The Last Straw (13 page)

“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 aware 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.”

Hastings nodded encouragingly.

“What can you remember about her? Anything unusual? You must see hundreds of customers each shift — why do you remember her?”

Peterfield shifted in his seat, looking a little embarrassed. He glanced at Patel, who smiled tolerantly. He could probably guess why the teenager remembered her.

“Well, I remember her because she was kind of pretty, you know. It’s a long shift and all the faces blur together after a while, but a couple stick in the memory.”

“Fair enough. Anything else that you can remember? Anything at all? You never know how useful the smallest detail might be.”

Peterfield blushed a bit, mumbling, “Yeah, she was wearing a bit of a low-cut top. You could see loads. And she had a tattoo on her tit…sorry, breast.” He looked at Hastings, who remained stony–faced. “It was a rose or something. Left one, I think.”

Well, that confirmed the ID, thought Hastings. The photo he’d shown Peterfield had been a headshot.

“Thinking back, what can you remember about her? What else was she wearing? Was she with anybody else?”

“I can’t remember what else she was wearing.”

Hastings hid a smile; typical seventeen-year-old lad. No way was he going to remember what Hemmingway was wearing below the waist. There was only one thing that was going to stick in his mind after such an encounter.

Screwing up his eyes as if to remember, Peterfield leaned back slightly in his chair.

“She was on her own, I do remember that. Trolley not basket. I think she used carrier bags rather than bags for life. She used her card, Chip and PIN. Hang on… Her name on the card was Clare or something.”

“That’s great, Kevin. Can I take your details in case I need to speak to you again?”

The boy nodded, probably figuring that a chance to see her again in a line-up was better than nothing.

After Peterfield had left, Patel turned to Hastings. “Well, Officer, if there is anything else that we can help you with, please don’t hesitate to let us know.”

It was clearly meant as a dismissal; it was after all a busy time of the day.

Hastings thought briefly, should he ask Patel to canvass any other members of staff for any other witnesses? It was probably better not to, he decided. This was Hemmingway’s local supermarket; she was likely to be a regular customer. People might well get confused about the time or day that they had seen her and muddy the waters. Of course, there was one thing that didn’t get confused and that was CCTV. A quick look to check that she was alone and that the times matched and he was done, he decided.

“There is one more thing.”

Patel barely repressed a sigh.

“Do you have CCTV for the night in question?”

“Yes. The store is covered in cameras. We will have many hours of footage.”

Hastings decided to take pity on the man.

“I’ll speak to my guv to see if we need to pull in everything. In the meantime, could we just have a quick look to see what time she arrived and left and if she was on her own?”

Patel had clearly decided that there was no point arguing and that the sooner he co-operated, the sooner he could get rid of Hastings.

Motioning Gary out of his office and back down the narrow corridors, Patel led the young PC to another large, darkened room. In it sat a security guard, his eyes glued to a bank of half a dozen monitors, each with four changing views of the shop floor, car park and ‘backstage’ areas.

Finding footage of Clara leaving was easy. The time stamp on the receipt clearly showed the time that she completed her transaction and locating it took seconds on the digital security system. She certainly had done a big shop, Hastings noted as she struggled out of the door, laden down with multiple bulging carrier bags. Her skimpy top did nothing to hide her cleavage from the overhead cameras, much to the delight of the bored guard, he imagined. He noted the time: 22:34h. One minute later than the time on the till receipt. Seemed about right, he figured.