Reckless Endangerment(64)

‘Do you happen to know any of the other men she was seeing?’

‘No. I certainly didn’t blunder in and find her at it. Not after that time in Miami.’ Cindy paused. ‘Hang on, though. I’ve just remembered. It was about a year ago. Same hotel, of course, and I’d called her and suggested a swim, just like I did last June. But I told you about that just now. She agreed to meet me on the beach in ten minutes’ time, but she never showed up. After about an hour, I rang her from the beach and she said something about having had to take a call.’

We hadn’t learned anything we didn’t already know. Sharon indulged in serial promiscuity. That she was looking for a rich man didn’t narrow the field either; the men who had been interviewed were all well-heeled. We thanked Cindy for her time and wished her a safe flight.

On Monday morning I received a report from the forensic science laboratory. The DNA sample taken from Sharon Gregory’s unborn child had been compared with the swab taken from Frank Digby, the wine merchant from Chalfont St Giles, but had proved not to be a match. Not that that took him out of the frame for her murder.

Later that day we received similarly depressing information: the sample that Lizanne Carpenter had taken from the hairbrush in Gordon Harrison’s bathroom at Fulham didn’t match either. As with Digby, that didn’t mean that he hadn’t murdered her. But from what Ken Sullivan of SOCA had said, Harrison was probably heavily engaged in some other nefarious activity at the time of the murder.

There was one piece of encouraging news. The DNA of a hair that Linda’s people had found on the pillow at the Dickin Hotel had been found to match that of the father of Sharon’s child. We were getting closer, but not close enough to make an arrest.

That apart, it looked very much as though our enquiry had stalled. We’d gathered all these DNA samples, but they meant nothing until we actually found the man who’s DNA could be matched to them, and none of them was on the database. We might get somewhere once we’d identified the fingerprints found in the room, but those could, of course, belong to anyone who had used the room over the preceding weeks.

I walked out to the incident room.

‘Dave, I think we’ll have another run out to the Gregory house and have a look around. What’s the position? Is it still under police guard?’

‘No, guv. It was handed over to Peter Gregory shortly after we’d interviewed Jill Gregory on Friday. But I’ve kept a key, just in case we needed it.’

‘Give him a ring, or Mrs Gregory, and ask one of them if it’s all right for us to have another poke around.’

We arrived at West Drayton at about eleven o’clock. It was immediately apparent that Clifford Gregory’s brother and sister-in-law had paid a visit. The house had been cleared up and there was no sign of the chaos that we’d encountered on the night of Clifford’s murder, apart from the wine stain on the dining room carpet and the broken television set.

‘Are we looking for something in particular, guv?’ asked Dave.

‘I wondered if there was a laptop computer anywhere here that might shed some light on more of Sharon’s bed mates, Dave. More than we’ve turned up so far.’

‘We didn’t find one the night Clifford Gregory was murdered, and we didn’t find one when we came back looking for Sharon. Why should we find one now … sir?’

‘It was just a thought,’ I said.

‘We examined the one in Clifford’s study,’ said Dave, ‘but the only files on it were those connected with his job as an accountant. Anyway, Sharon wouldn’t have been stupid enough to put details of her extramarital affairs on a computer that her husband might find, would she? And there wasn’t one in her locker at Heathrow.’

I still wasn’t convinced. ‘Nevertheless, we’ll have a last look round, Dave. When the house was searched, Sharon was still alive, and we were only looking for evidence in connection with her husband’s murder.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Dave.

That was the second time he’d called me ‘sir’ in a short space of time. However, he was right to doubt the value of conducting a second search. We went through the house – even the loft and the garage – but didn’t find another computer or anything else that would help us to identify who had killed Sharon Gregory.

‘Give Peter Gregory a call, Dave, and ask him if he’s removed a computer. And while you’re at it, ask him if a date’s been set for the funerals.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Dave. I think he thought I was becoming obsessed about finding another computer.