by Dane Cobain
Leipfold pulled up his notes and said, “Well, let’s see. First of all, I’m pretty sure we’re ahead of the cops. It took them a while to treat the case as a murder, which we were pretty sure of from the start.”
“But who did it?” Maile asked. “I mean, it’s not like her mother could’ve hacked a car. Was it Tom Townsend? Greg Bateman?”
“Or, indeed, Marie Rieirson,” Leipfold suggested. “I have my suspicions, but I’m not going to tell you who my money’s on.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to bias the investigation.” Leipfold shrugged. “And besides, it’s only a theory. But it’s a good theory, and I’ll give you a little hint to help you out. The killer wasn’t acting alone.”
Maile whistled softly and cast her mind back over what they’d learned so far. “I think I’ve got it,” she whispered. “There was a tech specialist. Am I right? Someone who reprogrammed the car to run Donna down? And then someone else who masterminded it?”
Leipfold grunted.
“If that’s the case,” Maile murmured, “then we can’t rule out Eleanor Thompson. And what about Marie Rieirson? Where does she fit in?”
“I’m not sure,” Leipfold replied. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. If you’ve got any ideas, now’s the time to tell me.”
“What if she was involved in Donna’s death?” Maile asked. “If you’re right and there are two people behind it, maybe something went wrong and they turned on each other.”
“It’s a thought,” Leipfold admitted. “And there’s also the possibility that Marie was the murderer and she’s gone on the run.”
“Is that what you think?”
“No,” Leipfold replied. “But I can’t know for sure until we find her.”
Maile sighed and drained the rest of her coffee. “I guess I’d better get to work then,” she said.
Chapter Sixteen: Fieldwork
THERE WAS AN AIR OF EXCITEMENT at the police station, and Jack Cholmondeley was entertaining a rare smile as his team gathered for their morning meeting. He had good news to share. He waited impatiently for his staff to assemble so he could get the ball rolling.
When he couldn’t wait any longer, he rapped his knuckles on the table and said, “Thanks for coming. How are you all doing today?”
There was a vague response from the ragtag group of policemen. A couple of them were left over from the night shift. While they weren’t actively working the case, they did want to keep an eye on it. The rest were working mornings, and they’d barely had time to make a cup of coffee after clocking in before Cholmondeley ushered them all into the briefing room.
“I’ll try to keep this quick,” Cholmondeley said. “We’ve uncovered some new evidence in the Thompson case. Now, as some of you already know, we’ve been able to locate the vehicle. It’s a self-driving model, which complicates things because it makes it hard to put someone behind the wheel at the time of impact.”
“If anyone was behind the wheel at all,” Mogford murmured.
“The car’s with the tech guys at the moment,” Cholmondeley continued. “But in the meantime, the specs are on the server. Unfortunately, the car was cleaned and repaired before we got to it, but I’m still hoping we’ll find something. If this car killed Donna Thompson, there must be some trace of it. I’ll keep you updated on that.”
Cholmondeley paused to take a sip of coffee, then glared at Constable Groves when she dared to raise her hand.
“I’ll take questions at the end,” he growled. “Now, a piece of good news. We managed to retrieve some prints from the steering wheel, as well as the dashboard and one of the door handles. The prints on the wheel belong to Tom Townsend, who was good enough to provide us a sample.”
“That bastard,” Mogford murmured. “We’ve got him.”
“It’s not enough to convince a jury,” Cholmondeley said. “We’ll need to prove that he fiddled the software.”
Constable Groves raised her hand again. “So what else have we got?” she asked.
“I said I’ll take questions at the end,” Cholmondeley reminded her. Groves was relatively new to the force, but he’d already taken a shine to her. She had enthusiasm by the bucketful and made a killer brew in times of crisis. “Now, let me see…”
Cholmondeley checked his notes and said, “The main lead we have so far is the second set of prints on the passenger side. Townsend told us that he picked Marie Rieirson up before going to the restaurant, so we’ll need to get a sample from her to rule out a third party.”
“And how are we going to print her?” Mogford asked. “It’s not like we can just give her a ring and ask her to stop by on her way to work. She’s missing, remember?”
“Easy,” Cholmondeley replied. “Take Groves and pay her house a visit. Find something you can lift a clear print from. We’re talking magazines. Hairbrushes. Bring me a damn door handle if you have to.”
“What about a warrant?” Mogford asked.
Cholmondeley scowled moodily. “Fine,” he said, “track down her parents or pay a visit to that theatre of Tom Townsend’s. Get him to show you around and take a look at the changing rooms. Someone must have something she touched before she vanished, even if it’s a bloody toilet seat. We’ll take every print in the city if we have to.”
“Yes, sir,” Mogford said. “And what are you going to do?”
Cholmondeley smiled. “I’m getting to it,” he said. “I haven’t told you about the ring that forensics found.”
* * *
At exactly the same time, several miles away and in less auspicious surroundings, James Leipfold was hosting a briefing of his own, and with a similar outcome.
