A Conflict of Interests (27 page)

"I think," Zellick said slowly, "I think you'd better spell out in words of one syllable exactly what it is you expect me to do."

Ensor did exactly that, in sufficient detail to leave no room for doubt. One hour and twenty minutes later, Zellick was cooling his heels in the departure lounge at Dulles International Airport. In his briefcase, the top copy of the agreement was signed, witnessed and date-stamped just the way Vaudrey had specified.

Raschid al Jalud lived within a short walking distance of Regent's Park at number 26 Nash Walk, a street named after the nineteenth-century architect who'd designed the terraced houses. As the official residence of the cultural attaché, the building itself was definitely at odds with the proletarian image Qadhafi liked to project, though, once inside, Coghill got the impression that Jalud and his household staff had done their best to rectify the situation. The interior hadn't been decorated for years and was suitably drab. The wallpaper in the entrance hall had faded from cream to a streaky yellow, while the baseboards and doorframes were a dull shade of chocolate brown.

The study at the front of the house, where Coghill had been told to wait for the diplomat, was in no better shape. A lot of feet had scuffed the Persian carpet and its intricate weaving had suffered in the process, becoming threadbare in places. The desk was utilitarian, so were the two armchairs, but they were undoubtedly in line with the austere tastes of Colonel Qadhafi, whose stern image gazed down from a picture frame above crossed daggers on the far wall.

Coghill glanced at his wristwatch, saw that it was just after six-forty and wondered how much longer he'd have to wait before Jalud deigned to put in an appearance. The Libyan had left the Embassy in Prince's Gate more than two hours ago and had visited the mosque in Regent's Park on his way home, where he'd finally arrived shortly after six. Kept informed of his movements by the surveillance detail, Coghill had gotten there ten minutes ahead of him and had been twiddling his thumbs ever since.

A murmured conversation reached him from the hall and he thought he recognized the surly voice of the Baluchi manservant who'd grudgingly admitted him to the house. Then the study door opened and Jalud walked into the room. He was about five six, slim with a narrow waist, and his sharp features reminded Coghill of a weasel, just as Caroline Brooke had said they would.

"Detective Inspector Coghill?" The voice was small like its owner.

"Yes, sir." Coghill made to shake his hand, but the Libyan ignored the gesture and promptly sat down behind the desk.

"You're with the Diplomatic Protection Group, I believe?"

"That's what I told your manservant." Coghill added another "sir" for good measure. Politeness was said to cost nothing, but in this instance it hurt.

"I can't understand why you should approach me directly, Inspector, when there are recognized channels of communication. If this is a matter affecting the protection of the Embassy and its staff, you should have contacted our security officer, Mr. Mahmood Omani. Surely you're aware of that?"

"This isn't some vague threat, it concerns you directly."

Coghill moved up to the desk. Jalud had tried to intimidate him, but his angry tone of voice had been marred by a curious lisp as though he had a loose denture plate in his mouth. Close enough now to smell his breath, Coghill realized he was sucking a peppermint in a futile attempt to conceal the fact that he'd been at the bottle. Another of the disciplines of the Islamic faith had been abandoned in the need to fortify himself before they met face to face.

"What exactly do you mean? Am I in some sort of danger?"

"Yes, sir. From the man who murdered Karen Whitfield."

"You can't be serious." Jalud tried to look incredulous, but it didn't come off. His face was stiff, his eyes furtive.

"Oh, but I am."

Coghill reached inside his jacket for the snapshots Caroline Brooke had given him. Then slowly and very deliberately he laid them down, face up and one at a time, like a banker in a pontoon school dealing to a gambler who was trying to make twenty-one the hard way. Abercorn House, Karen Whitfield striding across the forecourt and Jalud leaving the apartment building with the blurred figure of Nolan, the Irish hall porter, framed in the entrance. Three separate photographs that supported the circumstantial evidence they already had.

"I've never met that woman." Jalud looked up, wild-eyed, a trembling finger still pointing at her picture. "Never."

"How about Orville Patterson?" Coghill tossed a head-and-shoulders mug shot onto the desk. "Maybe his face is more familiar?"

