‘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.’
