The Last Straw

by Paul Gitsham

  The document was short, just two pages in length. The first confirmed that the phone number belonged to an unregistered, pre-paid, Pay-As-You-Go SIM card on the T-Mobile network. No customer name was available. No top-ups had been made as the card had been bought with two hundred minutes and one hundred texts, and paid for by cash, so there were no associated credit-card details. First usage on the network had been on Saturday July thirtieth.

  The second page listed all incoming and outgoing calls. Karen had already circled Severino’s number, which had been called on Tuesday ninth August, presumably to arrange their planned meeting on the Friday of Tunbridge’s murder. That Friday evening, there were a further half-dozen calls from Severino, none of which were picked up.

  Interspersed between these calls were several different numbers. Looking carefully at them, Warren spotted that they came from three separate numbers. Looking quickly down the rest of the list, he saw that in the weeks since the SIM card had been activated, only those three numbers had been called. His gut told him that it wasn’t a coincidence.

  Sensing Karen’s disappointment, Warren put on a smile for her. “This isn’t completely unexpected. The likelihood that somebody planning a murder would use their own mobile phone number is pretty slim. Criminals have been using throw-away mobile phones for years. These days, the networks have made it even easier for them. They just have to buy a Pay-As-You-Go SIM card. That’s much easier to dispose of than a whole phone, which if it is tracked back to you will probably be covered in your DNA and fingerprints.”

  Karen made a face. “Great. Sometimes I wonder if the phone companies do this sort of thing just to make our jobs more difficult.”

  Warren chuckled in agreement. “Having said that, Karen, don’t be too harsh. The phone companies have done us a little bit of a favour. Criminals are increasingly using their own personal handsets now, just replacing the SIM. And if we can link the SIM card to the handset we can get all sorts of other useful information from their phone.”

  “But how do we link the two, unless we already have them in custody and have confiscated their phone?”

  Warren pointed at the list of mobile-phone numbers. Beside all of the outgoing calls was a string of numbers. The same digits each time, Karen noted.

  “This is the phone’s IMEI code. Every mobile device has one and it is unique to that handset. Your telephone number is linked to your SIM card. Change the SIM card and you change the telephone number.”

  Karen nodded her understanding and Warren continued. “However, the handset also has its own code, which it transmits to the network. So, each time a call was made from this SIM card, the IMEI number was sent along with the telephone number. One of the purposes of this is to allow stolen phones to be blocked. If you get your phone nicked, then your phone’s IMEI code can be blocked, making it useless.”

  “So can we look up the IMEI code of the handset and see who owns it?”

  Warren sighed. “Sadly not. Registering your phone with the network is the owner’s responsibility and most people don’t bother — it’s daft really as it protects your phone from being used by thieves. I guess people figure that as long as they get a replacement handset, it doesn’t really matter what happens to their old one. If everybody who bought a phone was automatically registered, it would make our job a lot easier and make mobile-phone theft deeply unattractive immediately.

  “If the owner of this handset was registered, it would say so on here. All we know is that the phone is a BlackBerry Curve smartphone.”

  “What about the SIM card — do they keep records?”

  “I would imagine that the card was bought with cash. But it’s a lead worth following. Why don’t you get on it? You might get lucky and we may be able to get CCTV footage of the SIM card being bought. And in the meantime, do another request for the records from these three new numbers, high priority. If we can demonstrate that these telephones were all chatting to one another on the night Tunbridge was killed we might be able to bring them in on a conspiracy charge at least.”

  Chapter 30

  Jones looked at the list of names on his notepad. The team had made a lot of progress over the last few days in tracking down and interviewing many acquaintances of the late professor. Pretty soon, it would be time to start re-interviewing some of those that the team were less happy about.

  With Antonio Severino in custody, now was the time to make certain that the case that they had was water-tight. The last twenty-four hours in particular had started Warren worrying that the case might not be as straightforward as it had first seemed. One thing seemed certain and that was that some of the interviewees had been holding back. Exactly what they were holding back and precisely how significant that might be, Warren didn’t know, but it made him uncomfortable.

