A Conflict of Interests (18 page)

"You — a copper? You're having me on."

"Now, why would I do that?" he asked.

"I don't know." A couple of furrows appeared above the bridge of her nose as she gave the question further thought. "Maybe you thought it would impress me."

"I'd be taking a chance. To some people, we're the pigs."

"I prefer 'copper,'" she said and smiled.

"Yes? Well, that's nice to know, but this copper will find himself in deep water unless he checks in. Any idea where the nearest phone booth is?"

"I'm not sure. Hang on a moment while I have a word with the landlord."

She moved to the far end of the bar, exchanged a few brief words with a harassed-looking man in shirtsleeves, then returned to inform Mace he was welcome to use theirs. Raising the counter flap, she unlatched the half-gate and showed him into a small office in rear of the bar. In the process, she held on to his elbow and contrived to rub shoulders with him.

"It's all yours, sergeant."

Mace wondered if she was referring to herself or the room. "Thanks," he said, playing it safe. "I guess you've saved my bacon."

"Vera, my name's Vera."

"Right."

"What's yours?"

"Harry," Mace said, and gave her a weak smile.

"I'll see you later then, Harry."

He nodded dumbly, waited until she had closed the door behind her, then dialed the station, using one of the two emergency lines. The number rang for a good two minutes before Ingleson answered.

"Busy, Fred?" Mace asked him drily.

"No more than usual. What can I do for you?"

"I was just checking in."

"I see. Where are you calling from?"

"The Bricklayers' Arms in Southwark."

"You crafty old sod."

"It's not the way you think, Fred. I've got a meet on with one of my snouts. There's a fair chance he can put me on to the dealer who sold the white Mini to Pittis."

"A fair chance?" Ingleson laughed. "Knowing the lousy sort of information your snouts produce, I'd say you're being wildly optimistic, Harry."

Mace had to admit there was a grain of truth in the allegation. Although his sources were no worse than anyone else's, they'd never come up with anything really big, except on one occasion. Three years back, he'd received what had seemed a red-hot tip that a heavy mob was planning to knock over a Securicor armored van on its way to the Midland Bank in Wandsworth. The information had sounded convincing and the source had had a fairly good track record until then, two factors that had weighed heavily with Bert Kingman and persuaded him that they should act on it. The Flying Squad and just about every other gung-ho character in the Met had gotten in on the act and it had been a right bloody fiasco from beginning to end. While the police were busy tailing the Securicor armored van and watching the bank, the heavy mob had ripped off a supermarket in Richmond and got clean away with eleven thousand in cash. It was an incident Mace wanted to forget, but some of his colleagues wouldn't let him.

"You want to put your money where your mouth is, Fred?" Mace said belligerently.

"Maybe. Tell me more."

"The source is a used car dealer who's as bent as they come. He's a man with a lot of contacts in the curbside trade and he's out there now, making a few inquiries on my behalf."

"Doing you a favor, is he, Harry?"

"You could say that."

"A fiver says the answer's a lemon."

"You're on." Mace glanced at the disk on the telephone, then added, "Listen, if the guv'nor should want to get in touch, he can ring me on 703–1157."

"I'll make a note of it, Harry, but I don't think you'll be hearing from Coghill; he left for Guildford about three quarters of an hour ago."

"To see Egremont?"

"Go to the top of the class," Ingleson said. Then a phone rang in the background and he told him he was wanted on the other line.

Mace hung up, puzzled to know why Coghill had apparently changed his mind. Back at the cemetery, Coghill had given him the impression he was going to take the easy way out and let sleeping dogs lie, but now it seemed the men who'd been with Karen Whitfield were no longer off limits. In the end, the whys and wherefores didn't really matter, and although Egremont was small beer compared with the likes of Jeremy Ashforth, at least the investigation was moving in the right direction again.

