The Last Straw

by Paul Gitsham

  “And before you ask, no, I wasn’t jealous of his frigid wife or any other slappers he slept with and, no, I didn’t kill him.” If she spotted the irony, she didn’t show it.

  “OK, Clara, I can accept that. Tell me, what was his reaction when you found out that you were pregnant?” The question was brutal, deliberately out of the blue, designed to push her onto the back foot.

  Clara’s mouth opened in surprise; clearly she hadn’t been expecting the question.

  “Wha...? How did you know? Who told you?”

  “It doesn’t matter who told us. Please, just answer the question.”

  Clara slumped back in her chair; for the first time since she’d entered the room the defiant façade cracked slightly.

  “He was angry at first. Blamed it on me. Said I should have been more careful.” She snorted. “You’d think that a Biology professor would know that it takes two to tango.” This last sentence was delivered with no trace of mirth. “In the end, he made me get rid of it. Said it was for the best. He gave me some cash and arranged for me to move tutor groups so we wouldn’t see each other again.”

  Jones now, in a gentle voice.

  “How did that make you feel, Clara?”

  She sighed. “Cheap.” She looked at the ceiling and it was as if she’d forgotten where she was.

  “The thing is, he was right. I couldn’t have had that baby. Even with the university’s support, I can’t see how I would have looked after it. And Alan made it clear that he wasn’t going to help. Not that I’d want him to Anyway. The worst thing would be going back home. All the fingers pointing, all the whispering: ‘See, I told you so, stuck-up bitch, thinking she’s better than us.’” She looked the two detectives squarely in the eye, one at a time. “You see, I’m not only the first person in my family to go to university, I’m the first on my whole estate. Of all the kids I grew up with, not one of them stayed on to do A levels. Most of them barely finished their GCSEs. I got six A*s. Then I got an A and two Bs at A level.” She laughed harshly. “Shit, with my background when I got to university I ticked so many boxes on the outreach programmes I’m amazed the government didn’t stick me in their election manifesto. It’s just a shame I’m not a black lesbian in a wheelchair, then I’d have completed the fucking set. Anyway, that’s all in the past. I can’t say I’ll mourn the bastard, but I didn’t kill him.”

  The statement hung in the air, the look of defiance back on Clara’s face. Despite her protestations, Jones wasn’t convinced. This was one angry young woman and she had a hell of a motive. Nevertheless, it was time to move on. It seemed that everyone who’d ever met the professor could conceivably have a motive. And motive was only part of the equation. Without opportunity, motive meant nothing.

  “Now, Clara, we would like to ask you some routine questions about your whereabouts yesterday evening, between the hours of nine p.m. and ten p.m.”

  Shifting uncomfortably, Clara gazed into space for a second.

  “Boring night in. I watched a DVD then went out to Tesco to get some munchies. Figured whilst I was there that I’d do me shopping as well.”

  “Can anyone vouch for you? Flatmates, boyfriend, friends?” Jones continued probing gently.

  “No, I was on me own. Me flatmate was away for the weekend and I ain’t seeing anyone at the moment.”

  Nodding as if satisfied for the moment, Jones continued conversationally.

  “So what time did you go to Tesco?”

  “Must have been about half-nine or ten. Cupboards were bare so I did me big shop.”

  “Very strange time to walk half a mile to the supermarket, ten p.m. on a Friday. Especially when you have a corner shop just around the corner from you,” Sutton interjected.

  “Yeah, well, like I said, I was having a quiet night in and I wanted some snacks. Figured I may as well do me big shop then — it’s quiet that time of the night.”

  Nodding as if the explanation was perfectly reasonable, Jones took over.

  “I don’t suppose that you have any witnesses? Bump into anyone that knows you? Did you keep the till receipt?”

  “I didn’t see nobody I knew, but I think I might have the receipt.”

  Bending down, Clara started to root through her handbag. As she did so both officers were treated to a look down her impressive cleavage. A small tattoo of a rose adorned the top of her left breast.

