Reckless Endangerment--A Brock and Poole Police Procedural

by Graham Ison

  ‘Did I say that? I really don’t know. I was so confused and frightened by the whole business that I didn’t know what I was saying half the time.’

  ‘How did this man get in?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ said Sharon. ‘Through the front door, I suppose.’

  ‘Wasn’t it locked, then?’

  ‘I thought it was.’ Sharon looked directly at me. ‘I leave that sort of thing to my husband. He always makes sure the house is secure.’

  ‘Who closed the downstairs windows?’

  ‘I did. My husband forgot.’

  ‘Did he perhaps also forget to lock the front door?’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible. I didn’t think to check.’

  ‘Did the intruder take anything?’ asked Kate, switching the subject again.

  ‘My jewellery,’ Sharon replied without hesitating.

  ‘How did you know that? You were tied up.’ Kate stopped writing and looked up, smiling to mask her suspicion – a suspicion that was growing stronger as Sharon’s account unfolded.

  ‘Well, Mr Miller had a look round the house to make sure that the burglar really had gone.’

  ‘This is your neighbour, the same Sidney Miller, that you’re talking about, is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, he and his wife Janet are very good friends of ours. Of me and poor Cliff, that is.’ Sharon stifled a sob. ‘I followed him upstairs to the master bedroom and it was then that I saw Cliff. I was sure he was dead and Sid felt his pulse and said that he was. I must admit that I screamed hysterically at the sight of my poor husband lying there covered in blood, and I fainted.’

  ‘You mentioned that this man took your jewellery, Sharon,’ prompted Kate impatiently.

  ‘When I came to, I saw that my jewellery box was on the floor near my head. It was empty.’

  ‘You hadn’t noticed it there when you first entered the room?’

  ‘No, but I didn’t really know what I was doing.’

  ‘Presumably you’d put on a robe before following your neighbour upstairs, Sharon.’ Kate was doing what she always did: returning to an earlier statement to see if the story had changed.

  ‘I think so. Yes, of course I did.’

  ‘Where was this robe?’

  ‘Er, in this room.’

  ‘Do you sleep in this room, then?’ Kate glanced at the undisturbed bed.

  ‘No, I sleep with my husband.’

  ‘But the robe was in this room. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a spare one I keep in here.’ Sharon plucked at the front of her robe. ‘This one.’

  ‘So there should be another robe in the master bedroom?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure there is. Well, there must be, I’ve got more than one.’

  ‘So when did you come up here to get the one you’re wearing?’

  It was obvious to me that Kate was interested in this business of the robes. But knowing Kate, I sensed that her interest went far deeper than that.

  ‘Straight after Sid untied me,’ said Sharon.

  ‘You didn’t look into the main bedroom to see if your husband had been disturbed or even attacked?’

  ‘No – well, I didn’t know whether the man was still here.’

  ‘Just now you said that Mr Miller had already had a look around the house and he’d told you the man had gone. Apart from which, Mr Miller told one of my officers that when he untied you, you told him that the man had gone.’

  ‘Did I? I must’ve got mixed up.’ Sharon started to cry again, and grabbed a handful of tissues. ‘It’s all been such a terrible shock,’ she said, ‘and you’re confusing me.’

  Kate looked at the ceiling in exasperation. Sharon Gregory’s dramatic performance might’ve impressed a gullible man, but it wasn’t having any effect on Kate.

  ‘Did Mr Miller come up here with you?’ asked Kate, when Sharon had recovered.

  ‘No, he stayed downstairs until I’d got my robe and gone back down again. Then we started to look round the house together. I can’t really remember what I did or what order I did it in. I was so frightened and upset about having found that this man had murdered my poor husband that I didn’t really know what I was doing.’

  ‘Did you hear anything after this man had tied you up, apart from the noise of him crashing around the house? Did you, for example, hear a car starting up, or perhaps later on, after you’d recovered from your faint?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘I think that’ll do for the time being, Sharon,’ I said. ‘Now perhaps you’d carefully read the statement that Inspector Ebdon has taken down. You can make any changes you want to, and then perhaps you’d sign it.’

