Mimic

by Daniel Cole

  The side gate splintered apart with a single kick, allowing him to negotiate the overgrown rear garden, brambles snagging on his trousers, trying to drag him back. Noticing the curtains twitch in the adjacent properties, Chambers finally reached the eight-foot patch of soil at the far end. Conscious that the clock was already ticking, he raised his hands high and then drove them down hard, the metal sinking deep into the saturated earth.

  ‘Police! Open up!’ yelled Winter, banging against the metal shutter of Sleepe & Co. Restoration. ‘Open up!’

  The roller door released its grip on the wall, Tobias Sleepe appearing in the gap looking as grubby and dishevelled as ever. Dark goggles covered his eyes as he held a blowtorch in his hand.

  ‘Put that down on the ground!’ ordered Winter, eyeing it warily. ‘Put it down!’

  Following his instructions, Sleepe removed the goggles, a confused look on his face.

  ‘I’m seizing your pulley system,’ Winter told him, entering the building.

  ‘I need it for my work.’

  ‘I bet you do,’ said Winter knowingly. ‘It’s evidence in a murder investigation.’

  Reaching the suspended length of rope in the centre of the room, he tried to conceal his alarm, seeing no trace of either blood or hair anywhere, but noticing the conspicuously unsoiled frayed end protruding from an elaborate knot:

  ‘When was this cut?’ he asked Sleepe urgently.

  ‘My memory’s not what it was,’ he replied insincerely. ‘I can’t recall.’

  ‘Go up to your office and wait for me there!’ Winter barked at him, a quiver of desperation in his voice, the victorious sneer on the other man’s face confirmation that he had heard it too. ‘I need access to your rubbish bins.’

  ‘You’ll find them in the alleyway round the back. Please do help yourself,’ said Sleepe, making his way up the staircase.

  Staring back down at the rope, Winter looked ill.

  They’d staked everything on this.

  ‘Shit,’ he whispered, only hoping Chambers was having more luck.

  ‘Excuse me, Detective! … Excuse me!’ called Robert Coates from under his umbrella as he squelched through the garden to reach an exhausted Chambers still taking ineffectual blows at the floor of a five-foot pit. The mound of sludge above him was dissolving in the downpour, filling his excavation back in faster than he could get it out. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Investigating … the murder … of Alphonse … Cotillard,’ panted Chambers, flinging another spadeful of dirt behind him.

  ‘I presume you can show me a warrant?’

  Ignoring him, Chambers continued to dig.

  ‘Detective?’

  ‘What have you got buried under here?’ Chambers asked him, stumbling unsteadily into the soil wall.

  ‘It was my mother’s vegetable patch,’ answered Coates, crouching down to meet his eye, the rain ceasing as his black umbrella eclipsed the sky. ‘Detective. Do … you … have … a … warrant?’

  Giving up, Chambers tossed the shovel to the ground and met the beady black eyes above him defiantly:

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘In which case,’ started Coates calmly, ‘remove yourself from my property immediately and expect a call from my lawyer before the end of the day.’

  The relentless rain returned as he got back up and headed for the house.

  Barely able to stand, Chambers watched the water rising around his feet, the irony of his career ending in a grave that he had dug himself not lost on him.

  He’d fucked up.

  CHAPTER 10

  The busy platform was displaced by darkness.

  James ‘Jimmy’ Metcalf felt as though he was watching the journey happen rather than undertaking it himself, as the woman he’d been staring at for the past five minutes got up and moved away. Resurfacing from his daze, he realised that he’d drooled all over himself but didn’t particularly care, relishing every moment of this farewell high, the last he would enjoy for a good long while, perhaps ever. Truth be told, he wasn’t at all sure he’d survive the withdrawal process this time round. Even if he didn’t, it would still be preferable to the alternative.

  Stumbling off the Tube at Westminster, he emerged out onto the busy street, a sensory overload: traffic, voices, drilling – all vying for attention beneath a dazzling grey sky, the world all the more vivid after his subterranean journey. He forced himself to focus:

  ‘Excuse—’

  The young man walked by as though he were a ghost.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he tried again.

