The Conspiracy Theorist (10 page)

‘I’m only sorry I upset him.’

‘He’ll get over it.’

I shrugged and stared at him.

Naismith sighed, ‘
So
what can I do you for?
 
I
understand it is about a returned cheque.’

I repeated the background I had given
over the phone.
 
I was sure Naismith
knew the detail, but he still made notes.
 
Or else, he was writing a shopping list for the au pair.
 
When I finished, he put the pen down
with a well-practised regret.

‘I’m afraid I took the liberty of
discussing this again with PiTech earlier today, and they can see no way...’

I wondered whom he had seen.
 
Probably a minion, Carmody would be too
busy speechifying.
 
Lawyers always
wanted to show they were saving their clients money, so probably the finance
director.

‘I didn’t see you at the memorial service,’
I said.

Naismith seemed surprised.

‘You were there?’

‘Nothing if not thorough, Mr Naismith.’

I got a hard stare for my pains.

‘Then you will know it is not exactly
the easiest time for the family, Mr Becket.’

There were two moves here.
 
The first was to say it wasn’t a great
time for my client either, having lost her father.
 
But that made it too legalistic.
 
Too associated with other legal matters, like death duties,
inquests,
claims
in the chancery division.
 
If I had learned one thing in working
with Hunt and Carstairs, it was to avoid the law except where it was strictly
necessary.
 
The law only created
more work—for lawyers.
 
So I
went for option two.

‘The cheque is not made out from the
family account.
 
It is drawn on PiTech’s
not inconsiderable resources.’

‘Mr Prajapati death has been a deep
shock to all concerned.’

‘I could see that.
 
And it hasn’t helped an awful lot with
the merger either, has it?’

‘What are you referring to?’

‘As I said, I’m nothing if not thorough.
 
I don’t think your clients really want
me digging around in this and that, not for the sake of seventy-five
grand.
 
As you say, Mr Naismith, it
is not exactly the easiest time.’

I
parked the Spider in the multi-storey and wandered into the city centre.
 
In some ways, Chichester reminded me of
Canterbury: pedestrianised at its heart, bemused tourists consulting
guide-books, groups of foreign students blocking the pavements, and the usual
smattering of young mums with prams and matching tattoos.
 
There was no sign of any urban youths
with dogs, but I kept a weather eye out nevertheless.

I didn’t like threatening people, but I
had rather enjoyed making Peter Naismith feel I knew more than I did about the PiTech
merger, take-over, or whatever it was.
 
I showed the photographs of the poor
Cassandra
and gave the impression I had interviewed very many people—and not just
one half-cut Wing Commander (retired).
 
I tried to convey the impression that I was not only ‘thorough’ but also
persistent, and although I was powerless, I was an irritant that was not going
to go away.
 
I even asked
directions to the offices of the local newspaper.
 
Mr Naismith, looking regretful at such news, said that all he
could do was talk again to his clients.

Talk
to Carmody this time
, I had
advised him.
 
He seemed a decent chap to me.

Now I could only wait.
 
Mine is a boring job, all things
considered, I thought as I ordered a pint and a Ploughman’s.
 
But what else could I do?
 
What else can
I
do?

On the face of it I was just recovering
the money owed to my client, or my client’s father, for a boat someone had
purchased, got
themselves
killed in, and therefore
neglected to pay for.
 
There was a
moral argument, true, but that was not why I had taken the case.
 
I had the feeling there was much more that
that.
 
I just didn’t know what it
was.
 
I had learned today that
Prajapati was not the inexperienced sailor that people were making him out to
be.
 
There seemed to be consensus,
at least, that the man was competent.
 
And then there was the PiTech merger that Prajapati did or did not
support.
 
Would that be enough to get
himself
murdered?
 
In a way, if PiTech did pay up, it would suggest that there
was something to hide.
 

But that isn’t very likely, I
thought.
 
I have given it my best
shot.
 
But it was long shot, and
like all long shots was more like to go ricocheting off somewhere else than hit
the target.

My phone flashed.
 
It was Jenny Forbes-Marchant.
 
No, point talking to her before PiTech’s
lawyers had got back to me.
 
I
pressed
Ignore.
 
Then I got a text to say there was an answerphone
message.
 

I sighed and took it.
 
I hated pushy clients.
 
Pushy clients were hard work.

But the message was from someone I had
never heard of.

The
office of Mathew Janovitz
BSc.,
member of the
Association of British Investigators, was above a charity shop about ten
minutes walk from Chichester city centre.
 
It was a good location, not a great deal of footfall but close enough to
the railway station to ensure a regular clientele.
 
It is remarkable how many people come to the conclusion they
require the services of an investigator while engaged in the process of train
travel.
 
Perhaps it gives them time
for reflection.
 
Or is it that
travellers tend to be away from home rather a lot?
 
