Dane Cobain's Blog, page 13

Flash!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on some flash fiction on my cigarette breaks. I already tend to write a poem a day by doing the same thing, and it seemed like a great idea to work on some flash fiction of my own after I read someone else’s collection.

The great thing about doing this is that it doesn’t take a major alteration to my schedule and if I just keep on doing it, I’ll have enough to pull together a book in a couple of years. But of course, I’m impatient – and so I thought I’d go ahead and share a few of them right now. Check it out!

 

Flash

 

#1

IT TOOK HIM FORTY YEARS, but Avinash finally quit smoking overnight, with no nicotine gum, e-cigs or patches required.

It was little consolation to his family as they lowered the coffin into the ground.

 

#2

THE FIRST SUSPECT tried to bite off his fingertips. But his fingertips grew back and he got sent down for it.

The second suspect tried to remove them using the juice from a pineapple. But his fingertips grew back and he got sent down for it.

The third suspect used lye to burn the flesh away and was carried away in the back of an ambulance. But his fingertips grew back and he got sent down for it.

The fourth suspect used a skin graft. His fingerprints didn’t grow back and he got away with it.

 

 

#3

THE WORLD ENDED on a Tuesday. But we were all so busy working we didn’t notice.

 

#4

SHE LOST the game of life.

 

#5

ONE HEART ATTACK, two heart attacks, three heart attacks, four. Five heart attacks, six heart attacks, seven heart attacks, floor. But then people do insist on ignoring the warning signs. They should’ve taken the turn when they had a chance.

 

#6

HER LIFE was like a bad book that never ended. And then one day it ended and suddenly it didn’t seem too bad after all.

 

#7

“I’M SORRY, SIR,” the cashier said. “Didn’t you hear the news? The economy tanked. Money’s worth less than the paper it’s printed on.”

The man winced. “Is it okay if I pay by cheque?” he asked.

 

#8

THE NEIGHBOURS’ CAT came to Dan’s window every night. He liked to tap at the glass with his claws and paws and to meow, meow, meow. Dan had read somewhere that cats don’t meow to each other. They only meow at humans.

One night, the cat didn’t arrive. The following morning, he learned that his neighbours had moved away – and that they’d taken their cat with them.

The following night, the cat was back again as though nothing had happened.

 

#9

WHEN HE PASSED THE EVENT HORIZON, there was no turning back. The astronaut ceased to exist, and from the outside it looked as though he’d been stretched and elongated as the light was sucked into the ether.

For the astronaut, as he headed towards the singularity, a point of infinite mass in an infinitely small section of the cosmos, the laws of physics no longer applied. The future stretched out ahead of him – forever.

 

 

#10

JON WAS ON THE UNDERGROUND when he heard the announcement: “Would Inspector Sands please report to the operations room immediately?”

No one else batted an eyelid, but Jon had once worked as a fluffer beneath the city. He remembered those less than halcyon days in a post-traumatic fever of fire and death every time he closed his eyes.

The announcement rang out again: “Would Inspector Sands please report to the operations room immediately?”

Jon got the hell out of dodge before it was too late. The rest of the commuters walked on to an uncertain future.

 

Flash

 

Thanks, as always, for stopping by, and be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter for further updates. You can also click here to check out my books on Amazon. I’ll see you soon!

New Music Video: Sober

Hi, folks! I’ve got something a little bit different today. I’ve been wanting to shoot a music video for one of my songs for some time now, but life has a habit of getting in the way and so it took me a while to get around to it.

Still, I’ve been buying more filming gear of late, so when my new green screen arrived I thought it’d be fun to set it up and to have a stab at a music video. So I did.

 

 

You can check out the music video in the player above or you can click here to go and check it out on YouTube. While  you’re at it, be sure to subscribe for more videos as I may well have a few more of these up my sleeve – if I can be bothered.

Thanks, as always, for visiting and be sure to check out my first three albums – Nocturne, Sketches and Discordia – on Spotify, Soundcloud and iTunes. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter for further updates. I’ll see you soon!

Introducing Five Bookish Facts!

Hi, folks! Just a quick note to say that I’ve launched a new YouTube channel called Five Bookish Facts – which is pretty self-explanatory, when you think about it.

Basically, I plan to release a new video every Wednesday in which I’ll list five bookish facts about a book, an author, a publisher, a genre or a series. There’s potential for the concept to be taken in all sorts of areas.

 

 

At the moment, I’ve only filmed the pilot episode, which is about Northern Lights/The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. That said, I’ll be continuing in the coming weeks and even taking suggestions for books that you’d like to see.

So be sure to head over to Five Bookish Facts on YouTube and to give the channel a subscribe. It all helps, and I’m looking forward to hearing (and learning from) your feedback! I’ll see you soon.

Former.ly is now available on Netgalley!

Hi, folks! Just a quick update today to let you know that Former.ly is now available on Netgalley, so if you’re signed up to the service then you can head in there and grab yourself a free e-copy. It’s all set up so that you should be able to download it without prior approval.

You can find out more by clicking this link to check it out over on Netgalley. How exciting!

 

 

Remember to leave a short review if you do get around to reading it, and be sure to check out the Former.ly listing on Amazon or to visit my author page for further information!

In the meantime, thanks a lot for stopping by and be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter for further updates! I’ll see you soon.

New Song: You and Me

Hi, folks! Today, I’m just sharing a quick update to let you know about a new song that I wrote. It’s called ‘You and Me’ and it’s just something a little fun and sweet about nothing in particular – but also about my girlfriend and my cat.

You can click here to listen to the new song or you can check it out in the player below. If I continue to enjoy it, I’ll probably record it at some point and share a proper recording.

 

 

In the meantime, thanks as always for stopping by and be sure to check out my first three albums – Nocturne, Sketches and Discordia – on iTunes and Spotify.

You can also follow me on Soundcloud for more music or you can find me on Facebook and Twitter for further news. I’ll see you soon!

Insurance

Note: Today, I’m continuing with my little series of Leipfold short stories. I’ve written a bunch of these over the last few months and so I thought I’d share a few – although I must warn you, these are first drafts and should be treated as such. In this piece, Leipfold investigates a burglary at the office downstairs.

 

THERE HAD BEEN A BURGLARY.

Leipfold knew it had happened as soon as he opened the front door to the building. The building on Balcolmbe Street was a relic of the Victorian era, with long corridors and tall ceilings. The central hallway led to a downstairs bathroom and a graphic design company – Leipfold often joked that both were full of shit – and if you followed it round then it snaked up a flight of stairs to Leipfold’s office on the first floor.

