The Conspiracy Theorist (30 page)

I splashed water on my face and went
back to the table.
 
Through some miracle,
she was still there and my plate was empty.
 
So was hers.

‘I took your second skewer,’ she
said.
 
‘I could see you were not
going to eat it.’

Back
at the flat, she made up the bed in the spare room.
 
I lifted a book from the chair and sat watching her.

‘You know, Thomas, I’ve been doing a
lot of thinking over the past few days.
 
I think what we did the other night was a mistake.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed.
 
‘A mistake.’

The book was on Francis Bacon.
 
Meg’s taste rather than mine: all
screaming popes and screaming queens.
 
I placed it on the floor.
 

‘It was very nice,’ she said.
 
‘But it was a mistake.’

‘Because of Hammonde?’ I asked, not
liking too much the sound of my own voice.

‘Because of
me
, Thomas!
 
I don’t
know, you think you get something clear in your head and then ... someone gets
themselves beaten up.
 
It was not
hard at all to come back from that conference.
 
I was surprised how easy it was.
 
But you know what I most enjoyed?
 
It was being alone again.
 
Coming back and just being alone.
 
Then I saw you and then you left.
 
And I was alone again.
 
And I realised I preferred it.
 
I preferred being alone.
 
The trouble is with us, with you or me,
there is no option but full on, is there?
 
Somehow, we have to leave it behind...’

‘Leave what behind?’

‘Clara,’ she said.
 
‘Clara’s death, I mean.
 
Because that is what she has become to
you.
 
Someone who
killed herself.
 
A suicide...’

I started to say something, to object,
but she held up her hand.

‘...
when
what
I
want to do is remember her how she
was.
 
When I meet new people,
people who don’t know me, women mainly, we talk about children.
 
I tell them about her.
 
The way she was.
 
What
is she doing now?
they
ask.
 
Oh,
I say,
she died
.
 
And they are shocked of course.
 
But I don’t start from her death.
 
Because to do that is to lose
everything, we had before.
 
I want
to talk about her life, and all the pleasure it gave me.
 
I want remember that.
 
Remember the three of us,
how we were...
But you can’t.
Thomas.
 
You just can’t, as you
say, leave it alone.’

I
awoke at 5 am, got up and showered.
 
Meg’s bedroom door was firmly closed.
 
I dressed as quietly as possible and left the flat before
she got up for her early shift.
 
Outside,
I stood in the square and looked up for a moment, before walking with ringing
steps towards the Edgware Road.
 
Memories
of the night before came back, but I wanted to leave them locked up in the building
behind me.

St
Mary’s Parish Church on Hayling Island was medieval in the style of many Sussex
churches, cobble and flint with a slightly eccentric tower crooking its finger upwards
into a pellucid blue sky.
 
I was
early so I parked the hire car across the road and watched people come and go
through the lych-gate.
 
I had considered
going to the Marchant house, but I assumed other people would be there with
her.
 
I couldn’t think of how I
would approach Jenny Forbes-Marchant, or the best time to do it.
 
Perhaps I would just shake her hand and
see if she knew the truth about ‘Mark’.
 
I hoped, more than anything
else, that
she did
not.
 
Not the whole truth.
 
Not the whole truth and nothing but the
truth.

There was still something bugging me
about the whole thing.
 
I got out
my iPad to see if there was anything I had missed in Kat Persaud’s report.
 
I scrolled through it.
 
Simeon Marchant’s time as a ‘minion in
Naval Intelligence’, South Africa, his time as GCHQ, the Falklands ‘conflict’,
Greenwich...
 
There were references
to events Marchant could have been involved in.
 
I hadn’t read all of these so I started wading through
them.
 
The mobile connection was
dodgy, so only some of the links worked.
 
In the meantime, an email from Anthony Carstairs dropped into my inbox.

Afraid
to say that the blokes who burgled Chambers have been given bail despite two of
them being foreign nationals and at high risk of fleeing the country.
 
Had a word with MLF representing the
DPP and they said message came ‘from the Gods’.
 
I’ll let you know more when I find it out.
 
