Mimic

by Daniel Cole

  Jimmy was almost tempted to call out a warning, unsure what he’d even say – just that something didn’t feel right? So, he remained quiet, watching in morbid anticipation as Dolan finally reached the top rung.

  ‘A little help here!’ he laughed, struggling to scramble over the ledge.

  The other man slowly made his way over, extending his left hand to heave his bulky companion onto the stone as he brought his right hand down, sinking something into the back of his neck.

  ‘What the fuck?!’ bellowed Dolan, jumping unsteadily to his feet as the other man backed away. ‘What did you do?!’ he yelled, wincing as he rubbed the puncture wound.

  The man in shadow remained silent as Dolan dropped to his knees.

  Jimmy had unconsciously edged forward, out of the cover of the treeline and into the open, mesmerised by the events unfolding ten feet above.

  ‘I can’t feel my legs,’ gasped Dolan in fear and confusion. ‘What did you do to me?’ he asked. ‘I can’t feel . . . anything. I can’t . . . I …’

  Coming to his senses, Jimmy hurried over to the base of the podium, out of sight of the man somewhere above him. As he tried to organise his thoughts enough to remember where the nearest working phone box was located, a pair of smart brown shoes dropped onto the ground beside him. Moments later, a black sock fell from the sky . . . and then another.

  Deciding he needed to get out of there, Jimmy hesitated when a shredded shirt flapped ineffectually in the wind like a bird with a broken wing, something small and solid dropping into the very centre of it as it landed.

  Edging as far as he dared from the safety of the stone pedestal, Jimmy peered down at a wet syringe attached to a crimson-tipped needle. On hearing something being dragged across the surface above, he darted out into the open, heart racing as he grabbed the expensive-looking shoes and the bloody syringe before tearing back into the trees, leaving the sobbed mutters of ‘I’m so sorry’ in his wake.

  ‘He was … crying?’ asked Winter incredulously.

  ‘Apparently.’

  He looked lost: ‘So …?’

  ‘Jimmy Metcalf takes the shoes for himself, the syringe and needle to give to the police, but by the time he’d reached the phone box, another idea had come to him. He believed Dolan to be dead already and was standing there with the murder weapon in his hand, seeing it as a one-way ticket off the streets for good. Did you ever listen to the tape of his interview?’

  Winter shook his head.

  ‘The detective clearly thought Christmas had come early: he asked leading questions, prompted him on details he was struggling with, and signed it off without another thought.’

  ‘No doubt following Hamm’s instructions. He’d have admitted to the murder himself before he would acknowledge that Chambers was right.’ Winter sighed just as the sun managed to break free of the clouds. ‘Please tell me Metcalf gave you a description of the killer.’

  ‘Not much of one,’ replied Marshall. ‘Caucasian. Six-foot-ish. Possibly between twenty and thirty-five years old but perhaps even older. Dark hair. Sounded posh. And he was slim.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘You said the killer handled the syringe,’ he tried.

  ‘And then Metcalf wiped it clean before covering it in his own prints. He didn’t want to risk there being any doubt over his story.’

  ‘F-ing Jimmy Metcalf,’ he tutted.

  ‘F-ing Jimmy Metcalf,’ concurred Marshall.

  ‘And he won’t let you use this to get the case reopened? He’d do a good few years just for destroying evidence and lying about—’

  ‘It’s not gonna happen.’

  ‘F-ing Jimmy Metcalf,’ Winter reiterated. ‘OK. Moving on to the elephant in the … graveyard: why are you telling me all this? Why not go to Chambers?’

  ‘Ideally, I’d rather not come to either of you,’ said Marshall bluntly. ‘But needs must.’ Winter frowned at the bitterness in her voice. ‘… I’m going to be a homicide detective one day. But the fastest way to ensure that never happens is to march in there and ambush my future superior with a half-baked theory. The reason I need you is because we both know how this job works – there are things that happened which didn’t make it into the reports. I need you to fill in the blanks.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘What was Chambers looking for the day he decided to dig up Robert Coates’s back garden? He can’t realistically have expected to find a body?’

