The Last Straw

by Paul Gitsham

  The decision was instead made to focus on his past life. Would he flee to somewhere that he felt safe, or would he be wise enough to keep away from known associates and try to remain anonymous? Hoping that he sought the familiar, rather than the unknown, the team sifted through what information they had on the fugitive’s past. Local police forces were put on alert in Greater Manchester and Sheffield in case Spencer returned home or decided to seek refuge at his former university.

  Now, it just became a waiting game.

  * * *

  Warren sat in his office, brooding. It seemed almost certain that Spencer had committed the murder and now he was missing. There was little Warren and the team could do but wait and hope to hear from the teams searching for him. Nevertheless, there were still things that didn’t add up.

  The web of mobile phone messages had clearly hinted at a conspiracy involving at least four people. Buried in a drawer full of random junk in his room was the box that Spencer’s iPhone had come in, which contained a piece of paper with the phone’s IMEI number written on it. This confirmed Spencer as Anonymous Phone User Number Two. With Crawley’s Nokia confirmed as Phone Number Three, that left only phones numbers one and four to link to individuals. Who was the mysterious young woman, the apparent owner of Phone Number One, who it seemed had seduced Severino and stolen his swipe card and clothes? And what about the owner of Phone Number Four? What was their role in the sordid affair?

  As Warren mulled over the unanswered questions, hoping to come up with a new approach, his phone rang. Glancing at the caller ID, he was glad to see that it wasn’t from Superintendent Grayson; he wasn’t looking forward to that particular conversation.

  “Callum Foster, Image Analysis here. I’ve got some preliminary news on the nightclub footage you sent us from the Tunbridge case.”

  Warren grabbed a pen quickly, “That’s great, Callum, thanks for the quick turn-around.” Seventy-Two hours was a frustratingly long time to wait in a fast-moving case, but a surprisingly quick response from the overworked and undermanned Image Analysis department. Besides which, Warren had been taught long ago that making the effort to be polite and sounding grateful for any assistance given to you by the people whose services you relied on was rarely effort wasted. You never knew when you might need to ask them for a favour.

  “Well, don’t thank me just yet. We’ve barely started looking at the feeds from the cameras in the club and have only just located her. It seems that he was doing all of the buying — she doesn’t go to the bar once. No full facial shots there, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, well, I’ll take whatever you’ve got so far, Callum” Warren did his best to hide his disappointment.

  “I’ve just sent you an email of some enhanced still images taken from the video footage on the door. I think you might just find them useful for identification purposes. The pictures are blurry, but they are the best we can do, I’m afraid. See what you think.”

  At that moment, a new mail icon popped up on Warren’s desktop computer. Double-clicking, he saw that it contained several JPEG images. Opening the first image revealed it to be a close-up of the woman’s left ear. Despite the poor quality of the hugely amplified image, Warren could clearly make out the shape of her earring. A small metal trinket, in the shape of a teddy-bear. He made a quick note to have any future suspects’ houses searched for just such a trinket. Two more images showed the same picture with different enhancements, adding more detail.

  The next images were a close-up of her left hand. Her little finger had a gold sovereign ring on it, her ring finger was unadorned, whilst her middle finger appeared to have a simple band with a small stone embedded in it. Warren dutifully added these to his note. The presence of any one of these items of jewellery would mean nothing in court, but the presence of all three, although circumstantial, might be worth admitting as evidence.

  “The final image is a beauty, in more ways than one. We discovered it quite by accident when we were enhancing her ring finger. Thought it was a shadow at first, but then we took a closer look.”

  Warren opened the image, then gasped loudly, his heart rate leaping.

  “Er, you OK, guv?” The voice on the end of the phone sounded slightly worried.

  Somehow finding his voice, Warren reassured him that he was fine. Hanging up the phone, he continued to stare at the image. He now knew exactly who the mysterious woman was, but it didn’t seem possible. Everything had just got even more complicated.

