The Mimic (A DI Erica Swift Thriller Book 6)

by M K Farrar

  He reached for the kitchen worktop and picked up a plastic freezer bag with something inside it. He slid it onto the table in front of her.

  Erica stared down at it. The bag contained a glove, the clear, thin kind used in medical practises. It was bundled into a ball, but the dark streaks were clearly visible.

  She pulled her own gloves from her jacket pocket—she always kept them on her person, just in case—and snapped them on. She lifted the bag up to eye level and frowned. Were those dark spots dried blood droplets? If so, was it Brandon’s blood? Whoever had attacked him must have been wearing gloves, since there were no prints on the handle of the knife. Could she hope that this was the glove he wore? If so, with any luck, forensics would be able to get DNA from the inside of it. If they could match it to a sample they already had on file, she might not just be able to catch whoever had attacked Brandon, but also whoever had murdered Naomi, and the person who set fire to the unidentified body down by the canal.

  The same person who’d been writing to Nicholas Bailey in prison.

  “Where did you find it?” Erica asked him.

  “In the back garden, stuffed down between the wall and the shed.”

  “How on earth could our forensics team have missed that?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I guess someone wasn’t doing their job properly.”

  A prickle of unease went through her. Something didn’t ring true. “I’ve worked with that team on multiple occasions before and they’ve never given me any reason to think they aren’t one hundred percent focused on their jobs. For them to have missed something as large as a discarded glove would have been a massive oversight.”

  This was the sort of mistake that could launch an internal enquiry.

  “It’s not always easy to get DNA from the inside of a vinyl glove, but we might get lucky.”

  The glove was turned inside out, which was normal when someone removed a close-fitting glove like this one. The person wearing it would have pulled it from the top, around the wrist rather than from the tips of the fingers, so causing it to turn inside out as it was removed. Then it had been left, exposed to the elements for several days, which again made it harder to get any DNA samples that would be of any use. That didn’t mean it wasn’t possible, though.

  “You think it might help you find whoever did this?” Brandon asked.

  “It’s the most solid lead we’ve got,” she admitted.

  “I’ll feel better once I know whoever did this is behind bars.”

  Erica lifted her mug and took a gulp of the tea. It had cooled enough now to drink.

  “I’m going to need to get my team back here. If they missed this, there’s a chance they missed something else important, too.” She reached into her jacket pocket for her phone and pulled it out. Her mind was still reeling from the idea that they’d missed something as big as a glove.

  “You don’t want to do that, DI Swift.”

  His tone had changed, grown harder, and she looked up in surprise. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I only used the glove as a way of getting you here. No one missed it. I was wearing it the day of the attack.”

  Strangely, her head grew foggy, and the room seemed to tilt to one side. “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, you’re the detective. You figure it out.”

  “You were wearing the glove? You did that to yourself?”

  Her instinct was to rationalise this, but a wave of information flooded over her. The lack of fibres from the wall behind the house, where the attacker must have made his escape. That the dog hadn’t barked when someone should have been scrambling over the wall and into the animal’s garden. That the security footage from a few doors down had never caught anyone, and there hadn’t been any sign of footprints either.

  She’d thought at the time that it was as though the attacker had vanished into thin air, but what if the reason he’d disappeared so easily was that he never existed?

  Had Brandon Skehan done this to himself?

  A cold chill ran up Erica’s spine and crept up over her shoulders like a pair of ghostly hands. Her skin rose in goosebumps, and she had to stop herself shuddering. What did this mean?

  It was certainty that was solidifying inside her now. Brandon had cut his own face and lied to them about being attacked. And if he’d lied about that, what else hadn’t he told her?

  If each of the cases were connected, but Brandon was the assailant in his case, did that mean he was the assailant in the others as well? Was he the one who’d been writing to Nicholas Bailey in prison?

  Brandon Skehan was M Cimi.

  Erica got to her feet, but the room was wobbly around her. She glanced down at the tea. Shit. She should have known better than to accept a drink, but she’d grown to trust him. Her phone was in her hand. She needed to call Shawn and tell him what Brandon had done. She needed to ask for help. But her fingers didn’t want to comply, and when she tried to swipe the screen to bring up Shawn’s number, the phone clattered from her fingers and landed on the floor.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Shawn knocked on the office door and entered before he got an answer. There was too much at risk here to waste even a single second. “Sir, we have a problem.”

  DCI Gibbs looked up from his paperwork. He appeared tired, but that might have simply been the effect of the way one side of his face still pulled down slightly on one side. If Shawn hadn’t known what had happened, he might have just thought it was Gibbs’s expression rather than the result of the stroke.

  “Did Nicholas Bailey tell you something?”

  Shawn shook his head. “No, he refused to speak, so I figured my time was better spent here.”

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  “Lara Maher, the sister of Tristan Maher, gave DI Swift a letter she received not long after her brother was put away. The letter has a distinct tone to it, very similar to what’s been written to Nicholas Bailey in prison.”

  Gibbs steepled his fingers. “You think the letters were written by the same person?”

