The Last Straw

by Paul Gitsham

  However, it was when the investigators moved outside that they found what they were looking for. Stuffed down a drain, the manhole cover clearly moved recently, was a black plastic bin bag similar to that carried in the hand of the mystery person caught on CCTV leaving the Biology building immediately after Tunbridge’s murder. Inside, the bag contained a heavily blood-stained white lab coat with ‘A Severino — Tunbridge Group’ written on the collar in indelible ink; wrapped up inside this were a pair of similarly stained jeans and a hoodie, just like that worn by the person caught on camera. In the bottom of the bag were a pair of bloody latex gloves, some plastic overshoes and finally — the pièce de résistance — a blood-encrusted scalpel.

  The bag had immediately been dispatched to Welwyn for DNA typing and a more thorough forensic analysis, but high-resolution photographs had been sent directly to Middlesbury CID for their use. Jones had printed these out on glossy A4 paper before going down to meet Severino.

  * * *

  After dropping their bombshell on the young Italian and his even younger lawyer, Warren and Sutton left the briefing room as they requested yet another client conference.

  Sutton was jubilant, clearly on an adrenaline high. “Did you see the look on that young kid’s face?” he crowed, rubbing his hands together. “He’s thinking that any dreams he may have had of making his name overturning some great big miscarriage of justice have just gone up in a puff of smoke. I bet he even believed Severino!”

  Warren smiled slightly, finding his colleague’s mood hard to resist. “Don’t get too carried away, Tony. Plenty of slips between the cup and the lip. Even if he throws in the towel and admits his guilt now, we have a lot of work to do to make sure the case holds together.”

  Sutton barely seemed to hear him as he downed the last of his cold coffee, grimacing slightly. “How long do you reckon we’ve got to wait?”

  “Not too long. Either he cops to it right away or he tries to brazen it out. Regardless, we’ve done our bit. Let’s charge him and get him in front of Stevenage Magistrates first thing tomorrow morning.”

  In the end, it took little more than twenty minutes before Stock signalled that the client conference was over.

  Warren made sure that the PACE recorder was working before settling back into his chair. He and Sutton stared silently at Severino, knowing that the accused would speak first.

  “I know nothing of those items or why they were down my drain. I know nothing about the death of Alan Tunbridge.”

  “The evidence would suggest otherwise, Dr Severino. I am therefore formally charging you with the murder of Professor Alan Tunbridge on August the twelfth of this year. Do you understand what I have just said?”

  The young man nodded, numbly, muttering an affirmative. With that, there was nothing else to be said. Jones and Sutton left the accused and his lawyer in the cold, little room as the custody sergeant entered, ready to return him to his cell. Leaving through the empty doorway, Jones glanced back. The young man was now weeping floods of silent tears, his shoulders shaking as he fought to keep his sobs inside. Next to him, his lawyer sat uncomfortably; clearly unsure exactly what to say. His tutors at university had doubtless drilled him in the legal procedures that he would now need to follow on behalf of his client, but Warren doubted that they had given him much in the way of training for how to deal with a young man, almost the same age, breaking down as he contemplated spending the next few decades behind bars. The custody sergeant remained impassive; he’d seen it all before and his sympathy was limited.

  As he left the interview room Warren knew that he wouldn’t feel any elation until after the court case was concluded. Even then, he knew that it would be tempered by the knowledge that one person was dead and a young man’s life ruined, along with the family and friends of both men. Nevertheless, he was unprepared for the strange detachment that he felt as he looked back at the scene. Something didn’t quite sit right, he decided.

  Chapter 18

  By early evening, Warren had finished the paperwork from charging Severino. The Italian was due in front of Stevenage Magistrates court, charged with murder, first thing in the morning. He stretched and yawned, taking a masochistic enjoyment from the cracking and crunching coming from his stretching vertebrae. Reaching for his phone to warn Susan he’d be home soon, he almost knocked it off the desk in surprise when it rang underneath his outstretched hand; glancing at the caller ID he saw it was an internal call from the desk sergeant. “Crime Scene Manager Andy Harrison from Welwyn’s Forensic Unit is here to see you, sir.”

