Doppelganger

by Geoffrey West

  “Did she see you?”

  “She may have done.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “I’d have had to tell them I was following him. And if I’d told them what had happened they wouldn’t have believed me. Who was likely to be believed between the two of us? An unknown hospital volunteer or a respected clinical psychiatrist? Besides, I’d have had to tell my handler about my suspicions, and any suggestions that I was acting like a vigilante and the terms of my release under licence would have been automatically breached. They could have locked me up again. My only chance was to get proof.”

  “Did you follow him in Nottingham, and Huddersfield?”

  She shook her head. “I just read about the murders in those places. It was afterwards that I discovered he was working as a doctor there during those periods. It was when he came to Canterbury that I decided to come there to live – I had to try and stop him. I had to do something. And not long after he’d arrived there was the first killing.”

  “And all these years, is it him you’ve been afraid of?”

  “Yes. Jack, he kills people. He enjoys killing people. He’s got everyone on his side and he’s clever. What bloody hope do I have against someone like that?”

  “What happened the night he attacked Caroline?”

  “It was just as she said. He came up behind her, so that she couldn’t see his face. I ran towards them to break it up, he heard me, looked up and stumbled, and she was able to get away. I was wearing dark clothes, a big hat, dark glasses. I don’t think he could see my face as I ran towards him. As Caroline ran, I tried to intercept her, to stop her running, to tell her it was okay, that he’d gone, but she just stared at me and ran in a panic.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Caroline was running towards the road, as you know, and Lamelle had long gone. I heard the screech of car brakes – I imagine it was your car. I ducked out of sight. His car had already gone.”

  “Does he know who you are?” I asked her again.

  “I don’t know.”

  A nurse appeared behind us. I realised that while we’d been talking, Lucy’s grip on my hand had tightened more and more. Now she didn’t want to let me go.

  “Time’s up, young man,” said the cheery nurse. “Lucy needs her sleep now.”

  “Can you forget the things I said to you?” I asked Lucy.

  “I can try.”

  “Happy birthday for tomorrow.”

  “Thirty eight. All my life, the feeling I’ve had that I wouldn’t make it. And if you hadn’t saved me I would have been dead.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can. And I’ll ring you in the morning.”

  “Can you fetch me some clothes from my flat? A spare couple of nightdresses and my dressing gown and slippers? And my Kindle – I’ve got nothing to read.”

  “Of course.”

  Once I was outside the hospital and beside my car in the car park, I flipped open my mobile and dialled the number I still had in my contacts for Millicent Veitch. She answered on the third ring.

  “Jack? Why the hell are you ringing me?” she snapped.

  “To warn you Millicent. Your boss, Roger Lamelle. He’s the killer you’re looking for.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I haven’t time to go into it. But everything fits. You’ve been discussing the cases with him, haven’t you? That’s why he’s always been one step ahead of the police. He never makes the same mistake twice.”

  “Have you gone mad, Jack?”

  “I’m ringing to warn you, Millie. Once the police are on to him, he’s very likely to target you. You’re in danger.”

  “No, you’re in danger, Jack. You were a psychiatric inpatient not long ago, weren’t you? Looks as if you’re in danger of losing your mind all over again!”

  “Listen to me, Millie, for God’s sake listen, you silly bitch! Stuart’s already told the police what we know, it’s just a question of time before...”

  I stopped talking as I became aware of a shadow beside me, felt a pinprick in my arm. Then there was blackness.

  Chapter 16

  BIBLE KILLER

  I woke up to feel the light grey fabric of my car’s upholstery chafing my face, the aroma of the cloth filling my consciousness. I tried to move my arms but they were tied behind my back and my legs seemed to be bound at the ankles. I couldn’t move, because something was strapping me firmly down against the seat. The car was cruising fast, the rumbling of the engine throbbing through its frame, rocking and jerking me around with the undulations in the road.