“We’ve got a busy day ahead,” he was saying, simultaneously looking through the papers while Maile checked her emails. “Or rather, you’ve got a busy day ahead. I need you to go over to Marie Rieirson’s place and set up some cameras. Keep a low profile and don’t let on that you’re doing it, and make sure you stay on public property. The last thing we need is for you to get caught. I don’t think I could call in another favour right now. The police will be keeping their eyes on me.”
“It’ll be fine,” Maile said. “I don’t get caught.”
“You don’t get caught because you do most of your work online,” Leipfold reminded her. “This is different. This is IRL. Did I say that right?”
Maile laughed, slowly at first before throwing her head back and shaking so hard she chipped her tooth on her tongue piercing.
“What did I say?” Leipfold asked. His face was straight, but he had that tell-tale twinkle in the corner of his eye. Maile wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but she managed to stop laughing for long enough to say “nothing” and to gesture for him to continue.
Leipfold shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “I can’t ask you to do anything you’re uncomfortable with.”
“It’s nice to know you care, boss,” Maile replied, “but I’ll be fine. I’ll get you your cameras, and I’ll stay out of trouble while I’m at it. You forget I’m five foot five. I can blend in with a crowd if I cover my tatts and wear jeans and a jacket. But what are you hoping to get from it? And have you thought about the gear we’ll need?”
“You need money?” Leipfold asked. He looked across at her as though she’d asked for a pay rise and then remembered he wasn’t paying her to begin with. “The thing is, Maile, I—”
“You don’t need money,” Maile said, interrupting him. “You just need me. I’ve got everything I need back at home. Don’t worry about that. But why? Why worry about Marie Rieirson? I thought we were trying to solve the Donna Thompson case.”
“We are,” Leipfold replied. He finished working through The Tribune and picked up the Daily Mail, scowling down at it and making a mental note to wash his hands once he was done with it. “It’s the same case. As for what I’m hoping to get from it,
I’m not so sure.”
“Tom Townsend,” Maile murmured. She tensed as she said the name and then sat down on the edge of Leipfold’s desk as she pondered the implications. “You’re expecting to see Tom Townsend.”
But Leipfold just shrugged and turned another page of the paper. A couple of minutes later, he gave up on it and threw it into the wastebasket. Then he glanced at Maile’s notes and picked up the phone to try to drum up a little bit of business.
* * *
Maile stopped by her flat to get changed before she set out again for a spot of fieldwork. Kat was at work, but she’d left Maile a note to say she’d be back late and to ask her to top up the electricity meter. The keycard was taped to the note and placed strategically on Maile’s computer desk.
She chuckled to herself. She knew it hadn’t been there in the morning because she’d logged on to check her emails. That meant that Kat had left after her, which probably meant that she’d overslept, which meant that she’d been running late and explained why she planned to stay a little longer at the office. Maile realised that she’d started to think like Leipfold, and it made her smile.
It took her twenty minutes to prepare herself. By the time she was ready to leave, she’d transformed from a bat into a butterfly. Her eyeliner was softer, her hair brushed straight and tied into a ponytail, and she was wearing black leggings and a charcoal dress with white Nikes and a plain handbag. Instead of her leather jacket, she topped the outfit off with a cardigan and a long coat which helped to hide her tattoos, and she’d removed almost all of her piercings. She examined herself in the mirror, applied a little lipstick and touched up her contours, then smiled with perverse satisfaction. She looked almost normal. While it wasn’t the look she would usually have gone for, it would help her to blend in with the crowd.
“For a job like this, I need a little camouflage,” she’d said to Leipfold, and she meant it. Her handbag contained all of the tech that she needed, but she’d be loitering around for a while and there’s something about a short goth girl that attracts unwanted attention. Maile knew a little jujitsu and she could look after herself when she needed to, but her job wasn’t going to be any easier if little kids started to point at her and creepy guys with hygiene issues started asking for her number.
Maile hopped on the tube and made her way to the address that Leipfold had given her, then approached Marie Rieirson’s house on foot. She knew there was a problem when she turned the corner and saw a hive of activity outside one of the houses. She hoped that it was all just a coincidence, but it was a Tuesday and she’d always hated Tuesdays, so she wasn’t surprised when she reached the address and discovered half a dozen policemen milling around outside of it.
She cursed her luck and continued to walk along the street. She found a bus stop forty yards down the road, so she slowed to a stop and sat down. She pulled her phone from her pocket and gave Leipfold a call, hoping for some further instructions. But the boss didn’t answer, so she took a chance and acted on her initiative.
Maile got to her feet again and turned a corner, finding herself in a small city park that was bordered by trees and cast-iron railings, offering plenty of privacy beneath the eaves. She pulled up a spot on one of the benches and looked around suspiciously, but she was alone apart from a couple of cameras. Maile wasn’t worried. She had her back to one, and the other was too far away to pick her up.
So Maile unpacked her bag and arranged her devices in a line beside her. She had everything she needed, from spy cameras and storage devices to waterproofs and old smartphones, which she’d stripped for parts so she could use their modems to power the cameras. They had enough storage to shoot for a couple of weeks, if the solar-powered battery packs held out, but only enough data to upload a frame every couple of minutes and a short, low-quality video whenever they detected motion. But that was enough. Maile had used the same setup before for a different purpose altogether, and she knew that the equipment would do the job. And, best of all, the cameras were tiny. She’d built them into empty cigarette packets, the perfect urban camouflage. Easy to hide, easy to position, and easy for people to overlook if they happened to see them.
