The Conspiracy Theorist (8 page)

I felt the wind chill my face.
 
I had caught the sun on the golf
course.
 
We negotiated Eastbourne,
took the route over Beachy Head—the Seven Sisters stained nicotine-yellow
in the waning sunlight—and then
Birling
Gap,
Seaford, and crossing the swing bridge at Newhaven drove inland towards the
A27.
 
The coast road wasn’t much
fun at Brighton, and besides the South Downs were always worth a drive.
 
We passed Shoreham, Lancing, Worthing,
Arundel and finally made Chichester as the sun dipped below the horizon.

I checked in at a budget hotel on the
main drag and asked where the nearest secure car park was.
 
I left my bag at reception and drove
the Alfa across town to a multi-storey that was about to lock up for the night.
 
That done, I went for a swift pint in a
local hostelry before walking back across the park towards my hotel.

It was the usual city park after a
long, hot, late summer’s day: long shadows, the heat dissipating gradually.
 
There was the lingering aroma of cut
grass and the dry, yeasty whiff of cannabis resin.
 
Groups of people who had met and sat in circles with the
express intention of getting wasted were beginning to disperse and take their
growing belligerence home or to the pubs.
 
Some had lit disposable barbeques that would leave little squares of
charred grass in the morning, along with discarded bottles, cans, empty crisps
bags and all the usual detritus of a disposable society.
 
You could see where people had been
sitting, as the circle of litter remained as an outline of their presence.
 
Somehow they were just too important to
clear up after themselves.
 
I
wondered at the sort of mentality that meant you could just get up and leave your
rubbish behind.
 
Like it had
nothing to do with them, and that it was someone else’s responsibility.
 
It was the way such people lived their whole
lives, and it sickened me.

It makes you grateful that our climate
is so poor, I thought.
 
Otherwise
this would happen all year round.

Ahead of me, people were meandering in
the direction of the park gates.
 
I
noticed two youths stripped to the waist
;
one with a
bullet-headed dog on a choke chain, the other holding a girl’s hand.
 
She had her hair pulled back in a tight
ponytail, what is known, I believe, as
an ‘Essex
facelift’.
 
The two men were carrying cans of
cheap lager, the woman a small bottle of a blue liquid.
 
The couple had matching tattoos at the
small of their backs, a Hindu inscription of some kind.
 
I felt myself staring, so I looked
away.

Night was falling and bats were
beginning to flit amongst the trees.
 
It is so difficult, I thought, to catch nightfall in watercolour.
 
It is as if the colours conspire
against you.
 
You had to be very
good to do it well.

I heard a can being scrunched underfoot
and turned to see one of the youths ahead undertaking this activity with great
accomplishment.
 
It was as if he
were known for this particular skill, a master of the art.
 
His companions laughed and swaggered on
leaving the can behind.
 
I
considered calling the young man back to point out that a bin was not ten feet
away, but I decided against it.
 
It
had been a long day, and besides, I told myself, I had not seen him actually
drop the can.
 
He could merely have
been crushing something that was already in his path.
 
So, when I reached the flattened piece of metal, I stooped,
picked it up and put it in the bin.

It is what you do, I thought.
 
Pick up after children.

‘Oi!’ someone shouted. ‘What you
doing?’

I turned to see the trio and dog
regarding me with a malevolence I felt I hardly deserved.
 
I approached them.
 
The one who had called out was a tall,
gingery lad, his
hair cut
close to his skull, a
spatter of freckles around a pair of dull, brown eyes.
 
He had the unwashed feral smell that
comes from drinking all day and pissing in bushes.
 
He took a step towards me so I could benefit from the aroma.
 
The other one and his girlfriend looked
less interested, and stood farther off.
 

‘Can I help you?’ I asked politely.

He looked me up and down as if he were amused
by my appearance.
 
The dog must
have sensed something from his master’s tone as he started a low growling.
 
It looked like a Staffordshire bull
terrier.
 
They were nice dogs, in my
opinion, but they growled far too easily.

‘So it
was
your can,’ I said.

‘What’s it to you?
 
I'm sick of people telling me what to
do.’

What
to do
.
 
He jabbed a finger three times in my chest.
 
The dog started barking.
 
Without thinking, I grabbed the finger
and twisted it hard.
 
The boy
yelped.
 
I bent the finger back,
stepping out of the range of the dog, which began jumping up at us.
 
I placed the thumb of my other hand into
the hollow between the boy’s chin and his bottom lip.
 
I pushed his head back and held him there.
 
It would be a slow pain, but one that
would stop me being hit at least.
 
I
just hoped he would not let go of the dog.
 
