The Cambridge Theorem

by Tony Cape

  “You see, you left Giles at his staircase and pretended to go get your bike at the front gate to go home. But you hung around until the bar closed and things got quiet then you went back to Simon’s place. He was certainly not interested in seeing you a second time, was he? Because he was almost finished typing up the theorem, and he didn’t want anyone looking at it until he’d decided where to go with it, right? But, of course, he was unsuspecting. He maybe even appreciated it when you started to rub his shoulders. After all, he must have been feeling pretty tense and he was pretty easy with you, physically, right? I saw it in a photograph Giles took of both of you, you had your arm draped around him and he looked quite relaxed. Is it difficult to break someone’s neck with your bare hands, Lauren? I guess with your strength, it’s not that difficult, is it? You rupture the spinal column at the first and second vertebrae, which is the same injury that kills someone who is hanged, right?”

  He looked across at her. Oncoming headlights streaked her face with light. She turned and looked at him expressionlessly, the dark orifice of the gun levelled at his heart. They were a mile or so out of town. “Right to Girton,” she ordered.

  Smailes swung the car off the main road towards Girton village. He could see no black Jaguars behind him, no flashing blue lights. Christ, had he been hung out to dry? Where were George and Standiforth? Why had they not come through the door on the cue line, or when they had heard her pull the gun? He was fighting a dreadful awareness, that Standiforth wanted him dead. Secrecy becomes an obsession with us. He had known Gorham-Leach was going to kill himself, and made no move to prevent it. And although the thought sickened him, he thought George might fall even for it, the King and country stuff, expendability in the national interest. His tongue felt dry. Keep talking, he told himself.

  “But then you started making mistakes, right? The glasses had flown off when you broke his neck, and you didn’t think about them until later. You wanted to make it look like suicide, so you typed up that stupid note. Then you wiped the machine, and took Simon’s hands and pressed the fingers on the keys. Except you pressed the thumbs flat on the space bar, Lauren. That’s not how a typist hits that key, is it? Think about it. They tap it with the sides of the thumb, don’t they? You left the wrong print.

  “That’s when you went over to get Gorham-Leach. Must have been quite late by now. No one saw you. Was he expecting you? Had you already decided that tonight had to be the night? Probably, because he was only duty tutor for a week, right, and if you needed help to stage a suicide, you had to act fast. So you went back together and managed between you to get Bowles strung up by his belt on that hook. You were careful, wiping off the plant pot. Then you remembered the glasses, right? Lying there on the floor. You found the case, wiped them off, and stuck them in his pocket, never thinking that Allerton would find out and talk about coming to me with the story. He might even have blurted out his own role in removing the file. So you got to me first, and getting me in the sack was playing safe, wasn’t it? Actually, maybe your acting was good so far, but I always thought your fucking was weak, Lauren. I was just too much of a gentleman to say so.”

  They had come to the T-junction in Girton village and Lauren pointed to the right, the road to Oakington. Smailes’ monologue was becoming more forced. He thought feverishly of the information Standiforth had given him that morning.

  “I’m just surprised you fell for the whole thing from the start, Lauren. Didn’t you realize you’re a discard? No one has learned about Gorham-Leach’s identity over the years and lived to talk about it. You thought you were superior to those jokers from Leningrad? They didn’t know who he was, right? Somewhere on the road to the airport tonight they would have turned off and blown your brains out, sweetheart. And you thought you were such a hotshot, such a major mission for your first outing, stepdaddy pulling strings in Moscow and all that. You’ve been dead for months, Lauren.”

  “Left,” she said angrily.

  Smailes drove down a side road, council houses on the right, bungalows on the left, giving way to hedges and open fields. The road dead-ended in a car park, and the headlights caught a sign. Girton Golf Club. “Left,” she said again, and Smailes pulled into a small overspill car park. It was surrounded on all sides by a thick hawthorn hedge.

  “Kill the lights. Out,” she said.

