Doppelganger

by Geoffrey West

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will Jack. One day. One day when your heart’s been broken a few more times. Then you’ll understand.”

  I didn’t think about his words or their significance, until long afterwards, when my life had catapulted into the maelstrom.

  And that’s how I’ll always remember him. Dear old Douglas. Sitting peacefully, feeding the tiny birds in Notre Dame Square. And I somehow concertina the picture in my mind so it expands outwards and I see the whole of that part of Paris, there with Douglas in the middle of the beauty of it all. The Pont Neuf bridge and the lights that were twinkling in the buildings. The Quai des Orfevres with the three-storey high paintings on the huge windows. The long line of regimented golden buildings with their magnificent yellow-lit fenestration ranged along the riverbank. The lights dancing off the river and twinkling in the stained glass of the cathedral.

  Paris at its best. Douglas at his best.

  Life.

  * * * *

  I remember talking to a man who’d seen a lot of active service in the Second World War. He’d been telling me about his friend whom he’d had to leave seriously injured in a field hospital, and I asked him about their last conversation – for he’d told me that they’d both known that the other man was going to die. I asked him what were the final words he’d said to him. And my old friend had said, “Oh I can’t remember really. I think as I was leaving, my last word to him was “goodbye”.”

  That’s it really. Prosaic mumblings are all we’ve got in life. At least I’d told Douglas that I loved him, and he’d been embarrassed. And while it would be nice to think that some of the last words I said to Douglas were pearls of wisdom, they weren’t. Just goodbye, be seeing you soon, you’ll be okay. And he went along with the charade, when he, wise old bird that he was, knew very well that he’d never see me again.

  And after that night, things started moving fast.

  Nothing was ever the same again. And absolutely nothing was the way it seemed.

  I sometimes look upon that day in Paris as the real beginning of my nightmare.

  Because the events that turned my world upside down smashed into my life, just like an accident, completely out of the blue.

  And even now I’m still living with the consequences.

  * * * *

  I got home the following day, Wednesday, worn out and aching for bed. The flashing light was on my answerphone. A message from Lucy, wondering how I’d got on. And another one:

  “Jack? This is Douglas.”

  The message was timed last night, about 8 o’clock. My mobile had been switched off, so he’d been unable to reach me on the journey home.

  “Something you have to know about,” Douglas’s deep rasping voice hurried on. He sounded upset. Very upset. “I’m ninety per cent certain, but, my God, Jack, how I’m hoping I’m wrong. Can’t go into it on a message. I’m going to courier a parcel to Truecrime – that’ll explain everything. Looks like I won’t be speaking to you until after the operation, so promise me you’ll fetch that parcel, soon as you can. You must get that parcel urgently, Jack, you could be in serious danger.”

  The message ended. What did it mean? Douglas wasn’t prone to fanciful ideas, but he’d sounded scared and concerned. Whatever would it be about? Luckily, Truecrime’s London offices weren’t too far out of my way to Wales. I’d call in on the way, I’d told Douglas all about my trouble with Sean Boyd's people, and maybe he had some ideas about what I could do, maybe he was even in touch with police who knew more about Sean Boyd than I did, and there was something in the parcel that could connect Boyd with someone or something. If it wasn’t about that, I couldn’t imagine what it could mean.

  Next I phoned Douglas’s home, in case Cecile had some news about the operation. No answer, just the answerphone. Of course. She would be at the hospital, waiting.

  I called the hospital, and after muttering in my schoolboy French, luckily someone came on the line who spoke English. I was told that Mr Hosegood’s operation had gone as well as could be expected and he was recovering in the intensive care ward.

  I pressed the disconnect button, a wave of joy and relief washing over me. So far so good.

  You could be in serious danger. Douglas had said.

  I’d told him all about the Sean Boyd situation, so Douglas knew that I was already in serious danger, so why on earth was he adding to it? Maybe, in his heightened emotional state the night before his big op, he’d exaggerated things out of all importance.

