘You know who I am, then?’

‘You’re the print lady, aren’t you? Came highly recommended, I understand.’ There was an undertone to his words that was unmistakable.

‘Glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘I hope I’ve lived up to expectations.’ She’d already completed the trial order, ahead of schedule and at what she knew was a very competitive price.

‘Done some good work so far, from what I hear. Printing, and all that.’

‘And all that,’ she agreed.

‘Jeff appreciates a good supplier. So far I’m told you’ve done well.’

‘Not the cheapest, but the best.’

‘Something like that.’ He smiled. ‘Mind you, don’t get me wrong. Jeff appreciates a cheap supplier as well.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind. And that you’re the finance director.’

‘Got me sussed too, then? Well, yes, that’s my job.’ He paused. ‘For what it’s worth.’

‘Quite a bit, I’d have thought.’

‘It pays well enough, if that’s what you mean. Though maybe not enough to compensate for evenings like this.’

‘And I was trying so hard to be sparkling,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘Funnily enough, the evening’s rather brightened up in the last few minutes.’

‘That’ll be the prawn cocktail.’

He lifted his glass of white wine. ‘Yeah, and the Chateau Toilet Duck. Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’

That had been it, she thought. That trivial, jokey salutation. As they’d clinked their glasses, she’d felt as if something had passed between them. Some coded, inarticulate message. Some unspoken pact. Both knowing more than they were able to say. Not quite trust. Perhaps, at that point, nothing more than a balance of suspicion. But something.

That was where it had started.

That night, too, was the first time she really had an inkling of what she might be letting herself in for. It was the first opportunity she’d had to get anywhere close to her key targets – the smooth Jeff Kerridge and his much rougher number two, Pete Boyle. She already felt that she half-knew them from the files and reports that she’d worked her way through in preparation for the assignment, but meeting them in the flesh, after everything she’d read, was something else again. Everything she’d read indicated that, appearances aside, they were an unpleasant pair. Kerridge had built a business empire by ruthlessly jamming his hands into every pie he could find, legal or otherwise. He was what passed for the brains of the outfit, running a complex network of on- and off-shore companies that allowed him to funnel cash wherever he wanted for tax avoidance and laundering purposes. The forensic accounting team had tracked through some of those movements, but they didn’t yet have enough to be confident that a case would stick.

Boyle was a different matter. A hard-case from Hulme who, by dint of being that bit brighter than his associates, had managed to claw his way up to near the top of the pile. The word was that Boyle looked after most of Kerridge’s dirty work, and that some of that work could get very dirty indeed. Unlike Kerridge, who’d managed to stay squeaky-clean, Boyle did have a record, though it was mainly petty stuff from his youth. These days, he tended not to risk messing up his own Hugo Boss suit, if he could pay others to do the work for him. They were getting closer with Boyle. They’d picked up two or three of his associates over the last year or so on a variety of charges – GBH, demanding money with menaces, manslaughter in one case. No one had actually blown the whistle on Boyle, but they were gradually piecing together enough evidence to collar him. He’d left his metaphorical fingerprints in a few too many places.

At the dinner, true to form, Kerridge had been charm personified, chatting amiably with Marie during the earlier part of the evening. He had an old-fashioned manner which stayed just the right side of flirtatious. Probably just as well, Marie thought, eyeing Kerridge’s fearsome-looking wife. ‘Ah, Miss Donovan,’ he’d said. ‘The printer. I’ve heard some very good things about you. Your work comes highly recommended.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘I hope I manage to live up to my reputation.’

‘I’m sure you will.’ He turned and waved in the general direction of his wife, who was standing just a few inches behind him. ‘My wife, Helen. This is Miss Donovan—’

‘Marie.’

‘Marie, who’s handling some printing for us at the moment. You two should get together. I’m sure you’d have a lot to discuss.’

The two women gazed at each other with expressions that confirmed their obvious lack of any common ground. Helen Kerridge was a certain sort of Cheshire lady, Marie thought. Well-off, self-made, dismissive of those who thought their characters might be defined by something other than material possessions. Marie could imagine the older woman patrolling the upmarket clothes shops and restaurants of Wilmslow or Alderley Edge, killing days that had little other purpose.

‘We could do lunch sometime,’ she said, mischievously.

Helen Kerridge gazed at her for a long moment without speaking. ‘Sometime,’ she said finally, in a tone that suggested they should aim for one of the chillier days in hell.

