A solicitor accused of orchestrating the contract killing of his business partner stole more than £650,000 from his clients to fund his luxurious lifestyle, a court has heard.

Vina Patel, 51, was found dead by her husband and daughter in her office at Cort and Co solicitors in Blackbird Road, Leicester, on January 15, 2009.

John Cort (54), of Rutland Street, Leicester has been accused of arranging for Brian Farrell (37), of Queensborough Terrace, west London, to kill Mrs Patel, so he could claim a £1.5m life assurance payout.

Both men deny murder.

Yesterday at Nottingham Crown Court, prosecutor Timothy Spencer said Cort needed the insurance money to cover the cash he had stolen from clients in the process of selling their homes.

At the time the theft came to light, the relevant account should have contained around £876,000. Mr Spencer said there was only £224,000.

He said Cort spent the money on a succession of girlfriends described as "very young, black and who usually wore very short dresses and high heels", buying foreign holidays, expensive cars, clothes and flats in London, Nottingham and Leicester.

He said: "John Cort's hope was that, in due course, the insurance policy would pay out £1.5m and he could then reimburse the account and no-one would be any the wiser, but essential to that, Vina Patel had to die."

The jury heard that Cort later tried to cover up the theft by staging a robbery at his offices. He claimed, Mr Spencer said, that computer records and documents relating to at least nine individuals whose mortgage payments he had allegedly taken had been stolen in the raid.

Cort blamed the burglary on a man he had recently employed who had left the firm shortly before the alleged break-in. He also told police, in interview, that he suspected this man had been involved in mortgage fraud.

However, Mr Spencer said that several months later – after Cort and Farrell had been arrested – the documents Cort claimed had been stolen were discovered in a storage unit leased in Cort's name. Mr Spencer said; "The prosecution say this shows those files had been spirited away by Mr Cort, knowing that if they were available for scrutiny it would give away the fraud he had been involved in."

The court head that Trinidad-born Farrell, who worked in Harrods and supplemented his income as an escort for other men, told police in interview that he had seen Cort with "countless women" but that Cort had also paid him for sex.

He claimed the two men had sex in Cort's office in the days leading up to the killing – explaining why DNA had come to be found in the premises.

The jury previously heard that Farrell was responsible for the attack on Mrs Patel and that DNA on her hands was a "billion times more likely to have come from Brian Farrell than from someone unrelated".

The trial continues.