Doppelganger

by Geoffrey West

  We were on the A2050, in open countryside. On a road I knew well.

  Calculating fast. I reasoned that Lamelle would probably either be aiming to go towards the A2, and turn right, back towards London, or, more likely, left to make straight for Dover, with the idea of somehow boarding a cross-Channel ferry. I knew that there was a turning off this road onto two narrower thoroughfares that led along parallel, then rejoined this road further down. It was a desperate strategy. But it was clear that Lamelle was planning to kill Caroline once he’d used her, he couldn’t possibly risk leaving her alive. Besides, he wouldn’t be able to resist another victim, particularly one who’d eluded him before.

  Fields to my right. No lights anywhere. Alone, with only my cranked-high heartbeat for company.

  I thought quickly: Caroline had been averaging about forty mph in the main road just now. All I had to do was outpace her and get back onto the carriageway in front of them.

  I took the left turn then accelerated fast, following the narrow winding lane and praying that I wouldn’t miss the next right turn. I almost did, screeching to a halt as I swung the wheel at the last minute. Then I was roaring down the road that I was certain cut back on to the main thoroughfare I’d so recently departed from. At the end, at the junction with the main road, I braked to a standstill.

  Then I stared to the right for lights coming along the main road. A lorry, then an estate car, came and went.

  At last, in the distance, I saw what looked like Caroline’s car. Holding my breath I waited, and then, sure enough, I made out the Corsa’s shape and the first letter of the number plate. I reversed a few feet, killed my lights, and gunned the engine in neutral, determined that Lamelle wouldn’t see me until the very last second.

  It was going to be down to judgment and luck. I prayed to myself, prayed to God it would work.

  Caroline’s car came closer to the junction. My engine was revved high. Then just as it approached, I jammed the gear lever into drive. Revelled in the gearbox’s roaring squeal of protest as I tore forwards, aiming directly for Caroline’s passenger door.

  The impact lifted Caroline’s smaller vehicle off the road. I got a jumbled glimpse of Lamelle rolling forwards, the airbag bursting into his chest. The crashing, splintering and screeching went on for seconds until both cars came to a standstill, my front wing crumpled into his buckled door panel, smoke pouring upwards into the sky, feeling my own airbag crushing me back into the seat.

  My driver’s door wouldn’t open, but I made it out of the passenger side, running along behind both vehicles. The driver’s door of the Corsa was flung open wide, but there was no sign of Caroline. Lamelle was moving, trying to pull himself from the wreckage.

  Then I saw her, a few feet away, still lying on the ground, where she’d rolled into the gutter. I ran across and saw there was blood on her chest, helped her to her feet and onto the pavement.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay,” she said. “His knife hand jerked, but it’s just a flesh wound.”

  I held her in my arms, shaking with relief that she was safe.

  A car had pulled up and the driver was beside us, asking if we were all right, at the same time as he was dialling a number on his mobile phone.

  “We’re fine, thanks,” I answered him, as he gabbled to the emergency services. Muttering about two cars, and one casualty.

  “No, two casualties,” I told him, pointing to the Corsa.

  “Oh right mate, I didn’t see anyone else. In the back seat are they?”

  “No, the passenger in front.”

  Caroline and I both looked across. As we heard the sirens of the approaching vehicles it was clear that the other car was already empty.

  * * * *

  “Not to worry, he can’t get far,” said the burly police sergeant, as we sat on the pavement, waiting for the ambulance to come and check Caroline’s wound, though she protested there was no need.

  “He may be on foot, but he’s desperate,” I said.

  “Don’t fret, lad. After all, where’s he going to hide?” the policeman said reasonably. “We’ll get him within minutes. You two must be shattered. I’ve got your details. Best thing is for you to get checked over by the medics.” He looked across at the two wrecked cars. “You’re saying you deliberately rammed the other car, sir?”

  “Yes. Roger Lamelle is the Bible Killer. If I hadn’t stopped him he’d have killed Caroline. Can you contact DI Farley?”

