Chapter 55
55
No matter how many times they ran the sums, no matter how many times they looked for the ingenious way out, they came to the same conclusion. Royally screwed.
And no matter how many times they watched film of the mundane comings and goings in a doorway in South Manchester, Glenn Bailey stubbornly failed to materialise.
‘I can’t blame Amber, can you?’ Connor said, as they abandoned the laptop for softer seating and outright despair. ‘We’ve treated her and Rick as collateral. It must feel absolutely soiling to know that everything we did and said was to get into that iPad.’
‘Yep. When I started this I thought she was a willing, knowing handmaiden to a major bastard and now I wonder if Amber might be more unwitting than that. They have to have deleted him, though.’
‘We can’t know for sure without cross-referencing the Airbnb bookings and I deliberately didn’t look at anything other than the footage. That might’ve been stupid, but principles, huh? Principles while you’re hacking someone,’ Connor said.
‘If you want to know why we’d be kicked out of MI5– they had location tracking turned on. They knew the iPad was here the whole time.’
‘Fuuuuu …’ Connor put his hand on his head. ‘Of course! Oh man, that is the stupidest, dumbest, most obvious … I was lost in the mechanics of the Ring video.’
‘I’ll call Toby first thing. He’s sacking me either way, but if he’s called to see the big editor without warning, it will be an extremely vitriolic one.’
‘He’s sacking us– don’t act like you’re special and different.’
‘You can stay here rent free for as long as you like, you know,’ Bel said, and Connor smiled.
‘No offence, but I’ll be leaving Manchester with such force it’ll leave scorch marks all the way to Knutsford.’
Bel had been astounded and so, so grateful that Connor’s response to her imminently losing him his employment and ruining his prospects had been ‘gallows humour’ and not inchoate rage.
‘Why aren’t you angrier with me?’ Bel said. ‘You’d be justified in screaming. No apology could atone for what I’ve done. You save me from Anthony and this is how I repay you.’
‘You saved you from Anthony, I only had to make sure the video was running and hold my phone level. Also, I think I’ve levelled out now, post-Citalopram.’
‘Seriously, Connor. You have a mortgage. This is indefensible.’
‘In my last career, a man jumped out of a third-floor window, which has given me perspective about how much you can let a payslip matter,’ Connor said. ‘I knew this might go sideways when I decided to take part. You said I could walk away yesterday too and I chose not to. I’m not a fan of blaming other people for my decisions. And what would be the point? We might as well have a laugh when there’s nothing else to be done.’
‘Brokenly grateful for your generous Zen,’ Bel said, as she paced the sitting room and Connor lay across the sofa. ‘The sacking isn’t even the worst part. It’ll be ringing Ian and telling him that I have completely failed him and Erin.’
‘He can hardly blame you for the edited video and you’ve lost a lot, following his lead. He’ll feel bad about that.’
‘Oh SHIT,’ Bel said, stopping in her tracks. ‘If Amber’s told her mum, and her mum tells Glenn, then they could figure out from the details I’ve provided that Erin’s the whistleblower. She saw Amber with the iPad the night that Glenn panicked. Which also means Glenn could well figure out Ian’s involvement.’
She put her palm over her face. ‘I’ve got to warn him. He could walk into … actually he told me he’s walking Hadrian’s Wall next week.’
Bel foraged for her phone in her pocket to confirm.
‘Leave it until you know what happens with Toby,’ Connor said. ‘No point decimating other Sundays with speculation.’
Connor had mumbled he could go back to Salford, but as the day wore on, he said: ‘We’d only exchange morose WhatsApps all evening. I’m thinking we could lean into this with a last meal on Death Row Deliveroo energy?’
‘Yeah. You’re welcome to stay here in industrial-luxe purgatory. I know a hangover tomorrow will be horrific and yet I’m feeling wine too?’
‘Wine for sure,’ Connor said. ‘Anaesthetic.’
Bel lit candles, they ordered a chippy tea and spread it out on the vast dining-room table, under the looped cord lights.
‘The contrast is like that portrait of the matriarch and the manufacturing smog in your nookie lair,’ Connor said, shaking Sarsons over a heaped plateful.