"No." The denial was accompanied by a long, drawn-out hiss.

"We can prove he murdered Karen Whitfield."

"Why should that interest me, Inspector?"

"Because you were seen with Patterson in Northumberland Avenue last Wednesday evening. He met you outside the Playhouse Theatre and you drove off together in the direction of Trafalgar Square in a Datsun, license number CVA 231Y. The vehicle had been hired from Rent-A-Car Limited of 285 Kilburn High Road and was later found abandoned less than a mile from this house."

"It's a lie."

"We have two witnesses, Mr. Jalud."

"That's impossible, I was at home on Wednesday evening. They must have mistaken me for somebody else."

"I don't think so," Coghill said evenly. "I'm afraid you're the one who made a mistake, the day you met Karen Whitfield. You want me to describe what she did to you in her apartment in Abercorn House?"

He bored in on Jalud and spelled out the sordid details of their fun and games, adding a little flesh to the erotic symbols Karen Whitfield had entered in her address book. He told him about the camera behind the two-way mirror and the microphone in the base of the table lamp and how Leese had captured every perverted sexual moment on film.

"You know something, Mr. Jalud?" Coghill said, winding up. "Somehow I don't think that's quite what Colonel Qadhafi had in mind when he appointed you to be his cultural attaché in London. As a matter of fact, I'm absolutely sure you wouldn't last five minutes if he knew what you'd been up to."

There was a long silence, broken only by the swish of tires on the smooth pavement of the road as a car drove past the house. Upstairs, somebody with heavy footsteps crossed the room directly above their heads.

Finally Jalud said, "What is it you want from me?"

"Now that's more like it." Coghill pointed to the phone on the desk. "Sooner or later, Patterson will call you because there's no one else he can turn to for help. When he does, we want you to play along with him and agree to do whatever he asks, but don't sound too enthusiastic or eager to please, otherwise he'll smell a rat and back off."

"I'm not sure I care for that allusion," Jalud said and stretched his mouth in a thin smile.

The way Coghill saw it, the only thing wrong with the allusion was that it cast a slur on the whole rodent family. Aloud, he said, "If Patterson sticks to his usual procedure, he'll establish contact first, then direct you to a public phone box. That's when he'll get down to business, but don't worry, I'll be there to hold your hand."

"Do you mean you're going to stay with me the whole time?"

Jalud sounded anxious and with some reason. His wife and family would be curious to know why a British police officer was sitting on his tail, something which would take a bit of explaining.

"Only after Patterson has established contact."

"I see."

Jalud looked relieved. There was also a calculating expression in his eyes which flashed a warning to Coghill.

"Don't try and get smart, Mr. Jalud," he told him. "We'll be listening to every word you say."

"You speak Arabic perhaps?"

"No."

"Patterson does."

"Yes, but your English is so much better than his Arabic. In any event, the people who will be monitoring the conversation were trained at the Middle East School of Languages in Beirut."

Coghill left him to mull it over and walked out into the hall. There was no sign of the surly Baluchi manservant, but the Arab bodyguard dressed in flowing robes who'd arrived with Jalud was sitting on a ladder-back chair opposite the study. A cheery smile drew no response, and he continued to sit there lifeless as a statue, hawk face immobile and black eyes unblinking while Coghill let himself out of the house.

The Volvo was parked around the corner in Braemore Avenue, approximately 200 yards' walking distance from the Libyan's residence. Caroline Brooke had opened the sun roof, wound down both side windows and was reclining in the passenger seat, her eyes half closed, drowsing in the warm evening sun.

"How did you get on with Jalud?" she asked him as he got in beside her.

"We didn't part the best of friends, but he'll jump through the hoop, just as you said he would."

"Good." Caroline reached between the seats and picked up a Pye two-way battery-powered radio. Depressing the transmit button, she said, "Bulldog, this is Whippet. Our rabbit is nibbling, over."

Somebody breathed into the mike and produced a rushing noise; then a voice with a lilting Welsh accent said, "Roger. Stay on listening watch. Out."

Caroline turned the volume up slightly, placed the radio on top of the dashboard and leaned back in the seat again. "Better make yourself comfortable, Tom," she said. "We could be in for a long wait."

