A Conflict of Interests (9 page)

He was five minutes into briefing the officers detailed for the job when Franklin rang up to inform him that Kingman was on a Dan Airways flight from Majorca arriving at Gatwick at 2100 hours.

Franklin said, "It might be an idea if you met him at the airport, Tom. You see, it's been decided that 6 Regional Crime Squad will coordinate the investigation of the Leese and Whitfield murders, and Bert will need bringing up to date before the conference tomorrow at ten-thirty. Naturally, you'll be there to hold his hand."

"Ten-thirty could be a little awkward for me," Coghill said, and told him why.

"You think the contents of this safety-deposit box may provide us with a definite lead?"

"I'm hoping they will."

"In that case, we'll put the conference back half an hour," Franklin said and put the phone down.

Lean, dark and sardonic were three adjectives that described Detective Superintendent Bert Kingman to a T. The half-smile on his mouth was deceptive because it was always there, whether he was angry, bored or quietly amused. Observing him from a distance as he waited for his baggage to appear on the revolving conveyor belt, even Coghill, who knew him better than most, had no idea what sort of mood he was in. Alice Kingman, on the other hand, a plump woman with dyed blond hair, was an open book. Her mutinous expression was an obvious sign she was not pleased that their holiday had been cut short. It was also apparent by the way her lips never stopped moving that she was giving her husband an earful. Not that it had any effect on Kingman; face still impassive, he grabbed their luggage from the conveyor, loaded the suitcases onto a trolley and wheeled them through Customs. The one time his face registered a flicker was when he noticed Coghill among the crowd of onlookers, and then only an eyebrow lifted briefly.

"Hello, Tom," he grunted. "What are you doing here?"

"Meeting you." Coghill turned to Alice Kingman, politely expressed a hope that she'd had a comfortable flight and got a sulky smile in return.

"Whose idea was it?" Kingman demanded. "Charlie Franklin's?"

"Yes, but I would have come anyway."

"You shouldn't have bothered, Tom. I left our car at the airport garage."

"I know, you told me you were planning to do that." Coghill moved ahead, held the door open for the Kingmans, then joined them on the pavement outside the terminal building. "Still, now that I am here, I'll run you out to the garage. If nothing else, it'll save you a ten-minute wait for the bus."

"I'm not used to this four-star treatment." Kingman glanced at him suspiciously. "So what's behind it?"

It was, Coghill decided, hardly the right moment to tell Bert he might just as well have stayed on in Majorca, and he waited until he'd gotten the Kingmans settled in the Volvo before attempting to answer the question. Even so, he found it hard going, especially with Alice breathing down his neck and grinding her teeth in anger. Unlike his wife, however, Kingman was not the least put out by the knowledge that the Whitfield case had been taken over by the Regional Crime Squad.

"You seem to think we've had a raw deal, Tom," he said finally.

"Don't you?"

"I'm not so sure." Kingman pointed to the road junction up ahead and told him to turn right into a narrow country lane that led to the airport garage. "Have you talked to this Jeremy Ashforth?"

"Not yet," Coghill said. "I thought it best to wait until we had something more definite on him."

"It's just as well you did. You've got a bad number on your hands when the likes of Jeremy Ashforth gets involved with a high-class prostitute. You can find yourself under all kinds of pressure."

"I don't believe that," said Coghill. "Nobody's above the law."

"Then you've got a lot to learn," Kingman growled.

Patterson moved farther back into the shop doorway of Laval's bakery, seeking what shelter he could from the driving rain. The thunderstorm that had started earlier in the evening was still around, rumbling intermittently, and now the heavens had opened again, the sudden torrential downpour flooding the gutters. He wondered how much longer Orlov's people would keep him waiting, wondered too if any of the residents living above the shops across the street had noticed him and, if so, whether they'd considered his presence suspicious enough to phone the police. On a night like this, there was every reason to assume they would be glued to their TV screens, but after that initial cock-up in the Place du Tertre, he wasn't prepared to bet on it.

