The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler (13 page)

By the time I was past Queens Park and into Brondesbury the feeling was no longer so vague, but had acquired some sensory manifestations. I thought I heard footsteps which were almost in step with mine, but they stopped a beat or two after me when I paused to listen to them. If I turned to look behind me there always seemed to be part of the street where the shadows seemed unnaturally thick. Imagination? It is possible, but if these things were its product, then a part of me was observing them with extraordinary coolness and rationality. I was not afraid, you see, only intensely annoyed that my walk had not done its usual healing trick.

When I finally reached my flat, I was so worn out that I simply undressed and got into bed before immediately falling into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

In the course of the next week I did some more filming. I also became increasingly aware of being followed, not only at night, but during the day too. I was happily released from the idea that it was my own aberrant brain playing tricks on me when I actually saw my stalker, a man wearing an overcoat. He was too quick for me to see him for long, but I did get quite a good look on two occasions when I happened to glance out of the window of my flat. It was dark and I saw only his shape, but it was more than a shadow. He was standing under a plane tree talking into a mobile phone. In my experience imaginary beings do not carry mobile phones.

On my last day of filming for
Criminal Records
I was at the BBC. They wanted some shots of MacIver at a planning meeting and walking on and off the set of a discussion programme. By this time my performance as MacIver had become alarmingly accurate, and I had the pleasure of giving Germaine Greer a nasty shock. She and MacIver had recently crossed swords over Sylvia Plath.

I was surprised to see that Detective Inspector Bentley had turned up for my final outing. I was glad to see him, because I needed to satisfy myself that it was not the police who were following me for some mysterious reason. Bentley seemed genuinely surprised to hear what I told him. He said vaguely that he would look into it, but it was obvious he didn’t believe me. He even asked me directly if I was quite sure it wasn’t my imagination.

When the programme came out a week later it was highly praised, and my performance was commended. My agent became excited by the prospect of offers pouring in, but I pointed out to her that there was a limited market for impersonators of dead media personalities. My stalker was becoming increasingly assiduous, and occasionally I had the impression that there was more than one of them. Once I rang up Bentley, but he was dismissive, almost rude.

Then one morning the bell of my flat rang. It was the police. They wanted to take me in for questioning about the murder of Clive MacIver.

They took me to the Belgravia police station where the murder room for MacIver had been set up and I was made to wait for something like four hours. At last I was shown into an interview room. There was Bentley and a sergeant. The sergeant seemed familiar to me: had he been one of my stalkers?

Bentley sat down opposite me and introduced his assistant as Detective Sergeant Weyman. They asked if I wanted a solicitor present, but I declined the offer, so there were the usual formalities connected with switching on the tape machines, then the interrogation began.

‘Mr Soames, why did you never tell us you had recently met MacIver?’

‘Have I?’

‘While you have been waiting here at the station we had your flat searched. We found this on your shelves. It’s inscribed.’ Bentley threw down a book onto the table. It was a copy of MacIver’s last work:
Goya’s Dream: The Origins of Contemporary Culture
, based on his television series of that name
.
The cover featured a reproduction of Goya’s etching:
The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters.

I was not rattled. I said: ‘I hardly call a few seconds in a crowded book shop a meeting. I happened to be in Waterstones when he was signing, that’s all.’

‘More than a few seconds. Look at the inscription: “For Alec, ‘. . . ere Babylon was dust . . .’ Astonished good wishes, Clive MacIver.” “. . . ere Babylon was dust . . .” What does that mean?’

‘Some sort of quotation. I can’t remember the significance.’

‘Rather incurious of you, Mr Soames. Well, Sergeant Weyman tracked it down for me. The internet’s a marvellous source of information. Apparently it’s from Percy Shelley’s poem
Prometheus Unbound:

“. . . ere Babylon was dust,

The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,

Met his own image walking in the garden.

That apparition sole of men he saw.”

‘MacIver had seen his double in other words, and was remarking on it in a rather cryptic way in his inscription.’

‘Ah.’

‘A little more than just “Ah”, I think, don’t you? Did you talk at all with Mr MacIver?’

