Copycat

by C. S. Barnes

  28

  DC Lucy Morris was well into her second hour of watching CCTV footage when she first spotted Patrick Nelson. His coat collar was pulled up high around his neck to protect him from the cutting wind, and he was staring down at his phone as he was walking. When the order had come through to check CCTV footage again, Morris had quickly called around all the shops who had obliged her request without hassle the first time around. She didn’t quite have enough volunteers to piece together Nelson’s movements after this, but at least she’d found him somewhere. Morris paused the image and pushed herself away from her desk, standing and crossing to Chris Burton who was watching footage from outside The Black Hound, taken over the last two nights. Burton looked bored to within an inch of her life, so Morris settled down next to her to break the news. When her colleague’s face was level with her own, Morris announced, ‘Got him.’

  They both retreated to Morris’s desk at a quick pace to watch the footage that she’d found. Their eyes fixed on the screen with great concentration, they watched as Patrick Nelson appeared from the top of the shot, walking along the pavement that ran parallel to a string of shops just outside of the main city centre. They marvelled at the clear view of his face, the worried expression, the boyish nerves that were noticeable just from the way he carried himself, and as he disappeared from shot in the bottom of the frame, Chris let out a deep sigh.

  ‘Pull up Street View, would you?’ Chris asked her colleague and Morris followed orders. ‘And go to the search box.’

  ‘Woolham Street?’ Morris suggested, reciting the street name that this most recent footage had come from. Chris nodded along while Morris input their destination. ‘I like the way you think,’ the one officer complimented the other as they waited for the street to line up in front of them. ‘Got a pen?’ Morris asked, zooming in on the shop that the footage had come from. ‘So, this is Lavish, which is where we’ve picked up Patrick. I’m not too worried about the shops in between because we can already see that he’s on his own, but if we click this way…’ She guided the cursor back along the street. ‘We’ll find the end shop.’

  ‘Which presumably means finding the direction that he came from?’

  ‘Precisely,’ Morris replied, still waiting for the image to shift further along the street. ‘So that end of the street starts with Noodle Hut. Can you note that down?’ When Morris turned to her colleague, she spotted that Chris was already midway through writing the name, and she couldn’t help but smile at her colleague’s enthusiasm. Turning back to the screen, she clicked her way in the opposite direction along the same street. ‘Whatever the shop is this end will hopefully be able to show us which way Patrick branched off. It could narrow down where he was heading, maybe.’ Morris wasn’t fully optimistic about the plan, but it was the best idea they had.

  ‘Harris Studios,’ Chris read as the pixelated image cleared to reveal the brilliant white outside of what appeared to be a photography studio. She noted down their name. ‘You’d think somewhere like that would pride themselves on having photographic evidence of things, right?’ Chris tore the sheet of paper out of her notebook and ripped it down the middle, handing Morris the piece that read Noodle Hut. ‘You take the one end, I’ll take the other.’

  DCs Read and Fairer took their seats opposite Mr Gibbons; the latter of the gentlemen was in the middle of a phone call and he gestured to the officers with one outstretched finger, promising that just another minute would do the trick. Read took a hard look around the office space – it was a long time since he’d been somewhere like this – and when he dropped his eyes back down, Fairer shot him a questioning look.

  ‘Spotted something?’ he mouthed and Read shook his head.

  ‘Right, detectives,’ Gibbons said, slamming the phone down with a bang. ‘Now that shit show is over for the time being, we can get cracking on this one.’ Both officers were clearly taken aback, prompting Gibbons to let out a heavy sigh and add, ‘Apologies, two attacks on students in the space of two weeks has left the parents running scared and I’m fencing phone calls about whether their children are even safe to come in.’ He paused and rubbed hard at his eyes before continuing. ‘It’s not as though they’ve been taken on my watch, is it?’

  ‘We did wonder whether this would be causing you problems,’ Read said gently.

  ‘That’s an understatement.’

  ‘Is attendance down, would you say?’ Fairer asked, pen poised to take notes.

