Reckless Endangerment--A Brock and Poole Police Procedural

by Graham Ison

  ‘Thanks, Ted. It looks like she’s done a runner.’

  ‘Anything else I can help you with, Harry?’

  ‘No thanks. I’ll get our port watch people to make some enquiries. Oh, there is one thing: where does Sharon Gregory usually stay in Miami?’

  Richie delved into his pile of paperwork once again. ‘The crew always spends stopovers at the Shannon Hotel on Miami Beach,’ he said eventually.

  ‘I don’t know whether it’ll help us,’ said Dave, ‘but I suppose there’s an outside chance that she’s gone there, even off duty. D’you have a phone number for the Shannon?’

  ‘Sure.’ Richie scribbled the details on a memo bearing the airline’s crest and handed it to Dave. ‘If the crew room’s empty, and it should be, I could let you have a discreet look in her locker, Harry, if you think that would help?’ he suggested. ‘But for God’s sake don’t tell anyone that I let you have a gander without a warrant or I’ll have the union on my back like a ton of bricks. The next thing that’d happen would be a strike, and I could do without that sort of aggro.’

  ‘Thanks, Ted. A look in her locker might be useful.’

  Richie picked up his personal radio, led us down a flight of stairs, along several passageways and through a door marked ‘Private’ until we reached the crew room. Fortunately it was deserted. Taking out a bunch of keys, the security chief opened a locker labelled ‘Sharon Gregory’. ‘Pays to have a skeleton key,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘Although if the shop steward found out he’d go ape.’ It seemed that he was in constant fear of the trade union.

  There was little in the locker to excite our interest: some clothing, including a spare uniform, a couple of packets of tights and a pair of high-heeled shoes.

  ‘They wear high heels to greet the passengers,’ said Richie, offering a piece of useless information, ‘but they change into flats once they’re airborne.’

  ‘This might be useful, sir,’ said Dave, picking up a mobile phone. ‘I wonder why she didn’t take it with her?’ He picked up the phone and began to fiddle with it.

  ‘What are you up to now, Dave?’ I was always interested when Dave moved into his technical mode.

  ‘Copying her contact list, sir,’ said Dave, as he removed the SIM cards from his own phone and Sharon’s. Placing her card into his phone, he copied her contact list, and then returned Sharon’s card to her phone. ‘And she’ll never know we did it,’ he said, as he replaced his own SIM card and put Sharon’s phone back in her locker.

  ‘D’you think she might’ve had something to do with topping her husband, Harry?’ asked Richie, as we strolled back to his office. The suspicions of a career CID officer still remained.

  ‘I very much doubt it, Ted,’ I said, unwilling to disclose my concerns about the circumstances surrounding the murder of Clifford Gregory, even to an ex-copper. Loyalties tend to change with a change of career. ‘But I’ll keep you posted if anything interesting comes up. Oh, there’s one other thing. D’you know if Sharon Gregory had a particular friend, one who is in the same crew maybe and might know what she gets up to when she’s in Miami?’

  ‘Leave it with me, Harry, I’ll ask around. I’ll give you a bell if I find out anything.’ Richie glanced at his watch. ‘You got time for a snifter?’

  ‘Yes, why not? But Dave’s driving, so he’ll have an orange juice.’

  Richie laughed. ‘Rank hath its privileges,’ he said, as Dave and I followed him into one of the many bars to be found in the Heathrow Airport complex.

  Once back at ESB, I asked Dave to telephone the Shannon Hotel at Miami Beach and find out if Sharon was there.

  Ten minutes later, he returned. ‘She’s not there, guv, and they aren’t expecting the crew she’s usually with until Wednesday.’

  ‘That comes as no surprise,’ I said, leaving Dave to list the contacts he had found on Sharon Gregory’s mobile. I phoned Linda Mitchell in an attempt to clarify one or two points.

  ‘How many mobile telephones did you come across at the Gregorys’ house, Linda?’

  ‘Two, Mr Brock,’ said Linda promptly. ‘One was in the study and the other was on the worktop in the kitchen. I’m about to examine them, but it’s most likely that the one from the kitchen was Sharon’s, and the one in the study belonged to her husband. I’ll let you know.’

