by Mark Raven
‘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.’
I left Richie with copies of the CCTV stills and wandered down Broadway, past the Home Office on Queen Anne’s Gate and into that long, thin strip of Palladian greenery known as St James’s Park. I sat on a bench for a while, mulling over what he told me. As ever with Richie, there was more to it than he intended to tell you. Everything was about hierarchy with him: that decisions were made way above his head, and in manner than did not involve him. He had been lumbered with listening to an ex-spook called Sir Simeon Marchant when it really was the province of MI5. In a totalitarian regime, Richie would be just the type who would say he was ‘just following orders.’ But hadn’t that been my experience of working for the Met, too? The difference is, I told myself, the difference was ...
That Becket had taken his bat and ball away and retired to Kent.
I got up and wandered over the bridge, and out of the park. I crossed the Mall and into that area south of Piccadilly where many of London’s gentlemen’s clubs are based.
The Oxford and Cambridge Club was on Pall Mall. If I had come here a week ago it would have made sense. Now it seemed like an afterthought, a clumsy piece of investigation, going back over what I had overlooked originally. I’ve been given your name by a fellow at my club. Said you could help if a case has not been investigated thoroughly enough.
In my line of work, you tend to take recommendations with a pinch of salt. In a sense, it doesn’t matter who recommends you. Whether it is ‘a fellow at one’s club’ or the man who mows the lawn, it is the fact of the recommendation rather than the source that is important. Not in this case. I now knew that who recommended me was very important to Sir Simeon Marchant.
Richie had told me. He didn’t mean to, but he had.
I had one problem. A week ago I would have had a sensible story to tell. Instead of getting half-cut with Jenny Forbes Marchant, I could have found her father’s club, checked the membership to find someone who knew Becket. After all, there would not be that many of them who would, Becket not being an Oxbridge man, and that being the condition of membership—unless you were royalty. Now I didn’t even need to consult the membership list. I just needed to check if he was in that day.
The foyer was empty apart from a curved oak reception desk with a signing in book that resembled a medieval Bible. The man on the desk was stooped and cadaverous with skin the colour of parchment. His hands were large and expressive, having been deployed, I suspected, in many years of saluting, or helpfully pointing things out to people—like their faults. I imagined him singing a melodious bass in the local church choir when he wasn’t strangling rabbits for Harvest Festival. He could spot an Oxbridge man at half-a-mile and I was only two feet away from him.
‘Can I help you, sir?’
The ‘sir’ droned past me like a passing insect and had about as much significance.
‘I have an appointment with Sir Peter Watterson,’ I said. ‘Please give him my card.’
I was prepared for rejection. He checked the register and said, ‘Your name will suffice, sir.’
‘Becket, Thomas A. One T as in the martyr, and...’
But he was gone. I put my card away. I was alone with the Bible so I spun it around and leafed back through it until I found what I wanted.
We were sitting in the Members’ Dining Room. He was the only Member present and I suspect that was why we were in there. We were sitting at a table. If I was hoping we were going to sit alongside each other in wing-backed chairs in Moroccan oxblood leather, swirling balloons of brandy in the brassy light of a roaring fire, I was sorely mistaken. In reality, we did not have that sort of relationship. In fact I was surprised he agreed to see me at all. My type of policing never had much value for him; it caused too many headaches.
Watterson was a career policeman—almost thirty years in when I met him—recruited straight out of university into Special Branch. Cambridge, First in Human Geography. He was head of section, Commander in rank, attached to the Department of Professional Standards. At my interview he had liked the fact—he was the only one who did—that I was not a civilian policeman by training. He liked my degree in Law—Second Class, Open University—and the fact that, he said afterwards, that I would ‘ruffle a few feathers’. Managers generally regret saying such things to their subordinates, and, in the case of Becket, Watterson certainly did. But, by and large, we had a good working relationship. In July 2005, when I busy pissing people off, he s
moothed a few senior plumages and got me seconded to Interpol. I was away for two years and in that time he got himself promoted and had left DPS for greater things. Occasionally we met at colleagues’ leaving drinks, but he never came to mine. In fact, very few people did.
