by Dane Cobain
Leipfold skimmed through the names and addresses in the back of his Moleskine until he found the number he was looking for.
“Give me a minute,” he said. “Let me call the old man and get him over here. This needs to be handled discreetly.”
* * *
Cholmondeley didn’t answer the call, so Leipfold left him a message. The cop felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, but it wasn’t a good time for him to talk. He’d been checking his suit in the mirror and running a hand through his thinning tufts of hair. He adjusted his tie twice and barked orders indiscriminately before amassing his troops and walking down the stone steps of the police station. It was the part of the job he’d always hated. Jack Cholmondeley had never been short on confidence, but he also hated standing up in front of strangers. He was a cop, for God’s sake, not a schoolteacher. But every now and then there were the special cases, and this one was threatening to blow up into a shitstorm unless his team released a statement.
Cholmondeley walked over to the podium and tapped the microphone to check it. Satisfied with the muffled echo from the PA, he stared at the couple dozen journalists in front of him and introduced himself with his name and rank.
“Thank you all for coming,” Cholmondeley said. “And thank you for helping us to bring this matter before the public. We’d like to assure you that the perpetrator will be caught.”
He nodded at Constable Groves and she started to wander from journalist to journalist, handing out press packs and asking them to “take one and pass them on”.
“As many of you know,” Cholmondeley continued, “we’re investigating the death of an IC1 female in suspicious circumstances. I can now confirm that the victim was twenty-five-year-old Marie Rieirson and that she was found dead in her apartment after being reported missing several days ago. You may be familiar with Marie’s case due to our earlier appeals for information.”
Cholmondeley paused to wipe a bead of sweat from his forehead. He glanced to his right at Gary Mogford, who was watching the proceedings impassively while keeping an eye out for trouble. To his left, Constable Groves was finishing her rounds. She flashed her boss a quick thumbs up before handing out the last five press packs.
“While I’m not at liberty to discuss the full details,” Cholmondeley continued, all too aware of the cameras, “I have some limited information to share in the hope that you’ll be able to help. We now believe that Marie Rieirson died as the result of a blunt force trauma injury at the base of her skull. While it’s possible that this was as a result of the fall she sustained, our current belief is that it occurred before the fall as part of a premeditated attack on the victim with a large, heavy object.”
Cholmondeley paused, half for effect and half to get his breath back. Down below him, the cameras were still rolling, and people were taking notes on smartphones or frantically re-establishing their internet connections.
“As a result of these early findings,” Cholmondeley said, “we believe that Marie Rieirson was murdered. We’re making this appeal in the hope that a member of the public will come forward with some information that might help us. In particular, we’re interested in anyone who saw Miss Rieirson between Sunday the twenty-second and Tuesday the twenty-fourth. We’ve provided recent photographs of the victim to help with identification. We’d also like to hear from anyone who saw anything suspicious between those dates that may be connected to the case.”
Cholmondeley stepped back for a second and allowed Gary Mogford to take the stage. His contribution was short and to the point. He listed the contact number and the webpage that had been set up with further information, and he encouraged the public to get in touch. Then he handed back to Cholmondeley, who stepped up to the podium for the final time.
“This is an ongoing investigation,” he said, “and it’s prone to rapid developments. While we have no concrete leads to speak of, there are a number of avenues that we plan to investigate. We’d like to reassure the public that if foul play was involved – as we initially suspect – then we’ll find the perpetrator and bring them to justice. In the meantime, we ask you all to remain vigilant and to report any suspicions that you might have to the number that my colleague just read out to you. Thank you for your time.”
* * *
Maile managed to find a livestream of the announcement and watched it in silence with Leipfold sitting to the side of her. Cholmondeley finished his statement and then the feed panned back to the journalist, who started to sum up the developments while encouraging viewers to share their comments on social networks. Maile was half tempted to send a message of her own, but Leipfold cautioned against it, saying, “Now’s not the time.”
“But what do you make of that?” Maile asked.
“We haven’t learned much that we didn’t already know,” Leipfold replied. “But I’m surprised nonetheless. Looks like Jack Cholmondeley has finally seen the light and figured out that he might not solve this crime without a little help from the general public.”
“It might work,” Maile said. “It’s happened before.”
Leipfold’s phone rang and he scooped it up to answer it. Maile had noticed by now that he had two of them, a Samsung and an HTC, which was how she knew it was Jack Cholmondeley. He was the only person who ever dialled the HTC, and Maile suspected it was no coincidence. She also suspected that if she looked up the numbers, they wouldn’t be registered. They’d be cheap disposables, favoured by the criminal class because it made it harder to trace the calls they made.
She watched one side of the conversation as Leipfold brusquely replied to a couple of questions before sitting back to listen to whatever Cholmondeley was telling him. The policeman finished his update and Leipfold hastily told him about the attack on Maile and their suspicions that it was connected to the case. Then he thanked Cholmondeley and put the phone down. Maile wanted to ask him what had happened, but she knew better than to interrupt him when he was scribbling away at his notebook, which is exactly what he started to do once the call was over. But eventually he put the pen down and turned to talk to her.
