The Conspiracy Theorist (28 page)

‘Indeed.
 
It did distract me for a while.’

‘The speed at which they coughed up?
 
Bellwethers wasn’t it?’

‘That and the whole business of the
boat.
 
It was never about the boat except in
one small respect.’

‘Being?’

‘Being the fact that someone was spying
on Sir Simeon Marchant.’

‘Spying?’

‘Under surveillance.
 
You see, at first I thought it was Sunny Prajapati that was being
bugged.
 
Industrial espionage,
perhaps even a matrimonial, but then I realised the fittings were too old for
that.
 
Even if a boat were bashed
about like the
Cassandra,
the wood
would not fade that quickly.
 
That
was the mistake Janovitz made at first, but I think he realised later.’

‘Janovitz?’

‘He was the PI employed by Prajapati to
check up on his wife.
 
He was
attacked with me in Chichester.
 
They went back and finished the job.’

I watched Miles Breckenridge.
 
This was the point he should have told
me I was mad and that he was calling Jerzy, the Polish security guard.
 
But he didn’t.
 
His eyes stopped twinkling,
though.
 
It was a result of sorts.

‘Do you know what an iconoclast is, Mr
Becket?’

‘Someone who smashes icons?’

‘Yes, a good example of your
iconoclasm, that.
 
You go round smashing other people’s
preconceptions, their dogmas.
 
Am I
right?
 
That is
your
modus operandi.’
 

‘I’ve never thought of it that way.’

‘Well, it’s a thought, as they say.’ He
paused as if suddenly bored by the conversation.
 
‘So how does this involve Hawesworth and Breckenridge?’

‘Sir Simeon Marchant came to see you
the day before he was killed.
 
I
wondered what that was about.’

‘You know I can’t divulge that sort of
information, Mr Becket.’

‘Well, let me tell you what I think it
was about...’

‘More iconoclasm!’ he laughed.
 
‘No, no, please go on.’

‘I think it was about two things: one,
arrangements for his marriage to Maike Breytenbach, which involved things like
her sister’s visa, and his will, and a new house and Jacob’s business; two,
that someone was following him, or bugging him, and perhaps they had even
killed poor Mr Prajapati thinking it was him out in the Looe Channel
alone.
 
He was probably wrong on
that point—I think he read too much into things, he was a conspiracy
theorist, after all—but the overall assumption was proved to be
correct.
 
Someone was after
him.
 
The question was
who
?
 
Who would benefit from his death?
Cui bono?’

‘Mr Becket, now it is you that sounds
like the conspiracy theorist.’

I ignored this.

‘He might have even told you, Mr
Breckenridge, that he was going to engage a bloke called Becket to find
out.
 
He told other people...’

His eyebrow rose a fraction of an
inch.
 
I went on.

‘And when I ask myself the
cui bono
question
,
I think of Sir Simeon’s daughter and the son he was afraid of.’

‘Somewhat preposterous, if you don’t mind
me saying.’

I shrugged as if I didn’t mind at all.

‘I know you can’t do anything about
it.
 
Not until his inquest declares
the nature of his death...’

‘No, no,’ he
interrupted.
 
‘What is preposterous is like a lot of
iconoclasts or conspiracy theorists, Mr Becket, you just don’t check your
facts...’

I interrupted him, ‘Sooner or later, Mr
Breckenridge, someone will come asking questions and client confidentiality
will not come into it.
 
Was Sir Simeon
Marchant scared of someone?
 
Who
did he think was targeting him?
 
Was it his own son?’

I was shouting now—not very
seemly—and he was yelling back as if addressing an aged relative or
mental defective.

‘Mr Becket, check your facts!
 
Sir Simeon Marchant cannot have been
threatened by his son because he does not have a son!’

And with that the conversation was
over.

When
I had calmed down two coffees later, I went online at Starbucks and emailed Kat
Persaud explaining I didn’t have a phone, but to send the file over when she
had a chance.
 
Moments later she
replied.

Dear
Supersleuth, please find attached the research you requested.
 
As I said the University of Londinium
usually charges my services out at £960 per day + VAT.
 
However as it is you and you bought me
a pizza I have decided to waive said fee in lieu of the sterling assistance you
did to my research.
 
Besides I have
enjoyed looking into the background of Mr X—never put on an email what
you would not put on a postcard—and have decided, like Mr Snowden, that
it is in the public interest.
 

Hope
GCHQ isn’t reading this email!
 
If
so you will probably find me in working in Starbucks the next time you decide
to call me.
 
That is if you ever
get yourself a new ‘burner’—sorry too much watching of
The Wire
!
 
Your
’umble savant, KP.

I smiled and read the attachment,
thinking how attractive Kat Persaud was and, regretfully, how young too.
 
About the same age as
Miles Breckenridge, in fact.
 
But such different personalities.
 
What would happen if they met and
married or lived together or whatever people did these days?
 
How would it change both of them?
 

I was about to send her a reply when Littlemore
waddled in.
 
While he was ordering
his customary soup-bowl of coffee, I borrowed his phone and punched in a number.

