The Mimic (A DI Erica Swift Thriller Book 6) Read online

  The Mimic

  A DI Erica Swift Thriller

  Book Six

  ***

  M K Farrar

  ***

  Warwick House Press

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  THE MIMIC

  First edition. April 13, 2021.

  Copyright © 2021 M K Farrar.

  Written by M K Farrar.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three | Two years earlier

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven | Two Years Earlier

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve | Eighteen Months Earlier

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen | Three Months Earlier

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen | Six Weeks Earlier

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two | One Month Earlier

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five | Present Day

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  Chapter One

  The sharp blade slashed across his face.

  Brandon Skehan gasped in alarm but managed to jerk back right at the crucial moment. Instead of the metal puncturing his eyeball, it slit his eyelid and continued to slice his temple. With horror, he struck out with his arm, and the clang of metal hitting the floor filled the darkness.

  White-hot pain overwhelmed his senses, but he knew one thing. He had to run. No matter what else was happening, it was vital that he did. Blood poured down his face, blocking his vision and everything around him. He wiped the blood from his face, but it returned instantly. Blinding him. He wasn’t blind though—at least he didn’t think he was. The knife had missed his eye. Still the fear niggled at him—what if it hadn’t? What if it had nicked him and now he’d lose his sight? No, he couldn’t think about that. He had to focus on getting help.

  He kept going, staggering forwards. Which way was out? If he was stumbling in the wrong direction, he’d end up at the back of the house and trapped in the walled garden instead of running out onto the street.

  “Help” he cried. “Someone help me.”

  Brandon pushed through one door, and his heart lurched with relief. He recognised the change in smell of the shared space of the entrance hall, and the harder, colder tiled floor under foot, instead of his threadbare, moth-eaten carpet. He’d gone the right way, at least. Now all he needed to do was navigate the small space to the front door and he would make it outside.

  “Help!” he shouted again.

  He had an upstairs neighbour. Her name was Julie, but they’d never really had a proper conversation, only said ‘hi’ on passing. Perhaps she would hear his shouts and call the police. That was the best he could hope for.

  His hands met with solid wood, and he patted around, unseeing, searching for a handle. Where was it? It must be here somewhere. Adrenaline surged through his veins, the pain heightening his panic. No, he couldn’t let it distract him. He needed to focus. He was stronger than this.

  It was a fight to stay in control.

  He touched metal and yanked at the handle. To his amazement, it swung open and fresh air hit his face.

  “Help!” He staggered into the street. He tried to picture where he was—he’d been living on this road for the past six months—but couldn’t bring it to mind. All he could think of was the burning pain across his face and terror from the amount of blood he must have been losing. It was late—almost midnight now. What if no one was around to hear him?

  A distant female voice met his ears. “Oh my God. Are you all right?”

  He reached out, unseeing. “Please, there was a man. Someone cut me.”

  “I’ll...I’ll call the police.” She corrected herself. “No, an ambulance.” Her tone was heightened with panic, squeaky, even. But it was closer now, so she must have approached him.

  He tried to open his eyes again, wanting to see what was happening, but all he saw was blood.

  “Just call nine-nine-nine,” he said.

  “Yes, yes, of course. I’m doing it now.”

  Brandon pictured her, young and frightened—from the sound of her voice—holding her mobile to her ear.

  “You have to be careful,” he warned her. “He might come after me. He might hurt you, too.”

  She whimpered. “Oh God.”

  He didn’t want to frighten her, but she needed to know. It was important.

  The woman spoke. “Hello, I need an ambulance and the police. A man’s been...well, cut across the face. It’s really bad. He’s bleeding everywhere. We need the police, too. He says another man did this to him. He might still be in the flat.” A pause. “The address? Yes, we’re outside of...umm...twenty-three Gainsworth Terrace in Dalston.” Another pause. “Yes, please, come quickly. I can stay on the phone until you get here.”

  He dropped to his knees, his whole body sagging at the knowledge help was coming.

  He pulled up his shirt and held the material to his ruined face. He didn’t want to think about how it felt as though part of his eyelid was hanging off and there appeared to be a hole where his eyebrow used to be.

  A low rumble of an engine as a car drove past, then it stopped, followed by the slam of a car door. It was too soon to be the police.

  A male voice called out, “Is everything all right? What’s happened?”

  Followed by the young woman replying, “He’s hurt, but the police and an ambulance are on their way.”

  A hand, warm and solid, pressed against his back. “You all right, mate? Can I do anything to help?”

  Brandon didn’t even want to shake his head, for the fear of opening up the wound even more. “Is the ambulance coming?”

  “Yeah, it’s coming,” the man said. “You just hang in there.”

  It wasn’t as though he had any choice. He clutched his shirt to his face and waited for help to arrive.

