Doppelganger (6 page)

Ann poured me another brandy.
“Will your friend agree to help, do you think?”

“I’ll ask him tonight. He’ll
probably be keen.”

“He’s got to be a sensitive
person. This is a balancing act. It has to be done in utmost secrecy. We need
someone who uses tact, discretion and delicacy.”

*
* * *

Stuart spilt his beer as he
slammed the glass onto our table, then scratched his crotch for a moment before
sitting down opposite me and stuffing crisps into his mouth as if he was
shovelling coal into a steam engine’s fire. The Leg o’ Mutton in Canterbury High
Street is an olde worlde pub, a bit of a pastiche really, the kind of place
with unnecessarily hard wooden benches and an inglenook fireplace that wished
it was in a castle. There was a folk music concert in the next-door room, and I
could hear melodic guitar riffs and a fine but weedy singing voice floating
across to us.  Canterbury Festival was due to open in a couple of weeks, and
all around town there were signs for the fortnight-long jamboree of music,
theatre, drama and poetry that was being performed in a number of different
venues. 

Stuart was still wearing his tee
shirt and battered leather jacket. His stubble had almost acquired beard
status, and the steel-framed reading spectacles slid down his nose, as his
stubby grubby thumb scrolled across the screen of his iPad.

“No wonder the public hate the
media.” He grinned as he gulped down crisps and took a swig of his Fosters,
burping quietly. “I reckon editors would commit murders if they could, just to
be sure of decent copy. Matthews would, no question. Sales have gone through
the roof since the first killing.” Stuart grew up in Sheffield, and his
northern accent has been undiminished for all the years I’ve known him.

He adjusted himself in the seat
and slid his glasses up his nose once again. “Right, mate, let’s get down to
it. First off, this is the deal, yeah? Fifty fifty on the upfront payment
against royalties, and the same for any subsequent ones. And I get equal
credits on the front cover, and I supply most of the facts. You write it up,
and dig up all the crap about the family backgrounds of the victims, whitewash
them up and tell everyone they were only flogging their arses on the streets
because they were paying for chemotherapy for Granny. ‘Cos as things stand
we’ve never got enough for 80,000 words, unless he tops some other poor beggar
in the meantime. But your job is to find out all the kind of boring background
shit that can pad it out, at the same time as you sex up the copy I give you.
Plus you do any research I’ve not got the time for. I’ve got quite a bit of
juicy stuff that was too raw to use in the paper. All in here.” He tapped the
iPad. “I’ll email it all across to you later on.”

“Fine. Can we talk through what
you’ve got already?”

“Okey dokey.” Stuart sniffed and
blew his nose, then scrolled the screen, reading from it as he talked. “The
first victim, Annie Marie Molloy, a 58-year-old prostitute, whose beat was in
Canterbury East, near the station. Found naked and bleeding from wounds to her
head and body, laying up against some railings. The window cleaner who found
her, Stan Morris, couldn’t see her at first, wrapped up as she was in bright
blue builders’ plastic sheeting. He investigated further and found there was
summat inside the roll of plastic.” Stuart crammed more crisps into his mouth,
releasing a fine spray of potato crumbs as he continued: “Lots of blood,
horrific wounds to her head, evidence of partial strangulation. And she were
scalped.”

I nodded, remembering the
coverage at the time. “In the American Indian meaning of the term?”

“Absolutely. The skin and bone
along the top of her head was sliced completely off, like lopping the top off
of a boiled egg. When they found her, blood and brain tissue had leaked out all
over the shop, just like it was supposed to have done when they topped Thomas
Becket.”

The image formed uninvited in my
mind: eyes below an attenuated forehead, all the semblance of a normal face,
but with an oozing mess of horror above.

“How was it done?” I asked.

“Pathologist reckons as how it
was something heavy and sharp – particularly since the cut wasn’t clean, or
even complete. Summat like a heavy sword or an axe sliced into the forehead and
cracked open the front of the skull, then it looks as if it was sawn with a
hacksaw or summat similar until most of the top half of the skull was sliced
across. Then the front lid of the skull, along with the hair attached to the
remainder of her head, was sliced away separately.”

“Left with the body?”

“No.” He shook his head. “The
scalped sections are always missing. Police are reckoning he keeps them bits as
some kind of trophy, mebbe.”

I closed my eyes momentarily.

Stuart rattled on, in
professional mode. “Of course the Bible left on her chest, open at Judges
chapter three, with verse 15 highlighted. Right Jack, Murder Number Two. Angela
McCree was a much younger working girl, who frequented the High Street. She
were one o’ them stick-thin kids, almost anorexic. A registered drug addict
who’d resort to anything on hand if she couldn’t get reasonable gear. Dog walker
found her in St Augustine’s Abbey Gardens. Hardly a mark on her, apart from the
scalping and the damage to her head. Wearing jeans and nowt else.”

