by Dane Cobain
“Aren’t you going to tell me what’s happening?” Maile asked. “Why did you call in that favour with Jack Cholmondeley? What happens next? And who killed Donna Thompson and Marie Rieirson? Do you even know?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Was it Eleanor Thompson?” Maile asked. “Looks like that’s where the money is.”
“It might have been,” Leipfold said. “And it might not. We’re going to give her a chance to explain herself. But there’s something that I don’t understand here.”
“What’s that, then?”
Leipfold shrugged again. “Last time I talked to Eleanor Thompson, I asked her for her alibi on the night Marie died. She didn’t have one.”
“So she had opportunity,” Maile said.
“Yeah,” Leipfold said. “But that’s not what I meant. See, it’s just not Eleanor Thompson’s style. Remember the night her daughter died? She was nowhere near the scene of the crime, nobody was. It’s a different MO. When Donna Thompson died, the killer did it from a distance. When Marie Rieirson was killed, someone got up close and personal.”
“She still could’ve been involved.”
“Perhaps,” Leipfold said. “But if she was, she would’ve been smart enough to organise an alibi. Maybe the lack of an alibi should make me more suspicious, but in this case, knowing what we know about her, I think we can rule her out. She’s more cunning than that.”
“So who killed Marie Rieirson?” Maile asked.
Leipfold shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Suspects Gather
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, the sun dawned on the first day of February and life seemed almost back to normal. Maile and Leipfold completed the crossword in just under nine minutes. Shortly afterwards, the postman arrived with no new bills, one mail-order catalogue and two pizza menus. Three new emails came in to arrange a call for a preliminary quote. Maile was delighted, but if Leipfold was happy then it didn’t show.
“Cheer up, boss,” Maile said. “You look worried. Whatever it is, it might never happen. And besides, at this rate, you’ll earn enough cash to buy your bike back.”
“Maybe,” Leipfold said. But it was just a murmur, and Maile guessed that he was barely listening. He seemed listless and lethargic, but that all went out the window when Detective Inspector Jack Cholmondeley paid a visit. It started with a knock at the door. Maile spied him through the peephole, then admitted him with polite astonishment and directed him to take a seat at her desk so he could sit on the comfortable computer chair instead of on the plastic seats in reception.
Cholmondeley took her up on her offer and Maile went to make a round of coffee. When she set the mug down in front of him, Cholmondeley was saying, “…a few strings, but I was able to do what you asked of me. I hope you’re right, old friend.”
“When have I ever let you down?” Leipfold asked. He nodded a silent acknowledgement to Maile as she handed him a coffee and dragged a chair over to sit down beside him.
“Nineteen ninety-eight,” Cholmondeley said. “The Case of the Missing Gnome. I remember it well. But I take your point.”
“That was a one-off,” Leipfold snapped. “And you know it. It’s different this time. I can help you.”
Cholmondeley sighed and checked his watch, then drained his coffee in one. Maile stared at him and then looked down at her own cup, which was still steaming.
The guy’s throat must be made from asbestos, she thought.
“You’d better be right,” Cholmondeley said. “Face it. You’re only putting your reputation on the line. You’re asking me to risk my career.”
“You’ve done it before,” Leipfold reminded him.
Cholmondeley paused. “Okay,” he said. “Here’s the deal. We’ll meet tomorrow night. Seven PM at your office. I’ll have a few of my men on standby in case your hunch plays out, but this one’s on you. I’m committing resources in the middle of a busy case, old friend. You’d better make it worth my while.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Leipfold said. “I get it. Seven PM at my office. I want you to come along as well. Wear a wire.”
“A wire?”
“Yeah.” Leipfold drained his coffee and then gestured for Maile to fetch him a refill. She walked over and took his cup, but when she walked into the open-plan kitchen, she didn’t put the kettle on. She wanted to hear what they were saying, and she couldn’t do that if it was thundering away beside her.
