by Tony Cape
Acting Detective Constable Swedenbank had not done a bad job with the statements, considering it was a first effort, but Smailes always wondered why police statements had to be written in a foreign language. Policespeak had always irritated him, because no one actually talked like that, except perhaps his father. He often wondered if his father had lived whether he would have derived any satisfaction from his modest success with Cambridge CID. He doubted it. That would have been completely out of character.
Swedenbank came noisily into the office and thrust a lunch box into his filing cabinet. He was a clumsy man with untidy manners and an over-eagerness that he tried to contain around Smailes. He was also one of the hairiest people Smailes had ever met, barely hacking a clearing for his features from the bush that enveloped him. There were dark patches of hair under his eyes that his razor did not reach. Though three years his junior, he looked older than Smailes, with the haggardness of married men in debt. His new tweed sports jacket made him look conspicuously out of uniform. He saw the statements on Smailes’ desk.
“Are they okay, Sergeant?” he asked casually
“They’re fine, Ted. I don’t think you left anything out. Not that they’re ever likely to see the light of day in court.”
“Yes, I guessed that,” said Swedenbank, trying to sound rueful. “Pretty upper crust pair, really. No TICs, no juvenile record. Probably just a lark, really.”
When they had been called to the headmaster’s study at The Crowe School the previous week to interview the two terrified suspects, Smailes had immediately recognized the older boy as the son of one of the big-time desk jockeys at County Hall. The two boys, day students at Cambridge’s minor public school, had been caught by a vigilant conductor using forged bus passes on the trip to school. It had been a minor but potentially damaging fraud, but Smailes was satisfied only the two dud cards had been made. The pair were hardly hardened criminals, and had confessed the whole scheme with little prodding. Smailes had let Swedenbank take them into the secretary’s office for statements while the headmaster, an old-timer with academic gown and half-moon glasses, had asked Smailes whom he could call at the Cambridge police station to keep the matter out of the courts. The boys were from good families and had bright academic futures. They were probably unaware of the criminal nature of their actions. Like hell, thought Smailes, but gave him George Dearnley’s name anyway.
If Swedenbank had any sense, he would recognize the surname of the older boy and realize the matter would probably be dropped. But he couldn’t also know that the County Hall official, whose son had been caught red-handed in a petty crime, was also one of the Chief Super’s regular tennis partners, which would settle the matter beyond doubt. Smailes had known George Dearnley all his life, and had played tennis with him regularly as a teenager. The Chief Super had been one of the top amateurs in the county.
Smailes did not tell the headmaster of The Crowe School that he could save his breath. There ought to be some consequences, no matter how minor.
What bothered him as he rocked his chair back onto all fours and gathered the statements was the feeling that the score might have been different had the offenders been ordinary lads from the Comprehensive, as he had been. A kid from a council estate in Cottenham or Histon would no doubt have found himself hauled before the juvenile magistrate, fined, probation, criminal record, the lot. He felt irritated by these thoughts, and turned sharply to Swedenbank, who had the knack of making him feel off balance.
“Yeah, just a stupid lark, I guess,” he agreed. “They were scared shitless enough they’ll stay clean. Take these up to Gloria, will you Ted?”
Smailes handed Swedenbank the statements for Dearnley’s secretary and saw him stiffen at the insignificance of the task, and probably also at the mid-Atlantic swagger in his voice. He tried to keep the American patter out of his dealings with his fellow officers, because he knew it sounded affected, which it wasn’t. It was just the way he talked.
Smailes got up as the ADC left the room and walked to the window. It was mid-morning and he hadn’t had a cigarette yet, which pleased him. He could see across Parker’s Piece to the green copper towers and featureless modern facade of The Cambridge Arms Hotel. A few loners were out with dogs and a long-haired pedestrian made slow progress towards the hotel, the collar of his donkey jacket turned up against the late March wind. It was Wednesday of the week before Easter, always a bleak time of the year. Over by the central lamppost a Labrador lowered its snout in a charge at a group of seagulls. They wheeled into the air, shrieking. Below him a bread van honked its horn at a bicyclist who was approaching the roundabout too wide.