  He nodded and dialled a number and spoke for a long time.

  “DI Farley is on his way, sir. He’d be grateful if you wouldn’t mind waiting, unless of course the young lady needs to get to hospital urgently.”

  Within minutes the entire area was swarming with uniformed police, and a wholesale search had been instigated. Farley had repeated the platitudes I’d heard earlier about how Lamelle couldn’t get away.

  I held Caroline in my arms. She was trembling, the shock had finally got to her.

  “I’ll never forget what you did for me tonight,” I whispered to her.

  “Take me home, Jack. I can’t stop shaking. I feel sick. Some of the things he said to me were unbelievable. He was telling me about the awful things he did to those girls’ bodies...”

  I called a cab to take us back home.

  * * * *

  Next day I hired a car and drove down to Wales and collected Lucy. She was sleeping when I arrived, and, once settled in the warm car, she slept again, a smile on her face. It was a relief to me, for I didn’t know what on earth I could possibly say to her.

  Alone on the journey I’d reconciled myself to the fact that our affair was doomed. But when she was in the car, lying back in the seat and lost in slumber, I remembered the feelings I’d always had for her that just wouldn’t go away. Was our relationship really so impossible?

  When I saw her slumbering peacefully I persuaded myself that we had a chance. We really had a chance. Okay, so Lucy was selfish, moody, difficult in so many ways, but did it really matter? I could learn to make allowances for her, to adapt, after all I was hardly perfect, was I? Although I had strong feelings for Caroline, and she’d risked her life for me, something told me that my love for Caroline was never going to match the emotions I felt for Lucy. And right then I couldn’t imagine feeling this way about any other woman in the world. Ever.

  I thought again of what Roger Lamelle had said in the car, that Lucy had been partly responsible for poor little Aiden’s death, that he had merely aided and abetted the murder. Could it be true? It was dark, I was worn out from the long drive and the stress of all that had happened. But no, I realised, No, it couldn’t be true.

  We’d arrived and she woke up and stretched in the car, as I walked round and opened the door. We were outside Mad about the Book, and I just had to carry her case upstairs.

  I realised that I was never ever going to be able to ask her the question that was in my mind. If she once again believed that I doubted her integrity, that in one mistaken moment she might have accidently killed Aiden, our affair was doomed. Yet could I really go on loving her, not knowing the truth?

  In her flat, as she bustled around, switching on the kettle and checking her post, I felt a deep sadness, remembering the first time I’d come here, the beginning of my love affair. Since that time, both of us had changed. Maybe, I thought with a fresh surge of optimism, we could go back to the way we were when I had no idea she was Megan Foster? How I longed for that innocent period, before I knew what I knew now.

  I was in the tiny living room, channel-hopping to see what was on television, and Lucy was in the kitchen, making us something to eat. Suddenly all the lights went out.

  “Jack?” she called out. “Jack, what’s happened?”

  “Power cut or a blown fuse.”

  “Bugger! Just when we–”

  The single blood-curdling scream cut short her words.

  Chapter 20

  BLOODY ENDINGS

  Panicking, I dived for the kitchen door, tripping over the
pile of books on the floor in the darkness. When I’d struggled up and reached the kitchen, I saw that light from the outside window was spilling through, enough to illuminate the scene in front of me. As I drew closer I could see Lucy, with a man behind her, the razor sharp tip of one of her special woodwork chisels held against her throat. The man’s other hand, I could see, was barely a bandaged stump, with just one finger projecting from the white cloths.

  “Shall I kill her quickly or slowly?” Roger Lamelle asked me. “You choose.”

  Time stood still. All I could hear was the slowly dripping tap in the sink, and the heartbeat thudding in my ears as the unreality of the situation dawned on me. I heard another sound, more subtle than the dripping tap. A bubbling noise, a slow burble burble, and I realised that the soup that Lucy had put on the stove was boiling.

