by Dane Cobain
Leipfold browsed to the app store and looked through it, then hit the download button and waited for the file to install itself. He wasn’t at home much, so he didn’t have his own Wi-Fi, but he got a decent signal and he had plenty of data left because he hardly ever used it. The app downloaded quickly and it only took a minute or two to sign himself up to it. Under occupation, he entered “sleuth.”
The app prompted him to upload a photo, and the only one he had was an old headshot from several years ago, when his hair was a little thicker and his face fuller. These days, he was looking positively gaunt, mainly because he didn’t eat much and because without the booze, the weight had dropped off of its own accord.
With the sign-up complete, Leipfold sighed and followed the instructions. It told him to swipe right if he was interested and left if he wasn’t. He checked out the first picture and read the brief bio that she’d provided. Louise, 33, likes gin, gym and running. Leipfold swiped left and moved on to the next one.
He swiped for a couple more minutes, overwhelmingly favouring the left. The experience unnerved him and made him feel self-conscious. He was uncomfortably aware of the artificial awkwardness and the way he was being forced to judge on looks alone. He looked back over his relationships—the last of which had run its course almost half a decade earlier—and looked for a common denominator. It was as he’d thought. He’d been attracted not by their looks but by their intelligence. He wanted a woman who kept him on his toes, a woman who challenged him and inspired him to follow his dream to the nth degree. He wanted a woman who was strong in her own right, who’d have her own career to deal with while he worked late shifts in the office or followed beautiful young women along the street so he could report back to their boyfriends about their fidelity or lack thereof. He didn’t want these women, these depressing women, and he was pretty sure that they wouldn’t want him either.
Leipfold sighed and thought about his non-existent love-life. Who am I kidding? he thought. I’m too old, too set in my ways. No one would ever put up with me.
But that didn’t stop him from scrolling through the photos. He saw Maile, and a little later he saw Kat. He saw a couple of other faces that he recognised but couldn’t put names to, as well as a couple of women he’d gone to school with thirty years earlier. He left-swiped the lot of them.
He swiped left a dozen more times, then swiped right, right, and left in quick succession. Then he stopped, moving his fingers away from the screen with a sharp intake of breath. He was looking at the face of another woman that he recognised.
He was looking at the face of Mary Cholmondeley.
Chapter Thirty:
Gardening Leave
IT WAS FRIDAY MORNING, and all across the city people were sleepy-eyed and tired and looking forward to getting the day out of the way so they could go out and get lashed at trendy cocktail bars. Leipfold got up early and went for a jog before heading back home to grab a shower and a change of clothes. Then he hopped on Camilla and headed out for the day.
At first, he followed the route towards the office, but it wasn’t his final destination. No, he had a meeting at the station with Jack Cholmondeley, who said he had something important he needed to tell him.
I’ve got something I need to tell him, too, Leipfold thought. But he wasn’t looking forward to it.
The roads were clear and the conditions were good, and the ride to the station was a rare pleasure, the kind of ride that he just had to enjoy. It reminded him why he’d fallen in love with Camilla in the first place. He reflected that perhaps Camilla was the only woman he’d ever love.
If that’s the case, so be it. At least I can rely on her.
Leipfold parked up at the station and padlocked the bike to one of the bike stands, a couple of spots up from a sparkling Harley which must have belonged to one of Cholmondeley’s officers. Then he walked inside the station and made his way up to Constable Cohen, who was working the desk. The man looked exhausted and Leipfold felt a momentary twinge of sympathy. Then he decided that it was more likely that he’d been out clubbing than that he’d worn himself thin on too much overtime.
“Oh, it’s you,” Cohen said. He flashed Leipfold a worn smile and gestured towards the waiting area. “The boss told me to page him when you arrived. Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. He’ll come down to get you.”
Leipfold nodded and took a seat, then grabbed a paperback from his jacket pocket and sat down to read and wait. Time seemed to slow down, and he was pretty sure he’d heard the same song twice through the tinny speakers that the top brass had installed in an effort to refresh the force’s image in the eyes of the general public. If anything, it had the opposite effect. They had it tuned to Magic FM and it was inflicting a subtle form of torture on the unsuspecting ears of their visitors. Leipfold felt another twinge of sympathy for Constable Cohen when he realised that the man had to put up with it every day when he worked on reception.
After an hour or so, Leipfold got up and asked Cohen for directions to the coffee machine. Half an hour after that, he finished his book and slid it back into his pocket. He walked up to Cohen, waited for a young woman with a baby strapped to her stomach to finish asking about a parking fine, then told the man to go and find out what had happened to Jack Cholmondeley.
Cohen nodded mutely and disappeared, leaving the reception desk in the care of another man that Leipfold had never met before. He tried to engage him in light conversation, but then the telephone rang and the man excused himself to answer it. Feeling awkward and conspicuous, Leipfold settled back down on his plastic chair to wait.
The constable returned a couple of minutes later, red-faced and sweaty and with his face torn up with worry. “I’m sorry, Mr. Leipfold,” he said. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Why?” Leipfold asked. “What have I done?”
“It’s out of my hands,” Cohen said. “Orders from above. If you’ve got a problem, you’ll have to talk to Superintendent Richards.”
“What about Cholmondeley? Where is he?”
Cohen’s cheeks flushed and he looked down at the floor. “He’s at home,” he said. “On gardening leave.”
