Copycat

by C. S. Barnes

  ‘George, what am I looking at here?’

  The ME sighed. ‘Blunt force trauma.’ He hit the laptop’s enter key as he spoke, calling up a whole new sequence of images. This time the screen showed a series of shots on their way out of the zoom in, and picture by picture, Melanie soon saw the back of their victim’s head, a small dip in its centre, with dried brown blood laid over his hair. She put a hand to her mouth to hold in an expletive. ‘Let it out, Mel, it’s fucking ghastly,’ George said, cutting the image feed. ‘Did forensics collect up the various shit bits that were lying around?’

  ‘They collected samples of everything that was nearby, yes, some things bigger than others.’ She followed George across the room as she spoke, heading back toward the examination table. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I collected these from around the wound,’ he said, picking up a small petri dish. He held the container out for Melanie to observe. ‘Splinters, they look like to me, although I’ll be packaging them up and sending them to forensics, assuming that you don’t have any objections.’

  ‘He was hit over the head with wood?’

  ‘Not over. In. Whoever hit him, this thing went right in. There’s such a clear dent that I’d say if you could find the wood, you’d match it to his head like a goddamn mould.’ George snapped on a pair of clean gloves as he spoke, readying to resume his examination. ‘Anyway, early findings and all that. I’ll have a full report for your records as soon as I can type it, but unless I find something drastic in here, we’ll be sticking with blunt force.’

  ‘Thanks, George, for everything.’ But George waved the gratitude away with a whisk of his hand and sent Melanie packing in the direction of the lab door. ‘Wait, can I just check something?’ she asked.

  George looked up from the growing split in the boy’s torso. ‘Yes?’

  Melanie stepped around the opposite side of the table to face the right side and, holding her breath, she took a quick scan of the boy’s stomach. It didn’t take much finding, standing out against his pale skin like a little neon symbol, the exact size and shape his father had made it out to be – a small but distinct little thumbprint.

  32

  After everything, Melanie couldn’t stand the thought of pulling the Nelsons into Waller’s office for the sake of an identification. They deserved to see their child at his best and, given Waller’s plans, it would be a while before that option was given to them. So before she had left, Melanie had requested from Waller two pictures: one of the boy’s face, and one of the boy’s birthmark. It wasn’t Waller’s first stroll around the block and he understood the DI’s plans without her sharing them; so he obliged, angling the young man’s head away from the light to try to lessen the cobwebs of colouring that had formed under his freezing skin during his time outside. He handed the pictures over to Melanie and wished her luck before the DI went on her way, stopping at the station to collect DC Burton.

  ‘How sure are we?’ Chris asked as she climbed into the car.

  ‘So sure that this is actually just closure,’ Melanie replied, pulling away into the flow of traffic. The DI already knew, in her gut, that the young man on Waller’s table was Patrick Nelson. It was a case of finalising the identification and finding the sick soul who had murdered another kid. ‘Do you think it’s the same person, same people?’ Melanie asked, riffing off from her own thoughts.

  ‘Yes,’ Chris answered without skipping a beat and Melanie shot her a quick look. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise. Two kids from the same college who happened to be best friends, killed in the span of two weeks? We’re either looking for the same two people who attacked Jenni Grantham, or we’re looking for someone sicker than the people who attacked Jenni, and they’re just looking to make waves by killing Jenni’s friends.’ Chris watched as Melanie frowned over option two. ‘No, I’m not buying that we’ve got three psychos in a five-mile radius and this is the first we’re hearing of it either. It’s the same people, boss, I’m sure of it.’

  After this, Melanie’s silence stretched out for most of the journey. She needed the time to ready herself for what was coming. As they turned into the Nelsons’ road, she finally spoke.

