‘I’m doing OK,’ she said. ‘We have to stop meeting like this.’
‘Probably. Mind if I join you for a second?’
‘I’m waiting to meet someone.’
‘Yeah, I know. Why I’m here. Won’t take a minute.’ Without waiting for a response, he walked around the car and pulled open the passenger door.
She waited till he’d lowered himself into the seat. ‘What’s this all about, Jake?’
‘Ken Anstey, right?’
‘Any of your business?’
‘Yeah, my business. Pretty literally so, as it happens. Afraid Anstey’s not available.’
‘That right?’ She was watching his face, still trying to work out what he was thinking.
‘Picked up by the police, a couple of days ago. Various charges. Smuggling class A drugs. Tax evasion. Double-parking, probably.’
‘Shame,’ she said. Inwardly, she was cursing. Maybe some customs officer had just become overeager, or – probably more likely – Anstey himself had done something so inept they couldn’t turn a blind eye. Or maybe someone had deliberately grassed him up to the local plods who wouldn’t necessarily have been briefed on Anstey’s status. ‘Are you on messenger duties now, then?’
‘Don’t know if you knew, but Anstey did bits and pieces of work for us; one of our suppliers.’
‘Just like me.’
‘Yes, just like you.’ He smiled for the first time. She had the sense he was doing this under sufferance. ‘No, actually, Marie, not much like you.’
‘Possibly the most backhanded compliment I’ve ever been paid. But go on.’
‘Ah, well, Kenneth has caused us a more than a little embarrassment over the last day or two. Trying to wriggle his way off the hook by impaling others on it. Throwing dirt in all kinds of directions.’
‘Including yours?’
‘Including ours. Nothing we can’t handle, of course. Anstey was never on the team.’
‘Just a supplier.’
‘Just a supplier. And, unlike some people, not a particularly reliable one. Generally more trouble than he was worth. Anyway, that’s why I’m here. Apart from giving us a few headaches, he’s also left rather a lot of loose ends. Things that just might come back to haunt us.’
‘And you’re the Boy Scout,’ she said. ‘Tying up the loose ends into fancy knots.’
‘Something like that.’ He was gazing flatly out of the wind-screen, not looking in her direction. Ahead of them, a harassed-looking mother was struggling in the rear door of her car, trying to load a crying baby into a child seat.
It struck her suddenly that there was a potentially sinister undertone to his words. ‘So I’m a loose end?’
‘No, not really. Not you personally, anyway. But I’ve been sent to check. We know Anstey was doing some business with you, but we don’t know exactly what. I just need to make sure it’s not something that’s likely to cause us any problems.’
He was smart. Just the right garnish of implied threat, then back to smiles and business. She gazed back at him, as if wondering whether she should trust him, then she shrugged.
‘Can’t see why it would,’ she said. ‘He asked me to get him some documents.’ She tossed the padded envelope into his lap. ‘Take a look, if you want.’
He tore open the package and flicked briskly through the pages. ‘Shipping notices?’
‘Yeah. Duty paid.’
‘These fool customs, you reckon?’
‘It depends. They’re bloody good fakes, though I say so myself. If you got an officer who was really on the ball, they might get challenged, but they’d get you through the average inspection.’
Jake took another look through the papers, and for a moment she wondered whether she’d oversold the quality of the forgeries. Then he nodded and smiled.
‘Maybe another service you could provide for us directly. These look good quality.’
‘Tried the rest, now try the best,’ she intoned. ‘Everything’s a marketing opportunity.’
‘So I believe.’ He stuffed the papers back in the envelope and handed them back.
‘Two hundred,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Two hundred quid. I’m out of pocket.’
‘Teach you to do business with the likes of Ken Anstey,’ he said. ‘A walking bad debt.’
‘Unlike Jeff Kerridge.’
He said nothing for a second. ‘I’ll make sure you’re not out of pocket. There’ll be work for you.’
‘Marketing opportunity, then.’
‘Marketing opportunity; exactly. Marie . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Look, this isn’t the time or place. But I wondered if you fancied coming out for a drink sometime?’
She made no immediate response, but sat toying with the envelope, as though trying to compose an answer. Finally she said, ‘Christ, Jake, I thought you’d never ask.’
Afterwards, when he’d driven off, she sat in her car for a while, wondering whether she knew what she was doing. She was only following Salter’s instructions, she told herself. And even if her own instincts about Jake were off the mark, it was still the smart thing to do. Take the opportunity, find a way into the inner circle, get closer to Kerridge.
But she couldn’t fully fathom her own motives. She was attracted to Jake, of course. She couldn’t deny that. And not just to Jake himself, but to what he might be able to offer. Warmth, friendship, company, fun. And maybe sex, she added quietly to herself, as if that was nothing more than a half-joke, an afterthought. But, above all, something straightforward. No strings. No expectations. No ties.
And that was where things became tangled in her head. Because she felt, in her heart, that this wasn’t going to be simple. Again today, she’d had the sense that he was going through the motions, reluctantly doing Kerridge’s dirty work. Quite how dirty that work might get, she didn’t like to think. But her instincts still told her that Jake wasn’t happy, that he was looking for something different.
And maybe she could help him find it. But she knew that, if she did, nothing would ever be simple again.
That second meeting with Jake had been just before another, very different weekend that she’d spent at home with Liam. It had been her first weekend back. She’d deliberately avoided going home too frequently during those early weeks, much to Liam’s irritation. Of course, he’d read the worst into her decision, but really it was just that she wanted to allow herself time to get into the swing of her new life. She had known that it would be difficult, juggling these two identities, establishing a new reality for herself in Manchester. She’d been advised, by Salter and others, that the first couple of months would be critical. ‘It’s like driving a car,’ Salter had said during one of their preparatory meetings, his tone suggesting that this might be a concept unfamiliar to a woman. ‘When you first start, you have to think about everything. How to steer. When to change gear. How much rev to give it . . .’
‘I know what’s involved in driving a car, Hugh.’
He’d nodded sceptically, then continued. ‘It’s hard work because you have to concentrate all the time. But after a while you stop thinking about it. It becomes second nature. It’s the same with this business.’
It was a trite analogy, she’d thought at the time. But he’d been right. Those first few weeks she’d felt exhausted every night. It was partly because she was learning a new business, a new trade. Not just the printing, but everything involved in running the shop. Payroll. Tax. VAT. Bookkeeping. Invoicing. Taking orders. Preparing tenders. Costing up a job so they could actually make a profit on it. Cold-calling and following up prospects. Chasing the slow payers. A new world that she’d vaguely known existed, but had never had reason to explore.
All that was tiring enough. But the really hard part was the concentration needed to sustain her new identity. As Salter had implied, it wasn’t a difficult task in itself. After all, like all the best lies, her legend had been designed to be as close as possible to the truth. She’d stuck with her own name – it had been known for officers to answer to the wrong one – and most of the details of her past had been left broadly unchanged. She knew that, back at the ranch, they’d spent a lot of time carefully checking online to make sure that she’d wouldn’t be exposed by some out-of-date Facebook page or Google reference. The aim, from the start, had been to make her new life as effortless as possible.
