Doppelganger

by Geoffrey West

  “Do you like her?”

  Dave shrugged. “How can you like a person who looks at you as if you were the shit on her shoe unless you’re a rank above Sergeant?”

  “She hasn’t changed then.” I nodded.

  “And there’s something loathsome about a workaholic, too, don’t you reckon? One o’ them types that’s always on the phone, jabbering away, or burrowing through papers, and she’d rather shave her arse in public than crack a smile. But Fulford can’t get enough of her, and she’s got plenty of time for him too.”

  “Can you tell me anything about the case, Dave? Off the record?”

  “’Course I can’t, you mad prick! Talk to the Press Office.”

  “I don’t want squeaky-clean press releases Dave. I want more than that: details, facts, names, gossip.”

  “Well you can whistle for them, mate, I’m not risking losing my pension.”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  The woman’s voice from behind made me turn suddenly, and Dave stepped smartly away and vanished from view.

  Millicent Veitch had an excellent psychology degree and a PhD, and was making a name for herself as a BIA, and had had some speculator successes with a police force in Lancashire. Millicent was very short, with jet black short hair and self consciously casual clothing: jeans and a sweatshirt, bangle bracelet dangling from her wrist. I’ve come to the conclusion that she might once have had an attractive face, but that years of frowning had etched the lines of gloom around her mouth. And sometimes, very occasionally when the light’s just so, I’m sure I can see a faint line of moustache on her upper lip.

  “How are you Millie?”

  “My name’s Millicent, and you know it.”

  “I forgot.”

  “Like you forgot that once you were a reputable BIA, before you sold out to write those crappy books. You’d better clear off, Jack, you’re not welcome here. You’ve made it clear what your attitude is to the police. You’re either with us or against us.”

  “Who’s us? You and your pals in the dirty old caravan?”

  She shrugged. “I have loyalty. I’d never write anything defamatory about a retired police officer.”

  I turned to look at the figure striding towards us, who’d just come out of the caravan. DCI Fulford looked even more angry than the last time I’d seen him.

  “Dr Lockwood was snooping,” Millicent Veitch said, smirking as she turned towards the newcomer. “I was just about to ask someone to escort him away.”

  “My God, you’ve got some nerve!” The Scottish DCI glared at me for a moment, twisting his lips into that trademark scowl. “Millicent worked with you on a case once. She’s been keeping us amused about it.”

  I thought back to the one time I’d worked with Dr Millicent Veitch for another force. A case of domestic abuse, where Millicent had argued forcibly that the estranged husband of the murdered woman had ticked all the psychological boxes as her killer. I’d argued that he’d been innocent, but no one had listened to me, and the husband, Damon Allbright, had been sent down for 16 years, thanks to incriminating evidence belatedly found at his flat. A month afterwards he was freed when it was discovered that the evidence had been planted by the actual killer, who’d killed himself and left an explanatory note. That, of course, was the nub of our antipathy: Millicent was one of those people who’ll always hate you if you’re right about something. But our animosity was based on more than that. Our professional disagreement cloaked a more primeval feeling of friction between us that I had never really understood myself.

  “I don’t want to see you anywhere near here, ever again, Dr Lockwood.” Fulford said.

  “You don’t have jurisdiction over a car park, Chief Inspector.”

  “Don’t get clever with me, I’ve got your measure, laddie! Come along to try and get some gossip have ye?”

  “I was hoping–”

  “Aye, I know what you were hoping for, to get a glimpse inside the Incident Room. If you don’t leave this minute, you’ll be arrested, and if I ever see you hanging around here again, the same applies.”

  As I left, I thought I noticed Fulford’s hand glide surreptitiously along Millie’s arm, and she responded by moving a little closer to the senior officer.

  I had a beer in the Queen’s Arms on the way home. It was around lunchtime, and I knew Dave Parsons often popped in. My hunch paid off.

  “Fuck off Jack, do you want to get me sacked?” Dave said when he saw me, looking round furtively to check no one was watching.

