by Dane Cobain
Richards kicked off the meeting by clearing her throat and taking a roll call, writing down the names and departments of all attendees on the pad in front of her. Then she cleared her throat again and called the meeting to order.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “I’d like to thank you all for coming. I appreciate that this meeting was arranged on short notice and that many of you are technically off-duty.”
A couple of the officers grumbled, including Gary Mogford, who’d had to bail on a round of golf and a couple of pints with the boys, but they were careful not to grumble too loudly. The result was a gentle susurrus of discontent, a sound that Superintendent Richards heard but couldn’t act upon. She scowled around the room and shook her head.
“The purpose of this meeting,” Richards said, “is to look back over Operation Aftershock and to identify any final areas of investigation. As you all know, we have one suspect in custody and another in the morgue, and we have reason to believe that the two of them worked together. That said, I’d like to be able to tell the public that they’re at no further risk from the Tower Hill Terror, and I’d like it to be a guarantee. To do that, we need to understand more. Why did Marc Allman and Lucy Fforde act the way they did?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Richards’s delivery had each and every copper in the room trying to rack their brains for an answer.
Then Leipfold raised a hand, struggling to be seen amongst the tall beat cops and the massive men from the armed response team.
“I’ll take questions at the end,” Richards snapped. Cholmondeley buried his face in his hands, well aware of the woman’s thoughts on briefing etiquette. Leipfold, unfortunately, was unused to her way of working. She played it by the book, and Leipfold threw the book out a window and wrote his own.
“Please,” Leipfold insisted. “Just give me a couple of minutes. I think I have some information that might be relevant.”
Richards sighed and waved her hand. “Oh, very well,” she said. “What is it, Mr. Leipfold?”
All eyes were on Leipfold, and he shifted uncomfortably at the front of the room as he took the Sharpie from the superintendent and flipped a page on the easel.
“This won’t take long,” Leipfold said. “Now, I’m not sure whether you’ve got official confirmation or not, but we can be pretty sure that the two perpetrators were Lucy Fforde and Marc Allman. My assistant, Maile O’Hara, will be able to confirm that. She was already familiar with Allman through our own investigations, and she met Lucy Fforde at her dating night at the Oyster Club. That’s where Lucy met Marc Allman, too. Have you interviewed Kat Cotteril yet?”
“Of course.”
“Then she’ll have confirmed this too,” Leipfold said. “Allman was behind the Tower Hill Terror, at least at first. Fforde was his first victim, but instead of killing her, he made her a partner. They had some sort of connection, some sort of energy that spurred them both on. They were a dozen times worse together than they ever could have been apart. They took it in turns to pick their victims, Fforde finding a cheater and Allman finding whoever the hell took his fancy. Either way, though, they found them through the dating apps. That’s how they lulled people into a false sense of security so they could get them under control and strung up in that dungeon of theirs beneath the city. They were a match made in hell.”
“But why?” Richards asked. She was glaring at Leipfold like a hawk eyeing up a rabbit as it ran across the fields. “Why did they do it?”
“I think they both had their reasons,” Leipfold said. “For Fforde, it was revenge. A crusade against the unfaithful, a war against people who cheat on their partners through dating apps. For Allman, it was hatred, pure and simple. He’s just your basic domestic terrorist. They wanted to go out with a bang, to shout one last big ‘fuck you’ to the world before their bones turned to dust. Nobody wants to be forgotten.”
“We won’t be forgetting The Tower Hill Terror in a hurry,” Cholmondeley murmured. “But how did they choose specific victims? If someone was cheating on their partner, they’d be smart enough to cover their tracks.”
Leipfold snorted. “You’d be surprised,” he said. “But if it helps, I got Maile to run a little test for me. I gave her a couple of hours and she came back with a list of cheaters for me. You have to use a photo on those sites, and even with a fake name there are ways to figure it out. All you need to do is run a reverse image search and hey presto. You’ll know whether they’re legit or not.”