  * * * *

  Next morning, after a long lie-in I started my journey to Wales. By midday I was on the M25, heading for London. I pulled into a service station and took the risk of extracting the Glock automatic from its Sainsbury shopping bag and placing it under my car’s seat. Then I phoned Stu, telling him I was on my way to Glamorgan to interview the father of Annie Marie Molloy, the first Bible Killer victim, who’d agreed to give me some background on the murdered woman. After that, the plan was to go south to Llantrissant Manor, Godfrey’s house in the valley near Brecon, to settle in and get started on my work. Finally I rang Ann Yates at Truecrime.

  “Douglas Hosegood sent me a parcel, care of Truecrime. Has it arrived yet?” I asked her.

  “Parcel? What do you want to be worrying about parcels for at a time like this?”

  “Douglas said it was important. Have a look, Ann.”

  “Hang on.” I waited for a few moments until she came back on the line. “Nothing arrived today. Tell you what, Jack, you get straight down to Wales and I promise I’ll courier the parcel to you as soon as it comes. It’ll be there by tomorrow afternoon if it arrives in the morning.”

  “Thanks, Ann.”

  “You take care now.”

  Much later on, just as I’d successfully made my way around the M25, along the M4, and had turned onto the A49, in the direction of Gloucester, I noticed that a car had been following me for more than a few miles. At the next roundabout I circled it twice, and, sure enough, the Mercedes in question followed me when I took the third exit.

  It came closer, so close that it seemed to fill my rear view mirror.

  Chapter 5

  WELCOME TO WALES

  This was it. Gripping the steering wheel with my left hand, I reached down beneath my seat and retrieved the Glock and slipped off the safety catch.

  I pictured what was most likely to happen next. Sean Boyd’s killers, passengers in the Mercedes, would pull out and pass me. And, just as it came alongside, a sawn-off shotgun or an Uzi would poke its nose out of the passenger window and it would be the last thing I’d ever see.

  The car behind pulled out. Taking a deep breath, I pressed the open-window button until the glass was fully down. I could feel the roar of a breeze on my cheeks, tearing at my hair.

  Still accelerating, I lifted the gun and pointed it through the window. The Mercedes drew level.

  I’ll never forget the look of terror in the eyes of the woman in a fur-trimmed coat in the passenger seat. She stared at my gun and began to scream.

  Then, as suddenly as it started, it was over. The German car accelerated away into the distance as I slowed, trying to release the tension, aware that the innocent car driver whom I’d threatened with a gun might, right now, be reporting me to the police.

  But thankfully nothing happened after that. I pulled into a service station to freshen up and have something to eat. The bulletproof vest felt uncomfortable and bulky, and, I suspected, made me look mildly ridiculous, but I didn’t care.

  Why on earth hadn’t I told my mystery phone caller that I was giving up on Hero or Villain? They’d find out eventually I was lying, but it would at least have bought me time. But in the shock of the moments after I’d answered the call, I hadn’t reacted fast enough to think on my feet.

  I phoned Cecile, but the line was busy. And anyhow maybe it was wrong to bother her at such a time. So I grimly got on with what I had to do.

  The interview with Annie Marie Mollo
y’s widowed father in his semi-detached house in a suburb of Gloucester was about as grim as I’d expected it to be and it had taken much longer than I’d planned, because the poor old man kept reminiscing about the murdered woman’s mother, his stepson Arthur, and Arthur’s failings. I hadn’t the heart to hurry him and indeed it had been difficult making my escape, so that it wasn’t until ten in the evening that I was on the road from Hay-on-Wye and over the border into Wales.

  After stopping and consulting Ann’s handwritten map several times, I finally found the turn-off for the village, and the road widened slightly, and I passed the tiny SPAR grocery store and church that seemed to be the sum total of Bryn-y-Gare. Beyond the village the road climbed higher, into the mountains. I missed the turning the first time, but, after turning back and searching twice more, I saw the small insignificant signpost that said ‘Evans Quarry’.

