by Tony Cape
“I’m sorry, that’s not fair,” she said. She got up and walked to the bookcase. “Look, I’m going to have some Scotch, do you want some?”
“Sure,” said Smailes. “Don’t apologize. It’s okay. Look, I’ve given this case a lot of thought, and confidentially, I’m not ready to give it up yet. There are a number of, well, inconsistencies that bother me. What you have said throws a little more doubt on exactly how he met his death, I agree. But it’s not conclusive. Anyway, what motive could anyone have for wanting to kill Simon Bowles?”
She came and sat down again and handed him a small tumbler of whisky. “That’s the question I can’t answer, except I keep thinking that maybe he was involved with something or someone we knew nothing about, something really heavy. He was real secretive, you know. He’d make these trips to Oxford and London, and we really didn’t know why. He wouldn’t say anything about the research he was doing.”
“Did you know about the trip he made to London the day before his death?”
“Sure, I saw him on Sunday, he told me about it, he was going down the next day.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“No.”
“Did he mention it Tuesday night, when you saw him?”
“No. I knew better than to ask.” Lauren paused, and then asked urgently, “Are you levelling with me? Won’t the inquest find it a suicide?”
“Oh sure, but that doesn’t mean unofficially I can’t keep the file open. I found those glasses in his pocket myself, and didn’t get the incongruity.” He looked at her and smiled a little. “I guess it’s because I don’t wear them myself. I can’t think what it’s like to function without them if you’re dependent.”
Lauren looked through her spectacles at him and smiled weakly. “Right, right,” she said. “So seriously, you’re still asking questions?”
“Not actively. But I’m still asking questions in my mind.” He thought momentarily of telling her of Bowles’ research notes he had copied, of his suspicion that file had been removed, of the relationship with Fenwick, which she had almost guessed, and the unexplained payments to him, but dismissed these ideas quickly. It was already unprofessional enough for him to be sitting drinking Scotch in this woman’s bedroom, technically a material witness in an unusual death investigation, telling her information in confidence. He felt a little uneasy.
“Great boots,” she said unexpectedly.
Smailes held out one of the Tony Lama’s and cocked his ankle. “Yeah, I like them,” he said.
“You’re a pretty bizarre policeman,” she replied quietly.
He did not recognize the impulse that made him ready to confide in this person, but suddenly he found himself telling her the whole story of his involvement with the police force, about his father’s career and death, his marriage and divorce. She would prompt him from time to time, or murmur comments, but mostly it was monologue. He had not recounted these thoughts and feelings to anyone in years, and he felt strange as his story gathered momentum. He took his account right up to the present, and tried to explain the equivocation he felt about police work, but how it was difficult for him to imagine doing anything else. When he had concluded he felt embarrassed, and asked politely, “What about yourself? Tell me the real reason you’re in Cambridge.”
When he looked back on the evening, Smailes could not remember at what point his desire for her became unmanageable. It must have been at some point in her own monologue, as he watched her staring at the pillars of flame in the gas fire, tugging at her hair. He remembered looking awkwardly at the point where the sallowness of her throat met the white fabric of her blouse, and his mouth becoming dry. He was painfully aware that she did not wear a brassiere, how her breasts rocked when she shook her head and its dark curls in emphasis of some memory that exasperated her.
His concentration on her story faltered, but he heard her describe her conventional middle class Jewish upbringing in a suburb of New York, how she had felt compelled to study and achieve for her parents, Howard and Mimi, to reward their expectations as the only child of their old age. She said she understood his painful feelings about his father, that she had had a classical Freudian fixation herself, before her father had died in her early teens. He had enjoyed brief success as a screenwriter, but then had settled down to teach English in a high school on Long Island, until his sudden death from a stroke. Her mother was a Sephardic Jew, a first generation immigrant from Turkey, from whom Lauren drew her exotic looks. Her parents had spoiled her and she had not been a particularly rebellious teenager.
Some survival instinct told him his lack of professionalism had already gone far enough. He should not have come to her digs in the first place. He felt regret that he had confided in her. He shifted in his chair and tilted the whisky tumbler, as if to confirm it was empty, a prelude to leaving.
She turned and rested her dark eyes on him, and then caught herself, embarassed. “I’m sorry. I’ve been going on and on. It must be late.”
“Yes, I must be going.”
There was a hiatus in which he felt a mounting constriction in his throat and a pain in his stomach. Wordlessly, he got up and walked to the door, and reached for his raincoat hanging on the hook.
Afterwards, they agreed that he might have actually left if his larynx hadn’t given way. Standing with his back to the door and the handle in a backhand grip he tried to say, as Lauren walked towards him, “Call me if anything comes up.”
What he actually said sounded more like, “Cock-a-doodle-do.”
She threw back her head and laughed, a free and melodious laugh. He had not time to feel mortified because as he released his grip on the handle Lauren took a step towards him and then the blade of her nose was against his cheek and her lips against his, softly at first, then more urgently. Her arms rose around his neck and he felt the soft, untethered weight beneath her waistcoat with his hands, his excitement surging. She broke away and held him close.
