The Conspiracy Theorist (9 page)

‘A sorry sight, indeed,’ the old man
observed, as if reading my thoughts.

Wing Commander (retired) Sydney
Kenilworth was an elderly gentleman, probably not quite the same vintage as Sir
Simeon
Marchant,
post-war I’d say, but still getting
on a bit.
 
When I had told him I
was representing Mrs Jenny Forbes-Marchant, he had sniffed grimly and said,
‘Ah, the daughter.’

I took some photographs on my
phone.
 
I was not sure if I needed
them, but it gave me something to do while Wing Commander Kenilworth thought of
the next thing he was going to say.
 
He wiped his nose vigorously with a red-spotted handkerchief.

‘Wants to find out what went on, does
she?
 
The daughter?’

I thought of replying,
No she’s just after the money.
 
But I thought better of it.

‘Of course, who wouldn’t?’

‘Indeed,’ the old man said.
 
‘Tell her she’ll have to wait until the
inquest like everybody else.’

‘Mr Prajapati’s inquest?’

‘That’s the fellow.
 
I have been called to give evidence,’
he added self-importantly.
 
‘Now, poor
Simeon is not here.’

‘You met Mr Prajapati, then?’

The old man put his hankie away.
 
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait till
the inquest too, Mr.
..’

I reminded him of the name on the card
in his pocket.
 
Becket, one T as in the martyr
.
 
I skirted around the boat, taking more
needless snaps.

‘You know I was in the RAF myself,’ I
added conversationally.

We
were upstairs in the deserted clubhouse.
 
Fortunately, Wing Commander Kenilworth had a key to the bar so was able,
with great agility for a man of his years, to duck through the lower door,
prepare a couple of pink gins and bring them over to where I sat by the
window.
 

‘Plymouth, none of your London Dry
malarkey.
 
Chin-chin!’

I raised my glass, ‘Thank you very
much, sir!’

Thankfully we had got past the sharing
of information stage: RAF talk, postings and people—you would hardly even
call them mutual acquaintances—that we had both come across during our
service.
 
I still thought it wise
to call the old man ‘sir’; it cost me nothing and clearly gave him
pleasure.
 
My own father had not
been that dissimilar, but he had never made it to the exalted rank of Wing
Commander.
 
Both Beckets, senior
and junior,
père-et-fils
, had been
Warrant Officers, and had the distinction of being addressed by all and sundry
as ‘Mr Becket’.
 
Something both of
us had carried forward into civilian life.
 
It saved putting ‘Retired’ after your name, which seemed to
be sole province of senior officers of whatever service.

‘I left the bitters in, Mr Becket.’

‘Very wise, sir.
 
I’m driving, after all.’

He looked thoughtful.

‘Nice little car you have there,’ he
said, nodding to where the Spider glinted uncomfortably in the sunlight.
 
‘I’ve had an MG Sprite for many
years.
 
I do like to see the bonnet
when I'm driving, don’t you?
 
So
many of these modern cars fall away into the road.
 
Like driving a blessed television screen.’

I had heard this before from old
pilots.
 
The need
for a horizon.
 
Flying jets
was a different game these days.
 
Closer to flying a television screen—attached to a games
console, of course.
 
I
looked out to sea.
 
It was a fine day;
cloud scudding high and yellowed like in a Turner print, the water slate-grey
and choppy out towards Chichester Bar.
 
We talked some more of the treacherousness of the sea without feeling
the need to touch on the case of Sunny Prajapati.

‘Have you always been interested in
sailing, sir?’

‘I have, Mr Becket.
 
Since I was a child.
 
Swallows and Amazons
stuff.
 
If I had a choice I would have gone into the senior
service.
 
But my father was having
none of it.’

Same with me, I thought.
 
My father insisted I joined the
RAF.
 
But I didn’t say this unless
Wing Commander Kenilworth got sidetracked into more reminiscences.

