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Chapter 11

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.

Finally, they reached the duty manager’s office. A little larger than the others, it had a generous desk and comfortable-looking chair. As they entered Patel grabbed one of the metal-framed visitor’s chairs from behind the door, pushing it shut behind them as he did so. Once they had sat down, Hastings took out his notepad and the plastic wallet containing the photocopy of Clara Hemmingway’s till receipt.

“Without going into specific details about the case we’re working on, I wonder if you could identify the checkout assistant who served this customer last night. We have some questions that we need to ask them.”

“Of course, I’d be pleased to help. Let me see.” Taking out a small pair of reading glasses, the manager stared intently at the till receipt.

“Let me just look up which colleague dealt with this customer.” Turning to his PC, he clicked the mouse a few times before rapidly typing out a series of numbers onto the keypad.

“Aha. Kevin Peterfield. He was logged onto the till.”

“Is Mr Peterfield working today?”

A few more clicks of the mouse and Patel nodded.

“Yes, he started his shift about three hours ago. Would you like him to come in?”

“Yes, if you wouldn’t mind. Hopefully it shouldn’t take too long.”

Patel picked up his phone, asking for someone to find Peterfield.

The two men passed the next couple of minutes in silence. As he concentrated Hastings became aware of the low-level hum of background noise surrounding him. Through the walls he could hear the tannoy system announcing three-for-two offers. Strange that they hadn’t put an announcement over the speakers for Peterfield, he mused. As if reading his mind, Patel motioned with his head towards the shop floor.

“There’s no point putting out a tannoy announcement for Kevin. Unless he’s nipped off to the bathroom he should be sitting right at till number seven. Quicker just to walk down and collect him.”

Hastings nodded and the two men settled back into silence. In the background, Gary could hear the whine of an electric motor and muffled voices shouting instructions. Probably a forklift in the warehouse, he guessed.

A few moments later, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in!”

A nervous-looking youth entered the room. Seeing Hastings, his eyes widened in curiosity, then worry when Hastings was introduced. For his part, Gary forced a smile. According to the manager, the kid was under eighteen. Why then did he look as if he could pass for Hastings’ much older and bigger brother? He had to be six feet three and the five o’clock shadow that coloured his jowls looked a lot thicker than Hastings’ fine stubble. Hastings shaved daily but rather in hope than expectation; once a week would probably have been sufficient.

“Don’t worry, Kevin, you’re not in any trouble. Take a seat. I just have a few questions about a customer that you served.”

“Sure, anything I can do to help, Officer.”

Even his voice was deeper and older-sounding than Gary’s.

“According to the till receipts, last night you served this woman. Do you remember her?”

Hastings slid a headshot of Clara Hemmingway across the desk. Peterfield looked at it for a few seconds.

“Yeah, definitely. I can’t remember the time, but I definitely remember her.”

Hastings nodded encouragingly.

“What can you remember about her? Anything unusual? You must see hundreds of customers each shift — why do you remember her?”

Peterfield shifted in his seat, looking a little embarrassed. He glanced at Patel, who smiled tolerantly. He could probably guess why the teenager remembered her.

“Well, I remember her because she was kind of pretty, you know. It’s a long shift and all the faces blur together after a while, but a couple stick in the memory.”

“Fair enough. Anything else that you can remember? Anything at all? You never know how useful the smallest detail might be.”

Peterfield blushed a bit, mumbling, “Yeah, she was wearing a bit of a low-cut top. You could see loads. And she had a tattoo on her tit…sorry, breast.” He looked at Hastings, who remained stony–faced. “It was a rose or something. Left one, I think.”

Well, that confirmed the ID, thought Hastings. The photo he’d shown Peterfield had been a headshot.

“Thinking back, what can you remember about her? What else was she wearing? Was she with anybody else?”

“I can’t remember what else she was wearing.”

Hastings hid a smile; typical seventeen-year-old lad. No way was he going to remember what Hemmingway was wearing below the waist. There was only one thing that was going to stick in his mind after such an encounter.

Screwing up his eyes as if to remember, Peterfield leaned back slightly in his chair.

“She was on her own, I do remember that. Trolley not basket. I think she used carrier bags rather than bags for life. She used her card, Chip and PIN. Hang on… Her name on the card was Clare or something.”

“That’s great, Kevin. Can I take your details in case I need to speak to you again?”

The boy nodded, probably figuring that a chance to see her again in a line-up was better than nothing.

After Peterfield had left, Patel turned to Hastings. “Well, Officer, if there is anything else that we can help you with, please don’t hesitate to let us know.”

