by Dane Cobain
“Someone will find out what happened,” Maile said. “They’re probably on the way here right now. What made you choose this place? It’s one of the first places they’ll look.”
“It’s the only place I had left,” Townsend replied. “And I know this basement like the back of my hand. Only a couple of other people know their way down here, and I’ll be gone before they ever think to check.”
“You think Jack Cholmondeley and his team don’t know how to get hold of the building’s schematics?” Maile asked.
“They can do that?” Townsend asked. He sounded uncertain, off balance for the first time since he’d taken her and brought her down there with a rag of chloroform over her mouth. The theatre was theoretically off limits after hours, but Townsend had taken the liberty of making a copy of the key back when Driven was running.
“I know they will,” Maile said, although she was bluffing. “Let’s face it, Townsend. That wasn’t your only mistake.”
“Damn it,” he shouted. His voice echoed again, and Maile got a fuller sense of where she was. She hadn’t seen the theatre’s cellars during her last visit, but she could picture the echoing space that she found herself in and could remember the floors above her. She wondered if anyone could hear her from Jermyn Street, whether she could call for help from the shoppers at the Tesco Express or the late-night pedestrians whose feet beat the streets of the capital city. But she decided against it. She didn’t need to, if Townsend was going to do the work for her.
She could hear his feet pacing back and forth, and she could smell the dust as he disturbed it and sent it whirling through the air in smoky eddies.
“I just wanted what was best for the girls,” he said, still walking in little circles like a chicken in the yard. “You have to believe me.”
“Let me go,” Maile said. “Just let me go and get out of here. Run before they find you. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
Townsend paused for a moment, collecting himself. Then he started moving again. Maile sensed his presence at the same time as she felt his breath on her neck. She flinched and tensed herself, but Townsend meant no mischief. Instead, he reached behind her head and untied the blindfold, then snatched it aside and tossed it to the floor.
Maile closed her eyes instinctively, trying to protect herself from the onslaught of light, but the theatre’s basement was dimly lit. When she opened them, she found that she could see. They were in a circular room with a boiler in it, and Maile was tied to a chair with her hands behind her back. Townsend was on the other side of the room, watching her curiously. He was unshaven and unkempt, looking more like a homeless man than a thespian.
“I loved all three of them,” he said. “And then Donna died. It was a confusing time, but I swear I had nothing to do with it.”
Maile nodded but kept her mouth shut. She wanted to hear what he had to say.
“Then Marie disappeared and Jayne came to see me. She told me everything. How she’d learned the truth about Marie, and how Marie killed Donna with Bateman’s car. How she’d confronted her friend and the fight turned physical. And how she pushed Marie down the stairs and left her to die.”
“And you knew all this?” Maile asked.
“Of course,” Townsend replied. “Each of those girls told me everything, and I’ve never known any of them to lie. So when Jayne told me what had happened, I knew I had to protect her.”
“By kidnapping me?”
“It was the only thing I could think of,” Townsend said.
“I don’t get it,” Maile replied. “If you loved Marie, why would you try to protect her killer? Weren’t you angry?”
“I was at first,” he admitted. “But she said it was an accident. And she was all I had left. We were going to try to move past it. We were going to start a new life.”
“And then you kidnapped me.”
“Exactly,” Townsend said. He paused for a moment and took stock of his surroundings. “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”
“Yeah,” Maile replied. “You’re in trouble. Just let me go and get the hell out of here. Fly away somewhere, go someplace where no one will know you. Anywhere that isn’t here.”
Townsend dragged a rickety plastic chair across from one of the corners and set it down, then dropped himself delicately into it. Maile noticed – she couldn’t help it – that it was the same type of chair that they kept in the office. She was willing to bet it was identical right down to the model and manufacturer. While Townsend spoke, he seemed to sink further and further into the chair, like a cat on the back of a sofa.
“Perhaps you’re right, Miss O’Hara,” he said. “I’ve been a fool, an idiot.”
“You’ve acted like a character,” Maile said. “Not like a human being. You need to remember what you are, Mr. Townsend.”
“You’re right,” he repeated. “Of course, you’re right.”
Then he got up and walked towards the exit. Maile, who was still tied to the chair with her hands behind her back, followed him with her eyes. She struggled pointedly with her bonds.
“Well,” Townsend said, “so long.”
“Wait!” Maile shouted, as his back retreated through the doorway. “Aren’t you going to untie me? You can’t just leave me to die down here.”
Townsend paused on the edge of Maile’s line of sight, just on the other side of the doorway. His hand was wrapped around the doorframe. He glanced back at her. She was scowling in his direction and struggling against the bonds that held her to the chair.
“I’m sorry,” Townsend said. “I really am. But I can’t risk you coming after me. Just hang tight. If you’re right about what you said, they’ll find you. Good luck.”
Maile finally let it all out when he hit the light switch and slammed the door behind him. She could hear the click of a key in the lock, and it hit her head like the sound of breaking glass or a baby’s howl. She screamed and screamed and screamed, and the darkness pressed in around her.
* * *
Maile had lost track of time, and she had no idea how long she’d been beneath the floors of the theatre. The darkness was oppressive, cloying like a bad smell, and the only sound that she could hear was her own laboured breathing.