  It was for this reason that at midday, Jones and Gary Hastings pulled into a quiet suburban street in the north of Middlesbury. Although not nearly as exclusive as the leafy avenue that the Tunbridges had called home, it was a pleasant enough collection of modest, paired semi-detached houses. This particular neighbourhood of streets were named after flowering plants common in the area: Rose Drive, Peony Close and, in this case, Petunia Avenue. Warren wondered if in years to come there would be a Japanese Knotwood Close.

  “Won’t Dr Crawley be at work this time of the day, guv?” asked Hastings, puzzled.

  “I certainly hope so. It’s not him that we’ve come to see.”

  With that, he slowed to a halt a few doors down from number 128, the address listed as belonging to Crawley and his family. Before they got out of the car, Warren briefed Hastings quickly as to what his strategy was and what part he wanted Hastings to play.

  Number 128 was paired with an identical mirror, number 126, and it was up this carefully maintained driveway the two police officers strode. The doorbell was answered almost instantly, presumably by the person who had watched them approach through the upstairs net curtains. This was a good sign, Warren hoped.

  The door opened bare inches before being stopped by a flimsy chain. A mass of curly white hair, framing a carefully made-up right eye, behind thick glasses, peered curiously through the gap between the door and its frame.

  “Yes, may I help you?” The voice was strong but clearly that of an older lady. Its tone was the mixture of annoyance and curiosity often expressed by private citizens unexpectedly disturbed by a knock to the front door in the middle of the day.

  “Police, madam. My name is Detective Chief Inspector Warren Jones and this is Detective Constable Gary Hastings, Middlesbury CID.” Both men held up their warrant cards.

  “Oh, my.” The woman’s tone turned to one of concern mixed with excitement. “Has something happened?”

  “Nothing for you to be concerned about, Mrs…?”

  “Turnbull, Patricia Turnbull,” she supplied reflexively, confirming the identity that Warren had found from his computer checks earlier.

  “As I said, nothing for you to be worried about. We are simply conducting some routine enquiries. I wonder if we could come in?”

  “Of course, Officers.” The door closed briefly as the chain was released, then reopened fully to admit the two officers. Mrs Turnbull was a sprightly looking older woman that records showed to be seventy-nine years old. Dressed in a flowery summer dress, she exuded a faint smell of lavender as she stepped back to let the two officers into her home. Warren was pleased to note that even though the ground was dry as a bone and his shoes couldn’t have been at all dirty, Hastings instinctively wiped his feet on the welcome mat as he entered. Small details like that mattered to some people and Warren immediately knew that they had just edged up a notch in the old lady’s estimation.

  She led the two men into her living room. Glancing around, Warren could see it was a classic example of what he privately called ‘generic middle-class elderly couple’. It was furnished in lighter colours such as cream and beige, the predominant motif ‘flowery’. Large bay windows with net curtains dominated the f
ront wall, giving a huge panoramic view of a sizeable chunk of the street. A three-piece suite surrounded a large wooden coffee table covered with flowery coasters. Warren noted that the carpet surrounding the armchair nearest the window was depressed with additional indentations, as if the armchair was regularly moved from its current position. He smiled to himself as he mentally worked out the chair’s new position — directly in front of the bay window.

  The rest of the room was the well-dusted and eclectic mixture of photos, ornaments and knick-knacks that a couple of this age would be expected to accumulate. A heavy tread announced the arrival of the other half of the couple, preceded by a booming voice, “Was that the doorbell, Pat? It better not have been those bloody Jehovah’s wotsits again. Men of God or not, I’ll give them a piece of my bloody mind… Oh, hello...”

  The owner of the voice stopped dead in his tracks, his face flushing red with embarrassment as he took in the sight of Warren and Gary, dressed in suits not dissimilar to travelling preachers, Warren now realised.