“They didn’t release everything they knew,” Leipfold said. “They managed to get some samples from the sedan and the lab came back with a match.”
“And”? What did he say?”
“Tom Townsend was all over the thing,” Leipfold said. “They had no problem figuring that one out. His prints were on the wheel, for Christ’s sake. But they also had prints from an unidentified female, and that’s where the surprise comes in. Cholmondeley says they were a match to Jayne Lipton. Remember her?”
“Yeah, I do,” Maile said. “Marie Rieirson’s friend. The one in the fucked-up foursome with Tom Townsend.”
“Exactly,” Leipfold said. “And now we can put her in the car that killed her rival, sitting right beside the guy they were competing for.”
“There’s more,” Maile replied. “When Tom Townsend hired the car, he said he used it to take Marie to The Ledbury. But if that was the only time he had it, why was Jayne Lipton inside it? Were they both in there at the same time? If so, when? And if she was in there by herself, could she have tampered with it?”
“It could be a coincidence,” Leipfold said.
“No,” Maile said, shaking her head. “Coincidences are for the lazy. You taught me that, remember? There has to be a proper explanation.”
* * *
Leipfold promised Maile that Cholmondeley’s boys would look into the attack, but she didn’t have much faith in their abilities. Ever the cynic, she suspected that an unsuccessful attack on a young woman would take low priority when they had two bodies in their morgue and no one to bring to justice. Besides, she knew the statistics.
That was why, when she returned to work the following morning, she started an investigation of her own. She spent the morning going door to door, canvassing local businesses to see if they had CCTV. Most of them had cameras, bu
t most of them weren’t turned on or, if they were, they weren’t recording. Luckily, Leipfold’s reputation carried weight in the area, and Maile reaped the benefits. She was able to track down a couple of store owners who were both happy and able to give her the footage she was looking for. She took it back to the office on a portable hard drive for analysis. While she was walking, she noticed that she was constantly looking around like a meerkat on sentry duty, expecting to see something – anything – out of the ordinary. Another threat to try to take her down and stop her from working the case.
But it’s too late for that shit, she thought.
Leipfold looked up at her but said nothing as she re-entered the office and sat down at her desk. She’d given up on Leipfold’s spare machine and started bringing in her MacBook so she could work more efficiently. The boss understood and approved, although she’d lost him when she talked about RAM and CPU.
“It’s too slow,” she’d explained, “but it’ll cost you money for a new one.” He understood that, all right.
Maile booted up the MacBook and plugged in the hard drive. Then she made a couple of copies of the footage and started processing the images, identifying the relevant sections by the timestamp and trying to augment the colours and contrast so she could get a better look at what was happening. It was a lengthy, thankless task, but she couldn’t call it boring, not by a long shot. Every time she replayed the footage of her attack it started the adrenaline flowing all over again, but she pored over it like a geeky kid on an MMORPG until she turned into a big, sweaty mess.
She took a break from the screen to boil the kettle and to refresh herself in the bathroom. Then she sat back at her desk to review the footage again. There was something there that she hadn’t spotted before, some little insight that had been hiding in plain sight since she first took a look at it. She hit the play button again, first scanning the rest of the street and then focusing on the attack. She hit rewind and watched it again. Her attacker had turned his face at the last second, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. After all, he was wearing a balaclava, and no amount of enhancement would reveal the face beneath. No, it was the way that he moved, and the way he held himself as he walked along behind her. It wasn’t right, none of it was. Nobody walked like that, not normally. It was a distinctive walk, one which hinted at its owner’s personality. It was a thespian’s walk, the walk of a man who’d practiced for hours in front of the mirror to give himself an edge on the competition, a walk that screamed “look at me!” even as the man in the balaclava tried to hide his face from the light.
Maile knew that walk all right. She’d seen it before when she went to see Driven with Leipfold. When she cross-referenced the attacker’s height with the height of one of their suspects, she found a match. She had a name.
* * *
Maile was so absorbed by her new-found knowledge that she didn’t see Leipfold leave. When she looked up and saw he was gone, her heart skipped a beat and she involuntarily reached for the pepper spray and came up empty. She’d left it in her jacket because she’d figured that she was safe in the office whether she was alone or not. No one would get through the reinforced door unless she let them in. Even if they had a battering ram – or possibly a clan of half-orc warlords – they wouldn’t get in before the police could arrive, especially with the station only a mile and a half away.
But then there was a sound from outside. Maile retreated to her desk and pulled her jacket on, just in case. She checked the door and found that Leipfold had locked it, as he usually did when he left. As always, business was slow. Since they averaged three to four walk-ins a week, he wasn’t worried about losing out on revenue.
There was a knock at the door. Maile cursed his dire finances and the faceless landlord who’d refused to fix the intercom and then tiptoed up to the spyhole and looked outside.
And then her heart sank because she saw who it was and it scared her.
Tom Townsend knocked on the door again, then shouted, “Leipfold! James Leipfold, are you in there? I need to talk to you.” He knocked again. “Leipfold! I know you’re in there.”
