Mimic

by Daniel Cole

‘I’ve got this,’ she assured him.

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘… What’s up with him?’ asked one of the officers as Chambers walked away.

  ‘Nothing. He’s fine,’ Marshall replied curtly, turning back to the goddess towering over them. She moved round the heap of wet ash: black water coursing off the outstretched wings, the robe fashioned from the same ethereal cloth as used in the previous two murders – see-through where it clung to the skin. ‘Hey!’ she called, waving the man over. ‘Help me up,’ she said urgently, eyes fixed on a dark shape beneath the sheer material.

  Accommodatingly, the officer held out his hands to give her a leg-up, Marshall careful to only balance herself against the solid plinth on which the figure was standing. She strained to bring her eye level up to the goddess’s lower back, focusing intently on the eerily familiar image: an oversized pair of feet, a skirt protruding from a slight frame … and two bright eyes emerging from a darkened helmet.

  ‘Shit. Let me down! Let me down!’ she called.

  ‘What is it?’ the officer asked her, wiping his filthy hands on his uniform.

  ‘Marvin the Martian,’ she replied, looking a little dazed, the man staring back at her blankly. ‘… I know who she is.’

  Wiping his face with a grubby hand, Chambers left the outermost reaches of the floodlight and wandered back towards the car, seeing a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. As the rain abated, he glanced back at his colleagues, counting them up. Slowly, he approached the chain-link fence that separated them from the adjacent plot, the high-pitched chimes of raindrops striking the metal almost musical as he watched the darkness on the other side for any sign of life …

  Stillness.

  He turned to head back to the car, when a soft voice mused behind him:

  ‘I thought it was never going to rain.’

  Chambers spun round, seeing nothing beyond the repeating criss-cross pattern. He looked over to the white glow of the floodlight, debating whether to call out to his team but knowing there was no way of gaining access from their side. Thinking better of it, he walked up to the fence, feeding his fingers through the gaps, pressing his forehead against the cold metal. Letting his eyes adjust, a dark shape separated from the blackness and started to approach.

  ‘I had to be sure you’d found her,’ said Coates proudly, stopping just a few feet from the wire mesh between them, his face cloaked in shadow like the blank canvas that it was.

  He went to walk away.

  ‘You won’t get to her, you know?’ Chambers called into the void. ‘Eloise. We’ve got her. She’s safe … We know about the laurel leaves!’ he blurted in desperation, several moments passing before Coates returned.

  His curiosity getting the better of him, he stepped right up to the fence this time to meet Chambers’ eye, their faces mere inches apart.

  ‘So, we were right?’ Chambers smiled tauntingly. ‘The statues are about her.’

  A look of loss and regret, belonging to no other, filled the mimic’s face:

  ‘It was always all about her – the killing … the not killing.’ Coates seemed to retreat into a memory. ‘Do you have any idea what it takes to deny what you are? To change yourself from your very core outwards for someone? Have you ever loved anyone enough to do that?’

  Chambers remained ashamedly silent because he knew, breaking promises to limp after serial killers in the dark, that he hadn’t changed at all.

  ‘Seven years I went without,’ Coates continued, confiding in Chambers as though they were old friends. ‘… When I was pursuing her, while we were together, even afterwards when all I wanted was to win her back. I tried so hard to be normal … And then you returned to me. You showed me how deluded I had become, that I was never going to get my happy ever after no matter how hard I tried.’ He laughed wistfully. ‘You know, for a little while there, I think even I believed I’d changed.’

  Chambers could feel the fabric of the other man’s coat brushing against his fingertips:

  ‘I won’t let you hurt her.’

  ‘Hurt her?’ asked Coates, puzzled. ‘Why would I ever want to hurt her?’

  ‘Because you’re a sick fuck who blames everyone but himself for his inherent mediocrity.’ Even in the shadow, Chambers saw the surge of anger cross his face. ‘So, you are capable of emotion?’ he goaded him. ‘I wasn’t sure.’