  ‘Dogs.’

  ‘… Dogs?’

  ‘Chambers had his reasons for believing Robert Coates was going through rescue dogs at a worrying rate and that Henry John Dolan was a first tentative kill, someone’s graduation from animals to real people.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Marshall, the cogs turning. ‘Next one: I’ve read two differing accounts of what happened the night Chambers was attacked … both from you.’

  ‘OK?’ said Winter, a little defensively.

  ‘One was the transcript of your interview on the night, the other: your official written statement the next day … What happened to the snakes?’

  He looked tempted not to answer:

  ‘The truth is: I don’t know if they were real. Chambers was lying there bleeding out all over the road. The car was an inferno, and Reilly was …’ Winter returned there for a moment. ‘It was the worst night of my life. It still feels like a dream now. And I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if I’d been seeing things. When no reports came in overnight about snakes roaming the streets of Bloomsbury, I thought I’d save myself the psych review and leave that detail out.’

  ‘You know what you saw,’ Marshall pushed him. She stopped walking. ‘Did you see snakes?’

  ‘I just told you—’

  ‘Did … you … see … snakes?’

  Winter shuffled self-consciously: ‘… Yes.’

  ‘I believe you … They still refused to link the three incidents even after Chambers was attacked?’

  ‘From my very limited involvement after that night, I know by the time Chambers was in any fit state to tell them he’d been injected with something, it was three days later, he’d been in surgery twice, and had a blood transfusion.’

  ‘The evidence was gone.’

  ‘The evidence was gone,’ nodded Winter. ‘And I don’t think he pushed the matter.’

  ‘Why not? Why would Chambers never make any effort to find the person who tried to kill him?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him that.’

  ‘I will. So, you didn’t keep up with the investigation into Alfie and Nicolette’s murders at all?’ she asked with a judgemental barb.

  Winter shook his head: ‘Not really. They didn’t want me anywhere near it. I know they liked a local dealer for it for a little while, even arrested him I think, but that all fizzled out to nothing.’

  Marshall nodded: ‘I’ve got the file.’

  ‘And then there was that stalkery type who lived in the flats across from the leisure centre,’ he recalled, ‘but they were really scraping the bottom of the barrel by that stage. There’s no shortage of bad people out there, doesn’t make them the ones we’re looking for.’

  ‘I’m going to interview Henry Dolan’s girlfriend,’ said Marshall, thinking out loud, ‘see what she knows about him holding hands with strange men in dark parks. Then I want to find out where Robert Coates is these days. He was the prime suspect then; he still is now.’

  ‘What about Tobias Sleepe?’ asked Winter. ‘Are we discounting him just on Jimmy Metcalf’s vague description of a seven-year-old memory?’

  ‘Not just that.’ Marshall nodded towards the gravestone they had stopped beside as another gust of wind rattled through the trees:

  TOBIAS PERCIVAL SLEEPE

  1932 – 1996

  Devoted to his work.

  ‘It still could’ve been him,’ Winter pointed out while reading the inscription with disdain.

  ‘Could’ve been,’ agreed Marshall, looking a little p
ale. ‘God, I hope it was. But I need to know for sure.’

  Sunday

  CHAPTER 16

  Winter awoke in the darkness.

  Skin wet with sweat, he realised he was sitting bolt upright, the duvet a bloated heap halfway across the room. Still panting, he reached in panic for his legs, feeling the need to check they were still intact before switching on the lamp, but finding the insipid four walls of little comfort.

  ‘Shit,’ he whispered, wiping his eyes as he climbed out of bed and went over to the window, peering out to find the high street still dark, the sound of the bakers downstairs already hard at work the only sign of life.

  When he let go of the curtain, the framed award perched on the windowsill landed face-down on the carpet. Tempted to leave it where it was, he crouched to pick it up, unsure why he had ever kept it so long – a celebration of his ‘bravery’, a constant reminder of a night he only wanted to forget.