  ‘A couple of other things. I’d be grateful if you’d have all the pillows that were in the master bedroom examined. Doctor Mortlock tells me that Clifford Gregory was suffocated, and he suspects it might’ve been one of the pillows that was used. So, a check for saliva or mucus would be useful, but you know better than me the sort of thing we’re looking for. Also, the piece of material found in the hall that Sharon Gregory said the intruder used to gag her. See if there was any trace of her saliva on it.’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ said Linda. ‘I’ll get back to you as soon as I get a result.’

  ‘How are you getting on, Dave?’ I asked, returning to the incident room. ‘Incidentally, Linda Mitchell told me that she found another mobile in the house that belonged to Sharon.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, guv,’ said Dave. ‘The one we found at Heathrow has got all the usual girlie stuff on it, like hairdresser, manicurist, tanning studio, et cetera. But there are also six men’s names and their telephone numbers. Four of them are in the UK, and the other two have numbers in the States.’

  ‘And I’d put money on those men’s names not being on the mobile that Linda found in the kitchen at West Drayton.’

  Dave laughed. ‘It’s beginning to look as though our Sharon was the sort of girl who played the field, guv, and didn’t want the late Clifford Gregory to come across the phone we found at the airport. Anyway, Colin Wilberforce is doing a subscriber check to find the addresses.’

  ‘I just hope they’re not too far away,’ I said. I’d travelled long distances in the past to chase up promising leads, only to find that I’d wasted my time when I got there. ‘Apart from going to Miami, I somehow doubt that Sharon would want to travel too far to get laid.’

  ‘No, but the guys she was seeing might be prepared to,’ said Dave cynically.

  Linda Mitchell arrived in the incident room at two o’clock. She sat down and opened a file, resting it on her lap.

  ‘I’ve got the initial results of the examination of the property, Mr Brock. And I’ll start with the result I think will probably interest you the most: there was no trace of saliva on the gag that Sharon Gregory said had been stuffed in her mouth.’

  ‘What do you conclude from that, Linda?’ I asked. ‘Scientifically speaking.’

  ‘I would think that if she had been gagged and she’d eventually been able to dislodge it from her mouth, there should’ve been a trace. And in that case we’d almost certainly have been able to get a DNA sample from it. But there was nothing.’

  ‘So, the chances are that her claim to have been gagged wasn’t true.’

  ‘That would be my view,’ said Linda cautiously, and glanced at her notes again. ‘We also found a tea towel in the kitchen with a piece torn from it. The gag that was found in the hall is a mechanical fit for the tea towel.’

  ‘It looks as though the intruder tore the gag from that,’ I conjectured.

  ‘Or Sharon Gregory did,’ said Dave.

  ‘Moving on to the pillows,’ continued Linda, ‘there were traces of saliva and mucus on the pillow that we found on the floor beside the bed, and, of course, blood; the DNA on both pillows matches that of Clifford Gregory. It’s scientifically certain, therefore, that it was that pillow that was used to suffocate the victim, as Doctor Mortlock suggested. The bloodstains on the pillow that was beneath the victim’s head were also those of Clifford Gregory, but that was to be expected. His bloodstains were also on the sash weight I found in the garage, despite the fact that attempts had been made to wash them off.’

  ‘That doesn’t get me very far,’ I said. ‘We know that he was suffocated, rather than killed with the window sash weight. I suppose there was
nothing else anywhere in the house that might indicate who the murderer was?’ I knew instinctively that that was a vain hope. Not that it mattered. Now that we had the evidence that Sharon Gregory had purchased the sash weight and the clothes line, I was as certain as could be that she had killed her husband.

  ‘Nothing that points directly to the killer, I’m afraid, but we made some interesting discoveries. We found traces of the victim’s blood in the shower, although an attempt had been made to wash it away. If I can make a guess, I’d say that the murderer was naked and then showered. Furthermore, although the sash weight had been washed, we were still able to find traces of the victim’s blood in the P-trap under the kitchen sink.’

  ‘That fits with my theory that Sharon was the killer,’ I said. ‘And, of course, she was naked when Miller found her.’

  ‘We also examined all the cupboards and drawers,’ said Linda, ‘and none of them was fitted with a lock. And, as you saw for yourself, there was no indication that the front door had been forced. No jemmy marks, no broken glass.’

