Doppelganger (5 page)

A drenching in cold water under
the shower made my head feel clearer, my senses sharper.

I tried to knock the text of
Hero
or Villain?
into shape, but found it hard to concentrate. At the hospital
I’d talked to the police about what had happened but, as I’d suspected, they
admitted they were powerless to find the perpetrators. It was an awful feeling,
knowing that somewhere they were out there, planning their next attack. And
next time they were likely to do me some real damage.

But most of all, in spite of everything
that was going on, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lucy Green. Seeing her face,
hearing her voice. So much so that I rang the number she’d left with me, but
there was no reply.

How do you know that weird
indescribable moment when you fall in love? Is it the first moment you look at
the person’s face? Or is it when you feel that connection that lifts you
outside reality, as if you’re locked out of the world, stepping into something
else? Looking back on it I’ve often wondered exactly when it was that I fell in
love with Lucy, but I think that was it, when I first saw her, and I already
knew her face, as if I’d always known her.

I didn’t realise it at the time,
but I was on the edge of a precipice, and the ground beneath my feet was
crumbling away.

If I’d known what was going to
happen... No, it’s better not to go there.

That night I had my dreaded dream
again, this time more vivid than ever before. The silhouette of a face above
me, drowning out the light. The pressure on my neck. The burgeoning darkness.

I woke up to the sound of a text
arriving on my mobile. It was short and to the point.

 
No more warnings
. Next
time you die.

*
* * *

“Think about it.”

“It’s obscene.”

“It’s business, Jack. You know it
makes sense.”

Ann Yates’s voice was as cultured
and persuasive as ever. She looked good, as she always did: her neat blonde
hair touched the collar of a stylish black suit that probably had a designer
tag on the label. Yes, I remembered, it did, Donna Karan, if it was the same
one I’d seen her wearing only a month ago, when she’d taken all her clothes off
in the tiny bathroom adjoining her office, and I’d done the same.

Ann was my editor at Truecrime
Publications Ltd, the outfit who’d published my recent books. It was Monday, a
week after my car accident, that I was sitting in her first-floor office in
Marylebone, north London. Truecrime had part of the first floor in a tacky
1930s building, whose other occupants were OK Insurance, Abbey Legal and
Associated Developments Ltd and Atlas Theatrical Agents.

Six weeks ago I’d arrived at
Ann’s office early in the afternoon, to find her fuming with anger. She’d had a
few drinks over lunch and had started telling me about her husband’s latest
behaviour, how they were on the point of divorce. She’d offered me a drink, I
had sympathised, and somehow one drink led to another and we talked and talked.
I’m divorced myself, hadn’t had a girlfriend for a while, and had always found
Ann attractive, and things somehow, amazingly, turned a corner, I really don’t
know how or why. So when she’d locked the outer office door, and taken my hand
and led me through to her private bathroom, the excitement of the moment took
over. She had kissed me, then removed her clothes, frantically tugging at zips
and fasteners, helping me to do the same. There was something incredibly
exciting about making love in such a cramped area, where the washbasin and
toilet fought for space.

But as soon as it was over I
realised it was a mistake. I liked Ann, thought of her as a good friend, but I
certainly I didn’t want to start a relationship with her, indeed nothing was
further from my mind. And as we hurriedly dressed in that cramped bathroom, and
Ann started talking frantically about missed phone calls and things she had to
do, it was clear that she felt the same way. She told me that she was weak and
emotional and had just suddenly felt like doing something mad, saying for the
umpteenth time that it was ‘just one of those crazy things’, and how ridiculous
it was to do something like that in the office in the middle of the afternoon,
when anyone might have come banging on the door, wondering why it was locked.
But our afternoon of excitement was firmly locked into the past, and neither of
us had referred to it again, thankfully resuming our friendship as if nothing
had happened. I’d wondered about mentioning it to her a few times, but decided
that the incident was best forgotten – put down to one afternoon’s drunken
madness, that she was as keen as I was to pretend had never happened.