  How brave he had been while watching his partner die in the road like an animal.

  How bravely he had cried as he held Chambers’ leg together.

  And what bravery he had shown during his five separate periods off work because he wasn’t man enough to cope with his own memories.

  Carrying it through to the kitchen, he dropped it into the bin, instantly feeling a little better.

  A draught entered freely through the ill-fitting window in his bathroom, where he found a box of paroxetine at the back of the shelf – the fact that he had kept the medication proof of how little faith he had in himself.

  He took two tablets with a mouthful of water and then regarded his reflection in the mirror: overweight, hair thinning, unable to perform his job and now, like so many times before, afraid to even go to sleep.

  Pathetic.

  Determined to be better, he returned to the bedroom and put on a pair of jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt, heading out for a run before the world woke up. Tiptoeing, so as not to disturb his neighbours, he quietly pulled the door to behind him.

  Marshall stomped down the hallway, setting her neighbour’s dog off, and kicked the front door open, too tired to even remove her boots as she collapsed onto the bed face-first.

  Over the years, her non-conformist appearance had often drawn comparison to that of a vampire, that likeness never more accurate than when working the winter night shifts, where she could go days without seeing the sun, negating the need to even touch the blinds, her coffin-sized studio reduced to a dark box in which to sleep away the days.

  She was so tired – teetering on the precipice of sleep and yet resisting, stuck in that no-man’s-land in-between where one loses all control of where their mind takes them …

  It was snowing, it had been for days, great drifts laying siege to the old railway arches, the road borderline impassable as she continued under the bridge where a torn banner curled towards the ground like a hanging snake:

  ppy New Year 1996!

  The adjacent units stood frozen and forgotten, either vacated long ago or still closed up after the extended Christmas break. So she was relieved when the lone pair of footprints she had followed down from the main road veered off to the right, ending abruptly at the rusted roller door of Sleepe & Co. Restoration. The snow-dampened silence was clearly playing with her mind as she could easily imagine a ghost still standing there, waiting to be invited in. She walked up to the shutter and banged against the metal, the thunderous echo sounding deceptively more confident than she was feeling …

  The temperature plummeted as she crossed the threshold into Sleepe’s world, her misting breath betraying her unease as she gazed up at the roof above them – razor sharp and surreal – punctured by a million icicles.

  Her ID card felt firm in her hand – still brand new, as the hunched man gestured to the sparkling staircase – ice-covered metal climbing into the dark …

  The office was warm, an ancient heater glowing like fire as they spoke over the case files laying open on the desk.

  He was taunting her, every word laced with malevolence, mistakenly believing himself beyond reproach, protected by his advancing years.

  Repulsed by his rotting smile, she looked down at the black-and- white image of Alfie – just a collection of printed shapes on a photocopied document, rage building inside her as the man who may have been responsible relished this last opportunity to toy with the police …

  They were both on their feet, the frail man retreating from the little room as she screamed at him, Metropolitan Police Service-headed paper falling over the main workshop like giant snowflakes as she followed him out …

  The small body lay at the bottom of the stairs, an island in the crimson puddle still spreading across the floor.

  She stared at it for what felt like a long time, waiting to feel something, but it failed to come.

  Stepping back into the office, she collected up the case files and removed the security tape from the VCR. Using the sleeve of her jumper, she wiped down the table, remembering the doorknob and the handrail on her way out. After fishing the last of the sodden documents from Sleepe’s blood, she wrapped her scarf around her neck and headed back out into the snow.

  Monday

  CHAPTER 17

  Marshall was feeling a little jealous of Winter’s nine o’clock finishes after two particularly demanding shifts; three raids and a co-ordinated operation with London City Airport taking precedence over her after-hours enquiries. In desperate need of sleep, she’d been quite relieved when Henry Dolan’s former girlfriend, Rita, wasn’t available to meet until after work.

