‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite definitely, sir.’
‘Tell me about it.’ The commander sighed and leaned back in his chair, peering at me over his half-moon spectacles. I doubted they contained corrective lenses; I think he wore them for effect.
I spent the next few minutes describing the case with which we were dealing, larding it with technical CID phrases that I knew he wouldn’t understand but wouldn’t query for fear of being found uninformed about the basics of crime investigation. I decided, however, not to voice my suspicions about Sharon Gregory’s account of what had taken place at West Drayton. That would set him off theorizing. Anyway, we needed more than we had before we could justify arresting her.
‘Yes, very well, Mr Brock. Keep me informed.’ The commander carefully selected a file from his overflowing in-tray, placed it in the centre of his desk and caressed it lovingly.
I returned to my office. Dave was waiting for me.
‘Give me an excuse to get out of here, Dave,’ I said. ‘Any excuse.’
‘Will Heathrow Airport do, guv? I tracked down the security officer for the airline Sharon Gregory works for. His name’s Ted Richie and he’s an ex-CID officer. He was a DCI when he packed the Job in.’
‘Thank God for that. When can he see us?’
‘As soon as we can get there,’ said Dave, ‘but Charlie Flynn’s got some information for you that you ought to know about before we go.’
DS Flynn came into my office carrying a sheaf of papers. ‘I’ve checked through Mrs Gregory’s credit card accounts, guv’nor. Turns out she was one careless lady.’
‘How so, Charlie?’
‘The window sash weight and the clothes line that Linda Mitchell found in the garage were purchased by Sharon Gregory from a DIY supermarket in Ruislip a week ago and paid for on her credit card.’ Flynn thumbed through his pile of paper. ‘She also paid an online pharmacy company in Mexico six weeks ago, but there’s no indication what she bought.’
‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘Why would an air hostess buy a window sash weight and a clothes line? The house is double glazed and there’s a washer-drier in the utility room.’ But the answer was obvious: she, or her accomplice, had murdered Clifford Gregory. And the pharmacy company in Mexico could have been the source of the Rohypnol that Dr Mortlock had found in Clifford Gregory’s hair. But we had yet to discover a motive.
‘That’s not all, guv. The insurance policy that Sharon Gregory said her husband had taken out for twenty thousand pounds no longer exists. It was cashed in when the Gregorys bought their house five years ago. However …’ Flynn paused, presumably for dramatic effect. ‘Sharon took out a policy on her husband for one hundred thousand pounds.’
‘When?’ I asked.
‘Would you believe one month ago, guv?’ Flynn looked up and grinned.
‘Thanks, Charlie. That’s very helpful.’
‘Miss Ebdon said it looked like a put-up job, guv,’ said Dave, when Flynn had departed. ‘So, what’s next?’
‘What’s next, Dave, is that we go straight to West Drayton and nick Mrs Gregory on suspicion of murdering her husband. Not that she’s going anywhere until Wednesday. At least that’s when she said she was next on duty.’
It was only fifteen miles from ESB, as we had come to call the Empress State Building, to West Drayton. Even so, it took us nearly an hour, despite what Dave called ‘positive motoring’, an expertise that added another meaning to the term ‘hard drive’. But when we arrived at the Gregorys’ house, we found that our journey had been in vain.
The blue and white tapes were still in place across the front of the house, and a constable from the local station stood guard at the door.
‘Are you looking for Mrs Gregory, sir?’ asked the PC.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘She left about ten minutes ago in her Mini Cooper, sir,’ said the PC.
‘Did she say where she was going? Shopping, perhaps?’
‘She said she was going on duty. She was in her airline uniform and was carrying a small suitcase.’
‘I don’t suppose you happened to take a note of the index mark of the Mini Cooper, did you?’ I asked hopefully.
The PC opened his pocketbook and displayed a page. ‘There you are, sir,’ he said triumphantly.
‘Well done,’ I said. ‘You should go far in the Job.’ I’d often had that said to me when I was a young PC, but it hadn’t seemed to have the desired effect. Quite a few of my contemporaries at the Metropolitan Police training school at Hendon were now chief superintendents and one was a commander, but they were in the Uniform Branch and I wondered, yet again, whether becoming a CID officer had been a wise choice. And another thing I’d learned is that a compliment of that sort only holds good until your next mistake.