The first clue was the stack of mail in front of the door – or rather the lack thereof. They were stacked instead in the receptacle beside the door, and there were letters that hadn’t been there when he’d left on Friday night. It was rare – very rare – for the graphic designers to come in over the weekend, and Leipfold hadn’t touched them. It could have been the landlord perhaps, but he usually let himself into the offices and took the mail with him, and he always gave a couple of days’ notice.

Besides, there were scuff marks in the doorframe that suggested a tool had been used, an oily footprint on the carpet and a general bad vibe in the air that reminded him of when he was in the army and a shout rang out about a sniper. Something had happened and he wanted to know what.

He walked cautiously up the stairs, bracing himself for fight or flight if he came across someone. He wished he had a weapon, but all he had were the two built-in weapons that he’d been born with. The doorway to the office was closed, but it was just on the latch and not the main lock, which Leipfold checked religiously every time he left the place. That was enough to prove that someone had been in there – but if they had, they hadn’t forced the door like they did downstairs. They’d either used a key or picked the lock – but either way, they’d dodged the brute force approach and showed a little intelligence.

It was hard to tell whether anything was missing. Leipfold cast his mind back to how he’d left it, reproducing it in his head in high definition, but everything looked the same as it had when he’d left it. But Leipfold knew that that meant nothing – they could have copied down some information or booby-trapped the place without leaving any noticeable traces.

That meant that the rest of his day was a write-off. He had to inch his way around the office, examining every part of the office for something unusual. He expected a bomb to go off at any moment, or to discover that someone had stolen his computer. But neither happened, and it was mostly a wasted day. He only one thing out of the ordinary.

One of his case files was missing. The file for a man called Bear that he hadn’t seen since he’d been locked up behind bars with him in Reading Jail.

Leipfold finished checking the office, but there was nothing else for him to learn. Once he was satisfied, he picked up the phone on his desk and placed a call to Jack Cholmondeley at the Old Vic, one of the city’s most prestigious and underfunded institutions. Leipfold told him all about the break-in – as well as what had been taken – and then asked the copper what he was going to do about it.

“Well,” Cholmondeley said, “I can take a look at it. I mean, I’ll investigate. Sounds to me like there’s someone who needs taking off the street. But to be honest, James, you haven’t given us much to go on. Do you have any idea who might be behind it?”

“None whatsoever,” Leipfold replied. “Isn’t it your job to find that out?”

“Listen, friend, I’d love to help,” Cholmondeley said. “You know I’d love to help. But I haven’t got the men to spare. I’ll need something concrete. A proper lead.”

“Hmm.” Leipfold paused for a moment, mulling it over. “It could have been Bear, I guess. But why? And why now?”

Cholmondeley shrugged.

“Okay,” Leipfold said. “I’ll look into it and see what I can find out. If I get anything concrete, I’ll bring it to you.”

“Good lad,” Cholmondeley replied. “If I were you, I’d start with your landlord. See if he can help.”

“Oh no,” Leipfold groaned. “I was afraid it might come to this.”

 

***

 

Leipfold’s landlord was a useless old man who’d retired young and lived a life of relative comfort in one of his properties. He paid his way with the money he made from his tenants, and so he had a habit of cutting corners as a result of it. If he could fix the problem himself, he would do – and if he couldn’t, he’d leave it until it could no longer be ignored.

He wasn’t very receptive. Leipfold reported the break in for the second time, but the old man was unhelpful at best.

“What do you want from me?” the landlord asked.

“Good question,” Leipfold replied. “I want you to install some security measures. CCTV cameras, they’re all the rage these days. Some deadlocks for the doors. Maybe a burglar alarm.”

“I can’t afford that,” the landlord said. He always had been a man of few words.

“Isn’t it your duty as the property’s owner?”

“To a certain extent,” the landlord replied. “I comply with the law. And if you’re unhappy with the current situation, you’re free to leave.”

“Can you at least fix my buzzer?”

“I’ll add it to my list,” the man said, which is secret code amongst all landlords meaning ‘I’m never going to do it’.

“What about if I foot the bill for the work?”

“If that’s what you want,” the landlord said, “then it’s fine by me. But you won’t be getting a penny from me. You’ve already got me acting as your doorman.”

“What do you mean?” Leipfold asked.

“That chap, that friend of yours,” he said. “The one I let in last night.”

“Woah,” Leipfold said. “Slow down. Who are you talking about?”

“That well-spoken chap you sent down to your office,” the landlord said. “It must have been Saturday, maybe Sunday. Early afternoon.”

“What did he look like?”

“It’s hard to say,” the landlord said.

Leipfold turned to a clean page in his notebook and grabbed a pencil. “I’m going to try to draw him,” Leipfold said. “But I need you to guide my pencil. Let’s start with the shape of his head.”

It took the best part of twenty minutes, and Leipfold could sense the man getting more and more irate as the time passed. But by the end of it, they had a reasonable interpretation of what the man had looked like, and Leipfold sense that it was the best he was likely to get.

The depressing thing, Leipfold thought, as he started to work his way around the estate, is how I could tell the landlord knew something. I don’t have any friends.

Leipfold was on a fool’s errand. He’d made it his mission to take the drawing around every business in a one-mile radius of the office, hoping against hope that someone would recognise his poorly rendered photofit of the man who’d been inside his office. Unsurprisingly, the search was long, tedious and mostly unsuccessful. He was just about to give up when he got a match from the girl at Starbucks.

“Yeah,” she said, her eyes lit up with excitement. “I remember this guy. He was in here over the weekend. Came in for a latte.”

“What kind of time are we talking?”

“Must have been Saturday afternoon,” she replied. “Maybe 3 PM. Just after the lunchtime rush.”

“Sounds about right,” Leipfold murmured.

“Who is this guy?”

“Oh,” Leipfold said. “Just some scumbag.”

“This is exciting,” the barista said. “It’s just like I’m in a movie.”

“Yeah,” Leipfold said. “Something like that. Is there anything you can tell me about him? I’m trying to find him.”

“Hmm,” the woman replied. She thought about it for a moment. “He looked rough and ready, you know the type. Sat in the corner so he could keep an eye on the rest of the customers. You get those guys every now and then. You just need to keep your head down and wait until they leave. This guy, though. He was on another level. The worst part of it was his accent. Eastern European, Russian maybe. It was hard to tell, but whatever it was, it was terrifying. Scared the shit out of me, let me tell you.”

“Wonderful,” Leipfold said. “I love scary people. Can you do me a favour?”

“What’s that then?”

