The Tower Hill Terror

by Dane Cobain

  “That’s awful,” Leipfold replied.

  “It is,” Cholmondeley agreed. “And that’s why I need your help. I’m begging you, friend. Help me to catch this deranged son-of-a-bitch. We’ll all be safer when he’s off the streets and behind bars.”

  Leipfold paused for a moment. His mind was turning over and over, like it always did at the start of a case. That was when he realised he was probably going to take it. But at this stage, he still had more questions than answers.

  “That’s weird,” he murmured.

  “What is it?” Cholmondeley asked.

  “The crime scene,” Leipfold said. “It wasn’t right.”

  “In what way?”

  Leipfold took a deep breath and said, “It wasn’t a crime scene. At least, it wasn’t the crime scene.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can you get me a copy of the photos?” Leipfold asked. “I want to take another look at them. I think…”

  Cholmondeley waited for a moment before prompting Leipfold to continue. “What?” he asked.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Leipfold said. “But have you boys been working on the assumption that the hotel room was the crime scene?”

  “You mean to say it isn’t?”

  “Of course not,” Leipfold replied. “Sure, there was a lot of blood there. But not nearly enough to account for all of the injuries. And besides, someone would have heard something. She must have been kept somewhere else. They moved her there after they killed her.”

  * * *

  Maile didn’t get home until just after midnight, but Kat Cotteril, her housemate, was still up and about when she arrived. She was curled up on the sofa with a tartan blanket covering her from her shoulders to her feet, which still felt cold despite the fact that she’d brought a fan heater through from her bedroom. To her left, she had her mobile phone, and to her right she had a glass of wine, the TV remote and half a pack of Kettle Chips. She was watching a rerun of a reality TV show where celebrities had to work on a farm. A comedian with a familiar face was milking a cow, and Kat was absentmindedly munching her way through the crisps while he struggled to get to grips with his unusual assignment.

  When Maile entered the room, she took her coat off and hung it up, then tossed her handbag down on the table and slid out of her shoes. She sank into the big, leather armchair and exhaled.

  Kat glanced over, then turned around properly to get a good look at her housemate. Maile was wearing skinny jeans with a studded belt, a stylish blouse beneath a cardigan, her big, black boots and an unusual amount of makeup. Granted, she didn’t exactly look like a supermodel, but she’d clearly put an effort in. Kat was pleasantly surprised by how well she scrubbed up, and she said as much.

  “Thanks,” Maile mumbled. “It took me half the afternoon to get ready.”

  “Where have you been?” Kat asked.

  “Out.”

  “Who with?”

  “Some guy,” Maile said.

  Kat folded her arms and grinned. “On a date?” she asked. Maile nodded. Kat clapped her hands together in excitement. She tucked her legs beneath her and swivelled round to look at Maile properly. “Anyone I know?”

  “No.”

  “How come you didn’t tell me?” Kat asked. She reached across for the remote and muted the reality TV show she’d been watching. The comedian had finished milking the cow, and now a pale-faced weathergirl was helping to deliver a litter of lambs.

  Maile sighed. “I don’t have to tell you everything,” she said. “And I figured if you found out then you wouldn’t shut up about it. Besides, you know how much I hate talking about dudes. It’s so boring. Why do you never want to talk about CPUs?”

  “How did it go?”

  “It was whatever. He seemed nice enough.”

  “Is that why you were out so late?”

  Maile shook her head. “Nah,” she said. “He just wouldn’t stop talking. I tried to get away a couple times, but he just changed the subject and kept on talking about his job.”

  “What does he do?”

  “I dunno. Something in sales, maybe? Marketing? Finance? I wasn’t paying much attention.”

  “You’re being too picky.”

  “You think?” Maile said. “Am I the problem? I mean, is it so unrealistic for me to hope that maybe once, just once, I’d find a decent guy who doesn’t bore the shit out of me and who likes me for who I am?”

  “Probably,” Kat admitted. “Let’s face it, you’re unique. It’s not going to be easy to find someone you have stuff in common with.”

  Maile murmured something softly and made herself more comfortable on the sofa. She pulled out her phone and started to play with it.

  “You need to meet some new people,” Kat said. She pointed at Maile’s phone. “You know there’s a new dating app, right?”

  Maile scoffed. “I spend half my life online,” she said. “Maybe more. So yeah, I heard.”

  Kat shrugged, grabbed the remote and turned the volume back up on the television.

  “Maybe you should sign up to it,” she said. “A couple of the girls at work swear by it. Lesley snagged herself a neuroscientist. Not bad considering she dropped out of uni.”

  “I dunno…”

  “Come on, Maile,” Kat said. “You can’t stay single forever.”

  “Watch me.”

  “Look, I’ll even set up your profile and help you to look through it. It’ll be fun.”

  “You reckon?”

  “Yeah!” Kat said. She grinned. “Go on, grab your phone. I’ll crack open the vino.”

  “You fricken suck,” Maile said. But she grabbed her phone and drank the wine regardless.

