by Tony Cape
Here G-L rose unsteadily to his feet. He seemed exhausted.
“Well, my friends, I have ensured that our hardships will not be too great. Our scientists now know the same physics that CRI does, or the Germans in California, for that matter. And there have been virtually no development costs.”
Smailes could not understand why they hadn’t taken the scientist away, why they were continuing to listen to his monologue. Standiforth seemed rooted to the spot, as if in a trance. He did not look over at the two policemen.
“Murder? I don’t think so, gentlemen,” continued Gorham-Leach. “Oh, I don’t deny that it might have come to that, because he was a very bright chap. That’s why I decided to supervise him when I learned from Ivor what his next research project was going to be. I don’t believe he ever suspected me until the very end. I was particularly alarmed when I knew he was going down to London after visiting Oxford again. It was, I thought, probably a matter of time before he found something in the Alpine Society’s minutes or something about Gorham-Leach’s untimely demise. But I had a little trump card to play, you see, and it worked quite well. I knew of his, er, friendship with the new porter, and I also kept my ears open to see whether Nigel Hawken would be able to resist this latest piece of rough trade. He couldn’t, of course, having made the decision to hire him himself. Roger, you will never learn about the extent of homosexuality in the service, will you?
“So after I knew he’d gone down to London, well, I placed a discreet note in Mr. Bowles’ pigeon-hole, explaining that his new friend was not, shall we say, the monogamous type. The next night, it led to a furious row between them. Fenwick tried to deny it, but then he demanded to know how Bowles had found out—you see, I know all this because he told me when he came over to my rooms after he found the body. You see, Bowles threatened to kill himself unless Fenwick promised to stop doing ‘favors’ for Hawken, and Fenwick got angry and refused. He left and was on his way home, he went as far as the market place before he got worried, changed his mind, and came back. Well, it seems our distraught little detective had not been bluffing after all. Fenwick found him dead, and panicked. He knew I was duty tutor and came to my rooms and woke me. We went back over to Bowles’ room together. Around two. Well, I saw the scene and I saw that misleading suicide note and I saw his file sitting beside the typewriter. And so I made a little bargain with our unscrupulous Mr. Fenwick. I told him I would keep quiet about his involvement if he would keep quiet about mine, and he accepted eagerly. Then I told him to leave me alone.
“The file really was quite complete, wasn’t it? He even went back over my whole career, to try and put together a damage assessment. If anything, I’d say it was a little conservative. Not even our talented young sleuth could know everything I’ve been involved with, could he, Roger?
“And then, if I had only thought to lift out that ribbon. But you see, I was flustered, I confess. Should have checked the file cabinet then and there, removed the Bletchley file before anyone even knew it was there, shouldn’t I, Mr. Smailes? Well well well. Perhaps you are right, Roger. I’ve grown too old to spy.” Here he paused, and looked at each of the three men in turn.
“So, I suppose I should get ready. I suppose I’ll have to undergo the tedium of debriefing. I don’t think I’ll ever see prison, though, do you, Roger? You see, Detective Sergeant Smailes, you are a little new to this business, but the most important thing now is to avoid a scandal. Particularly, to prevent the Americans finding out. That would be a disaster, wouldn’t it, Roger? After all the assurances you’ve made that the files are clean, that the service is purged? I think we did rather a good job of making you think Conrad worked in Whitehall, don’t you? Our own defectors even believed it. We had controlled even our own gossip, you see.
“No, Mr. Smailes. There will be some exhaustive questioning, no doubt. Damage reports will have to be written. But there will no trials in camera, no garish publicity. A discreet exchange of important citizens perhaps, on the condition that no press conferences are held, a mutual condition. My colleagues will be given some plausible explanation for my sudden retirement, no doubt. Well, shall we?”
Gorham-Leach gestured to the door and the three men crowded into the dark hallway. Gorham-Leach gripped Smailes by the elbow to steady himself as he put on his heavy outdoor shoes. It was an oddly intimate gesture. The detective helped him as he struggled into a heavy raincoat.
