The Last Straw (49 page)

Warren leaned back in his chair. “It seems that the chief architect of this whole affair was the late professor’s wife, Annabel Tunbridge, and you could argue it all started nearly thirty years ago. They met and married back in the early 1980s, when she was a junior lab technician in Tunbridge’s first laboratory. Screwing young women that he supervised became something of a lifetime habit, I’m afraid. Anyway, as Tunbridge’s career progressed, she left her own career and became a full-time mother to their two children, following him across the Atlantic as he accepted posts in a number of US laboratories. When they came back to the UK, the kids were school age and Tunbridge was starting to make a name for himself. Although the plan had been for Annabel to go back to work and study for her own PhD, they found it impossible. Tunbridge would do secondments for months at a time in laboratories across Europe, whilst Annabel stayed at home and played housewife.

“By the time the kids were old enough for Annabel to consider going back to education, too many years had passed and the desire to go back to study just wasn’t there any more. At least on the surface. I think that urge never really went away and, although she’ll probably never admit it, I think she resented him for the choices they made. I can imagine that the resentment only grew as his career skyrocketed and the kids finally left home to do their own thing.”

“A powerful motive, but hardly enough to commit murder over, Warren. What changed?” The chief was leaning back in his chair, clearly enjoying the tale. Rumour had it that the chief was an amateur novelist on the quiet and that when he retired, some of the many tales that he had heard on the job would be appearing in hardback — suitably fictionalised, of course. Jones hoped for at least an acknowledgement in the foreword — some royalties would be even better.

“Well, it seems that lust entered the equation. Tunbridge’s philandering was an open secret around the university and in academic circles, although there is a sort of unspoken rule that ‘what happens at conference, stays at conference’, but it’s hard to imagine that his wife didn’t have at least some clue about what was going on. Anyway, it seems that life in the Tunbridge house was not at all cosy and hadn’t been for some time. Tunbridge was by all accounts an arrogant egoist and something of a sociopath. I doubt he was much fun at home.

“The rumour mill had been suggesting for some time that the marriage was on the rocks. However, that was the last thing that Mrs Tunbridge wanted. A senior professor’s salary isn’t too bad and Tunbridge made a fair bit on the side from speaking engagements and his royalties from some early patents that he co-authored, plus she knew full well the significance of her husband’s research and the last thing she would want to do is divorce him before it reached fruition.”

“But surely, if she killed Tunbridge, she also killed the research so that there would be no money anyway?”

“Well, that was the beauty of it, sir. On the surface she had no motive to kill him and, if anything, plenty of reasons not to kill him. She only really piqued my interest when I learnt that Tunbridge had told others that he was considering a divorce. It seemed inconceivable that she didn’t know about it, yet she made no mention of it to me and played the part of a grieving wife perfectly. Of course that’s not really a big deal, so I simply kept it in mind.”

Naseem nodded. “I think that’s fair, Warren. A reasonable interpretation could have been that she still loved him and the grief was genuine or that she felt his talk of divorce was just that. I think that twenty-twenty hindsight is a bit much to ask of my officers.”

Warren smiled appreciatively, whilst not believing a word of it. He knew full well that the inquiry board would be demanding not only perfect twenty-twenty hindsight but retrospective clairvoyance also. Still, that was their job, he supposed.

“Anyhow, whilst she could turn a blind eye to his bed-hopping, she was herself playing a dangerous game. For the past couple of years, it seems that she and Tunbridge’s experimental officer, Dr Mark Crawley, had been spending some quality time together.

“Why he and Mrs Tunbridge hooked up we’ll never know. She’s still a handsome woman for her age and both had been treated badly by Tunbridge over the years. Crawley spent a lot of time dealing with the fallout from Tunbridge’s lack of social graces and, whilst he would be the first to admit that he had it good career-wise with Tunbridge, he clearly hated the man. It could have been something genuine between them, or it could have been a way of figuratively screwing Tunbridge by either or both of them.

“Either way, Crawley was having troubles at home: his wife’s parents are ill and he’s been having problems with his kids. We also found out that they had decided to remortgage their home to have an extension done, right before the credit crunch and Mrs Crawley lost her job. With house prices falling and her parents needing care, not to mention the eldest off to university, it seems that financially Crawley was up shit creek without a paddle.”

