Paul Gitsham - The Last Straw

“Assuming that Severino was telling the truth about not knowing her, I’m stumped. Supposedly, the whole lab met her and they went for lunch together. I find it hard to imagine that a warm-blooded Italian like Severino could have forgotten a looker like her.”

“I agree, it doesn’t make any sense. Keep on checking.”

“Will do, guv. Karen has some ideas that she’s looking at for the moment, but she hasn’t found anything yet.”

“OK, I have an idea I’d like to follow up on. I’ll see you back at the station later.” Warren acknowledged the message and then hung-up.

Climbing into his car, he headed back onto the main road. In a few minutes he had arrived at his destination.

Recognising him before he even offered his ID, the middle-aged security guard opened the double doors to the campus Security lodge and admitted him into the small control room.

“Hello again, DCI Jones. Anything we can help you with?”

Jones pulled out his mobile phone and brought up the headshot of Clara Hemmingway he’d just shown to the Striblings.

“Have any of you seen this young woman around the Biological Sciences building in the past few weeks, particularly last Friday night?”

The guard who’d let him in fished a pair of reading glasses out of a top pocket and squinted at the image. “Can’t say that she looks familiar. I’ll see if any of the lads recognise her.” Walking towards the back of the room, he poked his head around an open door marked ‘Staff Only’.

“Jim, Imran, come have a look at this picture.”

A few seconds later a white, shaven-headed man who looked to be in his late thirties and a younger, Asian man emerged from the room, coffee cups in hand.

The first man looked carefully at the picture.

“She looks familiar… Oh, yeah, I remember her, Claire or something her name was.” He passed the phone over to his younger colleague. “You remember her? Lost her handbag in a nightclub a few weeks ago.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember her. Yeah, Claire or Clara or something. She turned up in tears about one a.m. one Friday night. She’d had a bust-up with her boyfriend or something. She stormed out of the club and left her handbag behind. Keys, wallet, phone, the lot. Bouncers wouldn’t let her back in. She turned up here a bit pissed and really upset because she didn’t know if her flatmate was in and didn’t know where to go.”

“So she came here?” Warren voiced his surprise.

“Oh aye,” said the first man, the slightest twinge of a Scottish accent colouring his voice, “we get all sorts. Female students in particular are encouraged to call campus Security if they are worried about their safety. Just last week, me and Imran persuaded a couple of local lover boys to leave some young ladies alone.” He smiled evilly, revealing a set of suspiciously straight teeth that didn’t seem to match his squashed nose.

“Yeah, they got the message,” confirmed Imran with a certain amount of relish. Jones decided not to ask for details.

“So what did you do when she turned up?”

Jim shrugged. “What we usually do. We stuck her in the office with a cuppa and a box of tissues and phoned her flat to see if anybody was in. Luckily there was, so we let her finish her tea then drove her home.”

“I see. Did she say anything whilst she was here?”

“Well, young Imran here would be the one to ask about that. I left, didn’t want to cramp his style.” He smirked.

For his part, Imran flushed slightly. “She didn’t say much. She calmed down when we contacted her flatmate and then she just asked the usual questions: how much crime do we get? How long have I been doing the job?”

“It’s the uniform — you know what it’s like”, interrupted Jim with a leer.

“I wouldn’t know, I haven’t worn one for years.” Jones was getting a bit tired of this boorish fool. “Go on, Imran.”

“Well, as I said, she was interested in what we do here and how we keep an eye on so many cameras. She asked if I could see where she worked, so I zoomed in on the Biology building.”

Jones perked up slightly.

“Did she ask about the camera’s coverage at all?”

Imran frowned. “No. She just wanted to see if we could peek inside the windows of the tea room. She joked that if we could she’d have to find somewhere else to skive off when she should be working, otherwise the boss might catch her on camera. I reassured her that we couldn’t see around there, because the camera is at the wrong angle…” The young man suddenly stopped, paling slightly.

“Oh, shit…”

Warren smiled grimly. So Clara Hemmingway knew all about the blind spot by the side of the building.

Back at the station, Warren filled in the rest of the team on what he had found out about Clara Hemmingway.

“She’s definitely the mysterious woman who seduced Severino. Which means that if that’s the case, she’s in this right up to her neck. The question is, why didn’t Severino recognise her?”

Karen Hardwick spoke up. “I have an idea. When was Hemmingway introduced to the lab? When did her affair with Tunbridge start?”

Warren answered immediately. “She started her project in November and presumably the affair started some time after that; she mentioned something about getting an extension on her essay.”

“In which case, it’s possible Severino never met her.” Karen placed a file down that Warren recognised as Severino’s personnel file. She leafed through it quickly, before stopping at a page to which she had attached a Post-it-note.

“According to this, Severino retained links with his previous research group at the University of Trieste in Italy. He popped over a couple of times a year to visit his old lab to share information on a long-standing collaboration, after which he usually delayed his flight home whilst he visited his family.” She smiled. “I wonder what the odds are that one of those sabbaticals coincided with the time when Clara Hemmingway was being introduced to the lab. He might never have clapped eyes on her.”

* * *

The telephone on Jones’ desk rang. Picking it up, he was surprised to hear the voice of Gary Hastings on the other end.

“Sir, it’s DC Hastings. Remember I interviewed the Tesco employee that claimed to have seen Clara Hemmingway on the night of Professor Tunbridge’s murder?”

“Go ahead, Gary, I remember the report.”

“The manager of Tesco has just called. Apparently another member of staff believes that he also saw Clara Hemmingway that night. I think you’d better hear what he has to say, sir. He’s on his way in now.”

“Good work, Gary. I’ll be down in a moment.”

There was silence at the other end of the line.

“Is there anything else?”

“Umm, yes, sir.” Hastings took a deep breath.

“I think I might have screwed up, sir.”

Jones made it downstairs to the main reception in record time. Standing in Reception was a rather morose-looking Gary Hastings. He looked even younger than normal, if that were possible, thought Warren.

“The witness is on his way in now, sir. The store manager is driving him down.” A ghost of a smile flickered across the youngster’s face. “Apparently police cars in the car park are bad for business.”

“OK, then, let’s have a quick chat. Bring me up to speed on what to expect and what it is you think you’ve screwed up.” Jones said this last piece in an inviting tone. In his experience, those honest enough to admit their mistakes were usually wrong about the severity of the mistake, particularly younger and less experienced colleagues. And at least the kid — detective — had the guts to own up. Of course, if it turned out that he really had screwed up — enough, say, to cost them a prosecution — Jones would personally tear him a new arsehole…