Superintendent Richards looked pleased, but she didn’t look impressed. Leipfold had more work to do if he wanted them to believe his theory, but he didn’t really care whether they believed him. He just wanted to put the final piece of the jigsaw into place.
“Proving the case is your job, not mine,” Leipfold said. “But now that Fforde’s dead and Allman’s in prison, the attacks should stop. That’ll give you enough time to look into it. And besides, Allman wants to be remembered. I think you’ll find he’s willing to talk.”
“We’ll need to play this one carefully,” Richards said. She looked around the room and settled her gaze on Jack Cholmondeley, just an old, tired cop who’d somehow become a minor celebrity thanks to his impromptu press conferences. “Is that it, Mr. Leipfold? Do you have anything else to add?”
“No, ma’am,” he said.
“Good,” she replied. “Then please sit down and shut up. This is my briefing, not yours. I’d like you to remain quiet for the rest of the meeting. If you think of something else then please hold it in until the end.”
Leipfold nodded to show that he’d understood her, zipped his lips theatrically and pushed his way through the policemen and back to Jack Cholmondeley.
* * *
Superintendent Richards took control of the agenda again, which meant she also took over the oversized notepad. She flipped the pages containing Leipfold’s notes and started out fresh, talking her team through the practicalities, what to charge Allman with, what to investigate next and what to say to the media.
“This hasn’t been our moment of glory,” Richards admitted. “There’s going to be an enquiry. A lot of people want to know why we didn’t catch this creep.”
“But we did,” one of the armed response cops protested.
Richards shook her head. “Not at all. Mr. Leipfold caught him, and then he called us in.”
“Just happy to help,” Leipfold quipped.
Richards fixed her steely eyes upon him. “One more word from you and you’re out of here,” she growled. “I mean it.”
She smiled sarcastically and then turned her attention back to the rest of the room.
“Detective Inspector Cholmondeley,” she said, “would you care to say a few words about your investigation into the Merin murder?”
“Of course,” Cholmondeley said. He elbowed his way to the front of the room and stood beside the superintendent. Leipfold winked at him from the back of the room. Cholmondeley ignored it and fixed his gaze on an empty stretch of the wall.
“Now,” Cholmondeley began. “As you all should know, we’ve also looked into the death of Carina Merin at the hands of her husband, Pete Merin. Mr. Merin confessed to being the Tower Hill Terror, but subsequent enquiries have ruled that out. We know that Mr. Merin killed his wife, but it looks like the other murders—those of Jayne Lipton, Abu Adewali, Calvin Myatt and Jennifer Jackson—are on the hands of Allman and Fforde.”
“Yes, yes,” Richards snapped. “What else can you tell me?”
“Only that I think we have a motive for Mr. Allman,” Cholmondeley said. “But you’ll have to bear with me here. First off, the man is a mystery. There are many sides to Marc Allman, and at least one of them seems to have lost the plot. Some of you may recall the letters we discovered inside the shipping container.”
Cholmondeley looked around the room. A couple of cops nodded their heads, but most of them looke
d blankly back at him. The content of the letters had been dismissed and not widely shared, mostly for fear that they would somehow leak to the media and put people on edge. They were currently in the forensics lab, undergoing rigorous testing and analysis. Cholmondeley was one of the few policemen who thought that there might be something valuable contained within the rambling, half-incomprehensible letters.
“Let me give you an example,” Cholmondeley said, flipping through a sheaf of papers to find the document he wanted. He fished it out and frowned down at it as he started to read. “Dear Lotty, I’m beginning to feel like Rudolf Hess. Hess left Hitler, stole a plane and flew to Scotland to try to broker peace and was written off by history as nothing more or less than a joke. I refuse to be a joke, Lotty. I love you and miss you and I’ll be with you soon.”
“Who’s Lotty?”
“A sister,” Cholmondeley said. “Charlotte Allman, now deceased.”
“By his hand?”