“Call me,” Leipfold said, scribbling down the office’s line on a sheet of paper in his notebook and handing it over to her. “If he comes back in, I want to know. I need to catch this guy in the act.”

“What’s it worth?” the woman asked. Leipfold sighed and gave her a few notes from his wallet. Then he bought himself a coffee and went about his business.

His next stop was The Tribune’s office. He’d tried to book an appointment with Jan Evans, the paper’s editor, but she’d palmed him off and hooked him up with a new reporter called Phelps instead.

“Make it quick,” Phelps said, and so Leipfold did his best. He told the newspaperman about the break-in at his office, as well as how his useless landlord had failed to act on it. He also shared his suspicions that it was a case of organised crime and made a public pledge that he wouldn’t rest until he tracked the man down. He also shared his sketch with the man and asked him if they’d be able to run it in the next issue of the paper.

“There’s no story in it,” the man said. “Our readers won’t care. You could run it as an advertisement, I suppose.”

Leipfold shrugged. “Whatever it takes,” he said. “And I need you to mention something else. I need you to bait the hook.”

“How’s that, then?”

“Some of my notes were stolen,” Leipfold said. “And we need to mention it. They were important notes on a case I’ve been investigating and I have reason to suspect that they’re the cause of the crime. Someone was looking for them, and they think that they’ve destroyed my entire case. I need them to know that they haven’t.”

 

***

 

Leipfold started sleeping in the office. He wondered whether he was losing his mind. For the first time since his days on the bottle, his mind felt clouded and almost unusable. It felt like he’s switched heads with an idiot, and he didn’t like it.

He started to wonder whether it was all in his head. Perhaps there hadn’t been a break-in after all, or maybe they’d targeted the graphic design company downstairs. Besides, what was it that the girl in the coffee shop had said? Something about an accent? Leipfold had pissed a lot of people off in his career, but they were all from Brixton and Brentford instead of Belarus. Maybe it was all just a wild goose chase. Perhaps he was searching for an innocent man, whose only crime had been to speak a strange accent in the British capital. Maybe the file hadn’t been stolen. Maybe he’d simply mislaid it.

But then he dismissed those thoughts as the rumblings of an impatient mind and continued to do what he did best.

A couple of days later, when Leipfold was in the middle of a meeting with one of his clients, the telephone rang. He excused himself for a moment and picked it up, then rattled off some instructions to whoever was on the other end of the line.

“Something’s come up,” he said, ushering the clients out of the office as quickly as he could. “I’m sorry. I’ll call you just as soon as I can to reschedule.”

“You’d better,” one of the clients said, but Leipfold didn’t hear them. He was already sprinting down the street towards the coffee shop, where the man with the bad accent was in the process of ordering another latte.

By the time that Leipfold got there, the man was nowhere to be found, but the barista who called him was able to point him in the right direction. He raced down the street until he hit the T-junction, then chose a direction at random and continued to jog down it. Surely, Leipfold reasoned, he can’t have gone far with a hot cup of coffee in his hands.

But there was no sign of the man, and he returned to the coffee shop with a racing heart and an overwhelming sense of disappointment.

That night, when Leipfold was asleep in the office, he was awoken by the tinkle of glass. It came from the hallway – out somewhere on the ground floor near the graphic designers’ office. He pulled himself groggily to his feet and reached out for the two-by-four he kept beneath his desk. With the wood in hand, he opened the door as quietly as he could and then snuck out onto the landing.

There was definitely someone down there. Leipfold could hear movement, but he couldn’t make anything out in the darkness. He continued to work his way down the steps, skipping the third from the top because it squeaked when you put too much pressure on it. He made it to the bottom and then stood there in the darkness. The air felt heavy, invasive.

And then there was movement, and Leipfold swung the wood through the air and made contact. A bone crunched as the wood made impact and a voice cried out in the darkness. Leipfold kicked out at the man and felt his foot connect with skull, then hobbled over to the lights and turned the switch on. The light hit his eyes and blinded him momentarily, but the guy on the floor faced the same disadvantage – and he had a minor concussion to contend with, too.

When his eyes adjusted, Leipfold took a good look at him. He was close enough to the sketch to be a match, but he was different enough so that Leipfold hadn’t spotted the resemblance until the man was lying in a crumpled heap in his hallway.

“Cor,” Leipfold said. “I know you. You’re the spitting image of old Bear. He must be your father.”

“I’m not saying nothin’,” the man said. His voice was muffled by the swelling that had already started to kick in, and he spat out a couple of teeth at the end of the sentence.

“Ah,” Leipfold said. “A double negative. So you are saying something?”

“Forget about it.”

“Fine by me,” Leipfold said. “Dear me, what was the plan? Does your father know you’re here?”

“You can’t do this,” Bear Jr. replied. “You’re not a copper.”

“No, I’m not.” Leipfold smiled unsettlingly and leaned in a little closer. “But I can call one.”

 

***

 

It was a couple of weeks after Leipfold’s citizen’s arrest, and life was pretty much back to normal. He caught up with Cholmondeley over a soft drink in the Rose and Crown. Cedric didn’t seem best pleased that Leipfold had brought a policeman into his booze, especially because they were both drinking soft drinks instead of beers and spirits. Besides, it was bad for business.

But Leipfold and Cholmondeley continued their conversation in blissful ignorance. If they felt the eyes of the landlord upon them, they didn’t show it.

“So what’s the story?” Cholmondeley asked.

“I want to press charges,” Leipfold replied. “I want that kid behind bars where he belongs, just like his father.”

“Oh,” Cholmondeley said. “Haven’t you heard? Bear’s up for appeal. He might be getting out.”

“We’ll see about that,” Leipfold replied. “Here, I want you to take this.” He slid a plain-looking envelope across the table to Jack Cholmondeley. “Take it with you and read it later.”

“What is it?”

Leipfold grinned. “It’s my notes on Bear. I always knew they’d come in handy one day. This is what the kid was after. It should be good enough to put the kibosh on any chance of appeal that he has. It might be enough to further prosecute.”

Cholmondeley grinned and snatched the envelope away. “You reckon?” he said.

Leipfold nodded. “There’s some serious shit in there,” he said. “Don’t read it on an empty stomach.”

Corruption

Note: This is another in the series of Leipfold short stories that I’ve been writing about the detective’s past. This one features a younger Jack Cholmondeley, too! Let’s go.

 

CHOLMONDELEY WAS WORRIED.

There had been accusations of corruption in the ranks, and it was his job to look into it. Unfortunately, he had to carry out an investigation without attracting attention. His superiors would have to find out at some point, but he had no desire to bring them into it until he had some proof.