Marie had seen Boyle only from the other side of the room. He was a broad muscular man, who clearly still devoted considerable time and energy to working out. He looked awkward in his undoubtedly expensive suit, a glass of fizzy wine in hand, with the air of a man who would much rather have been propping up some bar downing a pint of lager. Every now and then, his eyes scanned the room, his shaven head twisting on his thick neck, as if keeping watch for signs of trouble.

Marie’s only real objective for the night had been to begin building her own profile, become acquainted with one or two of the right people, get her own face recognized. She’d wondered whether to approach Boyle, but couldn’t find a reasonable opening. In the end, she’d been happy enough chatting to Jake Morton, who seemed the most promising route into the Kerridge empire.

Towards the end of the evening, when they’d finished eating and had moved on to brandy and liqueurs, Jake made his excuses and slipped away from the table. ‘Got a three-line whip for a debrief with Jeff,’ he’d said. ‘He likes to make sure we’ve all done our bit.’

She’d found herself stuck with some pompous old fool who ran a haulage company in Macclesfield, nodding politely while he ranted on about fuel duty and VAT. After a while, while he’d gone off to secure himself another brandy, she’d slipped away from the table herself and made her way out into the hotel lobby.

She’d only ever been a social smoker and it was years since she’d had a cigarette at all. There were moments, though, when she could envy the little amicable groups congregating around the front doors of the hotel. She slipped past them and walked out into the car park, enjoying the cold of the night air after the alcoholic fug of the function room. It was a chilly night, but the sky was clear and full of stars. She paused for a moment, enjoying the relative silence. The hotel was in the hills, on the edge of the Pennines, and, as she crossed to the edge of the car park, she could see the lights of Manchester and the Mersey Basin spread out below.

She had been standing for a few moments staring at the view when she heard the sound of raised voices behind her. She turned, peering into the darkness. There was a small group of men standing twenty or thirty metres from her, clustered in the lee of a large 4x4 parked near the entrance to the car park. She could make out the flicker of cigarette ends, the sound of some sort of altercation.

Her curiosity piqued, she moved slowly and silently around the edge of the car park, keeping close to the fence, trying to hear what was being said. None of her business, probably, but she shouldn’t miss the opportunity to pick up anything that might be of value.

She stopped suddenly and held her breath. Now she was closer, she could make out Jake Morton’s voice. She took another few steps then peered out from behind the row of parked cars.

It was Morton, no question. And next to him was the unmistakable bulky silhouette of Pete Boyle. There was another figure facing them, but she couldn’t make out his face.

It was Boyle’s slightly louder voice that she’d first heard. ‘It’s all right for you, desk monkey,’ he was saying now. ‘It’s not you taking the risks.’

‘From what I see, it’s not you either, Pete,’ Morton said. ‘So don’t come the martyr. I just say that we should play it cautious. If we go off half-cocked, we just risk drawing more attention.’

‘Bugger caution. I’ve tried being cautious. That’s why we’re in the shit.’

‘We’re not in the shit, not yet. We just have to be careful, that’s all.’

‘We’ve had three people picked up in the last three months. Bail refused in every case. Somebody’s grassing.’ She could see Boyle drop his cigarette butt and crush it hard under his shoe. He looked as if he was envisaging performing the same action on some more animate object.

‘We don’t know that,’ Morton said. ‘Shit happens.’

‘It’s happening too often lately. We need to do something. Send a fucking signal.’

‘We can’t take somebody out just because you think he might be a grass—’

‘Why the fuck not?’ Boyle said. ‘Even if we’re wrong, we’ve sent a message.’

‘We’ve sent a message that we’re a bunch of fuckwits who don’t know what we’re doing.’

Marie had moved a step or two closer, listening hard. It was the kind of stuff they needed to get on surveillance, she thought. Which was presumably why Boyle and Morton were having this conversation out in the car park, in case they were bring tapped in their hotel rooms or cars.

‘Come on, lads. Bit of teamwork. We’re all pulling in the same direction.’ It was the third figure who’d remained silent up to this point. Kerridge himself, she realized. He gently interposed himself between the two younger men with the air of a boxing referee who can see the bout slipping out of control. ‘You’ve both got a point.’

There was nothing in what he was saying, she thought, but he had a natural, easy-going authority that had immediately reduced the other two men to silence. His own voice was unexpectedly soft, so that Marie had to strain to make out his words.

‘Way I see it,’ Kerridge went on, ‘we’ve got some big deals coming up. Drugs, especially. That Rotterdam consignment’s the biggest we’ve done to date. Can’t afford for that one to go tits up.’

Marie made a mental note of the reference to Rotterdam. It was quite possible that her relevant colleagues were already on to it, but if not it would be another piece in the jigsaw.

