The Last Straw

by Paul Gitsham

  Walking up the drive, Karen saw that Tunbridge’s silver BMW was present, along with what she assumed was his wife’s Ford Focus. The doorbell was answered in a few moments by a young man, who, from the description, was likely to be the Tunbridges’ son. By way of greeting, Karen held up the black bag with the laptop.

  “Detective Constable Karen Hardwick. I’ve just popped by to return your father’s laptop.”

  “Oh, thank you, that’s very good of you.” He reached to take the laptop.

  Karen flushed slightly in embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry, Mr Tunbridge, technically it’s your mother’s property and so I will need her to sign for it.”

  “Oh, OK.” He seemed slightly nonplussed. “Mum’s actually having a meeting at the moment. Some friends from the university have dropped by and I think they are arranging the eulogy for Dad’s funeral next week.”

  Karen cursed herself for not ringing ahead. Now she would have to return the laptop to the station and try again later. It was one thing to hold onto a piece of paperwork overnight, but quite another thing to hold onto a victim’s property — she shuddered to think what would happen if her flat was broken into and the laptop stolen, Unlikely, yes, but still…

  “All it requires really is a couple of signatures and a quick visual inspection, then it’s all yours. One more thing ticked off the list.” She gave her most winning smile, making it sound as if the list in question were his, not hers.

  He thought for a second. “Fair enough, I’ll see if she’s free. Why don’t you wait in her den? She’s fussy about filing paperwork immediately anyway and, besides which, her den and Dad’s office are usually the only places in the house with working biros.”

  Following Simon Tunbridge through the hallway, Karen could hear the murmur of voices in what she presumed was the living room.

  It soon became clear to her why they called the professor’s workspace an ‘office’ and Mrs Tunbridge’s a ‘den’. Situated under the stairs, the room was little larger than a closet, with a small desk just large enough for Mrs Tunbridge’s own laptop and a half-size filing cabinet. A couple of shelves held various office knick-knacks; a pile of books was stacked on the filing cabinet. It made sense, Karen supposed. Mrs Tunbridge was a housewife and lady of leisure, from what she’d heard, so was unlikely to spend hours in here working, just the occasional bout of household paperwork, she guessed.

  Simon left and she heard him enter the living room. The voices stopped, before she heard Simon’s voice and a female voice talking. The woman sounded annoyed, although Karen couldn’t make out any words. Glancing around the office again, Karen’s eyes were drawn to the pile of books on the filing cabinet. They seemed mostly to be well-thumbed computer manuals. She made out a few of the titles: HTML for Dummies and Designing Winning Webpages. Something tickled at the back of her mind. Hadn’t DCI Jones mentioned in briefing that Mrs Tunbridge designed websites for the local Rotary Club? Looking closer, she was unable to suppress a gasp of surprise.

  Hidden behind the manuals, away from prying eyes, was a black, false leather A5 binder. Embossed in gold on the spine was the current year, a small spot of something brown and crusty partially obscuring the number two. Tunbridge’s missing diary!

  Chapter 55

  The phone rang in Jones’ office. Snatching it up, he hoped it was the call he had been waiting for. “DCI Jones.”

  “It’s Alicia Washington, Welwyn CID. PayPal just got back to us with the owner of the credit card that paid for the website you’ve been investigating. You aren’t going to believe this.”

  “Try me.” Warren managed to keep his tone even, resisting the urge to scream, ‘Tell me, damn it!’ down the phone.

  “The website was paid for by a Professor Alan Tunbridge.”

  * * *

  Karen felt her heart begin to pound and her breath caught. Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew some latex gloves. Not bothering to put them on — a little difficult to explain if she was caught — she used the edges of the gloves to slide the computer manuals fully out of the way, revealing the black organiser. The outside of the organiser was still spotted with what must be dried blood, although some effort had been made to clean the worst off. Next to the binder was a similarly stained USB memory stick.

  Outside the den she could hear Simon’s voice saying something to his mother, then her voice, louder and clearer, “Take your father’s car — the keys are on the side. I may need mine later.”

