by Dane Cobain
It wouldn’t be much fun to die down here, she thought.
A dreadful scream echoed out. Maile spun on the spot and tried to head towards it. She poked her head through what appeared to be a small service hatch, lighting her way, like her boss was, with an app on her phone. In her other hand, she held her can of pepper spray.
There was a movement on the other side of the hatch, and Maile raised the nozzle and placed a finger on the trigger. A head came into view, a ginger one, and the colour of the hair was all that stopped her from firing.
“Boss?” she exclaimed. “How did you get down here?”
“I have my ways,” he said. He gestured for her to climb through the hatch and to meet him on the other side. “I found myself in a warehouse. Some sort of aerospace factory by the looks of it, although it’s long gone now. They gutted the place when they moved out, but get this. There were footsteps in the dust, and that’s exactly what I’m following.”
“Yeah,” Maile grunted, shuffling through the hatch like some sort of sewer worm. “Great. Help me out here.”
Leipfold took her hand and pulled her through, then offered her some support while she struggled upright again.
“This place wasn’t built like this,” he said. “It’s been through some modifications. I wonder who did it.”
“Yeah,” Maile said. “And I wonder why.”
* * *
The man was kneeling beside his partner and checking her wound in the half-light. Kat watched him warily, but she made no attempt to escape him. She just watched him as he applied some pressure to stop the bleeding. He’d taken off a coat or a jumper and was using it to try to staunch the flow of the woman’s blood, but it wasn’t looking good.
Kat glanced down at her knife and saw that the blade had been dulled by the blood she’d spilled and that the lamplight didn’t bounce off the stainless steel. She looked back up, and the man was leaning in closer as Lucy Fforde wheezed and struggled to breath on the floor.
“Help me,” Fforde whimpered.
“I’m trying,” the man said. “Jesus Christ, she got you good.”
“It hurts…”
“I know, baby, I know.”
The man glared across at Kat as he absentmindedly stroked his fingers along the knife’s handle.
“I’ve got to finish the job,” he said. “Besides, you picked the last one. This one was always mine.”
“Woah now,” Kat said, backing away from the man and waving her palms in front of her as though she was trying to swat a fly instead of defending herself from a murderer. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Oh, I do,” the man said. “I’m the Tower Hill Terror.”
“That’s what your lady friend down there said before I stabbed her,” Kat replied, stalling desperately for time. “But how do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“You’ll have to take my word for it,” he said, but Kat could tell that something she’d said had got to him.
He wants recognition, she thought. Sickos like him always do. I might not know his name, but I know him all right.
Out loud, she said, “Tell me something only the Tower Hill Terror could know.”
The man paused, just a couple of feet from her. He was frowning at her, but the knife was still in his hand and she had no doubt that he’d use it if he needed to.
“Like what?” he asked.
Gotcha.
“How did you know the victims?”
“I didn’t,” the man said. “I found them all on dating apps. Lucy was the first. But instead of killing her, I started to admire her. To like her, even.”
From somewhere on the floor behind him, Lucy Fforde was still struggling to breathe, pushing the makeshift dressing to her chest with as much force as she could muster. She tried to say something, but neither of them heard her.
“Lucy and I took it in turns to pick the victim,” the man continued. “She had a thing for cheaters. She’d been hurt by them before. She liked to do her research. As for me…well, anything goes. I’m a connoisseur of pain. I don’t know what I look for exactly. You just seemed like an interesting case.”
“You chose me?”
The man nodded.
“Why?”
“Enough talk,” he said. “It’s time to end this.”
He took a step towards her, and Kat could smell the stale sweat from beneath his armpits. He had the knife in his right hand, and he took a swing for her. Kat dropped at the last minute and the blade just nicked her, catching her hair and sending a lock of the stuff tumbling to the floor beside her. She was on her hands and feet, crawling backwards across the floor as the man loomed over her, a silhouette that cut out the light from the lantern.
He brought the knife around again, and this time it connected and scored a long, thin defensive wound on Kat’s forearm. And then the man was standing right on top of her, reaching out a hand like a zombie in some old horror movie and then—
BANG.
Chapter Twenty-Six:
Friends Reunited
ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE beneath the streets of London, and the air hung thick with sulphur. Kat was exhausted, half-conscious and struggling to breathe, pinned down with a body slumped on top of her. She could feel something moist, something spreading slowly across her, but she couldn’t tell whether it was her captor’s blood, her own urine or a messed-up mixture of the two of them.
She looked up, as best as she could, straining her eyes to see her saviour through the darkness. He was a man, about five foot six or maybe five foot seven, with a chiselled face and ginger hair and eyes that looked steely grey until the light flickered across them. Kat recognised him immediately.
“Mr. Leipfold,” she said. “James Leipfold, right?”
“My fame precedes me,” he said. “And you’re Kat Cotteril.”
Leipfold grabbed the body that lay on top of her and hauled it a couple of feet across the floor. While he was checking the man’s pulse, he was joined by another figure that Kat recognised.