  “She followed me here, to Canterbury,” Roger said, the chisel pressed hard against Lucy throat. “What I told you in the car was true, Jack. Megan did partly murder little Aiden. I helped her, but she started it. I merely finished the job.”

  And all at once I knew that nothing in the world mattered but saving Lucy, holding her in my arms and telling her that I loved her and would stay with her all my life. I didn’t care about what she’d done in the past. That knowledge felt sure and it felt right.

  But if Lamelle had his way it was never going to happen.

  “Jack,” Lucy said quietly in the darkness. “Just leave now. Once he’s killed me, he’ll kill you, you know that’s what’s going to happen. If you get away now, you can survive.” Tears welled up in her eyes as she spoke. “Survive, Jack! Forget about me.”

  I stood there, wondering what I could do.

  “Do it for me, Jack!” She was crying now. “Remember me, remember that I loved you more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my life before.” She was sobbing so much she could hardly enunciate the words. “I love you Jack. I’m going to die, and all I care about is telling you how much I love you. How much I’ve always loved you... I’ll love you for as long as I live...”

  “How touching,” Roger said, the chisel’s tip etching its way into her neck, a tear of blood spilling down across the metal. “But Jack here was prepared to abandon you, did you know that Megan?”

  “Abandon me?”

  “Didn’t you know? He’s got a new girlfriend now. Caroline Lawrence. She stayed at his house last night. I was watching her car arrive.”

  “He’s lying.”

  “Come on, Jack. She might as well know the truth about you before she dies.”

  I was moving closer to them, the saucepan of boiling soup was to the left of me. I groped for the saucepan’s handle, lifted it in the air in the darkness.

  “Listen to me, Lucy. He’s lying. Caroline did stay at my flat but nothing happened.”

  There was no sound but Lucy’s soft whimper, then her sobs. The sobs grew louder. I wondered if he’d be able to see what I was planning to do. Then I heard Roger Lamelle begin to laugh.

  His laughing went on for what seemed like an eternity as I moved closer.

  But it ended.

  With a snarl of rage.

  I dropped the saucepan and leapt forward to see Lucy’s hand over Lamelle’s, blood squirting out underneath her fingers. A second later, she had ducked out of his grip, and I saw the flick knife I remembered she always carried in an ankle strap, sticking out of the back of his hand. He was still holding the chisel.

  Knocking him to the floor was easy. So was pulverising his face with my fists. When he’d stopped moving I sat back on my heels.

  “It’s okay, Lucy,” I said. “It’s over.”

  “Wait there, watch him, I’ll go to the mains and switch the lights back on.”

  When it was illuminated the scene in front of us was surreal. Blood was everywhere, so was the spilt soup, lending an even more macabre touch to the scene. Lamelle’s face appeared to be practically pulped, a mass of blood and broken tissue, his only hand twitching regularly, Lucy’s flick-knife still deeply embedded in the flesh, the chisel beside it. My knuckles were torn and hurt, searing agony shooting up through my hands and arms.

  I stood up, looked towards Lucy to check she was all right. She stumbled as she came across the room.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  I crossed into the other room for my mobile phone and dialled. On my return I was surprised to see Lucy occupying the position I’d just been in, straddled across Lamelle’s prone body. His shallow breathing was obvious, the chest moving slowly up and down.

  Lamelle began to moan. His hand twitched, he was beginning to stir. He opened his eyes. His moans gained momentum, morphing into a ghastly feral shriek that was getting louder and louder.

  “You don’t have to watch,” she muttered. “Go out of the room if you like.”

  I saw that in her hands was a long kitchen knife she’d obviously brought into the room. She held it in her two palms, gripping it tightly, blade pointed downwards.

  “What do you mean?” I asked her, not realising what she was saying. I’d just dialled 999.

  “Cut the call,” she said.

  “But we’ve got to–”

  “I SAID CUT THE CALL!”

  But it was too late.

