‘Also in Leamington Spa.’
‘And which teams do they supply?’
‘Us, Lambourn and Massarella.’
Straker smiled resignedly. ‘The Byzantine interconnectivity is utterly incestuous here.’
‘Oh it is. You have to remember that pre-Bernie, Formula One was tiny — a set of cottage industries. Thanks to him, it’s all grown proportionately: many of the firms originally involved in the sport are more or less still there — they’ve just got a lot bigger along the way.’
‘Which is fascinating, charming, and impressive — but seriously reduces the chances of any one relationship indicating who might be behind the sabotage.’
TWENTY
Straker was given use of an office two doors down from Backhouse’s within the Ptarmigan factory. He started writing on a whiteboard the sabotage-related entities he had discovered so far in his investigation. An electronic device. Jamming. An apartment in Monte-Carlo. Michael Lyons. A Warwickshire cottage. A Peugeot hatchback. Trifecta. He also wrote: FIA. Heavy fines. Motive?
Straker sat there and just stared at his board.
He tried to think out from — and beyond — each of the entities in front of him, his eyes darting between them.
After a few minutes, he was sure he had noticed something. It was subliminal at first.
But something was odd.
Inconsistent.
Yes, he thought. There’s something there that isn’t quite right.
He dwelt on a contrast — the significant contrast in affluence between Lyons’s cottage and that apartment in Monaco. How much would a week’s rental for a flat like that during the Grand Prix set one back? he wondered. He didn’t know precisely, but he would bank on it being a tidy sum. Could Lyons really have afforded that, considering the modesty of the thatched cottage and two-door hatchback? Hardly. What was Lyons’s status, then, while he had been in Monte-Carlo? Was he there privately, or on business? Because of the expense, it had to be business, didn’t it? If so, was he there for Trifecta, or had Lyons been moonlighting — for somebody else?
If it had been his employer, would the company itself be behind his illicit radio jamming? Was that likely? Straker realized he needed to know more about Trifecta.
He rang Karen in London: ‘Could you look into a company called Trifecta Systems for me? I need you to identify all their activities, key clients, directors, who their investors or shareholders are, and any news cuttings you can come up with — your usual magic!’
Leaving Karen to get on with that, Straker returned to staring at his whiteboard. Nothing came to him. For quite a while. Until, after his nth cup of coffee, he noticed something else. There was something missing. Something he knew, but which wasn’t on his board. He realized he had no idea of its relevance, but had a feeling that he wanted to know more about the person Lyons had met for breakfast that morning in Leamington. Why was he suspicious of that meeting? he asked himself.
What was the significance of it? It was a meeting with someone wearing a Benbecular lapel pin. There was no significance at all, if those pins were widely available merchandize items. Except Benbecular was hardly a “designer” brand. Someone wearing one was, therefore, demonstrating a heavily esoteric interest in motor racing. And the meeting was intriguing, again because of a possible inconsistency. Lyons’s office, which struck Straker as large and well-appointed, must have its own meeting rooms and hospitality facilities, surely? — and it was only a couple of miles away. Instead of meeting at Trifecta, then, Lyons had chosen neutral ground to meet this motor racing aficionado.
Why?
True, it was hardly clandestine — in a public restaurant, and in broad daylight — but Straker’s interest was piqued. He wanted to find out more.
How?
After yet another cup of coffee Straker came up with a wheeze. Picking out his phone, he searched the web for two things. First, he wanted a barber’s shop in the town; he found several, and picked one: Giorgio’s. Then he searched for the number of the Regent Hotel and dialled it using the embedded link on the website’s Contact Us page.
His call was answered promptly.
Straker asked to be put through to the dining room. A Black Country-sounding voice soon answered and introduced herself as Jill.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I have a strange request, and really hope you can help me?’
Jill gave a nervous chuckle. ‘Okay?’
‘It’s Giorgio’s — the barbers — here, we’re just around the corner from the hotel,’ said Straker. ‘We had a client in this morning who rang back asking whether he had left his glasses behind.’
‘Oh.’
‘At the time, we said no. But, would you believe it? — we’ve found them.’
‘Err, okay?’ said the girl, sounding a little unsure what this had to do with her.
‘I’m ringing because we don’t know how to reach him. He did mention he had just had breakfast with you, though.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do you, by any chance, have his name?’
‘How would we know that?’ she asked.
‘He happened to say that he was breakfasting with another of our clients, a Mr Lyons.’
There was a pause from the other end and Straker heard the encouraging sound of a page being flipped over. ‘Yes, you’re in luck — here it is. Mr Lyons … and … a Mr Jeremy Barnett,’ she read out.
‘Excellent. I suppose it’s too much to hope that Mr Barnett left a contact number when he booked?’
‘I’m afraid you’re right — he didn’t.’
Straker thanked Jill profusely and rang off. Next, via his iPhone, he looked up another telephone number on another website; he found one for the main switchboard for the company in question. He was going to take a punt.
Straker rang it. A few seconds later he was talking to an elderly lady who answered the phone: ‘Hello, Benbecular Engines?’
‘I need to write to Mr Jeremy Barnett,’ he explained, ‘and am anxious to get his title and address right, please.’
There was silence on the other end.
Oh shit, thought Straker. She doesn’t even recognize the name. Jeremy Barnett doesn’t mean anything to these people.
Suddenly he heard a sneeze.
‘Sorry about that, love,’ she said, still sounding distracted. ‘Caught by a sneeze. Who was it you wanted, again?’
‘Mr Barnett.’
‘Jeremy?’
‘Yes, that’s him.’
Straker smiled and added: ‘I’ve got him down as Engine Management Systems, is that right?’
‘No, dear. He’s in our Technology Development Division. His title is Management Engineer.’
‘Many thanks,’ he said. ‘My letter to him will be in the post today,’ and rang off.
Straker’s wheeze had worked.
He walked across his temporary office and wrote: “Jeremy Barnett — Benbecular” on his whiteboard.
Straker stood back and studied this new piece of information in the context of the others. For uncounted minutes, his eyes flicked from one name to the next, deliberately, as if trying to spot the anagram from among the jumbled letters of a cryptic crossword.
Straker, after thirty minutes, realized he had drawn a blank.
But that conclusion wasn’t completely useless. It did help confirm something for him: there was no apparent connectivity.
Straker’s mind wandered back to his previous assignment for Quartech. What had been the breakthrough with that? he reflected. Links, he answered: the way things were linked together, sometimes without apparent reason.