by Dane Cobain
Leipfold bought Maile a bottle of wine to celebrate, but she’d insisted that the greatest reward would be to go along with him to talk to Jayne Lipton. The sun drifted lazily across the sky, but the weather was still cold and neither of them felt up to the long walk to Shelden Street, where their suspect lived. So Leipfold booked a taxi and took some cash out, wincing slightly as he checked his balance. He still had enough working capital for a couple of months, thanks to the new client’s deposit and the sale of his motorbike, but he’d made a bigger dent than he’d imagined.
The taxi rolled into Shelden Street and pulled up on the kerb. Leipfold paid the driver while Maile checked her phone and climbed out onto the pavement. Then they walked up to the door.
Jayne answered their knock almost immediately. “You’re lucky you caught me,” she said. “I’m working from home today.”
“I thought you might be,” Leipfold replied. “I’d be doing the same if I was you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Maile asked. “You needed to keep a low profile. After all, you reported Marie missing but you were screwing the same guy. I guess you forgot to mention that. And now she’s dead.”
“She’s dead?” Jayne gasped. Her face flushed and she held a hand up to her mouth, but something about it didn’t ring true. When they discussed it back at the office, Leipfold said he believed her and Maile said that she didn’t, but both of them agreed that they could have been wrong.
“I’m afraid so,” Leipfold said. “I’m surprised that the police haven’t been to see you.”
“I have nothing to hide,” Jayne said. “Ask me your questions and then get the hell out of here.”
Leipfold shrugged and asked, “Are you in a relationship with Tom Townsend?
“No, I’m not,” Jayne replied. “But we used to have sex, if that’s what you mean. Tom wanted more and I didn’t, so I broke it off. End of story.”
“I see,” Leipfold replied. “Ever heard of a woman called Jowie Frankowska?”
“That bitch,” Jayne spat. She had the look of a woman who’s just stepped in something unpleasant while wearing her new Jimmy Choos. “Yeah, I know her.”
“How?” Maile asked.
“I just do,” Jayne replied. “She used to clean the flat when I was living with Marie. A family friend or something. Marie’s parents paid her rates because they knew that their daughter couldn’t look after herself. I always hated that girl.”
“Why?”
“Do I need a reason?” Jayne asked. “There’s just something about her. She thinks she’s entitled to the world on a plate, but that’s not how it works. Oh, don’t get me wrong. She did a good job of the place, but she did a little bit more than the cleaning, if you know what I mean.”
Leipfold stared at her for a moment, expecting her to continue. When she didn’t, he said, “I’m going to need you to be specific.”
Jayne laughed, a belly laugh that made her arch her back and flash a glimpse of her pearly whites. “Well, where do I begin?” she asked. “Money. Movies. Books. Jewellery. If she wanted it, she took it. Slowly at first, then more and more often, until Marie – useless as she was – couldn’t miss it. Jowie took her mother’s ring, and that was the final straw. Marie was going to tell the police. That was the last time I spoke to her.”
* * *
Later that afternoon, when Maile and Leipfold were back at the office, there was a knock at the door. Maile had her headphones on and didn’t notice, but Leipfold did, and he groaned as he got up to answer it.
“I need to fix that intercom,” he murmured, casting his mind back to the early days when business was booming and the building still smelled of paint and sawdust. Leipfold had been on Balcombe Street for over a decade, and the intercom had been out of order for half of that. It was probably just a loose wire, but he’d never got round to fixing it.
He opened the door to a familiar face, but it didn’t comfort him. He’d been hoping for a new client, but it was just Jack Cholmondeley, suited and booted in uniform, looking solemn. Leipfold invited him in and offered him a cuppa, but Cholmondeley was on duty and so he politely declined, opting instead to remain in front of Maile’s desk beside the door, ready to make a getaway.
“Can’t stop to chat, old friend,” Cholmondeley said, shaking Leipfold’s hand and tipping a wink at Maile, who returned it with a glare that could’ve stripped paint from the walls.