  Time to call in the cavalry, Karen decided. Taking her phone from her handbag, she pressed the home key. Nothing. Oh, no, not now! The phone had turned itself off again. Swearing under her breath, Karen depressed the on button firmly. The screen lit up. Outside the small room she heard the front door open and a shout of farewell from Simon, followed by the clash of it closing again.

  Although she knew it was far too soon, she glanced at the phone’s screen again. It was still showing the phone manufacturer’s logo. It could be another thirty seconds or more until the phone finally finished loading up its operating system then found a network signal. Assuming of course that was even possible in this little room underneath the stairs.

  With that in mind, Karen turned to leave the room. Suddenly the door opened, making her jump. An attractive, middle-aged woman stood in the doorway.

  “Well, what have we here?”

  * * *

  Tunbridge paid for the website? That hardly made sense. Why would he pay for this fake website that was then used to lure him to his death? Warren scratched his head thoughtfully. Looking around, he cast his eyes across the various pieces of paper that he’d spread out across his desk. His mind was whirring. The clue was here somewhere; he could feel it in his gut. But where? What piece of the puzzle was he missing? His gaze fell on the call list for the anonymous SIM card that they believed belonged to Clara Hemmingway. In amongst the numbers that they had identified as Tom Spencer’s and Crawley’s anonymous SIM cards and Severino’s mobile phone was another number, again linked only to an anonymous SIM card. The call list for that SIM card showed that it had only received and sent calls to Hemmingway and Crawley’s SIM card.

  Who was this fourth person and what was their role in the affair? The SIM card was of course un-registered and the unique IMEI code of the handset that used the SIM was not listed on the database. If only Warren could link the number to a phone he might get somewhere. More in hope than expectation, he picked up Spencer’s call log. A quick glance showed that unsurprisingly the code for his smartphone was different. Why would he have a second anonymous SIM?

  Next Severino’s handset. Again, no match. Then Crawley’s. Nothing. Then he had a sudden thought – the IMEI code was known to be assigned to a BlackBerry smartphone. Didn’t Alan Tunbridge have a BlackBerry? Warren’s heart started to pound. Maybe the killers contacted Tunbridge directly? What would it mean if that had happened? His mind spun; surely that would make no sense. He riffled quickly through Tunbridge’s phone records until he found the sixteen digit code.

  No match.

  Of course there wasn’t a match, he berated himself. The records showed that the phone had been called at 22:30 by Mark Crawley and answered in a conversation that lasted two minutes. At this time the scene would have been swarming with police and paramedics. Tunbridge’s phone was in his trouser pocket; there was no way it could have been answered and a two-minute conversation held.

  Holding Tunbridge’s phone record in his hand, he noted how thick the stapled pile of papers was. A memory tickled the back of his mind. Simon Tunbridge talking about his father’s planner and how they’d bought him the new phone at Christmas. A family plan, he’d said… Almost without conscious thought, Warren flicked the pages over to reveal the second set of calls listed; linked to her husband through a shared call plan, Mrs Annabel Tunbridge.

  The numbers matched.

  * * *

  Karen swallowed hard, hoping her voice would sound normal. “Mrs Tunbridge, I presume?”

/>   “Yes, my son tells me that you have some paperwork for me to sign for the return of Alan’s laptop?”

  “That’s right. It won’t take a moment.” Karen’s mind spun furiously; she needed to get out of the house immediately and call for back-up.

  “Unfortunately, I’ve just realised that I left one of the sheets in the car. I’ll be back in just a second.” It sounded weak to Karen’s ears, yet amazingly the other woman moved to the side to let her out of the room. As she did so she glanced into the den. Her sharp intake of breath showed that she realised Karen’s error at the same time Karen did. With all of the fussing over her phone, Karen hadn’t remembered to slide the computer manuals back to where they concealed the diary and memory stick.

  Without a second thought, Karen pushed the older woman away and sprinted for the front door.

  “Stop her!” bellowed Tunbridge, her voice a mixture of fear and fury. Reaching the door, Karen fumbled with the unfamiliar locks. Finally she yanked the door open and stumbled out into the daylight.

  The blow to the side of her head was like an explosion. The world flared an impossibly bright white, before fading to black.

