The Conspiracy Theorist (26 page)

I
left Richie with copies of the CCTV stills and wandered down Broadway, past the
Home Office on Queen Anne’s Gate and into that long, thin strip of Palladian
greenery known as St James’s Park.
 
I sat on a bench for a while, mulling over what he told me.
 
As ever with Richie, there was more to
it than he intended to tell you.
 
Everything was about hierarchy with him: that decisions were made way
above his head, and in manner than did not involve him.
 
He had been lumbered with listening to
an ex-spook called Sir Simeon Marchant when it really was the province of
MI5.
 
In a totalitarian regime,
Richie would be just the type who would say he was ‘just following orders.’
 
But hadn’t that been my experience of
working for the Met, too?
 
The difference is, I told myself
,
the
difference was ...

That Becket had taken his bat and ball
away and retired to Kent.
 

I got up and wandered over the bridge,
and out of the park.
 
I crossed the
Mall and into that area south of Piccadilly where many of London’s gentlemen’s
clubs are based.
 

The Oxford and Cambridge Club was on
Pall Mall.
 
If I had come here a
week ago it would have made sense.
 
Now it seemed like an afterthought, a clumsy piece of investigation,
going back over what I had overlooked originally.
 
I’ve
been given your name by a fellow
at my club.
 
Said you could help if
a case has not been investigated thoroughly enough.
 

In my line of work, you tend to take
recommendations with a pinch of salt.
 
In a sense, it doesn’t matter who recommends you.
 
Whether it is ‘a fellow at one’s club’
or the man who mows the lawn, it is the fact of the recommendation rather than
the source that is important.
 
Not
in this case.
 
I now knew that who
recommended me was very important to Sir Simeon Marchant.

Richie had told me.
 
He didn’t mean to, but he had.
 

I had one problem.
 
A week ago I would have had a sensible
story to tell.
 
Instead of getting
half-cut with Jenny Forbes Marchant, I could have found her father’s club,
checked the membership to find someone who knew Becket.
 
After all, there would not be that many
of them who would, Becket not being an Oxbridge man, and that being the
condition of membership—unless you were royalty.
 
Now I didn’t even need to consult the
membership list.
 
I just needed to
check if he was in that day.

The foyer was empty apart from a curved
oak reception desk with a signing in book that resembled a medieval Bible.
 
The man on the desk was stooped and
cadaverous with skin the colour of parchment.
 
His hands were large and expressive, having been deployed, I
suspected, in many years of saluting, or helpfully pointing things out to
people—like their faults.
 
I
imagined him singing a melodious bass in the local church choir when he wasn’t
strangling rabbits for Harvest Festival.
 
He could spot an Oxbridge man at half-a-mile and I was only two feet
away from him.
 

‘Can I help you, sir?’

The ‘sir’ droned past me like a passing
insect and had about as much significance.
 

‘I have an appointment with Sir Peter
Watterson,’ I said.
 
‘Please give him
my card.’

I was prepared for rejection.
 
He checked the register and said, ‘Your
name will suffice, sir.’

‘Becket, Thomas A.
 
One T as in the martyr, and
..
.’

But he was gone.
 
I put my card away.
 
I was alone with the Bible so I spun it
around and leafed back through it until I found what I wanted.
 

We
were sitting in the Members’ Dining Room.
 
He was the only Member present and I suspect that was why we were in
there.
 
We were sitting at a
table.
 
If I was hoping we were
going to sit alongside each other in wing-backed chairs in Moroccan oxblood leather,
swirling balloons of brandy in the brassy light of a roaring fire, I was sorely
mistaken.
 
In reality, we did not
have that sort of relationship.
 
In
fact I was surprised he agreed to see me at all.
 
My type of policing never had much value for him; it caused
too many headaches.

Watterson was a career
policeman—almost thirty years in when I met him—recruited straight
out of university into Special Branch.
 
Cambridge, First in Human Geography.
 
He was head of section, Commander in
rank, attached to the Department of Professional Standards.
 