“You always say that,” Leipfold replied.
“Doesn’t matter. This is serious. We’re talking about a murder.”
“You’re here about Donna Thompson, then,” Leipfold guessed.
“Yes and no,” Cholmondeley replied. “I’m here about Marie Rieirson as well.”
“Am I a suspect again?”
“No,” Cholmondeley said. “But someone is. I just got the report back. Let’s just say that her death wasn’t an accident.”
“I could have told you that,” Leipfold replied. “The two cases are connected. We just have to figure out how.”
“Perhaps,” Cholmondeley said. “I’ve never understood how you do what you do, but in my line of work we need evidence. Assuming that they’re connected is pure conjecture. Marie’s murder is a fact.”
Leipfold frowned and then risked a glance across at Maile. She was still sitting beside her computer, but she read his look like some secret sign language and surreptitiously started taking notes on what Cholmondeley was saying.
“You talk about proof like a priest talks about heaven,” Leipfold said. “Prove heaven exists and I’ll have faith in your proof. Until then, there’s only what happened and what didn’t.”
“Spoken like a true private investigator,” Cholmondeley replied. “You did the right thing when you set up shop on your own. You couldn’t cut it as a copper. You don’t hate criminals as much as I do.”
“You’re right,” Leipfold replied. “I don’t hate criminals. But I do hate crime. If crime didn’t exist, you’d be out of a job. You need it and I don’t. I can make a living out of jealous wives and paranoid businessmen in the grey areas where no crime has been committed, but you feed on crime like a drug dealer feeds on junkies.”
Cholmondeley’s face flushed. “Jealous wives, huh? Tell me, if you’re so busy then why bother to take on the Thompson case?”
“I figured you’d need the help,” Leipfold replied.
Cholmondeley laughed and said, “James, don’t ever change.” He paused for a moment as the tension seeped out of the room like pus from a popped spot. “Truth is, I was hoping you might be able to help. I’m not saying we’re stuck, but we could use an extra pair of hands.”
“Yeah,” Leipfold said. “I know you could. Listen, I’ll be honest. I’m broke, my business is dying and I’m not being paid for the Thompson case. I thought I could solve it and pick up a little business. Now the press has moved on and the cops are stuck. Even if I solve it, I’m not going to make a penny. What’s in it for me?”
Cholmondeley smiled. “The thrill of the chase,” he said. “Same as always.”
Chapter Twenty: Blood, Perhaps
IT WAS A FRIDAY MORNING, a week and a half after Donna’s body was discovered. Gary Mogford was off duty, catching up with White Dwarf and waiting for the enamel to dry on his painted figurines. Jenny Groves was on shift but taking a break to call her sister, who was pregnant. And Jack Cholmondeley had just arrived at the station.
He was in a bad mood. Mary was upset because he’d woken up at four in the morning, turned the bedside lamp on and started scribbling away in his notebook. It wasn’t the light that woke her. It was the sound of his biro as it scratched across the pages. It haunted her. It always had, although she’d learned the hard way not to look inside it. She’d done it once and been haunted for weeks by the grisly details that she’d glimpsed before Jack had walked i
n and snatched it away from her. He’d never raised a hand to her in all of the years that they’d been together, but it had been a close call that day and she’d never been foolish enough to take the chance again. Besides, she still had nightmares about what she’d seen, and her husband had lectured her for days on end about how lucky she was for her comfortable life and the disposable income that she didn’t need to work for.
“Strictly speaking,” he’d told her, “I ought to report you. You could get both of us into a lot of trouble. Damn it, Mary, I could be suspended. I could lose my job.”
“I’m sorry,” she’d repeated, crying hysterically to begin with before settling down into a slow, seething rage. “It won’t happen again.”
On that Friday morning, the buried tensions had come to a head again after Mary woke up and asked her husband to either put the pen down or to get out of bed and go to work.