Makes them wonder what is going on behind their backs.

Mr Janovitz—
call me Mat
—was a portly young man, mid thirties, with
prematurely greying hair.
 
He wore
the jacket to a dark pinstripe suit and old jeans that were frayed at the cuffs.
 
His t-shirt was black faded to a dirty
brown and advertised a band called Franz Ferdinand.
 
It had probably fitted him once.
 
In contrast, the office was very tidy, like he did not have quite
enough work on.
 
And yet Mat
Janovitz managed to convey the exact opposite.

He had already apologised for his attire—
had an argument with an Innocent Smoothie in
the car, shouldn’t drink and drive I suppose—
and the fact that he had
obtained my mobile number illegally through tracing the number plate on the
Spider.
 
(He had seen me parked
outside Lancing School Chapel.)
 
When
I had asked if Janovitz drove a black Range Rover, he looked perplexed, gazed
out the window, and said that he had observed those gentlemen too.
 

I nearly asked which movie he thought
he was in, but I stuck to the script.

‘You said you had some information for
me about Sunil Prajapati.
 
Why do
you think I’d be interested?’

‘Because you’re trying to get PiTech to
pay up for the boat.’

‘So you work for Bellwethers?’

‘Not on this occasion,’ he said.
 
‘Until last week I was actually working
for Mr Prajapati.’

‘For PiTech, then?’

‘No, for Mr Prajapati personally.’

Again the uncertain glance, the
half-smile; it was all beginning to get on my nerves.

‘I wanted to warn you, more than
anything,’ he said.

‘Warn me?’

‘Well, tell you what I know.
 
You can take it whatever way you want.’

‘Can I now?’

I was beginning to think the man had a
screw loose.

‘How about you start from the
beginning?’

Janovitz
had not been a freelance investigator very long.
 
Previously he had worked for one of the large insurance
companies as a claims assessor, some fieldwork but mainly running computer
checks on people.
 
That was his
specialism.
 
He knew enough about
hardware to be interested in surveillance and counter-surveillance work.
 
I’m
an amateur really, Mr Becket.
 
Not like you.
 

He seemed hung up on the fact that he
hadn’t been a policeman.
 
It is
getting harder for ex-coppers to move straight into private eye work.
 
The government are talking about
bringing in a three-month gap to avoid possible conflict of interest, or insider
dealing.
 
The thing is unless you
have been a
copper,
you will always feel a bit of an
outsider.
 
Or serving officers will
make you feel that way.
 
Janovitz
knew that.
 
However, unpleasant
Richie was to me, however ‘hated’ I was at the Yard, I still had been one of
them.
 
Once.

Janovitz was one of a new breed of
investigators, more suited to the so-called information age.
 
The one where the information came
second-hand and as tarnished as old coins.
 
Most of his work these days was desk-based—
find out about this person’s background or
that person’s motives, that sort of thing—
online, or by ringing
people up and pretending to be someone he wasn’t.
 
Sometimes he had to go ‘into the field’ to get people’s car
registration plates etc—that apologetic look again—but most of the
time, he could obtain the material from right here in his office.

I said I was delighted for him.

Janovitz also knew some of the techies
at PiTech and had, on occasion road tested prototypes, surveillance devices
mainly.
 
Top end stuff, they were a company with a huge reputation, long-term
contracts in the bag, no wonder bigger fish were always trying to gobble them
up.
 
Mr Prajapati was the creative
genius behind it all—so the techie guys said, anyway—and Mr Carmody
was the one with the contacts.
 
He was
ex-army, Special Forces some say.

One day, quite out of the blue, Mr Prajapati
dropped by the office personally.
 
He had a strange request for Janovitz.
 
Mr Prajapati wanted to be placed under surveillance himself,
and his family, so that he would know what others were seeing when they checked
him out.
 
Mr Prajapati called it
his version of counter-surveillance.

I raised my eyebrows at that.

‘Exactly,’ Janovitz said.
 
‘Almost as bad as ‘Doctor, my friend
has got this problem...
’
 
But, of course I took the job.
 
Paid in advance, very generous, and I
got to work.’

‘What did you find?’

‘That the wife probably
was
having an affair.
 
I had no hard evidence by the time Mr
Prajapati went missing.
 
But she
was spending quite a lot of time with a gentleman alone.’

‘Good old fashioned fieldwork,’ I
observed.
 
‘And the gentleman?’

‘Vincent Carmody.’

‘I see,’ I thought back to the memorial
service.
 
‘Lashings of guilt all
round.’

Janovitz stared at me as if he could
not quite follow Becket.
 
I felt
the same.

‘So how does this all link to the
boat?’ I asked.

‘Because it turned out Mr Prajapati was
under surveillance, after all.’