  Managing to turn my head sideways on the seat I saw a man at the wheel of my car, his hands in surgical gloves. My head felt muzzy and it was hard to breathe. I could see the rakish profile: dapper Lord Lucan moustache, thick dark hair, arrogant sleepy eyes, a mouth curved into a bitter smile of arrogance as he stared intently ahead.

  “Awake then?” he called across, peering into the rear view mirror. He’d obviously altered its angle so he could keep sight of me while he drove.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “And what the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m Roger Lamelle. And I’m driving us back to Canterbury – I found your address in your wallet.”

  My voice felt hoarse. I coughed for a long time, straining against the ropes that bound me, but there was no hope of escape.

  “You can’t get away with this.”

  “With what?”

  “Stealing my car. Kidnapping me.”

  “The answer to your first question is that I can certainly get away with what I’m doing. And I will.” He smiled. “Because I’m lucky you see. Always have been.”

  “So you are the Bible Killer?”

  He nodded almost to himself. “What a stupid name that is. Why do the press have to brand everyone with a ridiculous epithet? But you’ve guessed right. It is me that the police have been looking for. To date I’ve killed several women in Canterbury. Not to mention quite a few more in other towns over the past few years. But I can rest easy in the knowledge that I’ve got the skill and the brains and the luck to keep one step ahead of the idiots who are trying to catch me.”

  Another long pause. Neither of us saying anything. My neck felt cramped and hurt, as I strained to look at him.

  “I expect you're wondering about your girlfriend, Lucy. Or rather Megan. I’ll always think of her as Megan. I expect she’s told you that I killed Aiden, that she was totally innocent, hasn’t she? And you believed her?”

  “Yes.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter what you believe. The truth is we both killed Aiden. I started to choke him, she finished him off.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Do you really think that after all that questioning by our teachers and the police they’d get it so wrong? We both enjoyed it. But it was Megan who went through with it.”

  “I still don’t believe you.”

  He laughed. “Okay, you’re going to die, you may as well know the truth I suppose. You’re probably right, though even I can’t be certain. I think I knew Aiden was dead, because I felt that thrilling few seconds when the life went out of him, but I could be wrong. It might easily have been Megan who finished him off. But I’ve killed plenty of people since then and do you know what? It’s the most exciting feeling in the world. I can still remember the thrill that ran through me – there’s absolutely nothing to compare it to. Yes, looking back on it, it was too bad for Megan that she paid the price for Aiden Caulfield, when, in fact she played the strangling game as merely for fun, whereas I had other ideas. But tell me, what was I supposed to do? Everyone thought she was guilty, and I wasn’t sure at all which of us had actually killed him. All I had to do was keep a low profile. For goodness sake, I was a child, I acted like an innocent child, just as everyone expected me to do. I strangled little Aiden and he hardly even struggled, then Megan came over and it was too late for me to do anything but watch and wait, so that’s what I
did. It’s strange, you know I was right on the point of telling the teacher that it could have been my fault, but something held me back. I thought instinctively: wait, whoever’s held responsible for killing Aiden is going to be in big trouble, so wait and see what happens. For a long time I thought the truth would come out, I really did. But Megan was taken away. A policeman asked me some questions, but I decided to brazen it out and lie. And that was it. And gradually people forgot about Aiden and about Megan.”

  “How did you know where to find us?”

  “I heard from a friend of hers at the hospital that she was being treated at this hospital, and her boyfriend was with her. I thought that coming down here would be the best way to find you. And of course now that you know so much I have to deal with you permanently.”

  “What about Lucy?”

  “It was quite easy to finish Megan. No one stopped me going into the ward – I wore my white coat with my hospital ID and no one noticed I wasn’t on the staff. Megan was asleep. I added a little something to the saline drip she was connected to. By now it should have worked: caused a major heart attack.”

  I choked back tears of impotent fury. “Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Why do you enjoy killing people?”

