by Dane Cobain
Maile had been thinking about Asif Shaktar ever since she’d met him at the Oyster Club, and not just because she liked his beard or because she wanted to ask him about his dental routine. Something about the man had been bugging her, and she realised what it was the second that his name cropped up.
“That’s it!” she shouted.
Leipfold paused and turned to look at her. He’d been jotting notes on a flipchart while running through some sort of monologue, verbalising his train of thought without even realising it. Asif’s name came up as he was thinking about FunRunz, the company that had delivered the killer’s trophies to The Tribune.
“That’s what?” Leipfold asked.
“That’s where I’d heard his name before,” Maile said. “Asif Shaktar. I met him the other night.”
“Where?”
Maile blushed and realised that she hadn’t thought this through.
Stupid Kat, she thought. Damn her and her stupid bloody dating sites and damn the fucking Oyster Club. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of spending her evening at the dating event. She just preferred to keep her love life and her professional life strictly separate. She didn’t want to be that girl. She didn’t have time for boys. They were a hindrance. But sometimes at night she thought it would be nice to have someone to hold her.
She looked over at Leipfold. Then she shook her head and bit the bullet.
“I was at a dating event,” she admitted, before telling Leipfold what had happened at the Oyster Club and how she’d exchanged numbers with the deliveryman. She even told him about the conversation she’d had with Lucy Fforde after everyone else had left.
“Strange woman,” Maile said. “It was like she had split personalities. One moment she was playing the welcoming host and the next moment she was ranting about loverats and cheaters.”
“She must have been hurt by someone,” Leipfold replied.
“You got that right.” Maile paused for a moment and then started to chuckle. “I’ve just remembered,” she said. “She was talking about some kid who tried to pass as an adult and ended up getting kicked out. Said he’s been writing about her on his blog. I wonder what he said.”
Leipfold grunted and turned back to his flipchart. He was sending her a pretty clear “do not disturb” signal and it was obvious that he’d lost interest. But Maile hadn’t, so she put her headphones on and listened to a little music while searching for the blog that Lucy Fforde had mentioned. She’d thought it would be good for a laugh and that she could send it to Kat to put a smile on her housemate’s face, but it turned out to be good for much more than that.
She found the blog all right, and she also found out who the white-haired kid was. There was a picture of him right there on the about page.
“Uh, boss,” Maile said, pulling her headphones off and letting them rest around her neck, a death metal double bass drum beat echoing out and breaking the sacred silence of the office. “I think you should come and take a look at this.”
“What is it?” he asked.
Maile swallowed and took another look at the picture. “I think I’ve just found a link between Asif Shaktar and Lukas White.”
Chapter Sixteen:
Hypocrites
LEIPFOLD AND MAILE hopped on the back of Camilla and made their way to Lukas White’s place. They weren’t expecting a warm welcome, and so they weren’t surprised when they didn’t receive one.
“What do you want?”
It was Lukas White’s mother, and she didn’t look happy to see them. She was clearly in the middle of something in the kitchen. She was wearing an apron and there were telltale trails of flour across the front of it.
“We’d like to speak to your son,” Leipfold said. He tried to smile at her, but it came across more like a grimace. Maile was almost tempted to laugh, but this was important and so she forced herself to take control. She was hardly a social butterfly, but she was still better at holding a conversation than James Leipfold.
“He’s not in any trouble,” Maile said, anticipating the woman’s train of thought and seeking to defuse the situation before she was able to tell them to fuck off and to slam the door in their faces. “We just think he might be able to help us.”
“What’s this about?” Mrs. White asked, glaring at her suspiciously.
“It’s about the Tower Hill Terror,” Maile replied. “I’m sure you’ve read about him in the newspapers. I think your son might be able to help us to stop him.”
“Lukas? You’re kidding.”
“We’re not, Mrs. White,” Leipfold said. “But don’t worry. I don’t believe he’s in any danger. That said, he may be in possession of some information that could help us to bring a murderer to justice.”
“Well…” The woman looked them up and down again and then seemed to arrive at a conclusion. “Okay, you can come in. Quickly, now. And take your shoes off and leave them in the hallway, please. I’ve just done the housework and I’m in no mood to start all over again.”
Maile and Leipfold did as they were asked and were shown into the living room, which looked considerably tidier than it had on their last visit. Mrs. White leaned through the doorway and shouted her son’s name from the bottom of the stairs and then asked her guests to wait as she went back into the kitchen to check on her baking.
Lukas entered the room shortly afterwards and did a visible double take when he saw who his visitors were. The colour drained from his face except in his cheeks, which flushed a deep crimson.
“What do you want?” he asked. “I already told you everything I know.”
“Not quite,” Leipfold said. He was sitting comfortably in one of the armchairs and looking for all the world like he owned the place. He made no effort to get up. “You didn’t mention the Oyster Club.”
Lukas White looked straight back at Leipfold with a dormant expression on his face, as though the lights were on but no one was home. For a second, he looked as though he was going to deny it and to claim that he’d never heard of it. But then his head dropped slightly and he glanced nervously towards the kitchen, where his mother was still clattering around with her pots and pans.