  ‘So,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘we now have traces of blood in the shower, the sink and on the sash weight, and Sharon appears to have been lying to us about the gag. Also, Doctor Mortlock found traces of Rohypnol in the victim’s hair. All of which will give me something to question her further about. When we find her. What about fingerprints?’

  ‘Early days yet, Mr Brock, although I can tell you that we couldn’t find any identifiable prints on the jewellery. As you can imagine, there were a lot of dabs around the house and it’ll take some time to sort them out and eliminate those of Clifford and Sharon Gregory. But I can tell you that although there were fingerprints on the whisky bottle we found in the dining room, they were not Clifford Gregory’s. And there wasn’t a dirty glass anywhere. It’s made more difficult in that we don’t yet know the identity of any friends who may have been frequent callers at the house. Or even Clifford Gregory’s clients.’

  ‘You could start by taking elimination prints from Sidney Miller, the neighbour who found her,’ I suggested.

  ‘I’ve got him on my list of things to do.’ Linda looked up with a frown that implied that I shouldn’t try to tell her how to do her job.

  ‘Whoops! Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘However, there is one thing I’d like to say, Mr Brock. I’ve examined hundreds of crime scenes over the years and I’ve never come across a break-in where the burglar has created as much mess as is the case with this one.’

  ‘Nor have I, Linda.’

  ‘Now, about the two mobile phones in the house. They were as I suspected: the one in the kitchen was Sharon’s and the other one belonged to her husband.’

  ‘Give Linda the list you took from the mobile that was in Sharon’s locker at the airport, Dave.’ I gave Linda time to study the numbers, and then asked, ‘Were any of those numbers on Sharon’s house mobile, Linda?’

  ‘Not one.’ Having compared the list with her own notes, Linda handed it back. ‘And no calls were made to any of those numbers from the mobile found at the house.’

  ‘That confirms my original thought,’ I said. ‘That’s a list of her fancy men. Will you let me know as soon as you have something on the prints?’

  ‘Of course.’ Linda closed her file, gave me a copy of her initial report and was about to leave when she paused. ‘Incidentally, the rope with which Sharon Gregory was tied up was a mechanical fit to the clothes line we found in the garage.’ And with that latest confirmation of our suspicions about the burglary and murder, she left to make her way back to Walworth.

  Wilberforce glanced up as I walked into the incident room with Dave. ‘I’ve got the results of the subscriber checks on the numbers on Sharon’s phone, sir. The one Dave found at the airport.’

  ‘Where do they live, Colin? Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, or none of the above?’ I suggested cynically.

  ‘As a matter of fact, we’re in luck. One goes out to a Gordon Harrison in Glenn Road, Fulham; there’s a Max Riley in Guildford; Frank Digby’s at Chalfont St Giles; and a Julian Reed lives in Chelsea. I’m still waiting for Dave to get the details of the two in the United States.’

  ‘At least that’ll give us something to start with. Given that the subscribers probably all work, we’d better leave it until this evening.’

  ‘Oh good!’ exclaimed Dave. ‘That’s another evening taken care of.’

  ‘Is Madeleine working, then?’ Dave’s wife was a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet and more often than not their hours of work conflicted rather than coincided.

  ‘She’s pretending to be a swan in Swan Lake at Covent Garden,’ said Dave. ‘For two whole weeks. I sometimes think that her job is worse than ours.’

  I returned to my office and sent for DC Appleby.

  ‘I’ve got a job for you, John.’

  ‘Sir?’ John Appleby was a young, smartly-dressed and very keen detective constable.

  ‘Get on to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency at Swansea and see if you can get details of any cars that might be owned by the names that Sergeant Poole found on Sharon Gregory’s mobile phone. The British ones, of course.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ Appleby loved tasks like that and he set to work immediately.

  I had no idea whether that information would be of any help to us, but in cases like the present one, I had to try everything. It was what Dave called clutching at non-existent straws.

  It took Appleby half an hour to complete his check with the DVLA.

