A Conflict of Interests (14 page)

"I see from the landing card that you're staying with friends in London, sir?"

"Business acquaintances," Patterson said, correcting him. "I am also booked into the Piccadilly Hotel from Tuesday and at the Motorway Inn in Birmingham next Friday." He fingered the locks on his executive-style briefcase. "I can show you the reservation slips if you wish?"

"That isn't necessary, sir." The Immigration officer had had a long and tiring day, and it wasn't over yet. The flight schedules were all snarled up, thanks to a strike by the air traffic controllers in France, and three hundred passengers from an Alitalia Jumbo were following hard on the heels of the Munich-Frankfurt-London shuttle. "I hope you have a pleasant stay in England," he said and returned the passport.

Patterson half-bowed, replaced his trilby and moved on into the luggage hall. He collected his suitcase, passed through Customs without any trouble, changed eight hundred Deutschemarks into sterling at Lloyds Bank, then adjourned to the men's washroom to revert to his former appearance. Locking himself into a cubicle, he removed the contact lenses, peeled away the extra hair stuck onto his eyebrows and ripped off the adhesive facial blemish. That done, he tucked the spectacles into his jacket pocket, flushed the toilet and left the cubicle, satisfied that nobody was likely to pay attention to the color of his hair. From a phone booth in the concourse he rang Ace Airways and told the receptionist at the garage that he had returned from his business trip earlier than expected and would they please collect him from the airport and have the Mini ready.

At 4:25 P.M., one hour after touchdown, he was on his way, driving into town on the M4 motorway as far as the South Circular. Approaching Kennington, he pulled into a shopping arcade and rang the contact number he'd been given in Paris from a phone booth. A woman with a faintly masculine voice answered the phone and said, "Cherry Tree Kennels."

"Denise Rousell?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

"My name's Kingfisher, Henry Kingfisher," Patterson said. "We've never met, but I ran into Viktor the other day and he asked me to look you up next time I was in London."

"Oh yes? How is Viktor?"

"He's okay, but it seems the book trade is suffering as a result of the depression. And talking of business, he said to tell you he'd managed to find a copy of the paperback you wanted."

"Which paperback?"

"Jean Moulin's
Premier Combat
. I thought I'd deliver it in person."

"What a good idea." Her voice tailed away, and in the brief silence that followed, he could faintly hear several dogs barking somewhere in the background. "When were you thinking of calling on me?" she asked presently.

"Whenever it's convenient."

There was another pause while Denise mulled it over, probably calculating how long her friends at the Soviet Embassy would need to set up the meet.

"The weekend is always a busy time for me, Mr. Kingfisher, especially during the holiday season. And my only kennel maid has taken the day off."

"I can see you have problems," Patterson said drily.

"Are you free on Monday evening?"

"At the moment I am."

"Good. Why don't you come to dinner?"

"Dinner?" he repeated incredulously.

"Seven-thirty for eight. My address is one five four Cherry Tree Road, which is only a five-minute walk from the Underground station at Roding Valley. Just turn right at the T-junction at the top of the station approach road and you can't miss it."

"Yeah?"

"Would you like me to repeat the instructions, Mr. Kingfisher?"

"One five four Cherry Tree Road," Patterson said dully. "Turn right at the T-junction."

"That's right. Till Monday evening then," she said, and hung up.

Patterson replaced the phone and backed out of the phone booth, confused and uncertain. For an intelligence service which was arguably the most secretive in the world, the KGB was behaving completely out of character in arranging an open meet, and he wondered if they were planning to set him up. In the paranoic field of espionage, today's ally was tomorrow's enemy, and he didn't believe in taking chances. Within the next thirty-six hours, it was essential he discover which side of the street Denise Rousell was working. Still mulling it over, Patterson got into the Mini and drove on to his flat in Linsdale Gardens.

10.