  ‘No. Sorry,’ a woman replied, turning away until he left her alone.

  After years living rough, the sum of his worldly possessions filling a pathetic two-thirds of the rucksack on his back, he was well-accustomed to such dismissive salutations.

  ‘Excuse me, please,’ he smiled, surprising a man counting his change as he emerged from a newsagent. He could see the cogs turning: the man glancing from the handful of money to the insalubrious character before him. Seeing no way out, the stranger removed the pound coin and then unenthusiastically offered up the rest. ‘No. But thank you,’ he smiled. He wouldn’t be needing it. ‘Could you tell me the way to New Scotland Yard, please?’

  Less than ten minutes later, he passed through the restless shadow of the iconic revolving sign, immediately attracting the attention of the officers standing guard. Staggering a meandering path over to them, he nodded in greeting and then swung wildly, the makeshift knuckleduster unremorsefully dismantling bone, the man unconscious before he’d even hit the ground.

  Bursting into the building, he leapt over the security barrier before anyone had time to react, shoving several people off their feet as he tore across the atrium, officers closing in from all directions, some wielding firearms, most just approaching with batons raised.

  ‘Stop where you are!’ one of the armed officers shouted. ‘Stop or I’ll shoot you!’

  Accepting that he was completely surrounded, the homeless man froze and dropped the bloodied weapon to the floor:

  ‘OK!’ he panted. ‘You got me! You got me!’ He raised his arms, a small plastic bag visible in his left hand.

  ‘What is it?’ the officer asked him, approaching cautiously.

  He was still catching his breath: ‘… Proof.’

  ‘Of …?’ Snatching the transparent bag away from their prisoner, one of his colleagues restrained the man’s arms.

  ‘My guilt,’ the homeless man replied, smiling as the handcuffs tightened around his wrists. ‘I did something very, very bad.’

  ‘… And now two complaints in a single afternoon!’ bellowed Hamm, Chambers and Winter remaining advisably quiet on the other side of the desk. ‘We’ve already got Coates’s lawyer suing us for harassment. Think Sleepe’s will be far behind? And hey, want to know how I’m spending my Friday night now? With my boss and the legal team working out how much keeping this from the papers is worth to us. I told you to treat these as two … separate … incidents!’ Winter raised his hand. ‘If what’s about to drop out of that stupid bloody hole in your face includes the word statues,’ Hamm warned him, ‘I’d suggest you close it.’

  He did.

  ‘There’s something else,’ started Chambers.

  ‘Else?’ scoffed Hamm. ‘You mean on top of the man paid to restore damaged statues carrying out the very job he was employed to do, and the fact that two leisure centre members sometimes spoke to each other in passing?! There is no “else”. You … have … nothing!’

  ‘There’s something else,’ Chambers repeated, poking at the bear, ‘something we haven’t officially documented yet. We found a needle and broken glass where the teenager was murdered. We believe that—’

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I said: you’re wrong!’ Hamm shouted him down, startling everyone out in the main office pretending not to be listening in.

  ‘Sir?’

  Hamm tossed a
wad of paper across the desk at him:

  ‘A full confession from one James Metcalf in relation to the murder of Henry John Dolan in Hyde Park.’

  Chambers and Winter shared a confused look: ‘Who?’

  ‘Twenty-five. Homeless. That park was his spot,’ explained Hamm. ‘He saw an opportunity and he took it.’

  ‘You’re saying this was just a robbery?’ asked Chambers. ‘There’s no way that’s right.’

  ‘Really?’ Hamm reached over, took the paperwork back and started flicking through. ‘Here, he explains how he lured the victim into the park under the pretence of selling him some drugs. Here, it describes how he got Dolan to climb the podium himself, telling him it was where he’d hidden his stash. And here, he injects him in the back of the neck, paralysing him, taking his wallet, watch and clothing, then leaving him there to die.’