  He laughed, genuinely amused. “Jack, Jack you are priceless! That is as absurd as asking a man in a brothel why he wants to have sex. Or a junkie why he wants to stick a needle in his arm. There simply is no answer.”

  “It gives you a thrill?”

  “Of course it gives me a thrill. For God’s sake man, it’s the ultimate high! You’ve got power, for those seconds while their life drains away, you are God. You are God. And as for the victims...” He took a hand off the wheel and waved it in the air. “Apart from a brief period of pain and fear, it’s all over for them quite quickly, they simply, how can I put it... They simply cease to exist.” He slowed for an upcoming junction, and turned towards me for a second. “I’ll tell you a secret that hardly anyone knows Jack, and I swear to you that this is true: killing someone is a hell of a lot more exciting than sex or any kind of drug I’ve ever tried. The joy is the power you have over them you see, that’s the incredible feeling that never fails to excite me, the high to end all highs. The tragedy is, hardly anyone understands. The ecstasy of creating death is one of life’s best kept secrets.”

  “Why is it always women?”

  He shrugged, trailing a finger along his luxuriant moustache. “Women are easy to overpower. Women are man’s natural prey. They know it too – ultimately, they enjoy any act of aggression towards them. Of course they wouldn’t admit it, but when it comes down to it, women enjoy being dominated, they long for a man to rape them, or to beat them. And I tell you this, Jack, when they die, they die gloriously, in rapture.”

  “You really believe that?”

  He nodded. “It’s the natural order of things, you see, that we in the modern world shy away from. But you can’t stop your natural primitive instincts. They’re always there, lurking just under the surface. The urge to hunt, to ravish...”

  “To kill?”

  “Of course to kill! Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that our medieval ancestors thought nothing of murdering each other? Men have been hacking each other to death for centuries, and no one thought it was wrong. That was what chivalrous knights of old did – they didn’t just go around defending their maidens’ honour in carefully staged jousts, and dignified contests of strength. They stabbed and cut and sliced their way through flesh! They massacred and killed and raped, because that’s what they wanted to do. It was what you did, it’s what being a man has always been about.”

  “But you’re a doctor.”

  “So was Harold Shipman and Dr Crippen. Murder’s much easier for us because we’re used to death. Everyone wondered why Harold killed his patients. I know why. He enjoyed it.”

  “Just like you do.”

  “But I do it with panache. I take my victims by surprise... Harold nudged the elderly into sleep, he didn’t select a victim at random as I do. He wasn’t a hunter like I am. He had no flair, no originality, no style... All that nonsense about having a Bible left on the corpse with passages highlighted, to make it look like the killer had a mania for religion. Did you know that the police have got little Millicent working flat out to profile this ‘religious killer’, they think the religious aspect is highly significant, and Millicent comes and tells me all about it. She even asks for my advice! My God, how easy it’s been. The mutilations I carried out after death were just a bit of harmless fun, a chance to practise my old anatomy skills and bamboozle the bloody stupid police even more, mimicking the Thomas Becket angle, I always enjoyed reading about how they smashed his head and spread his brains across the floor of the cathedral. It appealed to me, doing something that linked me to England’s greatest, most adored martyr, whom Christian people still flock to worship in pilgrimage year after year. It was the ultimate desecration of Christianity, it appealed to me to mock the blessed St Thomas’s memory. And you see Jack, as I told you, I’m lucky, I’ve been lucky all my life. That’s why they’ll never catch me.”

  His talk was delivered at top speed, there was a wild maniacal quality to his behaviour, as if he was high on drugs. I wondered exactly how to categorise Lamelle’s particular type of insanity. Sociopath? Psychopath? Delusional? Egomaniac? I really didn’t know.

  “When did you realise who Lucy was?”I asked.