“Injuries?”

Stuart scrolled down the page.
“Again, apart from the scalping, partial strangulation. The body were partially
hidden under a pile of leaves. And again, the Bible left open on her chest,
this time open at Job chapter 21, highlighted at verse 26.

“Do you reckon the Bible
references mean anything?”

“Who knows?” Stu took a swig of
beer. “Likely to be a religious nut who chooses prostitutes because he objects
to their morals – wants to teach them a lesson, or some bastard who wants to
mislead the coppers into thinking along them lines. Or the most usual reason:
the killer enjoys killing women, and prostitutes are easy prey, out alone late
at night. Mebbe we’re looking for someone inadequate, isn’t that what you
psychologists say? A hatred of women means impotence or inadequacy.”

“Both of them prostitutes,” I
remarked. “What about Rebecca Fenton, the third victim?”

“Another working girl, aged forty-five,
found out at Greyfriars.”

I thought of the idyllically
beautiful riverside estate, where the oldest priory in England had recently
been repopulated by Carmelite monks after 400 years. It was sacrilegious that
such a holy and truly peaceful place, where the monks held services in the
ancient chapel in the middle of a field, had been defiled by a murder such as
this.

“Same injuries, another Bible on
her chest, this time with a verse from St John highlighted.”

“Any significance in the verses
he chooses, do you think?” I asked.

“Haven’t a clue.” Stu took a gulp
of beer and swiped a hand across his lips. “I’ll see if I can find a theologian
to study the passages. You never know.”

“And what do we know about the
final almost-victim, Caroline Lawrence?”

“Now that’s what’s interesting.
Spoke to my mole on the investigating team just before I got here. As we
thought, they are treating her as one of the victims. However, she’s not a working
girl and never has been. Caroline’s a perfectly respectable woman – she works
as an insurance loss adjuster here in the city. Her car broke down, and her
mobile phone battery was dead. She made it to the car park beside Healey’s Wood
and was walking back to the Saracen’s Head to phone for help. Had no idea that
that particular car park is used for all kinds of illicit relationships –
brasses go there in punters’ cars. It’s also known as a site for ‘dogging’ –
you know, where couples go for no-questions-asked sex with strangers. They’re
working on the principle that the killer assumed she were a working girl, found
her alone and took his chance.”

“And she ran off and blundered
into the road?”

“Aye.”

“Did she see him?”

Stuart shook his head. “Bugger sneaked
up behind her. First she knew, he’d bashed her on the head, and was trying to
throttle her. She struggled like mad and managed to bolt. Last thing she was
reckoning on doing was turning round and looking at him.”

“Could she say anything about her
attacker?”

“Nowt much. And this is summat
that’s really weird,” Stuart went on. “Crazy really. The AMIT taskforce have
obviously been reckoning on that it’s a man, that’s the usual thing you’d
expect, right? But Caroline said she’s certain she remembered a smell of
perfume.”

“Perfume?”

“Aye. Just before it happened,
she remembers that she became suddenly aware of a strong smell of perfume.”

“Aftershave?”

Stuart shook his head. “Knows her
perfume, does young Caroline, and she recognises it.
Heaven’s Dust
, by one
of them famous names, like Chanel, or Givenchy. Here,” Stu reached into his
shoulder bag and pulled out an envelope which he opened and took out a slip of
card. “Get a whiff of this.”

I smelt the card. Instantly a
sweet flowery perfume filled my nostrils, and it triggered a memory. I’d smelt
it somewhere before. Recently.

“I popped into town and got a
girl at the perfume counter in Debenhams to give me a sample. Chance in a
million they had some, but it were some special promotion. No point really, but
I was passing, and thought, if I ever smelt it again I might be able to
recognise it.”

“And do you?”

“No.”

I tried to think where I’d smelt
it before, but I couldn’t.

“But, come on Stu. That level of
violence, that degree of strength used. It’s someone who feels no affinity for
women, an arch misogynist, perhaps a female-hating homosexual, surely. How
could it possibly be a woman?”

He shrugged and slurped his beer.
“True, but It’s not just that. Caroline could be mistaken, but she reckons that
just for a second she caught a glimpse of a hand. Painted fingernails.
Statistically, most of these types of murders are done by men, of course,” Stuart
muttered. “But if you accept that a woman could have done the killings, the
method she used is neither here nor there. And think about it. How much easier
it would be for a woman to pick up potential women victims than a man. They’d
trust her, they’d be off guard when talking to her, whereas with potential
punters, they’d be aware of the risks, they’d be ready to run. What’s more...” Stuart
sat back and looked pensively into his pint, licking beer froth from his lips.
“There’s plenty of vicious women.”

