The Cambridge Theorem (35 page)

To express his annoyance Dearnley spent a long time wrapping up his phone call, looking away from Smailes at the wall that held his tennis calendar. He hung up the receiver slowly and lowered his feet. Then he leant forward heavily onto his elbows and said, “Derek, didn't expect to see you today. Tuesday's your day off, isn't it? Did Gloria tell you to come in?”

“No, she didn't, George. I'm sorry to barge in. But I just found something out that I wish I had known about a long time ago. Maybe you can guess what I mean.”

Dearnley gave a weary shrug and shook his head. “Sit down, Derek. You look agitated.”

“About my father. About why he was off work that week before he died. Was it really a heart attack, George, or did he do himself in? He bloody well should have, if he didn't.” Smailes stayed on his feet.

Dearnley's face remained expressionless. “Who told you about this?”

“How many people could have, George? How many people knew? How many people still know, people I've worked with for ten years, who know I'm the son of a bent cop? Am I the only one who didn't bleeding well know?”

“Watch your tone with me, Smailes,” Dearnley warned. “How did you find out?”

“I found his personnel file in the Records Division. I suppose I owe you thanks, helping get my mother the pension, and all that. Thanks a lot, George.” Smailes had never spoken to George Dearnley like this and felt a strange exhilaration. Maybe he was going to get fired, he reflected. He didn't care.

“I didn't sign any authorization for a Records visit, did I? How did you get in? What were you doing there anyway?”

“I took a form from Gloria and forged your signature, George. She didn't know what I was up to. I wanted to follow up on some leads from the Bowles case. Criminal records from the thirties. I'm not sure we got the story straight there, and I knew you'd probably turn me down if I asked. I shouldn't have done it, I know. Then I went to check personnel records, and found my father's file, your report, everything. I came straight over.”

George Dearnley got slowly to his feet. “Sit down,” he said quietly. Smailes did not move. “Sit down when I fucking well tell you,” Dearnley roared, and Smailes obeyed. Dearnley came over to him and put one foot on the chair, lowering his face until it was about six inches from Smailes' nose.

“How dare you, you arrogant piece of shit,” he said under his breath. “After all I've done for you, year in year out. You know what people say about you, don't you? That you're too fucking arrogant to follow procedures, that you think you're better than everyone else, that you talk with a stupid fucking American accent and that you're a lousy cop. Well, I'm sick of defending you, Sergeant Smailes, because maybe people are right. That case is closed, like I told you. You're suspended, as of right now. I want a full report on your visit to Records, and I want it within one hour. Then it's time to think about whether there's a place for you on this force, sonny.”

Smailes said nothing. He licked his lips and swallowed slowly.

“For your information, hardly anyone knew about the investigation into your father. Not even your mother, although she might have guessed. Maybe a few senior people here guessed, too, although I for one have never breathed a word. As far as I knew, it was just between the Chief Super and me. Frankly, Detective Sergeant Smailes, I never cared too much for your father, and neither did many others here in this station. Too officious by half. Behaved like he had a stick up his arse. Then we find this out about him, and his whole act fell apart. But when he died like that, I saw no reason to put his family through all the shame and disgrace that would have gone with going public with it. The only thing he would own up to was the vending machine caper. Said he'd got into trouble at the dogs, needed cash. But the more we looked, the more we found. It had been going on for years. Technically, we had no conviction, not even a statement, so your mother was entitled to the pension, I thought. And your family was entitled to protection, too. So you found out. Too bad.”

“How did you rumble him, after all that time?” asked Smailes.

“Got greedy, like they all do. Let some new guy bid up the pay-off, and the first one blew the whistle. Stupid mistake, considering.” Dearnley stood up and walked away, then turned and looked at him coldly. “Yes, I'd thought of telling you, somehow. It was a heart attack that killed him, and in a way, I thought it was a blessing, at the time. And I wondered that something, some day, wouldn't come out. But if it didn't, if I hadn't told you, it was not because of lack of respect for you, Derek Smailes. I always had that up until now. I've looked the other way at you bending rules before. Not any more. I suggest you get yourself some legal advice. Get me that report, understand.” Dearnley stood silently for a long moment, and Smailes sat still, respectfully. “Get out,” he said quietly.