  “I recognised her the night I almost killed Caroline, as someone I’d seen at the hospital, someone who was following me. I had to find out why, who she was and how she came to know my secret. So I made a point of looking for her around the place, and then, sure enough, I saw her on the ward one day, got a damned good look at her. Her face had hardly changed from when she was a child. The clincher was the foreshortened finger on her left hand. I remembered it in the school playground, that finger. I knew it was Megan. No doubts in my mind.”

  “And you knew she was on to you?”

  He nodded, slowing for the reduced speed limit. “It would have been too much of a coincidence for her to be working at the very same hospital as I was otherwise. I knew she suspected me of the murders, and I knew she’d deliberately followed me to Healey’s Wood that night.”

  “To stop you.”

  He didn’t reply for a moment. “Or maybe to watch me.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about Megan. But when she turned up, the girl managed to break free. Ever since I’ve been planning how to get rid of her. You know the rest.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  “I found a pistol in your car’s glove box. See? I told you I was lucky. Strange an ostensibly law-abiding guy like you having a gun, but then maybe you’re not all you seem – so few of us are. Your gun makes things so much simpler. For one thing it’s yours – your fingerprints will already be on it.”

  I remembered the gun that Dave Boyd had given me. The shiny .38 snub-nose revolver that he’d loaded for me with the magnum shells. Ironic that the weapon that had been given to me to protect myself was going to be the means of my destruction. But, although it didn’t matter now, my fingerprints were not on it. I’d been careful to avoid handling it without gloves, for the very reason that I envisaged having to abandon it after using the thing, and didn’t want to be linked to it forensically. However, points like that were hardly relevant now.

  Straining to see through the windscreen I recognised local landmarks near home. We’d reached the outskirts of Canterbury already. Proving that I must have been asleep for most of the long journey.

  “You’re going to shoot yourself” he said matter-of-factly, as he switched on the indicator to turn into the road through the woods leading to my house. “Your girlfriend successfully killed herself, because your relationship’s over – I saw from the hospital notes she had already taken an overdose, and what I put into her intravenous drip isn’t traceable eas
ily – she’ll simply have a heart attack, they’ll assume it was a sad repercussion of the medication she took, which I happen to know can cause these unexpected reactions. And you have business worries, I gather. In short you have no future, your girlfriend tried to kill herself, and is not likely to survive, so you’ve nothing to live for and you’ve decided to end it all. I don’t imagine you’re going to be obliging enough to open your mouth to let me blow your brains out in the classic way, but I think we can manage perfectly well with a round into the side of your head, à la Russian Roulette. If the single shot doesn’t kill you immediately at this range it should take out a big chunk of your skull and I promise you won’t last long. Unfortunately I can’t grant you the luxury of a second shot, that would stretch credulity a little too much! You might bleed for a while, and possibly experience a great deal of pain before the end. Once you’re dead or dying, I simply untie your hands, clasp them around the gun’s stock and leave you holding it – or maybe let you drop it, I don’t know which would actually happen in a suicide. I’ll play it by ear. Of course there’s things like gunpowder residue on the fingers which won’t be there, but I doubt they’ll spend too long doing tests like that when the cause of death is so obvious. Even if they suspect it’s not suicide, Millicent has told me that you have a dangerous enemy – a gangland criminal no less, a character called Sean Boyd. So if they don’t conclude suicide, they’ll assume it was a gangland murder made to look like suicide. Either way I’m in the clear.”

  “And afterwards you go on killing girls in Canterbury?”

  “No way. Canterbury’s over for me. I applied for a post in the States recently and I heard that I got it this morning. No more Canterbury killings, the Bible Killer’s activities will end just as abruptly as Jack the Ripper’s did. Then it’s on to Mount Ephraim Hospital, Houston Texas. The Yanks like an English accent. I’ll do well there. Keep my nose clean for a year or so, then I can start up all over again. This time, I think I’ll do the killings a distance from home, that’s the mistake I made here, keeping everything within the one town. Find some nice young juicy girls on the streets of some hick town, not too far away. It’s too risky to do things close to home. One lives and learns.”