  Smailes stepped out onto the wet gravel and into the pitch dark night. His legs felt shaky. Where the fuck were Dearnley and Standiforth? Why hadn’t they taken them out on Huntingdon Road? Or had they just driven off as soon as Smailes disappeared into the house? Were he and Lauren both discards, in fact?

  “Keep your hands out from your sides. Walk. Through the gap in the hedge.”

  He walked slowly towards a clearing in the hawthorn at the end of the car park, his feet splashing through pools of rainwater, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. His breathing was shallow and his chest felt tight. He was fighting panic, his thoughts careening. This must be where she had brought Allerton to kill him, he thought. He was on his own. Unless he did something soon, he was dead too. He walked through the clearing in the hedge and stumbled on a root. In the darkness he could see a drainage ditch to his left, a small thicket of young birch trees to his right. Half a mile away across a field the headlights of cars streamed silently north on Huntingdon Road. Far away to his left were the lights of Girton village. There was a strong smell of wet earth and rotting vegetation.

  The sound of his blood was pounding in his ears. In his desperation he thought of a goalkeeper’s feint, inviting the shooter to fire away from the body, the natural shot. With his right hand he reached inside his jacket to the holster and slipped the safety catch off the revolver. “Hey, keep the hands…” she began. Smailes buckled his right knee and fell forwards to his right, and in the same motion drew the gun and flung himself to his left onto his back, firing before he hit the ground. Two shots roared in the night and he felt a bullet smash into the earth at his left ear. Lauren pitched backwards. He was winded but got to his feet and moved towards her, the gun drawn. In the darkness he could see that her throat had been torn away by his bullet. A dark lake of blood was widening under her hair. Her mouth moved noiselessly, like the mouth of a fish, and the blood in her throat bubbled quietly, with a frothing sound. Her body began convulsing, first the torso, then the legs. Her eyes were frozen behind the round lenses, terrified and dying. He moved aside to vomit.

  Strong hands gripped his shoulders. “Derek, are you hit?” said Dearnley.

  Smailes was still retching. “Where the fuck were you?” he said eventually.

  “We couldn’t hear nothing for the bleedin’ vacuum cleaner, Derek. Just static. Then we see you come out and we know she’s got a gun on you. We couldn’t jump you on Huntingdon Road, she could’ve started shooting. Jesus, I’m sorry. This was close.”

  “Too fucking close, George.” He looked over at Lauren’s body, which was still. Standiforth was looking down at it with a pen-sized flashlight.

  “She dead?” said Smailes.

  “Yes, she certainly is,” said Standiforth. He walked up to them, and shone the beam at Smailes. “Sorry about that,” he said evenly. “But well done. You were right, of course. You were right about everything. Glad you still had the gun on you. Seems you needed it. That was quite a shot, falling backwards like that.”

  Smailes wanted to go for his face. Dearnley was supporting him, and he was breathing in great heaves.

  “Let me see your hands,” ordered Standiforth. Smailes holstered the gun and held his hands out in front of him. Standiforth held the beam on them. They were steady.

  “Okay, leave. Take a week. Get out into the country, the hills somewhere. Just let it work itself out of you. Don’t fight it. Tonight, stop driving as soon as the shaking starts, you understand? Just stop, spend the night somewhere. Remember, stop driving when the shaking starts. We’ll take care of everything here. Everything.”

  Dearnley and Smailes walked slowly back towards his
car, the older man supporting him round his shoulders.

  “Jesus, Derek, I’d no idea this was going to be so dangerous. I’d never have agreed to it…”

  “George, you telling me the truth? You didn’t know what was going on…? The mike, you couldn’t hear…”

  “Derek, I swear. Just static. Then you came out, I realized we had trouble. Not even any uniform backup. Standiforth had a pistol. I had nothing. God, you were nearly killed. Are you all right to drive?”

  They had arrived back at the cars. Standiforth’s Jaguar had been hurriedly parked, the doors flung open, the headlights ploughing into the hawthorn trees. Smailes could still smell cordite, and underneath, sweet wet earth.

  “Yeah, I think so.” He stood away from Dearnley and felt his own weight, searching for his face in the darkness. “George, I’ve got to believe you.”

