Copycat

by C. S. Barnes

  Eleanor Gregory sat alone in a well-lit interview room, her eyes tired from lack of sleep, and her neck cricked from a night hunched up on what passed for a bed inside a police cell. Her mother had ardently protested the whole thing, but in the end Eleanor had gone willingly, holding her wrists behind her back as though eager for Melanie to place the handcuffs on her.

  Eleanor had been transported to the station the previous evening where she had been detained on grounds of being a danger to those around her. Being suspected of two murders in as many weeks seemed to convince the chief superintendent that exceptions could be made for this particular case.

  Two storeys above the interview room, Melanie and her team were working furiously to process the new information that was coming at them in violent waves. Morris, with the help of the technology team and an eager Chris, was working through the contents of Eleanor’s laptop. Elsewhere, Carter was reading and documenting messages and call logs from the suspect’s phone. There had been bagged up items of clothing wedged in the back of Eleanor’s wardrobe that the officers also found in the early hours of the morning, and DCs Fairer and Read had couriered those over to forensics where they were currently waiting for all and any results the team might be able to find at short notice. The entire office was working in full throttle and for the first time since this charade began, Melanie finally felt as though the team had a measure of control.

  The DI checked her watch and, noting the time as just after eight fifteen, she headed down to the main reception in the hope that their requested social services worker might be there by now. She broke into a run on her way down, suddenly desperate to do everything in as fast a time as possible, as though making up for the previous weeks. But when she pushed through the doors into the main reception, far from finding a new face, Melanie was greeted with an all-too-familiar one.

  ‘Where is she?’ Mrs Gregory spat, rising from her seat and closing the gap between herself and the DI at a speed. ‘You’ve had her all night, you should be done with her now.’

  ‘Mrs Gregory, I’m afraid we haven’t even started. There’s a lot of evidence to proce–’

  ‘Evidence?’ the woman repeated, in a notably higher pitch. ‘Surely, as you’ve bloody arrested her, you should have all your bloody evidence.’ Each word landed with a physical weight that Melanie fought against reacting to. Instead she took a small step back, lengthening the gap between her and the other woman, and tried to explain.

  ‘We have enough evidence to hold her, Mrs Gregory, but we’re now in possession of certain items that will help to determine Eleanor’s involvement in this whole thing.’ Mrs Gregory parted her lips to speak but Melanie pressed on. ‘If you really want to help Eleanor, then perhaps you’ll agree to an interview yourself.’

  The woman appeared taken aback. ‘Why on earth would you want an interview with me?’

  ‘To determine your involvement in this whole thing,’ Melanie said with a smile that she couldn’t stifle. ‘You’re under no obligation, of course, and perhaps you’d like a solicitor to accompany you and advise you, which is also understandable.’

  The more Melanie explained, the more offended the woman appeared.

  ‘This is ridiculous, Detective Inspector, utterly ridiculous. Do you suppose that I killed them now? Is that your new theory?’ The woman shook her head at the thought. ‘I’ve no need for a solicitor, as I’ve done nothing wrong, but if it helps to clear up this bloody madness then of course I’ll agree to an interview, as soon as you’re ready and able,’ she said, implying that Melanie was not either at present.

  Melanie crossed the room to speak to the sergeant behind the desk. ‘Are there any interview rooms free at the moment?’

  The man glanced down to a small display, hidden behind the counter. ‘Interview room three appears to be empty, Detective, if that’s of any use.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ Melanie replied. She turned to face a newly startled-looking Mrs Gregory. ‘Shall we?’

  Melanie led the woman down a light grey corridor and into a room that was sparsely decorated; the only furniture it boasted was a table and four chairs, strategically placed in the centre of the space.

  ‘Please, do sit,’ Melanie offered, taking a seat herself. Mrs Gregory pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table. ‘There’s recording equipment fitted throughout the room so, for the benefit of the recording, could you please confirm your name?’

  ‘Fiona Gregory,’ the woman announced, with more hesitation than the act called for.