  ‘You’ll make a good DS one day, Burton, you know that?’ The DI pulled up outside of the Nelsons’ house and killed the engine without saying another word on the matter. Meanwhile, Chris was shocked into a delighted silence that she knew she needed to shake before she exited the vehicle. ‘Good to go?’ Melanie asked, craning for a look at Chris’s face. The DC nodded, unbuckled herself from the seat, and stepped out of the car in time with her boss.

  They’d barely set a foot on the path leading to the Nelsons’ house when the front door opened. Melanie had been expecting Mr Nelson, after his eagerness at the station, but instead it was Mrs Nelson in the doorway, her solemn expression and sad eyes greeting the officers as they arrived on her doorstep. Melanie gave her a thin smile, which the grieving mother reciprocated with some effort.

  ‘It’s him, isn’t it,’ Rachel Nelson asked in a resigned tone. Melanie knew that the parents were braced for this and, not wanting to string their pain out any longer than necessary, she gave the woman a gentle nod. Rachel Nelson sidestepped to let the pair of officers into the house, adding, ‘Phil is in the living room,’ as they walked by her.

  ‘Mr Nelson,’ Melanie said on entering the room and the man, perched on the edge of the sofa as though about to get up, turned to look at her. His eyes were ringed with red patches and Melanie guessed that there had been tears shed over the last few hours. ‘My colleague, DC Burton, and I have some images that we’d like to show you and your wife, if you’re both comfortable looking at them.’

  Mrs Nelson joined her husband on the sofa as Melanie and Chris took their seats opposite. Rachel gave her husband’s knee a gentle squeeze before meeting Melanie’s gaze.

  ‘We don’t mind, no.’

  With the same level of care she imagined someone would take with a real body, Melanie eased the photographs out of their folder slowly. She balanced the image of the birthmark on her palm and handed it over to Mrs Nelson who grabbed it with considerably less care than Melanie had shown. But the mother was eager, desperate even, and Melanie could understand that.

  The DI followed this image with the second one showing the boy’s face. She held back a wince at the sight of the boy who had become discoloured during his time in the woodlands, hoping that the parents wouldn’t notice the telltale signs of a body abandoned outside.

  Mr Nelson leaned forward to take this second image and as soon as he clapped eyes on the photograph, he sucked in too much air, which he quickly forced back in a difficult cough. Melanie and Chris shared a nervous glance while both parents assessed their respective images, saying nothing for what felt like the longest time.

  Mr Nelson spoke first. ‘Oh,’ he said, as though remembering their company. When he looked up to speak directly at the officers, Melanie spotted tears clinging to the edges of his eyes, ready to rush down his cheeks at any given blink. ‘I’m sorry, officers, I – well, I.’ He shook his head lightly, clenched his eyes, and the tears fell. ‘I do think it’s him, yes.’ He passed the image across to his wife, refusing to open his eyes again until the photograph had changed hands. He reached across to the small table standing at the side of the sofa, a box of tissues perched on top, at the ready. Pulling out two, three, four, he dabbed at his own eyes while passing two tissues across to his wife, sensing her need without even looking at her. In these seconds, the room remained so quiet that every one of Mrs Nelson’s tears that collided with the printed image landed as a loud dollop.

  ‘It’s him,’ Mrs Nelson eventually announced to the room and her husband approved her statement with a firm nod. ‘Yes, it’s definitely him.’ She ran a tissue beneath each eye to catch the final tears before handing both images back across to Melanie, who quickly stashed them into the cardboard folder, out of sight. ‘Who – who would have done this?’ Mrs Nelson asked, her
words struggling to fight their way out.

  ‘Is it the same person who got Jenni, is that what you’re thinking?’ Philip Nelson chimed.

  ‘At the moment, we’re unsure,’ Melanie said. ‘There’s an obvious connection between the cases and we can’t write this off as sheer coincidence, so moving forward, we will treat them as related incidents until we find a reason to think otherwise.’