  ‘A little, I suppose,’ Gibbons admitted. ‘What can I do for you exactly, officers? I’m conscious of wasting yours and my time.’

  Despite phrasing it as though he were doing everyone a favour, Gibbons looked less kind and more eager to get this process over with – but why, was the big question.

  ‘We wanted to know how the students were, really,’ Read replied, sounding inappropriately relaxed. ‘Whether there was any acting out, not turning up, generally not being themselves, anything like that.’ On the way over here, Read and Fairer had discussed tactics and decided to be as least threatening as possible, and Read was making a fine job of it. Their brief was to spot any odd behaviours; good students who had suddenly slipped in attendance, or concentration. In short, they were looking for their guilty party.

  In response to Read’s tone, Gibbons seemed to relax slightly too. ‘I actually wish that there was,’ he said, his voice suddenly tired. ‘That’s the thing, nothing and no one has changed. There haven’t been any red flags on the school computers, no one messing about on sites they shouldn’t be on, that sort of thing, because we do keep an eye on that, you know?’ he said, as though looking for credit. Fairer tried on an impressed face that prompted the principal to continue. ‘But no, no one is acting out. In fact, the handful of students we have who typically act out have been even quieter than usual. I suppose something about this whole business has just knocked the wind out of them.’

  ‘And who would you say the culprits are for acting out?’ asked Read.

  Gibbons shook his head. ‘Officer, when I say acting out, I mean they aren’t concentrating in class or they won’t put their bloody phones away. It’s a far cry from murder and kidnap. Besides, didn’t your DI cover all of this business with the students?’

  ‘Still,’ Fairer intervened. ‘We’re giving things a second look. It’s always wise to check.’

  ‘Top of the list is Eleanor Gregory, but she’s settled down without her cronies,’ Gibbons said, sounding genuinely saddened by the admission. ‘Chloe Wentworth, Jacob Bells, Laurie Campbell. Oh, Alistair House, as I said to your DI, was obviously sweet on Jenni Grantham. He hasn’t had much to say for himself since this all happened though.’ Gibbons continued to rattle off a dozen more names while Fairer struggled to keep up with the spellings. They might be nothing, but they were worth a shot, the DC decided. ‘But like I said, officers, none of them are murderers, and even they aren’t their usual loud mouth selves while all of this is happening. Christ, Eleanor can just about come in.’

  ‘Is she in today, do you know?’ Read asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not, no. She tried to come in, is my understanding, but her mother said she was too panicked to get the whole way here when it came to it. Poor girl, she’s lost the most of all of the students in this.’

  Fairer took over. ‘Patrick Nelson, was he one of the louder students, would you say?’

  Gibbons gave the question some real thought before answering. ‘Yes,’ he eventually admitted. ‘But only when he was in the right company.’

  Mrs Nelson had collapsed in a mound of tears in the front porch of her house after answering the door and finding Melanie Watton and Edd Carter outside. The struggling mother was convinced that her boy was dead, and that this was the announcement she’d been waiting for. But Melanie talked her round – ‘No, Mrs Nelson, not at all, not at all.’ – and eventually guided her into the living room, where Mr Nelson was sitting. Scrunched up toward one end of the sofa as though trying to occupy as little space as possible, the
man sat with his hands pressed between his knees and his eyes, glazed over, as though he were blissfully unaware of the commotion that had happened just for the officers to get this far into the house. Mr Nelson’s attention didn’t snap back until his wife laid a gentle hand on his shoulder and gave a slight squeeze, pulling him into the conversation.

  ‘There are new detectives here,’ she announced, her voice still shaken from the tears.

  ‘DI Melanie Watton, and this is my colleague DS Edd Carter,’ Melanie said, as her and Edd took a seat on the chairs positioned opposite the large sofa. Out of nowhere, Melanie suddenly felt quite tired of sitting in darkened living rooms, talking to troubled parents, asking about their children…

  Edd continued. ‘We’d like to go over some of the things that the first detectives will have mentioned. Would that be okay?’ Both parents nodded but didn’t go as far to offer verbal approval. ‘Okay, we have it down here that Patrick went out, telling you that he had somewhere to be. How did he seem when he told you that? Calm, agitated?’