“Besides,” Cholmondeley said. “I don’t know how deep the corruption goes. For all I know, it goes all of the way to the top.”

“I see,” Leipfold replied. The two of them were sitting in his office again, drinking coffee from the I LOVE LONDON mugs that Leipfold had bought from a shady guy in the back of the Rose and Crown. Leipfold hadn’t told Cholmondeley that he was in possession of stolen property, and Cholmondeley hadn’t asked.

“So what do you think?” Cholmondeley asked. “Can you help me?”

“I can,” Leipfold said, “but it’ll cost you. Some of us have to make a living.”

“I can pay,” Cholmondeley said. “But it’ll have to come out of my savings. There’s no way I’m putting you on the books back at the station. No offence.”

“None taken,” Leipfold said. “I guess I’m still just an ex-con in your eyes.”

“Not in my eyes,” Cholmondeley said. “But in the eyes of the law, perhaps. You’ve served your time. Let’s hope you don’t reoffend.”

“How could I?” Leipfold asked. He looked sad, remorseful. “I don’t drink anymore. I don’t drive, come to think of it.”

“Perhaps you should get yourself a motorbike,” Cholmondeley suggested. Leipfold’s eyes lit up as he considered the idea. Then they died again when he thought about how much it would cost to buy and run a vehicle.

“All right,” Leipfold said, after giving the matter some thought. “I’ll help you, as much as I can at least. I’ll need a list of names, of course. Everything you can tell me about the people that you suspect.”

“Way ahead of you.” Cholmondeley reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. He opened it up and reached inside, then withdrew a half-dozen sheets of paper that were covered with handwritten notes. “Here you go, here’s a list that I worked on. Start at the top and work your way down.”

“Gary Mogford,” Leipfold read, glancing over Cholmondeley’s notes for the first cop on the list. “Who’s he?”

“A new recruit,” Cholmondeley explained. “Only been with us for a couple of months. Everyone loves him, but I’ve been getting a bad vibe from him. I don’t think everything is as it seems.”

“All right then,” Leipfold said. “Just leave it with me.”

Leipfold took Cholmondeley through the motions, printed off a copy of his standard agreement and then got the policeman to sign it. Then he showed him to the door and promised that he’d be in touch.

The first stage of the investigation was to secure a little help. The only problem with that was that money was scarce, so Leipfold took some inspiration from Sherlock Holmes and paid some of the local kids a few quid to carry out some surveillance. They should have been in school, but Leipfold reasoned that it wasn’t his job to make sure that they had an education and besides – if they were going to skive, it’d be better off for them to be engaged in something productive, even if it was just to carry out some clandestine surveillance on men of the law. They were the type of kids who liked to taunt coppers anyway, and Leipfold was just giving them an excuse to do what they normally did.

He called them ‘the rabble’ and asked them to report back to him in his office. In exchange, he paid each of them up front with a £100 bonus for anyone who found evidence that could prove a cop’s corruption. And with this arrangement in place, he was able to spearhead the campaign from the office while he developed his second plan of attack.

He met with Cholmondeley the following day and updated him on his progress – which didn’t take long because there wasn’t much to say. Then he hit him with phase two, which would need his participation if it was to be a success.

“Here’s the deal,” Leipfold said. “I need you to leak some information.”

“I can’t do that, James,” Cholmondeley replied. “It’s more than my job’s worth.”

“Let me clarify.” Leipfold grinned at Cholmondeley and took a swig of his coffee, then shuffled in his seat to get comfortable. “I’m not asking you to leak anything that could cause any trouble. Just start a few rumours, and here’s the clever part – tell different things to different people.”

“And then what?”

“Then see what happens,” Leipfold said. “See if anyone breaks cover – and if they do, see what happens. You said that your officers could be corrupt. How? Are they talking to the press? Taking payoffs?”

“A little bit of both,” Cholmondeley said. “Or possibly neither.”

Leipfold groaned. “Oh no,” he said. “Is this another one of your hunches?”

“Let’s not talk about that,” Cholmondeley replied. “Let’s just say that I have my reasons. What kind of stuff should I leak?”

“I don’t know,” Leipfold said. “Make something up.”

So Cholmondeley did, and he took Leipfold along for the ride with him. It started when an informant provided him with some information on a lockup by the docks where a gangster was said to be storing something, although no one seemed to know whether it was drugs, guns or goods. Still, all he needed was the address, and that was enough to spread the rumour of a raid to a superior, a detective inspector who had a reputation for being a hard man, and not the type of man that it’s a good idea to cross.

But Cholmondeley crossed him anyway, and the fake information must have had some sort of effect because the shit started to hit the proverbial fan. Leipfold, along with a half dozen of the street kids, was keeping watch on the lock-up from a distance, and they got a front row seat to the whole performance.

The heavies arrived first, the fat-faced guys who wielded weaponry and beat men senseless on their bosses’ orders. They were there to look good, to turn people away who maybe didn’t have their crooked best interests at heart. They were followed by a thin-faced Eastern European man in a smart, black suit. He was clearly the man who ran the show – you could tell from his body language and the swagger he displayed that he was the guvnor.

As Leipfold watched, they brought in a couple of lorries and parked them outside the lockup, then started to unload its contents. Leipfold watched impatiently and waited until the first of the lorries was full up and getting ready to leave, and then he dispatched one of his youths to phone in a code word to Jack Cholmondeley.

Leipfold had taken Cholmondeley’s advice and bought himself a motorcycle on credit. She was a beast, a sleek machine he’d named Camilla and fallen immediately in love with. He had some experience with motorbikes, but not as much as he would have liked, and the race through the streets put his skills to the test. Luckily, the lorries weren’t difficult to keep tabs on, and the bike could have outpaced them even on a bad day. The hard part was avoiding detection from either the driver of the lorry or the inevitable tail that any self-respecting gangster would have placed to safeguard his merchandise. Nevertheless, Leipfold was undetected and unrecognisable in his leathers, and he kept a safe enough distance to track the lorry to another lockup on the east side of town. He got the address and location. That was all he needed.

 

***

 

Cholmondeley was busy the following day, but he met up with Leipfold the day after and gave him a brief update.

“Thanks for being the eyes and ears, James,” Cholmondeley said, helping himself to a seat in Leipfold’s office. He nodded when the detective offered him a coffee and then tried his best to make himself comfortable.

“It’s my pleasure,” Leipfold replied. “I assume you got my message with the new address?”

“I did indeed,” Cholmondeley replied. Two raids in one day, that must be a new record. We caught all the players on the act and they’re looking at a hell of a lot of jail time between them. But it gets better.”