It only took him twenty minutes to write his report of his activities that day. His strange sense of exhilaration did not go away. Gloria looked frightened and bewildered when he handed her the typescript, and avoided his eyes, but Smailes gave her a big smile.

“I'm taking a bit of a break, I guess you heard, Gloria. See you around,” he said. She looked at him nervously. “I told him I tricked you. It's okay, Gloria, don't worry about it.”

“Derek, I'm really sorry,” she said.

“Don't be, I don't seem to be,” he said.

As he drove home, Smailes felt strangely buoyant. At one point, he let out a loud guffaw. That old fucking fraud, Harry Smailes. All these years, he had been trying to emulate a petty crook. He felt as if an enormous burden had been lifted from him. So he had been suspended. Like father like son, he thought, and snorted again. For the first time in his life, he realized he didn't have to be a cop. Maybe he was going to have no choice in the matter. What was the procedure with a suspension? A disciplinary review board, wasn't it? Maybe he should just quit now, save them the trouble.

As he tried to pull into his usual parking spot in front of his flat, he was annoyed to find a Post Office Telecommunications van parked there. They had one of those little canvas huts erected over an open manhole, and he had to drive a little way down the street to park. He sat in the car for about five minutes, thinking. Then he drove off again, heading for St. Margaret's.

I
T WAS ALMOST SIX
when Smailes pulled up outside St. Margaret's College and he wondered whether he would still find Paul Beecroft on duty. He knew that continuing to conduct investigations while under suspension would only worsen his predicament if he were found out, and he hoped Dearnley would make no moves like warning people at the college against talking to him. He had to concede that was unlikely. George, despite his anger, could probably not conceive that Smailes would compound the insubordination charge against him, and obviously believed strongly in the futility of further inquiries in the Bowles case. Smailes was probably on safe ground, he thought to himself, although the metaphor sounded wrong.

He was prepared for a difficult interview with Paul Beecroft, but he was not prepared for what greeted him when he entered St. Margaret's porters' lodge. Standing at the counter, working intently on a clipboard checklist, was Alan Fenwick, dressed in his porter's uniform. Fenwick looked up as the door swung shut on its heavy closer, and flushed scarlet when he saw the figure of Smailes enter. He put down his pen and cleared his throat.

“Can I help you, officer?” he asked, a little hoarsely. Smailes looked at him silently for a moment, and then said casually, “Is Mr. Beecroft available? I'd like a word, if possible.”

Fenwick didn't need to reply. From his office behind Fenwick Beecroft emerged at that moment, wearing his overcoat. He too seemed taken aback to see Smailes standing there, and stood motionless, watching him. Another junior porter who was seated talking on the telephone finished his conversation and said something to Beecroft, who did not reply. The young man became aware of the tension in the room and looked over at Smailes also. Fenwick broke the silence. “The officer here asked to speak with you, Mr. B,” he said. “I was just going to tell him I thought you was leaving for the day.”

Beecroft stood to the side and indicated his office to Smailes. “Step right in, Mr. Smailes,” he said, and followed Smailes back into the room, closing the door behind him. He did not take off his coat.

“What the hell is
he
doing here?” Smailes began in an angry undertone. He did not want Fenwick to hear any of this exchange. Beecroft chose his words carefully.

“His suspension was lifted and the college council recommended him reinstated with a reprimand only. Last week,” he said.

“Isn't that a little unusual? Didn't you think fit to tell me, Mr. Beecroft? The main reason we didn't press charges against him over the Bowles business was because we were assured he would be fired. You told me so yourself.”

“Well, I was a little surprised. But I didn't see how it was any of your business, any more. The inquest finished that whole affair, didn't it? How is it your business how St. Margaret's chooses to discipline its porters, tell me? That's purely an internal matter,” Beecroft said testily.