At my interview he had liked the
fact—he was the only one who did—that I was not a civilian
policeman by training.
 
He liked my
degree in Law—Second Class, Open University—and the fact that, he
said afterwards, that I would ‘ruffle a few feathers’.
 
Managers generally regret saying such
things to their subordinates, and, in the case of Becket, Watterson certainly
did.
 
But, by and large, we had a
good working relationship.
 
In July
2005, when I busy pissing people off, he smoothed a few senior plumages and got
me seconded to Interpol.
 
I was
away for two years and in that time he got himself promoted and had left DPS
for greater things.
 
Occasionally
we met at colleagues’ leaving drinks, but he never came to mine.
 
In fact, very few people did.
 

I guess we shared the same sense of
being an outsider
;
he, because of his manner, which
was considered cool and clinical.
 
Like
a lot of men in the ‘Bwarnch’,
he was considered by other
colleagues in the Met as too posh
by half.
 
His nickname, as he rose through the ranks, became ‘The
Accountant’, and I knew this rankled with him.
 
True, he was a good administrator—thank God; there were
so few of them—and he was something of a bean counter.
 
He was one of the new
breed
of senior managers who came in with the new
Commissioner: all targets, outcomes, measurables, and cutting costs and
corruption.
 
But, Watterson sorted
out the mess that was the Flying Squad, and on his watch there was no fiddling
of expenses in the DPS, making it unique in the context of the wider
organisation.
 
He was passionate
about dealing with real corruption and ignorance in the force.
 
He had always been straight with me,
displaying that disarming honesty that very bright people tend to use.
 
They know it is the most sensible
course of action.
 

A year ago, he had retired, after
getting the copper’s top gong in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
 
I assumed he was sixty.
 
Ten years older than me, although he
seemed a different generation, more grown up, having played with what Richie
called, with unintended irony, ‘the bigger boys.’
 

As we chatted, he told me he kept
himself busy: some voluntary work, some non-exec roles on the Boards of various
companies that valued his sort of advice.

‘And contacts,’ I added.

He gave me that look from behind his
rimless spectacles.
 
The
Oh-dear-Becket’s- made-another-faux-pas
look.
 
I could see he wanted to
move the conversation and me on and out of the Members’ Dining Room.

‘Oh, I’m afraid I have so few of those
these days,’ he said.
 
‘You have
come about poor old Simeon, I presume?’

‘Yes.
 
I assume you recommended me?’

‘He didn’t tell you?’

‘We didn’t actually meet.
 
He rang me to say an ex-colleague
recommended he talk to me but...’

‘Yes, indeed.
 
A terrible thing.
 
Terrible.
 
He
had been staying here the night before, I understand.’

He looked around as if the club had the
answer to the mystery of the mugging, or the fact that this world could not be
farther away than a bus stop on the Euston Road.
 
He had a point.

‘One just doesn’t feel safe in London
anymore.’

‘Oh, it could have happened anywhere,’
I said.
 
‘Those boys weren’t
fussy.’

He took a handkerchief from his top
pocket and shook it out.

‘I thought it was a mugging.’

‘I got some of the same treatment.’

I indicated my face.
 
He removed his spectacles and began to
clean them.
 
He looked suddenly
naked, and older.

‘I didn’t like to ask,’ he said.
 
Perhaps he thought I had some a rare
skin disease or, in a fit of pique, had battered my own head against a brick
wall.

‘Same MO,’ I said.
 
‘I won’t bore you with the details, but
it was no mugging.
 
Just made to
look like one.’

He didn’t look shocked.
 
Or, indeed, alarmed at Becket’s
possible insanity.
 
Watterson
always had the ability to focus on the facts at such times.
 
Not allow
himself
to get distracted by extraneous detail.
 
He put his glasses back on and pursed his lips, ‘Interesting.
 
So you did work for Simeon after all?’

