Reckless Endangerment (12 page)

‘Manual strangulation. By the look of it, I’d say that her killer used both hands. Someone with a pretty powerful grip, I’d think. I might be able to tell you more when I carve her up, but I doubt it.’

‘Any idea of the time of death?’ I asked.

‘A bit tricky given the weather, the open windows and the air conditioning, Harry, but I’d hazard a guess at sometime after six o’clock last night. I can’t pin it down any nearer than that. I might know a bit more when I’ve analysed her stomach contents.’

‘Have you finished with the body, Henry?’

‘Yes. You can shift it to the mortuary as soon as you like.’

The laboratory liaison officer had been waiting in the wings. His job was to preserve continuity of evidence by taking charge of the mortal remains of Sharon Gregory and making the necessary phone calls. It was an important function; the last thing we wanted was some smart-arse barrister suggesting that the cadaver Henry had carved up at the mortuary was not the one found in room 219 of the Dickin Hotel. It had been known in the past for prosecutions to founder on minor technicalities, such as a detective omitting to put a signature on the right form at the right time, thus breaking the chain of evidence.

I opened the suitcase. It contained, among other necessaries, two summer dresses, a linen trouser suit, changes of sensible underwear, spare tights, a somewhat risqué bikini, and a make-up bag. There was also a small leather bag containing a variety of perfumes. It looked as though she’d intended staying away from West Drayton for some time. One thing was for sure: she’d never be going back there now.

Sharon’s handbag was on a bedside table. It was a black satchel bag from Aspinal of London, and I knew from my occasional enforced shopping trips with Gail that it retailed for not much less than £500. Inside, apart from what one would expect to find in a woman’s handbag, I found a small wallet containing credit cards, one of which was in the name of Clifford Gregory. According to the partial number on the receipts, that card had been used at a retail outlet and a restaurant at the Chimes Shopping Centre, Uxbridge. There was also a paper napkin bearing a mobile telephone number.

‘Give the credit cards and the receipts to Charlie Flynn, Dave. He might be able to tell us if there’s anything interesting on the various accounts. And check out the number on this napkin.’

‘There’s this mobile on the bedside cabinet, guv.’ Dave picked up the phone with latex-gloved hands and scrolled through to the record of sent messages. ‘There’s nothing on it,’ he said. ‘I suspect it’s a pay-as-you-go throwaway job.’

‘Is there anything to say whether it’s Sharon’s?’ I asked. ‘There is a receipt dated yesterday in her handbag for a mobile purchased in Uxbridge. Oddly enough it was a cash purchase, but she paid for the other items with a card.’

‘Looks as though she didn’t want it to be traced,’ said Dave. ‘I’ll check it out, but I doubt I’ll be able to confirm it. It’s probably one that she used to arrange a meeting with her lover and wiped clean after she made the call. Either that or it hasn’t been used at all.’

‘It’s not the one we found at the airport, then?’

‘No, it’s not,’ said Dave, ‘but we’re fairly sure she didn’t go back there, so that one’s probably still in her locker. Which is why she had to buy another one.’

‘I suppose she might’ve used the hotel phone from this room.’

‘I’ll have a word with the receptionist,’ said Dave. ‘She’ll be able to tell me. Guests get billed for calls. Usually quite heavily.’

‘I know,’ I said, recalling the commander’s horror when he’d discovered the cost of the calls we’d made to London while in Bermuda on an enquiry a few years ago.

Dave and I returned to the ground floor to be met by Kate Ebdon.

‘I’ve spoken to Natalie Lester, the receptionist who was on duty at the desk yesterday afternoon and evening, guv.’ Kate indicated a smiling Eurasian girl who was dealing with a couple of casually-dressed middle-aged Americans. Half a dozen other people were vying impatiently for the girl’s attention. ‘She said that they were extremely busy during that time and she doesn’t recall anyone asking for the Gregory woman. She also said that a visitor could’ve asked any member of staff who happened to be helping out on reception. And she confirmed that no one was with Sharon when she checked in.’

‘That’s what I expected,’ I said.

‘But she pointed out that if a visitor knew which room Sharon was staying in, there’d be nothing to stop him or her going straight up,’ continued Kate. ‘There are so many guests milling about that they never know who’s who. Incidentally, she mentioned that Sharon Gregory had stayed here before. At least four or five times during the past year, and she always asked for a double room with a double bed.’