“Why do I need a wire?” Cholmondeley asked.
Leipfold smiled. “Because you might want a record of what happens,” he said. “And because if I take a recording, there’s no chain of command, no nothing. You won’t be able to prove it hasn’t been doctored. But if you wear a wire, you can use it in a court of law.”
“What are you expecting to happen?”
“You’ll see,” Leipfold said. “Just wear the wire, get here on time and enjoy the show.”
Maile watched as the two men shook hands, then turned back to the kettle as Leipfold showed Cholmondeley to the door. She made a couple more cups of black coffee and was back at her desk by the time that they stopped talking. Maile watched Leipfold as he walked over to his desk and checked his emails.
Maile coughed and Leipfold looked up at her. She smiled, sheepishly. “So what was all that about?” she asked.
* * *
Leipfold kept his cards close to his chest, and Maile learned nothing that she didn’t know already. She didn’t know how to feel about it. Leipfold thought he knew what had happened, but he wouldn’t share it with her. She couldn’t decide whether he didn’t trust her or whether he didn’t trust himself.
“What if you get hit by a bus?” she asked. Or a driverless car, she mentally added. “If something happens to you, the answer dies with you.”
But Leipfold just shrugged. “Nothing’s going to happen to me, Maile,” he said. “You worry too much.”
“You’d worry too if Tom Townsend had jumped you outside the office.”
“Maybe he didn’t mean to jump you,” Leipfold said. “But I see your point, I guess. Trust me on this one, Maile. You don’t have long to wait.”
Maile grumbled about it, but she didn’t have much of a choice. Meanwhile, Leipfold’s train of thought had rolled on out of the station.
“I need you do me a favour,” he said. “Another one. But don’t worry. You’re going to like it.”
Maile frowned at him. “You want to bet?” she asked.
“I need you to type up my case notes,” Leipfold said, pretending not to hear her. He rose from his seat, walked across the room and dropped his notebook on her desk. “Maybe you’ll find your answers. I’ve never been one for formal reports, but sometimes a client asks for them. In this case, our client is Jack Cholmondeley, and he likes things to be more thorough than most. I need you to type up my notes and start work on a final report. Just the bare bones. I’ll finish it off tomorrow.”
“After whatever it is that you’re planning?” Maile asked.
“Exactly,” Leipfold said. “You learn fast. In the meantime, we’ve got a couple of new cases to look at. Or rather, I have new cases to look at. You’ll need to stay at the office and hold the fort.”
“What about the Thompson case?”
“What about it?” Leipfold asked. “I’m done with it. We need to look ahead to the next one. It’s about time this place made some money.”
* * *
It was the following day, and Leipfold was in a good mood as he made his way back to the office. His initial meetings had gone well, and neither of the new prospects seemed overwhelmed when he explained his rates and gave them a quote for a month’s retainer. Leipfold was pretty sure he’d get the first job. The other one could go either way, but it had potential.
The door to the office was unlocked, but Leipfold didn’t notic
e. Nor did he notice that Maile was missing – at least, not until the early afternoon. His confusion turned to concern when she didn’t answer her phone. Stranger still, she wasn’t responding to instant messages, and she didn’t answer the door when he cycled over to her house.
Leipfold was worried, all right. But when he got back to the office, it took on a more sinister turn. The postman had arrived. Along with the usual stack of unpaid bill reminders and charity appeals, he’d also brought a handwritten postcard with a not-so-cheerful message: Stay off the Thompson case or you’ll never see the girl again. There was no signature.
Leipfold cursed softly and delicately set the card on his desk, then fetched the lid of a cardboard box to place over it to protect it from further contamination. He knew that the police liked their evidence to be clean, and he suspected that they’d want to take a look at it. He was worried, of course, but he was also James Leipfold, and James Leipfold didn’t panic when it came to facing danger.
Instead, he grabbed his second phone, which he’d used more often than his main line since taking on the Thompson case, and put in a call to Jack Cholmondeley.