“I don’t think I shall enjoy the Moscow winters. They really are terribly harsh,” he said. Then he turned to Dearnley.
“Is it all right if I use the bathroom, Superintendent, before we leave? I suddenly feel a little unwell.”
Dearnley turned mutely to Standiforth who gave a silent nod. Smailes was shocked. He had seen smaller fish than Gorham-Leach swim out of bathroom windows. Neither did he trust the tone Gorham-Leach had been using. He instinctively followed him down the hall and stood outside the bathroom door as he heard the latch fastened from the inside. He waited impatiently, then heard a cry and the sound of a body falling. Smailes took a pace back and kicked open the door, but he was too late. Gorham-Leach was on his knees, his face contorted in a rictus of terror. The sodium cyanide had already stopped the muscles of his heart. A small cabinet door over the sink stood open.
“Jesus, George, down here,” he shouted, grabbing the dead man by the shoulders. As Dearnley crouched beside him he looked past him down the hallway. Standiforth had opened the door and was looking out across Jesus Green, where the rain still fell in sheets.
The interrogation of Fenwick was infuriating. He clung for a long time to his original story, and maintained that he had not seen Bowles alive that night, had not argued with him, and had not spoken with Gorham-Leach. An enraged Dearnley let him know that his relationship with Hawken was discovered, that the police would make sure the college council at St. Margaret’s was informed of his behavior after all. At first he had bluffed and denied the allegation, but finally acknowledged it. Standiforth had been in the room for the interrogation and made a disgusted gesture with his hands at Fenwick’s confession. Eventually Fenwick told Dearnley that he had only concealed one thing from them, and tried to bargain with them. He would tell them if they brought no criminal charges against him. At this Dearnley almost went for the man’s throat, and warned him they would make no deals, but that if he wanted to avoid being charged with everything they could think of, he had better tell the truth. Finally Fenwick confessed that after the discovery of Bowles’ body he had called Hawken at home in panic from the porters’ lodge. They could check the phone records and find he was telling the truth. Hawken had told him he would take care of the details and told him to take time off work if he needed it. He had asked whether he thought anyone in the lodge had known of their association, and Fenwick had lied and said no. All other attempts to get Fenwick to change his story failed. He was adamant he had not spoken with Gorham-Leach, nor anyone that night except Hawken. He had not argued with Bowles, who had not known of his liaison with Hawken. Dearnley ordered him remanded in custody anyway.
Smailes glowered at the notes on his pad and fought the suspicion that hovered at the edge of his consciousness. He didn’t know why he should believe Fenwick, but he did. He felt Gorham-Leach had been trying to protect someone with his swan song. Then there had been his forgetting Smailes’ name and rank, an odd slip.
He pulled out a Cambridge University directory and found the name of the chairman of the engineering department, and called him at home. Then with some difficulty he found the weekend number for the FBI office at the American Embassy in London. He had to do some cajoling, but eventually the agent agreed to make some further calls for him. It was a weekend and might take some time, he warned him. Then Smailes thought for a long time. He pulled out the Bowles’ file and found Klammer’s fingerprint report, and then thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. It was late afternoon before Smailes’ phone rang again, and he had to fight the knots in his stomach as he furiously scribbled not
es. Then he called up to Dearnley.
“Standiforth still here?” asked Smailes.
“Yeah, we booked him into the Cambridge Arms. Be here at least a few days, he said. Derek, on the suspension, I’m drafting a memo to Hinchingbrooke, okay, dropping…”
“Get him over here,” said Smailes. “I’m on my way up.”
It was dark when he pulled up outside Lauren Greenwald’s digs. He parked the Allegro at the gate and looked in the rear view as Standiforth’s Jaguar pulled in a few houses down. “I’m going in,” he said, before getting out of his car. He reached under the window box where Mrs. Bilton hid the spare key and let himself in quietly. He could hear Mrs. B. vacuuming in the back. Lauren’s light had been on; he prayed he was not too late.