Egremont was fifty-three, an inch or two under six feet and was, Coghill thought, a good stone heavier than he should have been for his age and height. He exuded an air of bonhomie and his florid complexion gave the impression of a successful businessman who had wined and dined a little too well all his working life. An hour earlier, a phone call had reduced him to a quivering jelly, but now Egremont was acting as though he didn't have a care in the world. Coghill suspected that his newfound air of confidence was entirely due to a liquid lunch hurriedly taken before Coghill had arrived at the house in Alexandra Avenue. Even though he'd obviously been sucking a peppermint to disguise it, the smell of brandy was still present on his breath as they shook hands on the doorstep.

"Do come in, Inspector." Egremont stepped to one side and waved a plump hand. "The drawing room is the second door on your left. I'm sure you'd like some coffee, wouldn't you? Edith made a pot before she departed for the golf club."

"Edith?" Coghill said.

"My wife. She would have liked to meet you, but she's in the semifinals of the ladies' foursomes and she couldn't let her partner down at the last minute."

"Well, it's you I wanted to see, Mr. Egremont."

"So you said, but Edith happens to know you by name. You see, she used to work in the police department at the Home Office before we were married." Egremont reached past him and opened the door to the drawing room. "That's why she would have welcomed the chance of meeting you face to face."

"It's a small world," Coghill said. "Who knows, maybe there'll be another opportunity."

The drawing room was spacious and looked out on to a large garden with a wide expanse of lawn leading to an ornamental pond covered with water lilies. Clumps of irises had been planted in each corner, and between the stepping stones on the far side there was a statue of a small boy astride a dolphin. Directly behind the statue and in front of the screen of silver birch trees at the bottom of the garden was a crescent-shaped flower bed crammed with floribunda rosebushes, lace-cap hydrangeas, lupins and delphiniums, the latter beaten down and looking pretty sorry for themselves after the heavy rain that morning.

"You have a very nice house and garden," Coghill observed.

"Yes, it was my mother's pride and joy before she passed away in 1978."

Egremont, it seemed, was one of those people who took refuge in euphemisms; he couldn't call a spade a spade and bring himself to say that she had died.

"White or black, Inspector?"

Coghill turned away from the French windows. "White, please," he said.

"You will join me in a glass of brandy, won't you?"

"It's a little early in the day for me." Coghill sat down in an armchair near the fireplace and helped himself to a teaspoonful of brown sugar.

"And of course you're on duty."

"Yes." He stirred the coffee and raised the cup to his lips, his eyes on Egremont. The older man didn't look quite as confident or relaxed as he had a few minutes ago and his hand trembled slightly as he poured himself a generous measure from the bottle of Courvoisier on the silver tray. "How long have you been married, Mr. Egremont?"

Egremont stared at him, obviously taken aback by a question he hadn't anticipated. "Two and a half years." His voice was a croak and he took a sip of brandy and tried again. "Edith had been married before, but there were no children to complicate things. Her first husband was fatally injured in a traffic accident in 1962. She was quite young at the time, only twenty-four, and it must have been a terrible blow for her." He gulped again at the brandy, then went on at machine-gun speed. "I had known Edith for years before I proposed to her. We were both members of the Civil Service Sports Club and keen on badminton. That's how we met. I'm a lucky man, Inspector. I have a very loving and understanding wife, my mother left me well provided for and I was eligible for premature retirement with full pension rights and generous redundancy terms when the government decided to cut down on the number of civil servants. We were doubly fortunate in that Edith was able to take advantage of the same scheme." He smiled nervously. "Naturally, a number of our friends and acquaintances are very envious and jealous that we should be so well off, but whatever we have, we've earned. Contrary to what most people think, the Civil Service isn't a nine-to-five job with endless cups of tea from Monday to Friday."

"We all have our crosses to bear." Coghill finished his coffee and set the cup and saucer down on the occasional table. "How and when did you meet Karen Whitfield?" he asked bluntly.

"That's just it, I've never laid eyes on her."

"Your phone number is in her address book."

"So you said when you rang me." Egremont paused to have another nip of brandy and then topped up his glass. "It's all very puzzling," he said, shaking his head. "And embarrassing too. Believe me, I've been racking my brains, wondering how on earth she got hold of my name."

"I bet you have," Coghill said quietly.

"The only explanation I can think of is that one of my colleagues must have been impersonating me."

"I'm afraid that won't do."

