Doppelganger

by Geoffrey West

  One evening I’d gone for a drink with Stuart, and had had too many beers. I was in that fuzzy stage, when your eyes are half closing and everything takes on a rosy glow, and your worries are lurking, locked away into that spare compartment at the back of your head. The Stag’s Head was a twenty-minute walk from my house, and the stroll wasn’t doing a very good job of sobering me up. Stuart had met a girl the previous week, and he’d spent the evening going on about how marvellous she was, how she was everything he’d been searching for in a woman, telling me all about how much the two of them had in common. Then he shut up realising he was being tactless. In fact what he said was, “Am I being a tactless bastard?” and I’d replied “Yes.”

  So I was wandering home in the dark. I felt muddle-headedly drunk, the lights of the High Street were in the distance, and the spire of Canterbury Cathedral rose above the rooftops as I staggered along the road. I felt more miserable and alone than I could ever remember. Right then and there I almost cried, alone in the darkness, wondering if I was destined to suffer like this for the rest of my life. I thought of Lucy, and I actually did cry for quite a long time, remembering her face and her smile and the feeling of my heart beating faster when I set eyes on her. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. It’s a good cliché, sounds poetic, but I seriously wonder if it’s true. You fall in love. You suffer. You push your way through a wall of suffering, then you find there’s nothing on the other side but another great big wall of pain.

  A garrulous group of university students passed by, shouting and laughing, not even noticing me, standing alone as I was, feeling sorry for myself. I pulled myself together and concentrated on the cup of hot chocolate I was planning to make when I got home. Not for the first time I wondered whether I should get a dog. I love dogs, and I love cats, I even love birds. But I didn’t want the worry and the commitment of going for walks, of having to make sure my animal is fed, of worrying when it’s ill. However, the thought of a lovely soft furry creature cuddling up to me, and letting me cry into his fur was an appealing one right now. But by the morning the idea would wither and die, just like so many of my grand, impractical, plans.

  A car drew up beside me and stopped. The door slammed, and the driver walked around and stood beside me. I recognised the anaemic features of Millicent Veitch, the BIA who’d worked so closely with Roger Lamelle. If anything she looked thinner than ever, her face seemed drawn and haggard, with dark shadows under her eyes.

  “I’ve screwed up on such a grand scale, my career as a BIA is over,” she said quietly. “My God, when you think I worked so closely with Roger. That I reported back to him everything that we’d found out about the murders. That’s why he was always one step ahead of us, and got away with it for so long.” Her voice was getting more and more strangled as she continued. “God help me Jack, when I think, some of those women might still be alive if I hadn’t been so smug and self satisfied. I was responsible–”

  “–No you weren’t.” I put my arm around her. “Of course you weren’t responsible, Millie. How could you have possibly known it was him? No one else suspected. In your position, I would never have known either. Nobody blames you, least of all me.”

  “It’s not just that. It’s that way I’ve always scored points against you, trying to prove myself, I suppose. So eager to prove that a woman working with the police can be as good as any man.”

  I looked at her in the darkness, the dark curtain of hair, the spectacles and the scowl, and I thought I saw her brush a tear from her eyes.

  “I know they all hate me, Jack. I know you hate me too.” She took out her handkerchief and blew her nose, her voice breaking with emotion. “They hate me because I don’t take tea breaks, and I don’t join in with their jokes, and they think I suck up to Fulford. I don’t mean to be stand-offish, or unfriendly and I never crawl to anyone in command. It’s just I don’t know what to say, how to relate to all that macho bravado, I’ve never understood the canteen culture humour. A woman PC once told me how the men on her watch victimised her, planted pornographic magazines in her desk, spread the word that she was a lesbian, did anything on earth they could think of to make her life a misery. She had a nervous breakdown, she had to leave the Force. I vowed that was never going to happen to me, so I tried to keep my distance, so they’d respect me. Well, it didn’t work, did it? Everyone's got their wish now. Millie V, the bitch who has to be a closet dyke, has finally fallen flat on her face for the last time. I’m a pathetic excuse. Just a bloody stupid joke.”

  “I tell you, Millie, no one blames you. No one’s laughing at you.”

  “Shall I tell you something, Jack? I always made a point of putting you down because, secretly, I was jealous of you. I watched you when we were working together on that case. The guys liked you. They didn’t like me. I suppose I’m just too competitive, too eager to get everything right. I try too hard and I fuck everything up.”

  “Forget it. There’ll be other cases.”

  “But I just wanted to say, I’ll never put you down again Jack. I think I wanted you to take notice of me, and you never did, so I just tried to have a go at you because the way you always ignored me made me so angry. But I was wrong, and I’ll never do it again.”

  “Are you okay, Millie?”

  “No, Jack, I’m not okay. I feel like hell. Do you know what I’d really like to do?”

  “What?”

  “Go to a pub and have a few drinks. Get completely pissed and forget about everything.”