“How is Rachel?”

“Not seen her for nigh on six
weeks now. She chucked me and I can’t say as I blame her. I drink too much, I’m
always late for dates, I’m a crude selfish bastard and I let her down time and
again. Wonder why she put up with me for as long as she did.”

“Sorry.”

“No one to blame but meself,
mate.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Aye, course I do. How about you?
Some time since your divorce, in’t it? I’ve not seen you with anyone. Got some
lass you’re seeing on the quiet?”

“No.”

“Someone who’s already married,
mebbe?”

“I told you, no.”

“Anyone on the horizon?”

I shook my head.

“Lying bastard.”

Then I remembered where I’d smelt
the perfume before.

Lucy
.

It smelt just like Lucy’s
perfume
.

I’m a realist. The likelihood was
that the characters who’d beaten me and threatened to kill me if I didn’t
abandon the Sean Boyd book would obviously let their lesson sink in for a day
or two, possibly even a week, assuming they’d achieved their end. Perhaps as
long as ten days. But Ann’s presumption of a fortnight’s grace was probably
overly optimistic. Besides, for all I knew they had an informant inside the
publishers. And as soon as they found out that the book was going ahead
regardless, they’d put out a contract on my life.

I got up early and drove down to
London, arriving in mid-afternoon. First I went straight round to an ex-soldier
I know who now runs a shop in the East End. He supplies surveillance materials,
gadgets that private detectives use, such as clandestine recording devices and
special cameras and camcorders. He also sells defence equipment, and three
hundred pounds bought me a Kevlar vest, a thick uncomfortable board-like
garment that was designed to absorb the impact of bullets and knives. Mind, it
couldn’t stop a bullet from a Mac 10, or a high velocity Uzi handgun say, and
even an ordinary round would be likely to drive the wind out of you, most
likely knock you over, but at least the impact would be spread over a
relatively wide area, and in most circumstances there’d be no entry wound.

Then I did something illegal, and
distinctly risky. A contact in the underworld had once told me about an
‘armourer’, based in south London, who could supply any weapon for a price. A
gun could be rented, provided it was returned to him unused or, if any rounds
were discharged, the hefty deposit you had to leave with him would be forfeited,
and it would be up to you to dispose of the weapon. A used gun, sullied by the
attendant forensic evidence irrevocably etched into its workings, could often
be tied to a specific murder or heist, precluding its use by anyone ever again.
Normally I never break the law, and if anyone found the Glock 9mm automatic in
my possession I would very likely be facing a prison sentence. But I was a
marked man. The likelihood was that at any time a contract could be put out on
me and I’d be in the kind of tight situation where a gun might be the only
thing that could save my life. When I got home I carried the gun and ammunition
in a Tesco carrier bag up to my bathroom. I wrapped the gun and the rounds in
masses of clingfilm, put it back in the carrier bag and wedged the package up
above the top of the hot water tank in the bathroom in a cupboard, behind
several copper pipes.

Then, for the hundredth time that
day, I thought about Lucy.

I felt a compulsion to see her
again, but I was afraid I had no chance with her. But I steeled myself to dial
the mobile number she’d given me, half expecting a brush-off. It was true that
after my ordeal she’d spent the entire afternoon with me, and collected me from
hospital in the morning, but that had been an act of duty, because she was
obviously a kind person, who wanted to help someone in trouble. Knowing her
attitude to my profession, let alone the fact that I’d agreed to do the very
thing she thought was appalling, that is start writing a book about the Bible
Killer, undoubtedly meant that she might not want to have anything to do with
me. Writing the Bible Killer book, of course, was something I’d have to keep to
myself for as long as I could, if I didn’t want to wreck my putative
relationship with her before it had even begun.

I needn’t have worried. She was
friendly, and when I tentatively asked if she’d like to have dinner with me,
she insisted that I should come to her flat, where she could cook us a meal.

I already knew about
Mad about
the Book
. The bookshop was in the ground floor of a 15th-century building
whose downstairs was one of those packed-to-the-ceiling antiquarian book
emporiums where cardboard boxes full of paperbacks spilled out onto the
pavement during opening hours, and where there was a cavernous interior, where
shelves tottered dangerously under the weight of thousands of tomes, and there
was barely room to walk. To the right of Mad about the Book’s main entrance,
Lucy led me to a much less noticeable doorway, behind which was a narrow
winding staircase. That first time I climbed those stairs, I had to practically
bend double to clear the ceiling until I emerged into the cramped oak
floor-boarded nest that was her home.