It only took her a couple of minutes to assemble each device, but they were too delicate for her to handle more than one at a time. Instead, she had to stash them by the entrance to the park and make a couple of passes, stopping with the pretence of checking her mobile phone or tying her shoelaces so she could place a camera and move along. The cops outside Marie’s place weren’t paying much attention. On her penultimate trip, with camera number four, there was no one outside at all, although their vehicles were still parked on the kerb. She checked the feeds on her tablet and all were working, so she treated herself to a can of Monster.
Maile hid the last camera in the loose masonry of Marie’s garden wall, aiming it squarely at her front door and the living room window to the right of it. She leant on the wall for thirty seconds or so, as if she were lost in thought and trying to decide what to do with her afternoon, then set off again.
She was just about to call Leipfold when she felt a heavy hand upon her shoulder. She whirled around, reaching for the pepper spray in her handbag, then caught sight of the panda-like uniform of the Metropolitan Police. Maile sighed and dropped her hand. She followed the policewoman back to the Rieirson place.
Chapter Seventeen: Digging
CONSTABLE JENNY GROVES stayed silent as she led Maile back towards the house. At first, Maile thought they were heading inside. Then she thought that Groves was going to cuff her and put her in the back of a cop car. But she was wrong on both counts. The policewoman stopped a half-dozen steps away from Marie’s driveway and pulled out her badge to identify herself.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’m not into the whole good cop, bad cop thing. I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”
“I’m not worried,” Maile said. She shifted slightly and tried to glance past Groves into the house. “What’s up?”
Groves smiled and Maile found herself returning it. “We’re investigating a crime here,” she said. “I was wondering if you’re local. Perhaps you saw something that could help us.”
Maile thought for a moment, chewing absentmindedly at the nubs of her fingernails.
“Anything at all,” Groves prompted, pulling Maile back to the here and now. “If it helps, we believe the victim to have been a young woman in her mid-twenties. Marie Rieirson. Ring any bells?”
Maile gasped softly and looked fixedly at Constable Groves. “Victim?” she asked.
“Damn,” Groves replied. “I wasn’t supposed to say that. Did you know her?”
Maile shook her head, which was only half a lie. “Past tense,” she observed. “So she’s dead, then? What happened?”
“This is strictly off the record, okay?” Groves said. Maile nodded. “We took a call from her cleaner. She said she found her employer’s body at the foot of the stairs after letting herself in for her weekly visit.” Groves paused. “Are you sure you don’t know the victim?”
Maile looked past Groves and at the house, where a couple of men in uniform were securing the building so that forensics could go in. She watched as the front door opened and two policemen led a distraught young woman out of the building and into the back of a waiting car.
Then she glanced at her nails. “I’ve never heard of her before in my life,” she lied.
Constable Groves looked at her suspiciously but let her go about her business. She handed Maile a card with her office number and email address and bid her farewell, but Maile was barely listening. She was busy thinking about Marie Rieirson and her cleaner and about how she’d headed home that morning before coming over. She cursed herself and wondered what might have happened if she’d arrived half an hour earlier.
Maybe I could’ve done something, Maile thought. I could’ve seen something, saved her. She had no reason to feel sorry fo
r the woman, but that didn’t stop her. No one deserves to die.
* * *
Maile couldn’t wait until she got back to the office, so she called Leipfold and filled him in as quickly as she could. Then she headed underground. The tube seemed to take forever, and it was packed with sweaty passengers cradling suitcases between their legs or hanging from straps with their backpacks in other people’s faces. She chewed thoughtfully at one of her fingernails and called Leipfold back as soon as she got some signal.
She was still on the phone to him as she climbed the stairs and let herself in. Leipfold had boiled the kettle and booted her computer so she wouldn’t have to wait for it to load. It was a quirk that the two had developed within a couple of days. They didn’t have much in common, but they did share a soft spot for efficiency.
Maile cut the call as she walked into the room, then took her coat off and hung it on the back of her chair. Leipfold glanced at her and said hello as she sat down and started to check her emails.
“I’ve got some good news,” Leipfold said.
Maile grunted an acknowledgement.
“We’ve got another case,” Leipfold explained. “It came in through the website. I met the client while you were gone and they already signed the contract. It’s not much – just a couple hundred a week to begin with – but there’s room for it to grow.”
“What’s the case?” Maile asked.
“Nothing too complicated,” Leipfold replied. “It’s for the CEO of an ad agency. Their creative director quit and took their biggest client with him, so they want us to dig up some dirt to help scupper his success. Shouldn’t be too hard, especially with you on board.”
“I’ll take a look at it this evening,” Maile said. “I want to check the cameras first. And then there’s Tom Townsend.”
“What about him?” Leipfold asked.
“I want to do a little more digging,” Maile replied. “See what he’s all about, you know?”