Mimic

by Daniel Cole

  ‘Who is it, please?’ a voice called.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Benjamin Chambers with the Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘Have you got identification?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hold it up to the camera, please.’

  Rolling his eyes, Chambers produced his ID card and held it above his head.

  ‘Closer, please.’

  Muttering, he stretched his arm out further, standing on tiptoes, when suddenly the metal door rattled open to reveal the strange little man behind. He must have been in his fifties and had the appearance of a cyclops – one eye enlarged by the magnifying glass suspended from a leather headband. He had a monk’s hairline and was wearing an oily apron that was almost as grubby as his hands and face.

  ‘Sorry. Can’t be too careful,’ said the man, peering anxiously up and down the street before gesturing for him to enter. He then closed and relocked the door behind them. ‘Tobias Sleepe,’ he introduced himself, regarding Chambers with interest.

  Inside, the industrial unit was moodily lit. Four grand statues stood upon wooden plinths, spotlights positioned above each of them as if displayed in a gallery, their size intimidating within such an intimate setting. Chambers strolled between them, taking in the subtle details: the intricate creases adding movement to bronze clothing, the all-too familiar lines etched into world-weary faces, and looked forward to getting home to tell Eve that he finally ‘got art … or whatever’.

  ‘You work here alone?’ Chambers asked while casually walking a lap of the space, noticing the assorted tools laid out across a workstation, a discoloured pill pot covered in red warnings, and the simple pulley system erected in the centre of the room, its empty rope hanging like an expectant noose.

  ‘The past thirty-two years.’

  ‘Heavy work, I bet,’ he commented conversationally.

  ‘Not if you’ve got the right tools,’ replied the man without taking his eyes off his wandering guest.

  ‘And you live here?’

  ‘Sometimes … That will be enough personal questions, thank you.’

  Chambers smiled, walking back over to join him: ‘Sorry, always did want to do something creative. I digress. The Hyde Park statue: which one is it?’

  The man turned his back on him and the four illuminated sculptures, heading instead for a darkened corner of the room. Chambers tensed up as he watched Sleepe pass the workstation covered in tools. But then, pulling an old cloth to the floor, he revealed a statue of a man riding a horse, whose right arm looked to have been smashed off. Both the rider and the horse’s eyes had been scratched out, and one of the animal’s legs lay broken in a box beside it.

  ‘Vandalism,’ Sleepe announced. ‘It’s a strange thing that the very worst aspects of the human condition are what keeps me in a job … Well,’ he chuckled, ‘just look who I’m talking to. I’m interested: I suppose, like me, you think of what you do as a calling … your purpose in life?’

  Chambers remained silent.

  ‘So, let’s say one day all your hard work pays off,’ Sleepe continued regardless. ‘The world miraculously turns into a nice place, that fabled utopia we’ve all been striving for … What would your purpose be then, Detective? … Huh? Here’s hoping we continue our collective fall from grace for all time … for both our sakes.’

  The two men stood in silence for a moment, the statues’ blind eyes watching everything.

  Clearing his throat, Chambers asked: ‘You retrieved the statue yourself?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Monday … Morning.’

  ‘And … who is it?’

  ‘The sculpture? I believe it’s a lesser known depiction of The Duke of Wellington.’

  ‘Do they routinely remove statues from the parks for repair?’

  ‘Almost never, and only as a last resort. But when they realised the horse’s leg was missing, it was deemed unsafe and they requested I remove it immediately.’

  ‘Was the arm recovered? I’m only seeing a leg.’

  ‘No. Nor the sword.’

  Chambers looked confused.

  ‘It was holding a sword,’ explained Sleepe.

  ‘And is anyone currently looking into who did this?’

  ‘I expect it will be dismissed as “petty vandalism” as per usual … It’s not like it’s a dead body, is it?’

  Chambers frowned and watched the man for a moment – watched the peculiar little grin that he’d fixed upon his face:

  ‘Don’t touch this again. I’ll have forensics round first thing to dust for prints.’

