The Conspiracy Theorist (25 page)

If there was a conspiracy to fool the
IPCC by the officers, it was not done to protect criminals but brave men who
risked their lives—and got it badly wrong.
 
The Met did everything they could to protect their own, and
in doing so misled the Menezes family.
 
In the end they nailed the Commissioner through the Health and Safety at
Work Act, but there were no criminal prosecutions.
 
The evidence threshold used by the IPCC—it was noted
by all and sundry, as well as in many internal reports and memoranda—was
much lower than the one needed by the Crown Prosecution Service, particularly
with the right wing press baying at their heels.

What got to me was how my own service,
the Directorate of Professional Standards, was complicit in this.
 
You would expect firearms officers to
close ranks and protect their backs, particularly when the commands coming down
the line from HQ turned out to be so garbled.
 
But it is a matter of public record that at least one of the
DPS interviewers led a witness, interviewing her in a pub with the TV on.
 
A news programme was reporting from the
crime scene in one ear, and in the other my colleague was telling her that the
real victims were the families of the poor firearms officers who would now no
doubt be out of a job.
 
As the IPCC
report said, such poor practice should be dealt with as a ‘local management
issue’, which we called a ‘naughty boy bollocking’ as it meant nothing.
 
Nothing at all.

All this I told Dr Katherine Persaud of
King’s College, London.
 
There was
nothing there that was not in the public domain, and she didn’t make
notes.
 
But she nodded as if it
confirmed her own theories.
 
She said
she was actually writing a book about whistleblowers—more references here
to the
zeitgeist—
and was more
interested in the only casualty of the whole affair, the IPCC administrator
sacked for leaking documents to a broadcaster.
 
I told her I knew nothing of that side of things.

I didn’t tell her the more interesting
story.
 
One, of how later that
month, DCI Becket had presented his own evidence and got moved sideways to
Interpol for an enforced sabbatical.
 
Two, how, a few years later, the whole sorry affair influenced how
Becket went after PC Elliott Quinn of a different firearms unit, giving him no
space until he blew his own head off before he could take someone else’s life.

That was how I sold it to myself,
anyway.

I
rang Rosenberg from a payphone at Charing Cross Station.
 
He was at work.
 
Outside the terminal building by the
sound of it as I could hear planes taking off in the background.
 
He said he had a positive ID on the
photos but nothing on the name I’d given him.
 
He said he would text the names through when he got back
into the office.
 
I was about to offer
to ring him back, and then I thought it might not be so bad to receive a text after
all.
 
See if they were tracking my
new phone yet.

You're
paranoid, Becket.
 
I’ve told you
before you make assumptions
.

I walked down Whitehall, past the gated
entrance to Downing Street—policemen with machineguns and active
imaginations—past Parliament Square where the tourists and the protesters
gather, past Westminster Abbey with its schoolboys dressed like junior barristers,
and down the relative sanity of Victoria Street to where New Scotland Yard crouched
behind its seawall of concrete terrorist barriers.
 
I gave my name to the copper on the gate, the receptionist
and, finally, a minion from the Special Intelligence Section, who came down, rang
Richie’s office, verified my identity and informed me I could have five minutes
with the great man.
 

Richie had a large corner office on the
tenth floor—north facing—impressive to visitors, but also one I
knew would be freezing in cold weather.
 
Senior management were located farther down Broadway, with a view of the
park and, in winter, Horseguards’ Parade.
 
But as this was high summer, few of the top brass would be
around—another reason for Richie letting me pollute the building with my
presence—and taking well-deserved rests at their retreats in France or at
law enforcement conventions in the States.
 
I was in no position to criticise; the old Becket had been on
any number of those jollies himself.
  
Had listened to many an interesting case study, very
few applicable to his work on a small island off the coast of mainland
Europe.
  
If the economy class
travel wasn’t such a pain in the arse, the trips were almost perks.
 
Decent hotels with swimming pools,
freebies from computer companies, private security firms pitching their latest
profiling software or location methodologies, even telling you in the bar they
were looking for a chap with just your type of experience.
 