“You caught the copper,” Leipfold said.

“We did indeed,” Cholmondeley replied. “He was there at the second lock up, handling illegal firearms right there at the address you gave us. We brought him in with the bad guys. Silly sod tried to tell us he was working undercover, but that’s just the last roll of the dice for a desperate man. We got him.”

“Great,” Leipfold said. “One down. How many more to go?”

“There are nineteen more names on the list,” Cholmondeley said. “Let’s hope they’re all as easy as this.”

Over the next couple of weeks, Leipfold started to wonder whether Cholmondeley had jinxed it. Their investigations slowed down, although they still proved cases against a couple more cops and found reasons to suspect half a dozen more. It seemed like every name on the list was corrupt to some extent, and Leipfold had spent several days compiling a comprehensive list on the lot of them, aided by the information that the rabble had provided, and calculating the final amount owed. It wasn’t comprehensive, but it was good enough to cause some comfort within the police force and besides – Cholmondeley had been given care blanche to do what he needed by his superiors. Leipfold reflected that either they were clean and they had nothing to worry about or they were so sure that they’d get away with it that it didn’t faze them.

Leipfold called the report ‘Rotten Apple’, because the job was like bobbing for the things in a barrel of water and because the police force was rotten to the core. Cholmondeley didn’t see the funny side, but he had to admit that Leipfold’s report had been worth what he paid for it – even if his savings had taken a hit as a result of it.

The detective was re-reading the report one morning, a couple of days after he’d submitted it, when there was a knock on the office door. He peered out at the visitor through the spyhole, but he didn’t recognise the young man who was on the other side of it. He recognised the uniform, though. It was the same uniform that Jack Cholmondeley wore.

Leipfold opened the door and welcomed the policeman to his office. “Please,” he said. “Take a seat.”

“That won’t be necessary,” the man replied. “This won’t take long. Do you know who I am?”

Leipfold shook his head.

“My name is Constable Gary Mogford,” the man said. “And I expect you to remember that. You’ll be seeing my face again, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure,” Leipfold murmured.

If Mogford heard him, he didn’t react to it. Instead, he just carried on talking.

“I know what you’re up to,” Mogford said, leaning a little too close for comfort. “Don’t think I don’t. Stay away from the police force, you hear? This relationship you have with the boss. It’s not healthy.”

“I’m sure Jack Cholmondeley can make his own decisions,” Leipfold replied.

“I don’t care,” Mogford growled. “If he orders you to check up on me again, I want you to turn him down. Politely. Don’t bring my name into it. Just do it.”

“Why?”

“Listen,” Mogford said, raising his voice and backing away from Leipfold in a failed attempt to show that he wasn’t a threat. “I have my flaws, but I’m not a bad cop. I can’t be bought and you won’t find my name in the books of any of the city crooks. I’m good at my job and I take it seriously. I resent you for questioning my integrity.”

“Don’t blame me, pal,” Leipfold replied. “I got paid to do a job and I did it. That’s all. I didn’t put your name on the bloody list.”

“Then who did it?”

“I think you’d better speak to Jack Cholmondeley,” Leipfold said.

 

***

 

The arrests came a couple of weeks later. Leipfold’s report wasn’t the only evidence, of course, but it had acted as the catalyst for a formal internal investigation which had made a lot of policemen feel uncomfortable.

Leipfold had heard a little news from Cholmondeley, but it wasn’t until the story hit the front page of The Tribune that he realised just how deep the corruption actually went. The police commissioner himself had been arrested pending further investigation under suspicion of taking payoffs from the local gangs, and Leipfold chuckled when he recognised the keen, fresh face of Gary Mogford on the front page as he made the arrest.

He wondered whether Mogford was still mad at Leipfold for carrying out his investigation – and indeed whether he would’ve credited him if he’d known it. But then he realised that he didn’t much care. He’d carried out the investigation to the best of his abilities and he’d made a profit while he was at it.

One thing was for sure, though. He expected to see and hear a lot more from Cholmondeley’s new recruit in the future. Then again, Leipfold thought, there’s nothing new about me having a cop for an enemy.

And at least I have a cop for a friend.

New Tune: Hello Lover

Hi, folks! I’ve got something a little different today. When I write new songs, I usually tend to share the demo so you can check it out. But I’m not going to do that today because I recorded my demo as quietly as I could while my girlfriend was asleep and so it’s not quite ready for public consumption.

I might record a full version of it at a later date but in the meantime, I thought I’d take the time to share the chords and lyrics. You can check them out below or listen to my music on Spotify and Soundcloud for more. And be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter while you’re at it.

 

The New Guitar

 

VERSE: C A/m x2, C Am G C (C7)

CHORUS: F G Am Em, F G

BRIDGE: Am Em F G

VERSE ONE:

she says she knows me by the way I feel,

she likes to fall asleep like nothing is real,

I keep on thinking that she

means something else,but she don’t.

I like to think about the things that I see,

I like to hide away so she don’t see me,

it seems like everything is hard to believe,

I’m in love.

CHORUS:

And we both know it’s just too hard to find the time,

this can’t wait until another day.

Every time you say ‘hello’ you cross the line,

hello lover, it’s great to meet you,

hello lover…

BRIDGE:

We see the world the same,

who’s to blame?

It’s all the same,

it’s just a game you play.

CHORUS

New Recording: Gone, Gone, Gone

Hi, folks! Just a quick update today to let you know that I’ve released another new recording. This one’s called ‘Gone, Gone, Gone’ and it’s an older song – but it checks out. I found it when I was going through my archives, gave it a listen and figured I’d record it.

You can listen to the subsequent recording on Soundcloud or check it out in the player below. Be sure to let me know what you think!

 

 

Of course, you can also listen to my first three albums – Nocturne, Sketches and Discordia – on Spotify, iTunes and Soundcloud, so be sure to check them out.

You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter for further updates. I’ll see you soon!

In Business

Note: This short story is another first draft from the collection of shorts I wrote about Leipfold’s backstory. Here, he’s setting up Leipfold Investigations for the very first time after his discharge from the army and his subsequent spell in Reading Jail.

 

In Business

LEIPFOLD WAS IN BUSINESS.

Sure, he was sleeping on a friend’s sofa and running the business from his seat in the corner of the Rose and Crown, but he’d made a start, and that was the main thing. He’d registered the business with HMRC, speculatively opened up a bank account and put a couple of adverts in the Yellow Pages. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

Besides, he was already bringing in a little business through word of mouth alone. He’d been surprised by how many people had heard of him, and how many people whose lives he’d touched when he was younger. They all bubbled up out of the woodwork. He was making so much money that he’d put a deposit down on an office, a cosy, empty little place on Balcombe Street, just round the corner from Marylebone Station. He hadn’t moved in yet, but he was looking forward to picking up the keys – and he’d already planned out the layout to the last square foot.