  You can take the girl out of Essex…I guess that’s what happens when you aim for fifty per cent of school leavers going to university. Jones felt a sudden flash of shame, both at the eyeful he was getting and his sudden unbidden academic snobbery.

  He glanced over at Sutton, who smirked back at him and winked, before restoring his poker face. Clearly no shame being felt there.

  Finally, Clara sat up holding a large purse in triumph. Opening it, she removed a till receipt from Tesco — a very, very lengthy till receipt. With a flourish, she passed it over. A cursory glance and Jones felt his hopes fade. According to the time stamp on the receipt, Clara had been at the checkout at pretty much the same time that Tom Spencer was reporting the murder of Tunbridge. If the receipt was to be believed, Clara really had done her ‘big shop’ that night; he was amazed she’d managed to carry it all home. Even on a quiet Friday night, he couldn’t see how she could have travelled to Tesco from the crime scene, filled a trolley this big, then put it through the checkout in those few minutes. He’d get her story verified by somebody as soon as possible. But it looked as though she was in the clear.

  With everything concluded, Jones asked a uniform to see her out. Alone in the room with Sutton, he looked at him questioningly.

  “Thoughts?”

  Sutton was uncharacteristically wary.

  “I don’t know, guv. She has one hell of a motive and she was definitely not telling us the whole truth — her dialect wobbled quite a bit, the inner-city Essex came through more strongly towards the end. That might be an indication that she was lying—” he sighed “—but that till receipt looks pretty convincing,”

  “I agree. She was definitely holding something back, but we did hit her pretty hard with the questions about her pregnancy. She’s clearly still upset over the incident — that may have been enough to rattle her cage. Nevertheless, unless she had an accomplice, I don’t see how she could have done a shop like that in the time she would have had. I’ll send someone down to Tesco to speak to the manager and see if any of the checkout staff remember her or if she pops up on the CCTV. However, I think we can probably rule out Ms Hemmingway’s direct involvement.”

  Chapter 10

  By the time they had finished interviewing Hemmingway it was getting on for four p.m. Jones’ stomach was growling, the breakfast banana and single bite of cheese sandwich not nearly enough to placate it. Thirty minutes more, he decided, then they were waking up Severino regardless. If he was to have any chance of making the restaurant for six-thirty, they needed at least a preliminary statement from him within an hour or so.

  In the meantime, Jones decided he had to try and get something to eat, or, if that failed, more coffee. Heading back to the canteen, he was dismayed to find that not only were there no more sandwiches, all of the fruit was gone too. To add insult to injury, the vending machine selling crisps and chocolate bars had a large handwritten ‘out of order’ sign sticky-taped across the coin slots. Heading back into the briefing room, he saw that the coffee urn was still plugged in, so he settled for another dark black coffee loaded with sugar. His fifty-pence piece remained alone in the honesty jar.

  “Ah, Warren. I hear that we’ve made quite some progress this morning.”

  Jones nearly choked on his coffee. Jesus, the man must be wearing padded socks! He turned around to see a beaming John Grayson standing behind him.

  “It’s looking promising, sir. We’ve got plenty of leads and several suspects. We’ve almost ruled out Tom Spencer and it looks as though another member of the lab may be the culprit. He’s sleeping off a rather heavy night at the
moment though. I thought we’d do it by the book and make sure he’s fully fit before interviewing him; besides, it gives us a little extra time to finish searching his house.”

  Grayson nodded, clearly not overly interested in the minutiae of the investigation. “I’ve scheduled a press conference for tomorrow morning, eleven a.m. I want you by my side for it. Ideally, we’ll have charged this chap and everything can get back to normal. In the meantime, I’m about to issue a statement to keep the press happy. Any thoughts about what should be in it? Press liaison thinks we should hint that we’re going to throw them a large bone tomorrow morning, drum up some interest and make sure that we are seen to be moving fast and decisively.”