‘And Sir Simeon was a friend of yours?’

The old man stiffened in his
chair.
 
‘I had that honour.’
 
He sipped.
 
‘A great man.
 
Many’s
the
time we’d go out in the
Cassandra.
 
Clip around the islands.
 
Simeon was a great birdwatcher.’

He stared into the distance, his
thoughts souring on him.

‘Introduced me to the club.
 
Best president we ever had.
 
Not everyone thought that way, of
course, but...’

‘He was unpopular?’

‘Well, for this new breed it is all sport,
you see.
 
Sir Ben Ainsley this and
that.
 
America’s
Cup.
 
Hanging off the side
of a catamaran, scurrying around like bilge rats, racing hither and
thither.
 
All very well, but they
want to make it the be-all-and-end-all of things...’

‘
They
?’

‘The new breed.
 
The boy racers.
 
Simeon was trying to maintain our traditions.’

‘Gentlemen not Players?’

‘What?
 
Oh, I see. Exactly!
 
Gentlemen not Players.
 
Very good!’

Wing Commander Kenilworth sipped at his
gin.
 
The colour had risen in his
face.
 
Despite his faith in
Angostura Bitters, he seemed profoundly affected by the alcohol.
 
But it was a wicked gin he mixed.

‘This is why those chaps are making
such a fuss.’

‘The ones who said Sir Simeon sold the
Cassandra
to an inexperienced sailor?’

‘You heard,’ he said grimly.
 
‘Sheer bad form.
 
The man was perfectly competent.’

‘So you met Mr Prajapati, then?’

And we were back to where we were half
an hour ago.
 
Wing Commander
Kenilworth seemed to have forgotten.
 
And this time he did not say that I would have to wait for the inquest.

The
Chapel of Lancing College rose like a neo-Gothic cliff above the Adur
Valley.
 
I had often seen it from
the A27 travelling westwards, but never before had it been so up close and
personal.

The memorial service had already
begun.
 
I could hear the organ droning
away inside.
 
The school’s
quadrangle had the empty feeling that churches manage to convey when a service
is on.
 
Like an admonition, I
thought.
 
But for
what exactly?

Perhaps because I had driven much too
quickly from Hayling Island, with a very large pink gin—
Plymouth, none of your London Dry malarkey
—inside
of me.
 
Consequently, the Spider
clicked and cooled by the side of the road.
 
A coach had blocked the entrance to the car park, so I
squeezed in on the yellow lines outside the chapel between a Range Rover and
another car on steroids.

The nearest thing the wealthy have to
horses these days, I thought.
 
The
rich mounted high above the road, Becket the lowly peasant in his Alfa looking
up at them.

How
strong was that gin?
I asked
myself.
 

I blew into the palm of my hand as I
walked up the path.
 
At least my
breath didn’t smell too bad.
 
But I
crunched an Extra Strong Mint anyway.

Inside, the choir were singing
something Bach-like.
 
I slipped
into the first pew available.
 
It
was not yet term time but the place was full of blazers.
 
Wing Commander Kenilworth had explained
that Prajapati children were in the sixth form at the private school so the
memorial service was being held there.
 
Grammar
schoolboy that I am, I never cease
to
be amazed at the English public school system.
 
Here you got the best sense of the class divide in modern
Britain and its complexity.
 
It was
not just about wealth—although having £30,000 per annum to spare
definitely helped—but the expectation that this was
what one did
.
 
One went
where one’s parents went, even if one’s grandparents had to pay.
 
For people like Sunil Prajapati and his
parents back in India there were, of course, much greater costs—not
least, in those days, a nine month’s separation a year.
 
But he had duly gone to Lancing and
when his kids were old enough, so had they—but as day pupils, of
course.
 
The old Wing Commander had
even said that he suspected that was why Prajapati had located his company in
the area; so his kids could go to school at Lancing.

The chief mourners were out of sight at
the front.
 