  Coates took a moment to consider his response. He glanced down:

  ‘How’s the leg?’ he asked with a sneer, and then outright smiling when Chambers shifted uncomfortably. ‘Rest assured, Detective, I wouldn’t want to spend a single day on this earth if she wasn’t on it.’

  Chambers frowned – something in the impassioned way he’d said it ringing true.

  Suddenly, Coates grabbed the wire fence between them, a ripple effect rattling off into the distance as he clawed onto Chambers’ hand, pressing his face up to the metal:

  ‘I would no sooner hurt her than I would you,’ he spat as Chambers struggled. ‘For only the living can suffer as you will,’ he smiled before releasing him.

  There were shouts from the team over by the floodlight and the sound of their footfalls running towards them. Instinctively glancing in their direction, Chambers looked back to discover that he was alone once more.

  ‘Coates?’ he called desperately. ‘… Robert?!’

  ‘Not long now, Detective,’ a voice hissed from the shadows, moments before the team reached them. ‘It’s so very nearly over.’

  CHAPTER 29

  Chambers hesitated on the doorstep.

  He’d spent years politely entertaining Eve’s whimsical miscellany of beliefs and customs but had never really put much stock in them, or in anything for that matter. And yet, he hesitated, knowing that if there was even a glimmer of truth to any of it – if all the evil in the world was in fact the work of malevolent demons at play, guiding the impious towards damnation – then they would be circling now, waiting upon that dark doorstep with him – all the things he’d vowed to never bring home.

  Taking an irrational glance over his shoulder, he crouched down to retrieve the bag of rice from behind the plant pot: another peculiarity of Caribbean folklore. Pouring a generous pile out onto the ground for the obsessive Jumbee, who would count every grain until sunrise, he fumbled with the lock and slammed the door behind him – the dirty footprints stalking him down the hallway suggesting perhaps not quickly enough. Attempting to kick his shoes off, he turned his ankle and landed in a heap on the floor, the minor inconvenience enough to bring him to tears.

  Half-asleep and wielding her husband’s cricket bat, Eve poked her head round the corner:

  ‘Ben?’ she asked, wincing in the offensive light. ‘What on earth are you …’ She trailed off, however, on seeing the state of her sodden husband. ‘Ben!’ she gasped, rushing over to him. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied, wiping his tears away in embarrassment. ‘I slipped. That’s all. Go back to bed. I’m fine.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ she said while rubbing at a patch of the dark mud that caked his skin. ‘Are you hurt? Is it your leg?’

  Chambers’ eyes filled with anger. He pulled himself back to his feet, leaving an applause of black handprints on the walls en route to the bathroom. He turned the shower on and stepped into the cubicle fully clothed as Eve hurried into the room after him.

  ‘Ben, you’re scaring me!’ she said, watching him struggle to remove his ruined shirt before tossing it into the bathtub. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Closing his eyes as the water began to steam, he lowered his head in disbelief, in failure, in lament of his own dulling brilliance:

  ‘Why would anyone pile the ash in the middle of the site?’ he asked himself in frustration. ‘It’s in the way. It’s nowhere near any of the entrances for removal.’ He laughed bitterly: ‘It was uphill of the cleared area!’ Smacking himself repeatedly in the side of the head, he whispered: ‘Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!’

  ‘Hey!
’ yelled Eve, grabbing his hand before he could hurt himself further. ‘Stop that! What are you talking about?’

  With a vacant look in his eyes, he turned to her:

  ‘The winged girl … He got to her.’

  Eve didn’t say anything but moved her hand to his chest, resting it over his heart.

  ‘Cut off her head,’ he continued, looking sick. ‘Took her arms as well.’

  ‘Oh, Ben,’ she whispered in pity.

  ‘I had him,’ he revealed as the water gradually turned from black to grey around his feet. ‘I touched him. I could feel his breath on my face … And I was powerless to do anything about it.’

  Looking understandably concerned, Eve made a valiant effort to keep her voice even:

  ‘What do you mean you touched him? Him who?’ she asked; although, fearing she already knew the answer.

  ‘Coates!’ he spat in revulsion. ‘He spoke to me.’

