Doppelganger

by Geoffrey West

  “And people like to read about violence?”

  “Yes they do. I believe it’s the ultimate ‘What if?’ syndrome. Everyone wonders what would happen if they lost control and went around killing anyone they didn’t like. That’s the fascinating question: how a killer can just plumb the depths of cruelty and viciousness without feeling any kind of remorse? Some of them are literally killing machines with the brakes off.”

  “Doesn’t it depress you? Make you feel as if you’re, I don’t know, tainted somehow?”

  I smiled as I shook my head. “I have a friend, the true-crime writer Douglas Hosegood. Great man. He retired long ago, but he helped me when I was starting out, writing the book about Fred West, the man who murdered his own daughters. West was a conundrum. Undoubtedly what anyone would call a truly evil man, and yet he had charm, a lot of people who didn’t know him well, liked him. He could cheerfully slice up the bodies of his daughters, yet while he was in prison they say he was a coward, scared of being bullied. Workmates who joined in his banter thought he was a great guy, always lively and cheerful, up for a laugh, housewives enjoyed flirting with him. Mind you, discovering all the unbelievable things that man did, it’s true, I found that it was really upsetting me, and I confided how I felt to Douglas. He explained, no matter how incredibly ghastly the crimes are you have to report, you have to keep it strictly professional. You never ever get involved, you don’t even allow yourself to have an opinion. You’re an observer, an evaluator of the facts, nothing more.”

  “I certainly couldn’t do it. I’d get too involved with the victims.”

  “Sure, in spite of my best efforts I can’t help empathising to some extent. But the good thing is, whatever terrible indignity and cruelty has been committed, it’s over and done with, the beast has been caught, and no one is still suffering.”

  “Except the relatives of the victims.”

  I nodded. “But the victims themselves, they’re at peace. And, with any luck, there’s usually the satisfaction of knowing that the perpetrator has been punished or he’s already dead.”

  “With any luck.”

  We talked about all kinds of things. She was interested in my work, and I showed her Douglas Hosegood’s first book – he’d signed the old copy he’d given me – and she smiled as she leafed through the pages. Shocking Killers had been published in 1984, and was one of my most treasured possessions. It reminded me of dear old Douglas, who was now enjoying his retirement in Paris with his wife, Cecile, who had been a well-known poet in the ‘70s. As Lucy looked at the chapters on the Wolfman of Amsterdam, and the Killer Postman of Carlisle, I told her about how Douglas had drilled into me the principles of never letting an urgent deadline get in the way of integrity. And never letting even the most awful murder upset you personally. His logic kept me sane in the long lonely dark hours when I was struggling to relate the unspeakable antics of killers, criminals and psychopaths.

  Lucy left at around twelve. I took her phone number and promised to call her.

  My bathroom had a full-length mirror on the wall beside the bath. I looked at my face and didn’t like what I saw. I needed a shave, my hair looked wild, and there were dark shadows under my eyes. My ex-wife used to say I was good looking – regular features, blue eyes, and at thirty six I still have all my own hair – it’s blond, a legacy of my Viking ancestors, according to my grandmother. My nose had been broken during my days as an amateur bare-knuckle boxer, but the break isn’t too obvious, more of a charismatic slope to the left, or so I kid myself. I have a small scar along my chin, that in cold weather assumes a rawness and redness, making it stand out like a welt. Someone once told me I looked a bit like Robert Redford in his younger days. But somehow I don’t think Robert would be best pleased.

  A drenching in cold water under the shower made my head feel clearer, my senses sharper.

  I tried to knock the text of Hero or Villain? into shape, but found it hard to concentrate. At the hospital I’d talked to the police about what had happened but, as I’d suspected, they admitted they were powerless to find the perpetrators. It was an awful feeling, knowing that somewhere they were out there, planning their next attack. And next time they were likely to do me some real damage.

  But most of all, in spite of everything that was going on, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lucy Green. Seeing her face, hearing her voice. So much so that I rang the number she’d left with me, but there was no reply.