  Emergency. Which service do you require caller?

  Weirdly, crazily, it was déjà vu. The operator’s disembodied voice took me back to the beginning of my adventure, when I’d just run down Caroline Lawrence, and had called the emergency services. When I’d been cold and scared and lonely, kneeling on a windswept road in the rain, thinking I’d just run over and killed a pedestrian...

  What service do you require? If you don’t reply an automatic scan will be launched to track your whereabouts...’

  I pressed the cut-off button.

  Lucy looked different somehow as she held the knife above her head, the point downwards, its dagger blade shimmering in the light.

  “Jack, this man has been responsible for thirteen deaths to my knowledge, what’s more he destroyed my life.”

  “So this is it,” I said, reasonably. “It’s over for him.”

  “Yes. So you do understand.”

  Before I realised what she was going to do, the knife came up in an arc above her head. I ran forward to stop her.

  But I was too late.

  She plunged the knife into his chest, to within an inch of the hilt.

  I stepped back in horror. To see her withdraw the sharp knife, then repeat the process again and again.

  Over and over again she plunged the knife into Lamelle’s chest, until what had been a shirtfront was nothing but a mass of oozing redness.

  Of course there was no point, for Roger Lamelle had died already. The cadaver was a pulp, a shell of mushy gore.

  I stood back, awed and shocked.

  Lucy staggered back and sat on the floor. She didn’t say anything, just turned towards me.

  Which was when I saw the blood on her jeans. Just at the waist. Below where the dagger-like chisel had been thrust into her abdomen, surely Roger Lamelle’s final instinctive act, committed as she’d leaned across his body.

  Lucy followed my horrified gaze, unaware until now of what had happened to her. Before I could stop her she’d pulled out the chisel, creating a spurt of blood, pulsing fast, spreading everywhere, pooling at the floor in front of her. Lucy’s hands flew across the wound trying to stem the flow.

  “Jack,” she said as I rushed across to her and covered her blood-soaked fingers with my own, desperately trying to close the wound. “I meant what I said. I will always love you... You’re everything I’ve ever...” The words ended, as her eyes grew wide with fear as blood bubbled out of her lips. She fell forwards into my arms.

  * * * *

  Lamelle deserved his end, of course he did. But the sheet depraved savagery of Lucy’s final attack was something I would never be able to forget. But could I really blame her? I’m ashamed to say that a part of me had enjoyed watching h
im die.

  When the police and ambulance arrived, I lied. Of course I lied.

  Afterwards, while I waited in the hospital corridor and the doctor came outside with a grim face to tell me the worst, I’d already guessed that Lucy’s wound would have proved too much. The doctor was going on about internal injuries, and the impossibility of survival...

  * * * *

  They let me sit with her, and alone with Lucy’s body in the side ward, I held her hand and wept for all the days and nights ahead that I would never share with her.

  Back at Herring Row police station, in the interview room, my lawyer, David, was sitting beside me as DCI Fulford, my old enemy, began the questions.

  “So, Dr Lockwood, let’s get this straight,” Fulford said, adjusting his heavy black-framed glasses, “Roger Lamelle was already in Ms Green’s flat, waiting for her when you went in?”

  “He must have been.”

  “He held her with that specially sharp chisel’s tip at her throat. What did ye do?”

  “Lucy stabbed him in the hand–”

  “With the illegally held flick-knife she kept strapped to her ankle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did she carry a weapon like that?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I overpowered him, knocked him to the floor. Punched him in the face.”

  “You smashed his jaw, broke his nose, shattered his cheekbone. Was that degree of violence really necessary?”

  I stared him out. Fulford cleared his throat.

  “So what happened after that?” he continued.

  “There was a struggle, during which I managed to get a knife and I stabbed him with it.”

  “You stabbed him with it?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  I’d thought to grip the knife’s handle before the police came, so that it would have my fingerprints on it.

  “Did you have to stab him so many times? For Christ's sake man, you can only die once!”