Cholmondeley had chosen the latter, like he always did, and he’d successfully surprised the skeleton crew who worked through the night by cracking the whip as soon as he entered the building. Constable Yates, a pale-faced twentysomething with a promising future ahead of her, noted down his orders in a feverish shorthand. Once she was sure her notes were accurate, she told Cholmondeley about the latest development.
“Frankowska?” he repeated. “Are you sure?”
“Positive, sir,” Yates replied. “Shall we bring her in?”
Cholmondeley nodded and then dismissed her with a wave of his hand. He had a mound of paperwork to get through, and his email inbox reminded him of a digital K2 – not as tall as Mogford’s Everest, perhaps, but a hell of a lot harder to climb. Besides, Mogford had given up on his emails and made it known that if someone wanted him to do something, they had to ask him in person. It had ruffled a few feathers, particularly with the newest recruits who could never seem to find him when they needed him, but it was a system that worked for both of them. Mogford was a younger man, a man of action, but Cholmondeley’s days on the streets were long behind him.
There was a knock at the door. After hitting send on a report to his superiors, he answered gruffly and Constable Jenny Groves entered the room with a cup of coffee and a tired smile on her face.
“Morning, sir,” she said. “I brought you a coffee. Flat white with a sweetener, right?”
“Right,” Cholmondeley said. “Mary won’t let me take sugar. She says it’s bad for me.”
“She’s probably right, sir.” Groves put the coffee down on Cholmondeley’s desk and then stood at attention in front of him. “When you have a moment, sir, could you come through to the interrogation room? Jowie Frankowska is here, but she isn’t talking. She says she wants a lawyer.”
Cholmondeley sighed and stared absentmindedly at his computer screen. “I guess we’d better find her one,” he said, massaging his temples. He thought back to the days when he’d had a little more hair, when a crook was a crook and a villain was a villain. “Do what you’ve got to do. I’ll be over in a couple of minutes to take a look at her. I want to hear what she has to say for herself.”
* * *
We have her.
Leipfold looked at the message again, then grunted and handed the phone to Maile. She read it, checked the number that had sent it and then read it again. Then she handed the phone back to Leipfold.
“Is that from the cops?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Leipfold replied. He scratched his scalp with the end of his pen and stared into the distance. “Jack Cholmondeley,” he murmured. “They’ve taken Jowie Frankowska to the station.”
“Have they charged her?”
Leipfold shrugged and slid the biro back into his pocket. “Who knows? Personally, I doubt it. They don’t have enough evidence to hold her. Not unless there’s something we don’t know about. But they’ll want to talk to her and hear her side of the story.”
“And what is her side of the story?” Maile asked.
Leipfold knew the case like the back of his hand, so he didn’t need to check his notes to answer her. “Frankowska said she found Marie’s body when she went to clean the place,” he explained. “She was at the bottom of the stairs, dead already when she got there, looking angry and scared and presumably pissed off, all at the same time. Frankowska called for an ambulance, but Marie was pronounced dead at the scene.”
“That’s it?” Maile scoffed. “Yeah, definitely not enough to arrest her.”
“Perhaps,” Leipfold said. “But according to Jayne Lipton, Frankowska was a thief. Maybe she got caught in the act and tried to settle the score. A body at the bottom of the stairs? She could have been pushed.”
“And she could have fallen.”
“Yeah,” Leipfold said. “I don’t know. It’s a shaky motive, but Frankowska had means and opportunity. And then there’s Eleanor Thompson.”
“What about her?” Maile asked.
“She links Marie Rieirson and Donna Thompson,” Leipfold explained. “And now they’re both dead. According to Frankowska, Mrs. Thompson paid Rieirson a visit. She was shouting abuse through the letterbox.”
“Hmm,” Maile murmured. “And was Frankowska sure it was Eleanor Thompson?”
“Yeah,” Leipfold replied. “She recognised her when I showed her a photo.”
