Paul Gitsham - The Last Straw

Giving up on the sophistication of the swipe-card mechanism, Warren turned his attention to the wooden door itself, looking for any evidence that it might have been forced. The door was a double affair; solid wood with a magnetic lock in the middle. Propping the door open, he looked carefully along the edges of both doors. Nothing. No scratches, no dents and certainly no evidence that it had been forced open.

Warren squinted carefully at the lock mechanism. It was easy enough to see how it worked. The lock was a sturdy metal bolt, recessed into the edge of the right-hand door, as you looked into the room. Either side of the central bolt were two metal contacts. On the opposite door was a metal plate with a hole in the centre for the bolt to slide into, again framed by metal contacts.

Closing the door, Warren heard a quiet clunk as the bolt sprang across. Swiping the card a second time, he heard the bolt spring back with an identical noise. It was clear how the mechanism worked. When the card was swiped, the bolt was drawn back; opening the door would break the electrical circuit formed between the contacts on the right-hand door and the metal strip on the left door. This, presumably told the building security system that the door was open, triggering an alarm if the door was open too long.

An idea was forming in his mind. Looking very carefully at the edge of the door around the lock plate, Warren finally saw what he was looking for. The faintest smudge of dust, contrasting with the clean, laminated wood that covered the rest of the door.

Warren beckoned his two colleagues to join him. After showing them what he had found, he fished his mobile phone out of his pocket.

“DCI Warren Jones, Middlesbury CID. I need a full forensic team to the University of Middlesbury School of Biological Sciences, right now.”

Returning to the station later that day, Warren set Hardwick and Hastings off to look into the life of the newly interesting Tom Spencer. The morning’s investigations had potentially blown a wide hole in his alibi and Warren needed to know more about the man before they pulled him in for questioning again.

The forensic team had arrived at the university within an hour. In that time, Warren and Sutton had used their authority to close off the main part of the building again. Shutting the busy department so soon after it had just reopened had not been at all popular with the staff, many of whom were still trying to recover from the weekend’s unexpected close-down. One or two disgruntled academics had been of a mood to put up a bit of a fight; however, the arrival of a few polite but burly PCs soon quashed any rebellion. Nevertheless Warren expected to be called into his superior’s office to justify himself and his actions.

Not a problem, thought Warren with some satisfaction. His hunches had proven correct. The PCR machine, with its contradictory log, was now in evidence lock-up. The forensic team had spent just a few moments looking at the door lock, before praising Warren’s keen eyes. Just as Warren suspected, it had been tampered with. A slight, sticky residue around the lock — revealed by the presence of dirt adhering to it — supported Warren’s hypothesis that a thin strip of metal had been stuck across the contacts. This effectively fooled the door lock into thinking it was closed, by completing the electrical circuit. The spring-loaded door bolt had then tried to spring back, but been stopped by the metal strip. The result was a door that thought it was locked, but could nevertheless be opened easily.

It was unlikely that they would ever find the metal strip, Warren concluded and, needless to say, there were no fingerprints; however, the lab had taken swabs of the sticky residue in the hope of identifying the tape or glue that had been used. The forensic technician had also suggested that the perpetrator would have needed to practise it a few times until they were sure it would work. Warren made a note to search the door log again over the previous few weeks, looking for anybody swiping in and out of the room in quick succession, probably late in the evening.

After leaving the technicians to finish up their work in the PCR room, Warren had moved to the ground floor, where DI Sutton was supervising the search for alternative exits to the building. With the help of campus Security, he had soon ruled out any tampering with the emergency exits. The locks on these were far more sophisticated than on the PCR room and covered by CCTV.

It hadn’t taken more than half an hour, however, before a DC had interrupted his call updating John Grayson, to tell him that they’d found what they were looking for.

He’d been led to a small tea room, not unlike the one that Warren had interviewed Crawley in on Saturday morning. This one was on the ground floor, overlooking the car park. The room had a large, uPVC double-glazed window, which Warren saw was open.

Sutton was quietly triumphant. “Got it, guv.”

The detective inspector pointed to the window, which opened to a distance of about twelve-inches, before being stopped by a folding metal arm. It was a pretty standard set-up, Warren noted. The arm was supposed to stop people opening the window too far and falling out. It took only a few seconds for Warren to spot what was wrong.

“The arm isn’t attached to the frame.”

The screw that would ordinarily have fixed it to the window frame was missing. A firm push would open the window all of the way, making a gap easily wide enough for a person to climb through.

And then Warren saw what had really got Sutton excited. On the bottom edge of the window frame was the slightest smudge of dark red. Blood.

Warren turned to Sutton in excitement. “Care to take a bet that blood belongs to the late professor?”

“No chance, I never bet against a sure thing.”

Warren turned wistful. “It’d be too much to hope that the killer cut himself clambering through the window; that would be just the evidence we need to tie him to the crime.”

Sutton smiled wolfishly. “We might not need the killer’s blood. We may just have the next best thing. Take a look at the lock, guv.”

Warren leaned over, careful not to touch the frame, following Sutton’s direction. On the bottom of the frame was a brass plate with a tapering groove that the bolt from the window would slot into. Caught around this and fluttering slightly in the breeze from the open window was a single strand of fibre.

Returning to his office, Warren saw that he had a number of messages waiting for him. First was from Pete Robertson in IT. As Warren had suspected, all attempts to track down the venture capital firm that had apparently lured Tunbridge to his death, California Biotechnology Investment Ltd, had come to nothing. No records existed for any such firm either in the UK or the US. The note came with the caveat that the company might simply not be registered under that name, but it was looking increasingly as though the company was completely fictional.

The second message was equally frustrating and was from the company that the apparently fake venture capital firm had used to host their webpage on, Hosting4U.com. The person paying for the web space hadn’t used a credit card, instead using the anonymous payment service PayPal. Warren was familiar with the system, having used it when purchasing goods off eBay and other websites. Unfortunately the only information that Hosting4U.com could give Warren was the name of the PayPal customer that bought the service; the mysterious JPriest.

With a sigh, Warren drafted another warrant, this time requesting the payment details for JPriest from PayPal. He signed it as urgent and sent it off to DS Kent to get it signed by a magistrate and filed appropriately.