The Cambridge Theorem

by Tony Cape

  He entered the small shop abstractedly, feeling like an alien, a refugee from a world of lawlessness and treachery. He glanced at the headlines on the ranks of Sunday newspapers on the counter. Showdown looms in South Atlantic, blared the tabloids. The young woman behind the counter beamed at him. “Yes, sir?” she asked, with her lovely ancestral sibilance.

  He ordered his cigarettes and commented on the weather, drawn to this first genuine human contact since the blur of night and death.

  “Och, it’s no bad the day, but it’s been awful. It really has. Are ye going far?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m on holiday.”

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  He noticed her blue nylon work coat, the same color as her eyes. He felt an urge to ask if she’d talk to him, listen to his terrible story.

  “I’m thinking of doing some hiking.”

  “Aye, well there’s plenty of hiking paths around here. Of course, it’s no the Highlands.”

  He left the shop and stood in the street, looking back towards the statue of Victory, and the sandstone turrets of the town hall that stood behind it. Somewhere there was a link between this ugly dance he had made and the implacable decency of this Scottish town. He realized he had no desire to drive further. He turned and looked at the sign for Sandie’s B and B, and pushed open the door.

  Sandie Cook was a suspicious woman in her mid thirties with thick, fair hair, broad shoulders and broad hips. She accepted his deposit and showed him into a small room next to the bathroom on the ground floor with a single bed, a sink, a dressing table and chair and a portrait of the Monarch of the Glen on the flowered wallpaper. She apologized for the lack of towels. She had not expected guests so early in the season.

  That night Smailes strolled down to the Black Bull in the town square which sold good beer and better whisky. From the public telephone out by the men’s toilet he put in a call to Iain Mack.

  Iain listened intently as Smailes tried to give him a condensed version of what had happened since they had last met in Cambridge. He interrupted with the occasional “No shit?” or by asking him to repeat something, but largely he just listened. When Smailes recounted the events of the previous night his tone became more urgent and he found himself stopping to take pulls on his whisky. He found the visual images still vivid and had difficulty explaining everything in order. Iain had him go back over the chronology, from the death of Gorham-Leach to the calls to the FBI to the decision to set up Lauren and their final, terrifying drive to Girton village and the golf course car park.

  “Derek, are you telling me this bitch was about to shoot you and Dearnley and the other guys are nowhere?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t believe it. Go on.”

  Smailes had difficulty with the final act and his voice actually broke as he described the bullet hitting the dirt two inches from his ear and the dreadful gurgling sound from Lauren’s throat as her life expired.

  There was a silence from the other end of the line, then Iain said, “Where did say you are?”

  “Cormond. Just over the border. Sandie’s B and B.”

  “I’m coming, okay? I’ll get off early Thursday, take the train, you can get me in Carlisle or somewhere, right?”

  “Right, but…”

  “No buts. I’m coming. Look, will you be okay this week, on your own?”

  “Yeah, I’m just shaken up. I’ll do some hiking, some thinking. Iain, you know what bothers me most?”

  “Yeah, that Dearnley and this bloke from MI5 just wanted you and her to shoot it out, no witnesses, right?”

  “It sounds like that to you too?”

  “I don’t know. I need to think about it too. I’ll call you tomorrow with the time of the train. Get some rest.”

  “Sure. And Iain?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  The weather stayed clear for the next several days and Smailes spent long hours tramping over low moors and through isolated glens. All he saw were sheep and crows and the occasional farm building. Once, miles from any road, he came across a battered Land Rover and a man who must have been in his seventies slowly repairing a collapsed section of dry stone wall. The wind was high and raw and Smailes had to shout his greeting. The man looked up calmly and nodded. “Isn’t it lonely out here?” yelled Smailes. “Och, when you’ve got your work ye dinna notice,” the man replied.

  Another time he climbed through a stile into a wide field to find himself confronted by a bizarre, long-haired animal which looked like an evil-tempered Highland cow without horns. The beast snorted and made a run at him and Smailes had to hurry to get back through the stile. He descended past the side of the field and down a track to a low farm building where brightly colored pennants flapped from long poles in the breeze. A stocky young man, who did not look like a native, stood outside the door wearing Wellington boots, oilskin and woolen hat. He was holding a large cabbage. Smailes greeted him and asked about the animal that had chased him.

  “Oh, that’s Angus the yak,” he said, in a distinct Southern English accent. He had a flat, wind-reddened face and wiry ginger hair.

  “Yak?”

  “Yes, he was given to the Tibetan center up the road, but he’s too bad-tempered to stay on the land. We’re trying to find a safari park to take him. Is that where you’re staying?”

  “No, I didn’t know it was there. What is it?”

  “It’s a Tibetan buddhist meditation center. It was started by some lamas a few years back. We used to live there ourselves, until we found this place.”

  Smailes wanted to ask how they made a living, but the question seemed impolite.

  “It’s open to visitors, you know, if you want to visit. Walk down to the road, then turn right. About two miles,” the young man said.