“And so they hatched their little plan?”

“Pretty much. Crawley had joked in the past that he should bump Tunbridge off and take over his empire. At some point, the joke became an idea.”

“I thought it was established that Crawley couldn’t afford the time to set up and run his own research group, what with all that was going on in his private life?”

“We thought so too, bearing in mind what Crawley himself had told us. But when I telephoned Professor Tompkinson, he dismissed that out of hand. He pretty much ran everything anyway. Give it a couple of years and they could have suddenly announced a breakthrough and nobody would have been at all suspicious.”

Naseem nodded.

“So what actually started the ball rolling?”

Warren paused thoughtfully. “We’re not entirely sure what precipitated the whole thing. Tunbridge’s contemplation of a divorce was probably the final trigger, but an important catalyst was Clara Hemmingway.”

“Ah, I wondered when she would make an appearance.”

“She appeared in November of last year when she was randomly assigned to him as a tutee to write an essay. Well, Tunbridge is something of a predator when it comes to women. He is clearly able to spot vulnerable young women and, despite appearances, Hemmingway is vulnerable. Who exploited who is a matter for debate. Tunbridge may have been the senior of the two, but Clara had been manipulating men since she was in her teens. He probably didn’t stand a chance.”

“So then he has his fun then dumps her?”

“Exactly. But, of course, she was pregnant and she tried to blackmail him into supporting her. The daft thing is, if he hadn’t been so arrogant he could probably have bought her off, no harm done. But instead he figured he was the university’s golden boy and she had more to lose than him and called her bluff.”

“So instead, she did the unexpected and went to Tunbridge’s wife. But Annabel Tunbridge already knew everything. She had his email password and knew all about how close he was to a lucrative breakthrough — and divorcing her. So they teamed up.”

“So that accounts for Hemmingway, the wife and her lover, Crawley, so where does Tom Spencer come in?”

“Well Tunbridge had treated Spencer appallingly and was on course to pretty much end his career before it started. Mark Crawley, on the other hand, had always treated Spencer well. Add in the charms of Miss Hemmingway and his abuse of steroids and they had themselves the perfect killer.”

The chief was clearly enraptured. Jones noticed that he’d diverted all his phone calls to his secretary, lest he be distracted by something as trivial as a call from the Home Secretary.

“What about this mysterious investor Priest? I get that he was fictional, but didn’t Tunbridge meet him?”

“They simply paid an American exchange student that Spencer knew to approach Tunbridge during the networking sessions of a conference. A smart suit, a business card and Tunbridge’s own hubris did the rest.”

“Well, it’s a hell of a tale, Warren. So what tripped them up?”

“Inconsistencies that seemed small in isolation but bigger when put together. Karen Hardwick was convinced that Tom Spencer’s alibi just didn’t make any sense. All pretty technical and entirely inconclusive, but it sent us back to look closer.

“Then there was Severino’s claims to have been seduced by a woman who sounded suspiciously like Clara Hemmingway — she threw us off the track for a bit with her clever supermarket alibi, but once we discarded that it became apparent that she was in it up to her neck. In the meantime, the calls she made to Severino as she seduced him opened the door to a network of four anonymous mobile phones, all of which were activated in the run up to the murder and which communicated solely with each other. Of course, by the time we figured this out, the two of them had disappeared into the wind.

“Their biggest miscalculation was killing Mark Crawley. At first glance it looked like a suicide — he even left a note on his computer. But the problem was that in it he took responsibility alongside Severino — which contradicted what we had already figured out. Further, it made no sense that he would happily lay the blame on Severino but try and protect the other people we knew had to be part of the conspiracy. Forensics soon figured out that the suicide and the note were both faked.

“What we now think is that Crawley had realised that the net was closing in and had gone to Annabel Tunbridge with the suggestion that the two of them confessed to being involved in the planning, then offering up Spencer and Hemmingway as scapegoats, hoping for a more lenient sentence. Forensics have since found what they think is the original version of Crawley’s suicide note, which was in fact a confession to his wife and children before he handed himself in, and it seems that he and Annabel Tunbridge decided to enjoy one last night of freedom before giving themselves up.