Maile started to panic, and her nimble fingers danced their familiar fandango across the screen of her smartphone. Leipfold answered almost immediately, and Maile talked quickly in a whispered monotone. “Tom Townsend’s here, and he wants to come in.”
Leipfold tried to cut in to ask what she was talking about, but Townsend was still on the other side of the door and Maile just talked right over him.
“Shut up and listen to me,” Maile continued, backing away from the door as though it were a snake that might strike at any moment. “Get back here right now. I mean it. He’s outside the door, and I…I’m scared, all right?”
Maile cut the call and looked across the office at the door. It was quiet again, too quiet. Townsend must have worn himself out, or else he’d changed tack and had something else up his sleeve. She keyed in triple nines and held one finger over the dial button, then edged slowly closer to the door. She was struck with the uncomfortable realisation that the entrance was also the only exit. She was trapped, for God’s sake. And from outside, there was only silence.
Only it wasn’t silence, not really. It was an absence of noise, the sound of something that was there but was holding its breath and trying to pretend otherwise.
And then the voice came.
“I know you’re in there,” Tom Townsend said, his voice lifting softly like a child singing a nursery rhyme. “I can hear you.”
Chapter Twenty-Two: A Confession
MAILE SHOOK HERSELF and made a beeline for the window. She was starting to panic, and she couldn’t think properly when she started to panic. She opened up the window and gulped in the fresh air, then scanned the side of the building for an emergency exit or a balcony.
What the hell, she thought. I’d take a drainpipe if we had one. But there was nothing, no way down that wouldn’t hurt when she hit the ground, and Tom Townsend was hammering away at the door.
She went to hit the dial button, knowing that Leipfold would be pissed if she called the cops to his office, and then she paused as she saw him from the corner of her eye, skulking along the street with his coat pulled up close and his head down like he was looking for money in the gutter. He was typing away on his phone, and she saw the result of it when his message flashed up on her screen a second later: Stay put. Don’t take any risks. I’m coming.
Maile toyed with the idea of calling down to him, but she didn’t want to give Townsend the chance to overhear her or the satisfaction of knowing that his attack last night – if she was right and it was him – had thrown her off balance. So she messaged Leipfold back.
He’s right outside. Be careful. I think he’s dangerous.
She watched as Leipfold read the reply and then quickened his step along the gum-spoiled pavement. Townsend was still at the door, still shouting for Leipfold to come out and face him. Then the knocking stopped and was replaced by the susurrus of a quiet conversation. Maile could hear Leipfold murmuring platitudes, and she could picture him trying to calm Townsend down while keeping a reasonable distance, but she couldn’t hear the other man’s responses. Then silence reigned again.
And then a key turned in the lock and the door opened, and Tom Townsend marched sheepishly into the office.
“Don’t worry,” Leipfold said, following their guest inside and closing the door behind him. He slid the lock into place. “This is all a big misunderstanding. Mr. Townsend here means you no harm.”
“That’s right, miss,” Townsend confirmed. He had a faint redness in his eyes and a small rash on his cheek. She almost felt a little sorry for him.
“Do you want to explain yourself, Mr. Townsend?” Leipfold asked. “Or should I?”
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, holding his hands up. “And I’m sorry if I scared you back there. I mean, just now, I wanted to
speak to Mr. Leipfold. And I’m sorry for last night as well. I thought…well, I thought you might be able to help me.”
“No way,” Maile growled, still regarding him with some suspicion. “So it was you. Why were you following me?”
Townsend opened his mouth to reply, but Leipfold raised a hand and he closed it again.
“Allow me,” Leipfold said. “Mr. Townsend here has some valuable information. Information that’s relevant to the Rieirson case and maybe even to Donna Thompson. But it’s not the kind of thing you can say in the middle of a busy street. That’s why I invited him in here. Be nice to him. He’s a guest.”
“I was nervous,” Townsend said. “Honestly, I was. I thought if I waited until no one was around, I could talk to you. Maybe even get you to take a message to Mr. Leipfold. See, I was worried that if I told him the truth, he might not let me out of here. But I thought that you, miss, would understand.”
“Call me ‘miss’ again and I’ll kick you in the crotch, asshole.”
“Let’s all take a moment to calm down,” Leipfold shouted. Maile’s face was flushed and her knuckles were white, while Tom Townsend looked ready to vomit. He had to lower himself into one of the plastic chairs in their makeshift reception area. He held his head in his hands and looked down at the floor.
“I’m sorry, okay?” Townsend said. “I swear. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just needed someone to talk to. When I saw you leave Leipfold’s place, I thought you might be the one. Close enough to listen to what I have to say without trying to arrest me.”
“I don’t believe you,” Maile said.
“Please!” Townsend cried. “Look, no harm done, okay? Let’s just forget about it. I won’t press charges or come near you again if you promise not to spray me in the face. Deal?”
“Deal,” Maile said. She frowned at him and leaned back against the wall with her arms crossed. Leipfold stood between them, looking from one to the other like a panic-stricken kid in the middle of a family argument. Townsend sagged visibly and then stiffened up again when Leipfold asked what he wanted to tell them.