  How do you know that weird indescribable moment when you fall in love? Is it the first moment you look at the person’s face? Or is it when you feel that connection that lifts you outside reality, as if you’re locked out of the world, stepping into something else? Looking back on it I’ve often wondered exactly when it was that I fell in love with Lucy, but I think that was it, when I first saw her, and I already knew her face, as if I’d always known her.

  I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was on the edge of a precipice, and the ground beneath my feet was crumbling away.

  If I’d known what was going to happen... No, it’s better not to go there.

  That night I had my dreaded dream again, this time more vivid than ever before. The silhouette of a face above me, drowning out the light. The pressure on my neck. The burgeoning darkness.

  I woke up to the sound of a text arriving on my mobile. It was short and to the point.

  No more warnings. Next time you die.

  * * * *

  “Think about it.”

  “It’s obscene.”

  “It’s business, Jack. You know it makes sense.”

  Ann Yates’s voice was as cultured and persuasive as ever. She looked good, as she always did: her neat blonde hair touched the collar of a stylish black suit that probably had a designer tag on the label. Yes, I remembered, it did, Donna Karan, if it was the same one I’d seen her wearing only a month ago, when she’d taken all her clothes off in the tiny bathroom adjoining her office, and I’d done the same.

  Ann was my editor at Truecrime Publications Ltd, the outfit who’d published my recent books. It was Monday, a week after my car accident, that I was sitting in her first-floor office in Marylebone, north London. Truecrime had part of the first floor in a tacky 1930s building, whose other occupants were OK Insurance, Abbey Legal and Associated Developments Ltd and Atlas Theatrical Agents.

  Six weeks ago I’d arrived at Ann’s office early in the afternoon, to find her fuming with anger. She’d had a few drinks over lunch and had started telling me about her husband’s latest behaviour, how they were on the point of divorce. She’d offered me a drink, I had sympathised, and somehow one drink led to another and we talked and talked. I’m divorced myself, hadn’t had a girlfriend for a while, and had always found Ann attractive, and things somehow, amazingly, turned a corner, I really don’t know how or why. So when she’d locked the outer office door, and taken my hand and led me through to her private bathroom, the excitement of the moment took over. She had kissed me, then removed her clothes, frantically tugging at zips and fasteners, helping me to do the same. There was something incredibly exciting about making love in such a cramped area, where the washbasin and toilet fought for space.

  But as soon as it was over I realised it was a mistake. I liked Ann, thought of her as a good friend, but I certainly I didn’t want to start a relationship with her, indeed nothing was further from my mind. And as we hurriedly dressed in that cramped bathroom, and Ann started talking frantically about missed phone calls and things she had to do, it was clear that she felt the same way. She told me that she was weak and emotional and had just suddenly felt like doing something mad, saying for the umpteenth time that it was ‘just one of those crazy things’, and how ridiculous it was to do something like that in the office in the middle of the afternoon, when anyone might have come banging on the door, wondering why it was locked. But our afternoon of excitement was firmly locked into the past, and neither of us had referred to it again, thankfully resuming our friendship as if nothing had ha
ppened. I’d wondered about mentioning it to her a few times, but decided that the incident was best forgotten – put down to one afternoon’s drunken madness, that she was as keen as I was to pretend had never happened.

  Right now Ann’s dark timber desk looked like something rescued from a 1950s schoolmaster’s study, and the faded grim wallpaper, brown carpet and miserable view of the perpetual traffic jam outside clashed with her laid-back sophisticated personality adorned with twenty-first century accoutrements: the iPhone that was never far from her long graceful fingers, and the slim Cartier timepiece on her wrist. It was late afternoon and daylight had practically disappeared. Ann never switched the lights on until she absolutely had to, said she preferred an autumn afternoon’s semi darkness, apparently it helped her to think. The cheerless undertaker-like environment matched my sombre mood. She’d poured us both a brandy, and my balloon glass sparkled with the reflected glare of the headlights of a passing vehicle outside.

