Driven (Leipfold Book 1)

by Dane Cobain

  “Driven,” Mrs. Thompson said. “What a farce. You’re right, Mr. Leipfold. I did go to see Tom Townsend. I thought if he dropped Donna, she’d quit that awful job she had and try to do something with her life.”

  “But Townsend didn’t drop her, did he?” Leipfold said. “And so you and Marie hatched a plan to get her out of the way.”

  Mrs. Thompson glared first at James Leipfold and then at Detective Inspector Jack Cholmondeley, who stared straight back at her until she blinked. “I’m not saying anything else,” she said. “Not until I’ve talked to my lawyer.”

  “Fair enough,” Leipfold replied. “I’m done with you, anyway. In the meantime, back to Tom Townsend. See, the man is a player, a real womaniser.”

  “Who was he sleeping with?” Cholmondeley asked.

  “Donna Thompson,” Leipfold replied. “Marie Rieirson, too.”

  “And me,” Jayne Lipton said, shaking her head sadly.

  “I thought so,” Leipfold murmured. He turned to face her. “And did you know about the others?”

  “I knew about Marie,” Jayne said. “She was my best friend, after all. We told each other everything. In fact, it was Marie who introduced me to Tom, back when she first started working with him.”

  “Excellent,” Leipfold replied. “Although not so much for you, perhaps. Either way, Tom was sleeping with Donna and he wanted to keep her around. I’m sure of it. Mrs. Thompson is no fool,” he continued, pointing at the woman on the other side of the room. She glared back at him but wisely stayed silent. “She tried to pay Townsend off but it didn’t work.”

  “Why not?” Lipton asked.

  “Because he was sleeping with her daughter,” Leipfold explained. “And he didn’t want it to stop.”

  “I see,” Cholmondeley said. “And why did he lie about killing Marie Rieirson?”

  “He was protecting the women in his life. With Donna dead, he suspected that Marie or Jayne was responsible. Jealousy is a powerful motive, after all. Then, with Marie dead, I think he wanted to divert attention away from Jayne, the only woman he had left.”

  “What a gentleman,” Jayne said. “But I didn’t kill Donna.”

  “I know you didn’t,” Leipfold said. “Marie Rieirson did. But Tom didn’t know that.”

  “So where is he now?” Jayne asked.

  “About to receive a visit from my men,” Cholmondeley replied, jumping in to answer the question on Leipfold’s behalf.

  “Why?” Jayne asked, staring stupidly up at Leipfold who glared back at her, a glint of steel in his eye and a heavy weight in his heart. Eleanor Thompson murmured something that sounded suspiciously like “what’s the silly fool done now?” Leipfold barely heard it. His head was full of the high-pitched whine that precedes a migraine and he was in a bad, bad mood.

  “Tom Townsend didn’t break the law until today,” Leipfold said, “when the bastard kidnapped my assistant.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Cautioned and Cuffed

  LEIPFOLD’S INSIDES felt like molten lead, but he wasn’t the type of guy who was ruled by his emotions. He kept his face steady as he surveyed the room again, taking in the corkboard on the wall with his case notes, the hat stand by the door, the plastic kettle on the kitchen worktop and the circle of strangers all brought together by a common cause. Leipfold looked around the circle again. The tension in the room and the tension in his head built into a crescendo and then passed away like a wave.

  “Now,” Leipfold said. “Where were we?”

  Jowie Frankowska flicked her long hair back and asked, “Where do I come into this?”

  “Ah,” Leipfold replied. “Good question. You, young lady, are innocent. Yes,” he continued, waving aside Cholmondeley, who’d exchanged a frustrated glance with Constable Groves and opened his mouth to say something. “I know how it looked. But poor Miss Frankowska here is guilty of nothing. She simply had the bad luck to discover the murdered body of a murderess.”

  It took a moment for this to sink in. Cholmondeley, content to take a back seat, still had his mouth open, watching events proceed with the same rapt attention that his wife offered up to daytime reality TV shows.