‘My “nookie lair”!’ Bel repeated shrilly, and Connor gave her a cheeky look as he licked vinegar from his finger.
‘All right, Austin Powers. “Nookie”, not heard that word in a long time,’ Bel said.
‘It’s a good word.’
Bel refilled their wine glasses and they took their dinner to the coffee table, saying: ‘Here’s to celebrating when you have absolutely nothing to celebrate and have made a complete pig’s ear of your assignment.’
‘Look at us,’ Connor said, ‘like Waiting For Godot with saveloys.’
‘Anticipating our inevitable downfall does have a certain “sparse theatre production” feel doesn’t it?’ Bel said. ‘Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor Johnson give career-best performances in Fucked …’
‘Are you Jodie Comer? Jodie Porn Star Martini Coma more like.’
Bel threw a cushion at him.
Full of fried food and numbed by Merlot, unable to concentrate on anything, they both lay across the sofas and listened to rain on the windows.
‘Connor, can you tell me about your dog? The one you loved enough to have a photo of him on your desk? Was he called … Mosley?’ Bel said.
‘“Mosley”? Named after the fascist leader, Oswald Mosley?’
‘Oh bugger … Mo … M … Maurice!’
‘The night before I get sacked and possibly criminally charged, why don’t I discuss my much-missed dead dog? After that let’s revisit the times I have been laughed at while naked.’
‘Have you been laughed at while naked?!’ Bel said.
‘No,’ Connor said, sitting up, pointedly contemplating the remainder of a battered sausage and making Bel honk. ‘My bare form has inspired only awe.’
He ate it, brushed his hands and lay back down again.
‘I bought Maurice as a puppy for fifty quid from some sketchy guy in the pub in Dagenham who intuited I wasn’t going to let him leave in charge of an animal. I’d never had a dog and had to Google what to do. I was only mid-twenties and it was like having a baby overnight, in terms of responsibility. Then Maurice became the making of me. We went everywhere together, except when he was with the dogsitter from eight to six that cost as much as a nanny. I realised I could actually really enjoy routine and responsibility. I was a bit of a pointless lad at the time, treating everyone and everything like it didn’t matter.’
‘I can imagine a lot came easily to you,’ Bel said.
‘Yeah it kind of did, if I’m honest,’ Connor said.
Bel realised this was a different era between the two of them, because she could pay him a compliment, and he didn’t react defensively.
‘Maurice bore witness to a lot in my life and gave me so much more than I ever gave him. The day I lost him …’
His voice thickened and he stopped. ‘… Nope, still can’t do that without weeping.’
‘I’m so sorry, Connor. I wish I’d met him.’
‘I wish you had too,’ Connor said, swiping a tear from his cheek.
Their livelihoods were about to be detonated but they were fully healed as friends.
There was a just slightly concerning brief memory fuzz for Bel in the middle of yesterday evening, like losing your central field of vision. And whatever had been said …why did it feel as if it had made him more forgiving with her?
She hoped to hell she’d not told Connor he was fit.
‘I’ve said to Toby we need an urgent Teams and he’s offered us 10.00 a.m.,’ Bel said, handing Connor a black coffee at eight the next morning. ‘Not too long to wait.’
She’d been awake since five. Bel had entered the phase of thinking the prospect had to be worse than getting it over with, fanciful self-soothing which was no doubt about to be corrected.
‘Urgh,’ Connor rubbed his eyes. ‘That’s going to be a real treat of an hour.’
‘It won’t be an hour. I’m taking the view this is at least a guillotine execution. As soon as Toby hears I robbed the iPad, that’s it, mission disavowed, contract terminated. You are negotiable.’
‘I’m not. If I scoured the Ring video from it, I’m full accessory.’
The doorbell sounded. Bel couldn’t remember if she’d ordered anything.
‘Ant, great to see you again!’ Connor muttered, and Bel said: ‘Don’t.’
She opened the door to Amber, in a faux fur bomber jacket and Lululemon leggings.
‘Morning, Becky Something. You look like shit. Did you not get much sleep?’