  Braving the torrential rain, Marshall knocked on the door of the beauty salon, feeling a little self-conscious when the immaculately presented woman invited her to take a seat on the reception-area sofa, all the while regarding her with thinly veiled pity. As she unpacked her bag, she tried to ignore the similarly judgemental stares from the other women pottering around as they cleared up for the evening.

  ‘Oh, I hope you don’t mind; I asked Dave to join us,’ said Rita with an Essex twang to match her Essex tan.

  ‘Dave?’ enquired Marshall.

  ‘Dave Thornton. My boyfriend. He knew Henry almost as well as I did.’

  Marshall scribbled a note as the largest man she’d ever seen in the flesh came over to sit with them. He looked simultaneously impressive and absurd, shuffling around with the limberness of a robot, while looking likely to burst should Rita be too careless with one of her talon-like nails.

  ‘I like bodybuilders, don’t I, love?’ she said, giving Dave a risky squeeze as the first street lights came on beyond the windows.

  ‘Thank you for meeting with me,’ started Marshall.

  ‘Don’t have much choice when the police ask, do you?’

  Marshall swiftly moved on:

  ‘I’m not here to open old wounds, and I know your original statement inside out so don’t intend to go over things discussed before.’

  ‘What’s this all about then?’ asked Dave, leaning forward, alpha male to his core.

  ‘Some new information has recently come to light,’ explained Marshall. ‘And it’s that I’d like to focus on.’

  ‘They caught the guy, didn’t they?’ Dave asked her, seizing any excuse to get riled up. ‘That homeless bloke. He admitted it!’

  ‘And my job is to ensure he never sees the light of day again,’ she lied, reading the room. ‘I need to make sure every last box is ticked or you know the lawyers will find a way in … They always do.’

  ‘So, this is just a box-ticking exercise?’ enquired Dave.

  Marshall couldn’t help the face she pulled.

  ‘She literally just said that, didn’t she?’ Rita scolded him.

  ‘I was just saying,’ he shrugged, leaning back as far as his body would permit.

  ‘What’s this new information then?’ asked Rita, turning back to her.

  Conscious of the ears listening in at the back of the room, Marshall lowered her voice:

  ‘It regards Henry’s …
sexual orientation.’

  Rita looked blank-er: ‘What? Like which way up he did it?’

  ‘Ummm. No. Sexual orientation, as in … straight or gay.’

  She noticed Dave take his girlfriend’s hand.

  ‘What you on about?’ Rita asked her, but in a way that suggested she already knew.

  ‘That he was seen with a man on the night of his murder.’

  ‘Well,’ Rita laughed, ‘that doesn’t mean—’

  ‘A witness saw them holding hands,’ Marshall cut her off. ‘He saw them kiss.’

  ‘I knew it. Didn’t I say?’ she asked Dave. ‘I bloody knew it!’

  ‘You knew?’ Marshall asked her.

  ‘Well, not “knew” knew, but I had a feeling.’

  ‘There were … rumours,’ added Dave mysteriously, putting his arm around Rita.

  ‘I need to identify who that man was,’ Marshall told them.

  ‘How should I know?!’ replied Rita, getting upset, tears threatening to spoil her perfect make-up.

  ‘Anyone he’d been spending a lot of time with?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘… Only …’

  Marshall sat up in her seat: ‘Only?’

  Rita turned to Dave: ‘There was that new guy … at his birthday party, remember?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘I remember.’

  ‘Know his name?’ asked Marshall.

  They both shook their heads.

  ‘He took off pretty sharpish once I turned up,’ said Rita bitterly. ‘Guess it makes sense now.’

  ‘Do you remember what he looked like?’

  ‘White guy. Sounded southern. You know, posh like. He wasn’t big – just normal size. Dark hair. Pretty good-looking, I suppose. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Do you recognise either of these people?’ Marshall asked them, handing over photographs of both Tobias Sleepe and Robert Coates. She held her breath expectantly …

  ‘… No,’ replied Rita.

  ‘Nah,’ said Dave, giving the pictures back.

  Unable to hide the disappointment in her voice, Marshall picked her notebook back up: