by Mark Raven
‘Don’t suppose you can run another FR check for me?’
He swore and cut the connection. But I sent the image to his mobile anyway. The image I had got from Reuben Symonds and young Darren Patterson. The man who had asked a group of teenagers to distract an old man for a moment.
I waited for the rear door downstairs to slam and looked out the back window to see the Carstairs Jag pulling out of the car park. Then I rang Jenny Forbes-Marchant. She sounded miffed.
‘You didn’t call this morning.’
Despite not recalling the promise I said, ‘Yes, well, I wasn’t feeling too good.’
‘We did overindulge slightly. Did they tell you off in A&E?’
‘I didn’t go there. I have a friend who was a nurse.’
‘A female friend.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘My ex-wife.’
‘I see,’ she said slowly. ‘Peter said you were a shit.’
There were many responses to that, but I bit my tongue on all of them. I didn’t want her to put the phone down just yet.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I hope it all goes well Friday.’
I was referring to the funeral.
‘Thank you.’
We were back in the tundra. Herds of caribou shivered in the icy blasts.
‘By the way, do you have the name of your father’s solicitor?’ I asked.
‘Why do you need that?’
‘I have some documents here I need to return to him,’ I lied. ‘Ones you father posted to me. Nothing important, but there were strict instructions to return them to his solicitor. Unfortunately there is no address. I'm sure it was an oversight.’
There was a long silence at the other end. The caribou stopped and stared. A wolverine trudged into view sniffing the snowy air, a litter of arctic fox cubs scattered...
‘Tom, look I’m in the gallery so I have nothing to hand. I’ll ring you back, okay? Are you in the office?’
I said I was and would await her call.
I didn’t think Jenny Forbes-Marchant would ring back on the landline, but I used my new mobile anyway. Littlemore answered.
‘Are you awake?’ I asked.
‘Of course, Ch—.’
‘Sober?’
‘You know I don’t...’
‘Have you got anything for me?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, keep looking. Next hour or so, I guess. Don’t ring me, or anything. I’ll call you. Got that?’
‘You’ll call me.’
I disconnected. I should really have said thanks or something. But I just couldn’t bring myself to. I would have once, but as I’ve got older I have become more fixed in my views, more unforgiving. It is not an attractive trait.
I went across the road to the pub. It was quiet: just a few regulars and the silent twinkle of the fruit machine in the gloom. I took a pint of Spitfire over to a seat by the window. There was a good view of the street and the entrance to Hunt and Carstairs LLP. I checked my watch. It was still too early. Unless they were nearby, of course. That is the trouble with paranoia, or any form of heightened awareness: you read too much into things, you see too many possibilities. I received a text from Meg. It said someone called Maike had rung and left her number. There was a small ‘x’ at the end of the message that looked promising. But like I say, you can read too much into things.
I rang Maike Breytenbach’s number. She picked up immediately.
‘My son said you wanted to talk to me, Mr Becket.’
‘Well I wanted to ask a question. About your lawyer. The one you and Sir Simeon were using to...’
‘So you know about him and me.’
Not a question, but I said ‘Yes’ anyway.
‘It wasn’t about the money. Like the daughter says. That was so insulting. She was very insulting. A very insulting girl.’
I thought: you don’t know the half of it.
‘She definitely has a way with her,’ I said.
‘Now, you are joking.’ She paused and then surprised me by giving out one abrupt laugh. ‘She most certainly has that way with her.’
‘She told you to leave and she took a lot of paper with her. But you didn’t mind because you had already taken it to his lawyer.’
‘That is correct.’
‘When was that?’
‘Straight away. Well, I mean the day after...’
She started crying. Loud, anguished cries. Almost wailing. No ambiguity here. I let it play itself out. No point interrupting.
‘They would not even let me see his body! They do not even want me at the funeral, but they cannot stop us. They cannot stop us. Jacob, he was with Simeon every week. For ten years. How often did that daughter come down? He did not even want to see her when he went to London. But I made him. I said: you should go. Simeon, you should see your granddaughter. You should stay with them. It is right.’ She paused again and repeated, ‘It is right.’
‘Did you ever meet the son? Mark?’
‘No, never. Not even back home.’
It took a while for me to process the information.
‘You knew Sir Simeon in South Africa?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course, that is where we met.’
It was later. The dead time between after work drinks and what in the world of real ale they call a session. The pub was empty apart from a large man who had pulled a chair over to the quiz machine and rested his forehead on the screen in search of the answer. I knew how he felt.
A car drew up opposite. Two men got out: one from the front passenger seat, the other from the back. The driver stayed put, the engine ticking over. It was the only car on the cobbled street. ‘Deliveries only’, it said farther down the road, but no one in their right mind wanted to drive down there anyway. It wrecked your suspension. You needed a four by four to cushion you from the cobbles. And it was a black Range Rover stopped outside the front of Hunt and Carstairs LLP. It might not have been the same one I saw in Chichester—these were very popular vehicles after all in the lease car scheme of accountants and salespeople—but one thing was certain: they were the same guys as in the CCTV stills.
Through the darkened glass I could just about see the driver gesturing emphatically like he was in charge. The guys in suits, Berenson and Verholen, looked over at the pub. Despite the fact I knew they could not possibly see me, I shrank back in my seat. Then the Range Rover edged forward and obscured them from view. After ten seconds or so, the vehicle moved off.
Berenson and Verholen were gone.
The Range Rover turned the corner of the road and turned left. It would be going around the back of the building. To the office car park.
The alarm above the door blinked for several seconds, and then ceased. This being the ‘tamper proof’ alarm system I had advised Anthony Carstairs to invest in. Feeling very foolish, I made an anonymous 999 call from my new mobile, and went outside. I knew I should wait for Kent’s Finest to arrive, but if the South Africans got in that quickly then they would be out just as sharpish. The sensible thing would be to wait...
I jogged across the road and looked through the window. I could see nothing inside. So I ran down to end of the road and turned towards the car park. The Range Rover was parked up close to the rear entrance to Hunt and Carstairs.
To discourage opportunist shoppers, there was a large steel barrier across the entrance to the car park. We never really used it—it was a deterrent that went with a big sign that talked of a ‘release fee’—but we all had keys to its padlock. Besides it was an absolute sod to move as it was rusted up and weighed about a ton.
If I could get the barrier closed, I thought, then nothing short of a tank would get out of the car park. And without the Range Rover, the South Africans would not get far.
To the casual onlooker it must have looked absurd: middle-aged bloke jogging around the corner, out of breath, suddenly decides to lift a ton of rusted steel and drag it round towards its metal post. It was like an episode of Jeux Sans F
rontières: man pulls lever down, lifts it from its holder like the stylus of giant gramophone, pushes it in an arc, stops to get his breath, pulls the barrier back towards him and starts pushing again.
Meanwhile: man in Range Rover—the opposing team—realises what is going on, beeps his horn twice and starts to manoeuvre round. Another man dashes out of the backdoor of Hunt and Carstairs setting that alarm off—Becket said they should have parallel systems, not such a failure after all—and gets in the back of the Range Rover. Meanwhile Becket is still slowly closing the gate, putting his back into it as slow and stately as a lockmaster on a canal. The driver revs the engine and starts driving towards Becket at full speed. Becket jumps out of the way and the Range Rover bumps past him and stops. The Range Rover is scratched all along its side by the barrier, but it is through. Becket closes the gate so they can’t come back. Why, he is not sure.
The guy gets out of the back of the Range Rover, Verholen I think, and moves towards Becket. Then he hears the sirens and gets back in the car. The other one—Berenson, it is—stumbles across the car park, pursued by two uniforms. The Range Rover takes off. Leaving us to it.
Obviously I had some explaining to do. But not as much as Mr Berenson who was wrestled to the ground and sat on by two of Kent’s Finest until a van arrived. Even then he didn’t seem that keen on giving up. It took five uniforms to get him in the back. They could not even get a restraint vest on him. If they were zookeepers they would have been able to tranquilise him, but as he was a human animal, they had to content themselves with slapping him around a bit until he got the message.
Unfortunately the local plods also remembered me, and said they had some questions. At the station, I was locked in an interview room while they thought them up. Fortunately, no one could get hold of Carstairs this time—he was in some inaccessible part of Whitstable, thank God—so his head clerk came from his home in the suburbs. He vouched for me, and to my surprise I was released once I had signed the scantiest of statements.
This said that Becket had just happened to be having a pint in the pub across the road when he witnessed a break in. The call was anonymous because Becket was in state of shock. Foolishly Becket had tried to stop them—that was true, at least—and he didn’t know what had come over him. Being an ex-copper, Becket knew he should have just left it to the police, but he just couldn’t help himself.
That went down well. Reluctant have-a-go hero. Should have left it to the professionals.
I didn’t say that these were the guys who attacked me in Chichester or killed Lee Herbert in London. If I had, I would not have got out of there before midnight. Nor did I say that I had attracted the burglars to the premises of Hunt and Carstairs, as this too would have led to a whole set of other questions. These would have led, as sure as eggs are scrambled, to the desk of DCI Richie, and if I wanted to achieve one thing it was to keep him out of it, for the time being at least.
Instead I asked if someone could take me to hospital as I had landed rather heavily. The head clerk kindly volunteered for this task and the local force was relieved, internal injuries being what they are, that I wouldn’t snuff it in their care. When we got to the car, I asked my colleague to just take me home. He was only too keen, he said. There was a rerun of Morse on ITV 4.
I stood outside my flat, looking up. There were no lights on, but that meant nothing. There were not meant to be any lights on. There was no black Range Rover on the street. That meant nothing too. I’m sure they would have had a backup vehicle. So I waited just to be sure.
After five minutes or so I rang Littlemore.
‘Any news for me?’ I asked, keeping my voice low.
‘Two of them were in there,’ he almost yelled. ‘I think...’
‘Keep your voice down,’ I hissed. I backed into a doorway, and looked around. ‘Go on.’
‘I think,’ Littlemore whispered, ‘it was one of the guys in the CCTV stills...’
‘You think?’
‘They didn’t put the light on. They used night vision...’
‘So how did you know?’
‘Just as he was opening the door. Light from the stairwell. Shaved head, no mask.’
‘I see. And the other?’
‘I don’t know. Taller, thinner. I’m working on it now.’
‘What did they do?’
‘They took everything. All the stuff in your flat. All the bugs. Cleared them out. The lot.’
‘Okay, get it all onto a disk. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.’
‘Okay.’
‘And Littlemore...’
‘Yes?’ he whispered.
‘Thanks.’
The flat was empty. You would not have known anyone had been there at all. It was certainly a contrast to the approach at Hunt and Carstairs LLP. I called Anthony’s mobile.
‘I’m surveying a scene of devastation,’ he said. ‘Fortunately for you, it is just your office they took apart.’
‘So you are there?’
‘Now, if they had touched my abode I would have been compelled to kill you, old boy.’
‘They didn’t because I interrupted them.’
‘Thomas, they were only here in the first place because you invited them. I really don’t mind you using yourself as bait, but to use my chambers, well I take a very dim view of it.’
‘I’m sorry, Anthony.’
‘But you are not ringing to apologise, Tom. I know you too well. Now, what can I do for you?’
I told him.
There was one message on the answerphone. It was from DS Singh and he left his mobile number. He said to ring whatever time. It was just after nine. I rang.
‘Hello, Daddy’s phone,’ a young girl’s voice said.
There was a struggle and I could hear Singh say, ‘Give it here,’ in an undertone. A door was closed firmly. Then, ‘Mr Becket? Thanks for ringing back. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
What happened next turned out to mean nothing at all. Turned out to? Who am I kidding? I even knew it at the time: what I was about to do meant nothing to me, or in the scheme of things, nothing at all. Nothing to anyone.
I was in a pub in New Cross, South London. Not quite collective kicking out time, but individually I had been close on a number of occasions. The bar staff looked at me with the exasperated patience of people who know they have created the problem they now face. I had shown the CCTV stills of my attackers to a number of the self-styled anarchists who shared the squat, albeit briefly, with the late Lee Herbert. To put it mildly they were not too enthusiastic to talk to me. I expected them to say they were sick of coppers hanging around asking them questions—it is amazing how often you hear such clichés—but their reticence went deeper than that. They just hated the State, they said. They could see why they needed to catch Lee’s killers, but not why they took poor Sistina into detention. I said that was the problem with the State: one thing came with another.
As I say, I knew it meant nothing. Lee Herbert meant nothing, it seemed. To the Met, anyway. But at least I was going through the motions of asking questions—unlike the local police, DI Spittieri and his shocked, young acolyte. What hope did we have if law enforcement was in their hands? It was clear to me they had been told to rein in their investigations into Lee Herbert’s death.
So I bought people drinks and drank doubles myself. I had another thought deep inside of me, another desire that I found I could not resist. The bar staff frowned, mistrust grew around me like bacteria in a Petri dish, or moss on a stonewall. And I was stonewalled any number of times as I asked my uncomfortable questions. But I had just enough whiff of the Old Bill about me that no one offered to punch my lights out. For the time being, anyway.
It ended with the landlord—the old fashioned sort you so rarely see these days—making use of another clichéd phrase you so rarely hear these days either: don’t you think you’ve had enough, son? Landlords and priests, I shouted as I left. Landlords and fucking priests
, the only people who call you ‘son’.
I went to a pub down the road, and then another. I left that one, walked back to the one before, was thrown out, was distracted by the smell of food, bought a kebab from a take-away and went for a piss down a back alley.
That was where they caught up with me.
There were a couple of them, which was a relief. I was hoping for one, but I would accept two. There could have been more. There would have been enough takers, but who wants to share out the proceeds more than two ways? They had seen plenty of blokes like me, on their way home from their cosy little office jobs, having a few drinks with their mates, deciding to have a few more, getting cut off from the crowd, or the others going home. Pissed as a newt and easy pickings.
That was Becket.
Except they were wrong. I was waiting for them. I didn’t know who they would be exactly. They were what they call ‘randoms’. Like I said, it didn’t matter. But I knew someone would try and roll me. Perhaps I wanted punishing for letting Mat Janovitz get killed, or for Meg, or for Clara, or for letting Anthony Carstairs down. Perhaps I just wanted to see if anyone was following me in a black Range Rover.
But these two were none of the above. They were a couple of junkies, I guessed, perhaps even from Lee Herbert’s squat—it didn’t matter—faded T-shirts of forgotten bands, painfully thin arms and one sorry blade between them. Just for show. I wasn’t sure either of them was strong enough to pierce someone else’s skin.
At last, I felt a calm descend on me. I handed over my wallet to the one without the knife. Then I rubbed the kebab in the other one’s face. Legerdemain. I took the knife from him and snapped it against the wall next to his head. I swivelled and kicked the arm holding the wallet. He screamed like he had been burnt and dropped it. The other one staggered off down the alley, so I had to take out my frustration on his mate.