It was clearly meant as a dismissal; it was after all a busy time of the day.

Hastings thought briefly, should he ask Patel to canvass any other members of staff for any other witnesses? It was probably better not to, he decided. This was Hemmingway’s local supermarket; she was likely to be a regular customer. People might well get confused about the time or day that they had seen her and muddy the waters. Of course, there was one thing that didn’t get confused and that was CCTV. A quick look to check that she was alone and that the times matched and he was done, he decided.

“There is one more thing.”

Patel barely repressed a sigh.

“Do you have CCTV for the night in question?”

“Yes. The store is covered in cameras. We will have many hours of footage.”

Hastings decided to take pity on the man.

“I’ll speak to my guv to see if we need to pull in everything. In the meantime, could we just have a quick look to see what time she arrived and left and if she was on her own?”

Patel had clearly decided that there was no point arguing and that the sooner he co-operated, the sooner he could get rid of Hastings.

Motioning Gary out of his office and back down the narrow corridors, Patel led the young PC to another large, darkened room. In it sat a security guard, his eyes glued to a bank of half a dozen monitors, each with four changing views of the shop floor, car park and ‘backstage’ areas.

Finding footage of Clara leaving was easy. The time stamp on the receipt clearly showed the time that she completed her transaction and locating it took seconds on the digital security system. She certainly had done a big shop, Hastings noted as she struggled out of the door, laden down with multiple bulging carrier bags. Her skimpy top did nothing to hide her cleavage from the overhead cameras, much to the delight of the bored guard, he imagined. He noted the time: 22:34h. One minute later than the time on the till receipt. Seemed about right, he figured.

“We can follow her backwards all around the store as she does her shop, if you like, but it’ll take some time to set up the different feeds,” offered the security guard, clearly welcoming the distraction.

“I’ll keep that in mind and see what the guv says — just don’t erase the footage. For the time being I just want to see what time she entered.”

“No sweat, sonny. Can you give us a clue? It’ll be quicker than just running the tape backwards ’til we find her.”

Hastings looked at Patel.

“How quick do you think she could fill a trolley like this?”

Patel pursed his lips thoughtfully, clearly caught up in the investigation despite himself.

“Realistically, I’d say a minimum of twenty minutes, plus about seven or eight minutes to put it through the till.”

Without being bidden, the security guard keyed in the command. The view shifted immediately. Running it backwards at four-times speed, it seemed to take for ever before a familiar flash of blonde hair appeared, walking into the store. At this angle, Hastings saw that the woman’s coat hid her cleavage from the cameras. Bad luck, boys, he thought to himself.

Carefully noting the time, 21:41h, and that she was alone, Hastings thanked the staff for their help. He looked at the two times in his notepad: fifty-three minutes. She certainly took her time over her shopping, he thought.

Driving back to the station, he parked the car in the garage and went looking for DCI Jones. According to the desk sergeant, Jones was unavailable. Sitting down at his workstation, Hastings wrote up a short report, noting the positive ID, the time that she entered and left the store and that she was alone. Stealing a Post-it note from his neighbour’s desk, he started to write a reminder to pick up the footage from the superstore.

Suddenly, his radio crackled into life with his call sign. Toggling it, he responded.

“Are you free, DC Hastings? Reports of a break-in at the Costcutter’s on Bailey Street. You’ve attended before.”

Hastings sighed. He certainly had attended before; three times before as a matter of fact. The small shop and off-licence was a magnet for thieves and vandals and old man Singh who owned the place practically had him on speed dial. CID were involved because they suspected that the culprits, who they had yet to positively link to the break-ins, operated on the periphery of a much bigger gang involved in large-scale thefts. The kids involved in the Costcutter break-ins were just local chancers, stealing alcohol and cigarettes to sell down the pub. The plan however was to catch them and use the threat of a conviction as leverage to get them to give information on the larger gang.

DCI Jones had asked that they lock-down any other work and make the murder of Tunbridge their priority. Hastings mulled over his options. He had done what Jones had asked him to do at Tesco and written up the report. Popping over to see Mr Singh and arranging Scenes of Crime to dust for fingerprints wouldn’t take long; then he could just add it to the file and worry about it again when the Tunbridge matter was resolved. Gary doubted that DCI Jones had meant for the lock-down to scupper ongoing investigations, and he knew that every time the kids broke in somewhere they potentially left behind the clues that might lead to their arrest.

Decision made, he trotted back down to the garage. He’d pick up the CCTV footage from Tesco later.