  Chapter 56

  Jones burst out of his office. “It was his wife all along.”

  Sutton spun on his chair. “Sorry?” He’d clearly been deep in thought and was struggling to change direction.

  Jones cleared a space on Sutton’s overflowing desktop and spread out the call-log sheets. By now, the other members of the task squad who were still present had gathered around the table, sensing a breakthrough.

  “The unknown fourth SIM card that Hemmingway called on the night of the attack? The handset ID matched Annabel Tunbridge’s BlackBerry smartphone. Not only that, the PayPal account that was used to pay for the fake website was paid for on Professor Tunbridge’s own credit card — who else would have access to his credit card?”

  Sutton was now fully up to speed, his agile mind piecing together the jigsaw puzzle and drawing conclusions almost as fast as Warren was revealing them.

  “So Mrs Tunbridge decided to kill her husband before he divorced her. Spencer was the hired gun, whilst Hemmingway acted as an accomplice and set up Severino—” his face darkened “—but I still don’t see what she has to gain from this. Any life insurance would now have to be split three ways — her, Spencer and Hemmingway.”

  “You’re forgetting Crawley. We know he didn’t commit suicide and his anonymous SIM card sits right in the middle of this little network of contacts. What if the original plan was for Crawley and Annabel Tunbridge to take over the research group and form a company to exploit Tunbridge’s breakthrough? Hell, maybe she’s the one that Mrs Turnbull suspected he was having an affair with? What if he started to get cold feet and was considering going to the police? Spencer and Hemmingway were in it up to their necks, but if he gave up everyone else and cut a deal, he might be able to get a conspiracy to murder charge and a sympathetic judge.”

  “I could see that working,” Sutton started, still looking a little dubious, “but what about Spencer and Hemmingway? How could they entice them to take part, beyond simple revenge?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t dismiss revenge out of hand Tony, but, even so, much of the work was Spencer’s. With Crawley as head of the group he’d probably pass his PhD and then end up with a job in the company, no doubt with all the usual perks. As for Hemmingway, it could just be money but she’s a science student as well. Probably guaranteed employment in the new company, I would have thought. I don’t think the details really matter right now. The main thing is to get an arrest warrant for Annabel Tunbridge. I just hope that she hasn’t done a runner like Spencer and Hemmingway.”

  Suddenly, Sutton went pale. “Oh, fuck!”

  Warren noted the look on his face. “What is it, Tony?”

  “I asked Karen Hardwick to return Tunbridge’s laptop on her way home.”

  * * *

  In situations like this, it was better to overreact than underreact and regret it later, Warren decided. As Sutton and Gary Hastings raced for the car park he grabbed a phone and rang the main switchboard, asking for emergency assistance from any uniform patrols in the vicinity of Tunbridge’s house. That done, he left the room in the steady hands of DS Kent, asking him almost as an afterthought to notify Superintendent Grayson of the breakthrough. As he clambered into his car and headed for the scene he offered up a silent prayer that Karen was OK.

  * * *

  Gary Hastings used his knees to brace himself as Sutton threw his sporty little Audi into yet another squealing turn. Strictly speaking, this was against regulations. The car was a private vehicle without lights and siren and as such shouldn’t be driven in such a manner. At this point, neither man could care less.

  “Straight through to sodding voicemail again. Either she’s turned it off, or that bloody handset has turned itself off. Shit, I have a spare handset at home from when my smartphone was playing up. I could have brought it in for her and then she wouldn’t be in this mess—” the illogic of that statement didn’t seem to register with the young detective constable “—and if I hadn’t forgot to go back to Tesco for those surveillance tapes when I said I would, we could have solved this days ago.”

  Sutton was in no mood for Hastings’ self-recriminations at this time. “Get over it, son, what’s done is done. Now we need to focus on cleaning this mess up and making sure that Karen is OK. Besides which,” he started, ignoring his own advice, “if anybody should be blaming themselves it’s me. What the hell was I thinking sending a trainee DC off on their own to return a victim’s property like she’s bloody FedEx or something?”

  With that, the car squealed into the road that led up to the Tunbridges’ house.

  “Which number is it?”

  “Twenty-six — but look, there’s Karen’s Fiesta.”

