The Cambridge Theorem (26 page)

I
T WAS WITH
a mounting sense of irritation that Derek Smailes resumed his study of the dead student's files. Part of Bowles' technique seemed to have been to examine the careers not only of known communist sympathizers, but of whole groups of individuals from which known agents had been recruited. In a long file called
Fellows and Travellers
he had extended his investigation to cover scores of Cambridge dons who may have had contacts with active communists in the thirties. For each individual he would reach a conclusion about their attitude towards communism—the range seemed to span from “member” and “sympathizer” to “neutral” and “hostile.” Since most of the Bletchley codebreakers had been recruited from Cambridge science departments, and since many prominent Cambridge scientists had been overt communists, Bowles had written evaluations of the careers of many of the senior figures at GCCS. These profiles appeared under the sub-heading “Cantab Junction and the Golf Club and Chess Society,” and Smailes suddenly wondered that this reference were not the one he had noticed on his first examination of the files, in which case his alarm at potential sabotage was misplaced. The possibility only succeeded in making him more annoyed that he had neglected the simple task of a physical inventory. However, his frustration was quickly replaced by excitement when he began reading the entries. Two of these first profiles were of peculiar interest to him, those of Nigel Hawken and Sir Martin Gorham-Leach.

It seemed that both Hawken and Gorham-Leach had seen wartime service at Bletchley Park after being recruited as research fellows at Cambridge. According to Bowles, both men had studied at Oxford as undergraduates, although their careers there had not overlapped, Gorham-Leach graduating in mathematics and physics in 1934 and Hawken going up in 1935 to study history. The two men might have met later at Cambridge, because Gorham-Leach was recruited to join the Bletchley codebreakers in early 1940, and Hawken was recruited by the War Office in 1941 after completing a doctorate in history. According to Bowles' research, Hawken wound up at Bletchley in mid-1942 as a military intelligence liaison officer, whereas Gorham-Leach seemed to have spent his entire wartime career as part of the front line codebreaking team. No doubt this was why G-L had been unable to tell him of his assignment during the war years, although much of the record of the Bletchley triumph was now in the public domain. The Official Secrets Act simply prevented a signatory from discussing the nature of his work in perpetuity, and Gorham-Leach was obviously the kind of man who would regard such a commitment solemnly. Smailes wondered whether there were any personal animosity on G-L's part toward Hawken that had caused him to push Bowles in Hawken's direction. The action seemed slightly out of character. Hawken had also claimed the two men were friendly, social acquaintances, which struck Smailes as incongruous. The profiles also answered another question for Smailes—Hawken did appear to hold a bona fide doctorate so was at least nominally qualified to be a Cambridge professor.

According to Bowles' research, Hawken had seen considerable service abroad with the Secret Intelligence Service—MI6—after the war, in Washington, Ankara and Bonn, before officially leaving the intelligence service in 1964 to take the position at St. Margaret's. It was clear that Bowles had been skeptical that Hawken's intelligence role had ever formally ended. As Gorham-Leach had indicated, he had been at Cambridge, officially with the Cavendish Laboratory as a fellow of St. Margaret's, since the war, apart from three years at Princeton University in the fifties. Nothing was mentioned about the Cambridge Research Institute.

At this juncture in his notes, Bowles had written “
See Oxford Blues and Reds
,” which referred to the research the young man had completed in the Oxford University archives. The volume of material was not so great as the Cambridge research, comprising one relatively slim document. It seemed that not as much was known about Soviet recruitment efforts there, although it was clear that pro-communist sentiment among undergraduates was equally as strong as at Cambridge. With his characteristic thoroughness, Bowles had identified clubs and societies to which both Hawken and Gorham-Leach had belonged, none of which seemed particularly provocative. Hawken had belonged to the History Society, the Oxford Union and the Pistol Club. Gorham-Leach apparently had not belonged to any political groups, but belonged to the Oxford University Alpine Club and something called the Blenheim Hunt. The conclusion reached about each man's communist sympathies at the time was the same—“hostile,” which seemed eminently reasonable to Smailes. Once again, he recognized the names of a number of well-known political figures among Bowles' profiles of those who had been active socialists while at Oxford University. Smailes wondered what the young man planned to do with all this information, and whether any of it was of interest to the authorities. But to believe Hawken, such information was all already known and Bowles was fruitlessly treading waters that had been thoroughly plumbed at both institutions. While Smailes found himself reluctant to believe Hawken on principle, he had to concede that it seemed unlikely that persons who had showed overt communist sympathies at Oxford or Cambridge would not by now have been identified and questioned.

One question continued to gnaw at Smailes as he completed his first review of Bowles' Cambridge files. Nowhere in the material he had read was the newly-explained question he had seen on Bowles' notecard, about the flagging of Bletchley files, explained, or even echoed. It might have no more significance than a doodle, but the fact that he could not confirm or deny its significance exasperated him.

It was around six on a Friday afternoon after his visit to Myrtlefields Hospital, and Derek Smailes had straightened the papers on his desk and was about to leave for the day. He had just filed his duplicate of the request to the coroner's office for a re-inspection of Bowles' personal belongings when his phone rang. He picked it up on the first ring.

“Smailes, CID,” he said gruffly.

“Del-baby. Nabbed any bank robbers lately?” Only Iain Mack was allowed to use the hated diminutive or to tease him about his work. Smailes grinned into the receiver.

“Iain, you old bastard. I called you twice this week. Where are you? I've got a raft of questions for you.”