  “No one’s going to know, Dave. Maybe I can help the investigation?”

  “How?”

  I shrugged. “I’m a BIA, remember, and if your assessment of the Veitch woman matches mine – that she’s a head-in-the-clouds academic with no real crime hunter’s instinct, maybe you could do with a fresh viewpoint?”

  “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “Sit down, mate. If you give me anything I swear I won’t reveal my source.”

  Dave hesitated, scratched his long aquiline nose, then pointed towards one of the private cubicles at the back of the pub. “Five minutes is all you get.”

  He told me about the latest victim, Rebecca Fenton. This time her head had been more or less pulverised, literally smashed to a wet, fragments-of-skull-filled, mess, most likely by a hammer or heavy metal object. This time, as well as a Bible laid open on her chest, there was a copy of TS Elliott’s book Murder in the Cathedral, and a note saying, “As Thomas died, so did she”. Murder in the Cathedral is a dramatised account by the famous English poet T S Elliot, summarising the life and death of St Thomas. The shock and outrage of St Thomas’s barbaric death and his subsequent sainthood, was the reason why Canterbury has been a magnet for pilgrims since medieval times.

  Apart from the method of her murder, Dave couldn’t tell me much more. Anna wasn’t a religious person, had no affiliation to any church that her family knew of, so why someone should compare her to one of the world’s most famous sainted martyrs was anyone’s guess.

  “Millie V reckons he’s someone perfectly ordinary, probably a dull character, who can hide behind a façade of respectability,” Dave concluded, “and he’s obviously a religious obsessive, though that may be something he keeps private.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “She’s pissing in the wind like the rest of us, but faffs around inventing bollocks to try and impress Fulford. A lot’s riding on this case for Fulford. He hates the media, as you may have gathered, and he’s not big on police politics. He retires next year, and if he could solve this case it would be a massive boost to his ego, whereas if he fucks it up he’ll be remembered as the incompetent twat who let people be murdered unnecessarily. Underneath his bluster he’s shit-scared of messing up, and he can’t take the pressure. He’s nervous. Jittery.” Dave sipped his beer. “And that kind of feeling rubs off on the team. He bawls people out for no reason, he gets excited if there’s the tiniest slip-up. Between you and me Jack, I haven’t got a good feeling about this business. We need more troops, more resources, the budget won’t stretch to the overtime we need. For instance, there was a string of similar killings in Nottingham a few years ago, and I think we should liaise with the team working on that, see if there are similarities. Fulford won’t even consider it. He’s so petrified of getting things wrong, he’s scared of taking any initiatives.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “It’s not bad. It’s disastrous.”

  * * * *

  The phone was ringing when I opened the door to The Gatehouse. It was silent for a few moments, so I thought it was a wrong number. But just as I was about to hang up, a gravelly voice whispered. “You taking the hint, Jack? Are you abandoning the book?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Yes or no, you fucker?”

  “Tell me who you are.”

  “Does that mean you’re not giving it up? We meant what we said. You won’t know when it’s going to happen. A bullet or a knife
. Or you’ll get pushed under a train–”

  “You’ve made your point.”

  “Then make the right decision, mate.”

  When the phone rang again I snatched it up quickly, heart racing. It was Douglas Hosegood’s wife, Cecile.

  “Cecile,” I said in surprise. “Good to hear from you.”

  I’d always considered her a lovely person. Naturally kind and charming and also highly intelligent, Cecile was a reasonably accomplished poet, well known on both sides of the Atlantic. She’d always been kind to me, protective in the same way that Douglas, my old friend the writer who’d helped my early career, had been. Something in her voice scared me.

  “It’s Douglas.” I could tell she was close to tears. “You know he had a heart bypass operation five years ago? In the last couple of months he’s gone down and down. They say he’s got to have another bypass as soon as possible. He’s got it into his head that he’s not going to get through the operation. He wants to see you one last time.”

  My heart sank. Douglas dying? It couldn’t be the case. My memories of Douglas were of a tall strong man, his silver hair and beard giving him a king-like aura of power and patriarchal strength. I’d pictured him enjoying himself in Paris for years to come.

