The Cambridge Theorem (31 page)

Derek Smailes began seeing a lot of Lauren Greenwald. For the most part they would go to pubs that he liked to frequent, and spend their nights at Lauren's digs. She explained that Mrs. Bilton, the landlady, lived downstairs and was hard of hearing, or pretended to be. She had never said anything to Lauren about overnight guests and one of the other students who lived upstairs, a horny undergraduate from Fitzwilliam, often had his girlfriends stay over. The other resident was a married graduate student whose family lived in London and whom she hardly ever saw. Somehow, Smailes felt reluctant to invite her to his flat, it was such a bachelor's redoubt, and she didn't seem to mind. Her bed was a bit small for both of them, but it was the kind of discomfort Smailes liked.

He found her intriguing. She had a strong sense of fun and began playing tricks on him from the start. On the Saturday after their first night together he had been at the swimming baths with Tracy, their regular venue, and Lauren had caught him completely by surprise by sneaking up behind him and grabbing the girdle of fat that hung at his waist. At first he felt annoyed that she had intruded on his time with Tracy, but she was so good with his daughter that he could not hang on to his mood. Her bathing suit, predictably, was black and Smailes could only admire how terrific she looked in it. She had an athletic figure and was obviously a strong swimmer, but she took lots of time to play with Tracy in the shallow end, which Smailes soon tired of. As they were all sitting together on the bench before going to the changing rooms, Tracy had asked coyly whether Lauren was Daddy's girlfriend, and Lauren had said yes, without a second thought. At times like that, he was struck by the implausibility of their relationship.

They never had trouble finding subjects to talk about. She was not at all what he would expect of a female engineer, and had interests in a lot of the same areas that he did. He quickly noticed a sort of angry intensity about her when she brought up certain subjects. She was vehement about what she called the withering of idealism in the United States and in Britain, and spoke heatedly of the materialism and shallowness of young people her age. Once when Smailes arrived at her digs she was listening to
Abbey Road
by the Beatles and held up her arm to silence him when he tried to speak. She turned the stereo up louder and together they listened to the whole second side in silence before she would speak. She looked at him almost angrily and said, “They're so fucking elegiac. See, there was a chance back then, that something lasting might happen.” Smailes did some mental arithmetic and said he thought she was a little young to like the Beatles and she told him impatiently that no one was too young to like the Beatles. When they spoke about respective plans for the future, she told him that after graduating she wanted to become an engineer somewhere in Africa, which made Smailes wince. Whenever he thought of Africa, he saw flies, heat and death. He couldn't imagine volunteering to live there. She explained that it was something she and her father had discussed before his death, and she felt it was a commitment she had to see through. He realized that her year at Cambridge would be over soon, in June, and she would be going back to New York. It crossed his mind that she might be a reason for his finally visiting America, but warned himself to presume nothing. Lauren was delighted by his eccentric love of Americana and called him cowboy and teased him about country music, which she said she loathed.

They didn't talk often about Simon Bowles. Lauren had backed off her insistence that the discovery of the spectacle case cast the whole suicide theory in doubt. Smailes was now involved full time with investigating the cigarette lorry theft and a couple of smaller robberies and maintained his interest in the case only by re-reading parts of Bowles' files from time to time. He had vacillated about going to Dearnley with his suspicions about a missing file, but had finally backed off the idea—the whole thing was too prejudicial. He witheld from Lauren any knowledge of Bowles' research or the unlikely double career of Nigel Hawken. After a week or so he did tell her of Alan Fenwick's involvement, which he immediately regretted, because Lauren latched on to this disclosure forcefully and insisted the relationship must be directly involved with why Simon Bowles had died. Smailes omitted the information about Simon's payments to Fenwick, and the negotiations that had ensued between George Dearnley and the family. George, of course, had been appalled and was inclined at first to renege on Fenwick's immunity. But the crafty young man had sold the car immediately and forwarded the check to Smailes. Dearnley realized it would be a considerable loss of face with Baddeley, the coroner, to change channels at this stage, and Alice Wentworth lobbied heavily for proceeding in the normal way, particularly when she heard there was another two thousand on its way. Smailes felt uneasy that Fenwick was buying his way out of a jam, but Dearnley had allowed Alice Wentworth to prevail. He did not doubt that George felt distaste at being outflanked by a venal punk like Fenwick, but he seemed to chalk it off to a wrong call to which he had committed too soon. If he blamed Derek Smailes for his predicament, he did not say so, which struck Smailes as slightly odd.

