Trouble was, unless Julianna could get him to open up to her, their relationship was probably doomed to failure. On the way to her house, she picked up groceries. She wanted to cook something special for Mark; he was visiting.
She welcomed him in with a kiss and a glass of wine. From the way he shovelled food into his mouth, he was hungry for food, and probably something else, but he would have to be patient.
‘The situation with Ellen? This moving in, has she agreed?’ she asked, grappling with the spaghetti on her plate.
He shrugged. ‘She's not exactly said no. I reckon, given her income, she should be able to save enough for the first year of living costs. I'm prepared to chip in, if she would let me. I don't think she likes the idea of loans.’
‘Don't blame her. That's very generous of you.’
He spooled his spaghetti around a fork. ‘I didn't treat her well when she was a kid. Ignored her.’
‘She turned out all right. Can't be that bad.’
‘I guess.’ He paused, spaghetti dangling off his fork. ‘I worry about her drinking. Her lack of friends. I took her to the club, but nothing came of it. She asked to leave. I thought she might get on with Hettie.’
By raking up family issues, Ellen was in danger of dragging Mark into a black hole, especially as the young woman refused to discuss anything to do with her parents, which riled Mark, obviously. He needed to share the burden with somebody. While Ellen might have cut herself free, Mark refused to. Or couldn't. Was there a difference?
‘What happened when you left home? Did you not want to stay in contact with Ellen?’
‘Student life is rather selfish. Then, I went back to Manchester, but avoided home. We've an uncle, Tim, Dad's brother. He's so different. He washed his hands of Dad long before the murder. He offered a sanctuary from it all. I'd occasionally see Ellen at his house. We weren't talking much, though.’
His appetite out did hers. He had eaten half his plate before Julianna had a chance to tackle hers. ‘You lived elsewhere?’
‘Salford, in lodgings. The job was demanding. A steep learning curve. Too steep. I discovered things I shouldn't have done.’
Julianna's ears were on fire. ‘Oh,’ she said, as nonchalantly as she could while her heart thumped heavily. She avoided Mark's eyes.
‘Yeah.’ He chewed slowly. ‘Shit, basically. I uncovered criminal activities.’
‘A client's?’
He swirled his wine around the glass before downing a generous mouthful. ‘More complicated. I had to run for it when I realised I'd stirred a hornet's nest. Before I left, I downloaded heaps and sent it to the police. You see, I blew the whistle and legged it. To this day, the police don't know who sent them the stuff. I used a fake account and deleted it straight away.’
Julianna had a different training to Mark. One that went beyond unearthing falsified figures, tax evasion and phoney bank accounts. Hers went deeper into the dark net and covert communications. If the police wanted to know, they could find out. But she suspected they were more interested in what Mark had uncovered and considered chasing after the whistle-blower a waste of time.
‘What was the name of the company you worked for?’ she asked.
‘Haydocks. Just one owner who is now locked behind bars facing charges of money laundering.’
‘And the clients?’
Mark shrugged. ‘I never uncovered the whole trail before things got a little dicey. I'm assuming they were drug dealers or something. They’d been using Haydocks to help them launder money for some time. Perhaps they'd got slack with the process. Something caught my eye and boom, it blew up, as they say.’
‘Ellen knows nothing?’
‘Nah. It's nothing to do with her. But, obviously, I kept quiet. Didn't even tell Tim why I left. Nobody came after me. I moved a few times just to be sure.’
Nobody came after Mark because of Jackson. Somehow, he had crushed the police investigation into Mark’s involvement in case anything leaked out to the bad guys. The snippet of information she had overheard in the back of the car now slotted into the picture, another brush stroke made visible. ‘And… that's it?’
He pivoted, his eyes darkening. She had pushed too hard.
‘What's with the third degree?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, perhaps too sharply. ‘Am I getting under your skin?’
‘A tad. Frankly, it could easily have fucked up my career. Snitching seemed the honourable thing to do and the legal one. But clients want to trust their accountants. It's no secret that everyone cooks the books a little, don't they? Loopholes get exploited. Numbers fudged. It's the way of things.’
‘So, you moved into forensic accountancy because you fancied more of the same? Isn't that the whole point of the job, uncovering illicit activities?’
‘Except now I've got Jackson’s backing. It's his name that comes knocking on people's doors, not mine. He's the crusader. I actually enjoy investigating fraud, and the like.’
‘Is this why he employed you, do you think? He must have known about Haydocks.’
‘Well, yeah, it’s on my resume. Can’t wipe out all those years and leave them blank on my employment record.’
‘And within months of being in London, you end up working in his forensics team: your ideal job. When do you think he knew about you?’
Mark smirked. ‘I met Hettie first, remember.’
Poking Mark to think was harder than she thought. He hadn’t realised the lengths Jackson went to with his vetting process; Mark’s lack of imagination and dogmatic style of