Her forecast proved wildly inaccurate. A few minutes later, Bulldog broke wireless silence to inform them that Jalud had reluctantly agreed to wait for a further call on 580-4444 from 8:00 P.M. onward.

"Any idea where that number is?" Coghill asked.

"Tottenham Court Road, opposite the Dominion Theatre," Caroline told him. "Patterson has used that particular phone booth before."

"When?"

The question went unanswered. Before she had a chance to reply, the surveillance detail in Nash Walk came on the air to report that their rabbit had left his hutch and was scampering toward Regent's Park Underground station.

Patterson wiped his mouth, left the paper napkin on the greasy plate, then picked up his rucksack and walked out of the snack bar on St. Stephen's Road. Despite the castle museum and cathedral, Norwich was off the beaten track for most American tourists, but it was the only town of any consequence in that part of East Anglia where he could be sure of obtaining the equipment he needed. To get there from Chippenhurst, he'd first hitched a lift into the small market town of Thetford, then caught a local bus, which had taken the best part of two hours to cover the remaining twenty-nine miles. It had been past four-thirty by the time the bus had dropped him off in the city center, and he'd then scoured the main shopping precinct looking for a store which sold the kind of specialized equipment a radio ham would consider essential, only to draw a complete blank. There was no shortage of citizen's band and ship-to-shore, but he needed a set in the ultrahigh-frequency range in order to talk to a plane, and that was an item the retailers didn't stock.

There had been no problem, however, with the rest of the equipment: from a stationer's he'd purchased a protractor, set square, plastic ruler and a pair of dividers, while the flash lamps which incorporated an orange winking light had been acquired from the main Ford dealer as well as from a corner shop that sold car accessories. The remaining items on the list, consisting of a pair of collapsible hazard warning signs with red illuminating reflectors and a roll of fluorescent masking tape, he'd obtained from a store that specialized in camping equipment.

Patterson turned right into Ber Street, went on past the church and entered the phone booth, one of several he'd selected beforehand in different parts of the city. Dumping the rucksack on the floor, he dug out a handful of loose change and arranged the coins in a neat pile on top of the box. Then he glanced at his watch, saw that it was two minutes past eight and lifted the receiver.

The man was in his early twenties and obviously fancied himself. He had dark curly hair and the sort of excessively handsome face Coghill always associated with commercials for aftershave and male deodorants. He was wearing a snug-fitting pair of Daks which drew attention to his genitals, and the blue silk shirt had been left unbuttoned to the waist to reveal a heavy silver crucifix partially buried in a forest of black hair. He smiled a lot into the phone and the way his free hand kept gesticulating led Coghill to assume he was chatting up a bird. The fact that he'd been on the phone for over a quarter of an hour without ever once feeding a coin into the box, also suggested that either he'd reversed the charges or else he'd discovered a method of swindling the Post Office. With the minutes ticking away, Coghill was on the point of physically removing him, when he suddenly hung up and backed out of the phone booth. Grabbing hold of Jalud, Coghill shoved him inside and closed the door behind them.

"We don't have much time," he said, "so just listen carefully and don't interrupt until I've finished. When you answer the phone, I want you to hold the receiver away from your ear so that I can hear every word. Let Patterson do most of the talking, but like I said before, don't be too eager to please. And. just remember this, if you bitch it up, a very blue movie with you in the starring role is likely to find its way to Colonel Qadhafi. Got it?"

Jalud nodded, then flinched as the phone rang. Taking a deep breath, he answered the call and croaked a hello into the mouthpiece.

Patterson said, "I'm going to make this short and sweet. You've read the newspapers and know the state of the market. Everything's gone to pot, but the stock I'm holding is worth a fortune in anybody's money. And there's no need to remind you that part of the material on offer can either make or break you, is there?"

"No." Jalud moistened his lips. "No, I'm only too aware you're in a strong bargaining position."

"Right on." Patterson chuckled, then the time-up signal cut in and Coghill heard him feed another coin into the box. "Okay," he continued, "the deal is this. You get in touch with ECAS Limited and arrange a trip to the Continent on my behalf and the entire stock is yours for free."