  Warren blinked in surprise. He hadn’t expected a personal visit, least of all this late on a Sunday. “Send him up please, Sergeant.”

  A few moments later the forensics investigator was making himself comfortable in Warren’s visitor chair. The man was a short, rotund middle-aged man with a shock of unruly greying hair. No longer in his paper suit, he was currently dressed more like a builder rather than a skilled, expert scientist, wearing faded denim jeans, battered trainers and a tightly fitting green T-shirt proclaiming that ‘Nerds Rock’. Mentally, Warren chastised himself, remembering a debate with Susan about what a ‘scientist’ should look like and how young children, particularly girls, still thought of scientists as stuffy, white, middle-class men.

  Stuffy was not a description that would immediately apply to Harrison, Warren soon decided. The man had a booming Yorkshire accent and a face that seemed constantly on the verge of breaking into a smile. His choice of verbal language was in stark contrast to the formal, medico-legal jargon that the reports he handed Jones were written in.

  “I hope that our preliminary findings were useful to you,” Harrison started after the two men exchanged pleasantries.

  “Just what we needed,” Warren assured him. “It was plenty enough to charge him and probably get him denied bail when he appears in court tomorrow. I assume that you’ve come to deliver the full story now?” Harrison nodded his agreement, fishing a pair of reading glasses out of his top pocket.

  “No great surprises from the autopsy,” he started. “I popped over to watch and it were largely as you thought. It seems his attacker walloped him from behind with that bloody great piece of rock. Hair and blood from the rock match the victim and a compressed fracture at the back of the skull matches the shape. Minuscule fragments of rock embedded in the poor bugger’s skull match the rock type.

  “Apparently the rock was a souvenir from the University of Boulder in Colorado, where the late professor spent a couple of years. Mark Crawley reckons it’s sat on the shelf above the door as long as he’s known him. It’s certainly dusty enough.

  “From the angle of the impact, we would suggest that he was originally sitting with his back to the door, leaning over his laptop. Either he didn’t hear his attacker enter in time to turn around, or was expecting them so didn’t look to see who had come in.”

  “So was that enough to kill him?”

  “Not outright, obviously, or he wouldn’t have been squirting like a fire hose when his throat was cut. It would almost certainly have severely stunned him and there is evidence of some brain damage. He could easily have died at a later time from the blow.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “Tunbridge was on a swivelling office chair. It was rotated anti-clockwise away from his laptop; about forty degrees or so, presumably so that the attacker, who we think was standing to his right having entered the office from that side, was now directly behind him.”

  Harrison jumped to his feet. “Could you sit in this chair, sir? It’s easier to show than explain.”

  Feeling slightly self-conscious, Warren got up and sat down in his visitor’s chair. Harrison moved behind him, plucking a pen from the desk tidy. It reminded Warren somewhat of Saturday morning trips to the barber with his father as a child.

  “The weapon found at the scene was a scalpel. The blood matches, as does the shape of the cut. It was probably taken from an opened packet we found in the consumab
les cupboard in the lab.”

  Leaning over, he placed his left arm across Warren’s shoulder and chest, gripping the top of the chair; the effect was like a seatbelt. Holding the pen in his right hand, he placed it along the left side of Warren’s throat, pressing gently into the artery pulsing below the skin. Suddenly the happy memories of Saturday mornings listening to Motown music on Radio 2 and looking at ancient car magazines, whilst his father had his weekly crew cut, no longer seemed as cosy to Warren.

  “Contrary to what you see in the movies, slitting a man’s throat ain’t easy. Stunning him probably made it easier than if he were kicking and screaming, but still it’s not a task for the faint-hearted. The placement of the cuts was very precise. They sliced the left carotid, then continued across the windpipe.” He moved the pen accordingly. “Then dug in and found the right carotid. It was a single stroke, although not necessarily extremely fast.”

