Copycat

by C. S. Barnes

  The Granthams absent-mindedly nodded along in time with Melanie’s delivery, but their faces remained tortured, on the brink of tears. ‘While we’re here we do have one question, if you don’t mind. Do you happen to know where Jenni’s college hoodie would be, the one showing the institute’s emblem?’ It was clear what the man was holding in that final shot, but what wasn’t clear was what happened in the seconds after when the man had disappeared from the frame again. Did he keep Jenni’s hoodie; was it Jenni’s hoodie at all, or someone else’s? Melanie knew that she must look everywhere for a link, no loose thread too small…

  Robert looked to his wife who, without word, rose from her seat and exited the room. There was the sound of footsteps thudding upstairs, arriving in a room directly above the living room by the sounds of it, and then shuffling. Melanie imagined drawers being opened, clothes being moved, perhaps even things being overturned.

  When Evie Grantham emerged again, she looked dishevelled, as though she’d been searching upstairs for hours rather than mere minutes.

  ‘It isn’t there,’ she announced, her eyes fixed firmly on the detectives. ‘It isn’t in her room, I don’t think, not that I can find. Do you have it?’ She spoke directly to Melanie, her tone more frantic than it had been seconds earlier.

  ‘It’s an item of interest at the moment,’ Melanie said. ‘Do you happen to remember whether her name was sewn into the hoodie, Evie, was that something that she did?’ Melanie tried to lower her voice, as though addressing a startled child, but it was clear that Evie Grantham wasn’t listening. Melanie stood and crossed the space toward the grieving mother who hadn’t ventured into the room entirely, but instead remained hovering in the doorway. Melanie lowered herself into Evie’s eyeline and rested a hand on her shoulder. ‘We will find out what happened to her, I promise you that.’

  At this, a small tumbling of tears erupted from Evie Grantham’s eyes and her body hunched over in a gesture that suggested more tears were coming. Taking a cue, Dixon appeared behind the woman in an instant, setting an arm around her and guiding her past Melanie and back to the sofa, to her waiting husband.

  Carter stood and joined his superior at the door.

  ‘We’ll be releasing this image as soon as we can,’ Melanie said, ‘with accompanying details of where and when it was captured. You might find that people try to contact you directly about this…’ Her sentence faded out as Dixon shot her a soft smile.

  ‘I’ll handle that side of things,’ he said, reassuring his superior.

  ‘Thank you, both,’ Melanie said weakly. Robert acknowledged her comment with a brief nod, but Evie remained passive, her tears still falling at a speed. ‘We’ll see ourselves out and we’ll be in touch with further details,’ Melanie finished, her junior officer already halfway down the hallway to the front door. Edd eased the door open and slipped out first. Melanie followed, closing the door quietly behind her before expelling a deep sigh, her breath spilling out of her into the cold outdoors, forming a small cloud.

  ‘You driving us back?’ Edd asked and Melanie silently threw the keys at him, heading toward the passenger seat. Both officers climbed into the vehicle and Edd waited until the engine was humming before initiating another conversation. ‘What’s going on, boss?’

  Melanie sighed. ‘I can’t make sense of it. Where was she going, Edd? Why was she even there?’ She rubbed at her temples as she spoke, kneading at the beginnings of a sharp pain in her head. ‘On the surface, she was a normal kid. Behind the scenes, she was researching killers, playing victim, walking around town at all hours. What are we meant to make of that?’

  Edd clicked the heating up a notch and eased the car away from the curb. ‘We don’t make anything of it. We keep looking and we make something of what we’ve got. We’ll get there, Mel, we always do.’

  Melanie gave him a tight smile in response to his enthusiasm and while she wanted – truly wanted – to believe in Carter’s optimism, there was something about this entire case that was already making her doubt herself.