“I think we’d better go to my room,” he said.
* * *
Lukas White’s bedroom was pretty typical for a boy his age, a little box room with a single bed beneath a small window, a chest of drawers with clothes poking out and a stand with a flatscreen TV and a couple of consoles. A stack of Marvel comics poked out from a cardboard box beneath the bed, and the floor was a minefield of dirty clothes and unwashed crockery. It was pretty clear that he spent most of his time in there.
The room was too small for a desk or a chair, so Lukas White cleared a space on his bed and sat down on it. Leipfold winced as the kid raked his arm across a pile of fresh and folded laundry, placed there by his mother no doubt, and sent it tumbling towards the floor on top of his sweaty gym socks and empty crisp packets. The kid gestured for Maile and Leipfold to sit down beside him, but they declined his invitation and remained standing. It gave them a height advantage and blocked off the exit.
“So why are you here?” Lukas asked.
“We found out about your blog,” Leipfold said. “You know, the one about the Oyster Club. What’s the matter, kid? It’s just a stupid club. Why the whole vendetta?”
Lukas mumbled something that they couldn’t hear and Leipfold asked him to repeat it.
“I said, ‘I can’t stand hypocrites.’”
“Hypocrites?”
“Yeah,” Lukas said. “How much do you know about the Oyster Club, anyway?”
Leipfold and Maile just looked at him. It was Leipfold’s go-to trick, relying on the inherent human need to plug the awkward silence in a conversation. It rarely let him down.
“I went along to the Oyster Club for a laugh,” Lukas said. “I heard about it online and I wanted to
see if it was as ridiculous as it sounded. It was.”
“What were you even doing at an over-twenty-one club?” Maile asked. “You must have known you’d get caught.”
“That was kind of the point,” he said. “I thought it’d be fun, something to do for the evening. Just a little distraction, that’s all. Don’t you ever get bored of life?”
“Kid, you’re fourteen years old,” Leipfold said. “What have you got to be bored about?”
Lukas White shrugged. “Whatever,” he said. “It was something to do. But when I got there and did a little digging, everything changed. The girls that go, they’re mostly regulars. They know what’s going on behind the scenes, and I started to hear some stuff that I couldn’t unhear if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t follow you,” Leipfold said.
Lukas White laughed, but it was a bitter laugh that was full of scorn. “Remember when I said I hate hypocrites?” he said. “Well, that place is full of them. That’s why I started my blog, Mr. Leipfold, and that’s why I post what I post on there.”
“Why are they hypocrites at the Oyster Club?” Maile asked.
“It’s the woman who runs it,” Lukas said. “That bitch Lucy Fforde. She talks a big game about how she hates cheaters and how her shitty little club is all about monogamy, but she’s just the same as the rest of them. She was married, you know. When she first started putting the events on.”
“So?”
“Don’t you get it?” Lukas asked. He grinned. “You should go back to my blog and read all the posts on it. They’ll tell you everything you need to know. But here’s the long and the short of it. Fforde met a man there and her marriage fell apart. The husband found out and broke things off with her. Then he just sort of…disappeared. She called the cops and they tried to find the guy, but nothing. Nobody’s seen him since. A couple of months later, she shacked up with the guy she met at the Oyster Club.”
Lukas White looked at them both and smiled sheepishly. “Now can you see why I wanted to expose their hypocrisy?” he asked. “This shit’s too good to miss. You couldn’t make it up.”
Leipfold shook his head. “No, kid,” he said. “I don’t. Why do you even care? I’m not buying that you’re so invested in Lucy Fforde’s love life that you wanted to shut her down.”
“That’s all I’ve got for you.”
Leipfold scowled at the kid and then asked his next question, the question that was the main reason why he’d wanted to see him in the first place.
“Does the name Asif Shaktar mean anything to you?” he asked.
Lukas shook his head. “No,” he said. “Should it?”
“It was worth a shot,” Leipfold said. He thought of another question, a longer one. “What about a chap called Marc Allman?”
That shot hit home, and the whites of White’s eyes were overtaken by darkness as his pupils expanded in recognition.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know him. We’ve just been talking about him. He’s the guy from the Oyster Club who hooked up with Lucy Fforde.”
* * *
They talked to Lukas White for another half hour or so, but if he had any more information, it was buried somewhere inside his mind where he couldn’t access it. He wanted to help, they could see it in his eyes, but he was also holding something back. Leipfold wondered what it was, and the fact that he didn’t know left a sour taste in his mouth.
When they left the kid’s room, they bumped into his mother on the stairway. She’d taken her apron off and was halfheartedly brushing the eaves with a feather duster, but she wasn’t fooling anyone.
“I thought my ears were burning,” Leipfold murmured as she escorted them to the door.
Lukas White’s mother followed them outside and then closed the door behind her.
“Okay, Mister,” she said. “What’s all this about?”