“Oh, I’ve been wanting to do that,” she said to his shoulder. She stood back and helped him with the reverse process of removing his raincoat, then his jacket. She ran her hands over his shoulders and kissed him again.
“You don’t wear a gun,” she said. “All the cops in the States wear guns.”
“Of course I don’t wear a gun,” he said softly.
She left him standing there and went to turn off the standing lamp, then the lamp on the desk, then sat on the bed and turned off the lamp on the nightstand. He heard the light popping of buttons.
As he sat beside her and began to tug at his boots he did ask himself briefly what the hell he thought he was doing, but it was a token protest. Her long nakedness waited for him as he climbed in beside her, and he felt exultant.
He was gratified that the preliminary moves were familiar and delightful until suddenly a surprisingly strong arm pushed him over onto his back and he became a baffled spectator. She knew what to do and Smailes found himself in entirely new territory, with all kinds of room for his hands. He had not made love in this way before and wondered with alarm as he approached his climax if gravity was going to be a problem. It wasn’t.
Lauren kept moving against him and in the glow from the streetlight he saw her face, distracted and intent. Then she gave a low moan, and her body shuddered, then relaxed against him. There was a long silence.
She had moved away and lay curled against him in a fetal position when her voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Sorry. To be so pushy. It’s more of a sure bet for me that way.”
He found her modesty lovely, after such assurance. He found her hand. “No problem. No problem at all. Are you okay, I mean, I didn’t ask…”
“Sure. I’m a modern girl. I have an IUD. You know, I don’t know what to call you.”
“What?”
“Your name. You’re just Detective Smailes. I can’t call you that. What’s your name?”
“Derek.”
He felt her shoulders rock with suppressed laughter. “What’s wrong
with that?” he asked.
“Nothing. Nothing. I’ve never known anybody with that name, that’s all. It’s sort of an old man’s name.” She cupped her hand over her nose. Derek Smailes had never liked the name either, but he didn’t tell her that.
“Call me anything you like, Lauren.”
“Okay, Plod. You can be Mr. Plod.” Now it was his turn to laugh at the preposterous caricature of the British bobby. She laughed too, and then it was still again.
Smailes lay in the dark, his thoughts streaming. He had never had such a strange, illicit encounter, or felt such an overwhelming excitement. He had broken no laws, only an unwritten code. There was no crime here, only suspicions. A brilliant and lonely young man was dead, by his own hand, and his friends felt cheated. They contrived motives, criminals and plots, to blame someone for their own failure to prevent the waste. A file may have been removed, it may not have, he could not be sure. Officials at the college had behaved strangely, impelled personal agendas he could only guess at. He felt irked by the loose ends, but then, he always did. It went with the turf.
His thoughts turned to the girl who lay beside him, her breath soft against his shoulder. My God, a sexually assertive female. Smailes had thought they were inventions of the letters pages of girlie magazines, or inhabited a different realm than his own. Yvonne had never done more than gently return his thrusts, her face averted and absent. Bernadette had been more adventurous, but inexperienced, and his other encounters had been too brief to be anything more than fleeting contests. But he had known that sex was not just a male obsession. What would she say if she knew it was the first time he had made love this way? He knew, instinctively, she would laugh.
But what on earth did she see in him, an ungainly provincial cop with white flesh and strange vowels? He turned to her and she murmured something. He felt a surge of tenderness towards her, her Jewish strangeness, her strength. They made love again, and this time Smailes led the way.
He awoke in a strange room with no idea where he was. Bruce Springsteen looked down on him from the poster on the wall, and he remembered. He felt a moment of triumph. You just bonked your first Yank, he told himself. What time was it? It was no matter, he was on late mornings this week.
Lauren was not around. He saw their discarded clothes on the chair. He heard the distant sound of water running in a bathroom. He needed to relieve himself.
He got up and walked to her sink and used her tooth-brush and towel. Then he wrapped the towel around himself and went back and sat on the bed. The door opened and Lauren came in wearing a cotton kimono. Her hair was wet. He suddenly felt embarrassed, an intruder, but her smile reassured him. She looked vulnerable without her glasses.
She came and rested her hands on his shoulders and asked if he had slept well. He asked her if she would get into trouble with her landlady, and she told him no, but they should wait until after nine for him to leave, the time she went to the shops. He asked her what they should do and she laughed and he pulled her down on the bed and they made love again.
When Smailes stepped out of his car outside his flat he had a giddy, unreal feeling and had to steady himself with his hand on the roof of the Austin. He could not suppress a huge grin.
“Shall I see you again?” he had asked.
“I hadn’t thought that we wouldn’t, Derek,” she said. “I’ll call you. We have to find out why Simon died.”
That was when Smailes realized that he had forgotten all about him.
Lauren Greenwald listened to the voice of the lecturer droning on and on about elementary organic chemistry that she already knew, and cupped her hand over her nose to hide a smile. She sat with her feet up on the bench in front, and in her folder she doodled the distinct shape of a British policeman’s helmet. It really did look like the head of an erect penis, she had to agree.