I guess we shared the same sense of being an outsider; he, because of his manner, which was considered cool and clinical. Like a lot of men in the ‘Bwarnch’, he was considered by other colleagues in the Met as too posh by half. His nickname, as he rose through the ranks, became ‘The Accountant’, and I knew this rankled with him. True, he was a good administrator—thank God; there were so few of them—and he was something of a bean counter. He was one of the new breed of senior managers who came in with the new Commissioner: all targets, outcomes, measurables, and cutting costs and corruption. But, Watterson sorted out the mess that was the Flying Squad, and on his watch there was no fiddling of expenses in the DPS, making it unique in the context of the wider organisation. He was passionate about dealing with real corruption and ignorance in the force. He had always been straight with me, displaying that disarming honesty that very bright people tend to use. They know it is the most sensible course of action.
A year ago, he had retired, after getting the copper’s top gong in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. I assumed he was sixty. Ten years older than me, although he seemed a different generation, more grown up, having played with what Richie called, with unintended irony, ‘the bigger boys.’
As we chatted, he told me he kept himself busy: some voluntary work, some non-exec roles on the Boards of various companies that valued his sort of advice.
‘And contacts,’ I added.
He gave me that look from behind his rimless spectacles. The Oh-dear-Becket’s- made-another-faux-pas look. I could see he wanted to move the conversation and me on and out of the Members’ Dining Room.
‘Oh, I’m afraid I have so few of those these days,’ he said. ‘You have come about poor old Simeon, I presume?’
‘Yes. I assume you recommended me?’
‘He didn’t tell you?’
‘We didn’t actually meet. He rang me to say an ex-colleague recommended he talk to me but...’
‘Yes, indeed. A terrible thing. Terrible. He had been staying here the night before, I understand.’
He looked around as if the club had the answer to the mystery of the mugging, or the fact that this world could not be farther away than a bus stop on the Euston Road. He had a point.
‘One just doesn’t feel safe in London anymore.’
‘Oh, it could have happened anywhere,’ I said. ‘Those boys weren’t fussy.’
He took a handkerchief from his top pocket and shook it out.
‘I thought it was a mugging.’
‘I got some of the same treatment.’
I indicated my face. He removed his spectacles and began to clean them. He looked suddenly naked, and older.
‘I didn’t like to ask,’ he said. Perhaps he thought I had some a rare skin disease or, in a fit of pique, had battered my own head against a brick wall.
‘Same MO,’ I said. ‘I won’t bore you with the details, but it was no mugging. Just made to look like one.’
He didn’t look shocked. Or, indeed, alarmed at Becket’s possible insanity. Watterson always had the ability to focus on the facts at such times. Not allow himself to get distracted by extraneous detail. He put his glasses back on and pursed his lips, ‘Interesting. So you did work for Simeon after all?’
I explained that I had been commissioned by Sir Simeon’s daughter to dig around—not strictly true, but it sounded more reasonable—and someone must have thought I found something out. It was simple enough explanation. He nodded. There was no reaction when I mentioned Jenny Forbes-Marchant.
‘You knew him well?’
‘Simeon? No, no,’ he seemed surprised by the question. ‘Not at all, just the odd conversation here. He sought my advice on a couple of occasions.’
‘When you recommended me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he tell you what the problem was?’
‘No, didn’t he tell you? Or his daughter?’
‘She thought it was something to do with his boat. He sold it to...’
He sighed. I felt something had changed and now I was boring him.
‘Oh, yes I heard all about that. In some detail, in fact. Simeon was very exercised about all that. He had all sorts of ideas. Something to do with a Russian takeover of the Indian chap’s company. I told him to talk to SOCA or SCD7, one or the other.’
‘Did he?’
‘No idea,’ he checked his watch. ‘I’m sorry, Tom. I have to catch my train. You know, I have a Senior Citizens’ Railcard. The joys of off-peak travel for me these days.’
I felt sorry for him. His pension must have only been about three times the average wage.
We wandered into the foyer, where the cadaverous servant retrieved Sir Peter’s trilby and umbrella. We walked outside into bright sunlight. He looked up at the sky as if he mistrusted it, and put his hat on.
‘So you knew Sir Simeon from here?’ I asked. ‘From the club?’
‘Heavens, no! We were both on the board of the same company for a while. I was a new board member and he took me under his wing. Of course he had done his research on me first!’
