The Last Straw

by Paul Gitsham

  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.”

  Chapter 40

  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.

  Chapter 41

  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.

  Leaning back in his chair, Warren closed his eyes. The morning’s hangover had largely disappeared, but the best part of a week of early mornings and late nights was starting to take its toll. Two minutes, he promised himself, before he moved on to the next item on his list. Two minutes wasn’t a lot to ask, was it? Just two minutes…

  The knocking at the door woke him in a panic, adrenaline coursing through his veins. Shit! How long had he been asleep? He looked at the clock and felt his panic subside. He’d taken more than his allocated two minutes, but, depending on what time he’d actually dozed off, he hadn’t been gone for more than ten or fifteen. He prayed he hadn’t snored.

  Grabbing a pen in an instinctive effort to look as if he had been busy, he bid his caller to enter. It was Karen Hardwick again, with Gary Hastings in tow. Karen seemed a lot more confident than when she had knocked on his door that morning, as well she might, Warren thought. Her late-night hunch might well have helped break the case.

  “Ah, Karen and Gary. Any more ideas?”

  “Just a thought about who to interview, concerning Spencer’s character.” Hardwick had deferred to her more senior partner but he was too polite to take credit for Karen’s idea and said so.

  “His university file didn’t have much about his extra-curricular interests
unfortunately, but did mention that he had represented his previous university in both karate and jiu-jitsu. So I decided to get on the web and see if he had a Facebook profile. He did and his privacy settings aren’t set very high. It listed him as a fan of UME Shotokan Karate Club. The club has its own fan page, which lists the contact details and training times of the club, plus a mobile-phone number.

  “Even better, unlike a lot of university sports clubs, it isn’t closed over the summer and isn’t exclusive to students. The chief instructor is a school PE teacher, Mike Gibson, who lives locally and the club takes part in summer play schemes. We thought that a little visit to the club might be a good idea, sir. Perhaps have a chat with the instructor, see if he can tell us a bit about Spencer?”

  Warren nodded approvingly. “Good thinking. When is the next session?”

  Karen glanced at her watch. “The current session of the imaginatively titled Middlesbury Karate Kids Klub will finish in about forty-five minutes.”

  “Then it sounds as if you and DC Hastings have just enough time for a quick cup of coffee before you go.”

  Chapter 42

  Karen’s bright red Ford Fiesta wheezed to a stop outside the primary school hall that served as a temporary dojo for the Middlesbury Karate Kids Klub. A hand-painted sign stood outside welcoming children ages six to fourteen and promising four hours of fun, fitness and self-defence daily, run by qualified karate and sports instructors, all with clean criminal record checks. Something wasn’t quite right about the sign, Karen noticed. The four words making up the club’s name looked as if they had been painted by different people at different times.

  The playground outside the sports hall was slowly filling up with parents. It was five minutes before the session was due to end and a large, well-built man, wearing a white-cotton training suit held closed with a well-worn black-belt, was chatting to an indignant-looking parent. As the two police officers drew closer Karen overheard the mother, a rather well-spoken woman in a designer dress not entirely suited to the weather, as she argued with the instructor.

  “Mr Gibson, I really must take Benjamin with me now. I need to go and do the weekly shop at Waitrose before I take him to cello practice. The lesson is clearly over and I am sure that your helpers are paid more than enough to put away a few pieces of equipment.”

  The instructor had clearly heard this before and remained in good cheer.

  “Well, of course, Ms Linton, you are welcome to take Benjamin now, but I really wouldn’t advise it.” He gestured behind him to where two dozen or so children of different ages wrestled crash mats onto two wheeled trolleys. Most of the kids wore T-shirts and tracksuit bottoms and seemed enthusiastic but clueless, whilst a liberal sprinkling of children wearing cotton training suits and a rainbow of different belt colours helped organise the others. “The philosophy behind the Middlesbury Karate Kids Klub is that we all use the equipment, so we all help put it away. Kids have a strong sense of fair play at this age and they don’t like to see other students not pulling their weight. Plus, all of the karate instructors here are volunteers from the local club. Nobody gets paid for giving up their time — the subscription fee only covers use of the school hall and insurance.”

  The immaculately coiffured Ms Linton looked for the briefest of moments as if she might cause a scene, before finally bowing to the inevitability of it and stalking back to her huge BMW SUV that was taking up the better part of two parking spaces. Karen and Gary resisted the urge to applaud.

  Instead, not wishing to cause a scene in front of the gossiping parents, Hastings stepped up to the instructor and discreetly showed his warrant card. “Nothing to be concerned about, sir, but I wonder if my partner and I could have a few words when you are free?”

  The instructor nodded, his face puzzled. “Of course. By the looks of things, just about every parent is here. We’ll be empty in no more than ten minutes.”

