by Mark Raven
A child chased a squirrel and shouted at it in Italian.
‘So where are you going with this, Becket?’
‘Me? I’m just handing over the evidence I’ve got. To you, DCI Richie. This is a CD with CCTV footage of people searching my flat last night, removing surveillance devices.’
Richie opened his mouth but nothing came out. I went on, ‘Exhibit B is a photograph of Marchant talking to the Djbril Mustapha. I got it from Darren Paterson’s phone, and finally this is a still of ‘Lukas Merweville’ entering the country. I’m sure you have all this information already Richie, but I thought I would hand it over while someone takes photographs of us. You see that fat chap over there, the one in the rather unprepossessing anorak? You can’t smell him from here, but he’s got a zoom lens.’
I waved. Littlemore waved back.
‘That’s my insurance policy, Richie. That someone arrests them before they do any more damage. And then someone has a serious chat with Mrs Jenny Forbes-Marchant.’
Richie smiled. In a certain light, he really did look like Jimmy Somerville of Bronski Beat.
‘You really are unbelievable, Becket. I would do all these things for you, if they hadn’t been done already. Why do you think the top brass were so exercised by all this? No one told them. One of them was caught at your office in Canterbury. The other two in a beat up Range Rover on the M2.’
‘You got all three of them?’
‘Yes, you dumb fuck. They have been trying to contact you to do a formal ID for the last day. Don’t you have a phone?’
He had pulled the rug from under me.
‘I should go down there now,’ I said.
He sighed.
‘Don’t worry, I sorted it. Not without a great deal of pain and expense. You see, our friend Merweville asked to talk to the Chief Constable of Kent, who in turn woke our dear Commissioner as he slumbered in St Valery-en-Caux. That’s why I agreed to see you, Becket. Not because I thought you had any new information for me. But because I could tell you it’s over, and finally-finally-finally to please, pretty-please, pretty-please-with-knobs on, stay out of it. I will try my best to clear it up and then I will let you know what really happened. Promise.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
We sat at her little kitchen table overlooking the square below. The window was slightly ajar letting in the soft, diesel-and-dust London air. It still felt like summer, but the leaves drifted from the trees as carelessly as sweet wrappers from the hands of schoolchildren. There was an air of celebration, but I wasn’t quite sure why.
‘He actually called you a ‘dumb fuck’?’ Kat Persaud said, as I finished telling her about my meeting with Richie. ‘I thought people only did that in American films. You dumb fuck!’
Her accent was so bad it made me laugh. She refilled our glasses with some fizzy wine that could have been Cava once. We had started on the expensive stuff I had brought round and worked ourselves down the price range of whatever was in her fridge. Her flatmate was out for the evening.
‘You stupid schmuck, Becket!’ I said.
‘You lookin’ at me, you freakin’ mook?’
‘That’s the best!’ I said. ‘But it’s so true. All this FBI-speak will be coming in with the NCA.’
‘It will be de rigueur, as they say.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Anyway, all the bad guys are safely locked away,’ she said raising her glass. ‘Thanks to Becket.’
‘Yes indeed. Three cheers for me. Richie rang Kent’s Finest and I can ID them tomorrow. After the funeral.’
She stood abruptly and starting putting some plates down on the table.
‘I’m afraid we are just eating up what’s left,’ she said. ‘Or tapas, as I call it.’
I scanned her report on my iPad.
‘What I still don’t get is why they let it get so far. What you say here, it all makes sense until the final part. It’s 1961-2; Simeon Marchant is in South Africa. Has a liaison with a local woman, marries her, a child is born. Mark. The boy dies a few months later. No one knows what happens to his mum, except she and Simeon are divorced. We have that in black and white, if you excuse the pun. Fast-forward to the mid-Nineties. Someone needs a false identity with dual British-South African citizenship. This is a two-passport job, for operational reasons. RSA not too difficult back then, 1994, and our very own High Commission in Jo’Burg even easier. And Mark Marchant is reborn in the form of one Lukas Merweville. We have very little background on Merweville before then...’
‘Pre-internet, of course.’
‘...or who he worked for. Could be South African intelligence or de Klerk’s disbanded secret police. It doesn’t matter. He is South African by birth and heritage, we know that. His job, commissioned by someone, their government of ours, probably both, is to infiltrate a group of white South African expats in Earls Court. Not too difficult as it seems they spend most of their time in the pub—either drinking or behind the bar—talking about how bad things were ‘back home’. Not exactly white supremacists, more like Daily Mail readers concerned that their country is going to the dogs but not prepared to do anything about it themselves. How did you get this stuff, by the way?’
She leant over me.
‘Click on the footnotes. There! Operation Flametree, it was called. Declassified in 2011, in South Africa not here, of course.’
‘The object being to neutralise any threats to the peaceful nature of Nelson Mandela’s state visit to the UK and, in particular, Brixton. Marchant-Merweville reports there is no threat, just hot air, and the visit proceeds without incident.’
‘They would all be locked up these days just for talking about it,’ she observed.
‘True.’ I said. ‘Of course what would happen next, according to the book, would be for the identity of Marchant to be closed down—it had been compromised after all—and Merweville returning to normal duties.’
‘But for some reason that did not happen,’ she said. ‘Do you like sardines? There is a can somewhere in here.’
She was rummaging in the back of the cupboard, standing on tiptoe, her t-shirt riding up at the back. It was a surprisingly tanned and downy back. It reminded me how young she was. I averted my eyes.
‘My guess is cock-up rather than conspiracy,’ I said. ‘Both sides thought the other was dealing with it. Whatever the reason, Merweville leaves, sets up REsurance...’
‘Catchy title.’