  ‘But,’ started Chambers, ‘how—’

  ‘He had the fucking needle!’ screamed Hamm, silencing him. ‘Covered in our victim’s blood, the syringe still wet with the drug. Case fucking closed!’

  Chambers looked crushed.

  ‘These murders were never related, you stupid glory-hunting prick,’ Hamm told him, clearly savouring this part. ‘There never was any statue connection. You got yourself suspended for nothing.’

  ‘Suspended?’

  ‘You heard me.’ Hamm turned to Winter: ‘I’ll let your chief decide what to do with you. You’re not my problem any more.’

  ‘What about Alphonse and Nicolette Cotillard?’ asked Winter while Chambers processed the news.

  ‘That investigation is still ongoing. Thought I might go in a new direction this time and try handing it over to someone actually competent.’

  ‘And the blood we found on the rope?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Hamm sarcastically. ‘I didn’t realise it was your first day. It’s completely meaningless. You two idiots obtained it illegally. We can’t prove where it’s come from, and now you say the pulley’s clean anyway. It’s a dead end! Just get out of my sight, both of you!’

  Still a little dazed, Chambers followed Winter out into the main office, ignoring the snide smirks and even snider remarks from their eavesdropping peers.

  Lewis was waiting for them by the lifts and patted his friend on the back as they stepped inside.

  Chambers stared at him vacantly: ‘I was so sure.’

  ‘I know you were,’ he smiled pityingly as the doors juddered closed between them.

  Chambers heard the front door slam, and quickly poured a glass of wine before Eve entered the room. Her eyes darted from the pans sizzling on the hob – to the candle flickering in the centre of the table – to the wine glass in his hand – to his excessively bandaged thumb – to the practised smile Chambers had fixed upon his face: one part ‘I’m so sorry’, two parts ‘what are we like?’, a sprinkling of ‘I’m just so happy to see you’, with just a dash of ‘I really badly burnt my thumb cooking for you and am smiling through the pain’.

  Her frown softened and after a moment she even smiled back.

  Nailed it.

  ‘I thought you were working tonight,’ she said, accepting the glass from him.

  ‘Funny story about that,’ he began, before taking several procrastinating sips of his own drink.

  ‘… Yes?’

  ‘We’ll talk about it after dinner.’

  ‘No. We’ll talk about it now,’ Eve told him, setting her drink down on the side.

  ‘OK. But don’t get mad. You know this case I’ve been working on? And you know how you’ve always told me to just follow my gut, to stay true to myself and what I believe in?’

  ‘Those words have literally never left my mouth.’

  ‘Well, I was paraphrasing.’

  ‘The time I said do not follow your gut, just make sure whatever you do you keep your job? Don’t stay true to yourself, ’cos we’ve got bills to pay? And screw what you believe in; we can’t afford this place on my wage alone?!’

  ‘Ummm.’

  ‘Ben, did you get yourself fired?’

  ‘No! Of course I didn’t get fired!’ he laughed, Eve relaxing ever so slightly. ‘… Just suspended.’

  ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going out. You were meant to be working,’ she told him, marching towards the bedroom. ‘It’s my night out with the girls from work.’

  ‘What, those stuck-up partners and associates who always talk down to you?’

  The door slammed in his face. Knowing better than to pursue her any further through the loft, he took a seat on the floor:

  ‘I’ll go in and grovel first thing Monday morning. I promise,’ he called through the door. ‘I screwed up. I mean, really, really screwed up. I just wanted to … I wanted to catch him before he could hurt anybody else. I know you think I was out to prove something, prove I’m smarter than them, but that’s not it.’ He sighed, a moment’s reflection in his impromptu monologue. ‘I just thought I could stop something bad happening to somebody who didn’t deserve it. I had to try. And I’m sorry you’re cross with me, but I’m not sorry for that.’

  The bedroom door creaked open and Eve stepped out wearing her second-favourite dress. She smiled down at him and reached out to take his hand:

  ‘And I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.’