"Are you calling me a liar?" Egremont said belligerently. "Because if that's the way you're going to behave, the sooner I get in touch with my solicitor, the better it will be for both of us."

"Don't be silly, Mr. Egremont. I've seen you on film performing with Trevor Whitfield."

It was a lie, but Egremont believed him. The color drained from his face and the glass in his right hand trembled.

"Oh, my Christ." He closed his eyes and repeated the phrase over and over again. Eventually, he placed the brandy glass on the table, took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. "This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me," he mumbled. "What in God's name will Edith think?"

"Maybe you can keep it from her," Coghill suggested. "All I want is a few straight answers to a few questions. Provided you cooperate, I won't be here when your wife returns from the golf club."

"And I'll never see or hear from you again?"

"That depends on how frank you are." Coghill shrugged. "I'm not anxious to make another trip to Guildford, but I will if later on I discover you've held something back from me."

Egremont gave it a lot of thought, fortifying himself all the while with several large nips of brandy. Finally, having summoned up sufficient Dutch courage, he said, "I met Karen Whitfield one rainy evening in March 1971. I was at a bit of a loose end, because Edith had telephoned me at the office earlier to say that she would be working late and would have to cry off the date we'd made to play badminton. I'd only been introduced to Edith the week before and I had this feeling she'd had second thoughts about our date, because she sensed I wasn't like most other men. Women can, you know."

"I'll take your word for it," Coghill said.

"Yes. Well, as you might imagine, I was pretty down in the dumps, so I went to a couple of pubs in Soho and had a few drinks to cheer myself up before going home to Guildford. To cut a long story short, I had one too many, and on my way to the Underground station at Tottenham Court Road, I happened to notice this walk-up flat next to a newsagent in Duke Street. The door was open and there was a visiting card above the buzzer which said: 'Model — top floor — please come up.' So I did."

"And met Karen Whitfield?"

Egremont nodded. "I don't know what prompted me to walk up that dimly lit staircase; perhaps it was the drink or a subconscious desire to find out what sort of man I was, or a combination of the two. Anyway, as things turned out, the experiment was a ghastly failure, but Karen was very kind and understanding and I found her easy to talk to. In fact, apart from my mother, she was the only woman I felt completely at ease with until I really got to know Edith. I suppose that's why I became one of Karen's regulars."

Egremont had continued to see her once every three or four months, first at Duke Street; then at Abercorn House after she'd moved to Maida Vale. In the beginning, he'd regarded Karen as a sort of counselor but, with the passage of time, the nature of these private therapy sessions had become much more torrid and her fees had gone up and up. With the passage of time also, she'd discovered his real name and what he did for a living, worming the information out of him bit by bit.

Coghill said, "What exactly was your job at the Ministry of Ag and Fish?"

"I rose to the dizzy heights of assistant principal," Egremont told him. "At one time, I was a member of the team that renegotiated our entry terms to the Common Market for the Wilson government."

"And as a result, you got yourself into the newspapers?"

"Yes."

"That's how Karen Whitfield got your number and was able to put a price on her silence."

"You don't have to tell me, Inspector," Egremont said bitterly. "The price became even more inflationary after Edith insisted I put the announcement of our engagement in the
Daily Telegraph
."

The initial demand had been for a lump sum of five hundred. After his mother had died in 1978, the hush money had risen to one thousand pounds per annum, from which plateau it had leapt to forty pounds a week following the announcement of his engagement to Edith. At the same time, Egremont had been informed that once they were married, he would be faced with an additional increase which would take their joint incomes into account.

The bitch was bleeding me white. Then the government announced their redundancy scheme for civil servants and it seemed a heaven-sent opportunity to get out from under. The way I saw it, Karen would no longer be in a position to blackmail me if I left the ministry."

"But she proved you wrong," Coghill said.

"Oh yes. I should have known Karen wouldn't give up that easily. A week after I'd retired, she wrote a letter calmly informing me that her board of directors had agreed to my request that I should be allowed to invest in Karen Boutiques Limited. The sum involved amounted to exactly one-third of the golden handshake I'd received on leaving the Civil Service. I told her to go to hell."