  Kate handed over the several sheets of paper and a pen. ‘Put in your date of birth at the top of the form, Sharon. You’ll see a space for it.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ Sharon Gregory fluttered her eyelashes and once again assumed a coy expression. She seemed to be very good at coy expressions.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Kate firmly, unmoved by the woman’s shrinking-violet artifice.

  Sharon Gregory took a few minutes to read the statement. ‘I’m not sure about the bit where I said that I came up here first to get my robe. I think perhaps I was wandering around in the nude …’ She glanced at me as she said that, and smiled.

  ‘Let me get this straight. Are you now saying that you were walking around the house with your male neighbour, but you don’t think you had any clothes on?’ asked Kate sharply.

  ‘I can’t really remember. As I said, I was confused and frightened.’ Sharon shot another shy smile in my direction.

  Kate took back the statement and made the necessary alteration. ‘There we are. Now perhaps you’d sign it at the bottom of each page, Sharon.’ She handed the woman the sheaf of forms and proffered a pen.

  Without another word, Sharon scribbled her signature in the places Kate had indicated.

  ‘We’ll undoubtedly have to talk to you again soon, Sharon,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said the woman, but I got the impression that she was not relishing the prospect of another interview.

  ‘When are you next due on duty?’ I asked.

  ‘Not until Wednesday afternoon.’

  ‘One other thing, Sharon,’ said Kate, as we stood up to leave. ‘Would you mind just pulling up your sleeves?’

  Sharon didn’t query this request and did as she was asked.

  ‘And now your ankles.’ Kate stepped closer and examined the woman’s wrists and ankles. ‘Thank you, Sharon,’ she said. ‘I should get some rest now, if I were you. Can I get someone to bring you a cup of tea?’

  ‘That would be nice, thank you. Then I think I’ll try to get some sleep.’

  ‘Tell me, Sharon, was your husband’s life insured?’ asked Kate. It was the sort of barbed question that she was very good at posing, and she asked it almost as a throwaway query. As though it were of no real importance.

  ‘Yes, thank goodness, but unfortunately it’s only for twenty thousand pounds. Cliff took it out when we were married and I don’t think he bothered to increase the amount. I’ve always left the financial side of things to him. He’s very good at it, being an accountant. Still,’ continued Sharon, ‘this house is worth quite a bit and I’ll probably have to sell it now. I really don’t know what I’m going to do.’ Her last statement was accompanied by a suitably sad expression.

  We left it at that, but I determined that I’d get DS Flynn, who had previously served on the Fraud Squad, to look into the Gregorys’ financial affairs.

  I was unhappy about the statement that Kate had just taken. Somehow it didn’t seem to hang together, and I began to wonder if we were dealing with something more complex than a straightforward break-in that ended up as a murder. The possibility that was foremost in my mind was that the so-called intruder was actually an accomplice and that he and Sharon had arranged the whole thing. But we had a long way to go before we could prove that.

  FOUR

/>   Downstairs in the hall, Kate sought out the woman PC who had earlier been sitting with Sharon Gregory. ‘Get a cup of tea organized for Mrs Gregory and take it up to her, would you, please?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said the WPC, and turned to go. If she thought that making cups of tea wasn’t included in her job description, she had yet to learn that care of victims was an important part of police duty. But she didn’t comment, probably from fear of annoying Kate again.

  ‘Don’t run away just yet,’ said Kate. ‘While you were baby-sitting Mrs Gregory, did she say anything about what had happened?’

  ‘Only that she’d been frightened out of her life when the man appeared, ma’am. She said she thought he was going to rape her. And then she said she hoped he wouldn’t come back again.’

  ‘Did she say anything about having been naked the whole time this was going on?’

  ‘She did say that she was naked when she first saw the man in the hall, ma’am.’

  ‘In the hall?’ queried Kate. ‘She didn’t say that the man was in the sitting room?’

  ‘No, ma’am, she said he was in the hall.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Give me your book,’ said Kate, holding out her hand. ‘Why isn’t there anything here to that effect?’ she asked, having read the last few entries.