‘No. I told you. It was a brief encounter in a book shop. There were crowds waiting for his signature. There wasn’t time.’

‘He didn’t ask you to have a drink with him or anything at his flat?’

‘No. Why should he? What are you getting at?’

‘Mr Soames, I believe you murdered MacIver.’

I was half expecting something like this after all the bluster. As a result, I didn’t explode with indignation or do anything that innocent people are supposed to do. I remained terribly calm; I almost frightened myself with my own calmness. The only physical reaction to the shock was that the extremities of my fingers went cold.

‘How d’you make that out?’ I asked. ‘In the first place I was in the theatre on the night in question. Hundreds of people saw me.’

‘I enquired about your role in
The Clandestine Marriage.
Not a very big one, was it?’

‘Traverse the lawyer. It’s an important part. And I was understudying Melvil.’

‘The performance began at 7:45, you’re on stage at around 8:30 and off at 8:40. Then you go on again at about 9:50 and the curtain comes down at about 10:10.’

‘What are you suggesting? That I went all the way to Ebury Street, killed MacIver and came back between 8:40 and 9:50?’

‘No.’

‘Then how? And why?’

‘I’m not concerned with the motive at the moment; but I do know how you did it.’

‘I didn’t. And anyway it’s impossible,’ I said, but Bentley was quite sincerely convinced I had done it. He and his sergeant did a lot of ‘Why don’t you make it easy on yourself and confess now?’ stuff, to which I responded with the contempt it deserved. I pointed out to them that I had an unshakeable alibi for the time between 9.40 when MacIver phoned the police and 9.53 which was when the police finally broke into MacIver’s flat.

‘Only if he was killed then, which he almost certainly wasn’t.’

‘He can’t have been killed
before
he rang the police.’

‘
If
it was MacIver who rang the police.’

‘Even if someone faked his voice—and I suppose you think it was me—he can’t have got back to his flat much before 9.40 if he left Harpo’s at 9.10.’

‘If he ever did go to Harpo’s.’

I told Bentley that he wasn’t making any sense at all. He leaned back in his chair and contemplated me. It was not a look of hostility; in fact I don’t think I’m flattering myself if I say that he was looking at me with admiration. Misplaced, of course.

‘I told you that I thought that all the little inconsistencies and oddities of this case had a single solution. The trick was to make some sort of leap of the imagination and find it. I began to suspect you very soon after we had first met. You were so eager to oblige. There is a type of psychopathic criminal who loves to help the police with their investigations, especially investigations of their own crimes. It somehow confirms their cleverness. At that stage the suspicion was only a vague uneasiness, but one learns to pay attention to these intuitions. Then there was your performance at Harpo’s, again almost too good to be true, even down to imitating MacIver’s little mannerism of tapping his glass with his fingernail. Of course, it could all have been an uncanny coincidence. It occurred to me then that you might have known more about MacIver than you were letting on, and that out of some actor’s bravado or vanity you were incorporating that knowledge into your performance. This led me on to the even more radical possibility that the mannerism was not, after all MacIver’s, but yours.’

I could do nothing but shake my head in bewilderment. He went on: ‘The barman recognised that little mannerism as MacIver’s because he had seen MacIver do it in the bar on the night he was murdered. But what if that
wasn’t
MacIver in Harpo’s bar. Mightn’t it have been you?’

‘Impossible. I was at the theatre all night.’

‘Harpo’s is in Dean Street, about five minutes very brisk walk from Wyndhams. You came off stage at 8.40 which gives you a good twenty-five minutes to change out of your costume and into MacIver, slip past the stage doorman—elderly and not very attentive, as I discovered—and go to the club. You had stolen MacIver’s wallet when you killed him, so you had his membership card, not that you needed it. You have one drink, establish your presence there and leave. Plenty of time to change back and make your final appearance on stage in the last act at 9.50.’

‘You’re forgetting the phone call from MacIver’s flat at 9.40.’