  ‘A serial killer spoke to you?’ Struggling with the button on his waistband, Chambers nodded. ‘Let me,’ she offered, but he slapped her hand away.

  ‘I can do it!’ he bellowed. ‘And don’t look at me like that! I can take it!’

  ‘Take what?’

  ‘All of it!’ he shouted, ripping the button clean off and stepping out of his soaked trousers. ‘More of it! … Anything anyone can throw at me! Because, despite what you may think, I am not weak!’

  Eve looked simultaneously worried, hurt, and confused:

  ‘Why would I, of all people, think you’re weak?’

  ‘Like you haven’t treated me differently ever since this,’ he scoffed, gesturing to the scars snaking from the bottom of his boxer shorts all the way down his right leg.

  ‘Is that what this is about?’ she asked him, throwing his dripping trousers into the bath with his shirt. ‘You trying to prove something? Is that why you agreed to take this case on? Is that why you’re having private conversations with serial killers now?’

  ‘It’s not like I went looking for him.’

  ‘And still, you somehow ended up in a situation where he could get you alone.’ Watching him as though he were transparent, she sighed: ‘You are right though. I have looked at you differently since the accident. And it’s true, perhaps with less respect than I had for you before.’

  Even though he’d always suspected it, Chambers felt wounded on hearing her say it out loud.

  ‘But not because I think you’re weak, Benjamin,’ she continued. ‘But because I think you’re reckless. Because I think you’re too proud for your own good. Because I don’t think you know when to stop … and wouldn’t even if you did.’

  ‘That’s the job,’ he told her.

  ‘Then quit,’ she replied simply. ‘Can you remember the last time you came home with anything positive to say about it anyway?’

  ‘I can’t just leave!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because …’

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘Because!’

  ‘Because our little life isn’t enough for you without the thrill of nearly getting yourself killed every time we’re not together?’

  Realising that he had no response for her, he couldn’t meet her eye.

  ‘Do you know what I wish?’ she asked him. ‘I wish you’d walk away from this awful case. I wish you’d tell them to just get somebody else. I wish you’d take some days off while this whole thing blows over. I wish you’d stay here … with me.’

  Chambers looked guilty: ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘You could. But you won’t.’

  He reached out a wet hand to stroke her cheek: ‘I don’t deserve you.’

  ‘No. You don’t,’ she said matter-of-factly: ‘But I’ll still be here waiting for you all the same.’

  Marshall gradually came to, lying on an unfamiliar floor.

  With a groan, she forced herself upright, not recognising any of the other people passed out around the room.

  She didn’t feel right – her head muzzy, co-ordination gone as she tried and failed to get up, wondering what toxic shit she had put into her body this time. In her desperation, she had gambled and lost on an unknown and evidently inferior product, the guilt returning anyway, just as it always did.

  She reached for her bag, but then panicked on realising how light it felt, pulling it open to discover that it had been cleaned out: her purse, her keys; they had even taken her travel card.

  ‘Shit,’ she whispered, laying back down to reach into her jeans pocket for loose change but coming up empty. ‘Shit!’

  Desperate times calling for desperate measures, she glanced around at the sleeping people, but then noticed their tossed possessions strewn across the floor – the self-comatose dregs of society an easy target for those one precarious rung up the social ladder.

  ‘You stupid …’ she chastised herself, pulling a face when she sniffed her T-shirt, the room a sweatbox of discontent.

  Unsteadily getting to her feet, she stumbled along the corridor and out through a metal door at the end, emerging in a dark alleyway. The drizzle soaked through her clothes in seconds as she vomited against the wall and then staggered towards the main road, still having no idea where she was as her ghostly reflection searched the shop windows for a clue:

  Holloway Road Stores

  She had to support herself against a lamp post, unable to remember how she had ended up so far out.

  Shivering uncontrollably, she calmly tried to assess the situation: it was the middle of the night. She was stuck miles from home in the freezing cold with no money, no bank cards, no travel tickets, and barely able to function.

  She was screwed.