“You'll never make it stick. I deny everything. I'm at the bleeding railway station, where do you think I'm calling from? Filial duty time, you know. You free tonight?”

“I'm free right now. What are your plans? You here for the Easter weekend?”

“No, just until tomorrow night. I've got to put in the obligatory with the Aged P's for a bit tonight. Dinner at least, I suppose, but I can see you later on. Where are you drinking these days? The Lamb and Flag?”

The Lamb was a pub where off-duty Cambridge cops went for refreshment, which Smailes had begun to frequent less and less.

“No, let's say The Masons. Around eight.”

“You got it, Kojak,” he said, and hung up.

Smailes sometimes wondered how his friendship with Iain Mack had survived into adulthood. It was now more than ten years since they had left school and their paths since had been so divergent. Iain had done well enough in A levels to make it to one of the progressive universities on the South Coast, where he had somehow managed to secure a degree while living a life of energetic debauchery. Smailes had been married with a baby daughter when Iain had first started coming home during the long summer vacations, so they had not seen much of each other during that time. They had felt embarrassed by their differences and defensive around each other, Smailes with the shorn hair and stiff manner of a police recruit, and Iain Mack with the scruffy beard, weird clothes and indulgent habits of a university student. But somehow the friendship had stuck, perhaps because each represented qualities the other yearned for. Certainly, Derek Smailes had always envied Iain Mack's flamboyance, the adventures and embroilments that he seemed able to negotiate without the trammels of self-doubt that complicated Smailes' life. After University, Iain had taken a position on an East London daily, eventually becoming an investigative reporter of some minor celebrity who broke a series of stories that went national. Then, in the last year, he had surprised everyone by taking an advertising job instead of moving onto Fleet Street, pronouncing journalism to be a venal, cynical and undignified profession. Smailes was amused that Iain found advertising a satisfactory alternative. He was currently laboring under a one year driving suspension that he insisted was the result of a faulty breathalyzer bag.

For Iain's part, Smailes did not doubt that he, the hard-working detective, somehow represented to him a solidity and dutifulness that Iain, in his more wistful moments, wished he could emulate. He had been genuinely distraught at Smailes' divorce, and have even offered in a semi-serious way to try and mediate between Derek and Yvonne. Smailes had thanked him but remarked that Iain's seducing Yvonne would only complicate the issue, at which Iain had pretended to take offense. There was in fact little rivalry between them, and although their lives had taken such different courses, Smailes becoming steadily more conservative and Iain less so, they were able to relax with each other. In particular, Smailes loved to listen to Iain gossip. He had specialized in modern history at University, and his career in newspapers had intensified his interest in, and knowledge of, the inside story of how the country was run. Smailes was convinced that Iain, if anyone, could fill in some of the blanks of Simon Bowles' research for him.

The Masons was a lowbrow pub that catered to a mixed clientele of students, working people and professionals who liked to slum it after work. The lounge was not crowded when Smailes took his seat. The aroma of spilled beer and tobacco helped him to relax, and he glanced over at the next table where a young man wearing a scruffy beard and eye make-up was waving his hands in the air and haranguing two young women wearing black lipstick and bored expressions. He couldn't catch the words. He looked over towards the door and saw Iain Mack squeeze past a large bus driver in the doorway and squint around the bar until he spied him. He was suddenly reminded of the one quality that really irked him about his friend—his overweening personal vanity. Iain waved and strode towards him, and Smailes saw that he was wearing a blue leather safari jacket and matching blue ankle boots which he wore outside his pants, and had had a white streak dyed into the front of his black hair. Smailes thought he looked ridiculous but said nothing, standing and returning his friend's awkward slaps on the shoulder. Iain pulled away and pushed his hair back with his hand.

“What do you think of my groovy hair style?”

“Groovy,” said Smailes.

“Yeah,” said Iain, and they bought beers. Iain made sure to make admiring comments about Smailes' lizard skin cowboy boots, which the detective always wore off duty. That Smailes could relax about his own eccentricities around Iain was a quality of the friendship he really treasured.

They spent time catching up on news. Iain's latest advertising account was a new dog food line called Regal, for which he had devised the campaign slogan, “Treat your pet like a king.” He complained bitterly over his beer of that afternoon's film session, the difficulty of getting a tiara to stay on the head of a hungry poodle while the technical people hung around at terrifying hourly rates and his boss nearly had a stroke yelling at people. Iain maintained seriously that he found the work much more creative than newspapers. He wanted to know about Smailes' love life, which the detective described gloomily as the Gobi desert. Then they talked about his work, and the Bowles suicide came up.

“Was he a philosophy student?” asked Mack.

“No, maths. Why do you ask?”

“Well, Cambridge has the highest suicide rate of any University in the country, and the highest incidence of suicides there is among philosophy students, so it's the best odds, you know.” This was a typical Iain Mack assertion, one that required improbable knowledge but whose veracity seemed unimpeachable.

“He was a bit of a detective, it seems. Worked out a whole theory about the Kennedy assassination that was quite persuasive.”

“The Cubans?” said Iain, predictably.

“Yes,” Smailes replied, “but he seemed to actually name the culprit. Or so he claimed.” There was a pause.

“Then there was the project he was working on when he died. Soviet intelligence links to Cambridge University. You know, the Blunt business.”

“This what you were calling me about earlier? Why are you interested in this kid's theories? You think it's connected with why he killed himself? Or maybe he didn't?”

“No, it seems pretty clear that he did, although there were some unusual circumstances, including the lack of any warning that he might try it. No, it's more that I have a sense that he was onto something. But whether it was related to the suicide, I dunno.”