If he does, I thought, I could end up getting bitten.

‘Lee, leave it for fuck’s sake,’ the
other lad called.
 
‘Can’t you see he’s
a copper?’

‘You would be advised to leave it,
Lee,’ I agreed.
 

I tried to keep my voice as level as
possible, but my heart was beating unpleasantly in my chest.
 
I cursed my stupidity for getting
involved.
 
But now I was involved I
had to finish it.
 
That was the
problem with getting involved: commitment.

Lee was saying nothing.
 
As I pushed his head back further, I watched
his eyes burning.
 
It is the shame
that gets them, I thought, always the shame.
 
Shame that they are inadequate.
 
That when it counted, they did nothing or
said too much.
 
During my
time in the RAF Regiment, I had seen enough new recruits like Lee.
 
They were the ones who lasted a
week—too thick or too weak to change their ways—and went back home
with bad boy reputations.

Gently, I moved my thumb down below the
chin, and found the sternal notch.
 
I increased the pressure there.
 
The boy smothered a cry, but showed no sign of giving up.
 
With his free hand he made a grab at my
hair.
 

I swept his legs from under him and pinned
him over the dog.
 
That’s one way
of doing it, I thought.
 
I felt the
terrier squirm and wriggle furiously underneath the weight of our bodies.
 
It started to whine.
 
I didn’t blame it.
 
I felt like whining too.
 
The girl shouted this time.

‘Lee, leave it for fuck’s sake!’

I looked up.
 
The other boy looked like he was torn between two courses of
action: kicking me in the ribs or running away.
 
Perhaps he would do both.
 
The girl pulled at his arm, and said in a hectoring tone, ‘Come
on, Jason.
 
He ain’t worth it!’

I was not sure if this referred to their
friend or me.
 
Am I worth it?
I asked myself.

Jason stood his ground, but the moment
had passed him by.
 
Now, he too was
like a dog on a lead.
 
The girl was
holding him back.
 
Jason called
out, ‘You all right, Lee?’

Lee had stopped struggling.
 
Twenty seconds more and I knew he would
lose consciousness.
 
The terrier
was whining less now, but still wriggling to get free.
 
I could feel its haunches scrape on the
pavement beneath us.
 
I released
the boy slowly, keeping an eye on the other two.
 
As I stood, Lee kicked out at me weakly, the fight gone from
him.
 
He rolled over and started
coughing.
 
Finally he let go of the
dog, which fortunately scuttled over to the girl, its lead trailing behind it.

I turned and walked back the way I
came.
 
It was a defeat of
sorts.
 
I listened out for a bottle
breaking and feet running after me, but none came.
 
Other youths passed me, shirts tucked into their jeans like
flags, making towards the incident, looking at me with interest.

Now, I had to walk the long way round
to the hotel.
 
What good did that do?
I asked myself.
 
What good did that do
anybody?

I went in to the nearest pub and
ordered a pint.
 
People looked at
me strangely.
 
I kept an eye on the
door.
 
I was breathing heavily.
 

There is a delayed reaction to
everything.

Why do I get involved? I asked myself.

Not for the first time either.

Next
day I drove down to Hayling Island.
 
The Marchant residence was on the bluff of a hill.
 
It was on an estate of substantial
properties, Edwardian I suspected, redbrick, ivy-clad, long shingle drives, and
reeking of old money.
 
They were a
far cry from the bungalows and new builds I had seen on my drive from
Chichester.
 
As the Spider crunched
to a halt, Jenny Forbes-Marchant, resplendent in a pair of jeans a size too
small for her, strode out to greet me.

So,
two weeks ago, Mr Sunny Prajapati, in payment for the yacht
Cassandra
, had drawn a cheque on his
company account, for the sum of £75,000.
 
He had given this to Sir Simeon Marchant, who had not deposited it
immediately.
 
When he had, it had
been returned by the bank.
 
Prajapati’s
company, PiTech, was not going to honour it.
 

Yesterday, Jenny Forbes-Marchant had
called me to apologise for Richie’s call, and explained she had a problem that
I could possibly help her with.
 

Her proposition was to me: if I got the
company to pay the amount in full or in part, I would receive a ten percent
commission of whatever was recovered.
 
I said I would think about it, and ring her back.
 
Then I went off to play golf with
Anthony Carstairs.
 
By the time we’d
reached the 18
^th
, Carstairs had convinced me that the prospect of getting
£7,500 for very little work was quite good, and if I wouldn’t accept the client’s
instructions he certainly would.
 

It was the word ‘client’ that did it.
 
I
would have a client
.
 