  “Detective Chief Inspector Warren Jones and Detective Constable Gary Hastings, Middlesbury CID. We’re just conducting some routine enquiries and wondered if you could help us,” he introduced himself hastily, sparing the poor man’s embarrassment.

  “Oh, er, Donald Turnbull, pleased to meet you.” A short stocky man with a small pot belly, dressed in brown corduroy trousers and a checked shirt open at the neck in deference to the warm summer weather, his handshake was strong. Warren could feel the roughness of calluses that spoke of a lifetime of working with his hands rather than sitting in front of a desk.

  Mrs Turnbull smiled as if vindicated. “See, he never even heard you come in. Deaf as a post, he is, but he won’t admit it.” She turned to her husband as if looking for confirmation.

  “Not so deaf I can’t hear your bloody nagging, woman,” he replied waspishly. Deciding to get them all back on track before he and Hastings became witnesses to a double homicide that had probably been brewing for fifty years, Warren cleared his throat loudly.

  “Oh, sorry, Officers, where are my manners? Please, take a seat.”

  By unspoken consent, Warren and Hastings each took an armchair. The Turnbulls sat next to each other on the sofa. The positioning of the furniture meant that questions could come from either side, a tactic that often worked for reluctant interviewees since if used skilfully it could disturb their equilibrium. Warren suspected that wouldn’t be necessary in this case.

  “So how can we help you? Is it about the murder up at the university? Our next-door neighbour worked with the poor man, I believe.” Mrs Turnbull was practically salivating with excitement. No need for a lengthy explanation, then, or good cop, bad cop with this one, decided Warren wryly.

  “Yes, we’re just conducting some routine enquiries.”

  “Why? I thought you’d caught your man? Italian chap, wasn’t he? You don’t suspect Mark Crawley, do you?” This from Mr Turnbull.

  Warren raised a hand quickly to forestall his questioning. “Like I said, Mr and Mrs Turnbull, these are just routine enquiries.” He was beginning to sound like a parrot, he realised, and he could see their scepticism at the over-used cliché. “Whenever there is a major investigation it’s normal for the police to check out the background of every person connected to the victim to build up a fuller picture of them. We’re just dotting the Is and crossing the Ts.” Inwardly, Warren winced. He’d repeated that cliché so many times in the past few days he was in grave danger of coining a catchphrase.

  “Oh. They only seem to focus on the suspects in CSI,” said Mrs Turnbull, looking a little dubious.

  “That’s because they only have sixty minutes to tell the story, not including twenty minutes of bleeding adverts,” interjected Mr Turnbull, rolling his eyes at his wife’s apparent foolishness. Warren said nothing, neatly avoiding an awkward discussion.

  “Well, anyway, first of all, how long have you lived here, Mr and Mrs Turnbull?” Warren started.

  It was Mr Turnbull who answered, after a few seconds of stroking his small, trim moustache. “Fifty-one years this October, I believe.”

  “Yes, that’s right. We had our eldest, Charlie in 1959. He’ll be fifty-two this year. We were living with my mum and dad at the time whilst we saved for a place of our own. Little Charlie arrived a bit sooner than expected. We’d hoped to be in our own place before we started having children. There wasn’t really enough room to bring up a baby as well, especially since my two youngest sisters were still at home also. But we coped. And then Donald’s grandmother — God bless her soul — passed away leaving him a small sum of money. With our savings, it was just enough to put a deposit down for this place. And here we still are.” She looked at her husband.

  For the first time since arriving, Warren caught a glimpse of the affection that, contrary to first appearances, still bound the couple together after more than half a century. He wondered if he and Susan would still have that after fifty years… Bickering on the outside but in love more today than the first day they had met.

  Warren mentally pinched himself. Where the hell did that come from? he asked himself. Not once in the days since he had asked Susan to marry him had Warren ever thought for one second that they would be anything but deeply in love until ‘Death do us part’. Suppressing the disconcerting line of thinking, he forced himself to focus on the task in hand. Fortunately, it seemed that getting information out of these two would probably not be a great test of his interrogation skills.