He moved silently up the stairs and across the landing to Lauren’s door. She was wearing her blue Mets baseball jacket and was throwing clothes hurriedly into an open suitcase on the bed, her back to him. He stepped in and said quietly, “Where are you going, Lauren? A quick dash to Heathrow, or is there a Polish freighter moored at Grimsby, maybe?”
She wheeled around and frowned at him. “Derek, you scared me. My Uncle Morrie has had a heart attack. My mother called this afternoon. I’ve got to go back for a while. I’ve been trying to call you. You weren’t home.”
She stepped towards him and reached to put her arms around his neck. He pushed her away angrily.
“Forget it, Lauren. You see, I made some calls after we went to arrest Gorham-Leach this morning. You knew that’s where I was going, didn’t you? Because you’d realized about the ribbon. Boy, that was a bad mistake. A really bad mistake. Then the KGB botched the burglary at Simon’s sister’s, so you had them wait for me here. Hadn’t you told them I didn’t pack a piece, Lauren? I guess I’d really fallen for it, hadn’t I? Just like Simon. Just like Giles. Why did you have to kill him, Lauren? Did he find you talking to one of the gorillas? Or did he finally demand to know the real reason why you’d had him lift the Bletchley file from Bowles’ cabinet, the afternoon I was interviewing the sister? Or did he find something lying around written in Russian? That was probably it. You forgot he spoke Russian, didn’t you?”
“Derek, what on earth are you talking about?”
“First, I spoke with the chairman of the engineering department. He remembered you. You see, you already have a PhD, don’t you? That’s why he thought it was odd you wanted to do undergraduate course work. But well, any recommendation of G-L’s was good enough for him. There was no Fulbright scholarship, was there? Because you’re twenty-eight years old and have already been working for two years for National Aeronautics, the defense contractor on Long Island. And their security procedures must really suck, if they hired you.”
“Oh, why’s that?”
“Because your parents were both members of the American Communist Party, that’s why. Not that you showed any interest yourself through school and University. But your father’s suicide must’ve really had a powerful effect, right? He took the Fifth at the McCarthy hearings and could never work in television or film again, could he? Must’ve broken his heart, teaching those sullen kids in the suburbs. That’s why he killed himself, right? It was a bullet, not a stroke, that killed him, wasn’t it? You might have an NRA in your FBI file, a Nothing Recorded Against, but your parents sure don’t. Quite a little saga, in fact. You told me how devoted you were to him, remember? Must’ve made you feel like revenge, deep down, even though you’d shown no interest in his politics.
“So it was quite a smart move when Ivan approached you on the kibbutz, right? Must’ve been one of the Arab field offices, yeah? No Soviet diplomatic missions in Israel, after all. They’d done their homework. Leaving out the ideology, it must’ve seemed like a chance to strike back at the system that killed Howard Greenwald. But I figure once you signed on, you really got into it. That second trip you took to the Middle East, the one after you were recruited, I bet it wasn’t to Israel at all, was it? Did you learn the unarmed combat stuff at one of the Syrian camps in the Bekaa Valley, Lauren? Is that where you met Ari, the Jordanian, or should I say, Palestinian? Is that when your commitment was really firmed up? Because you obviously decided you were going to be good, and you’re fucking well determined, I’ll say that. I must say, Agent Venditti had some even more interesting stuff on Momma Greenwald. Mimi Greenwald, formerly Sapora Levy, an agent-runner for a pretty big cheese out in Turkey before she emigrated to the U.S. and married your father. Must have been his mistress too, since the files says she had a child by him. You never mentioned your half-sister, Lauren, even though you have a pretty famous stepfather, I’d say.”
“Oh yeah, who?”
“Philby,” said Smailes.
He made no effort to stop her as she reached into the bottom of the suitcase and pulled out a small automatic pistol and pointed it at his chest. It looked like a Beretta.