  Warren processed the thought for a moment. “I can see how that would work, but surely that would leave Tunbridge facing away from the door? And wouldn’t he have sprayed blood away from his attacker?”

  Harrison agreed. “Exactly. At some point after the cut and whilst he was still pumping blood heavily, Tunbridge’s chair was turned clockwise to face the door, covering his attacker in blood.”

  “Why?”

  Harrison shrugged. “A little beyond my remit, sir. It’s possible that Tunbridge gave a few death kicks, or even that the attacker let go with his left arm mid-swipe — perhaps his nerve failed when the blood started pumping — and the swiping action turned the chair back around in the direction of the cut. He might just be a real sick puppy who wanted to look his victim in the face — some sort of messed-up dramatic shit he saw on late-night TV.

  “Either way, it wouldn’t have lasted long. Bleeding out from both carotids takes only a few seconds. You can see from the colour of his skin that there wasn’t much left. No question it was the cause of death. The rest of the PM didn’t throw up any surprises.” He picked up a sheet of paper and started reciting the findings. “A moderately healthy man in his mid-fifties, about what we’d expect for a middle-aged desk worker. Preliminary blood tox’ shows nothing unusual; stomach contents are consistent with him having eaten a bowl of spaghetti bolognese about six p.m.; no alcohol present.”

  Warren nodded. It certainly seemed to fit with his working hypothesis so far. He motioned to the rest of the photographs that Harrison had brought with him. “What else do you have?”

  Harrison spread the photos out. “Here are the footprints out of the lab. Everything is a bit difficult to interpret, perhaps deliberately so. Our best story is that the killer was wearing those plastic overshoes that you found. He’s a clever bastard. It looks as though he wore two pairs. The inner pair had inserts, probably cardboard, to stop us getting a tread pattern or shoe size. The outer pair would have been covered in blood — this is almost certainly the pair found stuffed in the black bag. The footprints lead away from the office for several metres down the corridor, where they abruptly stop. There are some traces of blood on the wall. I reckon that the killer removed the outer pair of booties and put them in the black bag at this point. He probably leant against the wall as he did so, leaving those traces. It’s reasonable to assume that he took off the lab coat and his outer gloves here and also stuffed them in the bag, along with the scalpel.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  Harrison shook his head in frustration. “Nothing. Working hypothesis at the moment is that he also wore two or more pairs of latex gloves. It’s easy enough to remove a pair of gloves without getting what’s on the outside on your hands, but you should leave traces of DNA or even partial prints on the inside of the glove. We’ve found nothing. Assuming it was someone in the lab, these guys are all molecular biologists — they know how to avoid contaminating their work with foreign DNA. Put that together with a DVD boxset of CSI for Christmas and we’re talking pretty forensically aware individuals.”

  “Can you make any inferences about height et cetera?”

  “Only general. Almost certainly right-handed as the slitting of the throat was definitely right-handed and it requires a degree of skill; the angle of the cut is slightly upwards, suggesting that the attacker would likely have been of at least average height and would need to have been moderately strong.

  “The gloves were standard university issue, medium size, but they’re made of stretchy latex so I wouldn’t want to speculate on hand size beyond suggesting the attacker wasn’t a NBA basketball player; similarly the booties were medium size and with the cardboard inserts it’s impossible to determine the shoe size of the person that wore them. A measurement of the distance between the footprints again suggest a person of average height and build, but the margin for error is so large I’d never sign off on it for court.

  “Best I can say, is that the person was not very small and weak and probably right-handed.”

  “Bugger,” said Warren quietly. None of the evidence presented excluded Severino — however it also couldn’t exclude half of the males in the country and a fair percentage of the women as well. Severino’s lawyer was right when he’d said that Severino was in the middle of the bell-curve.

  There were still some photographs next to Harrison’s briefcase. “Anything else?”