All in all, we were profoundly grateful
to the British taxpayer for sending us to Miami or New Orleans.
 
I was even nostalgic at times for my
time in Paris or Quantico.
 
But I never
felt the same affection for New Scotland Yard.
 
Familiarity sure bred contempt—oodles of it.

Richie did not look up as I walked in,
contenting
himself
with gesturing to a seat opposite
him.
 
I almost laughed.
 
He really did have Small Man
Syndrome.
 
Here was an important
man of business, surrounded by his sizeable desk, the crates he was packing and
a shredding machine the size of a pillar-box.
 
So big in fact, Richie could have probably shredded
himself.
 
I amused myself with this
thought while he pretended to work.
 

After he had finished checking a report
critical to national security, he signed it with a fountain pen that was almost
as long as his arm.
 
I felt like
taking it from him and snapping it before his eyes.

‘Moving house, Richie?’ I asked.
 
‘National Crime Agency not based here,
then?’

He closed the file, and was finally
able to pay some attention to lesser matters, like Becket.

‘Round the corner,’ he said.

‘That’s what they do, Richie.
 
They keep you moving.
 
First principle of
British government.
 
Move jobs,
move offices, move departments.’

He fixed me with his lashless gaze and
summoned up a world-weary expression.

‘If you must know, I applied for a
secondment.
 
What can I do for you,
Becket?’

‘I wondered how you were getting on.’

‘With what exactly?’

‘Lee Herbert’s killers,’ I said.
 
‘The ones who put my business card on
him.’

‘It didn’t cross your mind that you
might have dropped one?
 
When you
was mugged.’

‘It did but I didn’t.
 
Have any on me, that is.
 
I gave my last one to Janovitz.’

‘Who else?’

‘As I told you, Wing Commander Sydney
Kenilworth, Mr Mat Janovitz, a receptionist at PiTech, and Mrs Jenny
Forbes-Marchant.
 
Have you followed
any of those up?’

‘It’s DI Spittieri’s case.
 
No doubt he will be in touch.’

‘So it is no longer a serious and organised
crime, then?’

‘I’m not with you.’

I pushed the CCTV photograph across the
desk.

‘My assailants,’ I said, reading Rosenberg’s
text from my mobile phone.
 
‘One is
called Stein Berenson, the other Paul Verholen.
 
I don’t know which is which.
 
I think they are contract killers, likely associates of Mark
Marchant who had his father killed, most probably for the inheritance.’

If Richie could have looked less
impressed he would have.
 
‘Any
evidence of all this, Becket?’

‘Just supposition at this stage.
 
I was hoping you had found something.
 
At the very least you could run these guys through the
computer and see what pops out.’

He uncapped his pen, ‘Give me their
names again.’

I did so.
 
He wrote, slowly, copperplate, not what I expected, and left-handed.
 
It was like watching a child copying
someone else’s homework.

‘Where did you get this information?’
he asked.

‘I couldn’t say.’

‘Have you given it to Sussex Police?’

‘No, I wanted to see your reaction
first.’

‘My
reaction
?
 
My reaction?
 
What on earth are you talking about, Becket?’

‘See if you knew who they were.’

‘And why would I know who they were?’

Richie was developing a nice line in
anger.
 
It looked genuine
enough.
 
I pedalled back before he
flicked ink at me, or hit me with his ruler.

‘Well, just supposing that they are the
same people who attacked Sir Simeon Marchant, as well as poor Lee Herbert.
 
I was wondering why they were so
important that your soon-to-be-disbanded section—sorry, soon to be
seconded
section—was not pursuing
them.
 
Or indeed putting any
resources into their apprehension...’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘No, I don’t know that.
 
How could I know that?
 
I'm assuming that they are part of a
wider investigation that got out of hand.
 
Am I right?
 
Something that
was
the province of the SCD7 but now
isn’t.’

He swivelled in his chair and looked
out of the window.
 
It looked like
it needed a good clean—inside and out.
 
