Paul Gitsham - The DCI Warren Jones Series Books 1–3

In the meantime, Jones decided he had to try and get something to eat, or, if that failed, more coffee. Heading back to the canteen, he was dismayed to find that not only were there no more sandwiches, all of the fruit was gone too. To add insult to injury, the vending machine selling crisps and chocolate bars had a large handwritten ‘out of order’ sign sticky-taped across the coin slots. Heading back into the briefing room, he saw that the coffee urn was still plugged in, so he settled for another dark black coffee loaded with sugar. His fifty-pence piece remained alone in the honesty jar.

“Ah, Warren. I hear that we’ve made quite some progress this morning.”

Jones nearly choked on his coffee. Jesus, the man must be wearing padded socks! He turned around to see a beaming John Grayson standing behind him.

“It’s looking promising, sir. We’ve got plenty of leads and several suspects. We’ve almost ruled out Tom Spencer and it looks as though another member of the lab may be the culprit. He’s sleeping off a rather heavy night at the moment though. I thought we’d do it by the book and make sure he’s fully fit before interviewing him; besides, it gives us a little extra time to finish searching his house.”

Grayson nodded, clearly not overly interested in the minutiae of the investigation. “I’ve scheduled a press conference for tomorrow morning, eleven a.m. I want you by my side for it. Ideally, we’ll have charged this chap and everything can get back to normal. In the meantime, I’m about to issue a statement to keep the press happy. Any thoughts about what should be in it? Press liaison thinks we should hint that we’re going to throw them a large bone tomorrow morning, drum up some interest and make sure that we are seen to be moving fast and decisively.”

Jones’ heart sank; he detested this nonsense. The twenty-four-hour news channels were like a voracious animal, constantly demanding to be fed, day and night. Although very much a product of the modern news era himself, Jones nevertheless longed for the old days when the beast was only fed once a day, in time for the deadlines for the late-night news or the next morning’s newspapers. Back then, Jones and his team would have had the luxury of all of Sunday to firm up their evidence before a late evening press conference to reveal what they knew.

It also meant there was no way he could attend mass that morning. The local church had two Sunday services, the eleven a.m. service that Susan and Warren usually attended and an earlier nine a.m. service. Neither would be possible tomorrow — another black mark against his name in the mother-in-law’s book. For a brief, insane moment, Jones considered asking for the press conference to be postponed long enough for him to go to church with Bernice, or maybe he could run out now to attend the Saturday evening service that busy Catholics were allowed to attend in lieu of a traditional Sunday service. He mentally shook his head at the foolishness of the notion, a product of too little sleep and too much caffeine.

Answering Grayson’s question, Jones had to advise caution at this stage. “We shouldn’t count our chickens before they’ve hatched, sir. We’re still waiting to interview Severino. Forensics are still searching his house. We don’t know if anyone else is involved yet. I’d play it safe and simply confirm the identity of the deceased and the time of death, admit that we have a couple of people helping with our enquiries and ask for anyone with information to step forward.

“Besides, if Severino doesn’t play ball, we may not be ready to charge him before tomorrow’s press conference. Then we’d look a bit silly.”

Jones could see that Grayson sorely wanted to say more, to make the following morning’s press conference seem more compelling. Perhaps that way the news outlets would send out some of their big-name reporters, rather than the second-raters stuck with the Sunday shift that nobody wanted.

Tough, thought Jones, he was damned if he was going to let the tail wag the dog.

Detective Constable Gary Hastings pulled up outside the Tesco Extra that Clara Hemmingway had supposedly visited on the evening of Professor Tunbridge’s murder. Locking the doors of the Peugeot police car he’d borrowed — you couldn’t be too careful, he thought, and he’d never live it down if anything happened to the car when he was on a routine job — he strode in through the automatic doors. A couple of teenage girls smirked at him, but he ignored them, the job too important for distractions from the local jail-bait. Although he wasn’t privy to all the details, he knew that this was a key part of the investigation into the Tunbridge murder.

Ever since he’d joined the police, Hastings had wanted to join CID. Now, after a couple of years as a detective constable, he was starting to prepare for his sergeant’s exam. Being given sole responsibility for checking out the alibi of one of the apparently many suspects in the case was small beer, but you never knew, he thought, if he got himself noticed it could only help when he applied for promotion.

Walking purposefully up to the customer service desk, he introduced himself to the woman operating the till and asked to speak to the duty manager.

“Sure thing, love. That’ll be Mr Patel today.”. She motioned to the security guard loitering by the cigarette kiosk. “Oluseye go fetch Ravvi out of the office, will you, please?”

Grumbling, the security guard slouched off to a set of double doors marked ‘Staff Only’. As he waited Gary discreetly eyed the woman. Her name was Maureen and according to her name tag she was pleased to help. About five feet and early-fifties, he judged, she was large chested and squat, probably a few stone over her ideal weight. Her grey hair and ruddy complexion reminded him of those bustling ladies of a certain age that seemed a permanent installation in the church that he’d attended since childhood. Any minute now he expected her to ruffle his hair and say that she knew his mum — unlikely since his parents both lived over a hundred miles away.

“They say that you know you’re getting older when the police start looking younger. You look about the same age as my Amy’s son Neville.”

DC Hastings, acutely aware of the fact that at twenty-four years old he could still pass for seventeen, even in his dress uniform, fought back the urge to scowl. Mentally he upgraded her age to late fifties and, perhaps a little uncharitably, revised his estimate of her build to ‘morbidly obese’.

Fortunately, he was saved from further pleasantries by the arrival of the duty manager, a small middle-aged man. Introducing himself, Gary asked if there was somewhere quiet that they could talk in relation to an ongoing investigation. The manager, clearly relieved that Hastings wasn’t there to ask questions about selling alcohol or tobacco to underage kids, led him through the staff-only doors to ‘backstage’ as he called it. Hastings noticed that the staff side of the door had a large poster on it proclaiming ‘Smile! You’re going on stage’.

In contrast to the brightly painted walls of the shop floor, the walls here were drab plasterboard. Mr Patel led Hastings down a maze of corridors, the walls adorned with ‘employee of the month’ pictures — mostly spotty teenagers, Gary noticed — large eye-catching posters reminding staff to be vigilant about unattended parcels and shoplifters, as well as the obligatory health and safety notices. They passed a series of small, cubicle-like offices with staff busy working on PCs. One office, sturdier than all of the others, had an open door. As they went past Gary noticed a Securicor driver in helmet and body armour standing next to an open safe. Two similarly attired Tesco employees scowled at him as he was led past. It was all Gary could do not to stop and stare — by the looks of that safe, the long-predicted demise of cash in favour of credit and debit cards was still some way off.