She was alone, alone beneath the city.
After what felt like half a lifetime, she managed to turn backwards on the chair, which toppled over and splintered when she hit the floor. She worked her hands against the wood, wincing every now and then as it missed the rope and pricked her wrist, and was able to fray it enough to weaken it. After that, she worked the muscles in her arms, tugging at the rope like a Christmas cracker until it popped and she was able to release herself.
She stood up and stretched, then looked keenly around the room. The darkness was less complete than it had been with the blindfold on, and there was just enough residual light for her to make out the light switch. She turned it on and looked around the room, but it had clearly been out of use for some time and there was nothing that might be useful.
Worse still, the door was locked. If Leipfold had been there, he might have been able to jimmy the lock with a hairpin, but Maile wasn’t that kind of girl. If the lock had been computerised – and if she still had her mobile phone and an active connection to the internet – then she might have made it out. As it was, she had no hope.
Well, she thought, sullenly, I do have one hope.
She waited, and then she waited some more. When she finally heard the voices, she thought she was hallucinating. They were shouting her name from a long way away, from the bottom of a well for all she could tell. But she summoned up a deep breath of air and bellowed, “Help!” at the top of her lungs, then summoned up another and shouted again.
The voices grew closer, and Maile kept on calling to guide them. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed an ashtray, so dry that it hurt to move her tongue around. The voices stopped o
utside the door and asked what her name was as they tried to open it. When that failed, they started battering against it with some sort of heavy metal rod.
Meanwhile, Maile shouted her name – using the NATO phonetic alphabet – before taking another deep breath and shouting something else.
It was, “Somebody call James Leipfold.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Sudden Hubbub
WHEN LEIPFOLD LEFT, Groves and Cholmondeley were calling for a backup car to transport Thompson and Lipton to the station. Normally, Leipfold would have helped them, but he wanted to see Maile. He needed to know she was safe.
As he ran down the stairs outside his office and through the front door of the building, his hands went automatically to his pockets. But the keys to his bike were no longer there. Greg Bateman had them. Leipfold paused on the threshold, did a quick calculation in his head to figure out whether taking the tube would be quicker and then arrived at a conclusion. Townsend’s theatre was just over a mile away, so he set off on foot and made the journey from door to door in about the same amount of time it took him to finish a crossword.
Jermyn Street was a hive of activity. Two police vans and a half-dozen cars were parked haphazardly, like they’d pulled up in a hurry and emptied out without bothering to pay for a permit. Cholmondeley’s team ignored him at first, but then there was a scurry of movement.
Sergeant Gary Mogford detached himself from the throng and wandered over to meet Leipfold. He was in uniform, which was unusual, but then he was used to sitting behind a desk or raising his voice in a crowded briefing room. Mogford was out of his natural habitat, and it showed in his worried face.
“Leipfold,” Mogford grunted, nodding his head but refusing to shake the man’s hand. “I thought you might show up.”
“Cholmondeley said you found her.”
“Oh, we found her all right.” Mogford grinned and glanced over his shoulder at the entrance where his colleagues were gathering as their number swelled. “Don’t worry. She’ll be fine.”
“Let me guess,” Leipfold said. “She was in the changing room or locked up backstage somewhere.”
“Close,” Mogford replied. “She was in the boiler room. He left her there to die. It’s a good job we found her.”
“Yeah,” Leipfold murmured. “It is. And it’s a good job I told you where to look. Can I see her?”
“Soon,” Mogford said. “We need to clear the scene and ask her a couple of questions. Then you can accompany us back to the station. The boss wants another word with you, too.”
“Let me see my assistant. Then I’ll help in any way I can.”
“We’re working on it,” Mogford said. “But she—”
There was a sudden hubbub just inside the theatre, and the two men turned to look as the noise intensified and a half-dozen cops emerged through the doorway with Maile in tow. She looked pale but unhurt, her black clothes looking grey beneath the streetlights. Leipfold realised they looked grey because they were grey. She’d been coated in a thin film of cobwebs and dust, deep beneath the bowels of the building. But she still looked like an angel of death, at least until she saw Leipfold. Then her whole face lit up and she started to run towards him. She’d only managed a couple of steps before she was yanked back by one of Mogford’s cops.
“Calm down, love,” the policewoman said. “Let me get a paramedic to check you over. You can talk to your friend in a minute.”
Leipfold guessed it was Constable Yates, who he’d never met before but who he’d heard about from Jack Cholmondeley. She was a former army cadet, which was why Leipfold remembered her. He thought she looked more like a PR exec or an air hostess. In her uniform, she probably turned the eyes of the crooks she helped to collar, but Leipfold thought that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. She had an allergy bracelet across one of her wrists, and her only discerning feature was a small mole on her right cheek. Outside the Jermyn Street Theatre, she was working with a quiet self-confidence, and Leipfold thought he wouldn’t be surprised if he saw her again sometime, working undercover in a drug sting at the Rose & Crown.
“Boss!” Maile shouted, struggling against the cops who were restraining her. “It was Tom Townsend!”