The rest of the
congregation seemed to be well-to-do families and employees of PiTech, many of
them only a few years older than the sixth formers, but with less of an idea of
how to dress for such occasions.
 
Some
were not even paying attention but staring up at the chapel’s arched roof as if
it were a mathematical puzzle they hadn’t come across before.

I had to admit the ceiling was worth
looking at.
 
I almost missed the
end of the hymn and the request to be seated.
 
The Bishop of Chichester, no less, welcomed us all and, with
the air of a politician on the hustings, opened proceedings.
 
He knew this wasn’t his usual crowd and
wasn’t going to waste the opportunity.
 
He informed the congregation that this was not a funeral service but a
memorial—just as significant, for some, as a rite of passage—and
had been brought forward at the family’s and the school’s request to ease the
pain of the whole community.
 
It
was, he said, at such times, his eyes roving the serried ranks of blazers, that
one appreciates the support that one’s fellows can give one.
 
That support,
that compassion
, was part of the same compassion, the very passion,
that Jesus...

I zoned out.
 
We were on to the Jesus bit.
 
It is remarkable, I thought, how a clergyman could find the
shortest route from any given subject to Jesus.
 
The record was held by a radio slot called
Thought for the Day
, which would begin
with a reflection on supermarket trolleys in canals and within sixty seconds
would be onto the Parable of the Talents.
 
I regarded the ceiling until everyone rose and sang ‘How Sweet the Name
of Jesus Sounds in a Believer’s Ear’.

Next up was the local parish
priest—a female, with very short, peroxided hair—who reminisced
about the aptly named ‘Sunny’ first coming to her church on Shoreham
beach.
 
It was a good little speech
that made religion seem quite a normal thing.
 
She talked about his wife, Annie, and their two fine sons:
Prian and Prashanna.
 
She nodded at
them.
 
The rows ahead shuffled a
bit as if they were getting a glance at the grieving family.
 
She went on about Sunny’s pride in his
family’s accomplishments, his business, and his work in the local
community.
 
She talked of his great
love, sailing, which she herself shared.
 
Next week, there would be a family funeral, but her little church by the
sea would be too small to take but the closest family and friends.
 
So this was a chance for all of us to
celebrate Sunil Prajapati’s life and remember him.
 

Good on you, I thought.
 
All the things your bishop should have
said.

We rose for ‘Those in Peril on the
Sea.’
 

After this, a short shaven-headed man
came to the lectern.
 
He was introduced by the female vicar as Sunil’s friend and
business partner, Vincent Carmody
.
 
His tanned head glistened under the spotlight over the pulpit.
 
He had the sort of confidence I have
observed in junior officers who gain promotion early in their careers.
 
His accent was middle-England with a
slight drawl that betrayed a more privileged background.
 
True, he was glad to be back in the old
Chapel but he only hoped it had been under better circumstances.
 
In fact there could not be any worse
circumstances, he said with the pace and timing of a natural orator.
 
We have all lost someone.
 
He looked around the room: a husband, a
father, a friend, a friend of a friend,
the
father of
a friend.
 
We all shared some part
of a loss.

It is true, I thought.
 
Even I have lost something.

Carmody spoke of the young
Prajapati.
 
He didn’t really know
him that well at Lancing, as they were in different years.
 
But at university, Prajapati had taken
him under his wing, and shown him around.
 
Oxford, I guessed.
 

‘Sunny was known for being able to
charm his way into any party.
 
Some
called it
gatecrashing
, but Sunny was never ever thrown
out.
 
After they met him, people
wanted him to stay, you see.
 
Very
soon, I realised Sunny just liked being able to get into parties, especially if
he were not invited, clubs where he was not meant to be, because that was a
challenge to him.
 
That was what
drove him in business too.
 
He did
not accept the boundaries people placed around him.
 
That was what I loved about him.
 
And I know others did too...’

I noted the obligatory nod to the front
row.

‘...
and
we
will all miss him.
 