‘It might not have been from his flat. It was from his mobile which could have been anywhere. I suspect that you took the mobile to some remote corner of the theatre’s backstage area and made the call using your excellent impersonation of his voice. Then after the theatre you went to Ebury Street and threw the mobile under a car expecting that it would probably be found in the morning after the car had driven away. Anyway, we’re liaising with the phone company now: they may be able to pinpoint the specific location where the call was made. We should have the results back very soon’

I had to concede that his conjectures appeared possible but hardly likely. Perhaps the phone company would come up with something. But it was intolerable to be accused in this way, so I felt it my duty to find some flaw in his argument. I pointed out that he was forgetting that MacIver had been heard and seen leaving his flat at 7.05.

‘That was you again. The fact that the man seen leaving the flat did so rather noisily suggested that he might have been drawing attention to his departure. As soon as I realised it was you all the little problems seemed to resolve themselves. The fact that it was a hot night and yet MacIver was found dead on a warm electric blanket in an overheated room always suggested that someone was trying to confuse us about the time of death which must actually have occurred at about seven. The fact that the man seen leaving was wearing a fawn overcoat on a sultry night was also suggestive. That overcoat was a characteristic garment of his and would provide an effective yet simple disguise for you. Once it was off, you could become yourself. You wore it again at Harpo’s and then you got rid of it. Everything is explained, you see from the missing overcoat to the apparent missing two hours of MacIver’s life between seven and nine.’

‘It’s a theory,’ I said. ‘That’s all it is, and there’s no way you can prove it.’

‘Until we hear back from the phone company, that is,’ he replied carefully.

‘If they can give you the information you require. Which I doubt.’

After this there was a long pause and then Bentley said: ‘I’m aware of that. I just wanted to tell you that I know
how
. But I’d also very much like to know
why
.’

So would I, as it happens.

**

He was standing in my way. That’s the clearest explanation I can give, though I know it’s hopelessly inadequate. Like Magus Zoroaster who met his own image in the garden, he blocked my path. I am an actor, a good one. I need success. I didn’t realise it at first when I began to see him on television. It irritated me, that was all. There was this impostor with my face, mouthing pseudo-intellectual rubbish, favouring a reluctant public with his ingenious, inane opinions. I would watch him fascinated, regardless of whether his wretched programmes were interesting or not.

Then I noticed something. I leave you to draw your own conclusions. Whoever ‘you’ are, because I don’t want anyone to read this, naturally. I have to pretend that there is a ‘you’ to share my thoughts.

Where was I? Yes. Those television programmes with MacIver in them. I began to realise that after I had been watching them, I felt mentally and physically drained. I was exhausted; I couldn’t think straight. Sometimes the feeling lasted into the next day and I could barely get up in the morning. I tried to stop myself from watching him, but it was hard. And whenever I saw him on television it was as if he was sucking out my brain cells through the screen. At last I understood. He owed his success to the fact that he had found some way of drawing on my energies, because I was his double. Somehow he had found out about me and now he was living off two bodies, two brains, his and mine. No wonder he was a success. No wonder my career was on the slide. I had to confront him and tell him that I knew what he was doing and demand that he give me my life back. The problem—I was fully aware of this—was that he could just laugh in my face, tell me I was mad. Because that’s what it must seem like to the outside world, just a mad delusion, though I happen to know it’s true. So, reluctantly—

That quotation from Shelley which the pretentious git wrote in my book; remember what it went on to say? ‘Magus Zoroaster, my
dead
child . . .’ (My italics.)

He was dead. Why?
Because he met his own image, and because there was only life enough for one.
The Doppelgänger legend states that if you meet yourself, you will die soon. MacIver was slowly killing me, so it was kill or be killed. Self defence really; though I doubt that would stand up in court as an excuse. I’m not stupid enough to think that.

I followed him around a bit, got to know his habits. I laid my plans slowly, though I knew I had to do it during the run of the play. Small part, you see, not enough energy for a big one. Then, I only had to meet him. How? Well, at last this force, this energy which had been running against me for so long started to favour me. MacIver had just brought out a book and, as I was passing Waterstones in Piccadilly, I saw a poster announcing that he would be signing copies there the following week. So I went at the appointed time, bought a copy of his book and joined the queue in front of his desk to have it signed.