  “I’m afraid so, Chief. We’ve analysed the blood staining on the clothes that you gave us. It doesn’t contradict your theory, but it does raise a few awkward questions.”

  Warren sighed. “Go on, then, kill the mood even more.”

  The analyst rummaged through the photographs, ordering them carefully. Taking the first photograph, he placed it on the table in front of Warren.

  “As you can see, this is the hoodie that you gave us—” he placed another photograph next to it “—and this is the lab coat. What do you see?”

  Warren carefully examined the two images. “The front of the lab coat is covered in blood, loads of it — he must have been bleeding right at the attacker. The hoodie also has blood on the front of it, but only a triangle on the front from the collar down. If I had to do an interpretation, I would say the patterns are roughly consistent with a powerful arterial bleed straight at the attacker. The lab coat blocked most of the blood, with some getting inside to stain the hoodie that he was wearing underneath. In fact, rather a lot of blood got in.” Warren frowned.

  Harrison picked up on Warren’s bemusement. “You are right, sir, that’s a hell of a lot of blood. In fact, the size of the patch on the hoodie is consistent with the top three buttons of this style of lab coat being undone and the flap loose. Why the hell would you go to the trouble of sticking your lab coat on, only to leave the bloody thing wide open? Severino wore this coat every day — it’s not as if he doesn’t know how to do the buttons up.”

  Warren grunted his agreement, his mind spinning. “Perhaps Tunbridge struggled and pulled the coat open?”

  Harrison didn’t look convinced. “It’s possible, but doesn’t really sit with everything else. Besides, there’s more.” He pulled out another photograph; this one appeared to be the back of the hoodie. Clearly visible on the back were large smears of blood. Placing it on the table, he also took one of the blown-up CCTV images.

  Warren looked closely. “Shit,” he cursed quietly, “where the hell are those blood stains on this image? How can they suddenly have appeared on the back of the hoodie after his attacker exited the building?”

  Harrison nodded. “We wondered about that as well. You can’t see the front of the hoodie, so we can’t tell if it has blood on the front. We wondered if he’d done some sort of switch, you know, stuck a new jumper on after taking the blood-stained one off. After all, he wouldn’t want to walk down the street with a massive blood stain on his chest—” his finger stabbed the image again “—but that doesn’t really explain how the blood got on the rear of the hoodie. So we had the blood analysed and got one of the splatter experts to give it a good look, and she reckons the pattern is consisten
t with the hoodie being rolled up before being stuffed in the black bag. The wet blood on the front was transferred to the rear as the two pieces of material came into contact.”

  “OK.” Warren wasn’t quite sure where Harrison was going with this.

  “But, she is adamant that the blood was still soaking wet when it was transferred, at most a few minutes old when it was rolled up. It’s a good fifteen-minute walk back to Severino’s. She reckons that if he’d walked home with the hoodie on and then taken it off and rolled it up, the blood would have dried to a different consistency and the transfer would have been different.”

  Warren saw the peculiarity at once. “So the attacker kills Tunbridge, covering himself in blood in the process. He leaves the office and removes his lab coat, second pair of booties and latex gloves and bags them, but leaves on his blood-stained hoodie and jeans. Now he is no longer leaving bloody footprints or handprints. Somewhere further on, he discards the second pair of booties and their cardboard liner, probably in a random bin somewhere. He now exits the building, but then decides to get rid of the hoodie and bag that as well.”

  Harrison nodded. “It’s a reasonable interpretation so far, sir.”

  “The question is, why didn’t he take the hoodie off when he removed his lab coat? Why did he exit the building, running the risk of bumping into somebody whilst covered in blood. and then take the hoodie off? What about his jeans?”

  “Well, the jeans are black, so he probably figured he was safe — there wasn’t that much blood on them. I guess he stood close enough behind Tunbridge that he took it full in the chest. As to the other question, I suppose he could have not realised the blood was on the front, or perhaps he was wearing something that would identify him underneath, like a T-shirt with his name on it?”