Her name was Karen Whiffield. She was thirty-two<br >years old， had shoulder-length raven black hair， a trim but well-<br >rounded figure and was about five foot seven. She lay on her<br >stomach in the middle of a king-size divan bed， her head turned<br >over to the left and facing the outside wall. Her ankles， wrists<br >and elbows were roped together and she had been gagged with a<br >pair of tights. The green silk dress she was wearing had been<br >raised above her hips and somebody had burned her thighs and<br >naked buttocks with the glowing ember of a cigarette. That same<br >somebody had then held a small-caliber revolver to her head and<br >put two bullets into the brain.<br > The media were going to have a field day with this one， Coghill<br >thought bitterly. It was the kind of juicy murder with sexual<br >overtones they could really get their teeth into: well-to-do， at-<br >tractive young housewife tortured and shot dead in her secluded，<br >executive-style house， half a mile from the grounds of the All<br >England Lawn Tennis Club. They d been quick off the mark too.<br >The 999 call had been received by the police station in Wimble-<br >don at nine twenty-seven; by the time he d arrived from V District<br >headquarters in Kingston some fifteen minutes later， two local<br >reporters and a press photographer were already loitering outside<br >the house.<br > The press would want a statement from him and soon， but<br >right now there wasn t much he could give them， apart from the<br >victim s name and age. He d got that information from Detective<br >Sergeant Mace， the duty CID officer at Wimbledon， who d ar-<br >rived on the scene shortly after a Panda car had responded to the<br >999 call. Mace was downstairs， still interviewing the Whitfields <br ><br >