‘...and for some reason names one ‘Mark Marchant’ as a partner. Perhaps it looks better. Perhaps he needs a British citizen on board to get some contracts. Perhaps, even at that stage, he has been digging around into Sir Simeon Marchant’s background. Whatever the reason, he keeps the ID but uses it sparingly.’
‘None of which answers your question,’ she said, sitting down. ‘Eat.’
There was a bowl of sardines, some pita bread, a roulade of goat’s cheese, salami slices, one boiled egg cut in half. She topped up our glasses.
‘None of which answers the question: why did they let it go on so long?’ I said. ‘The only answer is that he must have been working for them.’
‘I guess so. Among other things: Zimbabwe, Egypt, Somalia, Eritrea, Kuwait, Kurdistan, East Timor, and latterly Iraq and Afghanistan. Places not entirely separate from British foreign policy. The perfect sub-contractor: someone deniable.’
‘So why spoil it all? What did he do to piss on his chips?’
‘His passport was up for renewal—he renewed it in 2004—perhaps they wanted to pull the plug on him? That would explain it, perhaps.’
She didn’t seem too sure.
‘Perhaps it affects his business? None of it makes any sense. The extremeness of his actions seem, well, too extreme...’
‘Well put, Mr Becket!’
‘Can I ask you a question?’ I asked.
‘Fire away.’
‘This website for Hawesworth and Breckenridge. Does it seem strange to you?’
‘You noticed that too?’
‘Yes, it
is as if they are not selling anything. Most solicitors are selling their wares. But...’
‘It is as if they don’t have to,’ she said. ‘I’m in Washington next week. A routine meeting. What does that sound like? I’m an academic jetsetter. No, we have a joint bid with Washington State. But I could have a look at their files, over there. They tend to be more comprehensive.’
‘Can I ask you another question, Dr Persaud?’
‘Go ahead, Mr Becket.’
‘Doesn’t alcohol affect you at all?’
I was late getting to Meg’s and she didn’t seem too keen on my explanation for the reason; that I had to meet my researcher at her flat to go through her report. It seemed pretty thin to me too when I said it.
‘How old is she?’ Meg asked. ‘And did you come to any conclusions?’
‘I’ll tell you in the restaurant.’
We managed to find a place still serving down the Edgware Road. Extended families of middle-eastern heritage clustered together, drinking tea and eating sweetmeats. Older men sat outside smoking from hookahs, sending up blue flumes of smoke into the night air. I knew Meg loved this part of London as it reminded her of our time abroad, or perhaps just her time abroad. Whatever the reason, it was a place she had moved post-Becket, a place where she had reverted to her maiden name and used the title ‘Ms.’. And who could blame her? The other one had not done her much good.
I had tried to put the consequences of my actions out of my mind. Not just the whole pre-history of selfishness and neglect, but also the night before last. In retrospect, that too seemed like a selfish act on my part. I shuddered at the thought of it; what Meg made of it. And now, this very evening, I was doing exactly the same; I was two hours late having spent the early evening at the flat of an attractive woman two decades my junior just because—sorry, obviously not just because—I was interested in something out there, something that was not us, a problem to solve at whatever costs. I had ceased to see myself as a crusader—a discredited term anyway these days—someone with crusading zeal, to make the world a better place, a fundamentalist, with absolute values. It was not like that. I was a relativist like the rest of them, just less of one. A less efficient one.
We ordered sparkling water with our kebabs. Meg was on an early shift the next day and I’d had enough of drinking. I explained the background to the case and why I had seen Kat Persaud. Somehow Jenny Forbes-Marchant had been duped by a man impersonating her dead half-brother. For whatever reason she had been complicit in the murder of her own father. But what was the level of that complicity? That was what I wanted to know. That was why I could not leave it alone. I told the story to Meg as if it was an article in a newspaper that I was reading her across the breakfast table.
From time to time she would glance from my face to my untouched food. It was like an admonition. So I had to eat.
‘What I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘is why you have to do something about it. The guys who attacked you are locked up, thank god. You have handed over the evidence to the police. But you are still going to the funeral...’
‘That’s different. I have to pay my respects. I can’t leave it without...’
‘Don’t give me that. You are going to ask that woman whether she knew about the attack on her father, aren’t you? You won’t leave it to the police as that man, Richie, said. You don’t trust anyone. You just have to do it yourself. You never really trusted anyone, Thomas.’
She let that hang in the air, and I chewed through some very nice cardboard masquerading as pita bread. More pita bread. A surfeit of pita bread. I thought about a suitable response, but she was right I could never leave things alone. She smiled.
‘You think I'm wrong, don’t you? You’ve gone quiet. That’s a sign Becket thinks I'm wrong.’
‘I just don’t regard human behaviour as acts of nature,’ I said. ‘Crimes are not accidents. They arise out of choice. This is not A&E we are talking about. People do not present with conditions, or whatever you call it; they make choices...’
‘I know that. I’m not stupid, Becket. I know it isn’t like A&E. I’m just saying you have a choice, too.’
I excused myself and went to the toilet. My heart was beating fast. I was furious with Meg. This was not the way it was meant to be. This was meant to be the end, or almost the end of the case, a time for celebration to moving on to the next thing. But the next round of things did not look too good to me. They seemed flat and lifeless and of no interest to me. Whereas knowing whether Jenny Forbes-Marchant was involved in the killing of her father was fascinating. To know why she made decisions, or choices, seemed to me at the heart of existence, my existence anyway. And to ignore it, as Meg was doing, seemed as wrong as the crime itself. With anyone else I would have stormed out, but with Meg I couldn’t, we shared too much pain to do that. And I loved her.
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.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
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 t
he 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.