“I know,” Leipfold replied, his voice shaking with a hint of emotion. It was relief and Maile knew it, and she also knew that Jack Cholmondeley was the only other person who would have noticed. It was a tiny tremor, but it was there.
“I told you not to trust him!” Maile shouted. Her words tore at Leipfold’s heartstrings, but she was still smiling and so he allowed himself a flash of hope.
Maybe she’ll be all right after all, he thought. As long as that bastard didn’t hurt her.
Leipfold knew that he’d never forgive himself if Maile had come to any harm. But he also thought he knew Tom Townsend. And with Eleanor Thompson and Jayne Lipton behind bars, he could make catching Townsend his top priority.
He allowed himself a smile. Maile was still shouting information across at him as the paramedics started to give her the once over, but Leipfold barely heard her.
He was busy thinking about Tom Townsend.
Chapter Thirty: To the Future
LATER THAT NIGHT at the police station, Leipfold and Maile sat in the waiting room. They’d both been interviewed – Maile had been interviewed twice – but neither had been ordered to stay behind. They were free to leave whenever they wanted, but they wanted to be at the station. That way, they could keep an eye on developments, and neither had any urge to go back home. Especially with Tom Townsend still out there.
Leipfold felt awkward, out of place. He leaned over towards Maile and murmured, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Seriously. I mean, I wasn’t in any danger.”
“How’d you figure that, then?”
“Come on,” Maile replied. “It was Tom Townsend. He’s all front. After all, he’s a frickin’ thespian. He tried to play us, that’s all. Said he was driven to it.”
“Driven to it?” Leipfold murmured. “By whom?”
“No one says ‘whom’ anymore.” Maile looked over at him and laughed when she saw his expression. “That goes right next to ‘nerd’ in the list of words that make you sound old.”
“Whom is used with a preposition,” Leipfold said. “I’m right and you’re wrong.”
“Whatever,” Maile said. “Can we get back to Tom Townsend? He said he was driven to desperation, boss. All he ever wanted was to be a polyamorous knobhead, but when you’re trying to keep three women happy, something’s bound to go wrong.”
“Polyamorous knobhead or not,” Leipfold said, “he didn’t kill anyone.”
“I never said he did,” Maile replied. “He told me he knew that one of the girls was behind Donna’s death, but he didn’t know which one. Then, when Marie died, he figured it must’ve been Jayne Lipton. Crazy thing is, he loved them all, if you can call it that. So he wanted to take the fall for it to protect her. And then, when that didn’t work, he thought if he kidnapped me, it’d scare you off the case. Only it didn’t work out like that.”
“Sure didn’t,” Leipfold said. His eyes flashed and for a second, they weren’t their usual, dull grey but a bright and brilliant blue.
“Anyway,” Maile continued, “I figured it was just a gesture, just Townsend being theatric. He didn’t even bother to hide his face. At first, I thought it was like something out of a movie, where if they hide their face then it means they don’t want to kill you. But once I figured out where his head was, I knew he wasn’t a threat. I don’t think he realised he was in the wrong. None of this is really real to him.”
“It will be,” Leipfold said. “Especially when I get hold of him. I already hit him once. Next time, I might not be as friendly.”
“You hit him? When?”
Leipfold sighed. “After he posted that bogus review on the internet,” h
e explained. “I might not be a cop, but I can figure things out when I have to. Stupid little so-and-so was trying to hide out with his arty friends, so I went on over and found him cowering behind a stack of pottery.”
“And you hit him?”
“He tried to hit me first,” Leipfold protested. “And besides, I needed to get through to him. I told him to sort his life out and to stop pestering people from behind a computer screen.”
“I guess he listened,” Maile replied. “He came out from behind the screen, all right. How did you know he’d taken me?”
“He left a message,” Leipfold said. “Back at the office. I figured it was him from the start. Besides, you told me he attacked you. Whether that’s true or not, it stuck in my head and led me to him. I knew Townsend wouldn’t take you back to his warehouse space, and he could hardly hide you at his mother’s house. Besides…”
“Besides what?” Maile asked.
“It had to be Townsend or Bateman,” Leipfold explained, the hint of a smile in his eyes. “They’re the only ones who could overpower you.”
Maile nodded. “I like your thinking, boss. So where is he now?”
Leipfold glanced gloomily at his watch. “Well,” he said, “if I were Tom Townsend, I guess I’d know the game was up. There’d be nothing for it. I’d run the hell away.”
* * *
A grim young man with a scowl that could melt butter was sitting alone at a bar in Gatwick Airport. He paid in cash and ordered two pints and a full English, which he gobbled down with brown sauce while keeping one eye on the departures board.
He’d booked three tickets, each to a different destination, just to be on the safe side. But he wasn’t worried. He was the kind of man, with his sallow face and his short brown hair, who could get lost in a crowd. And he had it all planned out. His first stop was Schiphol in Amsterdam, the great European hub where he could hop across the globe or hitch a ride across mainland Europe. He was travelling under his real name, of course. He just had to hope that his passport wasn’t flagged, but there hadn’t been any problems so far. As he sat there, drinking Peroni at 8:55 in the morning, he was starting to wonder if his luck was changing.