  19

  DI Melanie Watton was seated at a long table. To her left, sat DS Edd Carter and to her right, DC Chris Burton, both officers’ expressions set with stern confidence in the face of the horde of press in front of them. With the permission of Superintendent Beverley Archer, Melanie had arranged for a press conference of sorts, to allow her and her team to formally release the image and accompanying footage of the man who had been with Jenni Grantham on the night of her death.

  The press room was packed with familiar and new faces, and Melanie felt an early twist of nerves in her stomach; she’d fenced questions from some of the journalists in this room before, and she knew that they weren’t likely to go easy. She glanced toward Burton who was staring directly into the crowd, making eye contact with no one person but rather moving from individual to individual, as though sizing up her threats.

  Melanie shifted her glance to Carter, who was looking through the notes in front of him like a student cramming in last minute revision. The sight of both colleagues was enough to put Melanie’s mind at ease and, with a click of a button, the television screen alongside the panel changed from a police emblem into a still CCTV shot, and the room instantly fell silent.

  Melanie cleared her throat. ‘We have discovered CCTV footage of Jenni Grantham from the night that she was murdered. The full clip, which will be available shortly, shows Jenni with an unknown male outside The Black Hound public house in the centre of town.’ Melanie paused to show the clip of Jenni conversing with the man in question, ahead of her abruptly exiting the shot, leaving her hoodie in the hands of the man left behind. ‘We have been able to isolate a still image of the man featured in this footage.’ Melanie clicked to move from the video footage to a still shot. ‘If this man is still in the area, we’d very much like to talk to him in relation to the Jenni Grantham case. We hasten to add that at this time the man is merely a person of interest, who we would very much like to talk to.’ Melanie clicked again to shut the screen down. ‘My colleagues and I are open to questions relating to the case, within reason, if there’s anything that anyone wants or feels the need to ask.’

  A wave of hands appeared around the room; there were at least eight questions waiting to be launched at the panel already. Edd shot Melanie a quick look and a supportive smile before turning back to face their audience.

  ‘Yes.’ Melanie pointed to a man in his mid-thirties sitting in the front row.

  ‘This man that you’re looking for, are you treating him as a suspect?’

  ‘No, as I’ve clearly stated, the man is just a person of interest at this present time, and we’d like to speak to him in relation to Jenni’s whereabouts and state of mind when he saw her. Any information he has could be integral to the next steps we take with the case.’ Melanie leaned forward, holding steady eye contact with her questioner, but no sooner had she finished her reply than another question was fired, unprompted and without permission, from somewhere at the back of the room.

  ‘And is that because you’re drawing blank after blank with the case currently?’

  Burton’s head snapped in the direction of the question; the new voice was a distinctive one. Heather Shawly worked at The Sun and Star newspaper, where she’d been their crime correspondent for longer than anyone cared to mention. She stood tall at the back of the room, her blonde hair perfectly tamed to curl up in a bounce at the ends. Her make-up looked as though someone had been paid to do it for her; meanwhile her clothes looked like she should be in front of a camera rather than in a police briefing room.

  ‘We’re hardly drawing blank after blank,’ Melanie said but Heather cut across her.

  ‘This is the first official statement that you’ve been able to make though, is it not?’ Heather pushed, her notepad at the ready although she hardly seemed inclined to write anything down; the woman was clearly looking for an argument – or a misplaced comment from Melanie to quote from, at least. Melanie couldn’t help but won
der whether that argumentative streak was what made Heather so successful.

  ‘We’re not in the business of handing out details of ongoing investigations unless there’s a need for it,’ Carter jumped in to defend his boss, although Melanie wished that he wouldn’t.

  Heather gave a head tilt and a patronising smile. ‘But you’re in the business of asking the public for their help with a murder investigation?’

  ‘You’re a crime correspondent, Ms Shawly, I’m certain that you’ve seen this procedure before,’ Melanie snapped, her tone curt and dismissive. ‘As for us drawing blank after blank, we know the where, the how, and even, partially, the why.’ Melanie was bluffing, but she was making a good show of it. ‘Unfortunately, as is often the case with murder investigations, we’re lacking the who. Insofar as asking the public for help, the police aren’t in the business of knowing every single person in any given town, so yes, if anyone does know the man in question, we’d like to hear from them; and yes, in the interest of making this town safe again, we are looking to the public for any information they might have.’ Melanie inhaled sharply, as though attempting to suck the words back in, but they were out there – worse still, the outburst was on record. The DI quickly consoled herself – she hadn’t said anything untrue, after all – but she also dropped her head and avoided eye contact with the infamous Heather, for fear that this conversation might continue.

  ‘Are there any further questions?’ Burton asked. Her intervention provided the room with a quick recovery after the recent tension.

  A young woman standing close to Heather jumped in, unprompted. ‘So, are you saying that the town currently isn’t safe?’ she asked, alluding to Melanie’s earlier comment.

  ‘We’re not looking to put the fear of God into anyone,’ Chris said, her tone deliberately level and calm in a bid to counteract Melanie’s outburst. ‘We don’t have reason to believe that a similar incident will take place again, nor do we have any reason to believe that the town is under immediate threat of…’ Chris petered out, searching for the right word. ‘Under immediate threat from the person behind Jenni’s murder,’ she finished. It was a clumsy close, but it would have to do.

  ‘So, really, you’re saying that there’s a murderer out there who you know nothing about, but we probably shouldn’t worry about it?’ Heather spoke over a young journalist in the centre of the room, who was a mere handful of words into his question when the senior reporter stepped over him to voice her point. When Chris nor her colleagues offered an answer, Heather pushed again. ‘Is that right, DC Burton, or am I misunderstanding?’

  Chris froze; it was one thing to be involved in a murder investigation, but another thing entirely to be singled out like this, to be publicly accountable. Melanie sensed Chris’s tension and shot her colleague what was intended to be a reassuring look before turning to address the PC standing at the back of the room: ‘Can you escort Ms Shawly out, please?’

  Heather let out a harsh laugh than made Chris wince. ‘Thank you, officer, but I’ll see myself out. I think I’ve got enough anyway,’ she said, addressing the words not to the officer standing next to her but to Melanie herself, who was staring down the journalist with a hard glare.

  Melanie’s watchful eyes followed the woman out of the room and when the door was firmly closed, with a near-physical weight lifted from her shoulders, Melanie started afresh. ‘Now, if there are any further questions about the case…’

  20

  DS Edd Carter cracked open a can of Diet Coke and lifted his feet to rest on the coffee table. He took three long swigs of the drink, followed by a satisfied ‘Ahh’ that would have been funny, had there been anyone around to appreciate it. It was well after Emily’s bedtime and she was, once again, spending the night at Edd’s mother’s house – but he still couldn’t bring himself to drink anything stronger than a low sugar soft drink, lest he be called out in the middle of the night for a parenting emergency. For company, rather than any real interest, Edd grabbed the remote control and flicked on the television and, in a strange twist, he was greeted by the sight of his own face. Solemn and subdued, he found himself facing down with his earlier self, sitting inside the press room at the station. There was a clip of Melanie talking, bulbs flashing, and the footage cut just before past-Edd spoke.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Edd muttered before taking another sip.

  The footage was replaced by the CCTV clip that the police had officially released to the public. There were pleas being made left, right, and centre, and even one or two nationals were getting in on the story it seemed. Edd – and the rest of his team, he knew – were desperate for a break, and he hoped that this exposure would bring about the luck that they needed. However, this quick flicker of optimism gave way to annoyance when the CCTV footage ended, only to be replaced with a shot of Heather Shawly sitting inside a well-lit newsroom.

  ‘And is that because you’re drawing blank after–’ Edd hit the off button and plunged the woman into silence. But the new quiet of the television set coincided with the loud bang of Edd’s front door being closed in the hallway. He sat rigid on the sofa and stared toward the open doorway leading into the living room. It wasn’t the prospect of an intruder that unnerved him; it was the fact that only one other person had a door key…

  Trish came into view in the doorway. Angling herself to look directly at Edd, she met his eye contact without a flicker of nerve or embarrassment – two things that Edd very much thought his wife should be feeling. Without a word, he looked her over and noted one or two slight differences: her hair was a darker shade of blonde, her jeans a tighter fit than usual, her general posture ever so slightly more relaxed. Although if Edd had run away from his responsibilities without so much as a word of warning to anyone, he imagined he’d feel quite relaxed too. She pressed her back against the doorframe, as though propping herself, and opened her mouth to speak before just as quickly changing her mind. The silence swelled between them until Edd finally cracked. ‘You’ve got a nerve, you know?’ he said, standing from his spot on the sofa. ‘You’ve also got some explaining to do.’

  Trish exhaled hard. ‘Where’s Emily?’

  ‘With her grandparents.’

  ‘Why isn’t she here?’ Trish demanded, a note of irritation in her voice.

  ‘There’s a long and short answer to that, which would you like?’ Edd matched her tone and took two steps forward, closing the gap between them slightly. ‘She’s there because I’m working twelve-hour days on a murder investigation and my wife, Emily’s mother,’ he paused here to point at Trish, ‘that’s the part that you’re supposed to play, decided to up and leave us both without word or explanation. So yes, Mother Duck, I’m afraid she’s been having the odd night with her grandparents over the last two weeks. Dare I ask where you’ve been having the odd night?’ Edd accompanied the question with a raised eyebrow but as Trish opened her mouth to offer a response, he held up a hand to pause her. ‘Honestly, Trish, I don’t even want to know.’

  Edd pushed past her and headed toward the kitchen. Without invitation, Trish followed. He grabbed the kettle and took it to the sink to fill with water, meanwhile Trish ventured fully into the room and sat down at the centre table. When Edd set the kettle to boil, he turned around to find his wife staring at him, her eyes shining with the beginnings of tears, and he had to make some effort to swallow down an outburst; the rage he felt toward her in that moment was simmering just beneath the surface.

  Trish lowered her head and spoke toward the table. ‘I’m so sorry, Edd.’

  He sighed. ‘I figured that much.’ He pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her. In the background, the kettle caused a small shudder through the work surface as it came to a boil and Edd caught his wife’s eye. ‘You can make the first brew; I suppose we’re in for a long night.’

  Trish crossed the kitchen to the work surface and took Edd’s favourite cup down from their steel mug tree. He tried hard not to feel a pang of almost-love for her, but Edd knew
already that these were going to be difficult feelings to shake…

  It was nearly eight the following morning when Edd pushed through the door into the incident room and already the space was alive and buzzing. DI Melanie Watton’s office door was closed and, through the open slats of her blinds, Edd could see DCs Fairer and Read standing inside talking to her. He seated himself at his desk and turned on his aging desktop computer, resting his head gently in his hands while he waited for the machine to kick into life. Before the whirring had come to a halt, Edd was stirred by the brush of a cardboard cup being placed on his desk. DC Chris Burton looked down at him, a sympathetic smile on her face:

  ‘Double shots, you look like you need it.’ She nodded to the cup before crossing to her own desk and taking a seat.

  ‘Anyone ever tell you that you’re an angel?’ Edd asked, before removing the plastic lid from the drink and blowing gently against the liquid inside. ‘Jesus, just the smell of it is doing the trick.’ Edd continued to blow as he turned back to his monitor and typed in his log-in details.

  ‘Late night?’ Chris asked.

  Edd gave a curt laugh. ‘I didn’t get much sleep, to be honest.’

  ‘Too much information, Carter.’

  ‘I should be so lucky,’ Edd replied, staring at his screen for fear that his face might give away the discomfort he was feeling. It had been a sleepless night of harsh conversations and shocking revelations that had left Edd feeling like he was married to a stranger. Discussing that feeling with someone else – even Chris – was still a little too much to bear.