Right now Ann’s dark timber desk
looked like something rescued from a 1950s schoolmaster’s study, and the faded
grim wallpaper, brown carpet and miserable view of the perpetual traffic jam
outside clashed with her laid-back sophisticated personality adorned with
twenty-first century accoutrements: the iPhone that was never far from her long
graceful fingers, and the slim Cartier timepiece on her wrist. It was late
afternoon and daylight had practically disappeared. Ann never switched the
lights on until she absolutely had to, said she preferred an autumn afternoon’s
semi darkness, apparently it helped her to think. The cheerless undertaker-like
environment matched my sombre mood. She’d poured us both a brandy, and my
balloon glass sparkled with the reflected glare of the headlights of a passing
vehicle outside.

“What do we usually do?” Ann went
on, tapping a long silver fingernail on the leather top of her desk. I noticed
the nail’s end was split, something strange, an unexpected chink in her
immaculate corporate armour. “We wait until a serial killer is caught and
punished, then wade in and take it all to pieces, blow by blow, extrapolate a
book out of turgid facts, a welter of lurid details and a few words from
publicity hungry, out-of-date witnesses. When the news is stale. The tabloids
don’t do it, they steam in at the first opportunity. Nor did they ever – look
at the penny dreadfuls’ coverage of Jack the Ripper in the 1880s. If they’d
waited until he’d been caught they’d have been stuffed, wouldn’t they?”

“But to start writing a book
about the Bible Killer while he’s still active. It just seems immoral.”

“Why? 21st-century publishing is
more about immediacy than ever before. We’re getting more like tabloid
newspapers every day, and why not? Pretty soon I can see us getting a book out
within a fortnight. Besides, you’re hardly going to shout about what you’re
doing from the rooftops, in fact you’ll need to keep the whole thing secret. It
takes time to write it, then time for our bits and bobs, negotiating bulk sales
to the supermarkets, the copy editing, the design, the first print-run. With
any luck once you’ve pumped out 80,000 words he might easily be behind bars,
and we’ll have stolen a march on the competition. If he’s not, we publish
anyway, promising a sequel once he’s caught. Two for the price of one. This way
we capitalise on all the publicity while it’s fresh. We skirt round the legals
at the end, just like always. Plenty of facts will be
sub judice
of
course, but not the most juicy bits.”

Ann stared at me, flicking
irritated fingers across her brow.

“So come on Jack, what do you say?
You’re not going to chuck up the chance of a big earner like this, surely?”

“What if the police object to me
making enquiries when public sentiment is already so high?”

“And upsetting the police is
something new for you, is it Jack?” She looked at me steadily for a few
moments. “Come on, tell me. What’s the real reason?”

“Suppose I’m extra sensitive to
criticism these days. It struck me just how much my living depends on other
people’s suffering.”

“For heaven’s sake! Jack, how
many times do I have to tell you? You report the news, you don’t make it. And
you do it damned well. You’re one of our top sellers. Shall I tell you why the
public like your books? Because they’re not cut-and-dried assemblies of the
facts like most true-crime writer hacks. You go beyond the gruesome realities
and bring the people alive. When you do interviews you’re warm and likeable –
people open up to you because they like you, and they like you because you like
them. And it’s the human warmth you feel for people that brings your books to
life. To contrast that, you’ve got an uncanny knack of portraying the monsters
without frills. But it’s the sympathy, the empathy you feel for the victims is
what comes across in your books.”

“Thanks.”

She paused for a moment, blinking
and staring at me. “Facts not flattery, my friend. So what do you say?”

“It feels wrong.”

“But you’ll do it?”

I hesitated for a split second.

“Yes.”

“Knew you wouldn’t let us down.”
The smile transformed her face, and I noticed the fine lines around her eyes I
hadn’t seen before. “It’s the right decision. The recession’s hit us hard, as
you know. Between you and me, last year Truecrime was teetering on the edge. It
was a very close thing. And we’re not out of the woods by any means. Book sales
are down on last year, and we’re beginning to get into electronic books, that’s
the coming thing, and we need more capital to push things. We’ve got to seize
our chances as they come.”

