Paul Gitsham - The Last Straw

Navigating to her Documents folder, she pulled up her masters dissertation. The twenty-thousand-word document, stuffed full of pictures and hyperlinks to bibliography software, took an age to load. Scrolling through the document, Karen was transported back in time several years. To a time when the appearance or otherwise of a single white band on a black and white instant photograph was either a cause for celebration or the depressing realisation that two days’ work had been for nothing and that she would need to cancel her weekend plans to repeat everything all over again. Despite the urgency of her situation, she found herself smiling at the memories. In the past few years, Karen had chased suspected robbers, grappled with drunken youths and even had a knife brandished at her, not to mention the heart-stopping terror of an eighty-miles-per-hour-plus car chase through a residential area late at night. She’d had more nightmares about that episode than having the knife pulled on her. She still trusted Kevlar more than some of her colleagues’ driving skills, advanced driving qualifications be damned.

Nevertheless, despite all of that adrenaline-pumping action, she would have been hard-pressed to remember a more exciting time than when she’d finally seen that little white band appear and proven her supervisor’s hypothesis to be true. The thrill was matched a few months later, when the same photograph was published in The Journal of Cell Biology with her name listed as second author.

Shaking herself out of her reverie, she carried on scrolling through the document, before finally finding what she wanted in the ‘Materials and Methods’ section. Jotting down some notes, she quickly scribbled down some back-of-envelope calculations. The results were encouraging, but she knew to be cautious. Science moved on at a breakneck pace and what was state-of-the-art now was old news in just a few short years. She would need evidence to prove her idea — and that would have to wait until tomorrow.

Standing up, she felt the stuffiness of the room again. To hell with it, she suddenly decided, in a celebratory mood. She might not be able to afford an air-conditioning unit — and wasn’t sure where she would get one anyway at nine on a Wednesday evening — but Tesco had twenty-four-hour opening and she could afford to splash out on a fan. Not only that, she decided, I’ve been looking forward to starting that book all week and that rosé wine needs to be drunk. But I draw the line at getting a cat.

Eight a.m. the following day, DC Karen Hardwick took several deep breaths and tried to stop her hands shaking. The scribbled notes that she had written the night before were damp from perspiration that had nothing to do with the heat. She could see that DCI Jones’ office door was ajar, a sign that he was in and could be disturbed. But was he the right person to talk to? He was the boss. There were two more ranks between her, a lowly detective constable, and Jones, a detective chief inspector. Ordinarily, Karen would have spoken first to a detective sergeant or perhaps Detective Inspector Sutton. However, she had seen the faces around the table yesterday and realised that what she was about to suggest might not be popular.

Sod it, she decided. Time to bite the bullet. Jones seemed a sympathetic boss and he had actively sought her opinions a few times since asking her to accompany him Saturday morning. Screwing up her courage, she walked as confidently as she could to the office door. The administrative assistant nearest the door glanced up but said nothing, which Karen interpreted as ‘go ahead’; if Jones was busy or on the phone she would doubtless have said something.

With as much confidence as she could muster, Karen knocked twice.

“Come in.” The voice was confident but sounded a little scratchy, Karen noticed.

Opening the door, Karen stepped in. She had deliberately dressed in her most businesslike clothes this morning. A modest grey skirt that came to just above the knees, a white, short-sleeved silk blouse and a pair of smart black, flat shoes. Her hair had been teased into a bun and she wore just the barest hint of make-up. If Jones noticed, he didn’t give any indication and it was clear that he hadn’t given quite as much attention to his appearance that morning.

His face was sallow, with pronounced circles underneath his eyes. Although he was clean-shaven, Karen noticed that he appeared to have missed a few patches around the bottom of his throat. He wore what appeared to be a freshly starched light blue shirt, rather than the white one that he’d been wearing the day before, but the tie appeared to be the same and the dark jacket on the back of his chair looked a little creased. As Karen approached the desk she noted that his aftershave appeared to be a little stronger than normal.

Perhaps he was coming down with a summer cold, she thought. Then she remembered the appearance of DI Tony Sutton this morning, who had also looked decidedly dishevelled. Jones had grabbed Sutton and hauled him out of the office mid-afternoon the day before, saying something about going to the pub. Interesting…

“Yes, Karen, what can I do for you?” asked Jones, stifling a yawn.

Taking a few deep breaths, Karen plunged straight in. “I’ve been doing some thinking and a few things just don’t add up, sir. I think there may be more to what happened Friday night than we thought.”

Warren contemplated her for a second, before gesturing at the visitor chair in front of the desk. “OK, what’s on your mind?”

Karen sat down and spread her notes in front of her. “It’s Tom Spencer and his account of what happened on Friday night. I’ve been thinking about his trip to the PCR room and something doesn’t make sense.”

Warren motioned for her to continue.

“First of all, what was the weather like Friday night?”

Warren shrugged. “Hot and sticky, just like it has been for the past week.”

“And would you say that it was like that in the laboratories and offices in the Biology building?”

“I would imagine so. I don’t think that they have any air conditioning except in places like the PCR room.”

“What was Tom Spencer wearing when he found the professor’s body?”

“Jeans and a T-shirt, with a lab coat on. Why do you ask?”

“Well, do you remember how cold it was in the PCR room when Dr Crawley showed us around?”

Warren nodded, remembering how he’d been glad of his jacket. “I remember Crawley joked that the university looked after the equipment better than the staff.”

“Well, according to the computer log, Spencer was in the room for sixty-eight minutes. If I was in that room for so long, I’d probably have brought along a sweater or jacket to keep warm, especially if I’d been working in stuffy conditions all day. The contrast would have been uncomfortable to say the least.”

Warren frowned. “I can see where you are coming from, Karen, but maybe he forgot. Hell, it’s been like this for at least a week — he probably didn’t remember to bring a sweater to work. I guess he just had to grin and bear it. The room was cool, but I doubt he was in any danger of hypothermia.”

“Well, that’s the thing, you see — he didn’t have to grin and bear it. He could have left at any time.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Spencer stated that he was doing a PCR reaction and that he used the Tetrad PCR machine. Well, the thing with PCR reactions is that you just set them up and then leave them to go. The whole process is automated. Spencer will have made up the solutions in his laboratory, placed his tubes in an ice bucket, then carried them down to the PCR room — witnesses did say that he was carrying an ice bucket. All he needs to do then is place the tubes in the machine, select the correct program, press start, then return when the run has finished. There is no reason to stay in a cold room for so long.”