Against his better judgement, Leipfold had taken out a loan from one of Rod’s mates from the London underworld. The guy was a shark, but that was okay – Leipfold had found a way to manage him, and they’d struck up a deal where Leipfold did a little work for him in exchange for paying no interest, although he still needed to earn a couple of grand to finish paying him off and to square up. But it was worth it, especially now that he was turning over something resembling a profit, and it had made up for the fact that no bank in the world would have lent a man like him any money.

Most of the work was boring and repetitive, research-based stuff that Leipfold could carry out from anywhere. His days followed a simple routine. Every morning, he’d head over to the library and do the crossword in one of their reading rooms before winding his way between the shelves to find the books that he needed for the day. He got most of his information from a combination of the local papers and obscure records from nearby parishes, but he also learned a lot from non-fiction books about fingerprinting and a new, up-and-coming field called forensics.

One of his main clients was The Tribune, the local paper. Leipfold had come across one of their adverts in the own classifieds, replied to it, been invited in and eventually offered up a first assignment, which he passed with flying colours. His work mainly consisted of tracking people down for the journalists, mostly people on the shadier side of society, the working class people looking for a fast buck in the big city by playing fast and loose with the law.

One morning, a couple of days before his move to Balcolmbe Street, Leipfold was summoned to The Tribune’s offices for a new brief. They handed him a file with the little information that they’d been able to gather, then sent him off to find a woman called Jessica Beard.

“Who is she?” Leipfold asked. “And why do you want me to find her?”

“She killed her husband and went on the run,” Jan Evans, the paper’s editor said. As well as being Leipfold’s boss, she was a skilled writer and an amateur cryptologist, so the two of them got on like brothers and sisters from other mothers and misters.

“Great,” Leipfold said. “Thanks for telling me. Shouldn’t we leave this to the police?”

“I don’t necessarily need you to find her for me,” Evans replied. “You know us, we don’t want trouble. We just want to sell papers. If you find her then we’ll have to tell the cops, and I’m not sure that we want that attention. But if you can get us a statement – maybe even an interview – then we get the best of both worlds. What do you say?”

Leipfold frowned. “I’ll do my best,” he said. “Where do I start?”

“We’ve managed to track down a childhood friend of hers. She gave us a comment for us to fall back on, but we want to hear Miss Beard’s side of the story.”

“Give me the information and I’ll go,” Leipfold said.

And so Evans gave him an address and he followed the trail up north to the Midlands. The childhood friend of the murderess came from a small town called Nuneaton, a dull little place that seemed to be full of working class grafters and OAPs. To Leipfold, it was the epitome of working class Britain, a typical ‘Northern’ town that was built on the sweat of coal miners and factory workers.

According to the brief he’d been given, Jessica Beard was suspected of shooting her husband. The police had released a statement to say that she was a person of interest, and they’d warned the public to stay away. There was even a hotline for anyone with information. Meanwhile, friends and relatives were coming out of the woodwork now that the story was starting to break. One man, an ex-boyfriend of hers, had told The Tribune that she was in the habit of making death threats, and he’d also shared his theory that she’d killed her husband for her money. He’d told the paper that “she’s the type”, and dropped a hint that her husband had been cheating on her. Leipfold didn’t know how much to credit this guy, but intelligence was intelligence. He’d learned back in the army that sometimes you had to trust it until you could prove otherwise.

All of this information gave Leipfold a few ideas, but Evans has a few ideas of her own and had ordered Leipfold to track down the childhood friend and to follow up any leads from there. Leipfold was expecting resistance, but the friend had been paid off by the paper and was more than happy to answer Leipfold’s questions.

“I might not be much help, mind,” she said. “We ain’t that close.”

“That’s okay,” Leipfold said, absentmindedly. “Can I come in?”

“Sure thing.”

“What’s your name again?” Leipfold asked.

The woman laughed and told Leipfold that she was called Pamela, a fact that he remembered just as soon as she mentioned it.

“Thanks, Pamela,” Leipfold said. “Mind if I call you Pam?”

“You can call me Thomas if you like,” she said. “Makes no difference to me. What do you want?”

“I’m trying to get hold of Jessica Beard.”

“Of course you are,” she said. They’d reached her living room, and she gestured for Leipfold to sit down in one of her battered leather armchairs. He obliged but she remained standing, looking down at him from a position of power. “You’re just like the rest of them.”

“The rest of who?”

“The rest of the bloody journalists who won’t leave me alone,” Pam said. “They’re trying to dish up some dirt on Jess and I want to part in it. For the record, I think she’s innocent.”

“Interesting,” Leipfold said. “Why’s that?”

“It’s just not like her,” Pam said. “She’s a vegetarian for a start. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Leipfold shrugged. “People change,” he said.

“Not Jess,” Pam said. “I’ve known her since we were kids.”

“Perhaps you don’t know her as well as you think you do.”

“Perhaps.” Pam sighed and unfolded her arms, then pulled up some space on the sofa. Now Leipfold was slightly to her left, but the tension was already starting to dissipate and he was almost feeling welcome. He decided to chance it by asking for a cuppa, but Pam told him the milk was off so he settled for a glass of water.

“Well,” Leipfold said, “I love a good conspiracy. You say that you think your friend is innocent?”

“Yes.”

“I can believe that,” Leipfold replied. “I haven’t seen anything that convinces me she’s guilty. But then, I haven’t seen anything to prove her innocence, either. Maybe I can help.”

“You can?”

“I can try,” Leipfold said. “But you’re going to need me to help you to help her.”

“How do I do that?” she asked.

Leipfold grinned. “To do that, you need to make an introduction.”

 

***

 

It took him a while, but Leipfold managed to convince Pam that he was neither a cop nor a journalist. His best – and only – evidence was the brand new pack of business cards that he’d had delivered a couple of days earlier, but their effect was lessened somewhat by the fact that they were still wrapped in plastic. Still, the fledgling detective was good at talking, if nothing else, and he managed to convince her of his integrity, if not his abilities.

As a result, he found himself in a face-to-face with the woman who he was never supposed to meet in the first place. They met up in a small café just off the high street. It was the kind of place that served greasy strips of bacon on chipped plates with little sachets of brown sauce for a side garnish. It was overflowing with builders, painters, decorators and plumbers – the kind of people who wear overalls to work and catcall women as they walked past to go to their important meetings and to move on with their lives.

Jessica Beard was an attractive young woman with blonde hair and a pleasant smile. She had a little extra weight perhaps, but it made her more of a woman than most. She carried herself well and exuded confidence, as Leipfold quickly discovered.

“So how can I help?” she asked.

“It’s more a case of how I could help you,” Leipfold replied. “But you’ll need to tell me what happened.”

“I assume you’re referring to my husband.”

“Correct,” Leipfold said. “You’re a wanted woman. You’re on the run from the police for god’s sake. You’re not going to last long, innocent or not. They’ll find you.”

“But that’s not fair,” Jessica replied.

“Life isn’t fair. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

There was a lull in the conversation, and Leipfold punctuated it by slapping his fist against the table, splattering a fly and smearing its insides across one of the menus. Jessica flinched visibly and leant away from him.

Hey, Leipfold thought. She really wouldn’t hurt a fly. That friend of hers was right.

He also thought that if she reacted like that to the death of a fly, there was no way that she’d kill a human being. Leipfold knew from experience that it took more than a swat to do the job.

“My client will want to speak to you,” Leipfold said. “Would you be willing to talk to the newspapers?”

“Hell no,” Jessica replied. “They think I’m guilty. And besides, all they want is a story. They don’t want me to tell them what actually happened.”

“And what did happen?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “I left for work as normal, headed to a few meetings, grabbed some lunch. You know, the usual. I don’t know why, but I stopped to call the office before I headed back in and one of my colleagues told me that the police had been over. She said they thought I’d killed my husband, and it seemed like a good idea for me to keep my head down. I don’t want to go to jail for something that I didn’t do. It was a set up.”

“Perhaps it was,” Leipfold said. “I wonder. They must have had their reasons for it. Something doesn’t add up here.”

 

***

 

Evans from the Tribune called Leipfold up at his hotel that evening, and she wasn’t happy with his lack of progress. She’d asked him to invoice her for the time so far and to cancel the rest of the investigation, which Leipfold had agreed to do. But he’d already committed himself to the investigation, and not just by making the journey up north from the capital. Something just didn’t seem right.

He met up with Jessica the following morning. They’d arranged to meet in the hotel’s lobby, and she led the way from there to a nearby coffee shop. It was a quiet place, which meant that the two of them could talk without being overheard. Jessica wanted to meet in public, despite the risk that she might be recognised, because she said that it gave her a chance to escape if she needed to. That worked for Leipfold, because he thought that she might be better off if she was captured.

“You should hand yourself in,” he urged. “Tell your story to the authorities. If you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t trust them,” she said. “They’ve already made up their mind. They think I did it.”

“Yeah,” Leipfold said, “but they have to prove it. All you need to do is get a good lawyer. Tell your side of the story and force them to prove otherwise. But you should talk to the press. They can be a powerful ally.”

“They’ve already made up their mind as well,” she said. “But I didn’t do it.”

“We just need to come up with a different narrative,” Leipfold said. “We need to present an alternative set of events to explain what happened here. For example, perhaps your husband committed suicide and set you up to take the fall. Or perhaps it was a hired hit. Did your husband have any enemies?”

“Not that I know of,” she said. “But what do I know? I’m starting to find out that I didn’t know my husband as much as I thought he did. That is, if the press can be believed – which I don’t believe they can.”

“If you don’t trust the press, you’ll have to trust the police,” Leipfold said. “You can’t do this alone. You need help.”

“I thought you were going to help me.”

“I’m trying to,” Leipfold told her. “I’m giving you advice. You should hand yourself into the police. Tell them your side of the story. If you really are innocent – and I believe you – then they’re looking at you while there’s someone out there with a murder on his conscience and the freedom to kill again.”

“You’re saying that if I don’t hand myself in, they’ll kill again?”

“They might do,” Leipfold said. “And even if not, don’t you want justice for your husband?”

“Eh.” She shrugged and looked bashfully across at Leipfold. “I won’t pretend that I didn’t much like the guy.”

“Maybe don’t tell that to the cops,” Leipfold said.

 

***

 

Leipfold left Nuneaton that evening and all thoughts of Jessica Beard were pushed from his mind the following morning when he moved into his shiny new office. In fact, the next two weeks were so busy that he didn’t think of her once, and as far as the press was concerned, the story was over. He hadn’t heard so much as a rumour.

But that all changed one day when Jack Cholmondeley came round to pay him a visit. He’d recently been promoted to sergeant, and he wore the rank like a badge of honour. It had changed the way that he held himself, the way that he talked. He was clearly proud of who he was and where he’d come from, and Leipfold could relate to that. The new office was doing wonders for his self-esteem, reminding him that he was so much more than just an ex-con who used to have a drinking problem. He was a functional member of society, and no one could take that away from him.

The office was still just a skeleton. Leipfold didn’t have the budget to kit it out properly, so it consisted of a second-hand desk from a charity shop and five plastic chairs that he’d salvaged from a skip.  He also had a couple of books in the inbuilt bookcases, as well as a cheap plastic kettle in the kitchen area. It didn’t look like a serious place of business, but some serious business was already taking place in there.

“Come on in,” Leipfold said. “I’ll give you the tour.”

The tour didn’t take long, and the two men were soon sitting side by side on the plastic chairs drinking coffee and talking about the good old days. For Leipfold, it was just a good, old-fashioned chit chat – until Jack Cholmondeley mentioned Jessica Beard.

“She’s in custody,” Cholmondeley explained. “She turned herself in up north and got brought back down in a deal with West Midlands Police. I had my reservations, but the orders came down from above. We took her in and charged her.”

“What with?”

“Murder,” Cholmondeley said. “Although she told us a different story. We know that you talked to her, for example. I wondered if you could tell me what happened.”

“I can do that,” Leipfold said, and so he launched into the story of his journey up north and Jessica Beard’s insistence that she was innocent. Leipfold had no proof, of course, other than the woman’s word, but that was all he’d needed.

“That’s quite the story,” Cholmondeley said. “Unfortunately, I have spoilers. I know what happened at the end. Jessica Beard is dead, James. I’m sorry.

“Dead? How?”

“Suicide,” Cholmondeley said, simply. “I’m sorry, James. You can’t save everyone.”

“It wasn’t my job to save her,” Leipfold protested. “It was yours.”

Cholmondeley hung his head. “You’re right,” he said. “And I’m sorry. If I could go back in time and change things, I would.”

“Perhaps there’s another option,” Leipfold murmured.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I think we should look into it,” Leipfold said. “What do you say, old friend? Will you help me to uncover the truth?”