  Now it was Sleepe’s turn to watch Chambers closely:

  ‘It would appear the Metropolitan Police are taking vandalism rather more seriously these days.’

  Chambers met his eye, giving nothing away: ‘On this occasion, yes. Yes, we are.’

  Tuesday

  CHAPTER 4

  The Tower of London seldom managed to sneak up on anybody, but Chambers was a little surprised to see it through the driver’s-side window as he realised he was in the wrong lane. He’d been rolling through the city on autopilot, his mind too preoccupied with their stalling investigation to worry about the angry honks as he cut someone up.

  They’d learned that the work order for the statue had been submitted four days before its eventual removal, a strip of yellow tape, which had promptly blown away in the wind, holding the fort until then. Working off the assumption that the killer was responsible for the damage, it also seemed fair to assume he’d been returning to the park on a regular basis in the hope of finding his chosen spot now vacant. Officers had spoken with all the local homeless, the Park’s Department staff and every dog walker they’d come across. They had also retrieved the tapes from every security camera providing a view of the park – all to no avail.

  The same could be said for the victim, Henry John Dolan, who’d attended his regular gym session on the evening before his murder. A creature of habit, he’d also made it to his nearby Applegood Health Food Market on the way home, according to a receipt found in his rubbish. This still left them with a fourteen-hour time frame to work with between leaving the store, arriving home and first being spotted by the jogger.

  None of the hospitals they’d contacted thus far had reported any unusual shortfalls in their stocks of pancuronium bromide when accounting for breakage and general misplacement. And when the search widened to include veterinary practices and a number of specialist dental surgeries, the undertaking had become more of an ‘ongoing’ concern. Forensics, meanwhile, had discovered a staggering number of prints on the statue considering the thing had been ten feet up in the air.

  To top it all off, Chambers had picked up another murder and serious assault to add to his already crippling workload, and Eve had found the stash of his mother’s home-made ‘Fatty’ biltong he’d ingeniously hidden in an empty butter tub at the back of the fridge.

  Overall, it hadn’t been a good few days, the only ray of light being the revelation that the killer needn’t be a well-built man as originally suspected after seeing the makeshift pulley system which would no doubt make shifting a cumbersome corpse considerably easier; that coupled with the fact that Chambers had now encountered just such a shifty, not well-built man, who had already made just such a makeshift pulley system and, therefore, could now consider himself a suspect.

  Chambers slammed his foot on the brake, having just driven straight through a red light. Once the seemingly endless queue of vehicles had finished hurling abuse at him, he decided he was in desperate need of caffeine.

  Parking up, he was just about to climb out when the radio went off: ‘All units. All units. Have we got anybody in the vicinity of Bethnal Green? I think we might have a body.’

  ‘Think we might have?’ a gruff Glaswegian voice chimed in, before playing up for the sake of his eavesdropping audience. ‘Tell them if it’s either peach or brown, got arms and legs, and doesn’t get up when they ask “are you a body?” … it’s
probably a body.’

  ‘Thank you, Detective,’ said the dispatcher, struggling not to laugh. ‘The caller doesn’t speak any English.’

  A drawn-out sigh filled the speakers: ‘All right. Allocate to me.’ There was a pause. ‘Did you get that? You can allocate it to me.’

  ‘Sorry,’ the dispatcher came back to him, turning abruptly professional. ‘Additional details: it now sounds like there could be two bodies.’ Her voice became muffled and distant as she spoke to someone at her end. ‘They’re saying something about glue … or that they’ve been glued together maybe?’

  Snatching the handset from its cradle, Chambers responded before anyone else blocked the channel: ‘DS Chambers,’ he identified himself, switching the engine on, hitting the sirens and pulling out into traffic. ‘Allocate to me. I’m on my way.’

  ‘You sure, Ben?’ the Scotsman asked over the air.

  ‘I’m sure. Pass details.’

  Just then, a fourth voice joined the conversation, one that Chambers was a little surprised to hear: ‘This is Constable Winter. We’ll be backing him up.’