  “What do we usually do?” Ann went on, tapping a long silver fingernail on the leather top of her desk. I noticed the nail’s end was split, something strange, an unexpected chink in her immaculate corporate armour. “We wait until a serial killer is caught and punished, then wade in and take it all to pieces, blow by blow, extrapolate a book out of turgid facts, a welter of lurid details and a few words from publicity hungry, out-of-date witnesses. When the news is stale. The tabloids don’t do it, they steam in at the first opportunity. Nor did they ever – look at the penny dreadfuls’ coverage of Jack the Ripper in the 1880s. If they’d waited until he’d been caught they’d have been stuffed, wouldn’t they?”

  “But to start writing a book about the Bible Killer while he’s still active. It just seems immoral.”

  “Why? 21st-century publishing is more about immediacy than ever before. We’re getting more like tabloid newspapers every day, and why not? Pretty soon I can see us getting a book out within a fortnight. Besides, you’re hardly going to shout about what you’re doing from the rooftops, in fact you’ll need to keep the whole thing secret. It takes time to write it, then time for our bits and bobs, negotiating bulk sales to the supermarkets, the copy editing, the design, the first print-run. With any luck once you’ve pumped out 80,000 words he might easily be behind bars, and we’ll have stolen a march on the competition. If he’s not, we publish anyway, promising a sequel once he’s caught. Two for the price of one. This way we capitalise on all the publicity while it’s fresh. We skirt round the legals at the end, just like always. Plenty of facts will be sub judice of course, but not the most juicy bits.”

  Ann stared at me, flicking irritated fingers across her brow.

  “So come on Jack, what do you say? You’re not going to chuck up the chance of a big earner like this, surely?”

  “What if the police object to me making enquiries when public sentiment is already so high?”

  “And upsetting the police is something new for you, is it Jack?” She looked at me steadily for a few moments. “Come on, tell me. What’s the real reason?”

  “Suppose I’m extra sensitive to criticism these days. It struck me just how much my living depends on other people’s suffering.”

  “For heaven’s sake! Jack, how many times do I have to tell you? You report the news, you don’t make it. And you do it damned well. You’re one of our top sellers. Shall I tell you why the public like your books? Because they’re not cut-and-dried assemblies of the facts like most true-crime writer hacks. You go beyond the gruesome realities and bring the people alive. When you do interviews you’re warm and likeable – people open up to you because they like you, and they like you because you like them. And it’s the human warmth you feel for people that brings your books to life. To contrast that, you’ve got an uncanny knack of portraying the monsters without frills. But it’s the sympathy, the empathy you feel for the victims is what comes across in your books.”

  “Thanks.”

  She paused for a moment, blinking and staring at me. “Facts not flattery, my friend. So what do you say?”

  “It feels wrong.”

  “But you’ll do it?”

  I hesitated for a split second.

  “Yes.”

  “Knew you wouldn’t let us down.” The smile transformed her face, and I noticed the fine lines around her eyes I hadn’t seen before. “It’s the right decision. The recession’s hit us hard, as you know. Between you and me, last year Truecrime was teetering on the edge. It was a very close thing. And we’re not out of the woods by any means. Book sales are down on last year, and we’re beginning to get into electronic books, that’s the coming thing, and we need more capital to push things. We’ve got to seize our chances as they come.”

  She rubbed her hands together, smiling to reveal sparking white teeth. “So now on to more pressing matters. You’ll be glad to know that as soon as you deliver Hero or Villain? the designers have promised to make it a number one priority and they’ll get right onto it. I know the situation is delicate for you just now.”

  I’d already told Ann about being beaten up and threatened with execution because of the book.

  “So how long after I hand over the MS do you think it’ll be before it comes out?” I asked.

  “Six weeks I hope. We’ve already negotiated a deal with Tesco, so they can get it in time for the Christmas market, ideally.”

  Six weeks. Plus a fortnight or three weeks. More than two months of watching my back, of not knowing when to expect a bullet or a knife. At least embarking on this new project would take my mind off things.

  “We need to take the threats to your life very seriously. In fact the best thing would be if you went missing for a few weeks, just until the danger’s past.”