“Shut up, shithead,” she said coldly. “Put your hands on your head.”
He complied, and as he did so, felt the tape that held the microphone against his chest stretch against his skin. “Put the gun down, Lauren. You’re under arrest for the murder of Simon Bowles and Giles Allerton.” He tried not to say the cue line too loudly. They had discussed the fact that she might have a gun, but Standiforth had said he thought it unlikely. If she did, all he had to do was let her know about the backup in the street, and she would probably fold. If she didn’t she would lose her concentration when they forced the door and he could jump her then. Smailes had gone along with the plan.
“Now Lauren, you’ll never get that through airport security, will you?” said Smailes. He was listening for the door, the sound of feet on the stairs.
“I said shut up, shithead,” she repeated. “Did you drive?”
He nodded.
“Show me the keys. Slowly.”
Smailes went in his right hand coat pocket and held up his car keys.
“Let’s go,” she said. “You’re driving.”
Where the hell were they? Something had gone wrong, he thought with a flicker of panic. Christ, she had better not frisk me, he said to himself.
“Move,” she said. Lauren slipped the automatic into the pocket of the baseball jacket as they left the room and walked down the stairs. He heard nothing except the vacuum cleaner. The street was dark and he did not look back for the Jaguar. He climbed into the car and Lauren got in the passenger side. She pulled out the gun again and kept it on him. “Drive,” she said. “North. Huntingdon Road.” He looked in the rear view and thought he saw a black car pull out before they turned the corner at the end of the street, but could not be sure.
He tried to keep his voice easy as he pulled out into Huntingdon Road and headed out of town past Fitzwilliam College. “You see it seemed pretty obvious that Gorham-Leach, or should I call him Gottlieb, was protecting someone with his little farewell speech. But he was angry and it made him trip. You see, he never forgot a title or a rank, and he almost called me Mr. Plod, which must have been your little joke about me, right? He did the honorable thing, you know. Fell on his sword. His story about Bowles killing himself after a fight with Fenwick just didn’t jibe. It must have been the most incredible night of Simon Bowles’ life. He would hardly have been so upset about the supposed behavior of a boyfriend he’d only just met. And if the Fenwick story was a cover, how did he know about him? Then the cover story about the theft of the Bletchley file. Gorham-Leach didn’t have a pass key, so how could he have pulled it off after we’d sealed the room? You see, I’d told him about the missing file earlier in the week, and he must have worked out you were responsible. And I figure the only way you could have pulled it off was to con Allerton into taking it for you while he was over there alone with that deadbeat bookseller friend of his. What was the pretext, Lauren, that you were going to keep the investigation alive yourself? Is that the same line you gave him about the spectacles in the case, Lauren, why you had to go to me yourself? So you see, it all began to point to you, Laure
n.”
Smailes was desperate to get some kind of reaction out of her, to distract her from her terrible intent, but her face remained fixed and impassive, staring out onto the road and night.
“Bowles certainly wasn’t interested in seeing you, was he? But you had to go across there, preferably with Allerton as cover, because you knew he’d been to Oxford and then down to London, and Gorham-Leach had warned you that that was the danger sign, hadn’t he? So you showed up and managed to get a look at what was in the typewriter and it confirmed your worst fears, right? Gorham-Leach was blown and you could bet that Simon wasn’t just going to sit on the information. You must have had quite some influence on him to get him to go out to the bar with you, given what he was in the middle of. Because the original plan had misfired, hadn’t it? The idea was for you to show up as an innocent, displaced fellow scientist and get friendly with Bowles so you could keep tabs on him. Only when it turned out he was gay, you turned to Allerton as the closest alternative. Then me. It was safest to get me in your bed to monitor whether I could retrace what Simon had done. That’s why you jumped the gun when Giles got suspicious about the glasses in the pocket, right? Since Giles intended to speak to me anyway, you had to beat him to it. That was a really dumb mistake. Couldn’t you just have put them back on the body?