  Jones’ heart sank; he detested this nonsense. The twenty-four-hour news channels were like a voracious animal, constantly demanding to be fed, day and night. Although very much a product of the modern news era himself, Jones nevertheless longed for the old days when the beast was only fed once a day, in time for the deadlines for the late-night news or the next morning’s newspapers. Back then, Jones and his team would have had the luxury of all of Sunday to firm up their evidence before a late evening press conference to reveal what they knew.

  It also meant there was no way he could attend mass that morning. The local church had two Sunday services, the eleven a.m. service that Susan and Warren usually attended and an earlier nine a.m. service. Neither would be possible tomorrow — another black mark against his name in the mother-in-law’s book. For a brief, insane moment, Jones considered asking for the press conference to be postponed long enough for him to go to church with Bernice, or maybe he could run out now to attend the Saturday evening service that busy Catholics were allowed to attend in lieu of a traditional Sunday service. He mentally shook his head at the foolishness of the notion, a product of too little sleep and too much caffeine.

  Answering Grayson’s question, Jones had to advise caution at this stage. “We shouldn’t count our chickens before they’ve hatched, sir. We’re still waiting to interview Severino. Forensics are still searching his house. We don’t know if anyone else is involved yet. I’d play it safe and simply confirm the identity of the deceased and the time of death, admit that we have a couple of people helping with our enquiries and ask for anyone with information to step forward.

  “Besides, if Severino doesn’t play ball, we may not be ready to charge him before tomorrow’s press conference. Then we’d look a bit silly.”

  Jones could see that Grayson sorely wanted to say more, to make the following morning’s press conference seem more compelling. Perhaps that way the news outlets would send out some of their big-name reporters, rather than the second-raters stuck with the Sunday shift that nobody wanted.

  Tough, thought Jones, he was damned if he was going to let the tail wag the dog.

  Chapter 11

  Detective Constable Gary Hastings pulled up outside the Tesco Extra that Clara Hemmingway had supposedly visited on the evening of Professor Tunbridge’s murder. Locking the doors of the Peugeot police car he’d borrowed — you couldn’t be too careful, he thought, and he’d never live it down if anything happened to the car when he was on a routine job — he strode in through the automatic doors. A couple of teenage girls smirked at him, but he ignored them, the job too important for distractions from the local jail-bait. Although he wasn’t privy to all the details, he knew that this was a key part of the investigation into the Tunbridge murder.

  Ever since he’d joined the police, Hastings had wanted to join CID. Now, after a couple of years as a detective constable, he was starting to prepare for his sergeant’s exam. Being given sole responsibility for checking out the alibi of one of the apparently many suspects in the case was small beer, but you never knew, he thought, if he got himself noticed it could only help when he applied for promotion.

  Walking purposefully up to the customer service desk, he introduced himself to the woman operating the till and asked to speak to the duty manager.

  “Sure thing, love. That’ll be Mr Patel today.”. She motioned to the security guard loitering by the cigarette kiosk. “Oluseye go fetch Ravvi out of the office, will you, please?”

  Grumbling, the security guard slouched off to a set of double doors marked ‘Staff Only’. As he waited Gary discreetly eyed the woman. Her name was Maureen and according to her name tag she was pleased to help. About five feet and early-fifties, he judged, she was large chested and squat, probably a few stone over her ideal weight. Her grey hair and ruddy complexion reminded him of those bustling ladies of a certain age that seemed a permanent installation in the church that he’d attended since childhood. Any minute now he expected her to ruffle his hair and say that she knew his mum — unlikely since his parents both lived over a hundred miles away.

  “They say that you know you’re getting older when the police start looking younger. You look about the same age as my Amy’s son Neville.”

  DC Hastings, acutely aware of the fact that at twenty-four years old he could still pass for seventeen, even in his dress uniform, fought back the urge to scowl. Mentally he upgraded her age to late fifties and, perhaps a little uncharitably, revised his estimate of her build to ‘morbidly obese’.