Becket
would be gainfully employed, and thus allowed to poke further around in the
case of Sir Simeon Marchant and the missing sailor.

Back at my flat I had—after
listening to a threatening message—rung Jenny Forbes-Marchant and
accepted the case.
 
She said she
would be at the family home on Hayling Island the following day, sorting out a
few domestic matters, so I agreed to meet her there.
 

So that morning, after a rather pricey breakfast
at my budget hotel, I had located the solicitor’s office and had made an
appointment for two o’clock.

Now, gabbling like a schoolgirl, I told
all this to my new client as she led me through her father’s house.
 

It was a cavernous place.
 
The sort of holiday home the rich
bought in the good old days when there were servants they could send ahead to
get the beds turned down and a rip-roaring fire established in the grate.
 
A staircase in carved oak dominated the
entrance hall, with a stained glass window halfway up.
 
There was the distinct tang of
furniture polish, like a museum, and the paintings on the walls were dark and
done in murky oils.
 
Roses, seascapes, stick figures skating on a frozen lake reminiscent
of the Dutch school, but with no light to them and definitely no sense of
humour.
 
No
illicit
assignations, no rogues taking a leak behind a barn.

‘I know,’ Jenny Forbes-Marchant observed.
 
‘Hideous.’

I followed her down a corridor into a
large kitchen.
 
We were at the back
of the house with a view over what estate agents term ‘landscaped lawns to the
rear’.
 
I supposed that the house
would be on the market before very long and that was why Jenny Forbes-Marchant
was sorting it out.
 
She was
certainly dressed down for the occasion.
 
Besides the tight jeans, she wore an even tighter blouse (pink) and a
pair of red cowgirl boots.
 
The
ensemble was daring but it suited her.
 
I resisted the temptation to say so.
 
I had learned not to compliment her from our last encounter.
 
It was as if you woke something up
inside of her, and she might turn it on you without really thinking.

Besides, now she was my client it would
be unethical.

In contrast with the rest of the house,
the kitchen was light and airy and still had the old servants’ bells above the
door.
 
It smelled less museum-like
and more lived in.

‘My father,’ Jenny Forbes-Marchant
continued, ‘had no appreciation of the fine arts.
 
I think he bought all his pictures as a job lot to fill the
wall-space.’

‘It has been known,’ I said, not feeling
like critiquing a dead man’s taste in art, however ‘fine’.

‘Tea?
 
Coffee?’

She lifted a kettle from the Aga and
shook it at me.
 
I declined.
 
She had already made herself a cup and
wrapped her hands around it.
 
They
were tanned and her nails were
a shiny
carmine.
 
Like everything about her it was just
that tiny bit off-key.

‘I can come with you if it helps,’ she
suggested.
 
‘To the solicitors.’

I thought there was nothing less likely
to ensure success.

‘Let me try on my own first,’ I said.
 
‘Then, if I don’t have any luck... Well,
we’ll see.’

I don’t like to give my clients too much
information.
 
Before she could
object, I added, ‘Actually, right now I just need the paperwork from you.
 
Then I’ll toddle off down to the
sailing club to take some photos.’

‘Do you need me for that?’

‘No, it should be all right.
 
I rang ahead.
 
There’s a Commander Kenilworth who said he’ll show me around.’

‘
Wing-Commander
,’
she corrected me
.
 
‘One of Daddy’s
pals.
 
He virtually lives
there.
 
Perhaps best I don’t come,
after all.
 
I’ll just go and look for
the boat documents.’

She left the kitchen, and I heard her
boots click down the corridor.
 
I glanced
around the kitchen, stood up, opened one or two drawers, and read a shopping
list pinned by a magnet to the fridge.
 
Inside, it was fairly well stocked: bacon, cheeses, several jars of
pickle, and some vacuum packed beetroot.
 
Nothing rotten or going off.
 
Nothing past its sell
by date.

I went to the kitchen door and peeped
down the corridor.
 
It ran along
the back of the house and led to a room on the right.
 
I could hear Jenny Forbes-Marchant rummaging around.
 
That must be the study, I thought.
 
Makes sense, looking
out on the back gardens.
 
All shipshape and Bristol fashion.
 
I heard the study door close, so I went back to the table and
sat down.

Jenny Forbes-Marchant came back in, carrying
a file of papers.
 
She put them on
the table.
 

‘I hope these are what you need.’

While she drank her coffee, I leafed
through them.
 
They seemed good
enough to represent proof of ownership, not that it mattered too much for the
case I was going to make.
 
When I looked
up, her eyes were upon me.

‘All there?’

I nodded.