Coghill moved like an automaton from the bedroom to the hall, collected the
Sunday Times
from the doormat, then headed toward the kitchen. Still not fully awake, he left the newspaper on the table, plugged in the electric kettle he'd filled the night before and switched on the transistor radio. Breakfast normally consisted of two slices of toast, a glass of orange juice and a cup of instant coffee, but there were only a few dregs left in the carton of Sunfresh and the cellophane package of sliced bread yielded just one crust beginning to curl at the edges. The first to admit that his housekeeping left a lot to be desired, he was gratified to find there was half a pint of milk and a sizable lump of butter in the fridge, and that the jar of Nescafe in the larder was three parts full. Trimming the crust with a bread knife, he popped the slice into the toaster, then browsed through the newspaper while waiting for the kettle to boil.

The Whitfield case was no longer front-page news, but there was an article on the disturbing increase in the number of sex murders in the last year and Karen's photograph appeared with five other victims. Though living in different parts of the country," they had several things in common; all of them were married, had been in their late twenties or early thirties when they had been killed and had belonged to the top socioeconomic group. For some reason not entirely clear to Coghill, the feature writer appeared to think there was a definite correlation between the severe economic recession gripping the country and the homicides. About to read the feature again, he was interrupted by a cloud of steam escaping from the kettle, a warning buzz from the toaster and the doorbell. Rescuing the slice of bread before it became too charred to be edible, he switched off the kettle and went out into the hall to see who was calling on him.

Janice was the very last person he expected to find on the doorstep. He had neither seen nor heard from his ex-wife since the final decree had been granted twenty-one months ago, but there she was, large as life and smiling at him as though nothing untoward had happened between them. Her figure seemed a little plumper and he noticed that her auburn hair was not as well groomed as it used to be.

"Hello, Tom. Surprised to see me?"

"A little," he admitted. "It's been a long time."

"Aren't you going to invite me in?" The smile was beginning to look a mite strained and her voice sounded brittle.

"Yes, of course." He stood to one side. "The living room's the first door on your left."

"I haven't dragged you out of bed, have I, Tom?" Janice had grounds for thinking she had; he was still in his pajamas and dressing gown, unshaven, hair tousled.

"No," he said. "No, I was just about to have breakfast. Want to join me for a cup of coffee?"

"Yes, please."

"Let's go into the kitchen then," Coghill said. "It's at the far end of the hall."

Janice nodded and moved ahead of him, surreptitiously eyeing his choice of wallpaper, which he suspected didn't meet with her approval. "How many rooms have you got here, Tom?" she asked.

"Four, including the bathroom. It's a much smaller flat than the one we had in South Kensington."

"Well, it looks very cozy."

Cozy was Jan's way of saying she thought it was a poky little place, and while he was inclined to agree with her, it was all he'd been able to afford after they'd split up. His share from the sale of their flat had amounted to less than four thousand and anything larger would have entailed a crippling mortgage.

"You're becoming quite famous, Tom." Janice picked up the
Sunday Times
which he'd dropped on the floor in his haste to rescue the slice of toast. "Picture in all the newspapers, interviews on TV."

"One interview," he said, correcting her. "And to be really accurate, it was only a five-minute spot outside the Whitfield house, and most of that was lost in the cutting room."

"All the same, you'll gain a lot of kudos from this case, Tom."

"I doubt it." Coghill switched on the kettle, unhooked a couple of mugs from the dresser and measured a large spoonful of coffee into each one.

"You always were a pessimist."

It was obvious Janice hadn't read yesterday's newspapers, otherwise she would have known that Tucker was coordinating the investigation. Coordinating was a gray word deliberately chosen by the press relations officer at New Scotland Yard, because the deputy assistant commissioner (crime) had wanted to keep the setup nice and ambiguous so that the media wouldn't get the idea the Leese and Whitfield murders were linked together.

"Right now, you can't see the wood for the trees," she went on, "but you will, Tom."

