Doppelganger (9 page)

“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.

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
Molloy’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.

“One thing, Jack,” he paused and
I heard him drawing a hesitant breath. “I don’t rightly know how to say it. The
victim hasn’t been identified yet.”

“Yes?”

“There’s a rumour that she worked
at the hospital. She was found in the hospital grounds. Sorry mate, but her
description matches that of Lucy.”

*
* * *

The Hollamby hospital is a brand
new building on the west side of town. I’d arranged to meet Stuart in the
visitors’ car park. I screeched to a halt beside a silver Bentley, bleary eyed
and exhausted with the strain and the fear.

Immediately after Stuart’s call
I’d tried Lucy’s mobile but there was no reply, just the messaging service. I
sent several texts, none of which were replied to.

Was this the end? Had her own
premonition come true, that she was going to be killed before her thirty-eighth
birthday?

Stu had prepared me for the
worst, and the signs were not good. Lucy had said she was coming back to
Canterbury last night, and that she was planning to call in at the hospital to
see a friend. If she was okay, why on earth wasn’t she answering her phone?

I spotted Stu talking into his
mobile near to the area that was cordoned off by police tape, to the side of
one of the large modern glass-and-concrete buildings. Stu had shaved for a
change, and was wearing a turtleneck red pullover and his habitual blue jeans.
His hair looked less wild than usual. Of course the victim’s body had been
removed, and there was nothing much to see.