  Mrs Nelson thought for a second. ‘He sounded worried, that’s what I’d say. His voice,’ she paused and swallowed in a hard gulp. ‘His voice was a little shaken, and I was going to ask – going to ask what the matter was, but he was gone before I even had the chance.’

  ‘So, he was rushing to get somewhere.’ Edd spoke while writing.

  ‘To see someone,’ Mrs Nelson added and Melanie locked eyes with her.

  ‘No mention of who?’ Melanie pushed, hoping for more than Missing Persons had managed in their time here.

  ‘No, he did say,’ Mrs Nelson spoke, her tone confused. ‘I told the other officers.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Edd said, looking up from his notes. He shared a worried look with Melanie. ‘You know who Patrick was meeting?’

  ‘Michael,’ Mr Nelson chimed in, his voice cracking from under-use. ‘My wife, she told the officers that Patrick was going to meet someone–’

  ‘I told them Patrick was meeting someone called Michael,’ Mrs Nelson cut across her husband. ‘But we don’t know who Michael is.’

  No, Melanie thought with a hard sigh, and neither do we…

  29

  When Edd Carter pulled up outside his house, he killed his car engine and allowed himself a quiet moment to think back over the afternoon. The Nelsons had been distraught at the thought of their son being taken by some unknown individual. Meanwhile, Edd and Melanie had merely been frustrated, faced down again by the anonymous Michael character that seemed to be popping up and disappearing at uncomfortable speeds. The Michael Richards link had moved from clear to tenuous at best but it had occurred again, and neither Edd nor his DI quite knew how to proceed. The officer sighed hard and rubbed at his face before opening his door and swinging himself out of the car, and that’s when he spotted it.

  The house was alive with lights and movement – but Emily was meant to be spending the night at her grandmother’s house. The thought that something might have happened to his daughter catapulted to the forefront of Edd’s mind and he rushed up to the house, fumbled through opening the door, and burst into the hallway – just in time for his blushing smiling daughter to come bounding up to him. Emily launched herself at Edd at such an angle that her head collided with his stomach, and he had to hold in a heave as his daughter clung to him.

  Following the fierce concern that something might have harmed her, Edd’s relief that Emily was fine washed over him in a crushing wave of gratitude and he knelt down to his daughter’s level to kiss her rosy face. But then Trish appeared in the background.

  ‘Mummy’s home, did you know? Mummy’s home!’ Emily delivered the announcement with the same level of excitement that she usually reserved for Christmas morning, in her chorus of ‘He’s been, he’s been’ at finding her presents dotted around the living room, and it killed Edd to see his daughter approach her cheating mother with such excitement.

  When Edd said nothing, Emily took his hand and guided him toward Trish until the two were just a couple of feet apart. Still holding Edd’s hand, Emily reached for Trish’s, and with both adults connected through the link of a little girl, Emily announced: ‘We’re all back together, we’re all back to normal!’

  Trish shot Edd a smug smile over Emily’s head. ‘I’m making lasagne for dinner.’

  ‘I already ate,’ Edd said, squatting down to Emily’s height again. ‘Want to show me what you’ve been doing at school this week?’

  ‘Yes!’ Emily replied before dashing around her father and climbing the stairs to fetch her schoolbooks.

  Edd was grateful for two minutes alone with his wife. ‘You know this is out of order,’ he muttered.

  ‘What, coming back to my house?’ Trish snapped, more vicious than Edd had expected.

  ‘You don’t live here anymore, Trish. You left, remember? You left and gallivanted off.’ Edd paused to pull in a deep breath. ‘With other men. You abandoned us for a frolic or two with people you barely even bloody know and now what, I’m just supposed to take you back and forget that you’ve fu–’

  ‘Daddy, I can’t find my art book, so I’ll have to tell you about maths and English instead.’