“Could have been a lucky guess,” Maile said, doubtfully. “I mean, what if you’re right and she was lining her pockets when she was supposed to be on the job? Let’s say she pushed Marie down the stairs. Maybe she didn’t even mean to kill her. It’s not much more of a stretch to suppose she made the Eleanor Thompson story up to take the focus away from her.”
“That’s not her style,” Leipfold said.
“You only met her a couple of days ago,” Maile reminded him. “How well do you really know her?”
“Call it a hunch if you want,” Leipfold said. “I just don’t think that’s how it went down.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a short beep and an accompanying vibration that meant that Leipfold had received another message. He unlocked his phone and read it, then whistled softly and set the phone back down on the table.
Maile looked at him impatiently. “Well?” she said when she spotted the vacant look that her boss adopted when he was deep in thought. She knew it best from the daily crossword, although it sometimes appeared when he was trying to decide on his next course of action. “What gives? What is it?”
Leipfold said nothing. Instead, he handed her the phone with his left hand while grabbing a pen with his right. He started scratching his scalp with it while staring into the distance. Maile glanced at the phone, cursed when it asked her for a passcode, then held it over to Leipfold for him to unlock it. He did so without even looking. Maile looked down at the screen again and then gasped as she read the latest message.
Four words from Jack Cholmondeley. She has no alibi.
* * *
It was lunchtime, and Leipfold and Maile were out of the office. They were sitting in the back of a black cab and watching the city roll by on the other side of its windows.
The duo coursed through the roads towards the Thompson crime scene, and then past it and down Wentworth Road towards Tony’s Café. Maile figured out where they were going when they were still half a mile away. She recognised the streets from her research and she knew that the café was the only place they had yet to investigate.
Leipfold parked the bike down a side street and then the two of them ambled slowly along the road and into the cafeteria. The place was almost empty, except for a table in the corner where two builders were eating BLTs and drinking thick, black coffee. A man was serving behind the counter. Leipfold and Maile walked right up to him.
“Table for two, please,” Leipfold said.
“You can seat yourself,” the man replied. “We’re a café, not a restaurant. If you’re expecting a waiter, friend, you’re shit out of luck.”
>
“Charming,” Leipfold said. “Are you the owner?”
“Yes, I am,” the man replied. “Tony Barlow. How can I help you?”
“Donna Thompson used to work here,” Leipfold said. “She was on duty the night she died.”
“That she was,” Tony said. “What’s it to do with you? What did you say your name was?”
“James Leipfold,” he replied. “I’m a private detective. I’m looking into Donna’s death. I wondered if there’s anything I might be able to learn here.”
“I told everything I could to the cops,” Tony said. “I’m not saying another word.”
“I didn’t think you would,” Leipfold said. “But don’t worry. I’m not here to ask questions. I’m here for a spot of lunch.”
Tony’s mouth wavered. The corners of his mouth twitched up in a half-smile and he nodded at Leipfold as he handed him a laminated menu. His grubby fingers left a greasy pawprint, and Leipfold stared thoughtfully at it as he led Maile to a table.
“Something on his hands,” Leipfold murmured. “Blood, perhaps.”
Maile looked across at him. He’d picked a window seat, and they found themselves sitting side by side and looking out through the window at the traffic. A decent enough view, perhaps, but it must have been hell on a Friday night when the drinkers were out and about, causing trouble on Wentworth Road and looking for greasy food to fight their inevitable hangovers. Leipfold, meanwhile, was watching Tony’s reflection in the glass. He was staring intently at the back of Leipfold’s head, and not because he was waiting for a signal that he was ready to order.
“Why are we here, boss?” Maile asked.
“I wanted to see the place for myself,” Leipfold said. “To get a feel for who Donna Thompson was. To find out where she worked and how she lived. What she thought.”
“And what do you think so far?” Maile asked.
Leipfold shrugged. “Not much,” he admitted. “So far, at least. But I always found it hard to think on an empty stomach.”