A car turned into the Rue Nic-Fortin from the direction of the Avenue de Choisy and cruised slowly down the street to stop opposite the bakery. Somebody opened the rear nearside door and, braving the rain, Patterson crossed the pavement and scrambled into the Peugeot. The man sitting next to the driver got out, followed him into the back and slammed the door. As Patterson settled himself between them, the man to his left produced a strip of black velvet from his pocket and proceeded to blindfold him.

"It is necessary, you understand?"

"Oh sure," said Patterson. "I'm used to Viktor's little foibles."

The Peugeot shot forward, tires drumming on the cobblestones, the driver making a right turn at the top of the street. Other turns followed in rapid succession, so that within a short space of time, Patterson had lost all sense of direction. After a while, the drumming noise from the tires changed to a high-pitched whine and he guessed they were traveling on the Boulevard Périphérique, their speed fluctuating between fifty and seventy miles an hour. About fifteen minutes later, the driver turned off on to a slip road, and shortly after that, the drumming noise started up again. At one stage, Patterson was convinced they were going round and round in circles; then suddenly the Peugeot shot through some kind of archway and skidded to a halt.

Both doors opened and he heard his escorts get out. Presently, a hand gripped his left elbow and, responding to a none-too-gentle tug, Patterson wriggled across the seat, ducked his head below the sill and placed a tentative foot on the cobblestones. As he straightened up, another hand seized his right arm and a gruff voice said, "There's a staircase six paces ahead. Just rely on us and you'll be all right."

Wooden steps, a cool atmosphere and a faint musty smell that reminded him of mushrooms. It came as no surprise to Patterson when the blindfold was removed and he found himself in a wine cellar.

Orlov said, "It's good to see you again, my old friend."

"And you, Viktor."

The Russian was sitting on a trestle table at the far end of the cellar, his feet clear of the floor and swinging rhythmically back and forth like a pendulum. He had the broad shoulders, deep chest and narrow waist of a prizefighter, an impression that was reinforced by a misshapen nose and the scar tissue above both eyebrows. In fact, Orlov had never been in a boxing ring in his life and the facial injuries were the result of a traffic accident in Beirut some years back when he'd rammed into a truck that had shot out of a side street.

"Let's see now," Orlov mused, "when was the last time we met?"

"It must have been all of eighteen months ago." Patterson reached into the pocket of his plastic raincoat and brought out the video cassette. "Got a present for you," he said. "A blue movie."

"Blue?"

"Pornographic. The star of the show is Raschid al Jalud, a kinsman of Colonel Qadhafi."

"Do we know him?"

"Your people in London do."

"Then we already have him under our thumb."

"How about Jeremy Ashforth, novelist, international TV personality and opinion former?" Patterson moved closer, kept his voice low. "What would you give to have him under your thumb?"

"I should think we might run to twenty-five thousand dollars."

"Make it a cool half million and I'll throw in a couple of British politicians and a candidate for the presidency of the EEC."

"My people would want to see what they're buying first."

Patterson nodded. "No problem," he said. "I can arrange a preview in London, but it's strictly cash on delivery and you have to be there when the switch is made." He smiled and offered his right hand. "Do we have a deal, Viktor?"

"I think we do," Orlov said and shook his outstretched hand.

7.

First National had just opened for business when Coghill walked into the bank with Mace, Whitfield and Quainton in tow. The teller he approached had never seen either a warrant card or a search warrant before and insisted on checking their authenticity with the security guard on duty in the main hall before he agreed to inform the branch manager that a police officer wished to see him. It was also the first time the branch manager had been presented with a search warrant, but he could recognize a legal document when he saw one. Access to the customers' vault, however, was restricted and he was a little unhappy that Coghill wanted the others to be present when Whitfield opened his wife's safety-deposit box. That, plus the fact that Whitfield professed not to have a key and would require the duplicate held by the bank, gave him the excuse he needed to ring the head office and seek advice. Once he'd obtained their permission, there were no further problems; Whitfield signed for the duplicate key and the chief cashier, accompanied by a beefy security guard, escorted them down to the customers' vault.

