by Dane Cobain
Jayne’s murder had sparked a barrage of gossip, largely because she was connected to the previous case and because her name had already been in the papers. Maile browsed through the feed, pausing every now and then to look at a photo or to read the ill-advised sentiments of sixteen-year-old kids with nothing better to do than to troll their time away. But there was nothing there of significance.
Adewali’s death had passed by virtually unnoticed, apart from the initial flurry of speculation when the photos of the scene were first released. Maile cursed Lukas White, and the stupidity with which he’d blindly agreed to do a favour for a man on the street. But she was also grateful for the opportunity it created. She was able to filter through every response and to catalogue every share. Perhaps the killer had made a mistake somewhere.
Who are you? Maile thought. And why are you doing this?
Calvin Myatt’s murder had caused the biggest buzz of all, thanks to the widespread press coverage and the tabloids’ bad habit of glamorising the macabre. Myatt’s death had been front page news across the country, and it was already all over the news channels. Speculation was rife, and Maile indexed tens of thousands of posts about the atrocity. She’d have her work cut out for her if she wanted to make sense of it, especially because her only option was to filter through it manually, looking for that one post, somewhere, that would give them the lead they were looking for.
She found reports of road work on the day of Lipton’s death, a sketchy-looking guy in a car a couple of hours before Adewali was found, and strange noises from a shipping container in Battersea, not far from where Calvin Myatt worked. It was the last report that intrigued her the most. The person who’d posted it had said it reminded them of a wounded animal. They’d said that the sounds were faint and weak, like a dog with a broken leg that had been left to cower alone in a basement.
It wasn’t much but it was a lead, and they had precious few of those if Leipfold’s wall-mounted map was anything to go by. Maile walked over and took a look at it. She grabbed one of Leipfold’s yellow pins and jabbed it into the board where the shipping container was. It was just inside Leipfold’s circle.
The boss, meanwhile, was watching her every move from the comfort of his desk, where he was updating the company’s finances on a piece of complicated, outdated software.
“What are you doing?” Leipfold asked.
“I think I’ve got a lead, boss,” she explained. “A shipping container in Battersea. I haven’t got an exact address, but I can hone in on it within a half-mile radius.”
“What’s so important about the container?” he asked.
So Maile brought him up to speed with her research, starting with her methodology and finishing with the post she’d read about the noises from inside the container. Leipfold frowned and stared indecisively at the corkboard. Then he jumped up from his seat, pulled on his leather jacket and grabbed the keys to Camilla.
“Where are you going?” Maile asked.
“I guess I’m going to Battersea,” Leipfold replied. “We need to find this container and see what’s what.”
“Could be dangerous.”
“It could be,” Leipfold agreed. “I’ll give Jack Cholmondeley a call and see if he can send over some officers. In the meantime, there’s not a moment to lose. A woman’s life could be at stake.”
He rushed towards the door and opened it, then paused on the threshold. He turned back to look at Maile.
“You coming?” he asked. “You can ride side-saddle.”
Maile grinned. “Of course,” she replied. “Give me a second. I’ll grab my pepper spray. Someone’s got to look after you.”
Chapter Seventeen:
Armed Response
IT WAS LATER THAT EVENING, and Leipfold and Maile were in an undisclosed location in Battersea, looking through a mesh fence at an industrial unit that housed several dozen corrugated shipping containers. It was like a bizarre game of Tetris or dominos. Each container was a different shape, a different colour, a different brand.
“Jesus,” Maile murmured. “It’s where shipping crates come to die.”
“Yeah,” Leipfold said. “Let’s hope that’s the only thing that dies here.”
Leipfold and Maile paused for a moment, standing in silence to listen out for the noises that had been reported in the area. But there was nothing—at least, nothing that they could hear over the thrum of the passing traffic and the noise pollution from the industrial estate. Then they heard the distant sound of sirens, and Leipfold grinned and nodded in their approximate direction.
“Cholmondeley’s on his way, then,” Leipfold said. “Better make this quick.”
Leipfold grabbed hold of the fence and leapt at it. He was in his element, reliving his army days with relish. He scuttled over the fence and dropped down on the other side, rolling as he hit the ground to soften the impact. It was at least a ten-foot drop onto concrete, but Leipfold took it like a pro and, apart from complaining about his knees when he got up again, he seemed unfazed and uninjured.
“Keep watch,” he commanded, frowning at Maile from the other side of the mesh. “When Cholmondeley gets here, tell him where I am and what I’m doing.”
“And what are you doing?” Maile asked. “Be careful, boss. It could be dangerous.”
“I should bloody well hope so, too,” Leipfold said. “If it’s not dangerous, we’re in the wrong place. Wait here.”
* * *
Maile watched from a distance as her boss raced off into the labyrinthine maze of packing crates, racing from container to container and pausing every now and then to put his ear against the walls to listen. Every time he stopped, he’d shout “hello?” and wait for a response. Meanwhile, the sirens were getting louder and louder.
“Come on, boss,” Maile murmured. The stress she felt was like a living organism coursing through her veins in an elaborate attempt to take over her body and to stop her brain from fully functioning.
