Paul Gitsham - The Last Straw

As he left the interview room Warren knew that he wouldn’t feel any elation until after the court case was concluded. Even then, he knew that it would be tempered by the knowledge that one person was dead and a young man’s life ruined, along with the family and friends of both men. Nevertheless, he was unprepared for the strange detachment that he felt as he looked back at the scene. Something didn’t quite sit right, he decided.

By early evening, Warren had finished the paperwork from charging Severino. The Italian was due in front of Stevenage Magistrates court, charged with murder, first thing in the morning. He stretched and yawned, taking a masochistic enjoyment from the cracking and crunching coming from his stretching vertebrae. Reaching for his phone to warn Susan he’d be home soon, he almost knocked it off the desk in surprise when it rang underneath his outstretched hand; glancing at the caller ID he saw it was an internal call from the desk sergeant. “Crime Scene Manager Andy Harrison from Welwyn’s Forensic Unit is here to see you, sir.”

Warren blinked in surprise. He hadn’t expected a personal visit, least of all this late on a Sunday. “Send him up please, Sergeant.”

A few moments later the forensics investigator was making himself comfortable in Warren’s visitor chair. The man was a short, rotund middle-aged man with a shock of unruly greying hair. No longer in his paper suit, he was currently dressed more like a builder rather than a skilled, expert scientist, wearing faded denim jeans, battered trainers and a tightly fitting green T-shirt proclaiming that ‘Nerds Rock’. Mentally, Warren chastised himself, remembering a debate with Susan about what a ‘scientist’ should look like and how young children, particularly girls, still thought of scientists as stuffy, white, middle-class men.

Stuffy was not a description that would immediately apply to Harrison, Warren soon decided. The man had a booming Yorkshire accent and a face that seemed constantly on the verge of breaking into a smile. His choice of verbal language was in stark contrast to the formal, medico-legal jargon that the reports he handed Jones were written in.

“I hope that our preliminary findings were useful to you,” Harrison started after the two men exchanged pleasantries.

“Just what we needed,” Warren assured him. “It was plenty enough to charge him and probably get him denied bail when he appears in court tomorrow. I assume that you’ve come to deliver the full story now?” Harrison nodded his agreement, fishing a pair of reading glasses out of his top pocket.

“No great surprises from the autopsy,” he started. “I popped over to watch and it were largely as you thought. It seems his attacker walloped him from behind with that bloody great piece of rock. Hair and blood from the rock match the victim and a compressed fracture at the back of the skull matches the shape. Minuscule fragments of rock embedded in the poor bugger’s skull match the rock type.

“Apparently the rock was a souvenir from the University of Boulder in Colorado, where the late professor spent a couple of years. Mark Crawley reckons it’s sat on the shelf above the door as long as he’s known him. It’s certainly dusty enough.

“From the angle of the impact, we would suggest that he was originally sitting with his back to the door, leaning over his laptop. Either he didn’t hear his attacker enter in time to turn around, or was expecting them so didn’t look to see who had come in.”

“So was that enough to kill him?”

“Not outright, obviously, or he wouldn’t have been squirting like a fire hose when his throat was cut. It would almost certainly have severely stunned him and there is evidence of some brain damage. He could easily have died at a later time from the blow.”

“So what happened next?”

“Tunbridge was on a swivelling office chair. It was rotated anti-clockwise away from his laptop; about forty degrees or so, presumably so that the attacker, who we think was standing to his right having entered the office from that side, was now directly behind him.”

Harrison jumped to his feet. “Could you sit in this chair, sir? It’s easier to show than explain.”

Feeling slightly self-conscious, Warren got up and sat down in his visitor’s chair. Harrison moved behind him, plucking a pen from the desk tidy. It reminded Warren somewhat of Saturday morning trips to the barber with his father as a child.

“The weapon found at the scene was a scalpel. The blood matches, as does the shape of the cut. It was probably taken from an opened packet we found in the consumables cupboard in the lab.”

Leaning over, he placed his left arm across Warren’s shoulder and chest, gripping the top of the chair; the effect was like a seatbelt. Holding the pen in his right hand, he placed it along the left side of Warren’s throat, pressing gently into the artery pulsing below the skin. Suddenly the happy memories of Saturday mornings listening to Motown music on Radio 2 and looking at ancient car magazines, whilst his father had his weekly crew cut, no longer seemed as cosy to Warren.

“Contrary to what you see in the movies, slitting a man’s throat ain’t easy. Stunning him probably made it easier than if he were kicking and screaming, but still it’s not a task for the faint-hearted. The placement of the cuts was very precise. They sliced the left carotid, then continued across the windpipe.” He moved the pen accordingly. “Then dug in and found the right carotid. It was a single stroke, although not necessarily extremely fast.”

Warren processed the thought for a moment. “I can see how that would work, but surely that would leave Tunbridge facing away from the door? And wouldn’t he have sprayed blood away from his attacker?”

Harrison agreed. “Exactly. At some point after the cut and whilst he was still pumping blood heavily, Tunbridge’s chair was turned clockwise to face the door, covering his attacker in blood.”

“Why?”

Harrison shrugged. “A little beyond my remit, sir. It’s possible that Tunbridge gave a few death kicks, or even that the attacker let go with his left arm mid-swipe — perhaps his nerve failed when the blood started pumping — and the swiping action turned the chair back around in the direction of the cut. He might just be a real sick puppy who wanted to look his victim in the face — some sort of messed-up dramatic shit he saw on late-night TV.

“Either way, it wouldn’t have lasted long. Bleeding out from both carotids takes only a few seconds. You can see from the colour of his skin that there wasn’t much left. No question it was the cause of death. The rest of the PM didn’t throw up any surprises.” He picked up a sheet of paper and started reciting the findings. “A moderately healthy man in his mid-fifties, about what we’d expect for a middle-aged desk worker. Preliminary blood tox’ shows nothing unusual; stomach contents are consistent with him having eaten a bowl of spaghetti bolognese about six p.m.; no alcohol present.”

Warren nodded. It certainly seemed to fit with his working hypothesis so far. He motioned to the rest of the photographs that Harrison had brought with him. “What else do you have?”

Harrison spread the photos out. “Here are the footprints out of the lab. Everything is a bit difficult to interpret, perhaps deliberately so. Our best story is that the killer was wearing those plastic overshoes that you found. He’s a clever bastard. It looks as though he wore two pairs. The inner pair had inserts, probably cardboard, to stop us getting a tread pattern or shoe size. The outer pair would have been covered in blood — this is almost certainly the pair found stuffed in the black bag. The footprints lead away from the office for several metres down the corridor, where they abruptly stop. There are some traces of blood on the wall. I reckon that the killer removed the outer pair of booties and put them in the black bag at this point. He probably leant against the wall as he did so, leaving those traces. It’s reasonable to assume that he took off the lab coat and his outer gloves here and also stuffed them in the bag, along with the scalpel.”