The vault was protected by a reinforced steel door and a time lock that had been opened at nine-thirty. Subdivided by vertical steel bars set close together, the nearer of the two cages was adequately furnished with chromium-plated, tubular steel chairs and tables for the benefit of the customers. Beyond the second gate, the safety-deposit boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling on three sides of the room, each one locked into the frame like a miniature drawer in a giant-sized filing cabinet. The chief cashier handed the authorization slip to the security man in charge of the inner strong room, waited until he had delivered the correct box to Whitfield, then left them to it.

The steel box was two foot six inches long by six inches wide and was a treasure trove of five-, ten-, twenty- and fifty-pound notes bundled neatly together with elastic bands. Beneath the currency was a small address book indexed from A to Z.

"There must be all of ten grand there," Mace said, eyeing the money piled on the table.

"Better count it, Harry," Coghill said. "And while you're at it, check the serial numbers to see if any of them run in sequence. List those that do and we'll see if we can't trace the notes right down to the cashier who paid them over."

Coghill pulled out a chair and sat down to examine the address book. There were no names inside, only code words, like
Rabbit, Weasel, Stoat
and
Boar
. Each entry resembled a bank statement, with regular payments deducted from a debit figure at the top right-hand side of the page. In some cases, the client had obviously paid off the "overdraft" and a diagonal line had been drawn through the column of figures to show the account had been rendered in full. Under the code words, a series of letters indicated the sexual foibles of the clients. Having served with the Obscene Publications Squad earlier in his career, Coghill knew what the letters
D
,
CP, B, O, GS
and
AC/DC
stood for.

"AC/DC," he said abruptly; "is that where you come into the picture, Trevor?"

Whitfield turned a delicate shade of pink and reared back as though he'd just touched a live wire and received a nasty shock in the process. "What the hell are you implying? That I'm gay?"

"Are you?"

"For Christ's sake, I married Karen, didn't I?"

The indignation was there, but it lacked conviction. First impressions were often misleading, and because a man looked effeminate, it didn't necessarily follow that he had homosexual tendencies, but in Whitfield's case, Coghill believed he was the exception who proved the rule. It could be that this latent streak was the reason why Karen had taken up with him in the first place. Perhaps in the young ex-university graduate she had sensed that here was somebody who, for monetary gain, would be prepared to accommodate the bisexual tastes peculiar to certain of her clients.

"There's such a thing as libel by inference, Inspector," Quainton observed snidely.

"And you think your client should sue me?"

"Good heavens, no. What on earth gave you that idea?"

"I thought you just did," Coghill said.

He flipped through the address book again, noting that a dozen or so entries had a phone number listed under the code word. They were obviously the small fry; the bigger fish were not in the directory and had started out with large "overdrafts." Various hieroglyphics suggested that Karen Whitfield had taken a leaf out of the
Michelin Guide
and invented symbols to compile a potted history on each client, but their significance was not readily apparent. He went through the five pages allocated to the first letter of the alphabet, looked for a symbol that would describe Jeremy Ashforth and found a quill and a small box. He also saw that Ashforth's tastes for bondage, corporal punishment and oral sex had landed him with a debit balance of twelve thousand pounds, a little under half of which had been repaid before Karen Whitfield was murdered.

"I wasn't far off," Mace said. "The exact total is nine thousand eight hundred and seventy-five."

Coghill looked up. "How about the serial numbers?"

"I made a note of them as I went along. Roughly fifteen percent of the total cash is in sequence."

"Good. That should give us something to work on."

"Not so good," Mace said. "A fair number of the fivers are brand new and, in many cases, the withdrawal was less than a hundred pounds. Chances are those sums were drawn from a cash point, and tracing them back to a particular customer could be a mite difficult for the bank."

"So how many series do you think were actually passed across the counter?"

"Eight at the most."

"Well, that's better than nothing. Do you feel like doing some more addition?"

"Do I have any choice, Guv?"