  Fortunately, he was saved from further pleasantries by the arrival of the duty manager, a small middle-aged man. Introducing himself, Gary asked if there was somewhere quiet that they could talk in relation to an ongoing investigation. The manager, clearly relieved that Hastings wasn’t there to ask questions about selling alcohol or tobacco to underage kids, led him through the staff-only doors to ‘backstage’ as he called it. Hastings noticed that the staff side of the door had a large poster on it proclaiming ‘Smile! You’re going on stage’.

  In contrast to the brightly painted walls of the shop floor, the walls here were drab plasterboard. Mr Patel led Hastings down a maze of corridors, the walls adorned with ‘employee of the month’ pictures — mostly spotty teenagers, Gary noticed — large eye-catching posters reminding staff to be vigilant about unattended parcels and shoplifters, as well as the obligatory health and safety notices. They passed a series of small, cubicle-like offices with staff busy working on PCs. One office, sturdier than all of the others, had an open door. As they went past Gary noticed a Securicor driver in helmet and body armour standing next to an open safe. Two similarly attired Tesco employees scowled at him as he was led past. It was all Gary could do not to stop and stare — by the looks of that safe, the long-predicted demise of cash in favour of credit and debit cards was still some way off.

  Finally, they reached the duty manager’s office. A little larger than the others, it had a generous desk and comfortable-looking chair. As they entered Patel grabbed one of the metal-framed visitor’s chairs from behind the door, pushing it shut behind them as he did so. Once they had sat down, Hastings took out his notepad and the plastic wallet containing the photocopy of Clara Hemmingway’s till receipt.

  “Without going into specific details about the case we’re working on, I wonder if you could identify the checkout assistant who served this customer last night. We have some questions that we need to ask them.”

  “Of course, I’d be pleased to help. Let me see.” Taking out a small pair of reading glasses, the manager stared intently at the till receipt.

  “Let me just look up which colleague dealt with this customer.” Turning to his PC, he clicked the mouse a few times before rapidly typing out a series of numbers onto the keypad.

  “Aha. Kevin Peterfield. He was logged onto the till.”

  “Is Mr Peterfield working today?”

  A few more clicks of the mouse and Patel nodded.

  “Yes, he started his shift about three hours ago. Would you like him to come in?”

  “Yes, if you wouldn’t mind. Hopefully it shouldn’t take too long.”

  Patel picked up his phone, asking for someone to find Peterfield.

  The two men passed the next couple of minutes in silence. As he concentrated Hastings became aw
are of the low-level hum of background noise surrounding him. Through the walls he could hear the tannoy system announcing three-for-two offers. Strange that they hadn’t put an announcement over the speakers for Peterfield, he mused. As if reading his mind, Patel motioned with his head towards the shop floor.

  “There’s no point putting out a tannoy announcement for Kevin. Unless he’s nipped off to the bathroom he should be sitting right at till number seven. Quicker just to walk down and collect him.”

  Hastings nodded and the two men settled back into silence. In the background, Gary could hear the whine of an electric motor and muffled voices shouting instructions. Probably a forklift in the warehouse, he guessed.

  A few moments later, there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in!”

  A nervous-looking youth entered the room. Seeing Hastings, his eyes widened in curiosity, then worry when Hastings was introduced. For his part, Gary forced a smile. According to the manager, the kid was under eighteen. Why then did he look as if he could pass for Hastings’ much older and bigger brother? He had to be six feet three and the five o’clock shadow that coloured his jowls looked a lot thicker than Hastings’ fine stubble. Hastings shaved daily but rather in hope than expectation; once a week would probably have been sufficient.

  “Don’t worry, Kevin, you’re not in any trouble. Take a seat. I just have a few questions about a customer that you served.”

  “Sure, anything I can do to help, Officer.”

  Even his voice was deeper and older-sounding than Gary’s.

  “According to the till receipts, last night you served this woman. Do you remember her?”

  Hastings slid a headshot of Clara Hemmingway across the desk. Peterfield looked at it for a few seconds.

  “Yeah, definitely. I can’t remember the time, but I definitely remember her.”