‘I was just thinking of you,’ I said.

‘Me too.’

‘You were thinking of yourself?’

Meg laughed, ‘Of course.’

‘What did you do yesterday?’

‘Double shift, as it turned out.
 
Washing-up left in the sink by Thomas A Becket.
 
Messages to Becket
from strange South African women.
 
No phone calls from Becket.’

‘Sorry about that.
 
Phone problems.’

‘Where are you, Thomas?
 
Sounds like a laundrette.’

‘Starbucks, Victoria Street.’

‘London?
 
Look, I'm off today.
 
Come over, we need to talk.’

‘Meg, have you heard of a drug called
Exelon?’

‘Of course.’

‘What is it?’

‘Why?’

‘Because I saw it in Sir Simeon
Marchant’s study.
 
It was prescribed for him.’

‘That’s a relief,’ Meg said. ‘I thought
it was for you.’

Exelon is the trade name of drug called
Rivastigmine, which is used in the early treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
 
Meg told me that Exelon was one of
three brands that slowed the deterioration of nerve cells.
 
Current NHS guidance was to prescribe
whatever was cheapest at the time.
 
So there was no way of knowing how severe Sir Simeon’s condition was
other than it was mild to moderate.

‘Still pretty bad, then?’ I asked.

‘Still pretty bad.’

I told Meg I would ring later with my
ETA.
 

Littlemore sat down opposite me with a
rich waft of BO.
 
He put a
long-lens camera on the table and handed over a compact disc.
 
On this he had amusingly inscribed: ‘Chez
Becket’.

‘There’s nothing else on here is there,
Littlemore?’

He shook his head vigorously, tears
welling in his eyes.

‘Sorry,’ I said.
 
‘Can I make another call?’

He nodded.
 

‘Sit over there, then.
 
It’s private.’

Littlemore picked up the camera and shuffled
over to a stool by the window.
 
There he slumped like a sulky child and gloomily looked out.
 
I took a few deep breaths to
reoxygenate myself and rang Rosenberg.
 
He said he had a name for me.
 
Mark Marchant had entered the UK on a flight from South Africa, using
the passport of one ‘Lukas Merweville’.
 
He spelled it out for me and, with a note of finality, rang off.
 
For once there were no aircraft in the
background.

I called Dr Kat Persaud and thanked her
for the research.
 

‘Was it difficult to find?’ I asked.

‘Not really.
 
We have a whole team working on the Cold War here.
 
Externally funded research.
 
Like gold dust.
 
Funders go all dewy eyed and
sentimental about the bad old days when life was simple.’

‘Can you check out a couple of other
names for me?’

‘Do I get another pizza?’

Again that shiver of recognition—I
was talking to Clara—before she added, ‘Go on, then.’

‘Hawesworth and Breckenridge, that’s
one...’

‘Sounds like two to me.’

‘It’s a legal firm.
 
Victoria Street.’

‘Intriguing.
 
And the second?’

I spelled it out for her.

‘Lukas with a K,’ she repeated.
 
‘Same pack drill?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I email you?’

‘If you could, thanks.’

‘Okay I will try and squeeze it in
around irritating things like students.
 
I keep telling them to go away but they keep a-coming back...’

This
time Richie was only too pleased to see me.
 
I had said just two words into Littlemore’s phone and he
told me to come and see him at once.
 
This time he headed me off outside New Scotland Yard, as if he didn’t
want to contaminate the building with my presence.
 
We passed St James’s Park Tube, the Home Office and crossed
the road into the park.
 
It was
bright and Richie was wearing aviator specs, which seemed to accentuate how
small his head was.
 
In a certain
light, he resembled an insect, and not a particularly bright one either.

We sat on a bench overlooking the
stream.
 
Families took photographs
of each other, on the bridge, with Buckingham Palace as their Disneyland
backdrop.
 
It was in this very area
that, earlier in the year, a Cabinet minister had been photographed putting his
meeting papers in a rubbish bin.
 
Nowhere is private these days.
 
Everyone has a camera to hand.
 
But at least all the people around us looked like tourists, especially
the toddlers.
 
Despite all this, Richie
seemed nervous, and who could blame him?
 
Things had got out of control.
 
Things I had warned him about.
 
But he hadn’t listened.
 
And
now he was paying for it. I felt like gloating, but he got in first.

‘What bucket of shit have you stirred
up now, Becket?’

‘I assume you know what happened in
Canterbury, then?’

‘Heard?
 
Yes it has gone right to the top and the slap has come all
the way down to yours truly.
 
Satisfied?’

I shrugged.
 
I didn’t particularly care who got slapped in the Met.

‘Well...’

‘How did you find out, Becket?’

‘He was clumsy.
 
A kid took his photo on the Euston Road
before Sir Simeon was killed.
 
I
checked it out against flight arrivals at Gatwick.
 
It would appear that sometimes he comes into the UK as Mark
Marchant, sometimes as Lukas Merweville.
 
Poor bloke must have an identity crisis.’

‘That was because we threatened to pull
his passport.’