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.
NINE
We 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.