  ‘And I am Detective Inspector Melanie Watton.’ Melanie knew that she was running wild with this interview, but she also knew that an uninhibited conversation with the suspect’s mother might not come around again too soon. Melanie also knew that she’d have to carefully play the cards that they held, and feel her way forward from there. The detective pulled in a deep breath to steady herself before she began. ‘Mrs Gregory, I’m not going to ask you for hard facts because it hardly seems fair given the rushed nature of this interview,’ Melanie said, deliberately softening her tone. ‘But I would like to know some more details of your daughter’s character, as you know her, that might go some way toward determining what’s really happened here. Does that sound okay to you, Mrs Gregory?’

  ‘Of course,’ the woman agreed, although she didn’t sound certain.

  ‘Okay. How would you describe your daughter?’ Melanie tried to start with a relatively easy question, but Mrs Gregory pulled her eyebrows together by way of responding to it. ‘On a day-to-day basis,’ Melanie tried to clarify. ‘Is she lively, friendly, helpful?’

  ‘All of those things.’ Melanie felt as though Mrs Gregory had thrown herself on the answers, trying to catch each positive description of her daughter before it became hidden by something less savoury. ‘She’s always helping around the house, she does very well with everything at college, and–’

  ‘Actually, we have a testimony from Mr Gibbons, who has branded Eleanor as a bit of a troublemaker from time to time. Is this news to you?’ Melanie asked, and from the expression spreading across the other woman’s face, the detective knew that this reveal wasn’t exactly a surprise. ‘So, she’s prone to being a bit of a troublemaker?’

  Mrs Gregory rolled her eyes. ‘A little, yes, I suppose. But she’s a teenager, she’s no more or less of a troublemaker than her friends.’

  ‘Her dead friends?’ Melanie asked, her tone flat and her expression sceptical.

  ‘Detective–’

  ‘You’re quite right, Mrs Gregory, that was unfair of me. But speaking of her friends, what were your thoughts on Jenni Grantham and Patrick Nelson, were they troublemakers?’

  Mrs Gregory seemed to consider this for longer than she had done previous questions. ‘They could be, all children can be, but generally they always seemed very well behaved to me. Patrick could be boisterous, I know, but Jenni was always, she was always very kind.’ Mrs Gregory’s voice had taken on a note of sadness at the mention of Jenni, her eyes watering suddenly. ‘It’s a sad business, what’s happened to those children.’

  ‘And you firmly believe that your daughter had nothing to do with it?’

  Mrs Gregory stood up in a rush, knocking the table as she did. ‘Detective, I will not sit here, and have you talk about my daughter like she’s a bloody murderer, when I know full well that she is not. She’s not perfect, no–’

  ‘Why did you parade her around, Mrs Gregory? Can we talk about that for a moment?’ The subject change startled the woman and Melanie couldn’t help but push at it a touch harder. ‘Why did you let her on every television and radio segment that asked? Was that for yourself or for your daughter?’

  Thrown, the woman sank back into her seat. She rested her elbows on the table in front of her and cradled her head in her hands, avoiding eye contact with the detective. ‘Because she asked,’ she said, in a quiet voice. ‘Because Eleanor asked and begged, and I couldn’t say no because everything around her was terrible and this was something good, or
something she thought would be good and I just, I wanted something good out of it all.’

  For the first time, Melanie felt a stab of sympathy for the woman. The DI and her team had assumed that it had all been the mother’s doing, that Mrs Gregory was the driving force behind the interviews, the showmanship, when all along it had been Eleanor. Although, sad as Mrs Gregory looked, Melanie couldn’t help but feel pleased with this latest revelation, as credence, further evidence toward the type of young woman they were readying to face off against, just two interview rooms away.

  ‘Mrs Gregory,’ Melanie continued, readying for one final blow. ‘Our forensics experts have found Eleanor’s DNA on both Jenni Grantham and Patrick Nelson, in places where only the killer’s DNA would be found.’

  ‘I don’t understand…’

  ‘Eleanor’s DNA was found underneath the bag that was wrapped around Jenni Grantham’s neck, and larger traces of it have since been found–’

  ‘DI Watton.’ Superintendent Archer spoke in a raised tone as the door opened with a force that sent it slamming back into the wall behind it. ‘A word, if you please.’

