Chapter 41
41
Bel opened her door to Connor the following Thursday afternoon and despite the relative solemnity of the occasion, a make-or-break professional meeting, she ended up hooting.
Connor was wearing a ‘just say it’ comedy hangdog fury look. His hair was as wet as if he’d been standing under a shower head, his jacket was drenched and his skin glistening with moisture, as if he’d run a marathon.
‘Ahahahahha,’ Bel offered as greeting.
‘Oh, fuck you!’ Connor said. ‘Going home to London can’t come fast enough.’
‘London, our famously rainless capital,’ Bel said, standing aside to let him in. ‘You southern boys, seriously. Have you heard of a thing called an umbrella?’
‘It was sunny when I left Deansgate!’
‘Yeah, Manchester does that, I’ve learned,’ Bel said.
‘I thought the Gallagher brother huge anoraks up here were a style thing but they actually serve a purpose, don’t they?’ Connor said.
He unbuttoned his jacket and peeled it off. You could wring it out like a dishcloth, Bel thought.
‘I’ll put that on a radiator for you. Wet white shirt, is it? Aspredicted, actual Mr Darcy,’ Bel said, before her brain could halt her mouth. Connor, rather winningly, blushed.
‘If I said that to you it’d be harassment,’ he muttered.
‘It would be, because the patriarchy says my nipples are ruder than yours,’ Bel said. ‘Take it up with them.’
‘This escalated quickly,’ Connor said, eyes wide.
‘I’ll get you a towel,’ Bel said, before awkwardness could develop.
She returned with one from the spare room, pulled a chair out from the dining table and whacked the kettle on.
Her laptop was open and ready to start their conference with Toby and Albert the lawyer in ten minutes’ time.
‘The next Didsbury trip is on then?’ Connor said, rubbing at his hair.
After a period of silence from the Ci Vediamo direction– which Bel was right on the verge of finding concerning– Amber had got back in touch, and with strenuous apologies.
She and Rick (sans kennelled Gertie) had been on a last-minute holiday to Santorini. Instagram confirmed. There was a holiday dump of beaded thong sandal-clad feet resting on whitewashed balconies and paving slab-sized blocks of feta on fries next to his ’n’ hers sunglasses on the check tablecloth, set to a clip of ‘GREECE’ by DJ Khaled. Bel was glad the psychodrama of advertising yourself like a commodity online was one she could skip.
You & Connor have to come over. How about late drinks lock-in at CV? I need to pay you back for that MESS with Rick. Gertie will be over the moon to see her boyfriend too. How are you fixed for a week on Saturday?
Bel had responded positively and alerted both Toby and Connor they needed a hasty Teams meeting, hence today.
‘Your brother was great by the way,’ Bel said. ‘Did he have a good trip?’
‘Oh yes, he did, thanks. He’s on to London now seeing my parents. He bought them a sack of gifts in Selfridges food hall and went to the football museum.’
‘I see what you mean about his being incisive. I felt cleverer just talking to him.’
‘Right? He left me by handing over this card in a sealed envelope with the date I leave Manchester on it, with strict instructions not to open it before then. It contains a prediction apparently. Like some sort of cheap magician.’
‘Wow. You’ll have to tell me what it says. Should’ve bought an umbrella probably.’
The wall clock hit the hour and Bel clicked the link to join the meeting room.
‘I can’t overrun today, I’m afraid, I’ve got tickets for Operation Mincemeat The Musical ,’ Toby said, as the glass-walled office sprang into view on Bel’s MacBook.
Sure, sure, this is only lives, careers and our arses hanging in the balance, Bel thought and didn’t say.
‘Hi, Connor. How’s the Manchester posting going?’ Toby said.
‘It’s gone in unexpected directions,’ Connor said, nodding towards Bel, then Bel saw the shadow cross Connor’s face because he’d made it sound like they were sleeping together.
Bel assumed a businesslike tone and outlined the lock-in, the whereabouts of the iPad, the general intention to plunder.
‘I’m going to ask Amber if I can book the York family in for a stay here when my apartment won’t be big enough. I’m hoping she gets the tablet out and I see the passcode. Then, after that, one of us lifts it. Connor had a smart idea we could take a factory settings iPad, put their cover on it, let them think it’s bricked overnight while we swipe the goods from it, then put the original back.’
‘Woah woah woah,’ Toby said, putting his coffee mug down with a bump.
Albert Double-Barrel had woken up too, like the dormouse in the teapot.