  “That’s a great idea.”

  “But I don’t want to do it on my own.”

  “I’ve had a few drinks myself already, Millie. I was just on my way home.”

  “Okay, I can take a hint–”

  “But I don’t really want to go home. I’d really like to have a few more drinks too. To get totally rat-faced.”

  “Pissed as a fart?”

  “As a newt.”

  “What?”

  “As a newt. As pissed as a newt is the proper term.”

  “And you really want to get pissed as a newt with me?” she said in surprise.

  “Yes, of course with you.” I smiled for the first time. “Let’s try and blank out all the crap that’s happened and start over.”

  “I’ll park in the 24-hour car park over the road, and I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes, okay?” She smiled, and, for the first time I realised that she wasn’t bad looking. When her guard was down her eyes were kind, her smile was warm.

  “Sure. I’ll lean against the wall.”

  As she passed to go back to her car, she brushed her lips across mine.

  “I’ve always liked you Jack. Always.”

  Millie V, whom I’d never even liked until five minutes ago, when she confessed that she was a failure, and her sheer honesty had made her seem lost and vulnerable.

  Was it going to be a mistake, getting blind drunk with Millie V, a women who, just a few days ago, had been my sworn enemy?

  Probably.

  But why buck the trend? I’d made plenty of mistakes in my life before and I’d probably make plenty more.

  And it was better than facing another night of being lonely.

  Because, do you know something? In this life there’s nothing worse than being lonely.

  ###

  Geoffrey David West is a freelance journalist/author living in Surrey, near London, in England, whose great grandfather was a Superintendent of police in Lincolnshire. Perhaps his enthusiasm for crime detection was inherited.

  He was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger award in 2004, for a crime novel Deadly Contact, has published six nonfiction books for the Crowood Press on craft/building related subjects and written numerous articles for magazines and newspapers, including The Sunday Times, The Times and The Daily Mirror.

  Learn more at http://www.geoffreydavidwest.com or my blog at geoffreywestdotcom.wordpress.com or follow me on Twitter (@GeoffreyDWest)

  The JACK LOCKWOOD DIARI
ES is a collection of short stories about Jack’s life, a new story every week or so, find it at: jacklockwood.wordpress.com

  If you have enjoyed reading this book, please take a look at the beginning of the third Jack Lockwood thriller, Sheer Fear, available soon:

  Chapter 1

  AT A LOOSE END

  When vertigo hits you everything starts to spin.

  It had never happened to me before. But then I’d never been balanced on top of the rain-wet metalwork of a huge tower crane before either. Things seemed to swirl around, my vision was blurring and sounds whacked me like wet sponges, soft, muffled and weird. Everything seemed unreal, surreal, unearthly.

  Nobody tells you that when you’re standing 400 feet above ground on a structure of metal struts the bars under your feet buck and dive with the wind, as if you’re on board ship on a choppy sea. I’d just climbed up eight long ladders within the quivering metal structure, and my leg muscles were screaming. When I was halfway to heaven the endless silver struts gave way at last to the sea of steel directly below the door to the operator’s cab. Coloured lettering and rust were tantalisingly close above my head.

  And Bobby Keys, the man who was a few yards away from me, was going to die in minutes. Right now, he was holding his tiny daughter by the arms, dangling her in front of him over the drop.

  “KEEP AWAY!” he yelled at me. “OR I’LL DROP HER NOW. I’M WARNING YOU!”

  Bobby’s eyes were red-raw form the hysterical weeping I’d just witnessed. I registered the kind of snapshot details you’d get in your first day in hell: beads of rainwater on his pink bloody forehead, a single unshaven whisker on a dirty throat. A lonely unfastened shoelace caught up in the breeze.

  Drizzle hacked my face. The spinning sensation diminished. Gradually I could see and hear properly, aware manly of a thumping heartbeat in my ears. Legs still trembling I somehow managed to ease my way out along the jib, the horizontal arm that was shaped into a knee level cage, towards where Bobby was balanced halfway along the finger in the sky. He was standing, legs apart, outlined against the gunmetal grey clouds, now holding the trembling three-year-old child against his chest. Directly below him were the steel lines fixed to the giant jib-line hook on a pulley. It was attached to the straining wires around a rectangle of pure white concrete that was bigger than a car. I’d seen it weaving mesmerizingly close to my head above the streets of Canterbury as I was climbing up. I thought about Jessica, and wondered if I’d ever see her again. If I’d ever be able to tell her how I felt about her.

  The child was whimpering helplessly. I’d hoped her father might see reason if we could only talk, but it wasn’t to be. He faced me, hysterical eyes alive with a burning desperation. His grip on the child’s forearms slackened as his hands began to tremble uncontrollably.

  “Can’t you just give her to me?” I yelled.

  I was a few feet away from him now. I held out my right hand: a peace offering. The other was gripping the steel pole beside me. Random smells hit me: my own sweat. Diesel fumes. The nasty sweet-sour tang of hard hot metal.