Cholmondeley smiled. “Let’s do it,” he said.

 

***

 

The two men met up later that day, after Cholmondeley finished his shift. The policeman had a lead that they’d never followed up, on the assumption that the woman’s suicide had brought about an end to the case.

But now they were no longer limited by that assumption.

Cholmondeley knew that the dead man had a lover – better still, he had a name and address. She was called Rita Long and she lived on a council estate in Hammersmith. Cholmondeley drove them there in his brand new black BMW, which he’d bought for himself as a treat when he was awarded his promotion. He regretted driving it when he realised where he’d have to park, but he comforted himself with the knowledge that if someone tried to damage or steal her, he’d do his damnedest to come down on them with the full weight of the law.

Rita Long was living with a housemate and a large dog that looked like it had been hit in the face with a shovel. To Leipfold’s surprise, they were invited into the living room and granted an audience.

“What can I do for you gentlemen?” Rita asked.

“Good question,” Leipfold replied. “We’re here to talk about your ex-boyfriend.”

“You mean Anders?”

“Is that his name?” Leipfold asked.

“Yep,” Cholmondeley replied.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she said. “It was just sex. Strictly no strings attached.”

“And now he’s dead,” Leipfold said. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

She shrugged. “Not really,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t know him too well. It’s sad that he died, but you know. Life moves on.”

“Not for Anders,” Cholmondeley said.

“We were wondering whether there’s anything you could tell us about his death,” Leipfold said. “I understand that the police never came over to talk to you, so I thought we’d make up for it.”

“What do you want to know?” she asked. “I’ll help if I can, but I doubt I can help.”

“Do you think it’s possible that he committed suicide?” Cholmondeley asked.

She shook her head. “Hell no,” she replied. “He just wasn’t the type.”

“What type was he?”

“It’s hard to say,” she replied. “I didn’t know him that well. Like I said, it was just sex.”

“Interesting,” Leipfold said, even though it wasn’t.

The rest of the interview followed a similar pattern – Leipfold and Cholmondeley asked the questions and Rita Long gave them answers that didn’t really answer them. Their suspicions were awakened, although neither man really knew why. It was just a joint hunch, but it was enough for them to act upon.

Rita and her housemate were kind enough to allow them to search the house, but they didn’t find anything unusual. But both women refused them access to their cars, which set off a warning bell in Leipfold’s head. He took a closer look at them when he left, peering in through the glass to see if he could spot anything untoward. He found something. It wasn’t much, but it was something – just a single drop of crimson on the driver-side mat. Probably blood, but possibly not.

Later that evening, Leipfold and Cholmondeley discussed the new developments over soft drinks in the Rose and Crown. They’d independently arrived at the same theory, although a theory was all it was.

“Perhaps there was a murder after all,” Leipfold said. “And perhaps we just met our murderer.”

“Perhaps,” Cholmondeley agreed. “Maybe it was an accident. When she realised what she’d done, she tried to shift the blame.”

“We need to prove it,” Leipfold said.

“Leave it to me,” Cholmondeley replied. “I’ll see if I can get a warrant.”

 

***

 

The days passed slowly, and Leipfold had almost lost interest in the case by the time that Cholmondeley stopped by to provide an update. He met Leipfold at his office again, which was starting to look a little more lived in. He’d even got hold of a couple of potted plants, although they were already starting to look worse for wear. It wasn’t really Leipfold’s fault. The office didn’t get much sunlight.

“So what’s the latest?” Leipfold asked.

“We got a hit on the blood in Rita Long’s car,” Cholmondeley said. “The boffins at the station used this new technology called DNA profiling and were able to match it to Anders Beard. So we brought Long in for questioning. And guess what.”

“She changed her story,” Leipfold said.

“Got it in one,” Cholmondeley replied. “The blood was a smear, not a drop. We put it to her that the only way it could have got there would be if she tracked it in herself after being present at the scene herself.”

“Is that true?”

“No,” Cholmondeley replied. “But she didn’t need to know that. The upshot is that she changed her story and told us that she discovered the body – but that she didn’t want to call it in because she didn’t want his wife to find out about her.”

“Hmm,” Leipfold said. “So she’s saying it was a suicide?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Then why did she tell us he never would have done it?” Leipfold asked. “You know, the more I think about it, the more it seems likely that she really did try to set the wife up.”

“I agree,” Cholmondeley said. “But we still need proof.”

“Yeah?” Leipfold replied. “I might be able to help you with that. I know a guy that we need to talk to. You brought your car, right?”

Cholmondeley had brought his car. It was parked outside on Balcombe Street, and the two men climbed into it and then roared away into the night, with Cholmondeley driving and Leipfold providing directions. He’d already set up the rendezvous, and he led Cholmondeley through the streets to a lock-up in East London. There was a guy waiting outside for them.

“Be careful,” Leipfold said, while they were still in the car and looking out at his contact through the pristine glass of Cholmondeley’s BMW. “You let me do the talking, okay? This guy’s dangerous. Don’t let him know that you’re a cop.”

“It’s a good job I’m not wearing my uniform,” Cholmondeley said, sardonically.

They opened the door and stepped out to talk to the guy, who refused to give them a name. Leipfold showed the man the inside of his wallet and said, “Tell me what you’ve got.”

“Well,” the guy replied. “It’s like I said on the blower. It weren’t the dead girl what bought the shooter. I sold it to that other one, that one whose photo you showed me.”

Over the next couple of minutes, the man continued to tell his story, prompted by Leipfold when he started to ramble or wander off-topic. The gist of it was that Rita Long had bought the weapon, and the man they met even had a surreptitious video of the deal.

“I use a GoPro inside my jacket,” he said. “It’s inconspicuous but it does the job. I record each sale.”

“Bit of a risk,” Cholmondeley said. “Doesn’t that incriminate you?”

Leipfold glared at him, but his contact didn’t seem to notice. “I guess,” he said. “But it’s good to have some leeway if the cops get hold of me. Plus my clients know not to turn on me. If anything happens to me, their tapes go public. I’m not an idiot.”

“Right,” Leipfold said. “And so you can prove that you sold the gun to Rita Long – and not to Jessica or Anders Beard?”

“I can,” the man said. “If you make it worth my while.”

Leipfold looked over at Cholmondeley. “What do you say?” he asked.

Cholmondeley looked straight back at him. “I need to think about it,” he said.

 

***

 

It was a couple of days later and Leipfold was in a good mood. He finished off the crossword and then turned back to the front page story in The Tribune.

The headline read: Cops Make New Arrest in Beard Murder Case. Leipfold smiled and threw the paper across the room and into the trash.