  * * *

  Warren strode into the main office, heading for Tony Sutton’s workspace. On his way he called Karen Hardwick over to join them. Gary Hastings was nowhere to be seen. With a flourish he laid out the enhanced nightclub pictures, still warm from the laser printer, on the only clear space on Sutton’s desk.

  “I know who the mysterious young woman is that seduced Severino.”

  The two officers eagerly pored over the photos, their expressions turning from excitement, to recognition, then confusion. Sutton spoke up first.

  “Well, that doesn’t make any sense.”

  Hardwick said nothing at first, but her expression spoke volumes. She too was at a loss to explain the woman’s identity.

  “Are we sure it’s her? It could just be a coincidence.” She didn’t sound convinced.

  “That’s what I’m about to go and find out. In the meantime, I want you guys to try and come up with an explanation.”

  With that, Jones turned on his heel and left the two officers standing at Sutton’s desk staring at each other. Sutton broke the silence first.

  “Any suggestions, DC Hardwick, would be gratefully received, right about now.”

  Karen managed a tight smile.

  “I’m just a rookie, DI Sutton. I defer to your wisdom.”

  “Yeah, I was afraid of that.”

  Chapter 50

  Warren parked in the same spot as before, in the street adjacent to the White Bear. It was a little later in the day than his Tuesday visit and the pub doors were unlocked. Walking in, Warren noted the familiar smell of cigarette smoke. The room was empty, with nobody at either till.

  Behind the bar, an open doorway led through to the rear of the building; cigarette smoke drifted over the threshold. Warren could hear muffled voices and what sounded like cardboard boxes being moved around.

  “Hello, anybody in?” Warren called.

  “Yeah, ’ang on. Hold your bleedin’ horses,” the wheezy voice of Larry Stribling replied loudly.

  Hardly a textbook example of good customer service, Warren mused as he waited. A few seconds later, the landlord arrived, concealed from view by the three cardboard boxes of McCoys crisps he carried.

  “Oh, it’s you again,” Stribling greeted him, unenthusiastically. Warren remembered the smouldering bar towel from his last visit and wondered if it had caught fire in the end; that would probably account for his lukewarm reception today.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Stribling,” Warren proclaimed, forcing a wide smile. “I was wondering if I could ask you and your family a few more questions. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  Stribling opened his mouth to say something, then looked around the empty bar and let the lie die on his lips. He clearly wasn’t too busy to help.

  “Kids are out the back.” He turned and yelled through the open doorway. “Kel, Dazza, get down here. That detective’s back, wants to ask some more questions.”

  It took a further two more attempts, before the two teenagers finally appeared. Either Dazza had bought a multi-pack of same shit, different day T-shirts or he was attempting to reduce his carbon footprint by wearing clothes for several days at a time. A quick whiff of sweaty teenager suggested to Warren it was the latter.

  “Do you remember that girl I was asking you about? She came in here a couple of Fridays ago?”

  Cautious nods.

  “Could this be her?” Warren slid his mobile phone across the counter, a clear headshot on the device’s large screen.

  Kel and her fath
er looked first, both nodding tentatively. “Could be, hard to tell,” Stribling, admitted. His daughter was similarly unsure.

  “What about you, Dazza?” Warren held his breath as the grubby teenager reached over to look at the image. He paused for a long moment. “Yeah, definitely. She was well fit.”

  “Any distinguishing marks or features that you can remember?” Warren continued, holding his breath, now in anticipation.

  The youth continued to stare at the photo before clicking his fingers loudly. “Oh, yeah, I remember now. She was well fit, like I said, and she had a tattoo on her tit, a flower I think.”

  Warren resisted the urge to punch the air at the confirmation. A tattoo of a rose on her left breast; the same tattoo visible on the photos taken by the security camera in Mr G’s nightclub; the same tattoo that he and Tony Sutton had seen in the interview suite on Saturday. Clara Hemmingway.

  * * *

  Back outside in the warm, hazy air, Warren called Sutton.

