Paul Gitsham - The Last Straw

Warren struggled to maintain his composure. “You know as well as I do how hard it is to remove traces of blood. And there was nothing in the plugholes of his sink or his bathtub. Besides which, you saw him when we arrested him. Did he look like he’d showered in the past forty-eight hours, let alone twelve?”

Sutton was unwilling to concede the point. “That’s all conjecture. No jury would believe that.”

Warren batted the point right back. “You forget, it’s not up to him to prove he didn’t do it, it’s up to us to prove that he did! Beyond reasonable doubt. And everything we have got can be explained away as circumstantial. And all the stuff about his previous form is inadmissible. The charges were dropped. It’s hearsay and nothing more. Plus, as you said yourself, everybody who ever met this bugger had a motive to kill him.”

Sutton’s face didn’t change, Warren could see that he still had a long way to go to convince him. He decided to pull rank.

“Regardless, Inspector, let’s look at some of the other problems. First of all, where does this mystery woman fit in? Who is she and did she steal Severino’s clothes and swipe card to help set him up?”

Sutton snorted dismissively, but wisely decided to hold his peace. Jones ignored him and continued, “We know at least that this woman exists. Eyewitness accounts, plus CCTV, show that he was with a young blonde woman on the Friday night before Tunbridge’s murder. The question is, did she set him up?”

The question lay heavy in the air. Nobody could think of a way to answer it.

“Assuming that Severino was telling the truth, then we have her mobile-phone number. Karen, why don’t you bring everyone up to speed on what you found out?”

Karen cleared her throat, glancing nervously at Sutton. The detective inspector’s brooding presence clearly bothered her, “The mobile-phone number that we believe belongs to this young woman is linked to an anonymous Pay-As-You-Go SIM card that we have yet to trace. We have the telephone handset’s unique IMEI code, but it is unregistered and we can’t link it to anyone.”

Sutton rolled his eyes, but said nothing. Rather than being intimidated by this, Karen instead flushed slightly pink and shot a glare at him, her voice becoming stronger. “What we do know is that this SIM card only contacted Severino and three other anonymous SIM cards, all of which were activated at the same time. Furthermore, these anonymous SIM cards — sorry, unknown users — only phoned each other. On the night of Tunbridge’s murder, there was a lot of traffic between these phones, before and after the time of death.”

Despite himself, Sutton started to look interested. “So where does Severino fit in?” he asked.

“He doesn’t. Not unless he has a second phone with one of these anonymous SIM cards in it. His phone repeatedly called the young woman’s phone on the night of Tunbridge’s murder, the night that he claims she was supposed to be visiting him. She never picked up. If he did murder Tunbridge, then he kept on ringing this girl throughout the murder.”

“Or somebody else used his phone to provide him with an alibi,” Sutton suggested, still unwilling to drop Severino.

“A pretty weak alibi,” commented Hastings, earning a poisonous look from Sutton.

“Either way,” interjected Jones, “it would seem that whoever this mysterious woman is, these phone records suggest that she is tied into a conspiracy with at least three other people. This little network of four people activated their SIM cards on the same date, and on the night of Tunbridge’s murder spoke exclusively to one another, before going silent again. That is far too big a coincidence for me. We need to identify who these four people are. We may be able to charge them with conspiracy to murder at least.”

Silence around the table again. Hastings finally spoke up. “I know it sounds daft, but the only blonde girl that answers the description of the mystery woman is Clara Hemmingway.” He pulled over one of the still images taken from Mr G’s nightclub security camera. The image was too blurry, however, to be any use. The picture could easily have been Hemmingway or one of a hundred other girls in Middlesbury town centre that night.

“There’s no way to tell from that image, without it being enhanced-” Jones sighed “-but I can’t see how it would be possible. Hemmingway was taken on a guided tour of Tunbridge’s laboratory as part of the preparation for her essay, way back in November. Apparently it’s a big tradition at the university — the whole lab even goes out for lunch together. I don’t see how Severino couldn’t have recognised her when she turned up in the bar that night.”

Silence fell again.

“So where does that leave us, sir?” Sutton looked directly at Jones, the look in his eyes almost daring Jones to say what he knew was coming next. Jones locked eyes with him, briefly, before standing straight and addressing the whole table. His voice was steady.

“We reopen the investigation and start over again. If Antonio Severino did commit this murder, he didn’t do so alone.”

“I knew it,” snapped Tony Sutton.

“Inspector…” warned Jones.

“The moment his bloody mum came on TV complaining that her son couldn’t possibly have done it and that he’s so scared of prison he’d rather commit suicide…” Sutton stood up, unwilling or unable to finish his thought.

“Sit back down, Inspector,” Jones ordered.

Sutton ignored him. “Of course he tried to commit suicide. For once in his privileged life, he’s actually going to face the consequences of his actions. He fucked up. This isn’t Italy, where his family can just buy off whoever they need to. It’s England, where nobody gives a shit how much wine his family flogs. He’s going down and he knows it.”

Jones turned to Hardwick and Hastings. “I think this meeting is over. DI Sutton and I need a private chat.” The two detective constables left the room as fast as possible, without so much as a backward glance.

The door swung closed behind them. “Are you quite finished, Inspector ?” demanded Jones, for the first time letting his anger show.

Sutton ignored the warning signs. “No. We have a perfectly good suspect in custody, with the means, the motive and the opportunity. He has no alibi and the murder weapon was found in his possession. Why do you want to scupper that? We solved a high-profile murder in barely twenty-four hours and had the suspect charged, in front of a judge and remanded in custody in little more than forty-eight. Now, you want to tell everyone, ‘oops, maybe we were a bit hasty. Maybe we were wrong. He’s all upset and says he didn’t do it and his mum says he’s a good boy really’. We’ll be a fucking laughing stock!”

Enough was enough, Warren decided. “If you have such a big problem with this case, then there’s the door. You can leave right now and I’ll get you reassigned to something else.”

He stepped closer, deliberately invading Sutton’s personal space. “And another thing. Don’t you ever question my orders in such an insubordinate tone in front of junior officers again. I will have you put on report for the next six months if you ever behave like that again. You can consider this your first verbal warning. Do I make myself clear?”

Sutton smouldered silently. Warren stared at him expectantly. After a few seconds, the older man looked down. “Yes, sir. Perfectly clear.”

“Dismissed.”

Sutton turned on his heel and marched out of the room. The moment the door slammed shut behind him, Warren sat down and let out a deep shuddering breath. His hands were shaking. What the hell had just happened? It was the first time in Warren’s career that he had ever had a stand-up row with a junior officer. He’d had plenty of disagreements; in fact he positively encouraged dissenting viewpoints. But Sutton was downright insubordinate.