‘Did anybody see an agitated man leaving during the afternoon or early evening?’ I knew that it was a hopeless query, but sometimes a piece of vital evidence resulted.

‘You must be joking, guv.’ Kate laughed outright at such a preposterous idea. ‘There are always crowds of people in the hotel. And if any of yesterday’s guests saw anything, you can bet that they’re on the other side of the world by now. Most of the people who stay here are transiting airline passengers who book in for just the one night.’

‘Thanks, Kate. I’d guessed that the killer wouldn’t have made himself known to the receptionist. Judging by the saucy underwear in Sharon Gregory’s room, I think she knew the guy and had probably arranged to meet him here for a quick tumble. And told him the room number where he’d find her. What we don’t know is why it went so disastrously wrong.’

‘Of course, we’re assuming that it was lover boy who topped her,’ said Dave, injecting his customary valid scepticism into the discussion. ‘On the other hand, it might’ve been a passing floor waiter who happened to walk in and find Sharon prancing about in a thong.’

‘That’s in hand,’ said Kate. ‘I’ve got a team interviewing all the staff. And we’ll have to carry on tomorrow because not all yesterday’s people are on duty today.’

‘The receptionist confirmed that Sharon didn’t use the hotel phone, guv,’ said Dave, ‘but as I said earlier, she probably used the mobile we found and then deleted the call from the sent calls list.’

‘I wonder why?’ I asked, half to myself.

‘There again, her killer might’ve been a careful bastard and deleted the calls himself before taking off.’

‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but why not take the damned phone with him? He could’ve chucked it in the river rather than leaving it here for us to find.’

Leaving those imponderables for the time being, we returned to Sharon Gregory’s hotel room for another search, primarily to make sure that we hadn’t overlooked anything of importance. But we found nothing more that would help to tell us who’d killed her.

Back downstairs, we questioned members of staff who might’ve seen anything, but they were of no assistance at all. Finally we gave Sharon Gregory’s room back to Mr Sharp, the general manager.

‘However, Mr Sharp,’ I said, ‘other officers will be here tomorrow to question those members of staff who are not here today.’

‘I hope this doesn’t get into the papers,’ said Sharp, his shoulders slumping as he sighed.

‘What, with an airport full of freelance journalists and paparazzi?’ scoffed Dave. ‘You must be joking.’ He glanced across the lobby at a Japanese tourist with an expensive camera slung around his neck. ‘I think he might be one of them,’ he added.

The manager beetled off to intercept the innocent guest, but then stopped abruptly at the sight of a wheeled stretcher being pushed across the foyer. On it was a body bag containing Sharon’s corpse. ‘Oh my Godfathers!’ he exclaimed.

W
e got back to our office at ESB at about nine o’clock that evening, and I decided we’d done enough for one day. I sent the team home and told them to return early next morning. There was much to do.

In the interests of remaining alert the following day, I considered it inadvisable to spend another night with Gail and went home to the flat in Surbiton I’d bought after my divorce from Helga.

When I was a young uniformed PC, I’d met and married a German girl. Originally from Cologne, Helga Büchner had been a physiotherapist at Westminster Hospital and had pummelled my wrenched shoulder back into place following a confrontation with some youths I’d arrested in Whitehall.

I took her out to dinner that same night, and to a police dance at Caxton Hall on the following Saturday. After a whirlwind romance we were married two months later and began our shared life in an insalubrious flat in Earlsfield, South London. The marriage had lasted sixteen years, which was about fifteen and a half years longer than the predictions of my colleagues, mainly the female ones.

Over the years, and thanks mainly to my job, we had slowly drifted apart, but the last straw came when Helga left our four-year-old son Robert with a neighbour while she went to work. The boy fell into an ornamental pond and drowned. I didn’t blame the neighbour; I blamed Helga. I might be old-fashioned, but I thought that Helga should’ve put her career on hold, at least until Robert had started school.

On the day of the tragedy the superintendent called me into his office to break the news. It’s a day that is forever etched in my memory.

‘Sit down, Harry,’ he had said. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you your son has been drowned.’ Just like that.

Typically, the guv’nor hadn’t waltzed around the subject, but had got straight to the point. That, of course, is the CID way.