I explained that I had been
commissioned by Sir Simeon’s daughter to dig around—not strictly true,
but it sounded more reasonable—and someone must have thought I found
something out.
 
It was simple
enough explanation.
 
He
nodded.
 
There was no reaction when
I mentioned Jenny Forbes-Marchant.

‘You knew him well?’

‘Simeon?
 
No, no,’ he seemed surprised by the question.
 
‘Not at all, just the
odd conversation here.
 
He
sought my advice on a couple of occasions.’

‘When you recommended me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he tell you what the problem was?’

‘No, didn’t he tell you?
 
Or his daughter?’

‘She thought it was something to do
with his boat.
 
He sold it to...’

He sighed.
 
I felt something had changed and now I was boring him.

‘Oh, yes I heard all about that.
 
In some detail, in
fact.
 
Simeon was very
exercised about all that.
 
He had
all sorts of ideas.
 
Something to
do with a Russian takeover of the Indian chap’s company.
 
I told him to talk to SOCA or SCD7, one
or the other.’

‘Did he?’

‘No idea,’ he checked his watch.
 
‘I’m sorry, Tom.
 
I have to catch my train.
 
You know, I have a Senior Citizens’ Railcard.
 
The joys of off-peak travel for me
these days.’

I felt sorry for him.
 
His pension must have only been about
three times the average wage.

We wandered into the foyer, where the
cadaverous servant retrieved Sir Peter’s trilby and umbrella.
 
We walked outside into bright
sunlight.
 
He looked up at the sky
as if he mistrusted it, and put his hat on.

‘So you knew Sir Simeon from here?’ I
asked.
 
‘From the club?’

‘Heavens, no!
 
We were both on the board of the same company for a
while.
 
I was a new board member
and he took me under his wing.
 
Of
course he had done his research on me first!’

‘He showed you the ropes.’

‘Exactly.
 
You know what it is like when you leave the force.
 
You are at sixes and sevens.
 
And he helped me.
 
He didn’t have to, but he did.’

Sir Peter Watterson smiled
regretfully.
 
I couldn’t imagine a
person less likely to be at sixes, sevens or indeed any other confusing
numbers.
 
But I suppose, like the
rest of us, he had his own personal demons to deal with.

Reuben
Symonds met me at St Pancras station.
 
I was grateful for this offer, although I suspected he just wanted to
keep me away from the Alconbury Estate.
 
He had with him a youth in a hooded sweatshirt.
 
The hood was down, but he still resembled
a sullen Hobbit—with acne.
 
I
recognised him as Darren Patterson, brother of ‘Big Pete’, and partner in crime
of Djbril Mustapha who was apparently out of hospital and making a swift
recovery.
 

We sat in Costa Coffee.
 
Symonds and I drank tea, and Darren had
some sort of hot chocolate drink topped with shaving cream and pink
marshmallows.
 
No wonder the boy has
a face like a frozen pizza, I thought.
 

I showed them the photographs of my
Chichester assailants.
 
Darren
stared at them hard from under his brows.

‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘Yeah what?’ I asked.
 
‘Yeah it’s them?’

‘Fuck you.’

He looked away as if I didn’t exist.
 
I wished I could do the same to him.

‘Becket,’ Symonds put his hand on my
arm.
 
‘What’s the matter with
you?
 
He’s saying they are the
guys.
 
But we didn’t come here for
that.
 
We have something else for
you.
 
If you are nice and polite
and treat us with a bit of respect.’

Darren stared at Reuben Symonds with
his piggy eyes as if he was trying to tell him something.
 
Perhaps he’s telepathic, I
thought.
 
Symonds nodded and told
me why they wanted to see me.
 
So I
duly apologised.

To them both.

I
was in the office by six.
 
Carstairs was still there so I poked my head around his door.
 

‘Just the man,’ he said.
 
‘First, I get a coded message on my
mobile from Becket that I assumed was an invitation to play golf.
 
But when I call back I get your
answerphone.
 