Cholmondeley shook his head. “She was killed in a collision when she was five years old. Allman was eight at the time. My guess is that this is why he’s lashing out at society in the first place.”
Cholmondeley paused and looked around the room. Everyone’s eyes were upon him, and he frowned again as he considered his next move.
“Those letters show us the type of man that we’re dealing with,” Cholmondeley said, speaking slowly but surely so he wouldn’t stumble over syllables. “He’s capable of sheer insanity on the one hand and sparkling charm on the other. Truth is, he’s nothing but a rage-filled man who hates the world and is striking back at it however he can. He’s the arrogant sort, the type of guy who doesn’t think he’ll ever get caught.”
Superintendent Richards glared at him. “Doesn’t matter what he thinks,” she said. “We’ve got him.”
* * *
There were plenty of unanswered questions, and the rest of the meeting was dedicated to the search for answers. Superintendent Richards wasn’t happy with Leipfold and Cholmondeley’s explanations, but it was all they had to go on. She arranged for two teams to be formed to work on alternate hypotheses, while Cholmondeley himself would be responsible for finding evidence to support the existing theory. Leipfold, meanwhile, was asked in no uncertain terms to stay away from the case.
“That’s fine by me,” he said. “The case is solved, over. And once The Tribune runs its articles, business is going to go through the roof.”
The meeting broke up in the early afternoon with each of the teams briefed on what they needed to do. Richards said she’d deal with the press herself. She told Cholmondeley that she’d debrief him after holding a conference to announce that they had the Tower Hill Terror in custody. “I’ll hold back on telling them about Lucy Fforde,” she added. “At least for now.”
Leipfold and Cholmondeley had a debriefing of their own, held over a clandestine pint of lemonade in the Rose & Crown. Cedric, the landlord, wasn’t exactly an old friend, but he’d known both men for the best part of twenty years and had nothing against them going in there. They were bad for business, because they scared other punters away and didn’t try to drink the bar dry, but he didn’t have the heart to turn them away.
They perched themselves in one of the corner booths so they could keep their eyes on the rest of the premises. They sat in silence for a while, sipping on their drinks and eyeing up the patrons. Then Cholmondeley put his drink down and opened his mouth.
“I’ve got a proposition for you, James,” he said.
Leipfold looked shrewdly across at him. “You have, huh?”
Cholmondeley took a deep breath and said, “I want you to reconsider joining us. You’d make a good cop if you learned to follow the rules.”
“I’m allergic to rules,” Leipfold said. “I make my own.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Besides,” he added, “I’m too old.”
“So am I,” Cholmondeley said. “That’s why I need a little help. Police work has changed since I was a kid. We need new thinkers, new ideas. Maybe we need someone to break a few rules so we can shake things up, so to speak.”
Leipfold laughed. “We’ve had this conversation before, Jack,” he said. “Several times, if I recall. The outcome is always the same.”
“This time it’s different,” Cholmondeley said. “We got lucky. But you could have died when you followed Marc Allman, and then we would all have been in trouble.”
Leipfold said nothing.
“Please, James,” Cholmondeley said. “We could use your help.”
“I’ll think about it,” Leipfold said. He drained his glass and set it back down on the table. He slid a handful of change across to cover the cost of his drink and then set off, on foot, to collect Camilla.
Chapter Twenty-Eight:
Terminal
MARC ALLMAN WAS ARRESTED and formally charged that evening, and Jack Cholmondeley and Gary Mogford paid him a visit in the cells the following morning to see what the man had to say for himself.
His clothes had been changed at the hospital, and with no next of kin, it looked like he’d be wearing his gown for a few more days until they transferred him to a more secure facility. He’d been shot in the shoulder, but the man had gone down like he’d been punched in the gut. Cholmondeley knew he’d have to find an answer for that, and he’d also have to summon up an explanation as to who fired the shots. Questions were already being asked.