  Chapter Five:

  Only The Beginning

  MAILE HAD A HANGOVER the following morning, so she was glad when Leipfold asked her to man the office while he went out and about on his errands. All the coffee in the world couldn’t help her, but that didn’t stop her from trying. She’d also cleared three pints of water by 10AM, but at least she hadn’t had the shakes. She had her breakfast, a Subway sandwich, to thank for that.

  Leipfold, meanwhile, had climbed into his leathers and grabbed his keys before hopping onto his motorbike and driving into the inner city. At first, he cruised almost at random, hitting the side streets purely to give himself some time to think. Then he paid a quick visit to a potential client, one who’d come in through the website and caught his attention by offering an unusually large sum for a simple job. But the meeting was just a formality. There were some contracts to sign, and Leipfold needed to collect a USB stick that contained a previous PI’s research that he didn’t even plan to use.

  Back on the bike again, he’d passed the Grosvenor House Hotel before he even noticed it. On some level, his mind had been retracing Jayne Lipton’s final footsteps, but it was a hopeless task. Even if she’d been alive and on the streets, she would have been difficult to track down. With Jayne dead, autopsied and scheduled for a burial, Leipfold had no hope of finding any trace of her. But that didn’t stop him from trying. He wanted to see what Jayne had seen and to think what Jayne had thought, even if it didn’t amount to anything.

  Leipfold parked Camilla in the Grosvenor House car park and was just about to enter the building for the first time since discovering the body when his mobile phone rang. It was his secondary phone, a cheap pay-as-you-go device which he only ever used to communicate with Jack Cholmondeley. That meant that every time it rang, he knew who it was. It also helped to cover their tracks in case the cop was caught out and an inquest was formed to push its nose into things.

  “Leipfold,” he said as he answered the call.

  There was a little interference on the other end, as well as the background hum of a conversation. It sounded like Cholmondeley was calling him from the middle of a busy meeting room. />
  “It’s me,” Cholmondeley said. “Listen, I can’t talk. I just wanted to see whether you’d thought about taking on the Lipton case. I don’t mean to push you, but I need a decision.”

  Leipfold had already made his decision, but he paused and pretended to think about it, picturing his old friend waiting red-faced on the other side of the line. Then he said, “I’m in.”

  “Good,” Cholmondeley replied. “Then listen to this. I want you to go over to Jayne Lipton’s place and take a look around. It’s nothing sketchy, nothing illegal. We’ve got a copy of the key and written permission from her next of kin. They want the bastard who did it just as much as we do. Sergeant Mogford is going to meet you there so be on your best behaviour.”

  “Can’t you send someone else?” Leipfold asked. “I’ve never liked the guy.”

  “He doesn’t like you, either,” Cholmondeley said. “But this is business, James. And besides: who do you think has the keys?”

  * * *

  Leipfold hopped back on to Camilla and made his way over to Jayne Lipton’s place. He’d been there before, albeit briefly, but last time he’d made his way to Shelden Street, he’d had to hop on the tube to get there. While he was investigating the Thompson case, he was simultaneously trying to balance the books, and his only option had been to sell his beloved motorbike. Luckily, Greg Bateman, the balding used car salesman he’d sold it to, had kept the machine on his lot and so Leipfold was able to buy her back once a couple of cheques came in.

  Sergeant Gary Mogford was already there when Leipfold arrived, and he watched him, stony-faced, as he leant the bike on its kickstand and put the padlock on. Leipfold offered Mogford his hand as he walked up to the door to meet him, but Mogford just glared at him and refused to shake it.

  Gary Mogford had always struck Leipfold as the epitome of a middle-aged cop. His salt and pepper hair had lost its colour, and the man had worry lines so deep that they looked like scars. That day, he wasn’t in uniform. He was wearing his other outfit, a plain pair of jeans, a blue shirt with a wide collar and a faded leather jacket. Cholmondeley had once told Leipfold that he’d never seen Mogford wear anything else. He joked that the copper’s wardrobe contained multiple sets of the same two outfits, with a partition down the middle to separate them. Leipfold could believe it.

  Mogford nodded at Leipfold and said, “You’d better come inside.”

  Leipfold grunted, and the two of them entered the house in silence. Mogford showed him around the place to give him a sense of the layout and then explained the plan.

  “We’ll go room to room,” Mogford said. “You’re to stay in my company at all times, understand? The old man might trust you, but I don’t.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t really want to be here, either.”

  Mogford grunted but said nothing as he led Leipfold through from the hallway and into the living room, then from the living room into the kitchen and the small, urban back garden. There was no grass out there, just a half tonne of concrete and a dilapidated shed. Mogford found the key to the shed in one of the kitchen drawers while Leipfold was looking through the pantry, and they let themselves in just as the heavens opened and a thin, grey rain started to drizzle its way down from the clouds. Leipfold was prepared to bet, before they opened it, that Jayne Lipton had never been inside. And it looked like he was right. The air was thick with mildew, and cobwebs, slime and a fug of dead insects covered everything inside.

  Leipfold let Mogford carry out the inventory, preferring to stand outside in the rain than to get his hands dirty. But there was nothing there for the men to find. Nor did they find anything in the pantry, in the lounge or in the kitchen, so they climbed the stairs with some foreboding and proceeded to check out the upstairs bathroom and bedroom.