For Lauren's part, she did not believe the version of Fenwick's story Smailes told her, and was disgusted that the police had suppressed his involvement from the record. Smailes realized that he would have to keep his work and his love life separate, given Lauren's volatility. She had become angry at him and he had shouted back, insisting that they knew what they were doing. He told her she knew nothing about police work and the hard decisions it involved, that he was a fool to confide in her. She was mollified and apologized, but Smailes had learned a lesson from his indiscretion.

She was a playful and energetic lover, the best Smailes had ever known. She liked to dress up and enact all kinds of bizarre fantasies, which he resisted at first, but quickly began to appreciate. One evening she disappeared to the bathroom and came back wearing a judo suit. She practised karate with the University club and after closing the door, approached him across the room with her eyes narrowed, one forearm horizontal and the other raised vertically, one foot in its flat black sandal raised towards him. Then with a howl she leapt into the air and brought her back foot driving through the air to within an inch of his chin. After intimidating him with a number of other moves, any one of which could have knocked him cold, she threw him deftly to the floor and began to undress him. Then she made love to him in the same violent and intimidating way and Smailes loved it.

Occasionally Smailes would feel rueful about the disparity in their ages and lifestyle. One Friday evening at Mrs. Bilton's gate he bumped into the fellow lodger, the married graduate student, a huge, red-haired bear of a man with a Rob Roy beard and thick black glasses, who was carrying an armful of books and a brand new teddy bear out to his car.

He was a man of Smailes' age, doing what men of Smailes' age ought to do, going back to a wife and kid. On another occasion it was particularly humiliating to him when he went to pick up Lauren as planned and found Giles Allerton sitting in her room, as if he belonged there. He realized that Allerton must have spent considerable time there when he and Lauren had been lovers, but he believed Lauren when she told him that was all in the past. Still he couldn't suppress a surge of jealousy and resentment at this unexpected meeting, and was barely able to be polite when Allerton grunted a greeting. The feelings were no doubt mutual, since Allerton got immediately to his feet and left, hardly pausing to speak to Lauren on his way out. Smailes realized that Allerton represented for him the indolence and privilege of a whole generation from which he had been excluded, and he was annoyed that he felt any rivalry with this shallow, insignificant young man. Lauren had understood the chemical reaction between the two men immediately and had merely said, “Forget it, Plod. He's a child,” at which Smailes felt a sudden flush of embarrassment. She was able to read his thoughts and moods with an uncanny precision, which he found unsettling.

One particularly filthy night when Smailes was on late evenings he was sitting in his armchair reading after getting off duty around ten. Since the late tour could often extend past midnight, he and Lauren were not scheduled to meet until the weekend. Squalls of rain rattled against the windows and Smailes was glad he was home instead of driving around somewhere out in the storm. His armchair was a particularly ugly mauve plastic recliner that had come along with the place, but it was the most comfortable reading chair he had, the one he always chose to sit in. As often happened when he was alone at night, he had begun thinking again of the Bowles case, and of his own clumsy investigation. Almost out of a sense of guilt he had begun reading the dry history of the British security services that had belonged to Simon Bowles, but he was finding it repetitive and only moderately interesting. He found he couldn't keep track of all the names and dates and wasn't sufficiently interested in the subject to put out the effort needed. He was distracted by a rap at the window that he thought was the wind, but the noise was repeated so he walked over and pulled back the curtain. Lauren's contorted face was pressed up against the streaming window pane and she was wearing a ridiculous yellow sou'wester. He was delighted and annoyed at the same time, and went to let her in. He saw that her overcoat was soaking as she strode past him into the flat.