  “Thanks,” said Smailes. He had seen a documentary about Tibetan lamas on television some years back. All he remembered was some bloke with hair like a doormat, sitting in a cave tooting on a human thighbone like a clarinet. It was a measure of his peculiar state of mind that he even considered stopping in, finding out what went on. But he turned left at the road and began the long hike back to Cormond.

  He felt his entire career was moot. If it was true that Dearnley and Standiforth had collaborated in a plan that would have eliminated both him and Lauren, it made a mockery of all his notions of service and duty. There was no way he could prove it, of course, and a big part of him wanted to believe George’s protestations, despite the peculiarities of his behavior. But the very possibility that it might be true made it impossible for him to continue serving George Dearnley and the Cambridge CID.

  He was less sure where to go with his knowledge. On his second day he had taken the morning to drive to Dumfries where he took out a whole shelf of books from the public library on espionage and the British security services. He found he no longer had any impediment to his interest or concentration. And it was all there, everything Iain had warned him of. The shocking record of incompetence, the persistent security lapses, the pathological fear of the Americans, the determination to lie and conceal. In the evenings he would lie on his bed and read one account after another, drinking whisky slowly and trying to fathom his experience. His judgment was that of an outsider, but it seemed to him that Gorham-Leach had to be the most damaging Soviet spy since Philby, possibly of all time. He knew Standiforth and Dearnley between them would come up with some cover about the suicide and the deaths of Lauren Greenwald and Giles Allerton. There would be few people who would learn the truth of Gorham-Leach’s career, maybe not even the Prime Minister herself. Unless Smailes blew the whistle. What should he do? Go to the press with his outrageous story? Why should they believe him? And what would be his motive? To precipitate another scandal? To send the press baying for resignations? Yet should there not be some accounting? he asked himself. Wasn’t it his duty to Simon Bowles to ensure it?

  His mind was filled with these questions during the long day’s hikes and during t
he nights as he lay reading in his room. His landlady had warmed up to him a little, and even invited him to have dinner one night with her family. There was no one else staying at the guesthouse, and she seemed to welcome the company. She had two girls aged six and nine, and eating with them made Smailes think of Tracy and wonder whether anyone had told Yvonne he was away. Sandie Cook told him about her life in Cormond, where she had grown up. Work was scarce and her husband was away most of the year working on the oil platforms in the North Sea. The guesthouse had been her idea after he had started working there two years ago. Smailes felt able to relax with this good-natured woman, but was not inclined to tell her the real reason for his stay in Cormond. He told her that his friend Iain was coming to stay Thursday and they would leave together on Sunday.

  He had spells in the evenings when he felt shaky and unnerved, but he seemed to be able to medicate himself with whisky and slept well. He suspected that whoever Lauren’s accomplices had been were now recalled, that Moscow too would want to limit repercussions, that his life was not in danger. The sharpest pain was when he thought of Dearnley’s possible betrayal, more shocking than even his father’s. He knew he could not work with him again.

  Iain arrived on Thursday evening and they spent hours in the Black Bull where Smailes rehearsed the whole story from his incipient doubts in the Bowles inquiry to the affair with Lauren and the discovery at the Wentworth house in Rickmansworth. The rest of the events had moved so fast, but Smailes was able to recount them now with more detachment. He also felt a certain bravado in the telling, which his friend was quick to detect.

  “Well, you seem okay,” said Iain.

  “I suppose so,” said Smailes.

  Iain, of course, loved the whole thing. After the revelations about Blunt, the Mole at the Palace, the notion that Britain’s top military scientist, a Nobel Laureate, was also a Soviet agent made him simply exultant. He knew it would make a fabulous news story, and told Smailes he could make a fortune if he sold the piece to one of the Sundays. In fact, Mack could write it for him and they would both clean up. He braked his enthusiasm when he saw Smailes’ face cloud.

  “You thinking of sitting on this, going back to work at CID?” he asked.

  “No, I’m not going back to CID. But I don’t know if I want to blow the whistle. I don’t want to just act out of revenge.”

  “Why not? Don’t you deserve it after what those two tried to do to you?”

  Smailes had to concede that he was still undecided about whether Standiforth had prior knowledge of Lauren’s complicity, or had deliberately tried to have him killed. He also needed to believe that Dearnley, his mentor, had not set him up to be sacrificed. When pressed, Iain agreed that he thought it unlikely too. After all, the British invented cricket, he said. That’s why they were in so much trouble in the modern world.

  “So what will you do?” asked Iain.

  “Sit on my hands and make them sweat,” said Smailes. For the next two days the two men hiked for miles, against Iain’s protests, and talked again and again of the extraordinary events that Smailes had witnessed.

  “You know, it’s too bad that Bowles’ Cambridge Theorem will never be published,” said Mack the following day, as they hiked down a lane east of Cormond. “He’s the one who deserves all the credit, after all. If it were not for him, Gorham-Leach would have passed into quiet retirement and would never have been blown. And the records stands that he killed himself in some neurotic fit. It seems unfair. You going to tell the sister?”

  “I don’t think so. Not if they don’t want me to,” said Smailes, surprised at his own words. “But at least the Kennedy Theorem has a chance of being published. There ought to be something on record of his work.”