Then, later that day,
a nice lady from the Public Records Office kindly returns Mr Becket’s mobile,
asking
me
to ask
you
to refrain from using the fire exit as a means of egress in the
future as it sets off a little alarm under her desk and a full risk assessment
has to be...’

‘Yes I get the message, Anthony.’

‘What’s going on, Thomas?’

‘I had to go up to London and left my
phone behind.’

‘Look if you won’t tell me, that’s
fine...’

‘There really is nothing to tell,’ I
lied.
 
‘Are you around for
long?
 
Fancy a drink later?’

It was a calculated risk.
 
He sighed and said he had to go to Whitstable
for an Art Society meeting, but was up for a round the next day.
 
I said okay and disappeared upstairs
without firming anything up.
 
I
felt cheap.
 
For once, there was no
way I wanted a round of golf.
 
I
had other fish to fry.

My
old mobile was dead, so I put it on charge.
 
If anyone was interested, it told
them
I was still in the office.

I considered ringing Meg, but I was as
nervous as a teenager.
 
The
telephone is such a suitable medium for rejection.
 
When I first met her, a male friend said to me, ‘Just ring
her.
 
If you won’t, I will.’
 
He was joking or at least I thought he
was—he barely knew her—but what I recall is being afraid of the
sound of her voice at the other end.
 
A voice saying, ‘No’ in any number of ways.
 
Death by a thousand cuts.

Thirty odd years later and still the
same cold fear.
 
You really should have moved on by now,
Becket, I thought.

So I rang Rosenberg and left a message
to call my office landline.
 
Ten
minutes later he called back.
 
He
was outside again, shouting over the whine of aircraft engines.
 
I soon found out why.
 

‘So you
are
the old Becket, after all,’ he said.
 
‘We have had MI5 here, going through the bins.
 
Care to tell me anything?’

I told him that I suspected I was being
bugged.
 
That could be it.

‘Of course, borrowing my phone.
 
Thanks, mate!’

‘My suspicion is this Mark
Marchant—that name I asked you to check? —
is
an operative of theirs or SOCA or whoever, but had entered the country under
another name.’

‘He’s the son, right?
 
South African.’

‘He’s also some kind of contractor.’

‘Becket, why didn’t you tell me all
this when we met?’

‘I wasn’t too sure then.
 
What did the boys from Box say?’

‘Routine, they said.
 
They always say that when it is
not.
 
Routine size elevens
trampling through our face recognition logs.
 
Routine questions disrupting our routines.
 
We lost three hours of normal
work.
 
Fortunately UKBA are well
practised in fobbing off other civil servants.
 
If they can fool those twelve year olds in the Treasury,
they can fool anyone.’

‘Don’t suppose you can run another FR check
for me?’

He swore and cut the connection.
 
But I sent the image to his mobile
anyway.
 
The image I had got from
Reuben Symonds and young Darren Patterson.
 
The man who had asked a group of teenagers
to distract an old man for a moment.

I
waited for the rear door downstairs to slam and looked out the back window to
see the Carstairs Jag pulling out of the car park.
 
Then I rang Jenny Forbes-Marchant.
 
She sounded miffed.

‘You didn’t call this morning.’

Despite not recalling the promise I
said, ‘Yes, well, I wasn’t feeling too good.’

‘We
did
overindulge slightly.
 
Did they
tell you off in A&E?’

‘I didn’t go there.
 
I have a friend who was a nurse.’

‘A female friend.’
 
It wasn’t a question.

‘My ex-wife.’

‘I see,’ she said slowly.
 
‘Peter said you were a shit.’

There were many responses to that, but
I bit my tongue on all of them.
 
I
didn’t want her to put the phone down just yet.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
 
‘I hope it all goes well Friday.’

I was referring to the funeral.

‘Thank you.’

We were back in the tundra.
 
Herds of caribou shivered in the icy
blasts.

‘By the way, do you have the name of
your father’s solicitor?’ I asked.

‘Why do you need that?’

‘I have some documents here I need to
return to him,’ I lied.
 