Whether we are
family, friends, colleagues, business rivals, or just people whose parties he
crashed, because he was charming, and open, and very, very good at what he
did.’

Carmody ended abruptly and stood down
from the lectern.
 
Taken by surprise,
the peroxided vicar got to her feet and announced ‘All Things Bright and
Beautiful.’
 
After which, the bishop
rose again, statesmanlike, grave, the real star of the show...

I decided to scoot out and miss the
rush.

After the sepia of the chapel, colours
reasserted themselves: blue sky, scudding cloud, the whites, blues, yellows of
the cars, reds... someone hopped back into the Range Rover parked behind the
Spider.
 
I avoided looking in its
direction
;
not that it would have done any good.
 
Like so many cars these days, it had
darkened glass.
 
I went and sat in
the Spider and wound down the window.
 
Thoughtfully I rolled a cigarette, keeping an eye on the wing
mirror.
 

Who
would be waiting in a blacked out Range Rover outside a church?
 
Bodyguards?
 
Some wealthy people in there.
 
The offspring of
sheikhs or oligarchs?

Finally the congregation emerged.
 
First the bishop and Mrs Prajapati,
supported either side by her sons.
 
Then, the female vicar.
 
They lined up to greet mourners.
 
Vincent Carmody shook hands with the
two priests and went and stood behind the Prajapati family, hands on the boys’
shoulders.
 
I checked my watch.
 
Half-an-hour
before my appointment in Chichester.
 
Time to leave.

Down the long drive from the school.
 
A row of cars following me onto the A27.
 
The Range Rover not among them.

Bellwethers
LLP was situated on a cobbled
mews,
close to the
council offices and crown court.
 
I
had an appointment with a Peter Naismith, who managed the PiTech account.
 
I suspected the solicitor was quite
young, although I noted he was already on the short list of partners inscribed
in brass plaques just inside the entrance.
 
The receptionist looked at me doubtfully, as if she wondered
at my right to be there at all, much less to see a full partner.
 

I was met by an intern who was
twenty-five going on twelve
.
 
He said his name was Brian, or Ryan, or
perhaps even Diane.
 
No surname was
proffered and the badge just said ‘Trainee’ like he was working at a fast food
chain that wasn’t too sure if his very own nameplate was worth investing in
yet.
 
Brian carried a sorry-looking
reporter’s notepad that had been thinned by much tearing-out.
 
Hunt and Carstairs sent such specimens
out to deal with people who had wandered in off the street.
 
This was going to be harder than I
thought.

We went to a glass cubicle next to
reception.
 
I was offered a
seat.
 
I remained standing.

‘How can I help you, Mr Becket?’

‘I explained all that on the phone.’

‘Unfortunately,’ the boy said. ‘I did
not take that call.’

I nodded at the notepad, ‘
Don’t
they teach you to take notes here?
 
Or do you start afresh each time?’

The boy looked down at his pad.
 
I almost felt sorry for him.

‘We... Of course we take notes.
 
It is just that I don’t have them.’

‘Clearly.’

‘As I said, I didn’t take your call.’
 
He was getting shirty now.
 
I smiled.

‘I asked to see Mr Naismith.’

‘Mr Naismith is currently
unavailable.
 
You’ll just have to
put up with me.’

‘That’s the problem, Brian.
 
I cannot put up with you.
 
That’s the problem.
 
I really need to see a grown-up.’

Ten
minutes later, I was in Peter Naismith’s office.
 
He had small brown eyes, like raisins and a hard thin mouth
that had once tried to find things amusing but had given up after a few goes.
 
He had one of those puritanical Scots
accents—Aberdeen, Inverness Caledonian Thistle—the sort that goes very
nicely with the legal profession.
 

‘Sorry, about that Mr Becket.
 
I was tied up with a client.
 
I only asked Ryan to get you a coffee.
 
They are so very keen, you see.’

I didn’t believe him for a moment.