  “Will you come?” Cecile asked.

  “I’ll be with you tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Jack. Thank you!”

  Chapter 4

  DOUGLAS IN PARIS

  I dozed on the Eurostar, having taken the train to London’s St Pancras station. Flying would have been quicker, but there’d been industrial action at the major airports, and I didn’t want to risk unforeseen delays. There was something soporific about the blackness as we entered the Channel Tunnel. And I had the dream again, the frightful terrifying dream of the shadowy, faceless figure above me, the pressure on my neck, everything going dark. I woke up abruptly, sweating with fear. But everything was okay, the rumble-bump of the train as we shot through green fields with odd looking electricity pylons spanning the grassland, the occasional picture-book farmhouse punctuating the vast green fields. Why do you never see such weird triangular shaped electricity pylons in England, I wondered?

  I ordered something to eat, and the sandwich and coffee tasted of nothing at all as I worried about Douglas. After I’d eaten I closed my eyes again, trying to remember my most vivid memories of my friend. I hadn’t known him that long, but he’d helped me so much when I tackled my first True Crime book, that I thought of him as a good friend.

  It had been at my first book launch, at a smart hotel in London’s West End. Douglas giving a speech about his protégé, Jack, who, he was convinced, was going to be a bestselling author, given time. As he spoke I remembered the hours he’d spent with me, advising me on the Fred West book, telling me what angles to delve into, the best way to make it an entertaining read. And in time, Douglas’s prediction had almost been correct. Though I’d never penned a bestseller, Douglas had helped me to carve out a decent living, doing work I enjoyed. Without him I might easily have tackled my first book wrongly, so that it flopped, instead of being a success.

  The environs of Paris crept up on me like clawing fingers tearing my heart. Douglas might be close to death. I couldn't take it in. I couldn’t accept it.

  Cecile welcomed me into their town house in the 11th Arrondissement, along Boulevard Richard Lenoir, only a short walk from the Place de la Bastille. As I emerged from the Bréguet Sabin metro station I remembered the 18th-Century, German-designed graceful buildings in that area, the surprisingly traffic-free roads with their lovely multi-storey houses and hotels and apartment blocks interspersed with rows of neat shops. Douglas met me at the door and he appeared in better shape than I’d been expecting. He wanted to take a break outside, he told Cecile. He wanted a walk.

  So, with Douglas hobbling along at a snail’s pace, dressed up in a warm coat with a red silk scarf, and using a wooden walking stick with a large bulbous handle, we walked out and down the steps of the Breuget Sabin metro and emerged at St-Michel Notre Dame station, and walked up beside the river, then crossed the Petit Pont bridge to the Ile de la Cité and the square in front of Notre Dame cathedral, where we found a vacant bench near the entrance to the Crypte Archéologique, the large excavated area under the parvis where there were the remains of the original cathedral St Etienne and other ancient streets and houses dating back to Gallo-Roman days. It was approaching twilight and the grand cathedral with its three grand arched entrances and soaring nave was like a benign friend in the background. We were surrounded by tourists, and it struck me that this was what Douglas wanted, to be with people, not cooped up in his house. Beside us were some bushes where a couple of tiny birds perched on branches. Douglas took some bread from his pocket, gave a slice to me, and we threw crumbs to the little birds as we talked.

  “So, Jack, you think you’ve found the love of your life.” He smiled.

  “If you met her you’d understand,” I told him. And, in the selfish way that people who are newly in love behave, I rambled on about Lucy, her good points, her bad points, how I was hoping we could settle down together as soon as her current assignment was completed. I even told him about her foreshortened third finger, though goodness knows how that came into the conversation.

  “Jack, my boy, you’ve really got it bad.” Douglas stared ahead, smiling to himself.

  “If only you could meet her, Douglas. You’d love her, I know you would.”

  “I will meet her, perhaps at your wedding. God willing.”