  “Derek,” said Dearnley, pleading, holding up his hand and squeezing his shoulder firmly. “You can’t believe this was deliberate. I’d never let one of my men… Look, do as he says. Take a week. Take two. Just call in, tell me you’re all right. You want me to tell your mother you’re gone? Your sister?”

  “Don’t do anything, George. I can take care of myself.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  HE FELT A STRONG SENSE of unreality as he drove back down Huntingdon Road, although he felt unnaturally calm. The street lamps seemed unusually bright, and the note of the car engine was a soft and insistent purr. The familiar streets rose and fell. He parked and pushed open the broken door. The hall light was on. Pinned to his inner door was a note from his landlord. What happened here? Call me at work immediately. Les.

  Inside the wreckage of the flat he worked methodically. He reached down a canvas bag from the top of the storage cupboard. He found his hiking boots at the bottom of the wardrobe and threw them in. Most of his clothes were on the floor. He stuffed a few handfuls into the bag. In the bathroom, he looked down at the cowboy boots in the toilet. He felt a little lightheaded, and the boots looked a long way away. He packed a toilet bag. He hung his raincoat on the hooks in the hall and found his parka. Then he stepped over the broken furniture in the living room and was on his way again.

  His sense of unreality was intensifying. As he stood at the cash machine, punching in the numbers, his hands looked miles away, detached from his body, as if he were staring down the wrong end of a telescope. He headed east out of Cambridge, towards the motorway. He lit a cigarette from the lighter in the dashboard. His hands were steady.

  Someone just tried to kill you, he told himself. But she failed, because you killed her. The first time you’ve fired a gun in ten years on the force and you blew ber head off. Just like that. He thought he would head north and west, take the advice, go to the Lake District for a few days. He needed to think. Sorry about that. Well done. You were right about everything. Just static. Derek, you can’t believe, I’d never let one of my men…

  He noticed he was driving very slowly. There were few cars on the road, but everything was overtaking him. God, he had fallen for everything, hadn’t he? He should have known, realistically, she could see nothing in him. But the sex? Was it just faked? He saw her face, rocking in the darkness above him. Then he saw his father’s frown, an echoing voice. You should think about the police, you know, in case you want to settle down. Then Beecroft. It’s got to do with betrayal. It makes you angry somewhere, very deep down, and you need some kind of revenge, even if it goes against your grain.

  Suddenly, the shaking started. Mildly at first, and he started to pull over, then uncontrollably. There was a petrol station, and beyond, a motor inn. Traveller’s Lodge, said a large white sign.

  He parked and put his head on the wheel and wept. His arms and shoulders shook. His legs shook. He could not stop shaking, and he could not stop crying. His father, George, Lauren. He thought he might be sick again but there was nothing in his stomach.

  After a long interval he climbed unsteadily out of the car and entered the lobby of the inn. The light was too bright. Sickly music oozed from an overhead speaker. There was a large artificial plant standing by the registration counter, where a clerk in an ugly uniform greeted him with a large artificial smile. He said something to Smailes which he did not hear. He went into his wallet and found a credit card. “Room,” he said. “One night.”

  He lay on the bed in the dark and the shaking began again. It’s shock, he told himself. It’s natural, you nearly got killed. At some point he thought of the white Rover and panicked. He got up to the window and looked out, but there were no white Rovers in the car park. He took off his parka and tried to take off his shirt but the shirt was stuck. He realized he was still wearing the gun and shoulder holster. He took them off and threw them in a drawer. Then he opened the drawer and put the gun on the nightstand. When he took off his shirt he found the mike still taped to his chest and the battery pack clipped to his belt. He tore them off and threw them at the wall. Had they even bothered to listen? He lay down naked under the sheets, shivering, staring at the ceiling. Cars passed occasionally outside the window.

  They were making love again, hungrily, he had his hand in the thick black curls, but when he looked down to kiss her her mouth was making its dreadful noiseless movements and her throat was torn open. He woke up suddenly, terrified, a weak metallic light was pushing its way into the room. He got up heavily and showered. In the light he saw that his trousers and shoes were covered in mud. He put on jeans, boots. The inn had a restaurant. He needed coffee, food. He had survived.