  ‘I didn’t think it was important, ma’am.’

  ‘And who the hell are you to decide whether it’s important?’ snapped Kate. ‘For all you know, it could be vital evidence. Well, put it in your book now. And when you’re called to give evidence at the Old Bailey or wherever, you’ll say that I directed you to put it there and that you only put it there some time after the statement was made by Mrs Gregory because I had to tell you to do so. Clear?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The WPC spent a few moments making notes and handed the book back to Kate.

  Kate read through the entry and then signed it, adding the date and time. ‘You need to note everything a victim says to you, young lady, especially at the scene of a murder. Got that? And if defence counsel asks why you didn’t make the entry earlier, you’ll have to admit that you failed to do your job properly, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Good. Now get Mrs Gregory her tea.’

  As I said earlier, Kate could be very hard on her own sex. But above all else, she was a good detective and knew the value of apparently inconsequential statements made by anybody immediately after a crime had been committed. Especially those made by the victim.

  Linda Mitchell appeared in the hall from the kitchen. ‘I thought I’d bring you up to date, Mr Brock.’

  ‘Anything interesting so far, Linda?’

  ‘There are obviously fingerprints all over the place and it’ll take some time for Fingerprint Bureau to come up with any matches. And there’s this.’ Linda held up a plastic evidence bag. ‘It looks like the jewellery that Mrs Gregory said was stolen.’

  ‘Where on earth did you find it?’ I asked.

  Linda smiled. ‘On a shelf in the garage behind some pots of paint, would you believe? I’ll have it checked for prints, not that I hold out much hope of finding any.’

  ‘But why would someone steal jewellery and then hide it in the garage?’ I asked. ‘What d’you make of that, Kate?’

  ‘If he did,’ said Kate. ‘On the other hand, it might not be the real thing,’ she suggested. ‘And when he realized that it was valueless he dumped it.’

  ‘But why bother to put it in the garage?’ I asked. ‘Why not just leave it anywhere. Having looked round the house, I doubt that he was too worried about being untidy.’

  ‘I can tell you now that it’s not valuable,’ said Linda. ‘The necklace might look like gold, but it isn’t. The stones aren’t diamonds either – they’re crystal – although they have the appearance of being the real thing at a first glance. I’d say that she’d get away with it in a room with soft lighting, but an expert would spot the difference immediately.’

  ‘Any other surprises?’

  ‘Yes, I found a window sash weight in the garage as well, and what appears to be an almost new clothes line, but a length has been cut from it. They were also secreted on a shelf behind paint tins, along with the jewellery. I’ll keep you posted on anything else we find.’

  ‘Could the rope that was used to tie up Mrs Gregory have come from that clothes line?’

  ‘It’s possible, Mr Brock, but I shan’t know for certain until the lab’s carried out a few tests on it and conducted a comparison with Mrs Gregory’s bonds that were found in the hall.’

  ‘Thanks, Linda. Is it all right if Kate and I have a thorough look round the rest of the house now? We had a cursory glance earlier, but your chaps were still at work in some of the rooms.’

  ‘They’ve finished dusting for prints now and the video chap’s got all he needs. You’ll find Sergeant Poole around here somewhere. I think he’s made a start.’

  We began with the ransacked sitting room and found Dave having a look around. Kate and I sat down on a sofa to compare notes and Dave took a seat in an armchair opposite us.

  ‘What d’you think, Kate?’

  ‘I think the widow Gregory’s one carney little bitch who seems to have a habit of fainting every five minutes. And she was very composed when we were talking to her. Too bloody composed in my view.’ Kate was clearly not taken in by Sharon Gregory’s simpering pose. ‘I think she’s lying through her teeth. Her account was much too detailed. If she was as terrified as she claimed to be, she came up with a pretty good description of this mysterious guy’s jeans and trainers. One minute she said she was scared out of her wits, but the next she said she didn’t think the noise was anything serious. And if she didn’t like the question, she claimed to have fainted. Again!’