  “But how would I do the Bible Killer book?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” She leaned back in the chair, lit up one of her long thin French cigarettes and sucked on it until the tip glowed in the darkness. “Listen Jack, I’ve had an idea. They’ve only just given you the warning, so they’ve got to give you a chance to take notice. Professional criminals aren’t going to want to put out a contract unnecessarily, with all the attendant risk involved. Besides if they’d wanted to kill you they’d have done so by now, not bothered with a warning. Sean Boyd will be hoping their lesson’s sunk in, and they’ll have to give you time. At least a week, probably a fortnight. And you said you can finish Hero or Villain? in a fortnight, and surely during that time you could also do some of the research and interviews for this next one? Another week, say?”

  “It’s pushing it, but with any luck, yes. Any follow-ups I could do by phone.”

  “Right. Now Godfrey’s just bought this rambling old place in Wales – a weekend retreat he calls it, but he’s not planning on using it till next year. It’s a weird sort of manor house in a valley, Victorian I believe, looks like a ruin from the outside, but one wing’s been done up – decorations, kitchen, heating, like a four-star hotel without the staff, but no one would guess it’s even inhabited from the outside. It’s not even in a village, it’s five miles from the nearest village, in a valley between two mountains. I’ll persuade him to let you go down there to work. All the peace and solitude you could possibly want, plus no one can find you. There was some flooding and the access road isn’t repaired yet, but there is a way though. That Land Rover of yours is 4-wheel-drive isn’t it? You’ll make it up the muddy track, but lesser cars’ll get stuck.”

  “Total isolation, then.”

  “Just the job in your circumstances. So what you have to do is trawl for some information for the Bible Killer book in these few days of freedom, then get down there and finish Hero or Villain? as a priority, then crack on with the Bible Killer book, using the material you’ve gathered, working on the stuff you’ve got. Regard the place as a bolthole where you’re safe. Stay down there as much as you can, and just pop back here as and when you have to, to do the extra research and interviews. Should be able to do a lot of it by phone anyway.”


  “Okay, that sounds fine. But I’m thinking of practicalities. It won’t be easy for me to interview people while the enquiry is ongoing.”

  “True.”

  “However, there is one way. Can I have a co-writer? Split the credits?”

  “Do you have anyone in mind?”

  “Stuart Billingham. He’s a close friend, and a reporter on the local paper. Best of all, he’s probably already got a good deal of the data we need, plus he can do interviews on the basis that it’s for his paper. He could gather facts faster than I can, meanwhile I knock it into shape. It would save time.”

  She nodded, tapping ash from her cigarette into the ashtray. “That sounds like an excellent idea, especially the time-saving aspect. So many things are falling into place with this job. It’s current, you’re on the spot, and you already know a lot about it. And Canterbury is your city, you were born there, weren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “So we’ve got a real insider’s viewpoint. Now we want a bit of background history of the town, the Cathedral, the Thomas Becket angle. Now that’s extremely interesting, especially the theory that the killer’s modelling his killings to match the way Thomas was killed, you can pad it out with stuff about Becket’s murder. Then we’ll want details of the victims’ relatives, background on their lives, and rundown on the last hours leading up to their death. Add in the clues the police have got. You know the form.”

  Ann poured me another brandy. “Will your friend agree to help, do you think?”

  “I’ll ask him tonight. He’ll probably be keen.”

  “He’s got to be a sensitive person. This is a balancing act. It has to be done in utmost secrecy. We need someone who uses tact, discretion and delicacy.”

  * * * *

  Stuart spilt his beer as he slammed the glass onto our table, then scratched his crotch for a moment before sitting down opposite me and stuffing crisps into his mouth as if he was shovelling coal into a steam engine’s fire. The Leg o’ Mutton in Canterbury High Street is an olde worlde pub, a bit of a pastiche really, the kind of place with unnecessarily hard wooden benches and an inglenook fireplace that wished it was in a castle. There was a folk music concert in the next-door room, and I could hear melodic guitar riffs and a fine but weedy singing voice floating across to us. Canterbury Festival was due to open in a couple of weeks, and all around town there were signs for the fortnight-long jamboree of music, theatre, drama and poetry that was being performed in a number of different venues.