  Jayne Lipton had a surprisingly sentimental streak. Her bedroom was decorated in pinks and reds, and her double bed was covered with throw pillows. Her wardrobe seemed typical enough, but Leipfold was surprised to see so many fluffy teddy bears, old family photos and swimming and dancing certificates from her schooldays. Jayne Lipton had been twenty-four when she died, but her bedroom made her seem closer to fourteen.

  But there was nothing of interest. Mogford seemed dispirited as he led Leipfold back down the stairs towards the front door, but neither man had really expected to find anything. They weren’t the first team to have searched the place, and both men were well aware that there had been specialists and men with dogs, people who’d been trained to find things. They were just two regular guys doing the best they could.

  “Guess that was a bust then,” Mogford said, ushering Leipfold towards the front door.

  Leipfold nodded and said, “Guess it was.”

  Out front, Leipfold offered Mogford his hand again, and Mogford refused, once more, to take it. The two men nodded at each other, then Mogford watched Leipfold walk slowly back over to his bike. He was whistling as he walked.

  Leipfold patted his pockets to find his keys and to check that he hadn’t dropped the scrap of paper he’d grabbed from the pantry.

  * * *

  Later that day, when he got back to the office, Leipfold asked Maile to put the kettle on and then settled down at his desk to investigate his prize. It didn’t look like much. Just a four-inch square of plain paper with ragged edges from where Leipfold had torn it out of an old notebook. It was just a hunch, but Leipfold’s hunches had a habit of paying off. He figured that if a person wrote something down, it was something that they wanted to remember. Perhaps it was just a recipe for a Victoria sponge. But there was only one way to find out.

  He remembered a book he’d had as a young boy, back when his parents were still alive and they used to take it in turns to read to him until he fell asleep. It was about a spy who was a double agent during the Second World War, outfoxing his enemies with a different improbable trick in every chapter. That guy had magically made the contents of a note reappear by rubbing a pencil over the indentations the writer had left in the paper below. It was a good idea, but Leipfold found that a mixture of blotting ink and water worked better. He’d tested and refined the method, eventually settling on the perfect formula so that the ink sank into the indentations while the water was absorbed by the paper. It was a fiddly method, but it worked.

  By the time that Maile had boiled the kettle and made them both a drink, Leipfold was hard at work. Maile set his coffee down, pulled her own chair over and sat down beside him. She asked him what he was doing and he explained it to her.

  “Cool!” she said. “How long will we have to wait for results?”

  “It depends,” Leipfold replied. “How long does it take to finish a crossword?”

  It took them nine minutes, which wasn’t a new record but was still a good time. Leipfold jotted it down in the little notebook that he kept in his top drawer and then turned his attention back to the investigation.

  The paper was still drying, but the early signs were good. Ironically enough, it was spelled out across like a crossword clue. Something O T something something L something V something something nine.

  “What do you make of that?” Leipfold asked.

  “Looks like a username,” Maile replied. “Or maybe a password.”

  “How did you figure that one out?”

  “It’s got a number in it,” Maile replied. “It could be an address, I guess, but it doesn’t look long enough.”

  Leipfold smiled. Maile made sense, and her suspicions confirmed his own first impression.

  “Good call,” Leipfold said. “Then we know what to do next. First up, we need to figure out the rest of that username. It’ll get a little better as the paper dries, but see if you can improve the image with that computer of yours. Then find out everything you can about what it means.”

  “Got it,” Maile said. “I’ll see if I can pin it back to Jayne Lipton.”

  “Do some digging,” Le
ipfold continued. “I want to know everything about her. Find out what sites she used to visit and who she used to talk to. We need to find out what her routine was so we can figure out how she broke it.”

  “And what about you?”

  Leipfold grinned. “I’m going to take the rest of the afternoon off,” he said. “Two can play at that game. But you keep on working. Let me know if you find anything.”

  * * *

  Detective Inspector Jack Cholmondeley was exhausted. His team had spent the morning reporting to Sergeant Mogford while Cholmondeley was catching up with the other teams at the daily briefing, and then Mogford himself had taken up most of his afternoon. Worse still, Mary was in a mood with him. She said it was the anniversary of the day they’d met, and Cholmondeley didn’t remember enough to contradict her.

  He thought that nothing else could go wrong, but then Constable Cohen came running up to his office, not bothering to knock and bursting in to interrupt Mogford and Cholmondeley in the middle of a conversation.

  “This better be good, lad,” Mogford said.

  Cohen was out of breath, and he had to pause for a second before replying. “It is,” he panted, leaning forward to rest his hands on the desk.

  Mogford glared down at his hands until the constable moved them and stood up straight again.

  Cholmondeley, meanwhile, felt a little sympathy for Constable Cohen. He didn’t fit in with the rest of the boys, and Constable Yates was his only real friend on the force, although he got on well with the general public. He smiled encouragingly. “Go on,” he said. “What is it?”

  “There’s a parcel,” Constable Cohen explained. “At reception. I didn’t get a good look at it, but apparently it came by courier. Some guy on a bike, in full leathers with a helmet on. Nobody got a good look at him, but we got a partial on the number plate.”