  ‘Do I get the impression that you didn’t like her, guv?’ asked Dave, addressing himself to Kate.

  ‘Got it in one, mate, but overall I’m not too impressed by her story,’ said Kate. ‘She was a bit too vague when I pressed her, and she wasn’t red-eyed as if she’d been crying her eyes out when she discovered her husband had been topped. And when I had a look at her wrists there were no signs of rope burns, which is what I’d’ve expected to find if she was tied up in the way she described and had attempted to escape. There were no marks on her ankles either.’

  ‘Perhaps she wasn’t tied up very tightly,’ I suggested. ‘What did Miller have to say about it, Dave?’

  ‘All he said was that when he found her she was secured with rope around her wrists and ankles, guv, and she was lying on her side. He didn’t enlarge on it.’

  ‘We’ll see if he can tell us a bit more when we have a word with him later on.’

  ‘I told him you’d probably want to interview him this afternoon,’ said Dave.

  ‘I wonder what this intruder was searching for?’ I said, turning back to Kate. ‘He certainly tore the place apart, but he doesn’t appear to have taken any of the things I’d’ve expected a burglar to take. The TV is still here and so is the DVD recorder, albeit both chucked on the floor. And there are some easily portable items around the house that he could have fenced without raising too much suspicion.’

  ‘She did say that her jewellery was missing,’ said Kate.

  ‘Yes, but why turn out all the cupboards and drawers and throw CDs and DVDs about the place? And why overturn tables and lamps? Any housebreaker worth his salt would probably go straight for the bedroom if all he wanted was jewellery. Of course we shan’t know whether he took anything else until Mrs Gregory’s had a chance to see what’s missing.’

  ‘There’s something else, too,’ Kate said. ‘This bit about her wandering around the house completely naked with Miller, the man from next door. Seems a strange thing for a woman to do, if what she said is true. Unless,’ she added, ‘she’s having a fling with him.’

  ‘Or he was the accomplice,’ said Dave cynically.

 
‘Perhaps she likes to show off her body,’ I suggested lamely.

  ‘But only if there’s a man around to admire her,’ responded Kate cuttingly. ‘You’re not going soft on her because she’s a good-looking bird, are you, guv?’

  ‘She’s not my type,’ I said. ‘Although I could understand a lot of men being taken in by her. Sharon Gregory is certainly a woman who oozes sex appeal.’

  ‘To repeat what I said before, in my opinion it’s a put-up job,’ said Kate. ‘I reckon that this intruder, if he exists at all, was an accomplice. And, as Dave said, it might’ve been Miller. I haven’t worked it out yet, but I reckon Sharon’s scared of this guy, whoever he is, in a different way than she expressed. But if that’s the case, what was the motive?’

  ‘The murder of Sharon Gregory’s husband,’ said Dave bluntly, as usual encapsulating a valid reason in a few words. ‘The classic elimination of one side of the eternal triangle.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Let’s assume that the mysterious intruder is having an affair with Sharon and they jointly decided to get rid of boring old Clifford. But we’ll need a lot more evidence before we’ve got enough to arrest Sharon for conspiracy to murder. And it would be useful to know if she was cheating on her husband. And if so, with whom.’

  ‘There’s another thing,’ said Kate. ‘I had a look in the master bedroom and there wasn’t another robe in there. So the one Sharon was wearing wasn’t kept in the second bedroom. What’s more, there was a pair of trainers in the bottom of the wardrobe that were exactly the same as the Nikes that she said the intruder was wearing.’

  ‘The intruder wouldn’t have taken them off and put them in there, surely?’ I said.

  ‘No, but for want of a description, Sharon probably decided to describe her husband’s trainers just to bolster up her story.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ I said reflectively, ‘she’s lying, but I’ve yet to work out the reason.’

  Leaving Kate to get DI Tom Watson’s account of what he’d found when he’d arrived to do his preliminary survey, Dave and I began a detailed examination of the downstairs rooms. The result was much the same in each: the place had been thoroughly ransacked. And the more I saw of it, the less I was convinced that it was a professional job.