The Last Straw (11 page)

“That could have been the end of it. Angela kicked me out, fair play, and I’m sure Betty and Doug were happy to tell her ‘I told you so’, but there was still the issue of Josh. Angela never wanted to see me again, unsurprisingly, but amazingly Betty stood up for me. By now Angela was back with her parents and Betty basically said, ‘My house, my rules. Josh needs his dad and I’m not letting him get off scot-free.’ I think at first she was worried that I’d just piss off and leave them.

“As it happened, I was terrified that it would all have to go to court and I’d end up taking Josh to McDonald’s once a month if I was lucky. Anyway, she turned up at the bedsit I was renting and said in no uncertain terms that I was a shit husband but a good father and that a boy needs his dad. So that was that.” He shook his head slightly, as if he still couldn’t quite believe his own memory.

“Josh stayed with his mum and Betty and Doug helped her look after him whilst she went back to college. I started night school and with a little help from my own mum and dad managed to afford the rent on a two-bedroom flat so Josh could stay over. I saw him most weekends, and when he got a bit older and started going to school, Betty used to insist that Angela and I co-ordinate our shifts so that when Angela was on nights he could stay with me and I’d take him to school.

“Anyway, he’s seventeen now, starting to think about university. He’s always got on well with my second wife, Marie, and he probably spends as much time at mine as his mum’s. He has his own room in our house and he’s only a ten-minute walk from Angela’s so he often turns up in the evening to watch the footie with me on Sky. Angela and I still aren’t the closest of friends, but we both go to parents’ evening and any reports from school are sent around to me as well.”

Sutton shook his head again, as if in wonderment or disbelief. “It’s amazing. Betty still doesn’t like me very much, yet without her I’d be like half the fathers in this nick, barely seeing their kids and constantly going to court over broken access orders.”

Jones was at a loss for words. Sutton had just shared a clearly intimate part of his life with him. Maybe the two of them could work together.

“You make me feel guilty for all the wicked thoughts I’ve been having about my own mother-in-law, Tony. I’ll make sure I get an extra big bunch of flowers when I see her tonight.”

Sutton grinned, then turned sober. “Well, sir, may I suggest that we crack on, then? Sooner we’re done, sooner you can find a garage with a cut-price deal on daffodils.”

Chapter 8

As Sutton headed back to the canteen to round up the rest of the team Warren unwrapped the cling film from his cheese and tomato sandwich. He carefully peeled back the top slice of bread and plucked the sorry-looking slices of tomato from on top of the micron-thin layer of Cheddar resting on a much thicker layer of margarine. The tomato’s juice had soaked the top layer of bread, making it soggy. Carefully wrapping the tomato in the cling film, he deposited it in a nearby waste basket. Why couldn’t a man just get a plain cheese sandwich? Biting into the sandwich, he grimaced. Where it wasn’t soaked with tomato juice, the starchy white bread was dry, verging on stale, and the cheese was indistinguishable in flavour from the margarine. One bite was enough, he decided, and the remains joined the tomato and cling film in the bin.

Rejoining Hardwick and Sutton in the briefing room, he saw that a number of other detectives had also returned to the station. There was a low buzz of conversation. Kent, he saw, had started making use of the whiteboards, summarising the information flowing in from the investigators. Doing his best to ignore the faint, tantalising smell of somebody’s microwaved ready meal — clearly somebody better prepared than he to work on a Saturday — Jones called the meeting to order.

By agreement, it was decided to leave Spencer and Severino until last, to see if anything else came out of the mix before they narrowed the investigation prematurely. Starting with DS Kent, he asked the man to fill everybody in on what information had been acquired so far.

First of all, the house-to-house inquiries at the few residential properties nearby had resulted in no leads; no strange noises or suspicious strangers hanging around during the time of the murder or in the hours preceding it. Similarly, as expected, none of the local businesses had CCTV that overlooked the university building. The traffic cameras along the roads adjacent to the department were also useless, focused as they were on the roads and a nearby junction rather than the building itself. It looked as though between the university’s CCTV blind spots and the patchy traffic camera coverage in the area, it would be quite possible to approach the building and enter it on foot undetected.

