Trust No One (17 page)

She flicked randomly through a few more files, convinced now that the material was dynamite. The key question was whether anyone, on either side, knew quite how much Jake had taken.

She suspected not. If anyone really knew what was on this data stick, they'd be making more serious efforts to recover it. Her impression was that everyone – Boyle, Kerridge, Welsby, Salter, Uncle fucking Tom Cobleigh and all – suspected that Jake had taken more than he was letting on, but no one knew what. The interesting thing was that most of this material related only to Kerridge, with few references to Boyle. It seemed that Jake had held back this side of his evidence – the other half of the picture – because he hadn't known who to trust.

She opened one more file, this one intriguingly labelled ‘Stamps003'. To her surprise, it was a series of images showing just that – photographs of postage stamps. She skimmed through them, momentarily baffled. It looked like a child's stamp collection. Some British, others clearly foreign. What was this doing in here?

It took her a few moments to understand. Money laundering again. She was no expert, but she'd attended a few lectures on emerging trends. One of the trends was investment in high-value, low-volume commodities. They didn't come much lower volume than rare postage stamps. You might even make a profit on your dirty money.

There were further image files devoted to other commodities. Racks of wine, artwork, even rare books. All of these would open up more paths they could follow up, join yet more dots.

Her attention was caught by a movement in the corner of her eye. She realized she'd become engrossed in the material, forgetting where she was. She looked up, conscious now of the value of the evidence in her possession, her sense of vulnerability increasing.

She'd opened one of the car windows when she had pulled into the lay-by, but the interior had steamed up. She rubbed at the windscreen and peered out, then turned on the engine and heater.

She didn't know what had caught her attention. There were still few cars parked at this end of the car park. Several more had passed, but she'd become aware of something else, something she'd intuitively perceived as threatening.

It was only when the rear window had fully cleared that she spotted it. Just near the entrance to the car park, a few hundred metres behind her, sited directly in line with her, there was a parked car. A small anonymous grey saloon, almost unnoticeable from where Marie was sitting. At a conscious level, she couldn't be certain how long it had been there.

She was in no real doubt, though. The car's arrival had half-registered in her peripheral vision while she was engrossed in the material on the laptop.

She watched the car for another minute or two, hoping that the driver would decide to depart, having consulted his map, made his call, or completed whatever task he'd parked up to perform.

But the car remained motionless.

She made up her mind in an instant. Always assume the worst. That was a maxim that Keith Welsby had taught her. He applied it as a general guide to life, but she'd adopted it only as an operational rule of thumb. As Welsby had often pointed out, at least it meant you wouldn't be disappointed.

The car engine was running. She checked in the rear-view mirror that there were no cars entering the car park behind her. Then she released the handbrake, put the car into gear, and floored the accelerator.

She'd picked this car partly for its performance. Deceptively nippy, the review had said. One way of putting it. She headed across the car park going far too fast, and then pulled out on to the perimeter road, by now getting close to sixty. A moment later, she was on the access road to the motorway, already well above seventy. She pulled out suddenly, cutting neatly between a lorry and a white van, then across into the outside lane. She was a trained high-speed driver, accustomed to velocities and circumstances more challenging than this. Even so, she could almost feel the animosity of the drivers she'd cut up.

She took a glance in the mirror, trying to see whether the grey car had pulled out in pursuit, but there was no sign of it. She kept up her speed, undercutting traffic in the outside lane, putting distance between herself and anyone who might be following her.

She didn't want to keep this up for too long. For all her skill, there was always the risk of coming up against some less accomplished driver. And if she got caught doing this speed, Salter wouldn't be pulling too many strings on her behalf.

There was a junction ahead. She contemplated turning off, but decided she needed to confuse things first. Give her pursuer – assuming there was a pursuer – some options to play with. She sped past the junction, waited for another.

Minutes went by with no sign of a turn-off. It was bloody typical. She should have seized the first opportunity.

Finally, she reached another junction, a link with the M65. As far as she could remember, if she headed west she could do a loop round the end of the motorway and join the northbound M6 at an earlier point than if she continued along the M61. If there was anyone behind her, it would help confuse things, open up more options about where she might be heading. She looked in the mirror. No sign of the grey car.

She hesitated briefly, then hit the brake and pulled the wheel to the left, cutting across all three lanes to the exit, momentarily startled by the appearance of a lorry bearing down on her in the inside lane. The driver flashed his lights in warning, but there was no real risk. She was already past, heading up the slip road, her speed undiminished.

There were a couple of cars following her up the exit, but none of them was grey. She pulled on to the M65, still keeping her speed up, then, when she was more confident that no one was behind her, she slowed down to the legal limit.

She realized she'd been holding her breath for some time. Gripping the wheel, she inhaled steadily, calming herself, the adrenaline slowly receding.

She could still see the startled expression on the lorry driver's face as she'd swept across in front of him. And she didn't need any great powers of deduction to know what he'd been thinking.
Women fucking drivers.

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?'