  “In fact,” Leipfold continued, “I’d like to thank you. It was you who told me that Mrs. Thompson paid a visit to your former employer. That was what set me on the trail of their partnership. Care to explain why you were shouting through Marie Rieirson’s letterbox, Mrs. Thompson?”

  “Not without my lawyer,” she reminded him, ashen-faced but still strong and unafraid.

  “Fair enough,” Leipfold replied. “Can’t say I blame you. I’d be asking for a lawyer too if I was in your shoes. Things are looking pretty bleak for you.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Jowie said. “I thought you said Marie killed Donna Thompson.”

  “I did.”

  “So who killed Marie?”

  Leipfold frowned. “Good question,” he said. “That one had me puzzled for a while.”

  “Mrs. Thompson?” Cholmondeley suggested.

  “No,” Leipfold said, holding a hand up to silence the woman before she could say something. “She didn’t kill anyone. She just condemned her daughter with her own stupidity.”

  “Then who?” Frankowska asked. “I have a right to know. After all, the police thought that I did it. I should sue!”

  “Sue all you like,” Cholmondeley growled. “You won’t win.”

  “Relax,” Leipfold said. “Everyone calm down.”

  “Calm down?” Frankowska repeated, her voice sounding shriller by the minute and her accent kicking in as anger overtook her. “How can we? You said that one of us is a murderer. If Marie killed Donna Thompson, who murdered Marie? I know it’s not me and I doubt it was you, so who was it?”

  “Well now,” Leipfold murmured. “That’s a question for the ages. Luckily, I’ve got an answer. Most murders are committed by someone close to the victim. In this case, the murderer was very close indeed.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me!” Mrs. Thompson shouted.

  Leipfold gave her another of his withering looks and shouted right back at her. “I didn’t say it was! No, no. It was Jayne Lipton, of course.”

  Cholmondeley nodded at Groves, and Groves nodded back at him and gestured to Eleanor Thompson. “You take her,” she mouthed. “I’ve got my hands full.”

  Jack Cholmondeley couldn’t lip-read, but he got the gist of it and stepped smartly over to stand behind Jayne Lipton. He rested an arm on the back of her chair so that she’d know he was there. Leipfold was watching her, shrewdly.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  “You knew,” Leipfold said. “You knew Marie did it, but you didn’t tell anyone. I wonder how you found out.”

  “The ring,” Cholmondeley murmured.

  “What?” Leipfold asked.

  “The ring. Our forensic boys found a ring when they looked over the car. We never figured it out.”

  “It was my ring,” Jayne said. “It used to be my mother’s. Marie asked if she could borrow it, so I said she could. I never got it back.”

  “And you’d swear to that in court?”

  “If I had to,” Jayne said. “Does it help?”

  “It puts Marie Rieirson – or at least, your ring, which you say was last seen in her possession – in the back of the car that killed Donna Thompson. And you didn’t tell anyone. And then you fought with her. What did you fall out over this time? Tom Townsend? Why? He’s not worth the effort.”

  “You’re right, Mr. Leipfold,” Jayne said. “He’s not.”

  “Why don’t you tell us what happened?”

  Jayne said nothing, and Leipfold and Cholmondeley slipped into an old habit, staying silent to make their suspect uncomfortable so they felt the need to plug the gap. This time, it didn’t work.

  �
��Fine,” Leipfold said. “I’ll do it. You see, Jayne and Marie had an argument. And this wasn’t just any argument, the usual stuff that two friends bicker about. This was a real argument, and one that got out of hand. This was all at Marie’s house, of course.”

  “Of course,” Cholmondeley murmured.

  “I don’t know why you didn’t go to the cops,” Leipfold said, staring at Jayne across the circle. Her eyes flickered and Leipfold took it as a sign of recognition. “But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you knew – or at the very least you suspected.”

  “Knew what?” Mrs. Thompson asked. She was so swept up in the moment that she’d forgotten her own predicament.

  “Jayne knew that Marie killed Donna Thompson,” Leipfold explained. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it was Jayne who called me after it happened, trying to warn me off the case. Fat chance of that.”