‘He showed you the ropes.’
‘Exactly. You know what it is like when you leave the force. You are at sixes and sevens. And he helped me. He didn’t have to, but he did.’
Sir Peter Watterson smiled regretfully. I couldn’t imagine a person less likely to be at sixes, sevens or indeed any other confusing numbers. But I suppose, like the rest of us, he had his own personal demons to deal with.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Reuben Symonds met me at St Pancras station. I was grateful for this offer, although I suspected he just wanted to keep me away from the Alconbury Estate. He had with him a youth in a hooded sweatshirt. The hood was down, but he still resembled a sullen Hobbit—with acne. I recognised him as Darren Patterson, brother of ‘Big Pete’, and partner in crime of Djbril Mustapha who was apparently out of hospital and making a swift recovery.
We sat in Costa Coffee. Symonds and I drank tea, and Darren had some sort of hot chocolate drink topped with shaving cream and pink marshmallows. No wonder the boy has a face like a frozen pizza, I thought.
I showed them the photographs of my Chichester assailants. Darren stared at them hard from under his brows.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
‘Yeah what?’ I asked. ‘Yeah it’s them?’
‘Fuck you.’
He looked away as if I didn’t exist. I wished I could do the same to him.
‘Becket,’ Symonds put his hand on my arm. ‘What’s the matter with you? He’s saying they are the guys. But we didn’t come here for that. We have something else for you. If you are nice and polite and treat us with a bit of respect.’
Darren stared at Reuben Symonds with his piggy eyes as if he was trying to tell him something. Perhaps he’s telepathic, I thought. Symonds nodded and told me why they wanted to see me. So I duly apologised.
To them both.
I was in the office by six. Carstairs was still there so I poked my head around his door.
‘Just the man,’ he said. ‘First, I get a coded message on my mobile from Becket that I assumed was an invitation to play golf. But when I call back I get your answerphone. Then, later that day, a nice lady from the Public Records Office kindly returns Mr Becket’s mobile, asking me to ask you to refrain from using the fire exit as a means of egress in the future as it sets off a little alarm under her desk and a full risk assessment has to be...’
‘Yes I get the message, Anthony.’
‘What’s going on, Thomas?’
‘I had to go up to London and left my phone behind.’
‘Look if you won’t tell me, that’s fine...’
‘There really is nothing to tell,’ I lied. ‘Are you around for long? Fa
ncy a drink later?’
It was a calculated risk. He sighed and said he had to go to Whitstable for an Art Society meeting, but was up for a round the next day. I said okay and disappeared upstairs without firming anything up. I felt cheap. For once, there was no way I wanted a round of golf. I had other fish to fry.
My old mobile was dead, so I put it on charge. If anyone was interested, it told them I was still in the office.
I considered ringing Meg, but I was as nervous as a teenager. The telephone is such a suitable medium for rejection. When I first met her, a male friend said to me, ‘Just ring her. If you won’t, I will.’ He was joking or at least I thought he was—he barely knew her—but what I recall is being afraid of the sound of her voice at the other end. A voice saying, ‘No’ in any number of ways. Death by a thousand cuts.
Thirty odd years later and still the same cold fear. You really should have moved on by now, Becket, I thought.
So I rang Rosenberg and left a message to call my office landline. Ten minutes later he called back. He was outside again, shouting over the whine of aircraft engines. I soon found out why.
‘So you are the old Becket, after all,’ he said. ‘We have had MI5 here, going through the bins. Care to tell me anything?’
I told him that I suspected I was being bugged. That could be it.
‘Of course, borrowing my phone. Thanks, mate!’
‘My suspicion is this Mark Marchant—that name I asked you to check? —is an operative of theirs or SOCA or whoever, but had entered the country under another name.’
‘He’s the son, right? South African.’
‘He’s also some kind of contractor.’
‘Becket, why didn’t you tell me all this when we met?’
‘I wasn’t too sure then. What did the boys from Box say?’
‘Routine, they said. They always say that when it is not. Routine size elevens trampling through our face recognition logs. Routine questions disrupting our routines. We lost three hours of normal work. Fortunately UKBA are well practised in fobbing off other civil servants. If they can fool those twelve year olds in the Treasury, they can fool anyone.’