Smailes decided to change the angle of his questions. “You still a member of the Communist Party, Mr. Beecroft? Had any further brushes with the law since that assault conviction in thirty-three? Or is that none of my business either?”

Beecroft looked as if he were about to speak, but changed his mind and turned to look out of the glass panel in his door at the two porters working in the lodge. It seemed a long time before he turned around to face the detective.

“No, I'm not, Mr. Smailes,” he said wearily. “I turned in my card in thirty-seven, when I got back from Spain. I'd seen enough there.”

“Did Simon Bowles know you had been a Party member?”

“I doubt it. I doubt it very much. Of course I knew what he was looking into. Could've told him a few things too, if he'd asked me.”

“Like what, for instance?”

Beecroft looked at him steadily. “Can I trust you, Mr. Smailes? Trust you not to do anything without my say-so?”

Beecroft had obviously decided to talk, but then he had to. Smailes had him cornered on two counts. But it was clear that Beecroft had revealed little voluntarily and Smailes would weigh his explanations with caution. Trust was a two-way street.

“I don't know. You trusted me over the Fenwick business before. Why don't you just tell me what you know?”

“It's hard to explain, even to myself. And to someone of your age…You can't know what it was like here in the thirties, what the mood was. Then what so many of us had to go through when it became clear where Russia was heading.” Smailes said nothing.

“A lot of us joined the Party back then. I mean, college servants who gave more than a second thought to what was happening in the world, what was happening right here at the University. And there was a lot of recruitment going on, by some of the students and dons, and by people up from London. But joining the Party in them days was not like today, something you would have to be secretive about. Joining the Party was something you did openly, out of principle. It looked like Russia was the only hope for the future in them days, I can tell you. As for the Labour Party, democracy, parliament, well it was a bloody shambles.” There was an edge of bitterness in Beecroft's voice.

“Of course, some of them I couldn't stomach. Toffee-nosed socialists, we called them. The kind of communist who'd cringe if you ate with the wrong fork. But there was a lot of decent lads here too, who had a genuine wish to improve things, not just for us. A lot of us went to Spain. And a lot didn't come back, neither. I was lucky.

“Some of us was already having second thoughts about Stalin, through the show trials and that, but it was Spain what opened my eyes. The communists were just not interested in the working people creating something for themselves. You see, I got laid up with dysentery when I first got there and couldn't get to the Madrid front. I had to stay in Barcelona and signed up with one of the workers' militias when I felt right. So I was right there when the street fighting began, when the word came down from Uncle Joe to smash the independent militias, accuse 'em of collaboration, being Trotskyite, whatever. I was wounded in the leg and lucky to get out into France in one piece. That was the only fightin' I did in Spain, and it was against my own side, the bloody Republicans. And of course, everyone at home, the Left, just whistled whatever tune Joe said. It seemed to me that if the communists were as interested in stopping a revolution as they were in stopping Franco, they were just fascists of a different stripe. I'd been proud to be a party member up till then, but when I got back from Spain I was just sickened. I'd given back my card by the time of the Nonaggression Pact, but that really was the last straw. So I joined the Labour Party—not that I didn't think there's plenty wrong with it. But by the time I enlisted in thirty-nine I knew that if we was to save Britain from Hitler, then I'd just as soon keep the institutions we had. I thought it was worth fighting for. I was with the infantry in North Africa, and Italy. I'd made sergeant by the time I was discharged.

“And then I came back here, got married, and started working at the University again, and never really had much to do with politics any more. No, I never got arrested again, if you'd like to know. How the hell did you know about that, anyway?”

“Criminal records. We keep archives, you know.”

“Only one person round here knows I was a former communist, and I'd like to keep it at that, if that's all right.”

“And who's that?”

“I'm coming to it. I'm coming to it. Well, I was in the lodge here at St. Margaret's when Hawken was appointed senior tutor. I thought there was something fishy about that from the start, it's usually someone from inside you know, and when they said he's from the Foreign Office, well it got me thinking. It was only a bit after all the stuff about Philby going over, and it seemed too much a coincidence.”