  ‘Still want me to grovel to Hamm though?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘Still grovelling,’ she told him. ‘The truth: I’m just glad it’s over. This case was getting under your skin.’ She frowned at him: ‘It is over?’

  ‘It’s just, it doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘You’ve got to leave it be now. For your job … For me.’

  Chambers hesitated.

  ‘Ben! Tell me it’s over!’

  ‘It’s over. It’s over,’ he said in surrender.

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘… I promise.’

  At 8.15 p.m. Chambers was parked outside Birkbeck College as a raucous group of students passed either side of his car. He barely noticed, however, even their elaborate fancy dress failing to pull his attention away from the second-floor window where Robert Coates flickered in and out of view as he worked into the night.

  Deciding there was little to be gained from sitting in the cold watching him mark papers, he started up the engine and pulled away, intending to use the time to drive by Sleepe & Co. Restoration on his way home. Had he not been playing with the temperamental heater, he might have taken one final look up, might have noticed Robert Coates’s waspish face framed in the illuminated window, beady eyes fixed on the car as it moved off … watching Chambers leave.

  Monday

  CHAPTER 11

  ‘Hey. It’s me,’ said Chambers, feeding the slot another ten-pence piece as he clamped the receiver between his shoulder and ear.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s me!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ben! … Benjamin Chambers … We live together.’

  ‘Ben? The connection’s terrible. Where are you?’

  He peered out through the panes and was rewarded with the sight of a breakfast drunk urinating against the wall of a job centre.

  ‘Westminster,’ he lied. ‘Got The Houses of Parliament to my right and to my left …’ He turned his head and pulled a face: a feral-looking cat appeared to be eating a dead rat. ‘Well, you get the picture. I wanted to call you straight away. Guess who’s got himself a probationary period!’

  ‘You’re not suspended any more?’

  ‘No. You should’ve seen me. I calmly stormed right into Hamm’s office, gently slammed the door, helped myself to a chair when asked, and then told him to his face just how truly sorry I was.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘First shift back tomorrow.’

  ‘I need to go, but that’s such good news. Life can start getting back to normal again now, can’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it can,’ replied Chambers, almost managing to tell her he lo
ved her before she hung up on him. ‘Back to normal. Back to normal,’ he muttered to himself as he crossed the street to enter the run-down butcher’s shop.

  The man behind the counter eyed him suspiciously when, like a coiled snake, a length of thick rope attempted to break free of the bag he was carrying.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Two pints of your finest pigs’ blood, please.’

  Winter really, really could’ve done without being late for work. Dressed in jeans and a jumper, he leapt off the bus at Uxbridge Road and jogged past the shops towards Shepherd’s Bush Green Police Station in too much of a hurry to notice Chambers waiting outside for him.

  ‘Winter!’ he shouted.

  ‘Oh. No. No. No. I’m not talking to you,’ he said, continuing by. ‘Haven’t you got me in enough trouble?’

  ‘Not suspended though, I take it?’

  ‘No,’ he conceded. ‘Strike two.’

  ‘I need your help.’

  Laughing bitterly, he turned to Chambers with furious eyes: ‘No.’

  ‘Come on. We both know something doesn’t add up here. You know these two cases are related.’

  ‘I don’t know anything!’ Winter bit back as it started to drizzle. ‘The guy confessed, Chambers!’

  ‘But what if we could prove he’s lying? Show them we were right all along?’

  Winter glanced at his watch: ‘How?’

  ‘We provoke them. We force them to react emotionally, to make a mistake.’

  ‘And why does that sound so familiar?’ he replied drily, looking his dishevelled colleague up and down.

  ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘You’ve got blood on your shoes.’

  Chambers’ eyes flicked downwards, but he didn’t explain himself.

  ‘I can’t do this on my own. I can’t watch both of them at the same time.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Winter, turning away.

  ‘Look, you’ve met these people. They’re unhinged. I know if we push them, one of them is going to snap. They’ll finally show their true colours. And when they do, we’ll be waiting.’