  ‘Good God.’ Philip Nelson wore an expression of utter confusion. ‘I can’t make sense – I just can’t understand any of this. They’re children, nothing more than children, honestly.’ He was pleading with the officers, as though either Melanie or Chris might do something to reverse the recent events, and the DI felt helpless in the face of the pleading man. ‘Have you told the Granthams?’ he eventually asked.

  ‘What about Eleanor?’ Mrs Nelson added.

  Melanie leapt in. ‘What about Eleanor, Mrs Nelson?’

  ‘Is she a target? If they’ve got Jenni, if they’ve got – if they’ve got our Patrick, should Eleanor’s parents be worried. Should someone be watching her?’

  ‘We’ll have a police car patrolling past Eleanor Gregory’s house for the next few days, and we’ll be talking to her parents about minding her whereabouts a little more than usual, should there be any risk. Although we don’t currently have evidence to suggest that there is,’ Chris rattled off her reassurance like a practiced speaker and Melanie was notably impressed with her DC’s fast thinking.

  ‘There is evidence though, isn’t there?’ Mr Nelson pushed. ‘There are two bodies. Isn’t that evidence?’

  ‘That’s not what they mean, Phil.’ Mrs Nelson tried to settle her husband. The man shook his head and adopted the same look of confusion from earlier, slipping back into quiet. ‘We’d like to see Patrick, as soon as we can, please.’

  ‘I understand. Our Medical Examiner will contact us when his investigations are complete, and we’ll be able to arrange a viewing for you both…’ Melanie caught sight of Mr Nelson’s stunned face and decided to revise her offer. ‘Or for just one of you, it’s not compulsory that you see him. Either way, we’ll arrange things as quickly as we can.’

  ‘When his investigations are complete. Does that mean you don’t know what happened?’ Mrs Nelson asked, latching on to Melanie’s words.

  Too many thoughts rushed through Melanie’s head at once and she decided, against protocol perhaps, to answer with her gut instead of a guidebook. ‘No, at the minute we don’t know what happened. But we should know something in the next day or two.’

  The Nelsons thanked the officers for their time – although neither women felt like they deserved the parents’ gratitude – and they declined the offer of a Family Liaison Officer. ‘We don’t need someone rattling around the house with us,’ Mrs Nelson had said and Melanie, unwilling to fight a grieving parent, had let the issue go.

  The DI and DC were midway through their journey back to the station, with a heavy silence sitting between them in the car. Chris couldn’t decide whether it was the weight of their visit as a whole, or whether it was one thing in particular that was troubling her boss…

  ‘I would have lied about Waller’s preliminaries too,’ the DC said, guessing at the trouble. The heavy silence held its place for a second or two longer before Melanie eventually replied.

  ‘Thanks, Chris, that’s actually good to know.’

  33

  Superintendent Archer arranged for a press conference, featuring both DI Melanie Watton and DI Thomas Williams from the Missing Persons department. Melanie gave an eye roll at the mention of Missing Persons’ involvement, but Archer made her case – ‘They’ve got a fair bit to answer for.’ – and no more was said on the matter. It took two days to arrange for the right journalists and media to be involved, now their humble home-ground case had caught the attention of the bigger-named papers.

  ‘I’ve heard The Daily Mail will be there,’ Fairer said as he flicked through his computer’s controls, trying to find the right website for live-streamed television.

  ‘Why do you think that’s exciting?’ Burton replied, her tone one of genuine curiosity.

  Elsewhere in the station, Melanie was sitting across a table from Edd Carter, talking strategies on what to reveal and what not to reveal. The pair had been talking for nearly half an hour and had decided that Melanie needed to be as vague as possible, giving out very few specific details on Patrick’s death to avoid tipping off anyone who might be involved – or rather, anyone trying to be involved. With the newly applied pressure sitting firmly on the team to crack the case, they were eager to weed out the false witnesses before they got into full bloom, and limiting the public details was the best way of doing that. The two were about to pick up another strand of their discussion when a firm knock came at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ Melanie shouted, and in walked Superintendent Archer, donned in her most formal attire with a troubled look on her face. Both officers immediately stood to attention, somewhat startled by the appearance of their superior. ‘Ma’am, apologies, I didn’t realise that you were going to be around for this.’