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Bobby’s voice was shrill, plaintive, a lonely shrike into the drizzle and wind. “All of you. For me to give up, just hand her over and come down quietly.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  A long way down I could see a crowd had already formed, people as tiny as dolls, their faces craned upwards, the faint honking noise of someone yelling on a tannoy, muffled irrelevant words blown away on the breeze. From up here the grand spires of Canterbury’s St Augustine’s cathedral looked almost close enough to touch. The rest of the city was a fine colourful tablecloth spread out far below us: the river, the High street, the shopping centre, the ancient stone walls, cars, people, roads. All of the ordinary things that I longed to be a part of right now.

  My legs were beginning to tremble even more, agonised muscles locking down. Things were once again beginning to spin.

  I had to move closer to Bobby, the erstwhile jokey builder catch-hand, the cheeky chappie who always had a smile for everyone. I had to abandon the security of my beloved metal handhold to get within reach of him. The terror in the child’s eyes was enough to keep me moving. Inch by inch, shuffling along the slippery rain-soaked steel.

  I knew, of course, that Bobby was no newcomer to heights. He loved heights. He was a professional scaffolder, and also a crane operator on the rare occasions when he was in work. He enjoyed BASE jumping (jumping from high altitudes with a parachute), and I heard he’d also been a keen mountaineer. And last summer he’d spent three days strapped to a platform beside a bridge over the M20 motorway with a placard defending father’s rights for their children and their struggles against the wiles of spiteful ex wives.

  “Is this just another publicity stunt?” I shouted.

  “Fuck’s sake Jack, ain’t it obvious? I’m finished! This is the end!”

  The wind was whipping up, the gust smacking a blast of rain into my eyes. The slippery metal beneath my feet was shivering again. Water ran down my face. I tried to keep my voice steady.

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Got no alternative. Not now.”

  “Don’t you want to see her grow up?” I yelled.

  “Them bastards are gonna to convict me. I’ll be put away and I’ll never see her again.”

  “Of course you’ll see her.”

  “No one believes me. As it is …”

  The wind picked up again, blowing away the words.

  “There’s a way out of this—”

  “—Just leave me alone Jack! Why are your torturing me? I just wanna get this over with.” I saw his grip loosen slightly on the child’s wrists.

  “Stop! I believe you!”

  “Janet phoned you, didn’t she Jack? Told you I was threatening her and she was scared. That’s why you’re after me isn’t it?”

  “She said you were determined to get Leah.”

  “And I did. Janet started screaming at me, fighting me. I hit her. I had to get Leah away from her. She hit her head. There was so much blood … ”

  “It's okay, it’s okay, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you come down now and Leah’s safe.”

  I was lying. It wasn’t okay.

  On entering Bobby’s flat I’d seen Janet lying on the carpet, her head covered in blood, as Bobby knocked me aside and pushed past me through the door to his car. I’d leapt into my own car and chased after him and phoned the ambulance from my car. For all I knew, Janet was already dead.

  “Come on Bobby. Come down now and let’s get it sorted.”

  “Too much has gone on. It’s too late. I think I killed Janet. Didn’t mean to, but I had to get Leah away from her. And her head hit the wall. The way she fell down was terrible, man.”

  “It’s not as bad as it looked.”

  “Ain’t you been listening?”

  “Bobby, I swear, I don’t believe you killed those other women.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I swear it!”

  I was another inch closer.

  He was shaking his head. “Course you swear. You’d swear anything now, wouldn’t you?” He was yelling desperately, sobbing, tears running down his nose. “Police psychologists, they just do what the coppers tell ’em to do.”

  “No.” I fought for breath, voice trembling with fear. Things were spinning again now. The sky was falling down to meet me, the earth rising up.

  “Get away from me Jack. Leave me alone.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t do that. I want to help you.”

  “Help me? And why would you wanna do that?”

  Closer and closer. Soon.

  Very soon.

  “Bobby, believe me! You’re not even a suspect anymore! Come down now and you’ll be a free man.”

  My lies were tumbling thick and fast. Even I believed them.

  “You really believe I’m innocent of all the other stuff?”

  “Yes.”
r />   More lies. Of course he was guilty.

  “But nobody agrees with you, right?”

  “I just said you’re not a suspect anymore.”

  “Nice try Jack. I almost believed you.”

  He stared at me for a long time, the little girl still dangling there whimpering, eyes closed in terror now, fierce little face screwed up, lifted higher now by the strong arms clasped across her chest, holding her tight against him. Then Bobby sniffed. “No mate. Ain’t gonna happen. The other coppers treat you like a joke, no one’s going to believe a word you say.”

  He stared at me, the tears had stopped, he was looking into my eyes. “’Sides, there’s so much you don’t know – things that nobody knows that no one’s gonna believe.”

  “What? Tell me!”