  Looking down the deserted street, she spotted the red roof of a phone box.

  ‘Please. Please. Please,’ she whispered, opening up her bag to root through the rubbish, receipts and worthless tat they hadn’t deemed worth taking, overcome with relief to find the official Metropolitan Police business card and, more importantly, the two phone numbers scrawled on the back.

  She hurried across the road to the phone box and shut the cold outside, the standard montage of sex line numbers and call girl adverts decorating the back wall as she picked up the receiver and dialled the operator:

  ‘Hello? Yes, I’d like to place a call please but reverse the charges.’ She gave them the number and waited. ‘Come on, Winter. Come on.’

  Thirty seconds passed before the operator returned:

  ‘I’m afraid they’re not picking up.’

  ‘Shit!’ yelled Marshall, slamming the receiver down and remembering, of course, he would be with Eloise.

  Feeling as though she were about to cry, she looked down at the other number scribbled below it, knowing she had no other options left.

  She spotted the headlights approaching and apprehensively made her way over to the kerb as the car pulled up beside her. As she climbed in, Chambers looked utterly exhausted in the driver’s seat, the weak smile he attempted for her benefit only making her feel worse.

  ‘Hey,’ she greeted him, pulling on her seat belt to the squeak of the windscreen wipers against the glass.

  ‘Hey,’ he replied, turning the heat up for her, the dashboard clock reading 5:55 a.m. as he pulled back out onto the road.

  Neither of them spoke as he drove them through the empty city, Marshall unsure whether she appreciated him keeping to himself or if a part of her wanted him to be angry with her:

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask what happened?’

  ‘Figured you’d tell me if you wanted to.’

  She nodded self-consciously: ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Like I can’t take much more,’ he answered with surprising honesty.

  ‘Same,’ she admitted, Chambers again missing his prompt to enquire about her night. ‘Thank you for coming to get me.’

  ‘I need you,’ he said simply, coming to a stop at a roundabout as the only other car on the road rolled by.

  Marshall felt like she was going to burst, now under n
o illusion that the weight of the secret she had been carrying was going to cost her her life if she didn’t get it out:

  ‘This isn’t me, you know?’ she told him, Chambers concentrating on the road. ‘Maybe when I was younger, but not now. I’ve only been using again since January … and then with everything going on …’

  ‘You can make all the excuses you like,’ Chambers said thoughtfully, ‘but if tonight has taught me anything, it’s that people don’t change … None of us do. There will always be another excuse, and after that – another. And when they come along, we’ll all pick up right where we left off: Coates starts killing again; I’ll deliberately put myself in harm’s way just to prove something; Winter will return to the job that ruined his life; and you’ll keep on doing whatever it is that you’re doing. We’re all just waiting for an excuse.’

  Letting his depressing epiphany settle for a moment, Marshall turned down the heater and gazed out at the twinkling lights:

  ‘There’s something I need to tell you … tell somebody.’ She took a deep breath. ‘The night Tobias Sleepe died … I was there.’ Chambers raised his eyebrows but didn’t interrupt. ‘I had your old case files. It was freezing inside his workshop – ice everywhere, so we went up to speak in his office, but I got angry and he asked me to leave. I was screaming at him. He turned to me and … It was the tiniest of slips, but I can still remember the sound of him falling down that staircase. And I just stood where I was, looking at him … I left him there,’ she finished shamefully.

  Chambers didn’t take his eyes off the road as he considered his response:

  ‘Don’t ever tell anyone else that story. Understand?’ Marshall nodded. ‘Tobias Sleepe isn’t worth … this,’ he continued, looking his dishevelled colleague up and down. ‘I’ve been in this job a long time. I know a bad person when I see one – he was, and you’re not. Maybe we’ll never know who that blood on the rope belonged to, but I’m reasonably confident the world is an ever so slightly better place without him in it.’ She still looked broken. Chambers sighed: ‘As the only person you will ever tell about this, I absolve you of your sins. Fuck him. Now, let’s never talk of it again,’ he said, taking a right-hand turn.