Turning to the call-centre logs that night, no reports had surfaced as yet of any crimes taking place within a mile or so of the Biology building. Overall it had been a fairly quiet Friday night with no more than the usual amount of closing-time fisticuffs, drunken vandalism and domestic violence.

Dr Crawley and the university’s Personnel and Student Services departments had been helpful in supplying the names and details of the laboratory’s various workers and students, including the undergraduate student, Clara Hemmingway, that Tunbridge had his alleged affair with. A list had been drawn up on one of the whiteboards, headed ‘Potential Suspects’ with additional columns such as ‘Motive?’ and ‘Alibi?’. Jones had a feeling that before the day was out, a second board might be needed.

On a different whiteboard, a second list had been drawn up headed ‘Witnesses’. The two students that Tom Spencer claimed to have spoken to immediately before locking himself in the PCR room were named. Officers were on their way to interview them to check that they corroborated his story. A third whiteboard was simply labelled ‘Forensics’. This was blank at the moment.

Now it was Jones’ turn. Quickly, he summarised the interviews with Crawley and Tompkinson, adding a few more names to the suspects board. With that done, he moved on to Spencer. With the swipe-card logs from the PCR room and main-building entrance and assuming that the two students corroborated his story, Sutton proposed that they interview him one last time then eliminate him.

Jones shook his head. “Let’s not be too hasty. We don’t know that Severino didn’t have an accomplice and he was the only other person in the building at the time. Something doesn’t feel right about him.”

Sutton grunted non-committally. Ignoring him, Jones pressed on. “Spencer aside, number one suspect at the moment is Dr Antonio Severino, an Italian postdoctoral researcher in Tunbridge’s group. It seems that Tunbridge shafted him big time a few weeks ago and by all accounts he left in a furious if not murderous mood. We’re doing background checks on him now. CCTV has an unidentified male entering then exiting the building within the timeframe consistent with the murder. The building’s swipe-card logs suggest that the suspect used Severino’s access card. We arrested him an hour ago at his house. Unfortunately he seemed to have been having a one-man party last night and is busy sleeping it off in the drunk tank. We’ve a brief and a translator standing by for when he rejoins the land of the coherent. In the meantime, Forensics are searching his house and looking for trace evidence.”

Jones looked around the room. “Anything else to add? Any more questions?”

“Have we confirmed the wife’s alibi yet?”

Kent answered this. “We’ve tracked down a couple of her dinner companions and the duty manager from the restaurant last night claims to have remembered the party. Till receipts match her credit card number. We’re waiting on CCTV from the restaurant, but it looks as if she’s cast iron at the moment.”

Another hand. “Have we got any more forensics yet? What about the post-mortem?”

“Full results from the PM are promised by tomorrow evening. Preliminary forensics are consistent with what we had this morning. We can expect a full report from the unit at Welwyn tomorrow. No word as yet from Severino’s place. A computer forensics team from Welwyn will be looking at Tunbridge’s laptop, to see if there are any clues there, particularly as to why he was working alone on a Friday night.”

No more hands were raised, so Jones decided to assign roles to those present and close the meeting.

Calling Sutton over, he outlined his plans. Severino wouldn’t be fit for interview for a few more hours, so they had time to re-interview Spencer, who had just arrived at Reception. Jones was also keen to speak to the late professor’s one-time mistress, Clara Hemmingway. A couple of uniforms were dispatched to her student flat to bring her in for questioning.

* * *

Making their way down to the station’s number one interview room, Jones arranged for the desk sergeant to fetch Spencer. Moments later, the young man shuffled in. Dressed in a clean T-shirt and neatly pressed chinos, he was a far cry from the paper-suited, blood-stained mess from the night before. Escorting him was a middle-aged black woman in a smart, pinstriped suit carrying a briefcase. She introduced herself as Denise Jawando, his solicitor. Although he wasn’t under arrest, Spencer’s parents had insisted on her presence as a precaution. Jones noted that her handshake was perfunctory, her expression unsmiling.

As soon as all were seated, the recorders running and the appropriate introductions made for the tape, Jawando launched in.