  Jayne Lipton started to cry, and Leipfold and Cholmondeley tried the silence trick again. This time, it worked. Jayne started to gulp in big breaths of air, smudging her mascara as she wiped her face dry and tried to tell her tale between great heaving gasps that made her look like she was having a seizure.

  “She told me about her fling with Tom Townsend and what she’d done to Donna Thompson,” Jayne sobbed. “So we fought.”

  “Yes,” Leipfold said. “At the top of the stairs. And you didn’t mean to kill her.”

  “She just slipped.” Jayne’s torrent of tears intensified, and she held her head in her hands. Then, just as suddenly as she started, she stopped.

  “She slipped?” Leipfold asked. “Or did you push her?”

  She didn’t reply.

  * * *

  Constable Groves cautioned and cuffed the two women, scribbled down a few notes and checked the documentation that she’d been working on as the group interview evolved, then stood by for further instructions. Cholmondeley, meanwhile, was waiting for Leipfold to continue, but the detective was almost done. He thanked everyone for coming – Jayne and Eleanor in particular – and then said that everyone else was free to leave. Jowie Frankowska left immediately, but Greg Bateman stayed behind and held out a hand, which Leipfold immediately filled with a fistful of change from the petty cash tin. He was followed out by Mr. Phelps from The Tribune, who said he had enough for a dozen stories and that he’d write it all up in the morning.

  That left Jayne Lipton and Eleanor Thompson, cuffed and glum and looking more like a mother and daughter than a pair of murderesses, as well as Constable Groves, Detective Inspector Jack Cholmondeley and James Leipfold himself, who watched impassively as his guests left the office.

  As soon as they were gone, Leipfold whirled around and punched the wall. It was a solid punch, but it was a solid wall. Plaster crumbled and fell to the floor, but Leipfold’s already-damaged fist took the bigger battering. It had never really healed from the last time he’d lost his temper, and the punch popped one of his knuckles. He could feel it starting to swell. He cursed and evaluated the damage. Probably not a break, but damn near close to one.

  Cholmondeley rushed over to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. He was surprised to find that the younger man was shaking, so he grabbed the half-empty bottle of Evian from Leipfold’s desk and handed it to him. Leipfold drank gratefully from it and then looked at Cholmondeley. His steel grey eyes looked tired, but they didn’t betray any emotion.

  “Sorry about that,” Leipfold said. “It’s been a stressful day. And I’m worried, Jack. Tell me you’ve found my assistant.”

  Cholmondeley sighed. “Drink up,” he replied, gesturing to the bottle that Leipfold was holding. “I wish I could tell you that we have her, but we don’t. Not yet, at least. But we’ve got a team in position and they’re ready to go in. I just need to give them the order. You sure about this?”

  “I’m sure,” Leipfold replied. “Where else would he go? Besides, we can rule out the warehouse. There are too many people there.”

  “You’d better be right,” Cholmondeley grunted. “I had to call in a few favours to make this happen.”

  “I’m right,” Leipfold said. “I always am.”

  Cholmondeley frowned. “If you say so,” he said. “In that case, I’ll give the order.”

  “You do that,” Leipfold replied. He scooted over to his desk and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. He pulled it on, rifled through his pockets and pulled out a set of keys, which he tossed across the room to Jack Cholmondeley. The policeman caught them and looked back across at him.

  “Don’t worry,” Leipfold said. “I’ve got a spare set. Just make sure you lock the front door when you’re done here.”

  “Why?” Cholmondeley asked. “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got a date with Tom Townsend,” Leipfold said. “That is, if your men don’t beat me to it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: On Jermyn Street

  TOM TOWNSEND and Maile O’Hara were in a dark room, somewhere beneath street level. Maile was blindfolded, her skinny arms pulled behind her back and tied together with a length of rope, but Townsend had done a bad job of it and she could still see the light and the lack of it.

  Wherever they were, the air smelled old and stale. She could make out the distant hum of London traffic from somewhere way up above her. When a tube train passed by as it burrowed beneath the city, it made the walls thrum with movement and rattled thin chips of plaster from the ceiling. They settled on top of her head and made her scalp itch, but she couldn’t move enough to deal with it.

