Chapter 51
51
A mere fortnight left to endure and Connor would be home. Back to the floor-to-ceiling windowed open-plan office with beeping security arches and laminate passes, the Underground, his fancy local with onglet and Café de Paris butter on the menu instead of chips and gravy. And less rain.
The Tinker Tailor half-light ramshackle office on Deansgate with its dusty storage, art prints of mythological Manchester and a pot plant called Jason Not Orange would be a hallucination, an anecdote, a reference point.
If he saw Bel, it would be across a packed conference room, their doing a mutual startled wave of recognition and later a quick bout of that sort of British non-conversation when you knew someone but didn’t know them. Hi how are you yeah good thanks you not bad thanks it’s been ages wow yeah.
It made Connor wistful, even sad. He’d compiled himself a Manchester bands playlist so The Smiths could be partly to blame. He could hear Shaun saying: you obtuse miserabilist motherfucker.
There was the small matter of the undercover gig concluding first, with what seemed destined to be a trombone slide and a wet firework fizzle.
They arranged a drink in the same quiet, timber-ceilinged Didsbury pub which had hosted their previously fraught encounter. Connor recalled it being the tearful stage of Jennifer separation. They had progressed swiftly to irritation, where she was regularly updating him on why a rental she’d viewed wasn’t viable. Sure, condolences, but pick one, you have two weeks , is what he didn’t say.
This evening, Bel had arrived before him, sat in a Jessica Rabbit-ish strappy red dress, hair in loose waves swept back with grips, chin propped on palm. She smiled broadly at the sight of him and there was a tiny, yet perceptible, lurch of excitement in Connor’s stomach that he had provoked the smile. He relished the prospect of her company, even in straitened circumstances? That was new. Amazing what imminent departure could do for your mindset.
‘Even though I know you’ll be in character, it still comes as a surprise,’ Connor said, checking they spoke in solitude, taking a seat in front of his waiting pint.
‘Bella Niven is my Sasha Fierce,’ Bel said. ‘I see that the straightforward girly look makes more sense to your basic boy brain. I feel like I’m nine and my mum helped get me ready for a birthday party.’
Connor winked at her as he lifted his glass.
‘If this doesn’t happen, tonight …’ he said. ‘Are we just disappearing, as far as our new friends are concerned?’
‘You dump me, go back to London. I need space and the space need turns out to be indefinite,’ Bel said. ‘In my fiction I’m distraught enough to do some friend shedding from the Connor era.’
‘Ugh. Sorry for dumping you,’ Connor said, brushing beer foam from his mouth.
‘It’s OK. It was awful for me, though. You’d never actually properly finished with your ex and I caught you messaging her saying Manchester was temporary.’
‘Why do I have to be that bad?! I would never actually do something like that.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ Bel said, shaking her head, curls bouncing, and Connor felt significant disquiet. It turned out a conscience was a heavy burden even in make-believe.
Bel looked downcast and Connor added: ‘Ghosting them full stop feels slimy.’
‘It really does,’ Bel said. ‘But we went up in a hot air balloon of lies and now we have to get down again without breaking our legs.’
‘And if they’ve seen the awards photos?’ he said.
‘You’ve been helping a business writer at the MEN out, he wangled you an invite. They miscaptioned you.’
‘That feels a stretch, to be honest.’
‘I’ll jump in with lots of ooh could see you as a reporter, the Clark Kent look nnnnggg and you say something slighting about the wages and I reckon we’ll paddle to dry land.’
‘Hmm. Can I say I’m glad this is our last outing?’
‘Agreed.’ Bel tipped her white wine to clink his lager.
‘Connor,’ Bel said, after a loaded pause: ‘I’m going to take it. The iPad. It’s not going to happen otherwise.’
‘What? You can’t,’ he said.
‘It’ll be nothing to do with you. We’ll say we hid it and uploaded on site.’
‘But we made it clear that was impossible?’
‘No, they said it was possible, we didn’t. If Toby wasn’t super-hot on the “How” before, he’s not going to ask for an in-depth post-mortem once we’ve got the goods. We hid it behind a cushion. If the worst comes to the absolute worst and it comes to light, I’ll make it clear you had no idea and I went rogue. I’ll take the full rap if the bosses ever find out, but they won’t.’
‘Bel, you could end up not only losing your job but with a criminal conviction. Making you much less hireable in future. Don’t be a dick. You’re not doing this under your own name on a podcast. This is a “bringing into disrepute”, gross misconduct situation for a national newspaper.’
‘I don’t believe for a second the Kendricks would pursue someone overnight borrowing an iPad that far. Why bring attention over so little? Plus, if we’ve found what we think we’re going to, then none of it matters.’
‘The problem here is you’re saying A will happen, then B and C. It won’t. A big unexpected is coming, because it always does, and then you’re going to be left holding a stolen tablet you were clearly told you couldn’t steal. You don’t have the protection of the paper to do this.’
‘I know this. Call it my Aunt Tamara’s DNA. Fortune favours the brave. Or call it my rich kid golden parachute DNA, you can’t offend me.’
‘I was going to say. Much as I don’t want to revisit why I value employment …’
‘Look, go now,’ Bel said. ‘I could say we’ve split up already. That might work, actually: if I go in being teary, it’s a distraction …’
‘Absolutely not,’ Connor said.
‘Why?’
‘I’m not leaving you to do this alone.’
‘Connor, you are an immensely good and honourable person …’ Bel looked him in the eye as she said this. They both knew it was from the heart, and a newly held position on the matter. ‘And I thank you so much for it. But you don’t owe me this.’
Connor swallowed a lump in his throat.
‘Nevertheless. I decline to bail. I just don’t want to spectate the premature end to your shining career, either. Or sit down to a banquet of consequences with you.’
‘… I’m going to pretend to get completely smashed. That should give me enhanced eccentric roaming rights. Then I’ll go back first thing tomorrow and say I took the iPad when I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m going to tell Amber I’m hideously embarrassed but I have this light-fingered habit when under the influence. It’s a real thing, Tim’s grandad used to nick random items constantly. He didn’t have a mental condition or anything, he just loved half-inching stuff.’
‘It is a mental condition. It’s called kleptomania.’
‘My point is, “whoops, sorry, here’s your thing back” within hours of it going missing is hardly something you’re going to call Greater Manchester Police about. Especially if it’s a device you don’t want them looking at. You can hide the fact we uploaded Ring video memory, right?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘If I give the iPad back, while grovelling, explain to me how there can ever be a police complaint? They’d need to report it at 2.00 a.m. And unreport it at 10.00 a.m. They will only know of the data theft if we find something newsworthy in it.’
Connor let out a heavy sigh.
‘Twenty-four-year-old Connor would be like wooh, yeah, you’re right, this is watertight,’ he said, ‘Thirty-four-year-old Connor says, fuck around, find out.’
‘Thirty-four-year-old Connor needs to rediscover his optimism.’
Shaun had said similar. He felt sure he didn’t mean like this, though.
‘I’ll do it all,’ Bel said. ‘The only thing you have to worry about is a drunk girlfriend. You’ve handled one of those before, right?’
‘Know what, Bel? Don’t take this as a compliment. But you’re without precedent.’