  On Friday he called Gloria and told her he would be in George’s office at nine on Monday. She sounded cool and professional and Smailes wondered what the story was in Cambridge about his whereabouts.

  On Saturday night Smailes had to drive over to Dumfries to return the books to the bin outside the library, and the two men stayed in town for dinner and drinks. Iain wanted to know Smailes’ next move and he said he thought he might move to London to look for work. They agreed that he could stay at Iain’s place in Highgate until he got fixed up.

  “And what’s the move?” asked Mack.

  “Living death,” Smailes grimaced. “Private security. What else can I do?” said Smailes, counting out bank notes for the dinner check. The two men walked slowly out to the car park, when Smailes found his keys missing.

  “Hold on, Iain. Must’ve left them on the table,” said Smailes, leaving Mack standing in the night. The keys were indeed on the table that the bus boy had just begun clearing. He handed them up to Smailes with a smile, and it was then the detective saw the figure sitting away in the corner, reading a paperback; a burly, red-haired man Smailes recognized instantly, although he could not place the face. He thought at first it might be the homesteader with the yak he had run into earlier in the week, but that guy had had curly hair, he was sure, whereas this man’s hair was thick, red and short. He shook his head in frustration as he joined Iain again at the car.

  “What’s up?” asked Iain, seeing his face.

  “Saw someone I recognize. Can’t place the face. Frustrating,” said Smailes. They drove back to Cormond.

  He felt there was only one task left before the drive south the next day, and that was to write his resignation. He would type it when he got to the office, but he wanted to get the wording right. George would know, anyway. He wanted others who would see it to wonder, if only to themselves.

  He sat at the small dressing table and poured a finger of Scotch into the small plastic beaker he had been using to rinse his teeth. As he reached across to the nightstand for his notepad, there was a tap on the door.

  “Yeah, Iain,” he said.

  “It’s no Iain,” said a woman’s voice, quietly. “It’s Sandie.”

  Smailes looked puzzled, and thought for a second. Did she think they would try and leave without paying? Or perhaps there was a phone message. Maybe Yvonne had tracked him down, or his mother.

  “Come in.”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said, as she stood in the opening of the doorway. She seemed anxious. She was wearing a dark woolen skirt, a yellow blouse, slippers. Her hair was drawn back from her broad face in a pony tail.

  Smailes stayed seated at the dressing table. “Oh, that’s okay, Sandie. I was going to be up for a while longer. What’s up?”

  “Are you away the morn, like you said? It’s just, I have to speak to the butcher about the week, you know, the meat order…”

  The detective smiled to himself, at his own suspiciousness.

  “Yes, that’s right. Back to work, you know. We thought we’d leave after breakfast, settle up then.” Then the implausibility of her pretext struck him. Talk to the butcher, at ten thirty on a Saturday night? Maybe she was checking up on him, after all.

  Sandie’s eyes had scanned the room and had come to rest on his bottle of whisky. “It’s good taste you have, in your whisky.”

  Smailes smiled. “Would you like a drop? There’s another glass here somewhere,” he said, getting up toward the sink, where a second beaker stood sheathed in plastic.

  “Well, I don’t mind a wee one,” she said to his back. He could hear the door close and the slight sigh of the springs as she sat on the edge of the bed. He cocked his head slightly and raised his eyebrows as he uncased the plastic cup, still facing away from her. Was this what he thought it was? With the kids upstairs?

  He poured her a couple of fingers of whisky and held it up. “Water?”

  “No, not with whisky this good.” She took the glass from him and took a long sip, swallowing slowly.

  He leaned back and wondered what to say. He looked from her face to her broad-fingered hands cradling the plastic cup, the nail tips white and pointed.

  They both began speaking at the same time. Smailes was trying to say somethi
ng like, “Well, I’ve enjoyed my stay,” but pulled up immediately. Sandie had said something about a woman.

  “Sorry, what?” he said.

  “Was it a woman?” she repeated. “Why you had to come away? It’s no the time of year for a hiking holiday, and that’s the truth.”

  “Yes, it was,” he told her, without strategy.

  “Well if she’s no mind to look after what she has, she doesna deserve it,” she said forcefully, as if she had given the matter some thought.

  “She’s dead,” said Smailes.

  Sandie Cook looked at him with wide eyes and then finished her whisky in one draft. “Oh, I’m awfully sorry. I have no business here bothering you.” She set the glass down on the nightstand and seemed about to rise.

  “It’s okay, she deserves to be,” said Smailes. He was surprised at how calm he felt speaking the words, and how sure he felt of what he should do next. Sandie looked a little alarmed. “It’s okay,” he told her again, and reached out to place his hand on hers. Then he sat down next to her on the bed, and looking into her large, bewildered eyes, kissed her softly on the mouth. Her eyes closed and she responded gently, running her hand inside his collar and resting it on his neck.

  “Oh Derek, I’m so sorry,” she whispered to him, and he kept repeating, “It’s okay,” as he began unbuttoning the yellow blouse and they kissed again.

  “What about the kids?” he asked as she rose and put out the light and he heard the rustle of the lining of her skirt as she slid it to the floor.