A Conflict of Interests

Synopsis:

Karen Whitfield's death seems to be a sordid but routine domestic murder. That is, until Detective Inspector Coghill starts to ask some questions: how does the wife of a low-paid travel courier afford to live at the height of luxury? What is the real source of her income?

It doesn't take much for Coghill to discover that Karen was a high-class call-girl with a number of well-connected clients, and a lucrative sideline in blackmail. But as his investigations progress he comes up against unexpected and dangerous opposition at all levels. Torn between his strong sense of duty and a natural concern for his career — and life — Coghill is soon caught up in a classic and alarming Conflict of Interests.

A Conflict of Interests

Clive Egleton

Copyright © 1983 by Clive Egleton

ISBN 0-7278-4358-3

This book is for Pauline and Brian

1.

Her name was Karen Whitfield. She was thirty-two years old, had shoulder-length raven black hair, a trim but well-rounded figure and was about five foot seven. She lay on her stomach in the middle of a king-size divan bed, her head turned over to the left and facing the outside wall. Her ankles, wrists and elbows were roped together and she had been gagged with a pair of tights. The green silk dress she was wearing had been raised above her hips and somebody had burned her thighs and naked buttocks with the glowing ember of a cigarette. That same somebody had then held a small-caliber revolver to her head and put two bullets into the brain.

The media were going to have a field day with this one, Coghill thought bitterly. It was the kind of juicy murder with sexual overtones they could really get their teeth into: well-to-do, attractive young housewife tortured and shot dead in her secluded, executive-style house, half a mile from the grounds of the All England Lawn Tennis Club. They'd been quick off the mark too. The 999 call had been received by the police station in Wimbledon at nine twenty-seven; by the time he'd arrived from V District headquarters in Kingston some fifteen minutes later, two local reporters and a press photographer were already loitering outside the house.

The press would want a statement from him and soon, but right now there wasn't much he could give them, apart from the victim's name and age. He'd got that information from Detective Sergeant Mace, the duty CID officer at Wimbledon, who'd arrived on the scene shortly after a Panda car had responded to the 999 call. Mace was downstairs, still interviewing the Whitfields' daily woman who'd discovered the body, and he was hopeful she would be able to tell them a great deal more about her former employer. Meantime, you didn't have to be a pathologist to see that rigor mortis had set in. The corpse was also beginning to smell, which meant death had occurred at the very least twelve hours ago. But that was something the medical examiner would have to confirm, and they were still waiting for him to put in an appearance.

"Is it okay if I make a start, Guv?"

Coghill glanced at the police photographer. "You might as well," he said. "There's no sense in hanging around for Doctor Harrison."

The photographer nodded and began shooting from the foot of the bed. Coghill moved past him to the built-in wardrobes and opened each of them in turn. The larger of the two contained a rackful of Dior, Balenciaga and Yves St. Laurent model dresses, together with a three-quarter-length mink coat, a dozen pairs of Italian and Swiss-made shoes and enough Janet Reger underwear to stock a small shop. The smaller one was less impressive; it held only three inexpensive and well-worn suits, a couple of sports jackets, a gabardine trench coat and an assortment of ties, socks, vests and underpants. There were also four pairs of men's shoes which were far from new.

As far as he could tell from a cursory inspection, none of the drawers in the dressing table had been disturbed and her jewelry was still there, packed inside little red boxes under a collection of Italian silk scarves. A half hoop of diamonds set in platinum, a sapphire and diamond ring, a large emerald and a solitaire as big as a fingernail; at a rough guess, Coghill thought they were worth all of thirty thousand pounds. Robbery could have been a motive, but if that was the reason why Karen Whitfield had been tortured, it was evident the killer hadn't been interested in her jewelry.

He opened the sliding glass door to the adjoining bathroom and gave the room a quick once-over. Bidet, pedestal washbasin and a triangular-shaped bath with gold taps like something out of
Ideal Homes
. He looked inside the linen basket and on top of a pile of discarded shirts and socks, saw a pair of lace-trimmed panties which matched the oyster satin slip the victim was wearing. The window was fitted with a Chubb lock, as was the narrow elongated one high up on the outside wall of the master bedroom, another sign that the Whitfields were very security conscious, though he didn't recall seeing a burglar alarm. Closing the door behind him, Coghill went out on to the landing.