  39

  Superintendent Archer’s face was a pale red, but it was blooming into something much fiercer as she waited for the corridor to clear. Melanie knew that she was in for a reprimand, but she was grateful that her superior at least planned to do it in private. As the last police constable trailed away following a burglary suspect, Archer turned to face Melanie square on.

  ‘What are you playing at, dragging that woman in there without counsel?’

  ‘She didn’t want any,’ Melanie replied, pleased that she had this truth in her armoury.

  ‘And where’s your supporting detective? Carter, Burton? Do either of them know that you’re in here, or did you go in unprotected with the mother of a suspected murderer?’ Melanie was shot quiet on this one. Like a rumbled child, her eyes darted everywhere but in the direction of her accuser, and her guilt was all too obvious. ‘I thought as much,’ Archer continued. ‘Your social services worker is here to act as Eleanor Gregory’s appropriate adult, and the duty solicitor has arrived. I gave permission for both of them to have an hour with the girl before formal interviews begin.’

  Melanie let out a light sigh. ‘Thank you, Ma’am.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Archer replied, seemingly uncomfortable. ‘This has eaten into that hour, I’m afraid, so if I were you I’d get upstairs and get an interview plan together sharpish.’

  ‘But what about–’

  ‘I’ll see that the formalities are properly explained to Mrs Gregory from here on,’ the superintendent said, cutting across her junior officer, and Melanie had no inclination to fight with her on this. The DI knew that she’d gotten away lightly, as reprimands from Archer went.

  Melanie thanked her superior – still not quite making eye contact – and excused herself, before bounding up the stairs two at a time to get back in the company of her team.

  When she pushed through into MIT’s central office space, she stepped into a hive of activity. Her team barely noticed she was back, they were so busy carrying one lot of evidence to one person, trading it for another, finding something else worth checking out on their way back to their desks. Worker bees turned superheroes, Melanie could see that she hadn’t been the only one trying to make up for lost time. She scanned the room for Carter and, spotting him mid-conversation with Burton, Melanie waved them both toward her.

  ‘We need interview strategies, kids, I’ve got thirty minutes before I need to be in with Eleanor Gregory,’ Melanie said, taking a seat at a nearby table. The DS and DC swapped a smug look, still standing in front their superior. ‘What, what did I miss?’

  ‘Slow and steady strategy. You ask her about her Internet habits, how reliant she is on her phone, maybe how good she thinks she is with computers. But the main part of the interview should be when you hit her with this.’ Edd punctuated his speech by throwing a cardboard folder down on the desk in front of Melanie, the contents of which were spilling out due to the sheer volume of them.

  ‘What’s this, Edd? What are you giving me here?’

  There was another shared look between the two junior officers. Chris threw a glance at the clock pinned to the wall and said, ‘Get reading, you’ve got twenty-five minutes to learn as much as you can.’

  Melanie and Edd stepped into the interview room upholding a formal silence. Around the centre table there sat Eleanor Gregory, her new social worker – Izzy Hughes, as Melanie had been informed – and the duty solicitor, who Melanie recognised as Oliver Lane. Oliver was seated alongside Eleanor while Izzy had pushed her seat back from the table, excluding herself from the conversation but still making her presence known. Melanie and Edd took their seats opposite the suspect and her legal representative, and Melanie formally started the interview.

  ‘I am DI Melanie Watton, and this is my colleague DS Edd Carter. For the purpose of this interview recording, could you please state your names.’

  ‘Oliver Lane, duty solicitor,’ the man replied.

  ‘Eleanor Gregory.’

  Even now, when she was tired, when she was caught, the girl didn’t sound downtrodden and she certainly didn’t look like she felt guilty. Edd was sure that he saw the beginnings of a smile when he and Melanie had walked into the room, and he hoped that the surveillance had caught it too.

  ‘We’d like to talk to you about your Internet habits, Eleanor,’ Melanie said, shuffling the paperwork in front of her while ensuring it stayed hidden from the suspect.

  ‘What about them?’ Eleanor replied.