  “Yeah, it was definitely her. Have you any ideas how Severino could have failed to recognise her?”

  “Assuming that Severino was telling the truth about not knowing her, I’m stumped. Supposedly, the whole lab met her and they went for lunch together. I find it hard to imagine that a warm-blooded Italian like Severino could have forgotten a looker like her.”

  “I agree, it doesn’t make any sense. Keep on checking.”

  “Will do, guv. Karen has some ideas that she’s looking at for the moment, but she hasn’t found anything yet.”

  “OK, I have an idea I’d like to follow up on. I’ll see you back at the station later.” Warren acknowledged the message and then hung-up.

  Climbing into his car, he headed back onto the main road. In a few minutes he had arrived at his destination.

  Recognising him before he even offered his ID, the middle-aged security guard opened the double doors to the campus Security lodge and admitted him into the small control room.

  “Hello again, DCI Jones. Anything we can help you with?”

  Jones pulled out his mobile phone and brought up the headshot of Clara Hemmingway he’d just shown to the Striblings.

  “Have any of you seen this young woman around the Biological Sciences building in the past few weeks, particularly last Friday night?”

  The guard who’d let him in fished a pair of reading glasses out of a top pocket and squinted at the image. “Can’t say that she looks familiar. I’ll see if any of the lads recognise her.” Walking towards the back of the room, he poked his head around an open door marked ‘Staff Only’.

  “Jim, Imran, come have a look at this picture.”

  A few seconds later a white, shaven-headed man who looked to be in his late thirties and a younger, Asian man emerged from the room, coffee cups in hand.

  The first man looked carefully at the picture.

  “She looks familiar… Oh, yeah, I remember her, Claire or something her name was.” He passed the phone over to his younger colleague. “You remember her? Lost her handbag in a nightclub a few weeks ago.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember her. Yeah, Claire or Clara or something. She turned up in tears about one a.m. one Friday night. She’d had a bust-up with her boyfriend or something. She stormed out of the club and left her handbag behind. Keys, wallet, phone, the lot. Bouncers wouldn’t let her back in. She turned up here a bit pissed and really upset because she didn’t know if her flatmate was in and didn’t know where to go.”

  “So she came here?” Warren voiced his surprise.

  “Oh aye,” said the first man, the slightest twinge of a Scottish accent colouring his voice, “we get all sorts. Female students in particular are encouraged to call campus Security if they are worried about their safety. Just last week, me and Imran persuaded a couple of local lover boys to leave some young ladies alone.” He smiled evilly, revealing a set of suspiciously straight teeth that didn’t seem to match his squashed nose.

  “Yeah, they got the message,” confirmed Imran with a certain amount of relish. Jones decided not to ask for details.

  “So what did you do when she turned up?”

  Jim shrugged. “What we usually do. We stuck her in the office with a cuppa and a box of tissues and phoned her flat to see if anybody was in. Luckily there was, so we let her finish her tea then drove her home.”

  “I see. Did she say anything whilst she was here?”

  “Well, young Imran here would be the one to ask about that. I left, didn’t want to cramp his style.” He smirked.

  For his part, Imran flushed slightly. “She didn’t say much. She calmed down when we contacted her flatmate and then she just asked the usual questions: how much crime do we get? How long have I been doing the job?”

  “It’s the uniform — you know what it’s like”, interrupted Jim with a leer.

  “I wouldn’t know, I haven’t worn one for years.” Jones was getting a bit tired of this boorish fool. “Go on, Imran.”

  “Well, as I said, she was interested in what we do here and how we keep an eye on so many cameras. She asked if I could see where she worked, so I zoomed in on the Biology building.”

  Jones perked up slightly.

  “Did she ask about the camera’s coverage at all?”

  Imran frowned. “No. She just wanted to see if we could peek inside the windows of the tea room. She joked that if we could she’d have to find somewhere else to skive off when she should be working, otherwise the boss might catch her on camera. I reassured her that we couldn’t see around there, because the camera is at the wrong angle…” The young man suddenly stopped, paling slightly.