  ‘Around?’ Archer repeated. ‘I’m making up part of the panel.’

  Melanie and Edd swapped a look. ‘Are things that bad?’ the DS asked.

  Archer sighed. ‘We’ve got two dead kids in as many weeks, Carter, things certainly aren’t good.’ She shot a pointed look at Melanie. ‘Are you ready?’

  Carter excused himself and allowed the two women some privacy to walk to the press room on their own. They did so in silence, neither in the right frame of mind to make small talk with the other.

  When they were outside the press room, all either officer could muster was a thin smile, quickly tucked away as they stepped in to face the pack of interrogators waiting for them. Melanie had never seen the room so fit to bursting with press officials and, for the first time in her career, she knew hardly anyone in the room. It occurred to her then just how big the case was becoming, the defining one of her career even, a thought that terrified and excited her in equal measure, although it did nothing for her concerns about being able to catch their killer – killers, however many they were looking for.

  The superintendent and the DI took their seats at the table, and while bulbs flashed and journalists readied themselves for the opening of questions, the two officers present waited for the arrival of the third. As Archer checked her watch for the second time, DI Williams fell through the door with a blank expression and a dishevelled appearance that set Melanie’s eyes rolling again, and she hoped that the cameras hadn’t caught her.

  ‘Now we’re all present and accounted for,’ Superintendent Archer started. ‘We have invited you here this afternoon to discuss the developments in the Jenni Grantham case, tied, it seems, to the Patrick Nelson case as well. You are all of course aware of the restrictions around what we can and cannot reveal as part of the ongoing investigation, but nevertheless we invite you to ask questions and I, and my officers, will answer them to the best of our abilities. Before that, it will help you to know where we currently are with our investigations.’

  Archer relayed a potted version of both cases that Melanie had provided for her the day before, although the superintendent recited the details as though she’d done the groundwork on each case herself, such was her confidence and assuredness.

  As her overview came to an end, the superior officer opened up the opportunity for questions, of which there appeared to be many.

  ‘Superintendent Archer, you implied earlier that the two murders are tied, what exactly do you mean by that?’ The first question came from a young gentleman at the back of the room who was dressed for a job interview, his tie so tight that it looked as though it were pinching his neck. By comparison to the local journalists that Melanie was accustomed to dealing with, the young man might well have been the most professional member of the press Melanie had seen.

  ‘DI Watton may be able to tell you more about that.’

  Melanie swal
lowed hard and the gulp echoed from the microphone in front of her. ‘At the moment, we’re assuming there is a link between the two cases, but we cannot currently confirm what that link may be. As we’ve said, it’s very early days in both investigations, particularly in Patrick Nelson’s, where we are still waiting for a final autopsy report before making any definite conclusions.’

  ‘So they weren’t killed in the same way?’ The question came from a more familiar face this time. Melanie’s head snapped round to catch sight of Heather Shawly, her pen poised ready for an answer.

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t release that information yet,’ Melanie replied.

  Heather pushed again. ‘Presumably, if you can’t directly tie them together, then–’

  Superintendent Archer cut across the woman with a swiftness that would have made Melanie smile with glee – under other circumstances. ‘It’s a little busy in here, Ms Shawly, I think one question per journalist is fair for the time being.’ Heather Shawly had a bad reputation for being a hard and harsh wordsmith, and Melanie thought it couldn’t come soon enough for someone to take the woman down a peg. Archer shifted her gaze. ‘May we have a question from this side of the room?’

  ‘What involvement have Missing Persons had with this case exactly?’ The question came from another new face and it was expertly avoided by Archer, who redirected the query to an uncomfortable-looking DI Williams. Melanie leaned forward to hear the DI’s spin on his involvement. Whatever was coming, she thought, it better be good…