‘Too fucking right—’ Boyle began. But Kerridge was continuing to speak, halting Boyle without raising his voice.

‘But that’s Jake’s point. If we go stirring up trouble now, without knowing what we’re about, that might be misinterpreted. We’re moving into a different league with some of this new stuff. We don’t want our suppliers to think we’re a bunch of amateurs.’

‘I don’t—’

‘I know you’ve got the best interests of the business at heart, Pete. And I’m not saying you’re wrong.’ He paused, in a way that seemed theatrical, though Marie could see that he was lighting a cigarette. ‘But we need to get our ducks in a row. Do a bit of digging. If there is a grass, then, yeah, we dispose of him. Quick and clean. Take him out.’ Another pause. ‘I’ve no problem with that.’

Marie suddenly realized that she was wearing only her thin evening gown and its silly, largely decorative jacket to protect her from the cold. Even so, it wasn’t the temperature that sent a chill down her spine. It was the clinical language. Dispose. Take him out. She was finally beginning to recognize the reality that she was dealing with.

She pulled her useless jacket more closely around her shoulders and moved another step or two, watching the three men. She was reminded, grotesquely, of a bunch of middle managers discussing a redundancy. Except that in this world, termination had a more literal meaning.

Up to now, though she hadn’t realized it, this had felt like a game. Like another of Winsor’s exercises. It was hard. It was a challenge. But there were no real consequences. If she failed, it might set her career back a notch or two. Maybe cause her a bit of feminist embarrassment.

But of course it was much more than that. She was dealing with people who, if they thought she was a threat, wouldn’t hesitate to deal with her. Take her out. Dispose of her.

Jesus. For the first time, she began to wonder whether she was really up to this.

‘What do you think, Jake?’ she heard Kerridge say. ‘You OK with that?’

Morton had taken a step or two backwards, she thought, as if he were trying to disassociate himself from the other two. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part. She’d liked Jake, maybe even been attracted by him. She didn’t want to think that he was really part of all this.

‘It’s the sensible way,’ he said. ‘We don’t want any more screw-ups.’

And that was it. That was all he said, leaving her in the air. Not knowing whether he was really on board or just going through the motions. She knew what she wanted to believe, but she wasn’t sure what she really did.

She heard no more of what the men said, because there was a sudden sweep of headlights from beyond the car park entrance. She glanced at the luminous face of her watch. Nearly midnight. This would be the first of the taxis arriving to ferry guests home.

She was about to slip back along the edge of the cars when the taxi pulled into the car park, turning to the left to arc round towards the hotel entrance. She was caught momentarily in the full blaze of its headlights, dazzled by the glare. She stopped, breathless, feeling like an unprepared actor gripped centre-stage by a spotlight. She was sure, in that moment, that everyone could see her. Kerridge and his cronies. The taxi driver. The clustered smokers.

Then the lights swept by and she was back in darkness. Kerridge, Boyle and Morton were tracking back towards the hotel now, apparently oblivious to her presence. Beyond the car park, lower on the hill, she could see the flicker of more cars arriving.

She paused by the car park fence, safe now in the night, waiting for her heart to stop pounding.

Shit, she thought. I’m really not cut out for this.

‘Have you any real grounds to think so?’ Salter had asked a few days later when she’d first brought up her thoughts about Morton. She remembered Salter slumped back in the hotel armchair, his feet propped up on the coffee table. It was impressive, she thought, the way he managed to sound simultaneously both scathing and uninterested. As if he couldn’t quite be bothered to tell her what a stupid suggest ion it was.

She shrugged, then made a show of pouring herself another cup of coffee, ignoring Salter’s empty cup. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Just a hunch.’

‘Ah. A hunch.’ Salter rolled the word round in his mouth, his expression suggesting that he might be about to spit it out physically. ‘One of those.’

‘Woman’s intuition, Hugh. You know how it is. We’re just better at that kind of stuff.’ She smiled. ‘You lot have parallel parking instead.’

‘Well, I’ll bear your suggestion in mind, sis.’

‘That’s all I’m asking, Hugh. Just keep him on your radar. There’s something about him.’

‘Good looking, is he?’

‘Why? You jealous, Hugh? Don’t worry, he’s not in your league.’ She shook her head, wondering why they had to go through all this crap. Just a bit of banter. Show that she was one of the lads. Or as close to being one of the lads as she was ever likely to get.

That had been her third liaison meeting with Salter. She made a point of using the word ‘liaison’, which was how it was described in the formal procedures they were both supposed to follow. Hugh preferred the more old-fashioned term, ‘supervision’, presumably because it made him feel more important. He might have been designated as her ‘buddy’ up here, but they were the same pay grade. She had every intention of reminding him of that if he showed signs of getting uppity.