  Nodding, Hastings decided to return to the car with Karen to wait. Despite their discretion, he noticed that a couple of the parents were openly staring, one or two clearly discussing the two formally dressed strangers. He wondered what rumours would be circulating amongst the chattering classes the following day. At least we didn’t borrow a police car, he thought, and Karen’s old banger didn’t look as if it was the sort of vehicle you would be conducting official police business in. He mentally pinched himself for being rude about his colleague’s car; after all, she didn’t have to offer to drive.

  As they sat watching the car park empty Gary tried to start up a conversation. “You know, I’ve been looking at that sign.” He pointed towards the Middlesbury Karate Kids Klub sign, with its strangely painted lettering.

  “Imagine if the sign originally said Karate Kids.” Karen nodded, unsure where he was going. “Then imagine that somebody, possibly from the council, decides that it needs to be a bit more explicit and so helpfully adds Klub at the end — spelled with a ‘K’ to keep the spelling ‘cool’ and consistent.”

  He paused for a few seconds to let her process the thought. “Then you might just see why somebody hastily added Middlesbury at the beginning.”

  Karen laughed out loud. “I can see why the Karate Kids Klub might not look good on council literature.” She continued giggling. “Imagine what they’d find if they googled KKK.”

  Hastings smiled as the two of them leant back in companionable silence; he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She really was very pretty, he thought. And she had a lovely laugh. He noticed that she was staring hard at the door as the last few students exited. The last student to leave was a gangly teenage boy with a brown belt, who decided to take a swing at his instructor as he left. Gibson barely seemed to move, but before the punch could connect the boy was effortlessly upended with a leg-sweep. He landed flat on his back with a loud crack. Karen started in fear, before hearing the mingled laughter of the two martial artists.

  “I nearly had you, Sensei,” shouted the teen gleefully.

  The older man snorted. “Nearly isn’t good enough, James. Good break-fall though. You slapped the floor just right.”

  Karen sat back. “I thought he’d really hurt himself, with that big bang.”

  “No, they’re trained to do it. You slap the floor really hard to dissipate the force of the fall and stop it from rattling your bones too much,” replied Hastings absently. He noticed that Karen’s eyes had flicked back to the burly instructor, whose white cotton gi had come partly open, revealing a rather well-developed torso.

  Hastings cleared his throat and opened the car door. “Let’s see what Sensei Gibson has to say about Mr Spencer.” He noticed that Karen positively sprang out of the car.

  After formally introducing themselves, the two officers quickly got down to business.

  “Mr Gibson,” started Hastings, “we’re making some routine enquiries about a member of this club, a Mr Tom Spencer?”

  “Oh, yeah, I know Tom. What do you want to know?” The karate teacher was busy filling a large canvas holdall with padded mitts and shin-pads. His cotton gi had opened even more and Hastings noticed that Karen seemed to be studiously ignoring anything below the man’s hairline.

  “How long have you known him for?” asked Karen, her tone crisp and businesslike.

  Gibson paused to stroke his chin, “I guess it must be about four years now. He came to us as a new postgraduate student. He already had a first-dan black-belt in karate from his previous university and was also close to gaining his black belt in jiu-jitsu.”

  “How well would you say that you knew him, Mr Gibson?”

  Gibson waggled his hand in a so-so gesture. “I spoke to him a bit, but I can’t say that I knew him terribly well. As you may know, although I run the university club, I’m no longer a student at the university. I did a degree in sport science followed by teacher training at UME. I took over running the club in my second year. When I finished uni I got a job in a local secondary school and so kept running the club. I merged it with a local non-un
iversity club that was struggling for numbers, which is why I’m now involved with the local school kids.

  “The club has a big social event once a term, which I go to, but other than that I don’t tend to go out too much with the students.” He smiled ruefully. “I’m a little long in the tooth for pound-a-pint night down the Students’ Union. And I doubt either my wife or my head teacher would be too thrilled if I went out boozing to the early hours on a week night.”

  Hastings found himself feeling strangely pleased that the man had mentioned his wife; he noticed that Hardwick’s smile was slightly less bright.

  “What sort of a person would you say that Mr Spencer was, Mr Gibson?”

  The teacher frowned slightly.

  “He was a very good martial artist, that was for sure, and a pretty good instructor as well. The club has four black belts at the moment and I encourage all of them to teach parts of the lesson. Tom would also take extra, advanced sessions on a Saturday morning where he’d teach us new stuff. Shotokan-style karate is a great martial art, but its repertoire of techniques can be a little limited — it’s mostly punches, kicks and blocks. Tom used to teach us some different skills that he learnt from his jiu-jitsu, such as arm-locks, grappling techniques, basic throws, weapons work, that sort of thing. I learned a lot from him.”

  The two young police officers shared a look.

  “What sort of weapons work do you mean, Mr Gibson?” asked Hastings, trying to sound casual.

  “Oh, nothing too exciting!” the instructor said hastily. “We didn’t use live blades and we’d never let the kids have a go.” He’d clearly misinterpreted the officer’s interest. “Tom had a collection of plastic training knives that he used to teach us with. He had proper blades of course, but he wasn’t comfortable using those outside his jiu-jitsu lessons. You know, health and safety and insurance and that.”