  “I do, but that’s not why I’m here. Forensics were able to get DNA from the letter that was written to Maher. It seems the care that was taken to make sure no DNA or fingerprints were on the letter written to Bailey wasn’t given the same treatment as the one sent to Maher. Perhaps they hadn’t known what they were going to do at that point so weren’t worried about DNA, or perhaps they simply never thought the connection would be made between the two letters. Anyway, the point is that we’ve had a match.”

  “Who with?”

  “Brandon Skehan.”

  Gibbs’s lips pinched together, though one side still had some slackness. “Brandon Skehan? The man who was attacked in his home with a knife?”

  “The same one. We took a DNA sample to cross-reference it against any samples taken from his flat, so we had it on file. He’s the letter-writer, and DI Swift believes whoever is writing the letters is also the one who killed Naomi Conrad and the Jane Doe who was found by the canal. She thinks the killer is copying her old cases.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “That’s the problem. I’m not sure. She’s not answering her phone.”

  Gibbs got to his feet. “Ask the others. Someone must know where she is.”

  DC Howard and Rudd were standing by Rudd’s desk, looking over something. They both glanced up as Shawn strode over.

  “Where’s Swift?” he demanded.

  Hannah Rudd straightened, concern marking her features as she took in his stance. “She’s headed home. She needed to pick up her daughter, but I think she’s swinging by one of the victim’s homes on the way. He messaged her as she was leaving.”

  His blood ran cold. “One of the victims? Which victim?”

  “Brandon Skehan. He said he’d remembered something that might help the case.”

  “Shit.” He snatched his phone out of his pocket and swiped the screen to bring up her number. She was right at the top of his call
list—he phoned her more than anyone else in his life. He hit the ‘call’ button and placed the phone to his ear. Pick up, Erica, damn it. The phone rang a couple of times, and then the answerphone cut in, as though someone had deliberately refused the call.

  “What’s wrong?” DC Howard asked.

  “We need to get there, now. Put a call out and get whichever patrol car is closest to his address to respond. Brandon Skehan isn’t what he makes out to be. I think he cut his face himself and might be responsible for Naomi Conrad’s murder, and the body discovered down by the canal as well.”

  “Did we ever ask him where he was the night Naomi Conrad was killed?” Rudd said.

  “No, we didn’t even make a connection between the two, at least Erica did, but not in the way she thought. She thought he was the victim of a copycat—someone who was copying her previous cases and writing to Nicholas Bailey about them—but she never suspected Skehan.”

  Gibbs marched over and must have seen all the worried faces. “She’s still not answering her phone?”

  Shawn shook his head. “No, she’s not.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. She might just be driving,” Rudd offered hopefully.

  Shawn bit his lower lip. “I wish I could believe that, but my gut is telling me something else.”

  “Have we got Skehan’s address?” Gibbs asked.

  Shawn pulled it up from their records. “Yep, got it.”

  “Let’s get over there, then,” Gibbs said. “When we find him, I want him brought in for questioning. I want to know exactly where he was the night Naomi Conrad was killed.”

  “Wasn’t he in hospital while all that was happening?” Rudd said.

  Shawn shook his head. “No, think about it. Naomi was murdered before the ‘attack’ on him, but she wasn’t found until a few days later. He did post videos to her social media via her phone to make it look as though she was still alive. Then the second body wasn’t discovered until after he’d been released from hospital.”

  “Shit. So, is he M Cimi?” Rudd suddenly grabbed a pen and a piece of paper. “Look at what happens to the name if I move it around a little. Cimi back to front is imic. Add the ‘M’ and what do we have?”

  “Mimic,” Shawn finished for her. “And we need to find him. Now.”

  THEY PULLED UP AT SKEHAN’S house in a couple of unmarked cars. Two squad cars with their lights flashing had just pulled up to the address as well. If there was one thing that drew them all together, it was one of their own potentially in trouble. A BOLO had been issued for both Erica and Brandon Skehan, and they needed as many bodies on this as they could get.

  Shawn jumped out of the pool car and raced up to the building. The shared door that led into the property was already open, and he stepped through the small entrance hall and hammered on the door to the flat. “Brandon Skehan. Open up. It’s the police.”

  “DI Swift, are you in there?”

  Her car is parked over there,” Rudd said. “She’s not in it.”

  “Get inside, now,” Gibbs commanded.

  Shawn lifted his leg and did a donkey kick, his shoe slamming against the wood, sending reverberations up his leg. Once, twice.

  They had uniformed officers blocking the road behind, preventing Brandon from running.

  The doorframe finally loosened—he was lucky it was old and hadn’t been maintained. The frame cracked, and the inside of the lock was visible—a sliver of metal in the wood. He aimed another hard kick at the spot above the lock, and the door burst open.

  “Skehan!” he yelled, careful not to rush in just in case Skehan was armed or might be in a position to hurt Erica. “The building is surrounded.”

  He took another couple of steps into the flat.

  “Erica, are you in there?” He waited for a reply, but none came.

  DC Howard jerked his chin in a silent question, asking if they should enter. Shawn nodded in return and led the way, stepping inside the property but keeping his back to the wall to protect himself. Gibbs remained outside, his physical condition meaning he was better off not getting into any potential tussles.