The venue had been yet another anonymous business hotel, this one just off the M56 near the airport. The small meeting room was, as always, nothing more than a semi-converted bedroom. Not her ideal choice of location for a meeting with Hugh Salter, though so far he’d always been on what presumably passed for his best behaviour.

She didn’t know quite why she’d mentioned Morton at all. It was partly because, at least to her own ears, her achievements to date had sounded pretty thin. OK, she’d got the business up and running, which was no mean feat for someone of her inexperience. And it had been a tough few weeks. She’d arrived at the print shop on her first day to find that Gordon, the supposedly ultra-reliable, long-serving, ever-willing assistant she’d inherited with the business, had decided that he was happy to turn his hand to anything except working for a woman. Her first task on her first day, therefore, had been to accept Gordon’s resignation. Her second had been to call the Job Centre.

For the last couple of weeks, as well as the endless phone calls to drum up business, she’d found herself interviewing a steady stream of no-hopers, most of whom couldn’t be bothered even to pretend they had an interest in printing. Fortunately, Gordon had grudgingly agreed to hang around for a couple of weeks to keep the show on the road through a stream of mildly sexist grumbling. And, a couple of days before, she’d finally managed to find a suitable candidate to succeed him, Joe Maybury, an experienced printer who’d just been made redundant from some print shop in Stockport. She was just waiting for the Agency to run the criminal records checks – even with the day-to-day stuff, as Salter kept reminding her, you couldn’t be too careful– before she offered him the job. So, as she told Salter, things were looking up.

But she was acutely conscious that all this was mundane stuff. Just laying the foundations. Getting her legend up to scratch. It was all necessary. You couldn’t afford to cut corners at this stage. But by itself it was nothing. She had made only minimal progress in starting to build the relationships that would really matter – with the key players in the local underworld. Sure, she’d followed up all the introductions that had been provided to her, with some initial success. Some, like Kerridge, had agreed to see her. Some had made appropriately polite noises, and would probably be in touch if and when they needed her services. One or two had, to date, ignored her.

That was actually a decent strike rate, she told herself. She was particularly pleased to have made real progress with Kerridge, who was, after all, the biggest fish in this northern pond. Even there, though, a small voice whispered in her ear that all she had was the trial order for some legit business and the opportunity to hand over some money at a charity do.

It was that, probably, that made her mention Jake Morton. But what she’d said was true enough. She did have a feeling about him. And she knew from experience that her feelings in such matters were often right.

‘I’m not saying we should approach him now,’ she said. ‘I’m just saying keep tabs on him.’

She suspected that Salter was more interested than he was letting on. If there was anything in what she was saying, it could turn out to be a big deal. And if there were any big deals in the offing, Salter wanted to be the one doing the dealing. He’d be careful to ensure his backside was covered, but he’d want to grab more than his fair share of any credit that was going.

Salter picked up the coffee jug, weighed it briefly in his hand, and then looked disapprovingly at Marie’s recently filled cup.

‘You really think he might be interested?’

‘I really don’t know, Hugh. Like I say, it’s no more than a hunch. It was just something in the way he spoke—’

‘What did he actually say?’

She thought back to her brief, inconsequential, mildly flirtatious conversation with Morton at the charity dinner. What had he actually said? Not much that she could put her finger on. Not much beyond polite small talk.

‘It wasn’t anything he said, Hugh. He’s not an idiot. He’s not going to start blethering on about Kerridge and Boyle and the whole shooting match to someone he’s never met before, is he?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ Salter agreed. ‘So what makes you think he’s pissed off?’

‘Oh, God, Hugh. You know how it is. He makes a joke or two that sound like they’re not quite jokes. His tone of voice. Things he doesn’t say. I don’t know.’

Salter was still toying with the coffee jug, as if he were hoping that it might magically refill itself or, more likely, that Marie might take the hint and order another round.

‘It’s always delicate, you know. If we get it wrong – if we even time it wrong – we’ve blown it for good.’

‘I know that, Hugh. I’m not an idiot either.’ She knew it very well, although unlike Salter she’d never worked as a front-line handler. Her intelligence role had involved collating data on potential intelligence sources – informants, grasses, whatever you wanted to call them. She knew how difficult it was to get the good ones on board, and how sensitive the seduction process had to be. Not the small fry – the ones who’d slip you some usually worthless titbit of information in exchange for fifty quid in untraceable fivers. But the ones who really mattered. The ones who could offer you real access to the people at the top.