The
first time Janovitz set eyes on the
Cassandra
was when she was towed back into port at Hayling Island Club the day after
Mr Prajapati had disappeared.
 
It
was strange that his client had not told Janovitz about the purchase of the
yacht.
 
Or not so strange if you
think the focus of his concerns were purely matrimonial.

Janovitz waited until the police
forensics team and the Marine Accidents Investigation Bureau were finished with
the yacht, and then he had popped down to take a look himself, and take a few
snaps.

Just as I had done earlier that day.
 

‘And what did you find?’ I asked.

‘That there had been surveillance
devices on board, but that someone had removed them.
 
Very carefully, very professionally, like they expected they would have
to.’

‘If they were so good, how could you
tell?’

Janovitz smiled.
 
‘Good question.
 
I guess it’s easier to find things
you’re looking for.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Perhaps I had a hunch someone was
tracking him.
 
Perhaps it was just
me
on automatic pilot.
 
Anyway I found the residue of a material they use these days.
 
It was on the deck.’

He turned the computer screen round to
show some shots of the damaged
Cassandra.
 
  
They must have been similar to the ones I had taken on
my phone.
 
The only difference was
I hadn’t checked mine.
 
These were
I suspect more detailed, and there were close ups, but still they told me
nothing.
 
Janovitz kept clicking,
the
resolution getting
better and clearer with each
click.
 
Still I saw nothing.
 
He looked very pleased with
himself.
 

‘You see the product didn’t react well
with seawater, or oil for that matter.
 
I told PiTech that.
 
It
leaves a residue.’

‘It was a PiTech product then?’

‘I would say there’s a very good chance
it was.’

‘So you’re saying PiTech had its own
boss under surveillance?’

‘Co-owner.’

‘You mean Carmody?’

‘It’s a theory.’

‘Because he was having an affair with
his wife?’ I asked.

‘Or it was to do with the merger?
 
Or both?
 
Perhaps the two are linked.’

‘But you have no evidence.’
 

Janovitz smiled again, sourly this
time.

‘I think my expert testimony could be
refuted.
 
Put it that way.’

I thought for a while.
 
Janovitz watched the master at work.

‘So,’ I said. ‘I still don’t understand
two things: one, why you followed me from Lancing Chapel; and, two, why on
earth you think I will be interested.’

Janovitz paused and looked more
uncomfortable than ever.

‘Because,’ he said, ‘Sir Simeon told me
you would.’

From
Janovitz’s office I went straight to Chichester Police Station, a building that
resembled a 1950s secondary modern.
 
The investigating officer for the disappearance and subsequent death of
Mr Sunil Prajapati was a Detective Sergeant Jasbir Singh.
 
He was a thickset man in his late
twenties, of Asian heritage and with a distinct Birmingham accent.
 
If this did not make his life difficult
enough in very white West Sussex, he also sported an orange turban and the sort
of beard associated, in the public mind at least, with a certain type of
terrorist.
 
I wondered if I had
been allocated the Prajapati case because of his background.
 
But that would assume that the police
service bothered itself with such details.

He brought in a piece of paper, on
which I saw scribbled the information I had given the desk clerk and a print
out from the national database.
 
At
the bottom of the page there was a photograph of me—looking quite
youthful.
 
DS Singh had done his
homework, and I had only been kept waiting half an hour.
 
Impressive.

After we shook hands, the unsmiling DS
Singh said, ‘
As
I understand it, you have some
information for me, Mr Becket.
 
And
this is pertaining to the disappearance of Mr Sunil Prajapati.
 
You are an ex-Met officer currently
working as a private investigator.
 
Is that correct?’

‘Legal investigator,’ I said.
 
‘This is all very formal.
 
Are we being recorded or something?’

‘No, we are not.
 
This is a preliminary discussion,’ DS
Singh said. ‘What’s the distinction?’

‘What distinction?’

‘You said legal investigator...’

‘I investigate cases, legal cases.
 
Not people.’

DS Singh shrugged as if it were a
distinction, in his great wisdom, he considered irrelevant.

‘But you
do
have some information?’ he asked.
 
‘DCI Richie was of the opinion that you were just trying to
recover some money for a client.’

I wondered why Jenny Forbes-Marchant
had told Richie.
 
And why Singh had
contacted Richie.
 
So I asked.

‘Your file said I should,’ Singh
replied.

‘Interesting.’

‘And unusual, don’t you think?’ DS
Singh asked.
 
‘So what is the
information?’

‘I didn’t say I had information,’ I
said.
 
‘I merely told your desk sergeant
that I might have.’

‘You might have,’ Singh turned over the
piece of paper, and pushed it away from him.
 
‘I see.
 
No, I
don’t see.
 
Tell me.’

‘I was hoping to see the file in case I
saw anything.’

‘And they let you do that in
..
.’ he turned over the paper again, ‘...Canterbury?’