The Conspiracy Theorist (21 page)

Suffice to say, I had interviewed Littlemore
for the best part of an afternoon in hospital, trying to get a hint at my
characters’ motivations.
 
By the
end of it I felt like pulling the saline trip out of his arm and smothering Littlemore
with his NHS pillow.
 
(The one, as
far as I could tell, he had never contributed to via the tax and social
security system.)
 
What Becket
had
done, however, was get the fat slob
re-homed to a place in Pimlico where the locals didn’t know his background.
 
Most of the other residents in the block
were unemployed artists, so I told Littlemore to say he was writing a novel and
his odd behaviour—late hours at the computer, shuffling down the corridor
talking to himself, etc—would be accepted as the norm.

For this Becketian kindness, Littlemore
was profoundly grateful.
 
I also
put some work his way from time to time, because, for all of his other faults, Littlemore
was the sort of researcher who could find things out other people couldn’t.
 
Entirely self-taught, he was also off
the map as far as the security services were concerned.
 
I intended to keep it that way and told
him if he ever worked for anyone else I would set him up as quickly as a Kill
the Paedos FaceBook page.

‘I haven’t got long, Littlemore,’ I
said.
 
‘Walk with me to the Tube
and I’ll tell you what I need you to do.’

Southwark.
 
From where Chaucer’s pilgrims set
out for Canterbury and these days an up and coming place, one where I was no longer
surprised to meet such exotic creatures as Mrs Jenny Forbes-Marchant.
 
I was not at the gallery by half past
eight as arranged.
 
But quarter to
nine was close enough to save me from period of exile in Siberia.
 
Inside, I could see the last remaining
guests poncing about with flutes of champagne or orange juice.
 
Down a side street, the caterers were
already packing their van.
 
I went
in.

In many ways it was a similar place to
the Persimmon, as if galleries had their own generic set designer.
 
Even the exhibition had the same air of
restrained desperation.
 
The search for novelty.
 
But we were in Southwark, so the customers were more arty,
less Arab, and the prices were about half of what they were chez
Forbes-Marchant.
 
I spotted her
talking to a man in a black leather cap.
 
He looked familiar, like he was an actor or journalist or some other talking
head beamed into the Becket residence from time to time.
 
But he couldn’t have been that
important, as Jenny broke off her conversation as she soon as she saw me and
headed me off before I got to the drinks table.
 
It looked empty anyway.
 

‘Tom,’ she kissed me on both
cheeks.
 
‘You made it!’

‘I did,’ I said.
 
‘I made it.’

She whispered, ‘I’ll just say my
goodbyes.
 
Hold this.’

I took her glass and watched her
approach the hostess.
 
They went
through all the kissing business again, this time in farewell.
 
I finished the drink and put it on a
passing tray.
 
There were no
refills on offer.
 
Obviously the
buyers had all left and the gallery owner was just left with her rivals, the
artist and sundry hangers-on.
 
Dressed
in the bizarre uniform of the London art-scene—burnt sienna was the new
black that month—they chatted in little desperate groups, wondering where
to go next.
 
From their midst, a middle-aged
man approached me.
 
He was the only
one in laughing distance dressed in a pinstripe suit and he still had a
drink.
 
He stuck out his hand
formally.
 

‘Peter Forbes.’

There was something familiar about the rhythm
of his voice.
 
I studied him for a
moment.
 
He had a halo of dark
curly hair above a forehead as wrinkled and challenged as a boxer dog.
 
He was frowning at me like was a
sculpture he didn’t quite understand.

I nodded over at Jenny
Forbes-Marchant.
 
‘Any relation?’

‘Ex-husband.
 
And you?’

‘No, we’ve never been married.’

That one fizzled out in the frost.

‘No, your name?’

‘Sorry,’ I held out my hand.
 
‘Tom Becket.’

‘Ah, the man who got her money
back
.’

The
man
is a phrase that has myriad meanings in
the English class system.
 
All of them derogatory.
 
When people want to be polite—or patronising—
they put ‘gentle’ between ‘the’ and ‘man.’
 
This is the gentleman
who cleans one’s lavatory
etc
.
 
Mr—er—Becket?
 
He was the man who got Daddy’s money
back.
 

‘Well, her father’s money,’ I said to
Peter Forbes.

‘Jen tells me everything,’ he said.

‘That’s what ex-husbands are for.’

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s quite all right.’

He moved closer, smelling of aftershave
and other forms of neat alcohol.
 
He
must have had the type of job where it was acceptable to sweat whisky at your
colleagues all day.
 
When people
have that depth of reek before the watershed, there’s normally a problem.
 
He appeared perplexed.
 
I wondered what he was wondering.
 
His eyes came in and out of focus, so I
think he was wondering too.

‘Pardon?’

‘I said it is quite all right,’ I
repeated.
 
‘But you really should
not go round threatening people, Mr Forbes.
 
It will get you rusticated.’

‘I don’t know what you mean?’

‘Rusticated...’

‘No, not
that
!
 
About
threatening you...’

‘You rang me up a week ago, or
thereabouts.
 
Said I was to leave
her alone.’
 
I nodded again in the
direction of his ex-wife.
 
‘I must admit,
I thought it was a proper threat.
 
Until I met you.
 
Where did you learn to speak like Stephen Hawking, by the way?
 
Did you go to RADA or do you have an
new App on your phone?’