The sky hung low like a dirty washcloth. He heard a trace of melody in his mind and smiled. Willie Nelson’s version of “Blue Skies.” He loved that man’s music. He could almost smell the mescal and sagebrush in his songs, which spoke to him of oil derricks and old trucks, an idyll of masculinity where the cowboys wore their heartbreak as proudly as their Stetsons. His proudest possessions were his collection of Western shirts, and in particular his hand-tooled lizard-skin cowboy boots that had cost him almost a week’s pay at a fancy London boutique. Sometimes he fantasized showing up for morning briefing in a pigtail and bandana, seeing the Chief Super’s face. He smiled sadly at the ordinariness of the morning.
Derek Smailes was a big man with big hands and feet and sandy hair that he combed forward in short waves. This was probably a mistake, as he looked baby-faced already, but he’d never worked out what else to do with it. He had always looked younger than he was, but he didn’t mind that, now that he was almost thirty. Thirty, divorced and broke, he reminded himself. He had too much weight on his big frame, which didn’t bother him much, although his mother nagged him about the beer and cigarettes. His father had been dead of a heart attack on this side of sixty, she reminded him. He wore the nondescript civilian clothes of policemen everywhere, and expensive shoes. He always bought expensive shoes. They lasted longer.
He felt annoyed by Swedenbank’s simple enthusiasm, a quality he had never mastered. It would probably make Swedenbank a better detective than he would ever be, because Derek Smailes acknowledged that for all his ability, he never quite had the gas for the extra mile. Although he was the son of a policeman, he remained an outsider who had never quite learned the policeman’s lore, and he was sure his senior officers knew it, including his Uncle George.
The phone rang. It was Paula in the Operations Room, and her voice still wore the injured edge it had had since he had stopped seeing her around Christmas time.
“Smailes.”
“Derek, we’ve got a sudden death at St. Margaret’s College in Trinity Street. Apparent suicide. Whisky Michael Three has responded.”
“On my way,” said Smailes as Swedenbank came back into the room, still wearing his subordinate’s scowl.
“Let’s go, Ted,” said Smailes, reaching for his raincoat from the back of the door. “Topper at St. Meg’s. Get the PRs from the desk. I’ll bring the car round front.”
“Own goal, is it?” said Swedenbank, brightening. Smailes snorted at the notion that a student terrorist might have blown himself up with a bomb.
Outside the gothic portal of St. Margaret’s College, one of Cambridge University’s oldest, a small crowd had gathered to gawk at the police car and ambulance parked on the apron of cobblestones. The panda car had left its light flashing, an unnecessary ostentation that irritated Smailes. He drew his car alongside as Swedenbank handed him his personal radio. Both men clipped them to their lapels and drew their coats against the cold as they stepped through the massive gate of the college.
He felt the instinctive resentment of a townsperson as he walked into the large courtyard, a sudden island of calm privilege just yards from one of Cambridge’s busiest streets. A distinguished-looking man in a black suit, white shirt and grey tie approached them from the porters’ lodge on their right.
“Gentlemen, are you with the police?” he asked, in a softened East Angl
ian accent.
“Detective Sergeant Smailes and Detective Constable Swedenbank,” said Smailes, figuring that Ted would be gratified he left “Acting” out of the introduction.
“I’m Paul Beecroft, the head porter,” he said gravely. “Please follow me.”
Beecroft was obviously advanced in years, but he set off around the court at a stiff pace. Smailes jogged two steps to bring himself alongside.
“Can you tell us what happened?”
“Young fellow, research student. Name of Simon Bowles. Strung himself up, seems like. The bedder found him this morning. Called you right away, when I got the okay.”
Smailes knew what he meant. Cambridge police were never summoned to a University college without the approval of the senior dons, and they needed a warrant to enter of their own accord. They could probably clean up half the drugs in town if they could ever get approval for a raid, which, of course, they never could. That was another thing about the University that Smailes resented.
Swedenbank had drawn up against Beecroft’s other shoulder. He was keeping quiet and the scowl was gone. Smailes realized that if he had to nurse an ADC around, he could do a lot worse than Ted.