  ‘Would you say that you’re an active Internet user?’

  The girl snorted out a puff of air. ‘Course. I’m seventeen.’

  ‘And you use it for what, general social media updates, browsing, that sort of thing?’

  ‘I guess, and homework, sometimes.’

  ‘Ah, so you use it for research?’

  Eleanor shifted in her seat. ‘Yeah, when I need to do research for college.’

  ‘So, I’m assuming that…’ Melanie picked up a sheet of paper and read directly from it. ‘Manual strangulation is something that you needed to research for college reasons?’ She looked over the sheet of paper to eye Eleanor, but the girl was still giving nothing away, so the DI continued. ‘What about, top ten murderers uk, was that a college thing?’

  ‘It might have been, I can’t–’

  ‘How about hiding conversations on laptop, does that one sound familiar?’ Melanie cut across her and Oliver Lane leapt in before Eleanor could reply.

  ‘Detective, the two areas seem unrelated to me. Is there some connective tissue here?’

  ‘Funny you should ask.’ Melanie turned around the sheet of paper that she’d been reading from to present it to the solicitor and his client. ‘This is a list of search terms that we pulled from your laptop, although it took a while, given the jiggery pokery that we had to do to get into the thing.’ Melanie paused and eyed Eleanor. This time Mel was sure the young woman was sitting on a smug smile. ‘It’s not a comprehensive list but just some highlights, and we’ve managed to time and date them all. Here.’ Melanie tapped a side column on the page. ‘These different terms, how to hide conversations, how to manually strangle someone, and the others you can see listed there, they build a timeline of our case.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Eleanor replied.

  ‘I mean, two weeks after you looked up how to hide online conversations, Jenni and Patrick started to have secret conversations with a screen name we couldn’t trace, for example. Or…’ Melanie peered over to look at the sheet. ‘How about how you researched manual strangulation a week before Jenni died.’

  ‘Is there a question here?’ Oliver asked.

  ‘Yes. Can you explain that timeline, Eleanor?’

  The teenager shared a look with her solicitor before facing Melanie. ‘Not really.’

  Melanie sifted out another sheet from the pile in front of her. ‘Okay,’ she s
aid, facing another strip of paper toward the suspect. ‘Can you maybe explain why you’ve googled Jenni Grantham thirty-two times in the space of two weeks, all since her murder?’

  ‘I was looking for something,’ Eleanor replied.

  ‘What? Details on the case?’

  The girl released another puff of air, shook her head, and smiled. ‘No, DI Watton, not details on the case.’

  Melanie wasn’t sure whether it was hearing the girl use her formal title, or whether it was her overall tone, but something about Eleanor Gregory’s persona appeared to shift with that one answer, and Melanie felt spurred on to push at the girl even harder.

  ‘We’ve established that you’re an active Internet user, how about your mobile phone?’ Melanie asked, swapping a look with Edd who pulled out a sheet of paper from his own interview pack.

  ‘Again, I’m a teenager, so…’

  Edd read from the sheet in front of him. ‘You can’t balls out of this now, Paddy. We’ve done it and there’s no undoing it.’ Edd read again before looking over the sheet. ‘Should I continue?’ When no answer came from Eleanor, Edd read another text. ‘Meet me and we’ll talk about this.’ He set the paper down. ‘Those messages were sent the night that Patrick Nelson went missing; the night that we know now, Patrick Nelson was murdered.’

  Melanie wasn’t sure, but she thought Oliver Lane had just allowed a slight shake of his head. She wondered whether the full weight of the case was dawning on the tired solicitor.

  ‘Shortly after these messages,’ Edd continued. ‘It looks as though you made a call to Patrick, which lasted around a minute. What was the nature of that call?’

  ‘I was telling him where to meet me,’ Eleanor replied.

  Melanie felt a pull in her stomach, triggered by the girl’s unashamed honesty. ‘And where were you telling him to meet you?’

  ‘Don’t answer that, Eleanor.’

  ‘I want to answer,’ Eleanor said, turning to look directly at her solicitor before facing Melanie again. ‘I was telling him to meet me at the woodlands.’