London was a myopic blur of red buses and grey-brown river.
 
No sound just the noise of Richie
breathing through his nose.
 
Perhaps
he was meditating.

‘What is it, Wednesday?
 
Must be two whole days since you was
last arrested, Becket.’

‘Oh, great,’ I said.
 
‘A threat.’

‘No, I just mean we only seem to see
you when you get involved in something you can’t handle.
  
That was always the case with you,
wasn’t it?
 
Getting in over your
head and regretting it, I heard.
 
Not a team player, I heard.’

‘You heard right,’ I said.
 
‘Probably.
 
But that doesn’t mean
they
were right.’

‘Who are
they
, Becket?
 
It is
always
they
and
them
with you.
 
Some mysterious powers up to no good.
 
But there
ain’t
no ‘them’, Becket.
 
It’s all in
your head.’

I sat back, folded my arms and let him
talk.

‘You know what it’s like here,
Becket.
 
I used to think the answer
was always in the next room, in the briefing for senior officers I was not
invited to, the next rank up the pecking order.
 
But when I got there, into that next room, they were just as
clueless as me.
 
The bigger boys
didn’t seem to know either.
 
When I
got to the tenth floor, everyone thought that the answer was down the road with
SMT or Home Office.
 
But when you
get
there,
it is exactly the same:
they think it’s the Minister or one of his special advisors, who is
really
in the know.
 
But I doubt they really are, either.
 
Becket,
there are no conspiracies
, just bad men doing bad things.
 
But in the last few years we have had
to take every little bit of information, every silly little theory
seriously.
 
Every mad or slightly
mad conspiracy theorist, or whatever you want to call them.
 
We have a 24-hour hotline for
them.
 
And we have to take them all
at face value.
 
You know why?
 
Just in case one of them is right and
something really bad happens.
 
That
is the job of my section.
 
Sometimes I think it is a punishment...’

He laughed.
 
It didn’t suit him.
 
I thought about what he had told me.
 
What he had said outside St Pancras Coroner’s Court.

‘So you’re saying you knew Sir Simeon
Marchant?’

‘I met him once or twice.
 
He was someone we had to take
seriously.
 
With his background and
..
.’

‘You lied.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You said you never met him.
 
At the inquest.
 
That’s what you said.
 
You wished you had, but you hadn’t.’

‘The daughter was there.
 
I didn’t want to upset her.’

‘Bullshit.’

Richie gave out a long-suffering sigh.

‘Look, sometimes it felt like I was his
social worker or something.
 
Because of his seniority and his previous access to restricted
information, he really should have been assigned a more senior officer.
 
Someone at Box.
 
But guess who got him?
 
Muggins here.’

‘Box’ was the name coppers gave to MI5,
the civil servants in charge of national security.
 
The box in question was the address they used in wartime: PO
Box 500.
 
It was derogatory term,
meaning MI5 went home at the weekends, and put the answer machine on.
 
I could see why they would hand on
someone like Sir Simeon to poor old Richie.

‘When did he get assigned to you?’

‘I don’t know.
 
Soon as I came back.
 
I’d accept anything then.’

‘And when did he stop coming to see
you?’ I asked.
 
‘About six months
ago, I’d guess.’

Richie’s eyes widened in surprise.
 
I went on.

‘You must have been relieved.
 
But I bet you wondered.
 
Wondered why he stopped coming to see
you.’

‘Oh, yes I spent days at my desk just wondering
where he was and why I had not heard from him recently.
 
Someone told me he had a romantic
attachment, an impending marriage—there’s hope for us all, it
seems—but what interests me, Becket, is how you knew he stopped
contacting us.’

‘I was just guessing.’

‘No, someone told you.
 
I only hope it isn’t someone here.
 
But what do I care?’ he said to
himself.
 
‘I’ll soon be gone.’

‘Look, Richie.
 
All I'm saying is: I understand.
 
You were keeping an eye on Mark
Marchant for whatever reason, in the national interest or whatever, but now you
can go and pick these guys up before they do any more damage.’