‘Anything else you need from me?’

‘Just my retainer.’

‘Retainer?’

‘Five hundred pounds should suffice,
and a note saying I'm representing you.’

Reluctantly, she dug into her handbag
and brought out a chequebook.
 

‘The letter’s more important,’ I
said.
 
‘Anything.
 
Write on this.’

I gave her my notebook and dictated a
note.
 
She wrote like a good little
girl in her best copperplate that I was acting on her instructions in the
matter of the sale of the
Cassandra
to
PiTech—I read out the company address—on 17 August 2013.
 
She handed it back and turned her
attention to the cheque.

‘Your father,’ I asked. ‘Did he have a
housekeeper?’

She glanced up and said, ‘Why do you
ask?’

‘The place seems so well kept.
 
Note on fridge door.
 
Place polished, and well stocked.
 
All signs of long term female
occupancy.’

‘A little bit sexist, Mr Becket?’

‘Entirely,’ I agreed.
 
‘So, the housekeeper?’

‘He did,’ she sighed.
 
It was a different type of sigh today, I
noted, more regretful than sad.
 
‘A
housekeeper, if you can call her that.
 
I had to let her go, I’m afraid.
 
Before anything went missing.’

‘I see,’ I said, although I didn’t.

Jenny Forbes-Marchant regarded me with
appraising eyes.
 
She put her pen
down and leant forward, her tanned forearms in pleasant contrast to the pine
tabletop.
 
Her breasts pressed
against the silky pink blouse.
 
Another
button had come undone, presumably in the pursuit of documents.
 
She was about to say something when,
fortunately for me, her mobile phone rang.
 
She listened, stood abruptly and wandered out the back door.
 
A few moments later, she appeared in the
garden, stalking about on the lawn.
 
Then she paused under a tree and started picking at the bark.
 
It was obviously a very intense conversation.

I went along the corridor and into the
study.
 
I could still see Jenny
Forbes-Marchant from there.
 
She
was now kicking the tree with her cowgirl boot.
 
Perhaps someone had promised to buy a collage and then hadn’t.

The room was in a mess.
 
It was as if it had been burgled by an
amateur: paper was everywhere—on the desk, the floor, the window sills,
the chairs—it formed in drifts against the door and bookcase.
 
The drawers of an old metal filing
cabinet gaped pathetically, emptied no doubt by Mrs Forbes-Marchant.
 
It was the only paper-free zone in the
room.
 
The bookcases had not been
searched.
 
The books were tightly
packed and on a whole variety of subjects: mathematics, marine engineering,
boats—as you would expect—but also on contemporary politics,
geography, history and a row of old green Penguin paperback crime novels.
 

The bookcase was clearly well used,
with texts crammed in where and when Sir Simeon Marchant had stopped reading
them, or looked up something.
 
All
along the bookcase there were bottles of pills.
 
They were all for the same drug:
 
Exelon.
 
More
than anywhere else in the house, the study highlighted his absence.
 
It was sad.
 
A sad place.

There was tray of unopened
correspondence on the desk.
 
They
looked like circulars.
 
I read the
postmarks: South Africa, USA, India.
 
One was a magazine wrapped in cellophane:
ConGress 13,
it said.
 
I
glanced out of the window, and put it down.
 
Jenny Forbes-Marchant was striding back across the lawn
towards the kitchen.

Hayling
Island Sailing Club was a more modern building than I’d expected.
 
It jutted jauntily out over the shingle
beach like a bird craning its neck.
 
The viewing platform—or whatever it was—reminded me of an air
traffic control tower.
 
After
twenty-two years in the RAF it was a sight that I associated with home.
 
Perhaps members of the sailing club
felt the same when they rounded the headland and saw its steel railings glinting
in the sunlight.
 

The boats and racing yachts surrounding
the club also resembled light aircraft in a way.
 
Despite recent British successes in the Olympics, it still
seemed a very specialised sport: technical, exclusive and one needing very serious
money to take part in.
 
The overall
ambience of the club was sporting rather than leisure, but there were a number
of what I would call ‘ordinary boats’ beached outside the clubhouse.
 
Several members were taking advantage of
the good weather to do some running repairs.
 
But it seemed the
Cassandra
was past all help.

She leant on her side less like a beached
whale than an exhausted dog.
 
Her
sails had been
removed,
her masts lowered and laid to
rest beside her.
 
The gleaming
paintwork and varnished wood that I had pored over on eBay had been dulled by
the sea and darkened where crude oil had splashed against it.
 
The yellow-and-black police incident
tape was still draped over her, but in several places this had been ripped by
the wind or by prying hands.