Staff here are
spitting feathers. AC.

I emailed back to check when this was,
before I realised that the email was from 6 pm the previous evening.
 
Why hadn’t Carstairs rung me at
Meg’s?
 
Surely he must have assumed
I was there.
 
With a shock I
realised we had been in danger the night before.
 
It was unsettling.
 
I looked around now.
 
There
were plenty of parked cars but none were occupied.

Across at the church, people started to
arrive.
 
You could tell they were
mourners by their measured gait.
 
I
was certain Mark Marchant would not be foolish enough to attend.
 
Whatever game he was playing, it was
up.
 
Unless he is unstable, I
thought.
 
What if his tank was not
running on unleaded reason?
 
What
if he really thinks he is related to Sir Simeon Marchant?
 

Maike Breytenbach arrived, leaning into
her son, Jacob, as they made their way up the church path.
 
They were followed by
another woman
, the sister I presumed.
 
Everyone else was very white, and most were very old.
 
Wing Commander Kenilworth was one of
the sprightlier among them.
 
No, I
concluded, Mark Marchant would leave on the first plane to South Africa.
 
I recalled what Anthony’s email had
said:
despite two of them being foreign
nationals and at high risk of fleeing the country.
 
Two of them.
 
That meant they were unaware that
Marchant was really Lukas Merweville.
 
Which meant that Richie had done nothing.
 
Nothing at all.

What was he up to?

Across the road the procession
continued up to the church.
 
It
seemed they came from every retirement home in the South East.
 
They came on sticks and artificial
limbs, hobbling up the path.
 
They
came in wheelchairs with stout nurses in attendance.
 
One of them came in a black London cab that an old gentleman
told to wait.
 
Not cheap, I thought.

Unlike Sunny Prajapati, for Sir Simeon
Marchant there was no memorial service, just this funeral as a single, obscure rite
of passage.
 
It seemed strange,
given his war record.

Still Jenny Forbes-Marchant did not
arrive.
 
The flow of mourners had
stilled to a trickle, and then there were none.
 
All that was left was a row of cars.
 
No hearse had arrived.
 
I decided to get out and join the
congregation.
 
It was too late now
to do anything before the service.

As I walked across the road, a man got
out of a car.
 
He could have been
military, or a copper.
 
But his
manner was too polite, and familiar.
 

‘Mr Breckenridge.’

‘Mr Becket.’ the young lawyer said.
 
It was as if he really did not want to interrupt
me.

He held out a mobile phone like he had
just found it.

‘I have been asked to hand you this,’
he said.
 
‘There is only one number
on it.’

I took it.
 
He passed me and walked through the lych-gate, taking his
gloves off.

I pressed the green button.
 
There was one mobile number displayed.
 
I pressed it.
 
It was answered immediately.

‘Becket,’ the voice said.
 
It was a South African accent.
 
There was an unpleasant drawl to
it.
 
Like he had said ‘you piece of
shit’ instead of my name.
 
I
decided not to use his.

‘What is it?’

‘Just hold the line please.’

I walked several paces away from the
church gate.
 
I could see the
hearse approaching.
 
On the phone,
there was a sound like tape being ripped and a short yelp of pain.

‘Tom!’ she cried.
 
‘Tom, is that you?’

The voice sounded angry too, but it was
also transformed, so unlike her, thick with fear.
 
It was Meg, but not Meg.

I
drove as I was told to without contacting anyone, without speeding and with due
care and attention.
 
There was no
choice in the matter, no calculation, no planning.
 
I just had to get to Meg as quickly as possible, and I would
think what I needed to do after that.
 
I was breathing hard.
 
By
going along with them, I knew I was breaking every rule in the book.
 
But
the book in
question had been written by professionals
, and I was no longer a
professional.
 
I was a victim, and
victims followed their instincts.
 
Besides what else could I have done?
 
Talked to Richie or Singh?
 
One of them would not have done anything and the other would
not have known what to do.
 
The dilemma of modern policing.
 

So I drove as instructed.
 
