The Conspiracy Theorist (19 page)

I prodded around for a while, knowing I
was not going to find anything, and then tried Janovitz’s flat upstairs.
 
This hadn’t been touched—a
strange omission—but I could see nothing of value.
 
A proper search would take a team of
four a solid day’s work.
 
I hoped
Janovitz was experienced enough not leave anything that close to where he
slept.
 
But if he did, it would be
small and well hidden.
 
The man was
an expert in counter-surveillance, after all.

I went downstairs and closed the street
door.
 
I had been over
half-an-hour.
 
It was a good job I
had not kept the cab waiting, but it meant I had to go and find another.
 
I walked to the train station and took
a taxi out to Hayling Island.
 

Wing
Commander Sydney Kenilworth (retired) was waiting for me in the portico of his
large redbrick house.
 
It was about
five doors down from Sir Simeon Marchant’s place, but in this area that was
about half a mile in distance.
 
They were big houses with even bigger gardens.
 
In some parts of the country they would
have been referred to as parks, planted as they were with beech and cypresses,
anything that would thrive in the sandy soil.
 
As my taxi driver put it, people were not short of a few bob
around there.

I gave him an extra £20 and asked him
to wait.

‘That’ll keep me till four o’clock,
mate.
 
I’ll beep the horn when time’s up.’

‘Thank you so much.’

‘You’re late,’ Wing Commander
Kenilworth observed.
 
‘Is that chap
waiting for you?
 
No need.
 
I can run you back into Chichester.’

I went back to the taxi and knocked in
the window.
 

‘Did I give you a twenty?’

‘Yep.’

He held it up.
 
I took it.

‘Thanks very much you can go now.
 
Mate.’

After a few choice words, he spluttered
away up the gravel drive.
 
As he
turned into Elmore Crescent, he was already on the radio banning me from every
taxi in the Chichester area.
 
But
it was worth it.

‘You seem to have upset that bugger,’
Wing Commander Kenilworth said.
 
‘Tea or something stronger?’

I followed him down an ill-lit corridor
that opened out onto a conservatory.
 
That word, these days,
gives
the impression of
a small plastic structure glued onto the back end of a suburban semi.
 
This one was not of that ilk.
 
It is best described as an orangery
without the orange trees.
 
In fact,
there were no plants in there at all.
 
There was, however, a leather four-piece suite—good quality but
knackered, Chesterfield perhaps—a 42 inch TV screen perched on the bottom
half of a Welsh dresser, and a smoked-glass cocktail cabinet that looked as if
it could have been Art Deco—once.

The room had a lived-in feeling and,
simultaneously, a sense of decay.
 
Perhaps it was the heat.
 
It
must have been thirty degrees in there.
 
I removed my jacket before it melted off my back.

‘Sorry,’ he said.
 
‘I feel the cold these days.
 
Warfarin, you know.
 
Thins the blood.’

He stood by the cocktail cabinet.
 

‘What’s your poison, Mr Becket?’

‘Pink gin would be lovely, sir.
 
With tonic.’

‘Excellent choice, Mr Becket.
 
It is early after all.’

He mixed the drinks like a hobbyist,
taking delight in each small action.
 
When you reached Wing Commander Kenilworth’s advanced age it wasn’t a
bad hobby to have.

‘I barely use the rest of the house, to
tell the truth.
 
Sometimes I even
sleep down here.
 
Sofa,
put one of the rugs over me.
 
Perfectly adequate.’

‘You live alone then.’

He laughed and handed me a half pint of
what could have been rosewater.
 
Or
the sort of diesel that farmers are only supposed to put in their
tractors.
 
I took a sip and felt
the heavy warmth chase through me like quicksilver.
 
Wing Commander Kenilworth sat opposite me and crossed his
long legs.

‘Chin-chin,’ he said, raising his glass.

I had another sip and decided I’d
better ask some questions while I still could.

‘So they took the
Cassandra
away, then?’

‘Yes, and do you know what?
 
I hear they’ve taken her apart up at
Evershed’s yard.
 
All hush-hush, no
one allowed anywhere near her.
 
What do you think that is about?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ I lied.
 
‘Perhaps they suspect foul play?’

‘Who’s
they
?
 
The police did
not go on about foul play.
 
So why
would anyone else?’

I changed the subject.
 
‘How did the inquest go?’

He paused.

‘It was strange.
 
Well, how would I know what is strange?
 
I have never been to one
before.
 
But it was as if no one
was really bothered.’

‘They’re often like that,’ I said.

‘Are they?
 
Well I was very disappointed.
 
I had prepared a long speech, but the fellow cut me
short.
 
Said I was not there to
protect Simeon’s reputation.
 
But I
was you see.
 
That was precisely
why I was there.
 
I told him that.’

He went on to describe the inquest.
 
It was clear to me that it was in
everyone’s interest for it to be death by misadventure.
 
Whether, Prajapati was an experienced
sailor or not, the Coroner said, anyone sailing alone on those waters, in those
conditions, could get into difficulty.
 