Jenny Forbes-Marchant caught my eye,
clocked her ex, who looked like he was about to spontaneously combust, and almost
sprinted over.
 
Not an easy thing
to do in high heels.

‘Tom!’ she cried.
 
‘Tom, Tom, Tom, we must go or we will
be late
.’

And so, to the sound of the tom-toms we
left.

Outside,
she put her arm through mine and we walked in the direction of river.
 
I wondered if she had agreed to see me
just to make her ex-husband jealous—or just to irritate him.
 
Stranger things had been known.
 
It could not have been to drive him to
drink; Peter Forbes was already there and parked up for the night.
 

Well, now I knew.
 
I thought she had been unduly keen when
I called her from the train.
 
Unexpectedly in London tonight.
 
Fancy a drink?
 
Put
the boot in on the old man.
 
Whatever
her motivation, now I was in her presence I doubted mine.
 
She smelled good and leaned into me in
a girlish manner.
 
I thought, she
is no longer my client; there’s nothing unethical about this.

‘What are we late for?’ I asked.

‘Oh,’ she laughed.
 
‘I told Peter you were taking me to the
Tate.
 
A little
white lie.
 
He never took me
to such places, you see.’

I didn’t, but then you never do with
matrimonials; all the usual rules of engagement go out of the window and land
in the back garden with a thud.

She held onto my arm like a young girl,
only heavier, and we walked through the deserted Southwark streets towards the
river.
 
Everything was shuttered
for the night—the florist’s, the bookshop, a toyshop that sold wooden
trains and little else—a free newspaper blew along the gutter for a while
but it soon abandoned us.

Tate Modern was open for an evening
event.
 
Young staff dressed in
sombre, economical black directed us with complicit art-world gestures as if
they assumed we were on our way there.
 
We were obviously the right demographic.
 
Whatever was on, Jenny had already been and it was
splendid.
 
I wasn’t really
listening—that sort of arty talk just washes over me—besides the
river was before us now, a Prussian
Blue
expanse unravelling
eastwards toward the Shard, and sundry other lighted baubles on the Christmas
tree of capitalism.
 
Music was in
the air.
 
A grand piano almost
blocked Millennium Bridge, and we had to skirt around it while a young man
played something short and jangly like Chopin to a crowd of bemused
tourists.
 

‘Some busker!’ I remarked.

‘Silly!’ Jenny admonished, leaning into
me.
 
‘That’s part of the Tate’s
promotion.’

‘A wizard wheeze,’ I agreed.

Across the bridge, St Paul’s stood
before us lit by several hundred spotlights.
 
It looked like an alien spaceship had landed in the midst of
the city, classical amongst the usual London mishmash of neo-Gothic and
concrete, the wrong scale and dimensions, the wrong toy from God’s toy-box.
 

‘I’m not a great fan of Wren,’ she said,
dismissing his life’s work.

‘Took him 32 years to build it,’ I said,
knowing something about cathedrals.
 
‘That’s some commitment.’

‘Oh, I can see the
commitment
,’ she said.

I left it at that and looked around for
a pub.

The nearest was all bare boards and
advertising ‘real ale and fish-n-chips’.
 
I did not have high hopes, but the beer turned out to be half decent.
 
Jenny had her usual G&T, a
double.
 
My wallet considerably
lighter—we were deep in tourist territory, after all—I led us to
some barstools over by the window.
 
A high, round table was between us.
 
I thought it safer that way.
 

Jenny asked me about the Chichester attack
and I watched her reaction.
 
There
was none, apart from putting her hand out to touch the stitches on my
forehead.
 
She told me she had come
to see me in the hospital but had been turned away.
 
She didn’t mention giving a statement to the police.
 
Or anything about her
brother at all.
 
I showed
her the CCTV photograph of the ‘muggers’ but she showed very little
interest.
 
Not even commenting on
their suits.
 
It was strange.
 
But then, she was.

‘Did you see anyone like that in the
theatre bar?’ I asked.

I knew it was a question the police had
asked her.
 
Thanks to DS Singh, I
had Jenny Forbes-Marchant’s statement in my inside pocket.
 
But if she remembered the question, she
did not acknowledge it.
 

‘In the bar?
 
Why would they be in the bar?’

‘Not to see Brecht, that’s for sure,’ I
said.
 
‘Someone might have seen
Mark hand over the £500.
 
Followed
me outside and mugged me.’

‘I don’t think so.’

She stared into space.
 
Downed her drink and stood.

‘I’ll get these,’ she said.

I watched her sashay over to the
bar.
 
There was nothing furtive or
dishonest in her mannerisms.
 
Just sexy.
 
You’re too old for this, Becket, I thought.
 
You had your mid-life crisis a few years ago.
 
An affair and a
sports car.
 
Now you are
starting it all over again.
 
Is
that what you think you are doing?
 

Jenny was talking to the bar staff
while checking her mobile phone for messages.
 
The pub—if you could call it that—was almost
empty now.
 
Half past nine.
 
Perhaps it would fill up after the Tate
event finished.
 
Then the two
Polish girls serving Jenny would be overwhelmed by requests for exotic
drinks.
 
In the restaurant area, a
tiny mouse scurried along under the tables, his back to the skirting
boards.
 
I felt for him; there were
no scraps for me to feed on either.
 
Change the subject, Becket.
 
Change the record.
 
I put
the photos back in the envelope, as she returned.