  She could hear Townsend shuffling around the room. He was talking to himself, alternating between reciting lines from his play and raging at the situation he now found himself in. Sometimes he simply shouted, and other times he came right up close to Maile and talked in a soft, even voice. She wasn’t gagged and could have talked or screamed freely, but she didn’t want to give him the pleasure.

  “He’ll drop the case,” Townsend was babbling. “He has to. He’ll understand. He’ll see sense. Every story has to have a happy ending. I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want to kill anybody. I just want all of this to go away. I want everything to go back to the way it was.”

  Maile remained silent, although she moved slightly in her restraints and ran a dry tongue across the inside of her mouth. There was a hollow thud as Townsend sat down on something, then silence. It hung thick in the air for a couple of minutes until the man opened his mouth to speak again.

  “Maile O’Hara,” he murmured. “What a name. You sound like you belong in the theatre. All the world’s a stage, Maile O’Hara. You’re just playing your part. You can stay silent, if you like. Don’t worry. I’m not here to judge you. Your part doesn’t come with lines. You just need to sit still and look sharp until Mr. Leipfold drops his case against me.”

  “Creep,” Maile muttered. She didn’t know she was saying it until the syllable slipped out, and by then it was too late for her to catch it and to reel it back in.

  “She wakes!” Townsend said. He laughed. “Don’t worry. You’re not in any danger.”

  Maile held her head up high and said nothing. She’d read books about this, about what to do in a life or death situation. She knew her plan for the zombie apocalypse. And she knew that in a situation like this, her best option was to keep schtum and to hope for the best.

  Besides, Tom Townsend liked to talk, and Maile was ready to listen.

  “I just want to protect the girls,” Tom said, breaking the silence again. “I’m not a monster. Once your boss realises I’ve got you, he’ll drop the case and I can release you.”

  “He won’t stop,” Maile murmured.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Yes, well,” Townsend said. Maile noticed that there was a slight echo in the room, a warm echo that reminded her of high rafters and polished wood rather than an empty cave with dripping stalact
ites. “Your boss will drop his case and I’ll let you go. Then I’ll go and pay a visit to Mary Cholmondeley and see if I can’t convince those pesky policemen to drop it, too.”

  “You’re crazy,” Maile said.

  “No,” Townsend said, “I’m totally sane.”

  Maile laughed.

  “I’m serious,” Townsend insisted. “I’m perfectly rational.”

  “You’re struggling to tell the difference between life and fiction,” Maile replied. “And that plan of yours will never work.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s just a bad plan,” Maile said. She was starting to find her voice, her courage. She thought she had a feel for the man. He was weak, squeamish. He threatened to do things and didn’t follow through with them. He’d never be anything more than a director in a small, community theatre. He had visions of grandeur, but he didn’t have the cojones – or the skills – to follow through with them.

  “What’s so bad about it?” Townsend asked.

  “Someone will figure it out,” Maile replied. “You’re not some kind of criminal mastermind. You’re like a villain from an episode of Scooby Doo, and I know a couple of pesky kids who will stop you from getting away with it.”

  “Leipfold and Cholmondeley,” Townsend murmured.

  “Yes,” Maile said. “So where are we?”

  “We’re at the theatre,” Townsend said. “On Jermyn Street. Where else?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Maile said. She laughed, and then she flinched as she felt Tom Townsend’s hands on her shoulders. He shook her, an unsettling experience with a blindfold on her eyes.

  “Don’t laugh at me,” Townsend growled. “Don’t ever laugh at me. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

  Maile went quiet for a moment, conscious again of her predicament. She breathed slowly, calmly, bunching both of her hands into fists and practicing some of the mindfulness tricks that she’d read about online. She wished that she could see and that she was holding a weapon in her hand. She wished James Leipfold was there with his cynical stare and his plan for every eventuality. And most of all, she wished Tom Townsend would remove his hands from her shoulders. The latter of these wishes came true, and she relaxed almost immediately.