  Lucy’s photograph, that I had on my phone, had met with his approval. “Serious woman, Jack, not some flighty piece.” Though, looking back on all that’s happened since, I’ve tried to remember everything he’d said or done, but I can’t. Parts of our talk are just gone forever. And that’s the saddest thing of all.

  “The really crazy thing is, Douglas,” I wittered on, “When I met her, I felt as if I’d met her before somewhere. Yet I know I haven’t. It sounds ridiculous I know.”

  “And you’re going to tell me that you knew her in another life? Reincarnation?” He grinned. “Jack, you idiot, I give up on you. Next you’ll be giving up writing true crime and going in for Mills and Boon romances.” The smile vanished as soon as it had arrived, and he frowned for a second. “But you know, funnily enough, when I saw her photo, I myself thought there was something familiar about her face, and I’m not even in love with her! Maybe we both knew her in a former life?”

  And sitting there with Douglas looking up at the grand edifice of Notre Dame, I prayed that this wouldn’t be my last memory of Douglas.

  “All we’ve done is talk about me,” I said, guiltily.

  “That’s what I want to do,” Douglas said quietly. “I’ve had nothing but doctors and consultants and surgeons going on at me ever since this damned business started a couple of weeks ago, and I’m sick and tired of medical matters. I just don’t want to think about it.” He paused to catch his breath, now clearly exhausted by the walk. “I want to try and remember what it was like when I could stand up straight and stride around and breathe deeply and look at beautiful people and beautiful places and eat decent food and enjoy a few drinks. Ask anyone who’s physically ill, and it’s only their outside that’s ill, inside they’re healthy as they’ve ever been, their mind is healthy. That’s what I want to pretend, Jack my boy, just for this one night, that’s what I want to pretend.”

  It was then I noticed just how ill he was, how much weight he’d lost, the rings under his eyes. And the breathlessness.

  “You just don’t know what it feels like to be tired all the time,” he went on. “Everything’s an effort. The strain of fighting to get your breath. Of worrying about Cecile worrying about me. I just want to go in, get it done with, and, with God’s help, come out of it the other side. And if it’s the other thing, well so be it.”

  “You’ll get through this, Douglas, I know you will.”

  “I’m not kidding myself, Jack, believe me.
I died once already for half an hour. I didn’t tell Cecile, but I had the whole works, you know? The tunnel, the bright light, the overwhelming sense of peace. And I’ve got to say it wasn’t so bad. See, I’ve already bought the ticket and waited on the platform. I just don’t particularly want to get on the train. Not yet. Got too much I want to do.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments. I put my hand on his shoulder and gently squeezed, and at my touch he cleared his throat noisily. It struck me that just as things could go the wrong way for him tomorrow, they could equally well go wrong for me too. Until I’d gone to the Welsh castle, I was more or less a moving target.

  I was aware that death, for me, could arrive in a number of ways: a bullet from a man on a motorbike when I was wandering along the road thinking about something else. My car being rammed from behind, followed by a sudden ambush. Maybe even a knife in my back while I was standing in the middle of a crowd. Living for the next month was going to be a rollercoaster of fear, possibly a case of several touch-and-goes. It was so ironic that just when I had the prospect of a wife and, in the course of time maybe even a child, held in front of me, something real and wonderful to live for, the whole caboosh might be snatched away from me before it had even begun.

  Poor old Douglas. Dear old Douglas. Why was I thinking about myself at such a time, when I should have been thinking of nothing but him?

  “The House of God.” Douglas said quietly, looking up towards Notre Dame. “I’ve never been much of a believer, you know that? But when you come face to face with your own mortality, somehow it all seems to make sense. Cecile has always been a good Christian, but me, I’ve had my doubts.”

  “Notre Dame Cathedral. And Sacré Coeur,” I mused. “Seeing buildings like this always confirms what you once said to me.”

  “What was that?”

  “There’s always more good than evil in the world. And good always wins in the end.”

  “Sure. But what I didn’t say was you can never be absolutely sure which is the good and which is the evil until it’s too late.”