Paul Gitsham - The Last Straw

“Won’t Dr Crawley be at work this time of the day, guv?” asked Hastings, puzzled.

“I certainly hope so. It’s not him that we’ve come to see.”

With that, he slowed to a halt a few doors down from number 128, the address listed as belonging to Crawley and his family. Before they got out of the car, Warren briefed Hastings quickly as to what his strategy was and what part he wanted Hastings to play.

Number 128 was paired with an identical mirror, number 126, and it was up this carefully maintained driveway the two police officers strode. The doorbell was answered almost instantly, presumably by the person who had watched them approach through the upstairs net curtains. This was a good sign, Warren hoped.

The door opened bare inches before being stopped by a flimsy chain. A mass of curly white hair, framing a carefully made-up right eye, behind thick glasses, peered curiously through the gap between the door and its frame.

“Yes, may I help you?” The voice was strong but clearly that of an older lady. Its tone was the mixture of annoyance and curiosity often expressed by private citizens unexpectedly disturbed by a knock to the front door in the middle of the day.

“Police, madam. My name is Detective Chief Inspector Warren Jones and this is Detective Constable Gary Hastings, Middlesbury CID.” Both men held up their warrant cards.

“Oh, my.” The woman’s tone turned to one of concern mixed with excitement. “Has something happened?”

“Nothing for you to be concerned about, Mrs…?”

“Turnbull, Patricia Turnbull,” she supplied reflexively, confirming the identity that Warren had found from his computer checks earlier.

“As I said, nothing for you to be worried about. We are simply conducting some routine enquiries. I wonder if we could come in?”

“Of course, Officers.” The door closed briefly as the chain was released, then reopened fully to admit the two officers. Mrs Turnbull was a sprightly looking older woman that records showed to be seventy-nine years old. Dressed in a flowery summer dress, she exuded a faint smell of lavender as she stepped back to let the two officers into her home. Warren was pleased to note that even though the ground was dry as a bone and his shoes couldn’t have been at all dirty, Hastings instinctively wiped his feet on the welcome mat as he entered. Small details like that mattered to some people and Warren immediately knew that they had just edged up a notch in the old lady’s estimation.

She led the two men into her living room. Glancing around, Warren could see it was a classic example of what he privately called ‘generic middle-class elderly couple’. It was furnished in lighter colours such as cream and beige, the predominant motif ‘flowery’. Large bay windows with net curtains dominated the front wall, giving a huge panoramic view of a sizeable chunk of the street. A three-piece suite surrounded a large wooden coffee table covered with flowery coasters. Warren noted that the carpet surrounding the armchair nearest the window was depressed with additional indentations, as if the armchair was regularly moved from its current position. He smiled to himself as he mentally worked out the chair’s new position — directly in front of the bay window.

The rest of the room was the well-dusted and eclectic mixture of photos, ornaments and knick-knacks that a couple of this age would be expected to accumulate. A heavy tread announced the arrival of the other half of the couple, preceded by a booming voice, “Was that the doorbell, Pat? It better not have been those bloody Jehovah’s wotsits again. Men of God or not, I’ll give them a piece of my bloody mind… Oh, hello…”

The owner of the voice stopped dead in his tracks, his face flushing red with embarrassment as he took in the sight of Warren and Gary, dressed in suits not dissimilar to travelling preachers, Warren now realised.

“Detective Chief Inspector Warren Jones and Detective Constable Gary Hastings, Middlesbury CID. We’re just conducting some routine enquiries and wondered if you could help us,” he introduced himself hastily, sparing the poor man’s embarrassment.

“Oh, er, Donald Turnbull, pleased to meet you.” A short stocky man with a small pot belly, dressed in brown corduroy trousers and a checked shirt open at the neck in deference to the warm summer weather, his handshake was strong. Warren could feel the roughness of calluses that spoke of a lifetime of working with his hands rather than sitting in front of a desk.

Mrs Turnbull smiled as if vindicated. “See, he never even heard you come in. Deaf as a post, he is, but he won’t admit it.” She turned to her husband as if looking for confirmation.

“Not so deaf I can’t hear your bloody nagging, woman,” he replied waspishly. Deciding to get them all back on track before he and Hastings became witnesses to a double homicide that had probably been brewing for fifty years, Warren cleared his throat loudly.

“Oh, sorry, Officers, where are my manners? Please, take a seat.”

By unspoken consent, Warren and Hastings each took an armchair. The Turnbulls sat next to each other on the sofa. The positioning of the furniture meant that questions could come from either side, a tactic that often worked for reluctant interviewees since if used skilfully it could disturb their equilibrium. Warren suspected that wouldn’t be necessary in this case.

“So how can we help you? Is it about the murder up at the university? Our next-door neighbour worked with the poor man, I believe.” Mrs Turnbull was practically salivating with excitement. No need for a lengthy explanation, then, or good cop, bad cop with this one, decided Warren wryly.

“Yes, we’re just conducting some routine enquiries.”

“Why? I thought you’d caught your man? Italian chap, wasn’t he? You don’t suspect Mark Crawley, do you?” This from Mr Turnbull.

Warren raised a hand quickly to forestall his questioning. “Like I said, Mr and Mrs Turnbull, these are just routine enquiries.” He was beginning to sound like a parrot, he realised, and he could see their scepticism at the over-used cliché. “Whenever there is a major investigation it’s normal for the police to check out the background of every person connected to the victim to build up a fuller picture of them. We’re just dotting the Is and crossing the Ts.” Inwardly, Warren winced. He’d repeated that cliché so many times in the past few days he was in grave danger of coining a catchphrase.

“Oh. They only seem to focus on the suspects in CSI ,” said Mrs Turnbull, looking a little dubious.

“That’s because they only have sixty minutes to tell the story, not including twenty minutes of bleeding adverts,” interjected Mr Turnbull, rolling his eyes at his wife’s apparent foolishness. Warren said nothing, neatly avoiding an awkward discussion.

“Well, anyway, first of all, how long have you lived here, Mr and Mrs Turnbull?” Warren started.

It was Mr Turnbull who answered, after a few seconds of stroking his small, trim moustache. “Fifty-one years this October, I believe.”

“Yes, that’s right. We had our eldest, Charlie in 1959. He’ll be fifty-two this year. We were living with my mum and dad at the time whilst we saved for a place of our own. Little Charlie arrived a bit sooner than expected. We’d hoped to be in our own place before we started having children. There wasn’t really enough room to bring up a baby as well, especially since my two youngest sisters were still at home also. But we coped. And then Donald’s grandmother — God bless her soul — passed away leaving him a small sum of money. With our savings, it was just enough to put a deposit down for this place. And here we still are.” She looked at her husband.