  ‘Received.’

  In no mood for the inevitable argument to come, Chambers accelerated northwards through the city.

  ‘Pietà! Pietà!’ a dark-haired woman cried in anguish as Chambers pulled up outside a run of terrace houses that suggested neglect was contagious. She spotted him the moment he shut the engine off and came rushing over, her face wet with tears, a look of terror in her eyes. She grabbed a handful of his overcoat: ‘Pietà!’

  ‘I’m going to check on him,’ he promised, taking a step towards the open doorway. But when her grip failed to loosen, he had to forcibly remove her hands.

  ‘No. No. No. Pietà!’

  ‘You need to let me go to him,’ he told the woman firmly, passing her back to her teenage relatives and heading into the property.

  The smell hit him instantly: dirty litter trays, body odour and putrefaction. The bedroom to his left stood empty, so he proceeded down the hall, where Winter intercepted him:

  ‘Sergeant,’ he greeted Chambers curtly.

  ‘Constable.’

  ‘As you might be able to smell,’ he started, trying not to gag, ‘we’ve got two dead bodies.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure this time?’ deadpanned Chambers, not because he particularly wanted to provoke the young man, just because he’d handed it to him on a platter.

  Winter didn’t seem impressed: ‘Looks like it’s been a couple of days, at least. And …’

  ‘… And?’

  ‘Like control said: they’ve been glued together.’ Cupping his hand over his nose and mouth, he gestured for Chambers to follow him.

  They entered the gloomy living room. Rubbish blew around their feet on a cold wind, the French doors propped open while Winter’s partner stepped outside for a minute. Careful to keep the bizarre shape in the corner of his eye, Chambers braced himself …

  He turned to face it.

  In the centre of the threadbare sofa, a woman in her early thirties was sitting upright, a flowing cloth hooding her head before cascading down to the carpet. Across her lap lay the body of a teenage boy, head tilted back in her arms, ribs teasing the skin, naked but for a narrow strip of material around his waist. Despite the delay in finding them, and the smell to the contrary, both looked to have a healthy colour.

  ‘In all seriousness. You did check they were both dead, right?’ Chambers asked him.

  ‘Yes!’ Winter replied, affronted. ‘No pulse. No signs of breathing. No eye reflex.’

  Chambers nodded, satisfied, and then pulled his jumper up around his face just to breathe. ‘Glued?’ he asked.

  ‘Her hand under his armpit, his hand, legs and head … and the back of her head to the wall.’

  ‘Je-sus,’ said Chambers, sliding his hands into a pair of disposable gloves. Stepping lightly over the robes that spilled across the floor, he inspected the back of the boy’s neck.

  ‘Looking for something?’ Winter asked him.

  ‘Clues,’ he replied.

  ‘… In particular?’

  Finding no puncture wound, Chambers didn’t respond. But then he frowned on noticing the beige-brown powder coating the fingers of his gloves. Next, he attempted to gently manoeuvre the woman’s head, but gave up on realising that the material had been stuck onto her scalp to hold her in position.

  ‘Know who they are?’ asked Chambers. At which point, Winter’s perpetually aggravated colleague stomped back inside, notebook in hand.

  ‘Take it you met the neighbour on your way in?’ she asked. He nodded. ‘She’s calling one of them Peter or Peeta, but as far as I can tell, they’re Nicolette and Alphonse Cotillard. Mother and son. And this is their house.’ Reilly flipped the notebook shut as though she’d just solved the case. ‘On the plus side, she’s gonna shit a brick when she finds out this Peter’s OK.’

  Both Chambers and Winter shot her disapproving looks.

  ‘Found methadone in the bathroom cabinet,’ she continued, oblivious. ‘Look at how skinny they both are. It doesn’t take a genius to work out … scumbag junkies,’ she concluded in a way that implied they’d had it coming.

  Chambers scratched his head and looked at her: ‘The envelope in the hallway stamped Cambridge University Admissions, framed medal on the bedroom wall awarded at the under-eighteen’s British Championships, and the fact that there’s a nose clip beneath your great bloody hoof would suggest otherwise … He was a swimmer. A damned good one from the looks of it.’