  ‘Okay, brainy bean, let’s go.’ Edd set a hand on his daughter’s head as he spoke, feeling her too-soft blonde hair that she’d inherited from her mother. ‘I ate at the station, so I’m good for dinner,’ Edd told Trish, and he shot her a look as though he were daring her to challenge him on it, but she didn’t. Instead, she gave a gentle nod and retreated into the kitchen where, half an hour later, her and Emily would have dinner together while Edd rooted himself to the living room to check through his emails and pay some of the household bills.

  After Emily had gone to bed, Trish found Edd in the kitchen, shoving four pieces of bread into the toaster.

  ‘You didn’t eat at the station?’ she asked from the doorway.

  ‘You know that I didn’t.’ Edd continued his preparations, pulling butter, cheese and ham out of the fridge as the bread crackled into toast. He flicked the switch on the half-full kettle to set that to boil as he went along. ‘Are you going to stand and watch me until this is done?’ he asked, turning to face Trish for the first time since she’d appeared. ‘I managed to keep myself alive for three weeks, I think I’ll be fine for another evening. Unless you’ve done something to the bread.’ He gave her a taut smile as the toast popped up behind him, and Edd turned back to his evening meal preparations.

  ‘Can we talk?’ Trish asked.

  ‘No,’ Edd said, dragging a buttered knife along the first slice of toast. ‘No, we can’t.’

  ‘Edd, you’re being so–’

  ‘What? What am I being?’ He turned to face her, butter knife still in hand. Trish looked taken aback by Edd’s tone; he wasn’t prone to snapping at her, or raising his voice, but that night he had done both. ‘Trish, you can push as hard as you like but you aren’t making this go away. You left me, her.’ He gestured above his head to where their daughter was sleeping. ‘You left both of us without thought or explanation. I had to use my bloody work contacts, and social media of all God-awful things, just to find out where you were. And what if something had happened to Emily? To that girl that you care about so much, and want to come home to?’

  Trish opened her mouth to speak but Edd halted her with a raised hand. ‘Trish, I don’t even want to hear it, whatever it is. You said everything I needed to hear the other night. After that, we’re through.’ He turned back to finish buttering his toast, but instead sighed heavily and dumped the plate of food into the bin. He paced over to the doorway. ‘I’m going upstairs to get blankets. Take the bed. I’ll be up early anyway so I’ll pack things away before Em gets up.’

  ‘How long can you keep that up for?’ Trish asked, moving into his eyeline.

  ‘Until this case is over,’ he said, finally looking at her. ‘Then we’ll make things official.’

  Trish didn’t push any harder after that. She kept out of the way while Edd
searched for blankets and stole the spare pillows from the guest bedroom turned junk room. He made a makeshift bed for himself on the sofa and settled down for the night, taking his phone with him for idle browsing until sleep claimed him. But sleep didn’t.

  For a good thirty minutes, he could hear Trish shuffling around upstairs as though she were pacing from one side of the bedroom to the other. Half of Edd hoped that she was, that she was plagued by guilt and sadness and it was keeping her awake. More realistically, Edd thought she was likely doing it for some kind of dramatic effect.

  It was nearly half past eleven when Trish ceased and, presumably, got into bed. But even then, sleep didn’t come easy to Edd.

  Despite his best efforts not to, he replayed Trish’s explanation from the other evening. The sudden need and want for freedom, for a break from it all, how she explained it away just like that as though it were a normal thing for a wife and mother to do. An uncomfortable blend of anger and confusion swelled in Edd’s stomach, forcing him to sit up on the edge of the sofa, taking deep breaths to try to settle his unease. He was almost grateful when his phone flashed up, silently signalling a phone call – until he saw the DI’s number displayed.

  ‘Boss?’ he answered.

  ‘Did I wake you?’ Melanie was quiet, and her lack of urgency made Edd feel more relieved than nervous, which made a change these days.

  ‘No, no, I was up. What do you need?’

  ‘Can you get over to Camden Woods, just behind the playing field where Jenni was found?’ The confusion, anger, everything fell from Edd’s stomach. He remained seated on the edge of the sofa, bracing himself for what he felt certain was coming. ‘We need feet on the ground for this one, Edd. There’s another body.’