“It’s me,” Leipfold said, as the policeman picked up the phone with a grunt that reminded him of a horse on its way to the knackers. “Maile’s gone missing. There’s no sign of a struggle, but she’s not answering her phone and there’s a note. You know, one of those notes. She’s in trouble.”
“Slow down. We’ve got to stop talking like this,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Maile’s gone,” Leipfold repeated. “I need you to put out an APB for her. You know what she looks like. I’m worried, Jack. Her coat’s still here at the office. She wouldn’t have gone far without it. It’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.”
“I’ll get my best men on it,” Cholmondeley promised. “Just calm down.”
“I’ll calm down when you find her,” Leipfold replied. “We need to cancel the meeting.”
“What meeting?”
“Tonight,” Leipfold said, checking his watch. “In a couple of hours at my office.”
“Oh,” Cholmondeley replied. “That meeting. Afraid not, old friend. The meeting goes ahead. You need to tell me what you know so we can catch the bastard. And besides, it wasn’t easy to arrange it.”
“Maile’s missing, Jack,” Leipfold said.
“I know,” Cholmondeley replied. “And like I said, I’ll get my best men to look into it. In the meantime, we both have a job to do. Don’t screw this up for me, okay?”
Leipfold sighed deeply and glanced at his watch. It was 5:14 PM. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sat back down in his chair.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it. But you have to find her for me, you hear?”
* * *
Leipfold was still worrying about Maile and applying his not inconsiderable powers of deduction to the riddle of where to find her – because he already had a good idea of who’d taken her – when there was a knock at the door. He looked through the spyhole and saw his first visitors of the evening.
Detective Inspector Jack Cholmondeley was in uniform and cut an imposing figure despite the lighting, which made him look even older than usual. He was wearing a wire, as promised, and he’d brought backup in the form of a fresh-faced Constable Groves. Leipfold let them in and offered them a cup of tea, keen to stay busy to fight his mounting anxiety, but there was another knock at the door before they were able to answer him.
Leipfold scurried over to open it and returned with Jowie Frankowska. She’d been released on bail pending further enquiries, but Cholmondeley had found it easy enough to talk her into coming. Jowie had treated herself to a manicure. If she was disturbed by her brief spell in custody, she didn’t show it. To Leipfold’s eye, she looked even healthier than she did when last he saw her.
An awkward tension descended, like a bad smell that refused to go away. Frankowska sat as far away from Groves and Cholmondeley as possible, then stared at them both in silence. Leipfold watched it all with a wry smile, and he was almost annoyed when there was another knock at the door and Greg Bateman came in.
“Hi,” he said, shaking Leipfold’s hand and glancing apprehensively around the room. “Got the money?”
Leipfold looked at him, confused, until Cholmondeley leaned over and explained, “I may have said something about a reward.”
“Did you now?” Leipfold murmured, but he was saved from confronting the reality of his empty bank account by another knock and the appearance of two more guests, Jayne Lipton and Eleanor Thompson, who both made it clear that they’d travelled separately and met each other on the stairs. Leipfold greeted them there and took their coats before directing them to the seats in reception. Jayne looked pale and was dressed casually, and Eleanor Thompson was the polar opposite, healthy-looking, alive and in a modest black blouse with matching trousers and a pin holding her hair up in a bun. She reminded Leipfold of a dying spider.
Next up were three people from Cholmondeley’s list. The first to arrive was Tony Barlow, the café owner. He was still in his uniform – food-stained jeans and a baggy T-shirt, though he’d left his greasy apron at home. He looked angry. He clearly didn’t want to be there, and Leipfold wondered how Cholmondeley had talked him into showing his face.
Then Eddie Burns arrived, dressed in blue overalls and fresh off the job. He was in a better mood than Barlow, but he seemed confused about why Cholmondeley had summoned him. The policeman took him aside to have a couple of words with him while Leipfold answered the door again. This time it was Adrian Ford, the cab driver who’d passed Donna on the road on that fateful night. He looked sombre and perturbed, and he slouched into a seat without a word. He refused a drink when Leipfold offered him one.