Cholmondeley knew it had been Leipfold, of course, although Maile’s presence alone was enough to provide reasonable doubt. In the heat of the moment, and with all of the attention on Allman and his accomplice, nobody had taken the time to swab their hands for gunshot residue. With no weapon found either at the scene or in their possession when they were checked into the station, Cholmondeley was left with a mystery that he didn’t want to solve. But he knew that he’d have to give it a good go, in spite of his loyalties.
But right then, it could wait. Allman had been left to calm down during the first few days of his confinement, but they’d heard him calling from his cell, asking to talk to someone and to tell his side of the story. Mogford and Cholmondeley were more than happy to oblige.
Allman was cuffed and led through to an interrogation room. The cops left him to stew in there for half an hour or so, and then they rolled into the room to sit down opposite him. Cholmondeley introduced himself and added the date and time for the benefit of the recording. Then he leaned forward and said, “You wanted to speak to us, Mr. Allman.”
“I did indeed,” he said.
“Why?”
“Why not?” He leaned back in his chair, looking more like he was visiting a grandparent than like he was under arrest and in cuffs at a police station. “There’s no one to talk to around here.”
“Allman, make this good,” Mogford growled. “I don’t have time to waste on little shitstains like you.”
“Fair enough,” he said. He tried to spread his hands defensively, but the cuffs were tight and they stopped him. He looked down at them and smiled.
“What do you want?” Cholmondeley asked.
“I want to talk to the press.”
“Not going to happen.”
Allman sighed and leaned forward in his chair. “Listen,” he said. “There are a few different ways we can play this. Either way, I’m going to be heard. If you let me talk to the press, I’ll tell them everything. I’ll also extend the same favour to you. If you don’t let me talk to them…well, I can always have my day in court. If I plead not guilty, it’ll be the trial of the decade. You can bet that anything I say will be repeated in the papers either way.”
“I can’t do that,” Cholmondeley said.
“You can’t do that?” Allman asked. “Or you won’t.”
* * *
It was later that day, and Jack Cholmondeley and Marc Allman had been joined in the intervi
ew room by Alan Phelps of The Tribune. Phelps and Cholmondeley started their recordings at exactly the same time. They both wanted to make sure that they had a record.
“Interview started at 2:17PM,” Cholmondeley said for the benefit of the tape. “Present are the suspect, Marc Allman, myself, Detective Inspector Jack Cholmondeley, and journalist Alan Phelps from The Tribune. Mr. Allman, you said you wanted to make a statement. Let’s hear it.”
“I want to make a confession,” Allman said. “I did it. I killed those people, and I’d do it again.”
“Did you do it alone?”
“No,” Allman said. “I worked with a partner. Lucy. Lucy Fforde.”
“Why did you do it?” This came from Phelps, and Cholmondeley didn’t look too happy about it.
“Lucy wanted to kill because she was a woman scorned. I wanted to kill because I wanted to be remembered. We were a match made in heaven.”
Allman’s face was flushed and the veins in his arms were swollen and pushing at the surface of his skin. The wound in his shoulder had reopened slightly and blood was trickling down to his armpit. Cholmondeley and Phelps exchanged a nervous glance.
Cholmondeley found Marc Allman fascinating. He talked like a raconteur, but he also had a habit of going off on tangents or starting sentences with “the interesting thing about that is” before telling a story that could have bored paint.
At one point, about halfway through the interview when it was already too late either way, Cholmondeley held up a hand to interrupt him. “You do realise,” he said, “that we’re not going to offer you a deal. Don’t get me wrong, we appreciate your cooperation, but I’m still duty-bound to let you know how the law stands.”
Allman shrugged. “I’m not doing this for you,” he said. “This is for the benefit of Mr. Phelps over there. I’m not telling you this because I’m hoping for leniency or for time off my sentence. And I’m not doing it for the good of my soul, either. I don’t want deliverance. I have no remorse. All I want is to be remembered. That’s all any of us ever wants. It’s all we have. We’ll all die one day.”