  “Is that Charlie on the mantelpiece?” Hastings had clearly interpreted Warren’s pause as an invitation for him to step in and was pointing at a picture above the fireplace. It depicted a middle-aged man with his arm around a similarly aged woman, both sporting haircuts and clothing that were fashionable a decade or so ago. In front of them stood two teenagers, a boy and a girl. The backdrop behind them was that of Walt Disney World. The whole group were beaming ear to ear.

  “Yes, that’s him with his wife and their children, Maddie and Tim. That’s a few years old now. Tim would probably be about your age now, Constable.” Mrs Turnbull smiled fondly. “You know, Tim complained bitterly before they went that Disney World was just for little kids. Charlie reckons it was the best family holiday they ever had and Tim loved every second from the moment they arrived.”

  Hastings chuckled. “I remember thinking that when I went to Disneyland Paris. By the end of the visit, I didn’t want to leave!”

  “So you would remember when the Crawleys first moved in next door.” Warren now took over again.

  “Yes, now, let’s see…their eldest is going to university next year and Lizzi — that’s Mrs Crawley — got pregnant with him just after they moved in… It was the winter, I think…”

  “They moved in just after Christmas 1992,” proclaimed Mr Turnbull. “I remember because she told us she was expecting at that little barbecue we had in the spring to mark my retirement. Do you remember? She was drinking lemonade and I asked her why she wasn’t drinking something stronger, since it wasn’t like she had to drive home. And even if she did, Mark never drinks anyway — she could give him the keys.”

  “So would you say you knew the Crawleys well?”

  “Fairly well, I suppose. They are a nice enough couple and the kids have never been any real bother. We chat over the fence and usually invite each other over if we are going to have a barbecue, you know, just neighbourly, really. In fact they had us over for a few drinks last summer to thank us for putting up with all the mess and noise from when they had their new kitchen and patio extension built,” started Mr Turnbull.

  “I used to talk to Lizzi more years ago,” continued Mrs Turnbull. “She didn’t work for a few years off and on whilst she had the kids and I would chat to her as they played in the garden or she hung out the washing. I even kept an eye on them occasionally if she needed to pop to the corner shop.

  “In recent years we’ve spoken a little less. The children are older and don’t tend to play
in the garden any more and, with her parents being so ill, she tends to spend a lot of time visiting them.”

  “What’s the matter with them?” enquired Warren casually.

  “Well, her father’s been ill for a number of years. He had a stroke and he’s very frail, but her mother was fit enough to look after him at home and he’s still sharp mentally. But in the past couple of years, she’s been getting a bit forgetful. They think it might be, you know, Alzheimer’s.” She whispered the last word as if uttering a curse word or profanity, which Warren supposed it could be seen as, especially as you reached old age yourself.

  “Anyway, she is probably going to have to go into a home, but they are worried that he doesn’t qualify for funding, so they may not be able to find them something together unless they sell their house. I know that they are very worried about it all.”

  “So how would you say the Crawleys were as a couple?”

  For the first time there was a pause. Mrs Turnbull shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I’m not one for gossip, you understand.”

  Her husband snorted. “Then what’s the use of all the eavesdropping you do?”

  His wife shot him a poisonous glare, before continuing as if uninterrupted. “However, I do hear things now and again. And sometimes when I’m out watering the plants in the garden they come outside to talk on the mobile phone, privately, like.”

  “Never occurs to her to go back inside and grant them privacy,” interrupted her husband again, earning an even more poisonous scowl. Warren was feeling the urge to shoot him a look as well. Who knew what she was about to tell them?

  “Anyhow, it seems as though money is a big worry right now. They took out a second mortgage for the extension, hoping it would add value to the house. They want to move somewhere a bit bigger. Then of course this credit-crunch thing with the banks happened and they found themselves in negative equity or whatever it’s called. They owe more on the house than it’s worth. Then of course this thing with her parents happens and their lad wants to go to university next year, which will cost thousands now the government has raised tuition fees.”