The Last Straw. Paul Gitsham

the head of Security has just arrived. He is ready to go through the CCTV and the building’s access logs.”

      “Thank you, Constable.” Jones turned to Sutton. “Tony, can you go and see what they’ve got? The sooner we can start corroborating some alibis, the better.”

      “Will do, guv.” He turned smartly on his heel and strode off after the already departing constable.

      * * *

      “Dr Crawley, Mr Spencer claims to have been working in something called the ‘PCR room’ when the murder is believed to have taken place.”

      “He’ll have meant Molecular Biology Suite One, on the ground floor. Do you want to go there?”

      “Yes, please, if you wouldn’t mind.”

      Motioning them to follow, Crawley headed back towards the front of the building. Taking them back down the stairwell that they had used earlier, he then doubled back on himself, so that they were heading back into the building again. To their left were more offices and Crawley motioned to a set of double doors.

      “That’s the main admin office where the head of department, Gordon Tompkinson works. I’ll bring you back here after I’ve shown you the PCR room. I saw his car in the car park by the way, so he is in.”

      They continued down the corridor past yet more offices on the left. Through an open door Jones caught a quick glimpse of another tea room, this one a little tidier, again overlooking the car park. The rooms on the right appeared to be service rooms rather than laboratories, with signs on their doors such as ‘Sterilisation Unit’, ‘Media Kitchen’ and ‘Central Stores’. All the doors were shut but windows with old-fashioned wire-mesh safety glass afforded glimpses of darkened rooms beyond. The air was humid yet at the same time smelled musty. Jones made a note to ask Karen about it later, again reminded that in this environment he really was a fish out of water. Finally they pulled up outside another set of double doors. Unlike the others in the corridor, there was no glass window to hint at what went on inside. The sign, ‘Molecular Biology Suite One’ meant nothing to Jones. These doors seemed sturdier and to the right of them was another swipe-card reader.

      Crawley paused outside and motioned to the reader with the card that he wore on a lanyard around his neck. Jones thought for a moment - would entering the room compromise a crime scene? No, he decided, it was clearly a communal facility and besides which Spencer had been wearing latex gloves and other sterile clothing. It was unlikely that Forensics would get much in the way of useful trace evidence in there.

      “Please, go ahead.”

      Crawley swiped the card and there was the quiet click of a magnetic lock. A green LED lit up on the card reader. Pushing the door open seemed to require some effort and Jones felt a blast of cold air.

      “Positive air pressure,” explained Crawley without being asked. “It helps stop dust and other contaminants getting in and damaging the equipment. There is also air conditioning to keep everything at a constant temperature and humidity. They look after the equipment better than they look after the staff,” he quipped weakly.

      Stepping in, Crawley reached and flicked on the lights. Jones and Hardwick followed him in. Jones was immediately glad of his suit jacket. The air temperature was a few degrees too cool for his comfort and a marked contrast to the warm August weather outside.

      The room was like something out of a science-fiction movie, he decided. A reasonable size, it was nevertheless crammed with benches full of equipment. The three of them were able to fit into the room side by side, but to accommodate anybody else someone would need to shuffle along one of the other aisles. The doorway in which they stood was the only entrance and there were no windows. Over the rush of the air conditioning, Jones noticed a sound that reminded him of the Scalextric racing car set that he’d had as a child. A sudden, high-pitched whine, followed by silence, then repeated again, as if he were accelerating the tiny cars along the track, stopping them, then starting again.

      “Welcome to Molecular Biology Suite One, the jewel in the crown of the Biology department.” Crawley swept his hand, in a wide arc. “There’s the better part of two million quid’s worth of equipment in here, or at least that’s how much we paid for it when it was new. It’s also the most secure room in the building, not including the animal house.” He gestured upwards with a nod of his head, no doubt a reference to the unlabelled fourth floor that didn’t exist on the building’s public plans but which Jones had read up on when familiarising himself with potential terrorist targets.

      It was certainly impressive, he decided. Pride of place was a large glass-fronted unit, the size of a commercial chest freezer, with ‘Affymetrix’ emblazoned across it in blue. Jones hadn’t got the faintest idea what the machine did, but it seemed to be filled with stacks of plastic trays. This, he realised, was the source of the noise. He watched fascinated as a robotic arm scooted, whining, across the length of the machine, delicately picked the top tray off a stack, before moving it to a different stack to its right. From above, a second arm appeared, this time bristling with dozens of metal prongs, which it inserted into some of the hundreds of tiny wells that Jones now saw made up the tray. Removing the prongs, the arm moved rapidly, but precisely, to the right, before lowering the prongs slowly onto what appeared to be a frosted-glass microscope slide.

      Noticing Jones’ interest, Crawley gestured towards the machine.

      “It’s a slide maker for gene expression studies — it’s the reason for the security. It, and the equipment to read the slides, is worth hundreds of thousands. The university’s insurers insisted that we put it behind locked doors in case it gets stolen. There is a growing black market for these things in the Biology departments of developing countries. It’s also incredibly delicate, hence the air conditioning.”

      “Is this what Tom Spencer was using Friday night?”

      “Oh, no. This is strictly the property of the gene expression laboratory. Tom was probably using the Tetrad PCR machine. It’s not in the same league as the slide maker, but it’d still be worth nicking if you had a buyer for it.”

      Crawley led them down a side aisle to a squat black bench-top machine about the size of an old-style desktop computer sitting on its side. The equipment had four hinged lids, all closed, with electric-blue screws on top. A large keypad on the front was flanked by an LCD screen to the left and a stylised DNA molecule as a logo to the right. The machine seemed to be switched off. What appeared to be a booking sheet was covered in scribbled names. ‘Tom Spencer, Friday p.m.’ was scrawled under a column headed ‘Block One’. The other three blocks were empty at that time. Judging by the number of different names listed on the booking sheet, this seemed to be a popular machine. Even if Spencer wasn’t wearing gloves when he used it, Jones doubted that they would find any useful trace evidence.

      Motioning back toward the room’s only entrance, Jones asked how to exit the room.

      “There’s another swipe card. Security keeps a log of everyone who enters or leaves the room.”

      “What if you prop the door open? How do you get out if your swipe card isn’t working?”

      “If you prop the door open, after about a minute an alarm sounds. Similarly, if for some reason you manage to swipe yourself in but can’t get out, you can press that green fire-alarm-style button to release the lock. That also triggers an alarm. Either way, Security come running and you get a serious bollocking.”

      So it looked as though once you swiped in, you were in there until you swiped out again. With no more questions, Crawley led them back out into the warmth of the corridor. Jones removed his mobile phone from his suit jacket. Sutton answered within two rings.

      “Tony, it’s Jones. Have you had any luck with the head of Security yet?”

      “Just getting there, guv. We’re looking at the CCTV as we speak.”

      “Good. Can you also see if you can obtain a printout for the day’s swipe-card access logs for the building’s main entrance and for Molecular Biology Suite One?”

      Jones