Then Maile saw the lights, and she flinched as a half-dozen cop cars raced past her towards the entrance of the facility. They were joined there by two riot vans. Maile watched from a distance as their doors opened and two armed response units spilled out of the vans and onto the pavement.
She gestured frantically at Leipfold, pointing in the direction of the entrance. She thought about shouting across at him, but she wasn’t sure if her voice would carry. Besides, she didn’t want to attract the attention of the police force.
Leipfold, meanwhile, was gesturing frantically back at her. He pointed at the container he was standing beside, then at the lock, then back at the container. He shouted something, but it didn’t quite carry to where she was standing. But she knew what he meant, all right. He’d found something.
She hoped it was something worth finding. There was a crash from the lot’s entrance, the shrill, steely scream of the gate being bashed in. She could see a flurry of movement, a sure sign of the armed response team. Their dark jackets did the job, helping them to melt into the night and to gain the element of surprise. And they were armed to the teeth. The best way to spot them was to catch the light pollution glinting off their rifles.
Leipfold shouted something again, and the men with guns raced towards him. He held his hands in the air to show he was unarmed. But Maile was worried for him, and her heart was in her mouth as she watched the scene unfolding before her on the other side of the complex’s cold mesh fence.
Jesus Christ, she thought. I hope he knows what he’s doing.
* * *
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Jack Cholmondeley was in a bad mood. He’d been hoping for a lazy evening, a night spent rereading the case notes in front of the telly while Mary went to Zumba. She wasn’t too happy about taking a taxi, especially because her husband had let her down at the last minute. But when there was a choice between doing his duty
and ferrying his wife around in the back of his Beemer, there was only one real option for Jack Cholmondeley.
Now he had to deal with James Leipfold, who’d crashed the party before the response team arrived and put the whole operation in danger.
“Sorry, Jack,” Leipfold said. “You know how it is. A woman’s life is at stake. You should be glad that I called your boys at all.”
“This isn’t a joke, James.” Cholmondeley sighed. He grabbed Leipfold’s arm and dragged him away from the container. At the same time, the armed response team took up positions around the outside of it. “You could have died. This killer is dangerous, brutal.”
The leader of the armed response team, a man who Cholmondeley knew by face if not by name, was scanning the container with some sort of electronic device. He checked the readout and nodded, then asked Cholmondeley for instructions.
“You ready?” he asked.
Cholmondeley nodded. “Let’s do it,” he said.
“All units, on me.” The man gestured towards the door, and one of his men raced up to it with a pair of bolt cutters. They sliced through the rusty chain as easily as a military laser cutting through the rubber skin of a balloon. The chain popped with a sound like a gunshot and four men from the response team rushed forward and swung the heavy doors open.
At first, it was too dark to see inside, but the men led with their guns and followed up with flashlights. Ghostly motes of dust drifted down from the ceiling and were caught in the beams, like stars falling from the sky. The soldiers swept their beams around the room and Leipfold and Cholmondeley leaned closer. It was like looking through a window into hell.
The inside of the container looked like the slaughter room of an abattoir. It reeked of shit and piss and the sweet, coppery tang of blood that’s been spilled and left to congeal. The walls were damp with mildew, the floors were thick with dust and the unit was packed with heavy metal.
The flashlights lit up a gurney and passed on, then veered back over to focus on it.
“Jesus Christ,” Cholmondeley said. “There’s someone in there.”
The armed response team leapt into action, and Cholmondeley was forced to take a back seat. He no longer called the shots.
Forensics will be pissed, he thought. The armed response team was destroying valuable evidence, but to hell with it. There was a life at stake.
When Cholmondeley had taken the call with Maile’s intel and ordered the raid on the container, he’d had the presence of mind to order an EMT. They were hanging back, waiting for the all-clear from the response team. They worked quickly, scouring the scene for booby traps before beckoning the medics into the container once they were satisfied. They didn’t bother to look for suspects. Whoever they were, they were long gone.
Leipfold and Cholmondeley watched on in a stunned silence as two medics raced up to the gurney and examined the body that was strapped into it. One of them took a pulse. It was weak, but it was there.
“We’ve got a live one,” he shouted. “Just about. We need to get her out of here, now.”
“Holy fucking shit,” the taller man said, his voice carrying eerily on the wind like an echo in a graveyard. “Get a load of this.”
Leipfold and Cholmondeley leaned closer, as did a couple members of the armed response team. The rest were establishing a perimeter, sweeping the facility for any sign of life. It was hard to see by torchlight, but there was no mistaking the deep, crimson stain on the sheet that covered the injured woman.
The wound was where the woman’s legs met, and if there was any doubt about the unit’s connection to the killer, it was dispelled in the second they noticed.
“Oh no,” Cholmondeley murmured, burying his face in his hands. He was aware of the eyes of his colleagues upon him, torn between the awful scene inside the container and the unusual sight of the seasoned copper with tears in his eyes. “Oh no, no, no. We’re too late. The bastard already got to her.”