  Chapter Two

  Blue-and-white crime scene tape secured the front of the property. On the pavement on the other side of the cordon, a pool of blood, with a numbered crime scene marker beside it, gave way to a trail of dark spots, leading towards the front door. The two-storey house had been converted into two flats, and the attack on a man in his late twenties had happened in the ground-floor flat.

  As part of the Violent Crimes Task Force, DI Erica Swift didn’t only investigate murders. Knife crime was on the rise in London and had been one of the main reasons for their team being set up. She just wished they were having more of an impact on the epidemic, instead of things getting worse.

  The resident of the first-floor flat hadn’t been too happy about being turfed from her bed in the early hours of the morning, but until they’d had SOCO work the crime scene, including the shared entrance hall, she wouldn’t be allowed back home. One of the uniformed officers was already interviewing her to find out if she’
d heard or seen anything, but Erica would need to get one of her detectives to do the same. Normally, she’d have asked her sergeant, Shawn Turner, to direct the interviews, but tonight she had Acting DS Hannah Rudd with her.

  Shawn had gone for a week on the Costa del Sol with a couple of mates. She’d joked with him that he could have chosen somewhere with more culture than ‘Little England’ in the sun, but he’d said it was exactly what he was after. She’d insisted that he at least try some Spanish food while he was out there, to which he’d cocked an eyebrow and asked if Sangria counted. When she said it didn’t, he’d promised to have a couple of tapas with the booze.

  Erica wished she could have gone with him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a real holiday. She’d taken some time off—DCI Gibbs had insisted now he was back at work—but she’d spent it locally with Poppy. They’d done a few day trips out to places, pretending to be tourists, London Zoo, Kew Gardens, a go on the London Eye. The rest of the time they’d ordered pizza and cuddled up on the sofa and watched animated films. It felt as though she got so little time to do things like this with her daughter that it had felt like a holiday, even though they hadn’t stayed overnight anywhere.

  A female officer walked out of the flat and approached them.

  Police Sergeant Diana Reynolds was coordinating the crime scene. Erica had worked with Reynolds on several cases before.

  “How are you, DI Swift?” the blonde, no-nonsense sergeant asked her.

  “Good, thanks. This is Acting DS Rudd.” She introduced her colleague, and the two women shook hands. “What have you got?”

  “The victim is twenty-nine-year-old Brandon Skehan. He was attacked with a knife when he came home after a night out. He’s been taken straight to hospital, but from the few words the responding officers managed to get from him, he didn’t know who had attacked him or why. A uniformed officer went with him in the ambulance. I believe he’ll need surgery.”

  Erica would need to speak with the victim as soon as possible, but if he was going to be taken straight into surgery, it would be some time before he came out of the anaesthesia enough to speak to her properly.

  “It would appear as though whoever was responsible broke in through the back door,” Reynolds continued. “It’s off the kitchen and leads onto a small rear garden. We’re assuming he got out that way, too, since none of the witnesses saw anyone else leaving the property.”

  “How many witnesses do we have?”

  “Three, currently. The woman who lives upstairs, Julie Luxford, heard shouting, but she didn’t come down until after the police arrived. The first person on the scene was a twenty-year-old student, Lucy Frey, who had also just got back from a night out. Good thing the incident happened just after most of the pubs kicked out. She lives across the road. She’s sitting in the back of one of the squad cars, if you want to speak to her. She’s pretty shaken up.”

  Erica nodded. “Thanks, I will. Who is the third witness?”

  “Forty-two-year-old Mark Hamburg. He was also arriving home after finishing a shift at the packing plant where he works. One of my officers is sitting with him in the kitchen back at his place. Since he only arrived on the scene shortly before we did, there hasn’t been much he’s been able to tell us.”

  “Right,” Erica snapped on a pair of gloves, “let’s take a look at the crime scene.”

  They ducked beneath the tape, and Erica followed the sergeant into the flat, DS Rudd close behind. The shared entrance hall was tiny, with the door to the ground-floor flat standing open directly ahead, and the stairs leading up to the first-floor flat to their right. A radiator cover was attached to the wall and was stacked high with junk mail—leaflets offering pizza deals, advertising estate agents, or touting the local council. Droplets of blood spattered the wall above in an arc. The Scenes of Crime Officer had placed a numbered board beside it for photographing. There was another on the floor, on the threadbare carpet, beside yet more blood. She hadn’t seen the victim’s wound, but if it was across his face, and he’d lost this much blood, it must have been bad.

  Navigating the pool of blood and the trickle that led towards—or away from—the front door, they entered the ground-floor flat. They weren’t the only ones in the building; a Scenes of Crime Officer moved around, numbering anything of interest and taking photographs. He nodded at the women as they walked in.