  The fire-red Ford stood out like a sore thumb amongst the expensive Aston Martins and top-of-the-range BMWs. Sutton pulled up behind the Fiesta with a final squeak of his tyres. Hastings was out of the passenger seat before the handbrake had clicked fully home.

  “Calm it, Constable,” hissed Sutton as he joined the young man. “We don’t know what we’re going into. They could be sitting in the drawing room having a cup of tea for all we know. No need to make a drama unless we have to.”

  Gary took a couple of deep breaths and nodded. Cautiously the two men approached the house. Keeping to the edge of the driveway in an attempt to minimise their visibility, they could see that the living room was empty. As they approached the front door both men stopped at the same moment.

  “Is that…?” started Hastings in a harsh whisper.

  “Looks like blood,” confirmed Sutton grimly, looking at the small reddish-brown patch on the top step. The front door was ajar.

  Procedure at this point would have been to wait for back-up, rather than going in alone, but the voices through the hallway put paid to that.

  “Stick her, she knows too much.”

  The two men exchanged glances; they recognised the voice. Hemmingway. And there was no more time to waste.

  * * *

  Warren pulled up behind Sutton’s Audi, leaving a second set of tyre marks on the smooth tarmac of the leafy suburban street. A few seconds later a marked police Peugeot, lights flashing, made it three sets.

  As the police piled out of the cars Warren spied Sutton and Hastings either side of the front door. He turned to the sergeant who’d joined him, ready to co-ordinate their assault on the building. Before he got a chance, though, all hell broke loose as Sutton reared back and planted his boot in the middle of the front door, yelling, “Police, everybody down on the floor!” The force of Sutton’s kick against the unlocked door almost took it off its hinges.

  “Now you know why they call him Subtle Sutton!” shouted the sergeant as they raced up the drive. Sutton and Hastings disappeared into the house. Barely a second later, Hastings re-emerged backwards and horizontally, crashing end over end down the
steps. Leaping over his prone body emerged a wild-eyed Tom Spencer. Skidding slightly on the loose gravel of the drive, he raced around the side of the house. Hastings shook his head slightly, before scrambling to his feet and taking off after the fleeing student.

  Warren made it to the front door, his heart sinking as he saw the prone figure of Karen Hardwick sprawled on the floor. Blood was smeared across her pale forehead. Sutton was kneeling next to her.

  “She’s breathing,” he confirmed. Lying on the floor next to them was the still figure of Annabel Hardwick, still holding a knife. Blood was trickling from her nose and her lips were split. Sutton shrugged, a grim smile on his lips. “Self-defence.”

  He motioned over his shoulder. “Clara Hemmingway legged it through there. I think there’s a back door through the kitchen.”

  “On it,” confirmed the uniformed sergeant, pushing his way through the crowd and running towards the kitchen. A wail of sirens heralded the arrival of another police car in the distance.

  * * *

  Hastings was sprinting flat out. Dressed as he was in trousers and smart shoes, he was nevertheless keeping up with the fleet-footed PhD student. Crossing the Tunbridges’ back garden, Spencer headed for the fence, a six-foot, wooden-panelled affair. Grabbing it with both hands, he swung over it assault-course style, dropping down onto the other side. Without pausing, Hastings followed suit. Ignoring the ripping sound of his trousers, he landed clumsily in the next-door neighbour’s flower bed. Scrambling back to his feet, he saw that Spencer was already halfway across the neighbour’s garden and was racing for the next fence.

  Forcing his legs to pound even harder, Hastings managed to gain a couple of metres before Spencer reached the next fence. This time the student misstepped slightly, stumbling on the soft soil of a vegetable patch. With less momentum behind him than he needed, he barely made it over the fence, having to scrabble with his feet and pull with his arms to complete the manoeuvre. Hastings took full advantage of the other man’s error, pushing himself to reach the fence only a couple of seconds after Spencer. Learning from his predecessor’s mistake, Hastings timed his strides perfectly and sailed smoothly up and over. Landing gracefully on both feet this time, he took off again, before realising that his quarry was nowhere to be seen. Barely had this registered when he felt a huge weight crash into his left-hand side.