The second bathroom and lavatory were next to the airing cupboard and beyond them was a small nine-by-nine bedroom which was used as a study. It looked out on to the back garden, which was mostly lawn, and screened from the houses in the parallel road by a row of tall poplar trees planted shoulder to shoulder. An executive desk faced the window and there was a filing cabinet in the far corner. The drawers to both pieces of furniture were locked and the keys removed.

There were two other bedrooms at the front. To the right of the staircase was a large single with a French window, which opened on to an L-shaped verandah that extended around the side of the house over the double garage. Directly opposite was a fairly large double bedroom, oblong-shaped and lengthways on to the street. At the far end, were two fitted cupboards on either side of a wide bookshelf, on which there was a partially assembled model of a B-52 bomber. Other model aircraft were suspended from the ceiling and there was a montage of posters on the dividing wall, one of which showed a basket of oranges capped by an onion with the caption, "You don't get to the top by being like everyone else."

Coghill moved to the window and looked out on to a quiet street lined with horse chestnut trees. The house was on a bend near the top of St. Mark's Hill, about thirty feet back from the road and high enough above it to guarantee that no passer-by could see into the sitting room on the ground floor. The detached properties on either side were at differing elevations and appeared a good deal older, as did those across the street, which were spaced much farther apart. He thought it likely that the Whitfield residence had been built on a small plot of land that had originally belonged to one of the neighbors, and that the local planning authority had imposed certain restrictions in the interests of privacy. It was the only explanation he could think of for the narrow, elongated windows in the master bedroom and the large single at the front.

A Ford Granada drove slowly past the ambulance and the Panda car that had responded to the 999 call, and then pulled into the curbside. Recognizing the burly figure behind the wheel, Coghill waited until Leonard Harrison had gotten out of the car and pushed his way through the gaggle of reporters on the pavement before he left the bedroom and went downstairs to let him into the house.

"I see the vultures have gathered, Tom," Harrison observed, glaring at the pressmen.

"Yes. They were already here when I arrived. Somebody must have tipped them off."

Harrison grunted, then stepped past him into the hall. "Sorry I'm late," he said, "but I was up most of the night finishing my notes on the postmortems I did on the victims of that traffic pile-up on the Kingston bypass last Sunday evening. I was sound asleep in bed when your people phoned me." His face suddenly brightened and he raised the small black bag he was carrying in his right hand. "However, now that I'm here, where's the body?"

"Upstairs in the master bedroom," said Coghill. "She's been dead some time."

"And beginning to smell a bit?"

"Yes."

"Well, she would in this heat, wouldn't she?" Harrison went on down the narrow hallway and bounded up the staircase, taking the steps two at a time as though eager to get to work.

Mace was still interviewing the Whitfields' daily woman in the lounge-diner. Opening a door off the hall to his right, Coghill signaled he wanted to have a word with him and withdrew to the kitchen.

Harry Mace was forty-eight and nearing the end of his career. Methodical and reliable were two adjectives which featured in his annual assessment with monotonous regularity, damning him with faint praise. Long ago he'd come to the inevitable conclusion that he would remain a detective sergeant until the day he retired, a fact of life which he accepted philosophically.

"What have you got so far?" Coghill asked him as he ambled into the kitchen.

"Not a lot." Mace flipped through his notebook. "Mrs. Godfrey came to work for the Whitfields shortly after they moved in four years ago. Trevor Whitfield is a director of Travelways and works at their head office in Charing Cross Road. Apparently he's away on a business trip at the moment and isn't expected back until Saturday week, nine days from now. It seems his wife was also in business and owned a dress shop in Wimbledon High Street called Karen's Boutique and another somewhere in the New King's Road over in Fulham. The Whitfields have a son aged twelve who's a boarder at Grange Preparatory School in Newbury. According to Mrs. Godfrey, the last time she saw her employer alive was yesterday when she left the house and drove off to her boutique in the High Street.

"What time was that?"