  What had Ann said? You need a four-wheel-drive vehicle to make it up the Bryn-y-Gare pass.

  The rough road alongside the quarry seemed to last forever, the land on either side rising up, as if I was in a deep valley between twin mountains, or, more likely, slag heaps. The signpost to Llantrissant Manor was on the far side of the quarry. I parked and looked up.

  In the fading light I could see the road to the Manor rising practically vertically up the mountainside. It looked muddy and slippery, and I seriously wondered if it was going to be possible to make it. Another car stopped behind me. I tensed, reaching for the gun beneath my seat, then relaxed as I saw the middle-aged man in a flat hat and battered Barbour jacket and Wellington boots, striding towards me.

  “Lost are you?” he asked, leaning into the window I’d opened.

  “I must be.” I got out of the car. “I’m looking for Llantrissant Manor.”

  “Go up the top and down the other side, then it’s a couple of miles beyond that.”

  “Up there?” I pointed in amazement at the almost sheer cliff face in front of us.

  “Done any off-roading, have you?” He smiled the smile of the countryman in his element.

  “Never.”

  “Well you got the right vehicle for it. Never make it in an ordinary car, but yours should do it easy. Love them Land Rovers I do, built like a bloody tank, and they’ll tackle anything. All you gotta do is, build up your revs at the bottom and go for it in second gear. Watch out for mud, you might slide about a bit, but I think you’ll make it okay. It’s these rains, see, washed away part of the road last summer. Before that, they had tippers and trucks and all sorts going up and down there – renovating the Manor, so I gather. Some townie with more money than sense doing it up as a country retreat.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “Tell you what, my friend, how about if I wait and watch? If you get stuck in the mud I’ll nip back to my farm and fetch the tractor to tow you out.”

  “That’s really kind of you.”

  “You’re in the countryside now boy, we all mucks in. Give it a go then.”

  So I did. I could have done without this obstacle at the end of such a trying day, but I did as my kind new neighbour suggested. Accelerated hard, then plunged forwards. I climbed and climbed until I felt the engine’s impetus failing, but, even though I felt the car slide, I made it to the top. Then, once past the peak, it was almost as hair-raising, braking in low gear downwards, with the vehicle slewing sideways, practically into the deep ditch on one side. As the farmer had advised me, I drove on for a long time after the going was flat. Finally, when I’d almost given up hope, I saw the house in the distance.

  I turned through a gap in the high stone wall and parked in front of what looked like a ruined castle, complete with castellated towers. After parking, I walked under the tumbledown gatehouse, to the inner courtyard. It was just as Ann had said. There was a brand new section of wall grafted onto the old one, in the centre of which was a beautiful dark timber varnished front door.

  I went back to the car and sat there for a moment, trying to take it all in. This place, apparently at least five miles from any village, was going to be my home for the next few weeks.

  What an unholy mess my life was. The woman I was in love with was in York, while I had to write a vicious gangster’s unauthorised memoirs while pondering on the prospect of being a dead man myself very soon. I picked up the Glock and weighed it in my hand, hoping against hope I wouldn’t have to use it. The balance felt good, the weight just right. I gripped and aimed two-handed, just as I’d been taught to at the gun club, many years ago.

  As I carried my suitcase and a handful of papers through the doorway, which mercifully unlocked after the third try from the brand new key, I found the light switch to my left. Astonishingly, the interior seemed more as if it had leapt from the pages of an interior design magazine. A host of halogen ceiling lights sparkled down, delivering pure breathlessly-bright whiteness.

  * * * *

  The interior of my new temporary home was every bit as fantastic as Ann had described it. The following morning, after one of the most restful night’s sleeps I’d had in ages, I got out of the luxurious king-sized bed and took a look around.