* * *
Jack Cholmondeley, the armed response team and the EMTs had a long, long night ahead of them. With the unit secure, the medics carried the wounded woman out into the back of a waiting ambulance and rushed her to hospital. Cholmondeley explained to Leipfold that she wouldn’t be taken to just any old A&E. She was on her way to a military hospital where they’d be able to deal with the damage.
Meanwhile, the armed response team continued their sweep of the area. Leipfold wanted to go with them, but Cholmondeley had rebuked him.
“You’re not even supposed to be here,” he said. “Where’s that assistant of yours, anyway?”
Leipfold blanched. He’d forgotten all about Maile. “She’s just outside,” he admitted. “On the other side of the fence.”
“Better bring her in,” Cholmondeley grunted. “She can’t wait outside all night, and I suspect we’ll be here for a while. Either bring her here or send her home.”
And so Leipfold had given Maile the choice. True to form, Maile met Leipfold and Cholmondeley at the entrance to the facility, where they spent the next ninety minutes waiting for confirmation that the place had been secured.
Midnight was on the horizon by the time that they were given the all-clear, and it was one or two o’clock before the forensic team arrived and began their investigation. Leipfold and Cholmondeley were allowed to watch from a safe distance, although they had to wear protective suits to avoid cross contamination. Maile, meanwhile, had to stay by the entrance with the two men who were keeping a lookout, with their hands on the triggers of their weapons, in case the killer returned to the scene. Leipfold suspected they wouldn’t, and Jack Cholmondeley agreed with him. But there was protocol to follow, and it was better to be safe than sorry.
The search for clues continued throughout the night, although hope started to fade at around 3AM, when the dawn was still several hours away and the heavens opened up and started to rain down on the crime scene. Satisfied that the area was secure, most of the response team had returned to base for a debriefing, although four men were left behind on sentry duty with the promise of relief in the morning.
Cholmondeley didn’t feel relieved. He felt depressed, upset, like a failure. He just hoped that his team was getting a good night’s sleep because there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to keep him awake and alert for the morning shift, which he was due to start in just under six hours. He wanted to go home.
And Leipfold was barely present at all. His mind was elsewhere and his cold, numb hands were struggling to drag the nib of a biro across the pages of his notebook. He drew a copy of the map from his office wall, then tore out the page and handed it to Cholmondeley. He explained its significance and asked the cop to carry out an investigation of his own.
“It’s a pattern,” Leipfold explained. “I’m sure it is. So far, every victim has lived, worked and been discovered within the city. Odds are that our killer lives here as well.”
Cholmondeley thanked Leipfold for the information and promised to look into it. He took a photo of it and emailed it, with a brief explanation, to Groves and Mogford. They wouldn’t be working, but they’d probably beat him to the office in the morning and he wanted them to start looking into it first thing. He copied in Constable Cohen so he could cross-reference the map with their missing persons database. He wondered, vaguely, whether the latest victim was one of the women that they’d already looked at, or whether this was something different, something new.
Then he shrugged his shoulders and got back to work.
* * *
Nobody else had spotted the cameras, but it was the first thing that Maile thought to look for.
She knew a lot more about psychology than Leipfold thanks to the books she read. She wondered if her boss knew what could be learned from books about Ted Bundy, Peter Sutcliffe and Jack the Ripper. She doubted the thought had ever occurred to him. Leipfold was a man of action. He gleaned his knowledge from the
streets, not from books and documentaries. That was just one of the reasons why they made a good team.
No, Maile had a good idea how the mind of a killer worked, and a killer like this, whose crimes had been played out in the pages of The Tribune, would want to see the results of their labour. And besides, Maile had a suspicion, like an itch she couldn’t scratch. The killer knew, somehow, that they were coming. Maybe it was paranoia and maybe it was a lucky guess. Either way, they’d left their victim to die in the lockup, sure she’d bleed out or suffocate when the air ran out. And whether the woman survived or not, the killer had already taken their trophy. She wondered idly whether it would end up at the police station or at the offices of The Tribune.
The Tower Hill Terror had kitted the place out with little cameras, which were invisible from the inside of the container. But someone could see them on the outside, if they looked hard enough. They’d drilled little holes in the corrugated metal, attached the cameras and then plastered over them with second-hand shipping labels. The cameras couldn’t be seen, but the bulges could. Maile suspected that it was a similar setup to her own, which had come in useful during their last case.
At first, it was just a suspicion, but the suspicion slowly grew when she took a proper look around the facility. She had to bide her time and wait for the men on sentry duty to settle in for the long night and to stop paying her attention. She couldn’t get into the unit—not without being spotted—but she didn’t need to. Hell, she didn’t want to. But she could take a little look around.
She found the first camera within a couple of minutes, and cameras two and three followed shortly afterwards. They’d been hidden well, but not well enough: one inside the twisted knot of an overhanging tree, one amongst a pile of rubble and one lying flat on top of one of the neighbouring containers inside a discarded cigarette packet.
That’s one of my tricks, Maile thought.
She picked up the camera that had been lying in the rubble and held it in a gloved hand. She looked into the lens, then turned it over and around. It was a simple camera, with a single, low-quality lens attached to a router and a battery pack.