* * *
It was raining by the time that Leipfold left the station, but he took good care of Camilla and her tyres were the best in the game. Even though the roads were damp and he broke the speed limit a couple of times without noticing, she handled the weather well and he pulled up outside the Cholmondeley house without a problem. He parked up and went to knock at the imposing Georgian-style doors.
The door was answered by Mary Cholmondeley, who looked somehow regal and resplendent despite the fact that she was wearing a dressing gown. She’d had her hair styled and her nails still bore the paint from a recent mani-pedi. She was wearing a touch of lipstick, and her face had been plastered with enough makeup to hide the crow’s eyes that had plagued her since her early forties.
“Oh,” she said, as though she’d opened the door to a sack of shit. Her nose wrinkled without her realising, her face contorting into the disdainful expression that only the upper class is able to replicate. “It’s you.”
“It’s me,” Leipfold replied. “I was hoping to see your husband.”
“I see,” Mary said. She paused for a moment. “Wait here. Let me see if I can find him.”
Mary Cholmondeley closed the door in Leipfold’s face and left him waiting on the pavement while she bustled around inside the house in search of her husband. Leipfold waited patiently, examining the collection of pink flamingos in the garden with an ironic sort of interest, slowly soaking through as the rain continued to hammer down. Cholmondeley came to the door a couple of minutes later and invited him inside, glaring at his wife and barking at her to make the two of them a cup of tea.
“James!” Cholmondeley exclaimed. “Good to see you. How can I help?”
“What happened,
Jack?” Leipfold asked. “I went to the station and you weren’t there. What’s up with that?”
Cholmondeley sighed and led Leipfold through to the living room. He offered him a seat on the low leather sofa, which Leipfold took. Cholmondeley sat across from him on the matching armchair.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“I’ve got time.”
Mary walked in and laid a tray on the coffee table before straightening up and walking back out without so much as a glance or a word. Cholmondeley poured them both a cup of tea and went to sit back down again.
“I’m being pensioned off the force, James,” Cholmondeley said. “Richards says I’m too old, too slow.”
“She has a point,” Leipfold murmured.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Continue.”
“It’s because of the Tower Hill Terror,” Cholmondeley explained, staring gloomily into his cup. “We took too long to catch him. I’ll be damned if I know why I’m to blame when she had four different teams on the case, but she needs a lamb to sacrifice and I’m the closest one to retirement. So she put me on gardening leave and asked me to tender my resignation on Monday morning.”
“I hate that woman,” Leipfold said.
“It’s not her fault,” Cholmondeley replied. “It’s politics. She’s a smart woman and she’s good at her job. It’s the right decision for everyone.”
Leipfold shook his head in response, more vigorously than the old man had. “Bullshit,” he said. “You are the police force. How are they going to function without you?”
“They’ll manage,” Cholmondeley said. “Truth is, the game’s changed. Maybe I’m not the best man for the job anymore.”
Cholmondeley’s demeanour changed. He grinned, suddenly, and looked Leipfold dead in the eye. “I’m on gardening leave,” he said. “So I guess I’m going to finally do the bloody garden. But what about you, old friend? How are you going to solve those cases of yours without a man on the inside?”
Leipfold grinned. “Easy, Jack,” he said. “I’ll stick to my clients and stop helping your boys to catch killers.”
Cholmondeley chuckled and murmured something under his breath. To Leipfold, it sounded like, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Acknowledgements
Like all of my books, The Tower Hill Terror couldn’t exist in its current form without my publishing team. Kudos as always to Pam Elise Harris (my editor and partner-in-crime) and Larch Gallagher (my kick-ass cover designer).
Thanks as always are due to my friends and family, and to Donna Woodings, Carl Woodings, Heather and Dave Clarke and Alan and Olga Woodings in particular for their constant support.
Shoutouts are also in order for my BookTube friends. You know who you are. Special thanks to Todd the Librarian, Mindy’s Book Journey, The Mae Cave, Time for Books, KitKatsCanRead, Binge Reader, Charles Heathcote, Anthony Andrews and The Book Lady for their kind words about my books. I hope they enjoy this one, too!
Finally, thanks to all of my readers, from the regular ones who read every book to the newbies who are reading my work for the first time. While I write for myself, to keep myself sane and to scratch my metaphorical itch, it’s the readers and their feedback that make it all worthwhile. You guys rock.
About the Author
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician with a passion for language and learning. When he’s not working on his next release, he can be found reading and reviewing books for his award-winning book blog, SocialBookshelves.com.
Join the Conversation
THANKS FOR JOINING JAMES, Jack, Maile and me for the second installment of the Leipfold series. Whether you loved the book or you hated it, I want to know what you think. Join the conversation by tweeting @DaneCobain or visiting me on Facebook, and be sure to keep your eyes peeled for more books in the series.
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Former.ly: The Rise and Fall of a Social Network (Literary Fiction) When Dan Roberts starts his new job at Former.ly, he has no idea what he’s getting into. The site deals in death. Its users share their innermost thoughts, which are stored privately until they die. Then, their posts are shared with the world, often with unexpected consequences.
Come On Up to the House (Horror) This horror novella and accompanying screenplay tells the story of Darran Jersey, a troubled teenager who moves into a house that’s inhabited by the malevolent spirit of his predecessor.
Driven (Detective) A car strikes in the middle of the night and a young actress lies dead in the road. The police force thinks it’s an accident, but Maile and Leipfold aren’t so sure. Putting their differences aside and brought together by a shared love of crosswords and busting bad guys, Maile and Leipfold investigate. But not all is as it seems, as they soon find out to their peril...
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