There weren’t many of them, but they were critical. In the end, these people were often the lynchpins of the Agency’s painstaking efforts to build a watertight case against some target villain. They’d be major sources of evidence, maybe even key witnesses in the prosecution case. Success or failure might depend on what they were prepared to say or do, whether they were able to hold their nerve. They all knew the risks they were taking. Whatever steps the Agency might take to protect them – new faces, new identities, new lives – in the end they’d be left turning in the wind. Without friends. Without a past. Maybe without a future.

Christ knew why they did it. Sometimes it was for the money, which could be substantial, but rarely sufficient to justify the risk. More often, it was an insurance policy for those who thought their criminal days might be numbered. They seized on the promise that, when the proverbial did eventually hit the fan, they’d be looked after. If you already suspected that the ship might be heading for the rocks, then becoming a rat became a more attractive career option. Most often, though, from everything that Marie had seen, it was personal. Villains were remarkably persistent in holding a grudge, often for reasons that might be imperceptible or incomprehensible to the civilian world. Grassing someone up could be a highly satisfying form of revenge, at least for the few moments before you recognized the full consequences of what you’d done.

Occasionally, though, the reasons were more honourable. From time to time, a villain might genuinely see the light or get religion or simply realize that life didn’t have to be that way. That was the hunch she’d had about Jake Morton. That, in his heart, this wasn’t the life he’d chosen. That somehow, somewhere, he’d been suckered into it, drawn by the rewards it offered, and that now he was trapped because, quite simply, there was no way out. Once you’d stepped over that line, there was no easy way back. But, even on the basis of one half-flirtatious encounter, something had told her that that was what Morton had wanted. To be done with it all, to be normal, to rediscover the person he’d been before he’d sold his soul to Jeff Kerridge. Something told her that, if the time were right, if the approach were right, Morton could be persuaded to come over.

Salter had been watching her in silence for some seconds. ‘If it’s true,’ he said, finally, ‘he’d be one hell of a catch.’ He gently placed the coffee jug back on the table and picked up a custard cream from the unappetizing bowl that had accompanied the coffee. ‘I don’t know quite where he sits in Kerridge’s inner cabinet, but he’s not small fry. I’m willing to bet he’s got his financial thumbprints on most of the big deals that Kerridge is involved in.’

‘I might be wrong,’ she said.

‘Yeah, of course you might. In fact, you probably are. But there’s just a chance that you’re not.’

It was funny, she thought. To succeed in this job, you needed to be able to conceal your emotions, maintain that poker face. And Salter, by all accounts, had been very successful. But just at this moment she could read his thoughts as easily as if he were articulating them out loud. This might be the chance they’d been looking for. This might be a chance to spear some of the big fish – Boyle, maybe even Kerridge himself. More to the point, this might be a chance to boost Salter’s career.

‘We can’t rush it,’ she said, suddenly nervous about what Salter might do with what she’d told him. Jump right in there with his size elevens. ‘Like you say, we only get one chance.’

He nodded, looking distracted, his mind already somewhere else. Planning his next upward move probably. ‘Did you hit it off?’ he said finally. ‘With Morton, I mean.’

She blinked, surprised by the direct question. ‘I suppose so. I mean, I only talked to him for an hour or so at this bloody dinner—’

‘But you got on with him? Well enough to get a bit closer?’

‘Well . . .’

‘We need to keep on him,’ he said. ‘See if your instincts are right. Work out what might be the best way to get him on board. Do you reckon you might be able to do that?’

She shook her head and swallowed the last mouthful of tepid coffee. ‘Christ, Hugh, I don’t know. I’ve only met him once. I mean, we seemed to get on OK, but . . .’

‘Give it a go, then. Even if you’re not right about this, he’s likely to be one of our best routes into Kerridge and his mob.’

She gazed at him for a moment as if she were about to refuse. Then she nodded. ‘OK, Hugh. I’ll give it a go.’

‘Good girl,’ he said, in a tone that made her want to punch him hard in the face. ‘It could be a big one, this.’

Yes, I know, Hugh, she’d said to herself at the time. That was why I brought it to you. In reality, though, she had known that this was the best she could have hoped for. Of course, Salter would be able to shift, without missing a beat, from his initial sneering scepticism to snaffling the idea as his own. He was destined for the top, scrambling his way up on the backs of more scrupulous colleagues.

It didn’t matter. As always, he’d got what he wanted. But as they finished the meeting, she’d been left with a feeling that, almost without recognizing it, she’d achieved an objective of her own. She’d been given a reason to see Jake Morton again. Up to that point, she hadn’t even known that she’d wanted to.