Sir Simeon Marchant was barely referred to and certainly not
his demise.
 
No one referred to Mat
Janovitz or other private investigators involved in the work.
 
In fact, Wing Commander Kenilworth
seemed bemused by my suggestion.

‘Did Sir Simeon say anything to you
about his suspicions, sir?’

‘Suspicions?
 
Simeon always had suspicions.
 
He was a suspicious bugger, God rest his soul.
 
There should be more like him.’

‘He was suspicious about the
Cassandra
being bugged.’

‘Well, he would know all about
that.
 
That was his bag after all.’

‘His bag?’

‘Yes, surveillance and all that.
 
He didn’t talk about it much.
 
GCHQ.
 
Hush-hush.’

‘Cheltenham of course!
 
Why else would a navy man live there!’

Wing Commander Kenilworth looked as if
he was disappointed in me.
 
I saw
his point of view.
 
I was
disappointed in me, too.

‘Yes, the obituaries never really
referred to it, did they?
 
Talked
about Greenwich, but he was really in the heart of it.
 
Naval Section.
 
All sorts of goings
on.
 
He used to go up to
London quite regularly for reunions with the spooks.
 
That’s what he called them, the spooks.
 
I think he enjoyed their company.
 
Bright sparks, he said.
 
Once he took me to his club.
 
Very kind.’

‘The Army and Navy?’

‘Sorry?’

‘His club?’

‘The Rag?
 
Heavens no!
 
He
wasn’t a member there.
 
It was the
Oxford and Cambridge.
 
That was his
club, always had been.
 
He was a
Cambridge man, Simeon, didn’t you know?’

I did know that, but I had not been
paying attention.
 
Perhaps the bump
on my head had meant that I was not able to put two and two together and get
anything at all.
 
An incorrect
answer would at least have been something.
 
Instead I had not even thought about it.
 
What is wrong with you, Becket? I asked
myself.
 
Wing Commander Kenilworth
regarded me sadly.

‘A Cambridge man,’ he repeated and took
another slurp of pink gin.

‘Is that why he went up to London that
last time?
 
To go to his club?’

‘No, no.
 
I happen to know he had quite another reason.
 
He had to see his solicitor.’

‘What about?’

‘I think it was something to do with
her sister’s visa?’

‘Whose sister?’

‘Mrs Breytenbach’s, of course.’

I
must have been tipsy because I accepted a lift in Wing Commander Kenilworth’s
MG Sprite.
 
We drove along the
deserted road at no more than 20 mph but it still felt too fast.
 
The Americans call it DUI, I believe.
 
Driving Under the Influence.
 
But in the case of the Wing Commander
‘influence’ seemed too puny a term for the power alcohol had over his
life.
 
As we pulled into Sir Simeon
Marchant’s driveway, he said, ‘I don’t even know if she’ll be here.’

But the front door of the Marchant house
was open and a young man was loading a small white van.
 
It had ‘JB Plumbing’ on the side, a
local address and mobile number.
 
He
glanced our way and continued packing.
 
I wrote down the number plate and the phone number.
 

‘Oh ho,’ the Wing Commander said.
 
‘The son.’

We parked and walked over to him.
 
He was tall, wiry, probably what people
call ‘mixed race’, although he could have been southern European, with his hair
cropped close to the skull.
 
His
eyes were a lively green, and flickered with resentment.
 
He looked from the old man to me as if
challenging us to say something.
 
Anything.
 

‘Mother around?’ Wing Commander
Kenilworth asked.

The young man nodded inside.

She
was younger than I expected and darker complexioned.
 
Darker than her son, but with a rash of
freckles across the bridge of her nose that made her appear perpetually
astonished.
 
Wing Commander
Kenilworth had told me she had been Sir Simeon’s housekeeper since he had moved
there a decade or so ago.
 
I
guessed she was over sixty, but she looked fifty tops, testimony to the fact
that honest labour kept you in shape.
 
But she had the drooping shoulders of someone who had not slept in a
week, and only ate when someone reminded her to do so.

‘Maike, this is Mr Becket.’

Her name was pronounced ‘My-ker’, with
the emphasis in the second syllable.
 
She shook my hand in the disinterested way I had seen many times before.
 
It was the way victims shake your hand,
or parents of children killed in a RTA or bundled into a white van as they
walked home from school.
 
She was
lost.
 
Bereft.
 
Suddenly robbed of something that gave
her life shape and substance.
 
She
had worked here for many years, Kenilworth had told me, and now she was being
thrown out.

‘I know you are working for Mrs
Forbes,’ she said in a monotone.
 
‘She asked me to leave when you came here before.’

There was a hint of a South African
accent there, or was it in the rhythm of her speech?
 
She sounded exhausted.

‘Yes, I was working for her, then.
 
I am not now.’

She shrugged that it mattered to her
very little one way of the other.
 
Wing Commander Kenilworth studied the wallpaper.

‘Did you know that Sir Simeon contacted
me before he died?’

She sat down as if the wind had been
knocked out of her.
 
The old man
said, ‘What are you talking about, Becket?’