“May I remind you, Chief Inspector, that my client is here voluntarily as the witness to a crime in which he played no part and that he is not under arrest?”

Smiling tightly, Jones kept an even tone. “Thank you for your assistance. Mr Spencer, for the record, could you tell us again what happened last night?”

All eyes turned towards the young researcher. Fresh clothes notwithstanding, he looked dreadful; it had been barely twelve hours since he had found the body, yet he looked as if in that time he had lost a week’s worth of sleep. He was of average height and build, his hair a dirty blond, its length midway between scruffy and fashionably long. A few days’ stubble darkened his jowls.

“I was working late, trying to finish off some PCR reactions before going home. I went down to the PCR room on the ground floor about nine.” The student had a broad Manchester accent, although his diction was precise and absent the urban drawl possessed by many native Mancunians.

“Can anyone confirm that?”

“Like I said last night, I said ‘Hi’ to a couple of Stanley Westlake’s lab who work near there, Chloe and Steven. They were going to the Hogshead for a pint. I said I’d try to join them in an hour or so, but not to wait for me in case I was late.

“I was in the PCR room for an hour or so — you can check that, because it has a swipe-card lock — before going back up to the lab.”

“What were you wearing?” interrupted Sutton.

“What you found me in: jeans, T-shirt and a lab coat, with latex gloves.”

“When did you leave the PCR room?”

“About quarter-past ten, I guess.”

“Did anyone see you then?”

“No, I don’t think anyone was left in the building by that time, but again the swipe machine should confirm my exit.”

“Where did you go next?”

“Nowhere, I went straight back to the lab. I put the completed PCR reactions in the freezer. I’d seen Alan’s office light was on when I came back up, so I decided to pop my head around and say ‘Goodnight’. That’s when I saw the body.”

“You were still wearing latex gloves, a lab coat and a face mask when we arrived. Seems a little strange that you didn’t take these off if you were going to say ‘Hi’ to the boss.”

Spencer shrugged vaguely. “I dress like that all day, every day. I probably just forgot.”

“Tell me what happened then, Tom.”

Spencer’s eyes became downcast. “The moment I came in, I saw the blood. He was spun in his chair staring towards the doorway. I could see from the state of his throat that he had to be dead, but I checked for a pulse anyway. Then I dialled 999.”

Jones nodded in understanding. “May I ask why you didn’t use your mobile phone to call us? You young people seem to have them turned on constantly these days. I wouldn’t have thought many people your age could use a landline.” Despite his almost light-hearted tone, the question was a serious one. For Spencer’s generation, the mobile phone was like an extension of their body. Office phones and other semi-obsolete equipment were almost invisible to them. Spencer had an expensive smartphone in his pocket when he was arrested, indicating that he wasn’t a total Luddite.

“I saw a picture of one on the Internet and used Wikipedia to tell me how to use it,” responded Spencer with an almost straight face. Warren smiled briefly in response, before becoming sober once more.

“Tell me, Tom, how much did you hate Professor Tunbridge for stopping you passing your PhD?”

The question was deliberately brutal and out of the blue; Jones wanted to see what Spencer’s response would be. He blinked a few times, as if trying to understand the question. “Alan and I had our differences, sure, but I’d never dream of killing him.”

Jones and Sutton said nothing, waiting. The silence stretched uncomfortably. Eventually, Spencer broke it, as they knew he would. “Anyway, I have done pretty much everything I need. I’d be mad to kill Alan — I needed him to sign off on everything.” Jones and Sutton said nothing, apparently ignoring the contradiction with everything that they’d found out that morning.

“I was just doing a few more experiments, before I wrote up the final conclusion.”

Now it was Jawando who broke the silence. “I think we’ve heard enough, gentlemen. My client has a provable alibi. He was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.” At that moment, there came a knock at the door.

Sutton answered it, stepping into the corridor. After a few moments he returned and whispered into Jones’ ear, who nodded, then addressed Spencer.

“We’ve just got confirmation from the two graduate students that you saw on your way to the PCR room. Along with the security logs showing swipe-card usage, it seems that your alibi stands up. I think that’s enough for today. We may need to contact you again in the future, however, to answer further questions.”