“I’m not sure I follow you,” Leipfold said, turning around to look at her. He could see the kid leaning out of an upstairs window and listening in on them, but he didn’t see much point in telling her. It was poetic justice.
“I won’t pretend that I wasn’t listening in on your conversation,” she said. “I’m a mother, after all, and my son is still a child. Why were you asking him about Lucy?”
“Lucy Fforde?”
“Yes,” she said. “Why were you asking about my sister?”
“Your sister?”
Mrs. White looked just as surprised as Leipfold was. “You mean you didn’t know?” she asked.
“I think we’d better go back inside,” Leipfold said.
But Mrs. White shook her head. “Let’s go for a walk,” she said. “I don’t want my son to overhear us.”
“Very wise,” Leipfold said, thinking of the boy in the window above them. He fell into step to her right while Maile moved to her left. They looped the block three abreast as they continued to talk.
“My sister stole some money from us,” Mrs. White explained. She didn’t look at them while she talked. “A large amount of money, if you must know. This is several years ago now. It came at a bad time for us, and so we had to downsize. Lukas had to change schools, and he’s never forgiven her. The kids bully him, you know. I try my best for him, but I can’t really blame him for skipping school and getting himself into trouble. That’s what this is about, I take it?”
“Something like that,” Leipfold said. “At first, I thought your son was connected to the Tower Hill Terror, but I’m starting to doubt it.”
“Good. My Lukas would never be involved in something like that. He’s a good kid. He’s just a little bit…well, rebellious at the moment. You know how it is. You were a boy once.”
“Indeed,” Leipfold said. When he was Lukas White’s age, he’d been rubbing shoulders with petty criminals and sneaking into pubs. He couldn’t help thinking that Lukas White had got off easy. “So how does Lucy Fforde fit into it? That’s what I want to know.”
“I have no idea,” Mrs. White said. “All I know is that she stole Luke’s future and we’ve never forgiven her. That money was supposed to go towards his tuition fees. Nine grand a year? They must take us all for fools.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Leipfold said. “I never went to uni. Thanks, Mrs. White. That explains a lot. I see now why your son might have a grudge against her.”
“But what did he do?”
Leipfold stopped suddenly. Mrs. White turned around to look at him, almost knocking Maile over with her shoulder. They’d finished their loop of the block and were approaching the Whites’ front door.
“You should probably ask him that yourself,” Leipfold said.
* * *
Leipfold needed to talk to Maile, but they couldn’t talk while they were wearing their helmets and she was riding pillion on the back of Camilla. It had to wait until they got back to the office, but they got started as soon as he’d parked up and they continued to talk as Leipfold led the way up the narrow staircase.
“It’s the Oyster Club,” Leipfold said. “It’s related to the case. It has to be. How can it not be? It’s the only thing I can think of besides the Tower Hill Terror himself that links Lukas White, Asif Shaktar and Marc Allman.”
“But what about the victims?” Maile asked. “What links them?”
“I have no idea,” Leipfold replied. “But I’m going to find out.”
“I don’t get it, boss. If Lucas White and Lucy Fforde are related, what did he hope to gain from going to her dating night? He must have known he’d be recognised.”
“I suspect that was the point,” Leipfold said. “He wanted to cause a scene. To embarrass the woman in her home turf. Maybe he just wanted to remind her that he existed and that she’d stolen the money his mother had put aside for his education.”
“Maybe.”
By this point, they were inside the office, and Leipfold had chucked hi
s helmet down beneath the coat rack and headed straight into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Detective work was a thirsty business, and he was dying for a brew.
“You know,” he said, grabbing a couple of cups from the mug tree and rinsing them out in the sink in case they had any dust in them, “I was starting to think it was an inside job.”
“You were?”
“Of course,” Leipfold replied. “Weren’t you?”
“I mean, I guess.”
“The Tower Hill Terror seemed to know too much,” he said. “Whoever he is, he’s a master at the game. He’s been playing the police force off against itself, and I was starting to think that it had to be someone on the inside. It was the only thing that made sense. But now I’m not so sure, and perhaps this is the lead we need to figure out the truth here.”
* * *
Maile spent most of the early evening at her desk in front of the computer screen. As a relatively new employee—and Leipfold’s first ever official hire—she was on an hourly contract with time and a half for overtime. Leipfold told her to knock herself out, to work as hard and as long as she needed as long as she came up trumps with some information.
Leipfold’s trick with the map had given Maile an idea, and she was able to narrow down her search to specific areas. She pulled data en masse from social networking sites and then worked some magic with the CSV file, filtering through the information to look for common trends in different areas.
She even found accounts that were linked to Abu Adewali and Calvin Myatt, although Jayne Lipton had kept her private life offline. But so far, Maile had been unable to find anything useful. The victims all talked about the usual stuff—the shows they watched, the music they listened to, the books they read and the friends they hung out with. Maile spent the best part of an hour trawling through the data and had nothing to show at the end of it.
Frustrated, she changed tack, filtering posts based on their geographic location. She was looking for anything unusual around the time of the murders, giving herself a couple of days’ leeway on either side.