She felt sore in a way she hadn’t for years, but it was not an unpleasant sensation. She was very pleased with herself, and wondered what her mother would think if she could see her now. A British policeman! Talk about cutting your teeth.
Chapter Fifteen
DONALD WEST HAD BEEN on the job with the Immigration Service at Prestwick Airport for barely three months when on the Tuesday after Easter the unlikely happened—two of his passengers turned up on the White List. He had undergone his training in London, naturally, and what he was told was that for every hundred names he found on the Black List, he might find one on the White List. But here he was, barely out of his probationary period, and the two Danes were definitely there, names and passport numbers listed on the White List.
The instructor for that particular training seminar had put it like this: the Black List was for people who were just that—blacklisted. They were to be denied entry into Britain and held in Immigration and told the reasons why, how they could appeal if they wanted to. Nine times out of ten they were undocumented aliens making a phony immediate relative claim. Mostly Pakistani and Indian passports, trying for a second or third time. Then there were others, expelled for various crimes, barred from returning to Britain for life. Whatever the reason, that was not your concern. You found their name, nationality and passport number (if known) on the printout, and you asked them to take a seat and you called the duty supervisor to explain it to them. You didn’t trouble yourself with the arrangements after that.
The White List was something different. It was a much shorter printout than the Black List, of course. It was for people who were to be allowed into Britain without query, but who were to be followed after leaving the airport. These were not simply wanted criminals, it was explained. They were suspects in various crimes (often terrorist-related) or couriers for different conspiracies (usually narcotics), who might lead the authorities to bigger fish they were involved with. Again, it wasn’t your decision. You were to let them through to the baggage area, then close your window and go immediately to the Special Branch station and report that you had let through a whitelisted person and point that person out as discreetly as possible. More often than not, if you moved quickly enough, the person was still waiting for his bags at the carousel, or if he just had carry-on, was in the queue for the customs. That was all that had been explained to them, although after the session one of the other recruits told him that he’d been told the White List was put together mostly by M15 and a lot of the names were suspected legends, cover identities for agents of foreign powers. Donald West didn’t pay too much attention to that. He just wanted to be sure that he had the procedure right.
The problem was that at the smaller airports like Prestwick there was no Special Branch station, there was just an office for the regular police, which they shared with the airport security people. In that case your instructions were to explain the details to the officer in charge. There would usually be someone in plainclothes attached to the unit who could take it from there.
He thought he did a pretty good job of disguising any reaction when he handed the two Danes back their passports. Their names were there all right, among the dozen or so listed under Denmark. One was tall and dark, in his thirties and balding at the temples. The other man was older, a squat, overweight figure with short fair hair and a red complexion. They were both listed as “businessman” in their passports, and spoke the good, unaccented English that all the Scandinavians seemed to speak. When he asked them how long they were planning to spend in Britain, the tall one had said one week and gave as their address the name of one of the big hotels in Glasgow. He thought he had handled himself well as he smiled and wished them a profitable stay. He turned immediately to the next passenger and saw them leave the Immigration Hall out of the corner of his eye. Then he quickly pushed his Closed sign in front of his window and let himself out of the back of the booth. The other passengers in his line shrugged in annoyance and went to join other lines. He thought of running over to the supervisor’s office first, but decided to stick to the procedure he had been taught.
He didn’t know the police sergeant who was sitting
at the desk, and he tried to contain his excitement as he told him about the two businessmen on the noon flight from Copenhagen who were on his White List.
“And what’s that then?” asked the sergeant, suspiciously.
West was appalled that the sergeant did not know, but tried to explain patiently about the two lists and what he had been instructed to do about listed people. The sergeant rubbed his chin and thought for a moment.
“We’ve only got McCann in plainclothes and he’s in the freight hangar this week. They should be followed, you say…”
“That’s what I understood. I’m just supposed to report it to you, and you’re supposed to know what to do,” West said testily.
“It’s a new one on me,” said the sergeant flatly. West began to feel agitated. The pair would be through customs and off if they did not do something quickly. West did not doubt that their “business” was drug smuggling.
“I can hardly go out there, can I, in uniform, and have them pointed out? Here, you’d better let me have their names and a description and where they said they’re staying, and I’ll tell McCann about it when he comes in. He usually does, around two. Or I could call through to Special Branch in Glasgow…”
Donald West said, “Forget it,” and ran to the door. He should have trusted his judgment and gone to the duty supervisor first, someone who would at least have known what the White List was. They needed to act right away if the pair were not going to disappear entirely. Maybe he should follow them himself, he thought in panic.
He ran down the stairs, down the corridor and into the customs area. He could not see them. He ran out onto the concourse of the airport, which was crowded with people checking onto flights to New York and Toronto. He pushed through the first ranks of passengers to where he could see out onto the pavement, where the two Danes were already getting into a taxi. By the time he reached the doors they were gone, he couldn’t even make out the name of the taxi firm, let alone the number plate.