  Winter had to fight a smile as he watched his idiot partner lift her foot to reveal the bent piece of plastic she’d stamped into the carpet. Insulted, embarrassed, impressed and bemused, she stood there on one leg regarding the detective as though he’d just performed witchcraft.

  ‘Get forensics down here,’ Chambers told them, taking note of the paler areas of skin where he’d touched the male victim. ‘I’m going to get my camera.’

  He made his way out of the house and across the front garden.

  ‘Detective! … Detective!’

  With a hefty sigh, he turned to face Winter: ‘Now’s not the time.’

  ‘Pietà! … Pietà!’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he muttered, unable to catch a break as he watched the middle-aged woman come running over to them. ‘Go back to your house,’ he told her pointlessly. ‘Could somebody take her, please?’ he asked of their growing audience.

  Still inconsolable, she was shown away by an accommodating couple.

  Chambers shook his head and looked to Winter: ‘Before you say anythi—’

  ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘OK. Before you say anything else … I don’t have a problem,’ he told Winter while buttoning up his coat.

  ‘Bullshit. I saw what you said to your chief about me. I almost got suspended thanks to you!’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t,’ smiled Chambers, turning to walk away, the young constable ill-advisedly grabbing his arm. ‘Don’t … touch me,’ he spat in a cloud of warm breath.

  Winter let go but continued with what he’d come out to say regardless: ‘You were there that night. You know the conditions we were working in. Anyone would’ve thought that guy was dead. You could’ve had my back. You could’ve—’

  ‘I saved your arse,’ Chambers cut him off.

  ‘What do you …?’ he started, trying but failing to remain indignant.

  ‘You said it yourself: they showed you something I told my chief in confidence. So, whose side do you think they were on?’ Winter looked confused. ‘They couldn’t pin this one on me, so started looking for someone else to blame. If I had fought your corner, they’d have screwed you over just to spite me. Instead, you got off with a slap on the wrist for a sackable mistake. You’re welcome.’

  ‘So, you don’t think I’m an “incompetent wannabe, who can’t get past his own ego to even manage the basics”?’

  ‘Oh, that bit I meant,’ joked Chambers, slapping
a relieved Winter on the back, when the vocal woman came rushing back out of one of the houses.

  ‘Pietà?’ Chambers guessed.

  ‘Pietà,’ nodded Winter.

  ‘Pietà!’ shouted the woman, thrusting a book into Chambers’ hands, the page open at a photograph of Michelangelo’s renaissance masterpiece: a youthful Mary holding her son across her lap in the wake of his crucifixion, the positioning eerily familiar, the statue a five-hundred-year-old recreation of the crime scene twenty feet away.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Chambers muttered.

  ‘What?’ asked Winter urgently.

  Chambers turned the book around to show him, the constable’s face dropping to mirror his own: ‘… Pietà.’

  CHAPTER 5

  ‘Ben? … Ben? … Ben!’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Are you even listening to me?’

  Chambers stared at her with a blank expression on his face. It was ‘Treat Night’ and they were sitting in a booth at their favourite restaurant. A coconut and lime chicken had appeared in front of him, while Eve’s dish already looked half-eaten.

  ‘Yeah, sorry,’ he apologised. ‘I’m just tired. So, was Paul all right?’

  ‘I was telling you about that ten minutes ago!’

  ‘Oh … But was he?’

  ‘I’m not telling you,’ she said, folding her arms. As usual, her Jamaican accent had returned with her temper.

  ‘Putting this,’ he gestured between them, ‘aside, it sounded quite serious. I like Paul.’

  ‘Dead … Alive. You won’t know now until we see him at his birthday.’ Chambers looked relieved. ‘… Or funeral,’ she added, turning her attention back to her dinner. ‘Is something going on at work?’

  ‘There’s always something going on at work,’ they chimed together, reciting Chambers’ go-to answer every time she asked the question.