  The bedroom, on the first floor, led off a corridor behind the mezzanine gallery that looked down on the huge entrance hall. Magnificent huge stained-glass windows now lit the ultra-modern maple-wood staircase and hallway, bathing everything in sunlight, tinted blue and green according to the windows’ hue. There were four double bedrooms including my own, and each of them had pristine cream-and-white décor, and floor-to-ceiling cupboards, and there was thick cream carpeting on the floors.

  Downstairs I found a space-age kitchen that was absolutely huge, with acres and acres of work surfaces and a big table in the centre, around which there were six chairs. The living room had relaxing amber-yellow walls and a white ceiling, and a lot of beige soft-leather furniture perched on the deep blue heavy-pile carpet. The far wall of the room was mostly comprised of vast windows, allowing a view across this valley towards the mountains. On the glass-topped coffee table beside the sofa was a leaflet entitled The Bryn-y-Gare Valley – home to exotic flora and fauna since Roman times...

  The study – for want of a better word – was also larger-than-life, and was reassuringly bookish, with row upon row of books on the shelves, including, to my delight, my own books published by Truecrime Publications. I wandered over and studied them: Fred and Rose’s Secrets and Too Many Rotten Apples. Much of the remainder of the books were, naturally, published by Truecrime Publications.

  The writing desk was equipped with an excellent computer that had the latest word-processing package installed on it. When I’m working in one place, as opposed to jotting things down on the move, I prefer a big screen to that of a laptop. It didn’t take me long to bring in all my papers and notes and tapes for transcribing, then to download the completed parts of Hero or Villain? from my laptop onto the desktop machine. The internet connection worked, so did the telephone. That was one big relief, as I’d imagined that reception might have been impossible in this hilly area, for Llantrissant Manor appeared to be in a valley between mountains.

  So for the next few days I got stuck in.

  On the Friday night I had my nightmare again, where I’m being choked to death and the light is disappearing. Yet right in the middle of it I saw Douglas’s face. He was smiling, looking as he’d done in the days I’d first met him, when he had the large grey moustache and no beard. He was saying something, but I couldn't make out what it was, and while he was talking he was frowning, as if he was imparting some deep secret. Then he waved, smiled and walked off purposefully – I could just make out someone in the distance with their arms outstretched to welcome him.

  I woke up with a splitting headache, my heart racing, and looked at the bedside clock: 4 am.

  When I got up the following morning there was a text message on my phone.

  Douglas died at 4am this morning. Will let you know about funeral. Love, Cecile.

  * * * *

  It wasn’t
really a shock, for I’d been half expecting it. The coincidence of the dream was grizzly, but you hear about things like that happening now and again. People talk about telepathy, life after death, surges of electrical activity in the brain at the point of passing, but nobody really has a clue, it’s all just guesswork. All I know is I found it comforting, that if it was some kind of near-death telepathy, that Douglas was happy in his final moments.

  After that the days were fairly dreary: typing away, revising, editing, transcribing the words. There was plenty of food in the freezer and everything I could possibly need in the cupboards, and although I’m a lousy cook I managed to fry sausages and eggs, and prepare chips in the oven. Plus of course brewing plenty of mugs of real coffee.

  Was I lonely? Yes. But I phoned Lucy every day at six o’clock, and she told me about the people she’d met in the shop, how interesting York was, all about a historic road called The Shambles, and the endless American tourists who admired the beautiful doll’ houses she was selling. We talked about everything: the weather, the news on the television and radio, how my work was progressing. She was planning to come back to Canterbury this weekend, should have arrived there last night, so I was looking forward to travelling back to see her tomorrow night, if she could stay until Monday.

  And after all that slog Hero or Villain? was finally finished. It was midnight, ten days after I’d first come to Llantrissant Manor, and I hadn’t seen a soul in all that time. The phone rang and I picked up, wondering who’d be ringing at this time.

  “Jack?”

  I recognised Stuart’s voice immediately. “Yes.”

  “Get back here soon as you can, mate. There’s been another murder.”

  Which meant, of course, more information for the next book I had to write, unsurprisingly provisionally titled The Bible Killer.