The air was thick with sound for a few minutes as the guests got their bearings. Leipfold handed drinks out, but he didn’t talk while he was doing it. He was preoccupied with the knowledge that someone in the room was a murderer – and the fact that Maile was still missing.
Once the drinks had been handed out, Cholmondeley glanced meaningfully at his watch and cleared his throat. The hubbub died down, and Leipfold and Cholmondeley moved over to stand at the head of the circle.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Leipfold said. “Thank you all for coming.”
And then he was interrupted by another knock at the door.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Trial By Media
NOBODY MOVED. Every face in the room turned to look at James Leipfold, who was in his element. His concern for Maile wasn’t quite forgotten, but it had been filed away so he could focus on the investigation.
“Ah,” he said. “That’ll be our final guest for the evening.”
Cholmondeley stared at Leipfold as he walked over to the door and opened it up. The rest of the guests were looking from one face to another, trying to figure out who else they might be expecting, and for a single, split second, Cholmondeley wondered whether Leipfold had tracked down Tom Townsend and talked him into surrendering. He nodded at Constable Groves, who edged her hand towards the cuffs on her belt, but then the visitor entered the room and Cholmondeley frowned as he realised he’d never seen him before.
Leipfold led the man into the room and gestured for him to sit away from the circle, on Leipfold’s own computer chair. Then he walked back to the centre of the circle and stood beside Cholmondeley. He beamed and clapped his hands together.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “This is Alan Phelps, a good friend of mine. Mr. Phelps works at The Tribune. Isn’t that right, Alan?”
Phelps grunted noncommittally and pulled a notebook from his pocket. He reached in again and took out a pen, and then he followed that with his mobile phone. He started a voice recording and set it down on Leipfold’s desk.
“Mr. Phelps is here on my behalf,” Leipfold continued. “See, business isn’t exactly booming, and so Alan and I
made a deal. I’ll give him the biggest story of his career, and he’ll give me enough coverage to keep me busy for the next six months. Isn’t that right, Alan?”
“Sure,” Phelps said, shrugging slightly and sitting back in the chair, poised with his pen and ready to absorb all of the action. “Whatever you say, Mr. Leipfold. Just remember that I’ve got to be out of here within the hour, okay?”
“Sure thing,” Leipfold replied. “Let’s move on. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
Cholmondeley cleared his throat and stepped forward, holding up a hand to signal to the room that he was the one in charge, at least officially. Leipfold nodded and stepped back to give him the floor.
“My name’s Detective Inspector Jack Cholmondeley,” he said. “Some of you know me and some of you don’t. If you don’t know me, count yourself lucky. Mr. Leipfold here is a private detective. That means he’s good at sniffing out the truth by whatever means necessary. I think he’ll be the first to agree that he doesn’t always play by the rules.”
Leipfold laughed but said nothing as Cholmondeley continued. “Me, though, I play by the rules. I’m a copper through and through. That’s why I’m here. No one is under arrest right now, but I think I should make myself clear. Every person in this room barring myself, Constable Groves, Mr. Leipfold and Mr. Phelps is a suspect.”
“That’s right,” Leipfold interjected, patting Cholmondeley on the back. “And we’re not just here for Donna Thompson. We’re here for Marie Rieirson as well. The two cases are connected, and I’m about to tell you how. Of course, if there’s anyone with a guilty conscience here, now would be a good time to step forward.”
There was an uneasy silence, broken only by the sound of Alan Phelps scrawling notes inside his Moleskine using a tired blue biro.
Leipfold shrugged and said, “As you wish.”
He turned to look around the room, meeting the eyes of each of his suspects and observing their reactions before moving along to the next one. When he was satisfied that he held their full attention, he dropped his bombshell.