"About ten-fifteen." Mace smiled wryly. "I gather she never got out of bed much before nine-thirty. Mrs. Godfrey has a key to the house and she always makes her a cup of coffee and takes it up to her room before she gets on with the housework." He turned over a page. "I'm told the Whitfields have two cars, a brand-new Volkswagen Golf and a Saab which is about a year old. I haven't been able to check that; both up-and-over doors to the garage are locked and there's no window."

Harry was right, Coghill thought; what he'd learned so far didn't amount to very much. Nine murders out of ten were committed in the family and this one was beginning to look as though it was in the same category. The killer hadn't broken into the house; Karen Whitfield had opened the door to him and invited him inside. That meant she must have known him fairly well and had no reason to suppose she would come to any harm.

"What do we know about the Whitfields, Harry?" he asked. "Did they hit it off?"

"They never seemed to quarrel, at least not in front of Mrs. Godfrey. According to her, they were very fond of each other." Mace shrugged his shoulders. "She could be wrong, of course, but I doubt if she can shed any further light on their relationship. From what little she did tell me, it's pretty obvious that Mrs. Whitfield was a very private sort of person, the kind of woman who kept herself to herself."

"It's possible she may know where the Whitfields were living before they moved to Wimbledon."

"I'll ask her."

"You do that," Coghill said. "And while you're at it, find out what you can about the deceased's family — parents, any brothers or sisters and so on. Meantime, I'll contact Travelways and ask them how we can get in touch with Trevor Whitfield."

He went through the hall to the alcove under the staircase, looked up their number in the directory and dialed 836-0479. The pleasant-voiced woman who answered the phone seemed a little nonplussed when he asked to speak to Mr. Whitfield's secretary and suggested he should have a word with the personnel branch. There was a momentary silence, then a brisk voice said, "Draycott — Personnel."

Coghill gave his name, informed Draycott he was a detective inspector with V District and told him that he should check his identity with Commander Franklin at New Scotland Yard before phoning the Whitfield residence in Wimbledon.

"Why should I go to all that trouble?" Draycott asked him impatiently.

"Because this is an emergency and I don't want you to think you're dealing with a practical joker."

"I get the idea."

"I'm glad you do, sir," Coghill said and put the phone down.

A door opened and closed and was followed by the sound of Harrison's footsteps on the landing above.

Coghill backed out of the alcove and looked up at him. "What can you give me, Leonard?" he asked.

"The body temperature is sixty-nine point one. As a rough yardstick, the heat loss is about one point five degrees per hour. This would mean death probably occurred some time between two and four o'clock yesterday afternoon, but don't quote me until I've done an autopsy." Harrison came down the stairs, still talking. "There are no particles of skin under the victim's fingernails and the absence of any bruises on the torso would seem to indicate that she offered no resistance. I could find no trace of semen on her slip or on the bedspread, which you'd expect if she had been sexually assaulted. However, I've taken some smears and we'll know one way or the other after I've examined the slides under a microscope." He stopped on the bottom step, eyebrows raised in a perplexed frown. "Her panties are missing, Tom."

"They're in the linen basket," said Coghill. "I'll have them delivered to you in a plastic bag."

"Fine." Harrison stepped down, ambled toward the front door and opened it. "Phone me around seven tonight and I'll give you a verbal resume of my findings."

"That's what I call service, Leonard."

"Yes, well, I want to clear the decks; it's the Ladies' Semifinals tomorrow and I've got a ticket for the center court. Mind you, it looks as though Wimbledon's faced with a rival attraction today."

Coghill followed his gaze and saw the number of reporters had grown considerably since Harrison had arrived. They had also been joined by a couple of TV crews and there were the usual curious onlookers among the crowd. He didn't want them still hanging around when Harry Mace and the police constable from the Panda car started on their house-to-house inquiries, but they would never agree to move off unless he made it worth their while. A brief statement of the facts coupled with the promise of a more detailed briefing at a press conference that evening should do it. Where and when? The first question was easy to answer; Wimbledon Police Station might have fewer facilities than the District Headquarters at Kingston, but it was near the scene of the crime. There was little point in holding the briefing before Harrison had completed his postmortem, and there was also the next of kin to be considered. It was essential the victim not be named before Trevor Whitfield had been informed that his wife had been murdered. Seven-thirty looked like a reasonable bet; that would give the BBC and ITV reporters sufficient time to file a story for inclusion in their late evening news programs.