Paul Gitsham - The Last Straw

How did he manage it? he wondered. Prisoners weren’t allowed belts or shoelaces, to prevent just this type of thing occurring. Furthermore, prison cells were designed so that prisoners couldn’t hang themselves. There was nowhere high enough for them to loop the noose and drop. The governor was cagey at first, but after reassurances again that nothing would be leaked to the media before the prison’s official statement and the results of their inquiry he had admitted that Severino had wrapped his jeans around his neck, then around the frame of the bunk-bed — and simply fallen backwards.

Whether Severino had known that there was no way to achieve a hangman’s drop in such a short distance and so throttling was the only way to cause death was not yet known: he wasn’t ready to be interviewed just yet. Nevertheless, the technique appeared reasonably effective. The governor had a note of grudging admiration in his voice as he noted that very few people had the strength of will to throttle themselves to unconsciousness. Their survival instinct almost always kicked in and saved them. It appeared that Severino had managed to override this instinct until it was almost too late, although the prisoner who raised the alarm said that he was alerted by thrashing noises, so it seemed that he had saved himself in the end.

Nevertheless it had been a close call. Thanking the governor and once again promising not to say anything to the media, Warren hung up. Staring at the wall, he thought back to the meeting the day before. A cold chill ran through his body, before settling in the pit of his stomach as he remembered his last look at Severino. Warren knew that the look of terror on the man’s face would stay with him for a long time.

* * *

The unpleasantness of the conversation with the governor of The Mount weighed heavily on Warren’s mind and he was therefore glad when Karen Hardwick knocked on his office door a few minutes after he hung up.

“Guv, I’ve just got back the information on the mobile phone that the mystery woman used to contact Severino, but it doesn’t look as if it will be much use.” Karen Hardwick tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice as she handed the email that she’d just printed over to Jones.

The document was short, just two pages in length. The first confirmed that the phone number belonged to an unregistered, pre-paid, Pay-As-You-Go SIM card on the T-Mobile network. No customer name was available. No top-ups had been made as the card had been bought with two hundred minutes and one hundred texts, and paid for by cash, so there were no associated credit-card details. First usage on the network had been on Saturday July thirtieth.

The second page listed all incoming and outgoing calls. Karen had already circled Severino’s number, which had been called on Tuesday ninth August, presumably to arrange their planned meeting on the Friday of Tunbridge’s murder. That Friday evening, there were a further half-dozen calls from Severino, none of which were picked up.

Interspersed between these calls were several different numbers. Looking carefully at them, Warren spotted that they came from three separate numbers. Looking quickly down the rest of the list, he saw that in the weeks since the SIM card had been activated, only those three numbers had been called. His gut told him that it wasn’t a coincidence.

Sensing Karen’s disappointment, Warren put on a smile for her. “This isn’t completely unexpected. The likelihood that somebody planning a murder would use their own mobile phone number is pretty slim. Criminals have been using throw-away mobile phones for years. These days, the networks have made it even easier for them. They just have to buy a Pay-As-You-Go SIM card. That’s much easier to dispose of than a whole phone, which if it is tracked back to you will probably be covered in your DNA and fingerprints.”

Karen made a face. “Great. Sometimes I wonder if the phone companies do this sort of thing just to make our jobs more difficult.”

Warren chuckled in agreement. “Having said that, Karen, don’t be too harsh. The phone companies have done us a little bit of a favour. Criminals are increasingly using their own personal handsets now, just replacing the SIM. And if we can link the SIM card to the handset we can get all sorts of other useful information from their phone.”

“But how do we link the two, unless we already have them in custody and have confiscated their phone?”

Warren pointed at the list of mobile-phone numbers. Beside all of the outgoing calls was a string of numbers. The same digits each time, Karen noted.

“This is the phone’s IMEI code. Every mobile device has one and it is unique to that handset. Your telephone number is linked to your SIM card. Change the SIM card and you change the telephone number.”

Karen nodded her understanding and Warren continued. “However, the handset also has its own code, which it transmits to the network. So, each time a call was made from this SIM card, the IMEI number was sent along with the telephone number. One of the purposes of this is to allow stolen phones to be blocked. If you get your phone nicked, then your phone’s IMEI code can be blocked, making it useless.”

“So can we look up the IMEI code of the handset and see who owns it?”

Warren sighed. “Sadly not. Registering your phone with the network is the owner’s responsibility and most people don’t bother — it’s daft really as it protects your phone from being used by thieves. I guess people figure that as long as they get a replacement handset, it doesn’t really matter what happens to their old one. If everybody who bought a phone was automatically registered, it would make our job a lot easier and make mobile-phone theft deeply unattractive immediately.

“If the owner of this handset was registered, it would say so on here. All we know is that the phone is a BlackBerry Curve smartphone.”

“What about the SIM card — do they keep records?”

“I would imagine that the card was bought with cash. But it’s a lead worth following. Why don’t you get on it? You might get lucky and we may be able to get CCTV footage of the SIM card being bought. And in the meantime, do another request for the records from these three new numbers, high priority. If we can demonstrate that these telephones were all chatting to one another on the night Tunbridge was killed we might be able to bring them in on a conspiracy charge at least.”

Jones looked at the list of names on his notepad. The team had made a lot of progress over the last few days in tracking down and interviewing many acquaintances of the late professor. Pretty soon, it would be time to start re-interviewing some of those that the team were less happy about.

With Antonio Severino in custody, now was the time to make certain that the case that they had was water-tight. The last twenty-four hours in particular had started Warren worrying that the case might not be as straightforward as it had first seemed. One thing seemed certain and that was that some of the interviewees had been holding back. Exactly what they were holding back and precisely how significant that might be, Warren didn’t know, but it made him uncomfortable.

It was for this reason that at midday, Jones and Gary Hastings pulled into a quiet suburban street in the north of Middlesbury. Although not nearly as exclusive as the leafy avenue that the Tunbridges had called home, it was a pleasant enough collection of modest, paired semi-detached houses. This particular neighbourhood of streets were named after flowering plants common in the area: Rose Drive, Peony Close and, in this case, Petunia Avenue. Warren wondered if in years to come there would be a Japanese Knotwood Close.