“Lauren, what the hell?” he asked, as she marched around his living room, inspecting the furniture, looking at the books in his book shelves, the pictures on the wall.

“I came to beard you in your den, you fat old bear,” she said. “If I'd called, you might've put me off, admit it. I wanted to see how you lived. So I just came.”

She looked ridiculous. Her overcoat was an old fashioned, tight-boddiced type that was gathered at the waist and then flared almost to the floor. She wore black laced boots and a long dark skirt and a sou'wester that was far too large and came down over her eyes and ears. She pushed it back off her head and the cord caught it as it draped down her back. She shook her hair and laughed.

“Are you mad?” she asked.

“No,” he said unconvincingly. “But I'd have invited you if you'd asked.”

“Sure,” she said and resumed her inspection of his home. She turned her head to read the titles of the books on his shelves. The two volumes on Bletchley Park with the defaced spines were on the top shelf, but Lauren apparently did not recognize them. Hunting further, she found the fat folder containing the xerox of Bowles' notes sitting on top of the bookcase. She opened the file and said, “What's this?”

“I've got a friend in London, he's writing a book on espionage and he asked me to look at his rough draft. It's a bit dry,” he said.

“Isn't all this what Simon was into?” she asked, riffling through the papers.

“I dunno, was he?” said Smailes. He didn't want to get into it again with her. He knew if he told her it was Simon's work she would immediately formulate all kinds of wild theories that he didn't want to listen to. Bowles' inquest was now only days away and he was committed to letting that machinery work. Lauren had said she was going to boycott the proceedings because she was annoyed at the suppression of the Fenwick evidence, and Smailes hoped she kept her word.

“How'd you get here?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Bike, of course,” she replied. “Perfect night for a spin.” She continued her inspection of his home, lifting the Indian cotton print that he had draped over the herculon couch.

“Boy, do you have awful taste,” she said. Smailes realized he was embarrassed by the shabbiness of the flat, and he found this inspection vaguely demeaning. Lauren had walked over to the chair and squinted to see the title of the book he had been reading, then took a sudden step backwards.

“Yuk, Plod, it's a recliner.” She hooted with delight as she found the catch on the armrest that released the mechanism of the chair. It groaned on ancient springs and elongated itself into its humanoid shape. “You old fart, you've got a recliner.”

He felt angry and defensive. “Yeah well, I didn't know that when I got it. It came along with the place. And for your information, I don't use it as a recliner. Did you find me in it when you showed up?”

Lauren was not going to be cowed. She took him by the arm and positioned him in front of the chair and shoved. He toppled backwards into the chair's vinyl embrace and she climbed up on the arm-rests, straddling him. He started to laugh. He loved it when she pushed him around. She began to kiss him hungrily.

“Sweetheart, take off your coat,” he said.

“Take off my pants,” she replied. He reached up under her coat and skirt and slid the panties down and over one boot, then the next. He stroked her and her breath became more shallow and she kissed him so hard their teeth met. She climbed down and they made love right there on Smailes' hearth rug, Smailes kneeling behind her and Lauren arching her back towards him. He felt like a highwayman, ravishing some rain-spattered traveller. Her alternation between aggression and submission won him completely, and he felt drunk with his desire.

Later as they lay together in his small dark bedroom he asked her if she always got what she wanted. She seemed completely at rest but he felt tense and uncertain.

“What do you mean?” she said sleepily.

“I just don't see what you see in me. I'm a thirty-year-old, divorced policeman with child support payments and a second-hand Austin. I'm overweight, have lousy taste and a five hundred quid overdraft. Do you regularly have affairs with men you have nothing in common with?”

Lauren raised herself on an elbow in the darkness. “Derek, what are you saying? Don't run yourself down. You're a special guy. You're strong, but you're also gentle. You've seen a lot and you're real smart, but you're not bitter or conceited. You really think we have nothing in common?”