Beecroft led them past the ornate fountain in the middle of the court and through a passageway into a second, smaller court. Smailes guessed it was probably eighteenth century, the first court obviously older. Here were simple, three-story buildings, mullioned windows, plenty of ivy. They made their way around the lawn to a staircase where he recognized Bert Ainsworth of the uniform branch through a crowd of students. He was stationed directly in front of the stairs.
“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” said Beecroft, with exaggerated courtesy. “Please go on with your business. The police have work to do.”
The students backed away slightly, but showed no signs of leaving. There were maybe a dozen, men and women.
“Who is it, Mr. Beecroft? Is it Simon? What’s happened?” asked a young man in a bus driver’s overcoat.
Beecroft ignored the inquiry and marched up the stairs to the first landing. Smailes was directly behind him.
“Tell Bert to let no one up. No one,” he said over his shoulder, and Swedenbank retreated back down the stairs.
On the landing he could see two men in the familiar black uniform of the ambulance service. Over their shoulders he could see another uniformed policeman whose face he knew, but whose name escaped him.
The passageway, lit by a single naked bulb, was crowded. Beecroft indicated a door at one end.
“He’s in there.”
“Smailes, CID,” he said, advancing past the ambulancemen to the constable. He could feel his pulse quicken, and he was short of breath from matching Beecroft’s pace from the lodge and up the stairs. “What we got?”
“He’s been dead for a while, sir. Hung himself. I’m Dickley, sir. Just transferred from Huntingdon,” said the constable. He seemed embarassed and at a loss.
“Have you called the coroner’s officer?” asked Smailes. The ambulancemen were obviously impatient to leave, but someone had to pronounce the subject dead first. No ambulanceman would touch an obviously dead body. His unit would have to be decontaminated and he would probably lose overtime while it was out of service.
“No sir. We just checked him and closed up. Just been here five minutes.”
Dickley was apparently hesitant on his first week with division. It would have been fine for him to get the coroner’s wagon over if the man was obviously dead.
“Who found him?” asked Smailes. He knew he was putting off having to go into the room. Beecroft stepped forward. “The bedder, Mrs. Allen, sir. She’s in the kitchen.” He indicated with a nod a second room down the passageway as a short, bespectacled figure emerged from it.
“Officer? How do you do?” The man edged sideways past the ambulancemen and held out his right hand. Smailes saw that his left arm hung uselessly at his side, its fingers buckled into a claw.
“I’m Nigel Hawken, senior tutor of this college. I’ve been trying to comfort Mrs. Allen. She’s quite shaken up, I’m afraid.”
Hawken was a man in his middle or late sixties with steel gray hair, a stubby gray mustache and gold-rimmed spectacles. He was wearing blue pinstripes and a red tie with dogs on it.
Smailes shook his hand. “Detective Sergeant Derek Smailes, CID,” he said again.
Hawken looked agitated. He had a florid complexion and an erect, military bearing. Smailes decided he probably smoked a pipe.
“When was he found?”
“About half an hour ago. We called right away,” said Hawken. His voice sounded like ripe fruit.
Smailes took the handle of the door and went in, with Hawken on his shoulder.
The room was a small, dark study-bedroom, lined on two sides with books. Immediately inside the door to his left was a desk with a modern typewriter sitting in a pool of light from a desk lamp. Beyond was a single bed, made, although it looked as if someone, or some people, had been sitting on it. It had a plain blue counterpane and was overhung with the first of many shelves of books. Against the opposite wall were two armchairs flanking an electric fire set into an old fireplace. To the right was a black four drawer filing cabinet and a standing bookcase of the same height. In the center of the room was a stained rug, possibly Oriental.
One reason the room was so dark was that the leaded windows were small and shrouded by a number of hanging plants. Another reason was that they were partly obscured by the body of a young man that hung from a belt from one of the heavy plant hooks screwed into the oak window frame. A small wooden chair was tipped over underneath the body and another potted plant in its hanging basket was sitting on the floor beside it. It looked like an aspidistra.