Janice had always been a great one for clichés and for once there was a certain amount of truth in what she'd just said. The police artist had sketched a face that had been identified by Mrs. Underwood as the man she'd had words with in St. Mark's Hill after he'd swerved to avoid her Pekinese. The same man was known to Mrs. Hayden, Gordonston and the Central Licensing Authority as Oscar Pittis and, according to American Express, their computer printout showed that the list of serial numbers Mace had obtained from the estate agents were part of 12,000 Deutschemarks' worth of traveler's checks purchased from their office in Frankfurt on May 11, four days before Pittis had moved into 192 Southwood Road. Then, on June 8, he'd bought a secondhand BMW priced at £3,750 from the Hampstead branch of S. V. Motors, for which he'd paid cash. Twelve thousand marks amounted to less than £4,000 and more than half of that had been swallowed up by the cost of renting a flat in Highgate. The facts, therefore, raised more questions than they answered because it was obvious somebody must have been financing Pittis before he'd conveniently disappeared.

"Do I get a cup of coffee or not?" Janice demanded.

"Oh, sorry, I was deep in thought."

"So I noticed." She wrinkled her nose, striving for a wry expression. "I always did come a poor second to the police force."

"You're wrong," Coghill lied. "I was thinking about you."

"I bet."

"No, really, I was wondering how things are between you and Eric."

Eric Leadbetter was a self-employed builder's supplier whom Janice had met when answering an advertisement in the old
Evening News
for a typist with some experience of bookkeeping. That had been back in the days when Coghill had been a detective constable with the Obscene Publications Squad, and there was no getting away from the fact that the extra money had come in handy at the time. Without her salary, they could never have afforded the mortgage payments on the flat in South Kensington.

"Eric went bankrupt nine months ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that; it must make things pretty difficult for you both." Coghill sipped his coffee and wondered what else he could say without sounding trite. "How are you managing? I mean, has he found himself another job, or what?"

"I wouldn't know, Tom. We separated in March, though to be absolutely honest, he walked out on me. Eric started drinking heavily after his firm went bust and I got tired of being the breadwinner so that he could drown his sorrows. We had a series of blazing rows; then one night I came home from work to find he'd packed his things and gone." She shrugged her shoulders. "End of story."

"You're better off without him, Jan."

"That's what I keep telling myself."

"Well, you'd better believe it. Leadbetter was a complete phoney."

"Maybe that was the attraction, the knowledge we were two of a kind."

It was meant for effect, inviting contradiction, but there was a lot in what Janice had said. He remembered her joining the Law School at Nottingham University when he'd been a second-year student, a very poised redhead who'd exuded an air of supreme confidence and had managed to look well groomed even in a pair of faded jeans and a floppy sweater. She had owned a Triumph TR4 sports car in those days, a status symbol which had fostered the illusion of a wealthy middle-class background. She had also affected to despise the elitist atmosphere of Oxford, and had casually let it be known that she had never considered applying for a place there because she preferred to be among real people. Later, much later, he'd met her parents and realized it was all a pretense. Her father was a foreman at the MG works in Abingdon and her mother worked in the staff canteen, but Janice was their only child and they had indulged her every whim.

"I should have been satisfied with what I already had, Tom. But you know me, I always had this craving for instant success."

"Don't think I didn't want it too," Coghill said.

Janice had begun to show an interest in him at the beginning of his final year, which had been very flattering to his ego because she had been undoubtedly the most attractive woman undergraduate on the campus. A cynical friend had observed that she had obviously marked him down as a potential highflyer, but if so, she'd suffered an early disappointment. The expected first hadn't materialized and he'd ended up with a good second-class honors, but by that time, Janice had been sleeping with him and, with the benefit of hindsight, Coghill supposed she'd decided it was too late to look elsewhere. At any rate, she'd dropped out of university and had joined him in London when he was still pounding a beat. A year later, they'd been married, but promotion hadn't come fast enough for her liking and eventually she'd cast around, looking for somebody with better prospects. That was when Leadbetter had entered the picture, and in due course she'd asked Coghill for a divorce not long after he'd been made detective sergeant.

"Do you know of any openings for a civilian typist in the police force, Tom?"

"What?"

"I've been made redundant, one of the three million unemployed."