Paul Gitsham - The Last Straw

“Karen Hardwick had a moderate concussion and needed a few stitches to a scalp wound, but there will be no long-term effects. She started back today, in fact, on light duties.”

Naseem nodded, pleased. “And what about DC Hastings?”

Warren’s expression turned sombre. “He’s no longer in a critical condition, but he’s still in Intensive Care. He didn’t have time to put his stab vest on before he went into the house. The knife struck a rib and was deflected away from the heart, but it nicked a lung. He’s due to undergo another operation tomorrow, then we’ll know more. If all goes well he could be back on light duties by Christmas.” Warren’s voice grew quiet. “He saved my life, sir. Pulling the knife back out of a stab wound is a cardinal sin in first aid and he must have known that, but he did it anyway. I don’t think I would have survived until the back-up arrived if he hadn’t crawled over and stuck Spencer like he did. I can only imagine the pain he was in.”

Naseem shook his head in silent respect at Hastings’ bravery. “Let’s hope for a full recovery, then, shall we? The service needs young officers like that — even if they make mistakes from time to time.”

Warren nodded, feeling relief at the hint that Hastings’ mistake with the CCTV evidence would probably be glossed over. He agreed with Naseem: the police service needed young officers like Gary Hastings. Warren just prayed that the young man agreed and was fit enough both psychologically and physically to return to duty.

“So tell me why you think this whole sordid affair took place. There are contradictory reports at the moment. Spencer, Mrs Tunbridge and Hemmingway are all busy trying to cover their own arses and, of course, Crawley isn’t here to tell his side of the tale.”

Warren leaned back in his chair. “It seems that the chief architect of this whole affair was the late professor’s wife, Annabel Tunbridge, and you could argue it all started nearly thirty years ago. They met and married back in the early 1980s, when she was a junior lab technician in Tunbridge’s first laboratory. Screwing young women that he supervised became something of a lifetime habit, I’m afraid. Anyway, as Tunbridge’s career progressed, she left her own career and became a full-time mother to their two children, following him across the Atlantic as he accepted posts in a number of US laboratories. When they came back to the UK, the kids were school age and Tunbridge was starting to make a name for himself. Although the plan had been for Annabel to go back to work and study for her own PhD, they found it impossible. Tunbridge would do secondments for months at a time in laboratories across Europe, whilst Annabel stayed at home and played housewife.

“By the time the kids were old enough for Annabel to consider going back to education, too many years had passed and the desire to go back to study just wasn’t there any more. At least on the surface. I think that urge never really went away and, although she’ll probably never admit it, I think she resented him for the choices they made. I can imagine that the resentment only grew as his career skyrocketed and the kids finally left home to do their own thing.”

“A powerful motive, but hardly enough to commit murder over, Warren. What changed?” The chief was leaning back in his chair, clearly enjoying the tale. Rumour had it that the chief was an amateur novelist on the quiet and that when he retired, some of the many tales that he had heard on the job would be appearing in hardback — suitably fictionalised, of course. Jones hoped for at least an acknowledgement in the foreword — some royalties would be even better.

“Well, it seems that lust entered the equation. Tunbridge’s philandering was an open secret around the university and in academic circles, although there is a sort of unspoken rule that ‘what happens at conference, stays at conference’, but it’s hard to imagine that his wife didn’t have at least some clue about what was going on. Anyway, it seems that life in the Tunbridge house was not at all cosy and hadn’t been for some time. Tunbridge was by all accounts an arrogant egoist and something of a sociopath. I doubt he was much fun at home.

“The rumour mill had been suggesting for some time that the marriage was on the rocks. However, that was the last thing that Mrs Tunbridge wanted. A senior professor’s salary isn’t too bad and Tunbridge made a fair bit on the side from speaking engagements and his royalties from some early patents that he co-authored, plus she knew full well the significance of her husband’s research and the last thing she would want to do is divorce him before it reached fruition.”

“But surely, if she killed Tunbridge, she also killed the research so that there would be no money anyway?”

“Well, that was the beauty of it, sir. On the surface she had no motive to kill him and, if anything, plenty of reasons not to kill him. She only really piqued my interest when I learnt that Tunbridge had told others that he was considering a divorce. It seemed inconceivable that she didn’t know about it, yet she made no mention of it to me and played the part of a grieving wife perfectly. Of course that’s not really a big deal, so I simply kept it in mind.”

Naseem nodded. “I think that’s fair, Warren. A reasonable interpretation could have been that she still loved him and the grief was genuine or that she felt his talk of divorce was just that. I think that twenty-twenty hindsight is a bit much to ask of my officers.”

Warren smiled appreciatively, whilst not believing a word of it. He knew full well that the inquiry board would be demanding not only perfect twenty-twenty hindsight but retrospective clairvoyance also. Still, that was their job, he supposed.

“Anyhow, whilst she could turn a blind eye to his bed-hopping, she was herself playing a dangerous game. For the past couple of years, it seems that she and Tunbridge’s experimental officer, Dr Mark Crawley, had been spending some quality time together.

“Why he and Mrs Tunbridge hooked up we’ll never know. She’s still a handsome woman for her age and both had been treated badly by Tunbridge over the years. Crawley spent a lot of time dealing with the fallout from Tunbridge’s lack of social graces and, whilst he would be the first to admit that he had it good career-wise with Tunbridge, he clearly hated the man. It could have been something genuine between them, or it could have been a way of figuratively screwing Tunbridge by either or both of them.

“Either way, Crawley was having troubles at home: his wife’s parents are ill and he’s been having problems with his kids. We also found out that they had decided to remortgage their home to have an extension done, right before the credit crunch and Mrs Crawley lost her job. With house prices falling and her parents needing care, not to mention the eldest off to university, it seems that financially Crawley was up shit creek without a paddle.”

“And so they hatched their little plan?”

“Pretty much. Crawley had joked in the past that he should bump Tunbridge off and take over his empire. At some point, the joke became an idea.”

“I thought it was established that Crawley couldn’t afford the time to set up and run his own research group, what with all that was going on in his private life?”

“We thought so too, bearing in mind what Crawley himself had told us. But when I telephoned Professor Tompkinson, he dismissed that out of hand. He pretty much ran everything anyway. Give it a couple of years and they could have suddenly announced a breakthrough and nobody would have been at all suspicious.”

Naseem nodded.

“So what actually started the ball rolling?”

Warren paused thoughtfully. “We’re not entirely sure what precipitated the whole thing. Tunbridge’s contemplation of a divorce was probably the final trigger, but an important catalyst was Clara Hemmingway.”