‘Take whatever time you need,’ he’d said, after filling me in with the brief details. ‘I’ll square it with the commander. The duty inspector at Wandsworth nick dealt with it, if you want to have a word.’

That awful event had finally torn apart the tattered remains of a marriage that had been full of arguments, accusations and counter-accusations. It hadn’t been helped by adultery on both sides, and ultimately Helga’s decision to leave me for a doctor with whom, unbeknown to me, she’d been having an affair for the previous six months.

The only lasting benefit I derived from the marriage was the ability to speak fluent German. On balance it might’ve been cheaper to have gone to night school.

Gladys Gurney, my ‘lady-who-does’, had been working miracles on my flat. She really is a gem, and Gail had repeatedly tried to filch her from me. The whole place had been tidied, polished and hoovered from top to bottom. Even the windows had been cleaned, at least on the inside. My shirts had been washed, ironed and put away in the wardrobe. The bed had been changed and the dirty sheets and pillow slips laundered and placed tidily in the appropriate drawers. The detritus I’d left after my last stay had miraculously disappeared. And there was one of Gladys’s charming little notes on the kitchen worktop.

Dear Mr Brock

I found a pair of Miss Sutton’s shoes the ones with high heels what seemed to somehow have got under your bed. I’ve give them a polish and left them in the wardrobe. I hope she never hurt her feet getting home without no shoes on.

Yours faithfully

Gladys Gurney (Mrs)

P.S. Your microwave has broke down.

As I said, Gladys is an absolute gem. I left her wages on the kitchen worktop and added an extra five pounds and a note of thanks. She’s worth every penny.

I was in the office at eight o’clock the next morning, thus giving me two hours before the commander arrived at the stroke of ten. He was never at work earlier than that and I suspected he had been warned not to overdo it by Mrs Commander, a harridan of a woman if the photograph that adorned her husband’s desk was anything to go by.

My team had been busy. At nine o’clock, DS Flynn came into my office.

‘I’ve been checking on the credit cards found at the murder scene, guv. Clifford Gregory’s card was used twice at the Chimes Shopping Centre at Uxbridge the day before yesterday. The receipts show that it was first used for the purchase of underwear at ten-sixteen, and again for an omelette, a pastry and two coffees at ten-thirty-seven at an Italian restaurant at the shopping centre.’ Flynn closed his daybook. ‘I’ve got Sheila Armitage checking it out at the shopping centre; she might turn up something useful. And the hotel told me that Clifford Gregory’s card was swiped by the receptionist Natalie Lester at the Dickin Hotel at twelve-oh-two. But we knew what time she’d booked in, of course.’

Dave appeared with cups of coffee. ‘Not much joy so far, then, guv,’ he said, when I’d brought him up to date.

‘I think there’s no doubt that Sharon Gregory murdered her husband, Dave. The purchase of the window sash weight and the clothes line is down to her, and the online transaction with the Mexican pharmaceutical company was almost certainly for the Rohypnol. As well as the evidence of Clifford Gregory’s blood in the shower tray and on the sash weight.’

‘I can’t see this ghostly intruder bothering to take a shower,’ said Dave, ‘unless he hadn’t got any clothes on either. And that would create a whole new ball game. Frankly, I don’t think he exists.’

‘Perhaps not an intruder as such, Dave,’ I said. ‘Even so, it might be a good idea to examine the computer at the Gregorys’ house to see if it turns up any other names. And Charlie Flynn has confirmed that she used her husband’s credit card on two occasions in Uxbridge, and to check in at the hotel.’

‘And they haven’t got a hope in hell of getting their money. What a terrible shame!’ commented Dave, who had jousted with credit card companies in the past.

‘The only question,’ I continued, ‘was whether she had any help to murder her husband. Was this mysterious intruder known to her and was he an accomplice in the murder? Or perhaps he didn’t exist at all.’

‘I just said that …
sir
,’ said Dave.

At two o’clock that afternoon, we were back at Henry Mortlock’s mortuary.

The naked body of Sharon Gregory, sewn roughly together after Mortlock’s probing, lay on a table.

‘As I said at the scene, Harry, the cause of death was manual strangulation.’ Mortlock finished washing his hands and turned to face us. ‘Petechiae, cyanosis and congestion all indicate pressure on the jugular veins. There was also heavy bruising in that area – probably caused by the killer’s thumbs – which, as I suggested previously, implies that he had some strength in his hands.’