  “The victim was attacked as soon as he entered,” Reynolds told them. “The attacker came from the living room, approaching the victim from behind, and reached around him to slash the knife across his face. From the little we were able to get from the victim before the ambulance took him, he hadn’t even managed to turn on a light yet. He knocked the knife out of the assailant’s hand and made a run for it.”

  The knife was still on the floor, an evidence board with a number one placed beside it. It was a five-inch blade, with a handle that looked like a regular kitchen knife.

  “Did it come from the victim’s kitchen?” Erica asked. “Or did the attacker bring it with them?”

  “We’re not sure yet.”

  Erica looked around, taking in every detail. “What about the rest of the flat? Was anything taken?”

  Was this just a botched break-in? Or did the attacker have other motives?

  “Nothing big that we can see. All the expensive technology is still here—the television and a laptop.”

  “The victim might have disturbed him when he got home,” Acting DS Rudd suggested. “Afraid of being caught, he lashed out with the knife and made his escape.”

  “Yes, quite possibly.” Reynolds nodded towards the back of the building. “There’s a broken pane of glass in the back door where it appears as though it’s been knocked in and then they reached through and opened the door from the inside.”

  Erica walked through the flat to the back door. Sure enough, it was just how the sergeant had described it. Glass littered the kitchen floor. She wanted to get a look outside at what would have been the attacker’s escape route as well as their point of entry. The back door opened onto a narrow yard which had been illuminated with a floodlight. The paving slabs were cracked with weeds growing through them, and in need of a good power wash. A garden shed that had also seen better days, sat in the corner and a table and chairs with missing wooden slats and a rusted barbecue completed the look. A back wall led onto the garden of another house, while fences separated the yard from the adjacent neighbours.

  “Has the shed been checked for anyone hiding in it?” Erica asked.

  “Yes. It was one of the first things the responding officers did. No sign of anyone, though.”

  Erica put her hands on her hips. “Assuming the attacker both entered and escaped this way, he would have had to cross one of the neighbours’ gardens. It’ll be worth asking if any of them heard or saw any disturbances.”

  She went to the back wall, pulled herself up, and used the torch on her phone to light the garden beyond. Several dog toys and a couple of piles of shit lay on the overgrown grass. She jumped back down again.

  “This household looks as though it has a dog. If he went this way, there’s a good chance the dog would have started barking.”

  “I’ll get one of my officers to go around there.”

  Erica walked over to the fence on the right-hand side and reached for the top and gave it a wobble. It moved at her touch, swaying back and forth. “If they’d tried to climb this side, the whole thing would have fallen down under them.”

  The fence on the left-hand side wasn’t much better, rickety and rotting away at the base. “My guess is he went over the wall and must have gained access the same way, too.” It could be an important lead. “I’ll walk around and have a chat with the owner, find out if he saw or heard anything. I want to talk to the young woman first, though. You said her name was Lucy Frey?”

  Reynolds nodded. “That’s right.”

  Erica turned to her acting sergeant. “Rudd, can you speak to the upstairs neighbour?”
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  Rudd nodded. “Right away, boss.”

  Hannah Rudd had been thrilled to get the opportunity to step into Shawn’s shoes while he was away. It had caused a bit of tension in the office, particularly with DC Howard, who’d thought he should have been chosen for the job, but Rudd had been sharp and enthusiastic the whole time, and Erica knew she hadn’t made the wrong choice.

  Erica left the property and walked over to the police car where the first witness was sitting in the back seat, the rear door open. A female uniformed officer was with her, crouched to bring them to the same level, speaking in a low, calm tone that Erica struggled to catch.

  The young woman barely looked old enough to be living by herself, never mind be out in the early hours of the morning. She was twenty—apparently—but could have passed for sixteen. She held a cup of water in one hand, but it was shaking so badly she was in danger of throwing it all over herself, and her face was pale.

  Erica took out her ID as she approached and showed it. “Hi, Lucy. I’m DI Swift. I wondered if I could have a quick word?”

  The uniformed officer gave her a nod of acknowledgement and rose to standing. “I’ll be right over there if you need me.”

  “Thanks,” Erica said and then turned her attention to the witness. “I hear you were the first one to find Mr Skehan this evening.”

  Lucy nodded. “I wouldn’t say I found him, exactly. Saw him, would be a better way of saying it. He burst out of the house, yelling for help and covered in blood. I was on my way home, but it wasn’t like I could just ignore him or anything, so I ran over to help.”

  “Where were you on your way home from?”

  “A pub in Stratford. A friend’s band was playing, and I went to watch.”

  “What time did you leave the pub?”

  Lucy frowned as she thought. “About eleven. I got the Tube home and walked the rest of the way.”

  Erica glanced back to the victim’s flat. “Have you ever met Mr Skehan before?”

  “No, I haven’t. I’ve seen him occasionally from my window, coming and going, but that’s all.”