‘Ones you
father posted to me.
 
Nothing important, but there were strict instructions to return
them to his solicitor.
 
Unfortunately
there is no address.
 
I'm sure it
was an oversight.’

There was a long silence at the other
end.
 
The caribou stopped and
stared.
 
A wolverine trudged into
view sniffing the snowy air, a litter of arctic fox cubs scattered...

‘Tom, look I’m in the gallery so I have
nothing to hand.
 
I’ll ring you
back, okay?
 
Are you in the office?’

I said I was and would await her call.

I
didn’t think Jenny Forbes-Marchant would ring back on the landline, but I used
my new mobile anyway.
 
Littlemore
answered.
 

‘Are you awake?’ I asked.

‘Of course, Ch—.’

‘Sober?’

‘You know I don’t...’

‘Have you got anything for me?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Well, keep looking.
 
Next hour or so, I guess.
 
Don’t ring me, or anything.
 
I’ll call you.
 
Got that?’

‘You’ll call me.’

I disconnected.
 
I should really have said thanks or
something.
 
But I just couldn’t
bring myself to.
 
I would have
once, but as I’ve got older I have become more fixed in my views, more
unforgiving.
 
It is not an attractive
trait.

I
went across the road to the pub.
 
It was quiet: just a few regulars and the silent twinkle of the fruit
machine in the gloom.
 
I took a
pint of Spitfire over to a seat by the window.
 
There was a good view of the street and the entrance to
Hunt
and Carstairs LLP.
 
I checked my watch.
 
It was still too early.
 
Unless they were nearby, of course.
 
That is the trouble with paranoia, or
any form of heightened awareness: you read too much into things, you see too
many possibilities.
 
I received a
text from Meg.
 
It said someone
called Maike had rung and left her number.
 
There was a small ‘x’ at the end of the message that looked
promising.
 
But like I say, you can
read too much into things.
 

I rang Maike Breytenbach’s number.
 
She picked up immediately.
 

‘My son said you wanted to talk to me,
Mr Becket.’

‘Well I wanted to ask a question.
 
About your lawyer.
 
The one you and Sir Simeon were using
to...’

‘So you know about him and me.’

Not a question, but I said ‘Yes’
anyway.

‘It wasn’t about the money.
 
Like the daughter says.
 
That was so insulting.
 
She was very insulting.
 
A very insulting girl.’

I thought: you don’t know the half of
it.

‘She definitely has a way with her,’ I
said.

‘Now, you are joking.’
 
She paused and then surprised me by giving
out one abrupt laugh.
 
‘She most
certainly has that way with her.’

‘She told you to leave and she took a
lot of paper with her.
 
But you
didn’t mind because you had already taken it to his lawyer.’

‘That is correct.’

‘When was that?’

‘Straight away.
 
Well, I mean the day after...’

She started crying.
 
Loud, anguished
cries.
 
Almost wailing.
 
No ambiguity here.
 
I let it play
itself
out.
 
No point interrupting.
 

‘They would not even let me see his
body!
 
They do not even want me at
the funeral, but they cannot stop us.
 
They cannot stop us.
 
Jacob,
he was with Simeon every week.
 
For
ten years.
 
How often did that
daughter come down?
 
He did not
even want to see her when he went to London.
 
But I made him.
 
I said: you should go.
 
Simeon,
you should see your granddaughter.
 
You should stay with them.
 
It
is right.’
 
She paused again and
repeated, ‘It is right.’

‘Did you ever meet the son?
 
Mark?’

‘No, never.
 
Not even back home.’

It took a while for me to process the
information.

‘You knew Sir Simeon in South Africa?’

‘Of course,’ she said.
 
‘Of course, that is where we met.’

It
was later.
 
The dead time between
after work drinks and what in the world of real ale they call a session.
 
The pub was empty apart from a large man
who had pulled a chair over to the quiz machine and rested his forehead on the
screen in search of the answer.
 
I
knew how he felt.