Conflict of Interest

Merlin de Vere had been one of Judith’s best sources in the City. Not that he was leaky – though he was less of a closed book than some of his peers. It was more that he’d had his own views which he wasn’t afraid to share; views that usually ran contrary to the rest of the market, and that frequently turned out to be right. Forthright and controversial, Merlin de Vere had always made for good copy.

Judith had been calling him for a quote since she started on The Guardian, having quickly discovered he was someone she could call at any time of the day or night for his angle. Since those early days, they’d both seen each other through changes in jobs. A symbiotic friendship had grown up between them. Operating in different parts of the same, closed world, there was always plenty of information to exchange – and they had learned to trust each other.

So when the news of his death had come out, a week ago, Judith had been more than simply scandalised. While most others responded to the circumstances of his ‘accident’ with a voyeuristic shiver, she’d been left feeling bewildered and strangely hurt; she’d never so much as suspected a dark side to Merlin. Had the super-intelligent, witty and cultivated man she’d thought she’d known been leading a double life all along? Because, within hours of the first Reuters report of his death, rumours had been churning through the newsrooms of the City; Merlin de Vere had choked himself to death on methane. He’d been surrounded by hard-core S&M magazines. He’d had his head in a refuse sack of two-week-old garbage, including the rotting carcass of a seagull. He’d shoved a dildo up his ass.

No matter how saddened and curiously betrayed she felt by the news, Judith realised that her feelings were as nothing compared to what Merlin’s girlfriend must be going through. After the funeral at St Columbus’s, last Friday, she’d greeted Denise Caville outside the church afterwards, but could think of nothing to say. There simply weren’t the words to express what she was feeling. Instead, she’d simply given Denise a hug and whispered, ‘I’m so sorry.’

Now, as she stood in Denise’s Wapping flat that September evening, looking out over the broad, blue-grey sweep of the Thames, she was still wondering why Denise had invited her. She had phoned the day after the funeral saying there was something she wanted to talk to her about – could Judith visit her at home? Judith had been surprised and mystified. Why did Denise, whom she’d never met before the day of the funeral, want to see her? Half a dozen possibilities had been occupying her thoughts ever since that brief conversation, none of which, she was soon to learn, had any relevance. Denise brought over a glass of wine for each of them, and sat opposite her at the large picture window of her sitting room.

‘I’m glad you could come so soon,’ she began, the dusk skyline reflected in her sunglasses. ‘I wanted it to be you because I know Merlin trusted you. With information, as well as other things.’

Judith nodded. There had been many times in the past few years when she’d been privy to news from Merlin that would have made a front-page scoop, but which she hadn’t used until he’d given her the say-so. But did Denise suspect she knew something about his sexual other life?

‘You see, the full story of his death hasn’t been in any of the newspapers.’

Judith raised her eyebrows. ‘There’ve been plenty of tabloid stories.’

‘Which are mostly true …’ Denise bit her lip. ‘The stuff about the porn and the dildo and the seagull – it was all there.’

Judith was astonished by her frankness.

‘But there were other things which very few people know about,’ she continued, ‘things which tell a very different story. You see, Merlin didn’t die in some bizarre S&M “experiment”. He was murdered.’

Judith sat back in her chair, eyes narrowing. ‘You’ve talked to the police?’

She nodded. ‘And they’ve done sweet FA of course. Which is why I wanted to speak to you.’ She took a sip of her wine before speaking softly. ‘I know you’ll be thinking that I’m just looking for some other explanation because the truth is too painful. But it’s not like that at all.’

Judith nodded.

‘I want to give you the real story, or at least the part of it that I know, because I know you won’t twist what I say.’

‘Denise, I feel very privileged, really I do. And grateful to you for thinking of me. But the thing is, I’m not a crime reporter. I cover business stories.’

‘This is a business story,’ Denise assured her. ‘Judge for yourself.’ She paused for a sip of wine, before beginning, in a slow, clear voice, to tell Judith the story of what she’d found when she’d gone down to Merlin’s Dorset cottage the previous Saturday.

It had been almost noon when she had arrived, later for her than on most Saturday mornings because she’d had to go into the office to clear up some invoicing which needed to be done by the end of the month. She had parked her car behind Merlin’s, and gone into the cottage. From the moment she’d stepped inside the front door, she’d realised something was different, though it took her a moment to work it out; the clock had stopped. It was a mahogany grandfather clock, and had been in the de Ver

e family for five generations. Merlin had always been in awe of the fact that, despite its age, its time-keeping was still precise – so long as it was wound up regularly. A creature of habit, Merlin would always wind the clock before attending to any other chores in the cottage. On a summer’s evening, Denise told Judith, when he arrived at the cottage, he would usually open the sliding glass doors at the front, spend a few minutes out on the balcony, then return inside to wind up the clock. But when she’d got there the following morning, the clock was stilled into silence.

Calling out for Merlin, and receiving no reply, she had assumed he was outside, or had gone for a walk. Then she’d taken her overnight bag down the passage to their bedroom – and had been hit by the stench coming from the bathroom. It had taken her several minutes to fully take in her discovery. What she found inside the bathroom was like a scene from the sickest pornography imaginable. After pulling back the wetsuit mask to confirm the body inside was Merlin, she’d gone straight to the telephone to call the police.

The police had kept her out of the way while they removed the body and dusted the house for fingerprints. Finding nothing to suggest the death was suspicious, they’d later asked Denise if there was anything outside the bathroom that was out of place. She’d told them about the grandfather clock right away. Then, after she’d gone through the kitchen, she mentioned finding a bottle of red wine in the fridge. Merlin, she said, was a bit of a wine buff, and one of his firmly held principles was that red wine should always be served at room temperature. Not so long ago, after a chilled red wine experience in a pub, and an argument with an irate Australian, he’d told her that people who put red wine in the fridge should be shot. So what was an expensive bottle of claret doing nestling beside the orange juice inside the fridge door?

Notes had duly been taken by a police officer. Then later that day the police had escorted her back to London, making sure she was safely home before they went on, with some Met colleagues, to search Merlin’s flat for any signs of unusual activity. They’d found nothing untoward, and their search had included a scan of Merlin’s computer records – which was when they’d opened a file containing a huge quantity of explicit S&M video clips. All this they reported to Denise later, although she was still too paralysed by shock to know what to make of it.

‘I didn’t even try to sleep that Saturday night after Merlin died,’ she told Judith now. ‘I was so shaken up I couldn’t stop thinking about it all, knowing that there was something very, very wrong. Then just before dawn I had this sudden thought, I must check Merlin’s computer against the disks.

‘You see, Merlin had his computer crash on him a couple of years ago, losing everything on the hard drive. Since then he’s been paranoid about losing stuff– the problem is, he’s pretty hopeless with anything technical. So when he discovered I used to be a computer programmer, we came to this arrangement that every Wednesday evening I’d go home to his place, make back-up copies of everything on his computer, and keep the disks in my private safe, for extra security. So at dawn on Sunday, I went to his flat, booted up the computer and checked my back-up disks against what was on his hard drive.’

Judith followed what she was saying intently.

‘The analysis showed two differences. First off, all the porn stuff was new—’

‘You mean it was downloaded since—’

‘The Wednesday night before he died. Correct.’ Denise looked at her significantly. ‘I happen to know he had a late-nighter on Thursday, only got home at about one-thirty a.m. And he left for Dorset straight from the office on Friday. So when was he supposed to have got hold of the stuff?’

She shook her head, less bewildered, Judith couldn’t help observing, than outraged.