‘Nobody’s taking anything off the premises. That is the criminal act of theft.’
‘We’d return it ASAP,’ Bel said, but she was hot under her clothes. This was a Jenga block tumble, she knew it and felt it instinctively.
‘Steady on there, Woodward and Bernstein,’ Toby said, ‘“Intention to return” isn’t mitigation when stealing something, or everyone would use it. And I’d rather you didn’t make that case in a magistrate’s court, in the name of working for this newspaper.’
‘We can’t upload up to 180 days of doorbell footage while we’re in the bar, though,’ Bel said. ‘It’s going to take about two hours. Right, Connor?’
‘Yes. Obviously, if it’s only recording when motion-triggered, it’s not five whole months of tape but it’s still a lot. It’ll take at least two hours, I reckon. We can erase the fact we’ve uploaded it so they’d not know we have it straight away.’
‘Then you have to figure that out in situ, I’m sorry,’ Toby said, leaning forward on his elbows. ‘We’re out on a limb here as it is, hoping the strength of the Ring video evidence will negate the manner by which we acquired it.’
‘But we’re robbing that?’ Bel said.
‘Copying sensitive data and pilfering an expensive thing are two different activities, neither are without risk but one is far greater than the other,’ Toby said. ‘Albert, this feels like your purview?’
Albert coughed into life.
‘Yes, that’s correct. With the doorbell camera we could argue if she left the device around and open in your presence, then it is tantamount to photographing a page in an open diary. It’s snooping, yes, but in the public interest. Once you remove the device from the premises you have simply stolen her property.’
‘Which I can’t do?’ Bel said.
‘Which you can’t do,’ Albert confirmed. ‘We are bending the law, not breaking it.’
‘Right,’ Bel said, chewing her lip. ‘This limitation might’ve been useful to know from the outset. Still, limitations make you more creative.’
Much as Bel wanted to howl, she had to accept compound error. Until Connor raised the time frame for copying the footage, Bel had never thought on logistics much beyond accessing the iPad.
‘We do this not because it is easy …’ Toby began.
‘But because we thought it would it be less hard than this,’ Connor said.
Toby chortled and Bel realised he’d never thought this was going to work. He’d been playing along so the plucky podcaster gal felt she still got to try things.
‘Oh, and you two, have a fab time at the awards tomorrow! Schmooze your butts off, please. That table cost an arm and a leg but worth it for presence, I think. But it’ll have none without you working the room and pressing the flesh.’
Bel said sure thing , we’ll be belles of the ball , no pun, speak soon, smiled a false smile and hit End Meeting. She closed the laptop to be sure.
‘Great. No concern for how impossible our task just became, much excitement about us eating toad in the hole with the presenters of Smooth Radio North West. The real Operation Mincemeat: we’re dead in the water.’
‘How do we pull this off?’ Connor said. ‘The undercover sting not the toad in the hole.’
‘Spoiler: we can’t. We’re screwed. Totally,’ Bel said. She saw his surprise she didn’t have a workaround. If she wasn’t so gutted she might’ve been flattered.
‘Really?’
‘Even if I manage to see Amber’s passcode, and we make a grab for the iPad, the idea we can hide it for hours while it’s uploading to a second device? I know you think I am a vainglorious dipshit,’ Bel said and Connor smiled, ‘but even I don’t think that’s feasible. That is beyond the bounds of credibility.’
‘I can’t go to the loo, get it on my way past, hide it in the men’s somehow …?’
‘But if it goes missing right after I’ve asked Amber to look at it …?’ Bel said. ‘If they hunt for it while we’re still there and find the upload in progress?’
‘Yeah. Sheesh. What do we do? We’re committed to the lock-in as it stands?’ Connor said.
Bel tapped her pen on the dining-room table.
‘We carry on and hope the answer comes to us in the meanwhile.’
‘Ah, the old Bel Macauley approach of: it’ll be all right on the night?’
‘More or less.’
‘Toby told me to learn everything I could from you. I’m certainly doing that.’
‘Oh, really?’ Bel said.
‘Yep.’ Connor counted off on his fingers: ‘Hope is a plan, starters make people uptight, and Big Celery control the media.’
Bel laughed. She was grateful to him for responding to this setback with good humour. She didn’t feel humorous.
The number of people who believed Bel could achieve something she couldn’t, was now totalling five. Or six, if you counted Bel herself, which after that encounter, she didn’t.