  The list he handed me was interesting. Frank Digby of Chalfont St Giles boasted a Ford Galaxy; Julian Reed, who lived in Chelsea, owned a Mercedes; and Gordon Harrison, the man in Glenn Road, Fulham, owned a Jaguar XF. All expensive cars. But according to Swansea, Max Riley of Guildford was not registered as the keeper of a motor vehicle of any description.

  ‘Well done, John. Give them to Sergeant Wilberforce and ask him to put them on the Police National Computer with the proviso that sightings are to be reported, but the driver is not to be questioned. Unless, of course,’ I added, ‘they’ve been stopped for a traffic offence. I wouldn’t want to upset the Black Rats by preventing them from doing their job.’

  Appleby looked rather pained. ‘I can put them on the PNC, sir.’

  ‘Sorry, John, of course you can. Go ahead, but tell DS Wilberforce what you’ve done.’ I didn’t want to upset our office genius either.

  SEVEN

  After leaving her home in West Drayton on Monday morning, Sharon Gregory had driven the four miles to the Chimes Shopping Centre at Uxbridge and spent half an hour looking around the shops. In one of them, a boutique that specialized in erotica, she selected a thong, a shelf bra and a pair of black hold-up stockings.

  ‘That should get my man excited, don’t you think?’ Sharon asked the salesgirl.

  ‘Without a doubt,’ said the assistant. ‘I’ve got a similar set and they work for me every time.’

  ‘I should think you’re lucky enough not to have to try very hard,’ said Sharon, glancing enviously at the girl’s décolletage, while paying for her purchases using her dead husband’s credit card. The assistant didn’t see the card and therefore wouldn’t have noticed that it bore a man’s name, but she wouldn’t have cared anyway.

  Her shopping finished, Sharon found an Italian restaurant and took a seat away from the window. It was not yet time for lunch, but she had skipped breakfast and was feeling a little hungry. She ordered an omelette, followed by a cup of coffee and a pastry. Twenty minutes later, she ordered a second cup of coffee, but dismissed the idea of another pastry. She did have her figure to worry about.

  ‘Is there anything else you’d care for?’ asked the handsome young waiter when Sharon asked for her bill.

  ‘You never know,’ she said, laying a hand on the waiter’s arm. Perhaps no more than twenty, he was tall and slender and had a face that suggested Italian ancestry, although he spoke with a Cockney accent. He was certainly of the type that appealed to her. ‘But I don’t hav
e the time right now. Maybe later?’ She spoke in a contrived sultry voice and flashed the young man a beguiling smile. ‘Why don’t you give me your phone number?’

  Agreeably surprised to have been propositioned by an attractive girl, the waiter scribbled his mobile number on a paper napkin and slid it surreptitiously across the table. ‘I’m afraid I’m working until midnight tonight and tomorrow, but I’m off at six the day after,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ said Sharon, putting the napkin into her handbag; she had to admit, if only to herself, that she could be a very deceitful temptress who enjoyed teasing handsome young men. However, she had other plans in which the waiter would play no part. Another time, perhaps?

  Unsurprisingly, Sharon having flirted outrageously, the young waiter didn’t notice that it was her dead husband’s credit card that he put in the machine before handing it to her. Not that it would have worried him any more than it may have concerned the girl at the lingerie boutique, had she seen it.

  It was one of the great advantages of the chip-and-pin method of payment.

  Finally, Sharon found a mobile phone outlet and bought an untraceable pay-as-you-go throwaway for which she paid cash. She put ten-pounds’-worth of talk time on to it, for which she also paid cash.

  And then it was time for what she hoped would be a ‘fun’ afternoon.

  Arriving at the Dickin Hotel on the fringes of Heathrow Airport at midday, Sharon checked in and took the lift to the second floor. Ten minutes later, recalling the number from memory, she made a telephone call on her new mobile.

  ‘I’m ready and waiting for you, darling,’ she said, when the man answered.

  ‘Are you at our usual hotel?’ asked the man, his excitement mounting.

  ‘Of course, darling. I’m in room 219 this time.’

  There was a pause while the man jotted down the room number on the pad by the telephone and calculated how long it would take him to get there. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can, darling,’ he said, having told Sharon when he expected to arrive.

  ‘Drive carefully,’ cautioned Sharon. She terminated the call and deleted the number from the phone.