  “Oh, shit…”

  Warren smiled grimly. So Clara Hemmingway knew all about the blind spot by the side of the building.

  Chapter 51

  Back at the station, Warren filled in the rest of the team on what he had found out about Clara Hemmingway.

  “She’s definitely the mysterious woman who seduced Severino. Which means that if that’s the case, she’s in this right up to her neck. The question is, why didn’t Severino recognise her?”

  Karen Hardwick spoke up. “I have an idea. When was Hemmingway introduced to the lab? When did her affair with Tunbridge start?”

  Warren answered immediately. “She started her project in November and presumably the affair started some time after that; she mentioned something about getting an extension on her essay.”

  “In which case, it’s possible Severino never met her.” Karen placed a file down that Warren recognised as Severino’s personnel file. She leafed through it quickly, before stopping at a page to which she had attached a Post-it-note.

  “According to this, Severino retained links with his previous research group at the University of Trieste in Italy. He popped over a couple of times a year to visit his old lab to share information on a long-standing collaboration, after which he usually delayed his flight home whilst he visited his family.” She smiled. “I wonder what the odds are that one of those sabbaticals coincided with the time when Clara Hemmingway was being introduced to the lab. He might never have clapped eyes on her.”

  * * *

  The telephone on Jones’ desk rang. Picking it up, he was surprised to hear the voice of Gary Hastings on the other end.

  “Sir, it’s DC Hastings. Remember I interviewed the Tesco employee that claimed to have seen Clara Hemmingway on the night of Professor Tunbridge’s murder?”

  “Go ahead, Gary, I remember the report.”

  “The manager of Tesco has just called. Apparently another member of staff believes that he also saw Clara Hemmingway that night. I think you’d better hear what he has to say, sir. He’s on his way in now.”

  “Good work, Gary. I’ll be down in a moment.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Umm, yes, sir.” Hastings took a deep breath.

  “I think I might have screwed up, sir.”

  Chapter 52

/>   Jones made it downstairs to the main reception in record time. Standing in Reception was a rather morose-looking Gary Hastings. He looked even younger than normal, if that were possible, thought Warren.

  “The witness is on his way in now, sir. The store manager is driving him down.” A ghost of a smile flickered across the youngster’s face. “Apparently police cars in the car park are bad for business.”

  “OK, then, let’s have a quick chat. Bring me up to speed on what to expect and what it is you think you’ve screwed up.” Jones said this last piece in an inviting tone. In his experience, those honest enough to admit their mistakes were usually wrong about the severity of the mistake, particularly younger and less experienced colleagues. And at least the kid — detective — had the guts to own up. Of course, if it turned out that he really had screwed up — enough, say, to cost them a prosecution — Jones would personally tear him a new arsehole…

  By the time the desk sergeant let them know that the witnesses had arrived, Tony Sutton had also appeared. He too had listened as Hastings had admitted that he had forgotten to go back and pick up the breakdown of the till receipt or request the full CCTV footage of the night in question. Fortunately, when the manager had phoned beforehand, he had remembered to ask for both and the manager was bringing them with him. How significant was the mistake? wondered Jones. Depending on what this witness said and what was on the receipt and CCTV footage, it could have been either very significant or entirely trivial. And what about DC Hastings? He wouldn’t lose his job over it — cock-ups happened — but the size of the blot on his record could potentially determine the course of his career for the next few years. Jones hoped for all of their sakes that the mistake was trivial. The heavy feeling in his gut predicted otherwise.

  Hastings introduced Sutton and Jones to Mr Patel the store manager, who in turn introduced Aaron Jenkins. Another seventeen-year-old checkout assistant, he at least looked the right age, noted Hastings. He was short and spotty, his hair was greasy and untidy, and his dark blue Tesco T-shirt seemed to hang off his skinny frame.