The A27 was busy but I knew I was under
some sort of surveillance.
 
They
may not even intend to meet me.
 
He
had perhaps achieved his objective just by getting me away from Jenny
Forbes-Marchant and asking difficult questions.
 
I still did not know if Sir Simeon’s daughter was in on
it.
 
Right now I didn’t care.
 
I just recalled the shock on her face
as I drove away in my hire care.
 
She was just getting out of a black Mercedes, resplendent in black
herself, staring hard at me, open-mouthed.
 
She did not seem complicit in Meg’s kidnapping, but it was
hard to tell.
 
And that did not
mean she wasn’t involved in her father’s death.
 
How can you fully understand a person’s motivations?
 
But something deep inside me told me
she was not guilty.
 
She was not
that good an actor.
 
She wore her
heart on her sleeve.
 
And it was a
pretty shallow heart too.
 

Now it would all come out, whatever
happened.
 
It
would now be impossible to bury it.
 
But I could not think about that right now.
 
I just had to get Meg free—and then I would worry
about myself.
 

I realised they must have picked me up
there last night or this morning.
 
Perhaps they even followed me to the hire car place in Paddington,
realised I was going to the funeral, and doubled back to get her.
 
It didn’t matter.
 
What mattered was that I could not
leave it alone, as Meg said, and now she was paying the price.
 
I beat the wheel with my hand.

‘Fuck.
 
Fuck.
 
Fuck.
 
Fuck!’

That about summed it up.

North, as instructed.
 
A steady fifty-five miles per hour, as instructed.
 
I passed a garage, an abandoned
factory,
a
rural railway station.
 
But it was too soon.
 
I needed to relax, be ready for the
long game.
 
These were professionals
after all.

The phone was propped up in front of
me.
 
A text came in.

At
next roundabout, go back the way you came.
 
Full circle.

I did as I was told.
 
No other vehicle did the same.
 
No one followed my hire car.
 
I wondered how they were tracking me.
 
Presumably via the phone Breckenridge
had given me.
 
Why had he given it
me?
 
How was he involved?
 

Up ahead, the factory again, the
garage...

Another text.

Pull
in at train station.
 
Park.

I did.
 
No one followed.
 
I parked.

Switch
off engine.

I obeyed and pocketed the keys.
 
A train was pulling in at the station.

Run
4
train
!

I got out of the car and raced up the
ramp to the platform.
 
The train
was making a beeping noise like it was about to explode, the doors closed.
 
I hit the flashing button and, to my
huge relief, the doors opened.
 
I
squeezed through, before they changed their mind.
 
I looked back at the empty car park, realising I had
forgotten to lock the car.
 
It is remarkable
how you think of such inconsequential things at times of great stress.

The carriage was almost empty.
 
But none of the other passengers paid
me the slightest attention.
 
I was
just another commuter who had nearly missed his train.
 
I sat down, breathing hard.
 
My heart doing a
quick seven furlongs in my chest.
 
The phone bleeped.

Well
done. AFI.

Army speak:
Await
Further Instructions.

I had little choice.
 
I sat back.
 
A jovial guard came along.
 
I asked him what the final station on the line was.
 
He told me and I bought a ticket, a single.
 
I thanked him, realising I could barely
talk.
 
Perhaps I was having a heart
attack?
 
Perhaps this was how it
came to you.
 
He gave me a friendly
tap on the shoulder and left me to it.

Miles of countryside.
 
I couldn’t really focus on it.
 
Another text.

Don’t
think of using this phone for anything.
 
We are monitoring it.

I had already discounted borrowing
someone else’s—who would I call, and what possible use would it do, Meg?
—
but
it was important that they thought I
would.
 
And perhaps they thought
there would be some point to it.
 
There was a hint of weakness in that text.
 
It no longer sounded like one voice.
We are monitoring it.
 
It had the classic feeling of dual command.
 
I started to think through what they
wanted from me.
 
It could not be
just keeping me away from Sir Simeon’s funeral, or Jenny Forbes-Marchant.
 
There had to be more to it.
 
And why was Miles Breckenridge
involved?