“Maile,” she said, her voice croaking with emotion. The full enormity of her situation had hit her during the long hours attached to the manacles, but it wasn’t until she saw her housemate’s face that she realised she was truly, finally free. It was too much for her, and Kat began to cry.
“Shh,” Maile said in the same way that Kat shushed her when they were sitting in front of the TV and she wouldn’t stop chatting. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”
Maile gave her housemate a quick once over to check for injuries and then wrapped her up in a hug once she was sure she was going to survive.
“What the hell’s going on?” Kat asked.
“I don’t know,” Maile said.
“Okay. Then let me try another one. Who’s that man?”
“I think I can help you with that,” Leipfold said. He was standing over her captor, shining the light from his phone on the man’s face. “Marc Allman, old buddy. Fancy seeing you here.”
Leipfold slapped Allman in the face a couple of times, but nothing. “He’s unconscious,” Leipfold said. “But I think he’ll live. I didn’t shoot to kill.”
“There was another one,” Kat said. “A woman.”
“Where?” Leipfold broke the shadows with the light from his phone and lit up another figure on the floor, the body of a woman in a pool of blood. “Good God.”
Leipfold ran across to her and investigated the wound. Then he knelt to take her pulse and ended up switching to CPR. He hummed “Stayin’ Alive” as he worked her, using the Bee Gees to keep time with the compressions.
“Maile,” he said. “I need you to call Jack Cholmondeley.”
“We’re underground, boss,” she replied. “I haven’t got a signal.”
“Then get yourself the hell above ground,” he demanded. “And take Kat with you if
she’s ready to walk.”
“I’m ready for anything,” Kat replied. “Just get me out of here.”
“Then let’s do it,” Maile said. Still holding tight to her housemate, she took her weight and helped to hoist her to her feet. “And what about you? What are you going to do?”
Leipfold stopped pumping at the woman’s chest and tilted her head back. “I’m going to try to save a life,” he said. He forced her jaws open and bent down to put his mouth to hers.
* * *
The paramedics arrived first, within a matter of minutes, and one of them stayed with Kat while Maile led two others back down beneath the streets, explaining what had happened while she struggled through the sewer and along the old Victorian walkway towards the hidden room that the killers had used. At first, the medics had said they’d wait until the cops arrived, but when Maile said she was going back in with or without them, they took a gamble and decided to follow her.
Cholmondeley and his rapid response team arrived shortly afterwards, and with the medic’s permission, they followed Kat as she led them back down into the hellhole.
“Are you sure you’re okay to do this?” Cholmondeley asked. “You’ve been through a lot.”
“I’m fine,” Kat insisted. “And the faster you boys get down there, the faster you can have them in handcuffs. It’s them, you know. The Tower Hill Terror.”
“Them?” Cholmondeley’s brows arched so high they would have brushed against his hair, if he had any. “There’s more than one of them?”
“There are two,” Kat said. “At least, there are two that I know of.”
“And they’re the Tower Hill Terror?”
Kat shrugged. “It’s what she told me,” she said. “Come on. You should see for yourself.”
The response team checked their weapons and led the way with Kat and Cholmondeley guiding them from behind. Kat was exhausted, sore, dehydrated and drastically undernourished, but she still held her own against Jack Cholmondeley, whose arthritis was playing up. It was only made worse by the moisture in the air.
“It’s just through there,” Kat said, and the assault team fanned out into an attack position.
“Watch out,” Cholmondeley said. “There are friendlies in there. Hold your fire unless you’re taking defensive action.”
“Yes, sir.” It was hard to tell which one of them spoke, because the group acted as a unit and, as they moved into formation with their padded outfits and their helmets, they looked more machine than man. Kat and Cholmondeley held back while the gunmen stormed the room, sweeping the darkness with their mounted flashlights. Lit up, the room looked small, almost insignificant. It was maybe 15”x20”, a former pump room designed to clean the brackish sewers of Victorian London. It was empty now, but it still held an eerie atmosphere as though it had secrets that it wanted to tell.
The response team leader gave the all-clear and Cholmondeley led Kat back inside her former prison.
Cholmondeley wasn’t surprised to see that Leipfold was there. He also wasn’t surprised to see Marc Allman, although he wished things could have turned out differently.
Damn it, he thought. We had the man in custody. We just didn’t have enough to make it stick. But if Allman survived, and it looked like he might, they’d have all the evidence they needed to put him away for a long, long time. Whether he turned out to be the Tower Hill Terror or not.
He was surprised to see the paramedics on the floor beside the body of a woman. “Another victim?” he asked.
“Hell no,” Kat said. “She was in on it. They must have been working together.”
“Is she dead?” Cholmondeley asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Not yet,” one of the paramedics said, raising his head without looking up at them. “But it’s not looking good. She’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Good,” Kat said.
“What happened to her?”
“I stabbed her,” Kat said. “But it was self-defence. I managed to get loose and there was a struggle. It was her or me.”