She rubbed her hands together,
smiling to reveal sparking white teeth. “So now on to more pressing matters.
You’ll be glad to know that as soon as you deliver
Hero or Villain?
the
designers have promised to make it a number one priority and they’ll get right
onto it. I know the situation is delicate for you just now.”

I’d already told Ann about being
beaten up and threatened with execution because of the book.

“So how long after I hand over
the MS do you think it’ll be before it comes out?” I asked.

“Six weeks I hope. We’ve already
negotiated a deal with Tesco, so they can get it in time for the Christmas
market, ideally.”

Six weeks. Plus a fortnight or
three weeks. More than two months of watching my back, of not knowing when to
expect a bullet or a knife. At least embarking on this new project would take
my mind off things.

“We need to take the threats to
your life very seriously. In fact the best thing would be if you went missing
for a few weeks, just until the danger’s past.”

“But how would I do the Bible
Killer book?”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”
She leaned back in the chair, lit up one of her long thin French cigarettes and
sucked on it until the tip glowed in the darkness. “Listen Jack, I’ve had an
idea. They’ve only just given you the warning, so they’ve got to give you a
chance to take notice. Professional criminals aren’t going to want to put out a
contract unnecessarily, with all the attendant risk involved. Besides if they’d
wanted to kill you they’d have done so by now, not bothered with a warning.
Sean Boyd will be hoping their lesson’s sunk in, and they’ll have to give you
time. At least a week, probably a fortnight. And you said you can finish
Hero
or Villain?
in a fortnight, and surely during that time you could also do
some of the research and interviews for this next one? Another week, say?”

“It’s pushing it, but with any
luck, yes. Any follow-ups I could do by phone.”

“Right. Now Godfrey’s just bought
this rambling old place in Wales – a weekend retreat he calls it, but he’s not
planning on using it till next year. It’s a weird sort of manor house in a
valley, Victorian I believe, looks like a ruin from the outside, but one wing’s
been done up – decorations, kitchen, heating, like a four-star hotel without
the staff, but no one would guess it’s even inhabited from the outside. It’s
not even in a village, it’s five miles from the nearest village, in a valley
between two mountains. I’ll persuade him to let you go down there to work. All
the peace and solitude you could possibly want, plus no one can find you. There
was some flooding and the access road isn’t repaired yet, but there is a way
though. That Land Rover of yours is 4-wheel-drive isn’t it? You’ll make it up
the muddy track, but lesser cars’ll get stuck.”

“Total isolation, then.”

“Just the job in your
circumstances. So what you have to do is trawl for some information for the
Bible Killer book in these few days of freedom, then get down there and finish
Hero
or Villain?
as a priority, then crack on with the Bible Killer book, using
the material you’ve gathered, working on the stuff you’ve got. Regard the place
as a bolthole where you’re safe. Stay down there as much as you can, and just
pop back here as and when you have to, to do the extra research and interviews.
Should be able to do a lot of it by phone anyway.”

“Okay, that sounds fine. But I’m
thinking of practicalities. It won’t be easy for me to interview people while
the enquiry is ongoing.”

“True.”

“However, there is one way. Can I
have a co-writer? Split the credits?”

“Do you have anyone in mind?”

“Stuart Billingham. He’s a close
friend, and a reporter on the local paper. Best of all, he’s probably already
got a good deal of the data we need, plus he can do interviews on the basis
that it’s for his paper. He could gather facts faster than I can, meanwhile I
knock it into shape. It would save time.”

She nodded, tapping ash from her
cigarette into the ashtray. “That sounds like an excellent idea, especially the
time-saving aspect. So many things are falling into place with this job. It’s
current, you’re on the spot, and you already know a lot about it. And
Canterbury is your city, you were born there, weren’t you?”

I nodded.

“So we’ve got a real insider’s
viewpoint. Now we want a bit of background history of the town, the Cathedral,
the Thomas Becket angle. Now that’s extremely interesting, especially the
theory that the killer’s modelling his killings to match the way Thomas was
killed, you can pad it out with stuff about Becket’s murder. Then we’ll want details
of the victims’ relatives, background on their lives, and rundown on the last
hours leading up to their death.  Add in the clues the police have got. You
know the form.”