“But in reality, Mrs Tunbridge had no intention of falling on her sword. As far as she knew, there was no evidence to link her to the murder and she was unaware that we were searching for Spencer and Hemmingway. She figured that if they could get rid of Crawley and link him to Severino, the three of them could brazen it out.”

Naseem whistled. “I don’t know if she was brave or foolish.”

“I’d settle for arrogant, sir.”

“Works for me. Is that the original note there?” He gestured at the printout in Warren’s hand.

Warren nodded. “It seems that they copied and pasted chunks of this original, presumably to keep his wording and phraseology — remember he was dyslexic — then filled in the gaps themselves and hoped nobody would notice the difference.” He handed over the sheet.

Deer Lizzy,

By know you will know of my arrest. I am typing this because I can’t bare to look in your eyes when I tell you the truth. I am so sorry for what I did. It was a wicked thing that we planned, I can only hope that by confessing to my crime one day you and the boys will forgive me. Please now that I only did it for us. Money is so tight and with your mum and dad so ill its only going to get worse. I couldn’t bear the fought that you an the boys would be made homeless.

I have been a bad husband and I know that this will all come out in the end. I had an affair with Alans wife Annabel. We both enjoyed the excitement of going behind his back and things were so stressful at home that I wanted to get away from it. I now there were times you felt the same.

I will not try and blame it all on Annabel since I am an adult and went along with it, but when Alan started talking about getting a divorce, I told her, hoping that she would join me. But Annabel instead was angry and said she had only stayed with Alan because she believed in Trident Antibacterials. Alan would discuss his ideas with her and she would help prepare his conference talks. She felt she deserved part the millions he would earn.

I am sure that you will learn all of the details from the press but I need to confess it here to you. Annabel and I plotted to steal the labs research and set up our won company. But we realised that we couldn’t do it without getting rid of Alan first. So we contacted Tom Spenser and a student called Clara Hemmingway that Alan had got pregnant. Together we planned his killing.

Killing Alan was wrong, but the most wicked thing was setting up pour Antonio Severino. I want to state for the record that Antonio was entirely innocent and should be released immediately.

Yesterday I went to Annabel and we decided that it had gone far enough. She is coming around this morning and we will drive to the police station together to confess. Why the delay? Because if I have realised one thing in the past few days, it is that I love you and the boys more than life itself. I hope that by confessing my crimes I can also gain your forgiveness. This will be the last time that we are together, us and the boys. By the time I get out of prison they will probably be groan up.

I really hope you will be waiting for me when I come out.

I love you all so much,

Mark

There was a respectful silence for a few seconds.

“Do you think that this will lessen the pain of his poor wife and kids?”

Warren shrugged resignedly. “I don’t know. Maybe one day, but at the moment I think they are too stunned. I went to see her yesterday and she was clearly not in the same room as me.”

“Do you think this will be admissible in court during the trial?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. The CPS are deciding if it’s worth submitting. But it’s really only the icing on the cake. We have plenty to charge them with regardless.”

“What puzzles me is why Spencer and Hemmingway were around Tunbridge’s house when you arrived. It doesn’t seem to make any sense.”

“Well, Spencer and Tunbridge were lying low until the shit storm died down. We’ve no idea what their plans were in the long run — to re-emerge and brazen it out or to run away. So ask yourself, where is the last place anyone would have expected to find them? Pretty ballsy, I agree. It also meant that Tunbridge could keep an eye on them.”

“But what about her son? He met Spencer and Hemmingway at his mother’s house. Was he involved?”

“Apparently not. And so what if he met them? He was already due to fly back to the States the day after the funeral. You may have noticed that I haven’t yet mentioned the couple’s daughter. It seems that she didn’t even bother coming home for the funeral. Their son Simon has spent more time catching up with old friends than comforting his dear old mother, although he did seem genuinely shocked and upset that his father had been murdered. Apparently Tunbridge was banking on him being safely gone before we went public with any photos of the missing culprits. I guess that BBC America doesn’t screen
Crimewatch
reconstructions.”