  The flat wasn’t big by any standard, and a matter of a few strides brought him to the doorway that led into the lounge. Quickly, he checked the room, DC Howard covering his back, while DC Rudd blocked the exit.

  Empty.

  He stepped back out and nodded farther down the hall. The next door led to a bedroom, which was also empty. He kept going to the back of the flat, where the kitchen and the back door leading onto the small garden was located. The kitchen was cramped and cluttered, with a wooden table and chairs at its centre. Two half-drunk cups of tea sat on the surface.

  There was no sign of Erica, but he spotted something else. “What is that?”

  He snapped on a glove from his pocket and picked up the bag, the plastic dangling between his thumb and forefinger. Inside was a balled-up glove, similar to the one he was wearing, streaked and dotted with dark-brown marks. He recognised them instantly. Dried blood.

  “What does this remind you of?”

  “An evidence bag,” Howard said immediately. “You think DI Swift found something?”

  “Looks that way. And he’s done something to her to shut her up.”

  “Then why leave the evidence sitting on the table for us to find?”

  Shawn’s mind turned over the possibilities. “Or he used the evidence to get her here.” The penny dropped. “Her finding evidence was never the problem. It was a trap from the start.”

  He did his best to rein in his emotions, when what he wanted to do was lash out, to kick at the wall and punch the table, and grab the nearest person and roar in their face. But he could do none of those things. “Fuck.”

  “Sarge, look.” Howard nodded down to the kickboard. A slim mobile phone was flipped up against it, the screen cracked, as though it had been thrown or knocked out of someone’s hand.

  Shawn bent and picked it up. He didn’t need to turn the phone on to see it was Erica’s. There was a sticky mark on the back cover where Poppy had stuck several My Little Pony stickers onto Erica’s phone in an attempt to make it ‘pretty.’ Shawn remembered how Erica had laughed about how she didn’t think people would take a detective very seriously if she had a phone covered in pony stickers. It had rung when he’d tried her number back at the office. Had she been about to answer it, only Skehan had stopped her? Had he hit her?

  That growingly familiar rage bubbled up inside him. If he was right in his suspicions that Skehan was responsible for the death of Naomi Conrad, then he was more than capable of killing Erica.

  “Get an alert out, both on Brandon Skehan and DI Swift. Make sure everyone knows she might be in danger, or possibly hurt or worse.” He swallowed down the wave of emotion that came with that thought. He couldn’t imagine a world without Erica in it. He knew it wasn’t comparable to her losing her husband—he and Erica were partners, but of a different kind to what she’d been with Chris—but the possibility of that hole in his life emerging felt like a cavernous sinkhole that he teetered on the edge of.

  Where would he have taken her?

  “He’s copying her past cases and now he has her. What’s he planning on doing with her?”

  The letters to Nicholas Bailey. Why write to Bailey unless he was the key to all this?

  Was Brandon Skehan planning on finishing what Bailey had started but had failed to achieve?

  “I think I know where he might have taken her.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Erica had woken in the middle of a nightmare.

  It was a nightmare she’d had multiple times since Chris’s death, so many she’d lost count. Night after night, she’d jolted out of sleep, her heart crashing against her ribcage, her breath locked in her lungs, a scream trapped in the back of her throat.

  But, other than that time with Chris, it had never been real before.

  Now it was.

  From somewhere nearby, a train rumbled and screeched through a tu
nnel. Hot air hit her face, and the floor was hard beneath her. When she blinked open her eyes, she stared into darkness.

  Her mind went back to what had happened, piecing everything together. Brandon Skehan. He’d cut his own face and made himself look like a victim. He’d been the one to murder Naomi Conrad and then set fire to whoever the poor woman was who DI Carlton had been investigating. It wasn’t only her past cases that he’d been copying, it had been one of the victims.

  Where was he now?

  She tested her arms and legs. She didn’t think he’d tied her up. He must be feeling pretty confident that he’d got one over on her. She tried to sit up, but wooziness took over, and she had to force herself to keep still until it passed.

  She remembered the tea she’d drunk. He must have put something in it. How stupid of her. She knew better than to put herself in such a vulnerable situation. But he’d seemed like a good bloke, and stupidly, she’d felt sorry for him. She’d really believed that he’d been traumatised by the attack.

  Gradually, her eyes got used to the gloom.

  “Good morning, princess,” Brandon said from not far away. “Guess where we are?”

  Was it morning already? No, she didn’t think so. She hadn’t been out of it for that long.

  Erica pushed herself to sitting and coughed as acid rushed up from her stomach and burned the back of her throat. She didn’t know what he’d given her in the tea, but it hadn’t agreed with her.

  “I know where I am,” she managed to say.

  “The same place your husband died.” He sounded delighted with himself.

  How was that possible? The abandoned Tube station had been bricked up after what had happened with Chris and Nicholas Bailey.

  He read her thoughts. “It’s taken me some time, I must admit. I’ve just been working on it, brick by brick, loosening each one and placing it back again so the Transport police wouldn’t become suspicious.”

  She was back on that abandoned platform again. Tears of anger and frustration and grief rose to her eyes, but she blinked them away. There would be time for tears later.