“Well, I’m sure we’ll be able to prove that,” Cholmondeley said. “But I’ll need you to make a quick statement to that effect at the station. Once you’ve been checked by the EMTs, of course.”
“Can I go home first?”
“No,” Cholmondeley said. “Sorry. I need you to make the statement while everything’s still fresh in your mind. Do you have any idea who she is?”
“Yeah,” Kat said. She shivered. “She’s a woman called Lucy Fforde from The Oyster Club. Are we done here?”
“For now,” Cholmondeley said, and so Maile and Kat made their way back to the surface to leave Leipfold and the policemen to it. He walked over to Leipfold and slapped him on the back.
“You too, I’m afraid, James,” he said. “I’ll need a statement.”
“No problem.”
“Any idea what happened to Allman?”
“Someone shot him,” Leipfold said.
Cholmondeley looked shrewdly across at him. “Any idea who?” he asked.
“Search me,” Leipfold replied.
Cholmondeley didn’t fancy dealing with the paperwork.
* * *
A second ambulance arrived, and then a third. The EMTs took the woman out first, following Leipfold through the empty warehouse and out the door that he’d jimmied. Marc Allman came next, conscious again and screaming in pain from his gunshot wound. The paramedics said he’d live, though they’d need to operate to remove the bullet, and the police team sent two men to keep watch over him.
Cholmondeley, meanwhile, paged Sergeant Mogford and Constable Groves, who were both officially off-duty but who’d been told to be ready to report if the case developed. It had developed, all right. It had developed big time. He ordered them to meet him at the station, then asked Leipfold and Maile to get in the back of his big, black Beemer.
“What about Camilla?” Leipfold asked.
“You can come back and get her when we’re done,” Cholmondeley said. “If she gets a ticket, I’ll pay for it.”
“You’d better,” Leipfold said. He leaned over and whispered something to Maile, who nodded at him. Cholmondeley was watching them in his rear-view mirror.
“You know,” he said, “strictly speaking, you two shouldn’t be talking. Not until we’ve processed you back at the station.”
“I’m not a can of fucking peas,” Maile said. Leipfold glanced across at her. Cholmondeley’s face turned red, and then the two men burst out laughing at the same time.
“Fair point,” Cholmondeley said. “And hey, thanks for your help. You too, James.”
“Looks like you needed it,” Leipfold said.
Cholmondeley winced. “Perhaps we did,” he conceded. He twisted his key in the ignition. “I still don’t know who the woman is,” he said.
“Is Allman alive?” Leipfold asked.
“So far.” Cholmondeley put his Beemer into gear and reversed out of his parking space, then pulled a speedy U-turn and steered the vehicle towards the station.
“Then you can ask him.”
“Perhaps,” Cholmondeley said. “But we can’t ask his partner, the woman.”
“Lucy Fforde,” Maile supplied.
“Right,” Cholmondeley said. “She didn’t make it to the hospital. I’ve got Constable Cohen at the scene to keep me updated.”
“So what’s next?” Leipfold asked.
Cholmondeley drummed his hands on the steering wheel and thought for a moment. “Looks like we’ve got a mystery on our hands. I intend to solve it.”
Leipfold shrugged and looked blankly out of the window. Maile looked up front and met Jack Cholmondeley’s eyes in the rear-view mirror.
“Need any help?” she asked.
Chapter Twenty-Seven:
Visual Confirmation
>
IT WAS THE FOLLOWING DAY, and to Jack Cholmondeley it felt like half the force had assembled for the meeting. Superintendent Richards was leading it, and she stood at the front of the busy room with a Sharpie in her hand and an A3 pad on an easel in front of her. She was wearing a plain white blouse and a stylish pair of blue jeans, clothes designed for comfort and for action in equal measures. Her grey-white hair was unkempt and unruly, and the bags under her eyes were even saggier than usual, suggesting that she’d stayed up all night and skipped a shower.
Cholmondeley couldn’t imagine what sort of stress the woman was under. It was bad enough for him, with the pressure trickling down from Richards and into his department. The woman was like a filter for responsibility, taking the strain from the public and the politicians and diluting it into something more palatable for the officers that served beneath her.
His team was there, too. Ambitious Constable Yates, loose-jawed Constable Cohen and dependable Constable Groves were beside him, and Sergeant Mogford was standing in front with Constable Hyneman. Meanwhile, Sergeant Joe Riggs from the forensic team had made his way to the centre of the room, with two of his officers beside him. They were joined by two of the armed cops and the head of the response team, as well as by an independent commissioner, a secretary to take notes on the proceedings, and three men that Cholmondeley didn’t recognise but who looked from their bearing like they were important men indeed.
Leipfold was there too, although Richards had drawn the line at that and told Cholmondeley that Kat and Maile weren’t welcome. Strictly speaking, Leipfold shouldn’t have been there either, but there were a couple of loopholes that could be exploited to bring him in as a private consultant. Kat and Maile, though, were civilians. Their place was at home, not at the station. It was probably for the best. There was standing room only in the briefing room, and precious little even of that.