  It was a bright April Sunday morning and he felt an odd clarity as he accelerated up the ramp to the M1, Britain’s jugular vein of steel and rubber, and pointed the car north. It had been Standiforth’s plan, from the start. Both he and George had argued in favor of driving straight over there with uniformed backup and pulling her in on suspected murder. Standiforth had stood his ground. There was no evidence against her in either of the murders. Bowles was officially a suicide, and Allerton’s body had yet to be found. She was obviously an illegal of some sort, but which sort? He argued heatedly that unless they could trap her into some form of confession she could invoke the protection of her Embassy and then God knows where they would end up. It meant the Cousins would find out the wrong way. We need to control that briefing, he had said. And besides, he was concerned she was a double. Maybe the Cousins had been onto Gorham-Leach for years, had sent their own agent to confirm him, not trusting the British. Did anyone believe a major defense contractor would hire an engineer with a background like hers? He had argued for the remote mike and the receiver and cassette recorder in the car. They had had to call in the technical people to rig it all up. It was a Saturday so it had taken hours. Smailes had argued angrily at first, that she was a killer and a spy and that they were wasting time, but eventually he had gone along with Standiforth’s plan. He was quite prepared to confront her himself, and there seemed to be no undue danger. Smailes still had his weapon, Standiforth carried an automatic. George, whose gun permit was still expired, eventually deferred to Standiforth also. He had shaken his head in disbelief at first when Smailes told him about his affair with the American girl. We’ll talk about this later, Sergeant, he had said.

  But now Smailes was not sure the whole thing wasn’t a fraud. They had known about Lauren. They must have. They let him stroke his chin and make the calls and think he had nailed her himself, so that they could send him in as point man, then hang him out to dry. Certain arrangements have had to be made, had been Standiforth’s line. You bet. He just didn’t believe the story about the vacuum cleaner and the static. Modern electronics were better than that. And he wondered that George wasn’t part of some plot, despite his protests. He thought back over some of his strange moves, his insistence on closing the case, his acquiescence in the Fenwick business, the speed and venom with which he’d suspended him. As he thought about it, he was convinced that George would grab his forelock if the brass invoked his patriotism, particularly brass like Stand
iforth.

  Anger had cleared his head. He drove into the Midlands and through the neat angular brick rows of the Birmingham suburbs. Men were out in their gardens, trying to turn the soil for the new planting season, as they had done for centuries. He felt oppressed by the senescence of his culture, by the earthbound race of the British, bowed beneath their leaden skies and ancient divisions. There was such determination to resist. We need to control that briefing. God forbid an accounting should be made.

  North of Birmingham he joined the M6 and the land gave way to tamed contours of pasture and arable land. Plump sheep and placid cows rested in the mild afternoon. Electric pylons strode away towards the spires of distant churches. He had thought to turn off into the Lake District but was adrift in his thoughts and drove right past both turnings to the South Lakes and Kendal. He climbed Shap Fell and began the slow descent towards Carlisle and the border country.

  He was well over the border into Scottish lowlands when he saw the petrol gauge almost empty and felt around with his finger in an empty packet of cigarettes. A sign pointed to Cormond, and Smailes turned off on a B road that soon gave way to granite bungalows and then the sandstone terraces of the dour little town. The green hillsides swept down into the town itself, punctuated with sheep and patterned with dry stone walls. He passed a gray Victorian hotel on his left, the cars of the Sunday drinkers parked neatly in front, then guesthouses, a baker’s shop, a cafe and a stationery store, which looked open. He drove through to the town square where the war memorial stood, an iron statue of Victory, brandishing a laurel wreath like a deck quoit above the names of the fallen. He circled around and drove back down the main street and parked outside the stationery store. Next to it was a sign announcing Sandie’s B and B. He stepped out onto the street. A man in a tweed jacket and flat hat was loading a tray of seedlings into the back of a Land Rover. A young woman pushed twins towards him, in an animated discussion with her mother.