Paul Gitsham - The Last Straw

Jones and Hastings walked down the Turnbulls’ drive.

“Well done, Gary, you have good instincts. You kept the conversation flowing nicely with the chatter about Disney World. In interviews like that, you have to remember that they are undergoing a conflict internally. People such as Mrs Turnbull are natural gossips and their first impulse is to help the police, but they are understandably reluctant to get anyone that they know into trouble.

“The key is to relax them and get them to open up naturally, as if they are just having a conversation.”

“I see, but why did you choose me, rather than DI Sutton or another DC like Karen Hardwick?”

Warren smiled. “A couple of reasons. First I’m trying to work with as many different people as possible over the next few weeks, to get to know the team better; Second, I took a gamble and played the odds a bit, using some tricks my first DCI taught me.

“He said that if you are going into an interview like that and have the opportunity to do some basic research on your interviewees, do it as it might give you some ideas about how to conduct the interview. I looked up the nearest neighbours to Crawley’s house on the electoral register and saw that his next-door neighbours were an elderly couple. I also saw that the area has an active Neighbourhood Watch scheme. It’s a bit of a dodgy stereotype to say the least, but I figured Mrs Turnbull could very well be a curtain twitcher — the local gossip that knows everything — so I decided we should pay a visit.”

“Well, it might be a dodgy stereotype, but it seemed to work quite well. But that still doesn’t explain me being there.”

“Well, that’s an even dodgier stereotype, Gary, and I hope you’ll forgive me. Although there wasn’t any information on the web, there’s a good chance that a couple of that age have middle-aged kids. And that those kids may well have had their own kids. It’s not unreasonable to guess that at least some of those grandkids are about your age — mid-twenties.

“Elderly women in particular tend to be very fond of their grandsons, so there was the possibility that you would remind her a little of him. If she didn’t have a grandson, she might have a granddaughter, and you’d be the perfect sort of young man for any young lady to introduce to her gran.”

Hastings stood with his mouth open next to Warren’s car. “You brought me along for that? On the off chance that some old lady would take a shine to me and tell us more information? I don’t know how to take that.”

“Don’t think about it too much,” Warren advised. “It was little more than a stab in the dark and, to be honest, she was such a gossip I could have brought along DI Sutton in a tutu and she’d have still told us everything.”

Hastings clambered into the car, still shaking his head. He looked over at Warren surreptitiously. Either he’s a genius or a madman, he decided. But which is it?

* * *

Mark Crawley pulled into the end of his road. He’d left work early, recognising the early warning signs of a crippling migraine. Hardly surprising, he thought, given all of the events of the last few days. He had a handful of known triggers for his migraine; some were easily avoided, such as alcohol, others less so, such as stress. He was usually a pretty laid-back kind of person — you had to be to work with Alan Tunbridge — but recently his stress levels had been sky-high. It was a miracle he’d lasted this long without an attack. Now all he wanted to do was crawl into bed with the blinds down and take his pain medication. If he was lucky, he’d kill it there and then and be back to himself in a couple of hours. At the worst, he could be bed-ridden for the next thirty-six.

As he rounded the curve that led toward his house it was all he could do not to slam on the brakes in panic. Coming out of his next-door neighbour’s drive was DCI Warren Jones and another young man that he didn’t recognise. Forcing himself to slow his breathing, he fought the urge to turn the car around. There was only one reason that he could see for Jones to be visiting his neighbour and that was to ask questions about him.

He saw that Jones was carrying on an animated conversation with the young stranger and was not paying any attention to Crawley’s car. Fighting every instinct in his body, Crawley kept on driving at a steady twenty-five miles per hour, past his driveway, past the Turnbulls’ and past Jones’ Mondeo. Neither man so much as glanced up. Carrying on, he drove to the far end of the road, one eye on the rear-view mirror. To his relief, he saw Jones pull away from the kerb and continue on to the end of the road, without doing a U-turn. Clearly he’d realised that the road was a wide curve, joined at both ends to the same main road.

Now, with the road clear, Crawley stopped and executed a clumsy three-point turn. Pulling into his driveway a few seconds later, he raced into the house. Much to his surprise, the sudden adrenaline jolt seemed to have scared away the migraine. That happened occasionally and he decided to hold off taking his pain medication. The pills were strong and made him a bit dozy, so he didn’t like to take them unnecessarily.

Slumping down onto the couch, he thought about what he had just seen. What did it mean? Why were the police investigating him? Was it just routine or did they have another reason? He picked up his mobile phone, checking for any messages. No texts, two emails to his personal account. He opened up his email app and saw that they were both junk mail, one from lastminute.com, another from Tesco. Closing the email, he automatically opened his NewsFeed app and flicked through the BBC headlines. Crawley was an unapologetic newshound and constantly read the news online. He’d not had time all morning and was craving his information fix. He flicked past the usual depressing stories about the economy and suicide bombings in Afghanistan until a local news headline made him stop, his mouth turning dry. He double-tapped the expand icon to bring up the full story. As it came up his stomach contracted painfully. The news article was brief, with few facts, but contained everything that Crawley needed to know. Guilt washed over him like a tide.

Feeling sick, he closed the browser and called up the phone’s dialler. The call was answered on the second ring.

“It’s me — we’ve got a problem. We need to meet.”

Hastings and Jones returned to the station just before one p.m. Jones headed off to his office and Hastings made a beeline for his desk. His stomach was rumbling and he fished in his desk drawer for his sandwiches and banana. Peeling the fruit, he glanced surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye in the direction of Karen Hardwick’s desk.

The small band of detective constables stationed at Middlesbury were a fairly close-knit group, and they’d all heard about the rookie’s visit to the university with DCI Jones on Saturday morning. One or two of the older constables had been a little jealous that she had been singled out so early in her career, but Hastings was fairly sanguine about it. He knew that she had experience with that sort of environment that others in the department lacked and it seemed sensible to him that Jones should use it.

Besides which, she is very pretty, he thought to himself. A few casual questions had ascertained that she was single and Hastings had to admit that things had been very quiet on the girlfriend front lately. Of course, if he were to explore that possibility any further, it would mean having to strike up a non-work-related conversation with her and that was where things fell down.

At the moment, she seemed to be concentrating on her mobile phone. Ignoring the sandwiches in front of her, she was quietly cursing the handset. Finally, she flipped it over and removed the battery.