There was a poster, an enlarged photograph of some white-haired man, pinned to the wall to the left of the windows, near what Smailes assumed was a clothes closet. The scene made him feel terrible.
He advanced to the limp figure of the young man, whose feet swung grotesquely in the air, the head twisted in an unnatural angle against the neck. Despite his bravado, Smailes didn’t like stiffs. He didn’t like them at all.
Swedenbank came up beside him, breathing heavily. Smailes felt the young man’s hand. It was cold. He turned to Hawken, distracted momentarily by the ADC’s face, which was turned up towards the dead boy as if in supplication.
“Anything been moved?”
“No. Everything is as Mrs. Allen found it.”
“Who has been in the room?”
“Well, Mrs. Allen, myself, the ambulancemen and the policemen. No one has touched anything, I think. We were waiting for you,” said Hawken.
Smailes could tell from the edge in his voice that Hawken didn’t like answering questions. He was the type who liked to ask them. He noted the tone of accusation that they had arrived late, and ignored it. Smailes hated having civilians watch his work.
“Will you excuse us for a few minutes, Mr…?” Smailes fished for his name.
“Dr. Hawken. Dr. Nigel Hawken. Certainly,” he said icily, and left the room.
“Poor bugger,” said Swedenbank, as Hawken closed the door. He had not stopped looking at the grimace on the dead boy’s face. Smailes realized it was his first hanging.
“Yeah, well at least he didn’t make a mess of it,” said Smailes. “See what you can find. Maybe a note.”
Swedenbank retreated towards the door as Smailes knelt under the body. The chair had tipped away after the boy had kicked it. Looked as if he had set the plant down first. Careful type.
He looked up at the body, growing more used to its presence. Longish fair hair over the collar of a rugby shirt. Acne scars. Skinny build, corduroy jeans, tennis shoes. The watch on the boy’s wrist was still running. It showed a quarter to eleven.
He reached inside the jeans back pocket and removed a wallet, something that Dickley should have done. In the left front pocket he found some change and a pair of spectacles in a case. The wallet contained seven pound
s, a credit card, various library cards and some folded papers.
“Sarge, look at this.” Swedenbank was standing over the desk with his back to him.
What he was indicating was a typed sheet in the platen of the typewriter. Smailes took out a handkerchief and rolled it upwards. It was fairly brief.
“They came back. I couldn’t take it. Simon.” It was the first typed note Smailes had seen.
He opened the desk drawer with the handkerchief. Pens, pencils, a roll of tape. A key ring and a checkbook. Further in, a partly used ream of typing paper.
He removed the keys and went over to the fireplace. Six shelves of books in the standing case. The file cabinet was locked. The small key from the young man’s ring fitted and in the first drawer Smailes found neatly arranged hanging files. The first read Abominable Snowman.
Swedenbank was examining the bookcase above the bed. Smailes left the file cabinet unlocked and walked over to inspect the poster of the white-haired gent, who looked familiar to him. It was Bertrand Russell, or one of the Alberts, Schweitzer or Einstein, Smailes wasn’t sure which.
“Seen enough, Sarge?” asked Ted. Smailes had to hand it to him. He wasn’t doing badly for a first suicide.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“How long has he been dead?”
“Maybe eight, ten hours. Joints in the fingers already stiff. Light still on the desk, bed not slept in. Funny thing about rigor mortis. It’ll go away again in a few hours.”
“What do you make of the note?”
“Dunno. Little bit fishy. First typed note I’ve seen. I’d like to know who ‘they’ are.”
“Prints, pictures?”
“Well, the scenes of crimes boys have to come in for the snaps, but forget the prints. It’s pretty routine. Get the coroner’s officer on the radio and tell them to get their wagon down here. The ambulance boys can scarper—Bert and I can help with the stocking stuffing.
“Tell the SOCO boys we need pictures, then get the full ID, next of kin from your man Beecroft. Hop a ride back with Dickley and help him with the SD report. He didn’t have the sense to empty the pockets or secure the note. Take these things, will you Ted?”