Weirdly, behind the outside door
to her flat, were huge metal bars that slid into the brickwork either side,
which were, as Lucy told me, “To protect me. Don’t laugh.” She went on: “But I
would always feel insecure, if I didn’t have locks like this. I couldn’t sleep,
I’d be afraid of someone breaking in. The windows are alarmed, too. I’m a
scaredy cat, I know, but I worry about being attacked. Especially now.”

“Canterbury is one of the least
crime-ridden cities in England.”

“I know. It’s stupid, but that’s
just the way I am. Easily scared. And right now it’s even more important to
take care.”

And that wasn’t all of it. She
carried a flick knife – a vicious looking thing that was undoubtedly illegal –
in a sheath attached to her ankle, and showed me how quickly she could slip it
into her hand and activate the sharp snap that flicked out the vicious pointed
blade, apparently honed to a razor’s edge. She also carried a can of mace, also
illegal, the spray that disables an attacker by temporarily blinding him. And
she told me she’d attended an unarmed combat night class, and was adept at
certain karate chops.

It did make sense in one way, but
it was only later that I understood why she felt so scared all the time. Of
course by then it was too late.

Like the staircase, the sitting
room had a very low ceiling, as well as tiny, leaded-light windows with frilly
curtains, a small television and a comfortable floral-pattern covered sofa and
chairs, and the floorboards were dark oak, waxed to a bright shine. Through one
doorway was her tiny kitchen, and the other door led to her bedroom. I’d
glanced into the bedroom in passing, and it was just as I’d imagined it would
be: chintz covered eiderdown over the half-tester bed, that had neat dark blue
drapes. The ceilings and walls were painted white between the twisting
woodworm-riddled black oak rafters. The whole flat smelt of furniture wax,
cooking herbs and the faint scent of incense from joss sticks. Lucy told me
that she liked to light a joss stick wherever she could, she enjoyed the sharp
hard tang of the smoke, it reminded her of her mum, who’d apparently been a
hippie in the 60s. Even now, whenever I smell that characteristic sharp tang it
reminds me of that time, when I was more content than I’ve ever felt before or
since.

Her workshop was next door to the
bedroom. On one work-table was a miniature wooden dressing table, two inches
tall, complete with shield-shaped, swivelling mirror. Its drawers, so miniscule
that it was almost impossible to grasp their handles between fingertips, slid
in and out smoothly, constructed using such delicate joinery that it was
unbelievable. Another workbench was taken up partially by a large bandsaw, an
elaborate affair with a metal platform, the centre of which had a fine-toothed
blade running at right angles. There was also a pedestal drill, with a similar
flat bed and a handle to pull the drill bit downwards, and there were also
miniature clamps, tweezers, and a special miniature hand-held drill, as well as
several large magnifying glasses on bendable metal arms. In the corner there
was a partially constructed dolls’ house – Georgian, with fine-grained
floorboards and tiny fireplaces. On shelves above her worktable there were
racks full of sheets of very thin timber and strips of metal, as well as metal
rods, shelves full of tiny boxes of screws and different kinds of adhesives,
tiny pins and screws and an assortment of miniature chisels and other small
hand tools.

She showed me one of the special
chisels, demonstrating how to use it on a piece of hard black timber; its blade
was V-shaped in cross-section, specially made to slide through timber needing
only minimal hand-pressure. Quite a lethal weapon, I thought, if it fell into
the wrong hands.

After eating in the living room
we relaxed on the sofa and she told me about her upbringing in the small
Hertfordshire village, an only child with doting parents who’d died in a car
crash when she was at university, studying Egyptology and archaeology.

“Ridiculous subjects to study,” she
said, sipping red wine. “What’s the point of it? Mum and Dad dying like that,
it brought it home to me how ephemeral life can be. I’d had all these fantasies
about being an archaeologist and going on digs in ancient Egypt, writing
papers, giving lectures. But after only a year into the course I realised that
the reality was that the only options were teaching, which I didn’t want to do,
or finding a post in some dreary museum, here or abroad. I wanted to do
something practical. My father always liked tinkering with woodwork in his shed
and I used to watch him. There’s something I love about timber, the smell and
the feel of it. I decided to do a carpentry course. Then, after that, I taught
myself about this kind of tiny micro-joinery.”

She showed me her books on
ancient Greece, her pen-and-ink drawings of the ‘backs’, a waterside area of
Cambridge, where there are quaint pubs by the river. I’m no judge but to me she
seemed to be a talented artist. She loved music, playing me some of her favourites,
Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen, even some early Bruce Springsteen, artists she
deemed to be ‘timeless’, as well as modern musicians, most of whom I’d never
heard of. The evening zipped past. I didn’t want it to end, I just longed for
it to go on forever, because everything about her had hooked me. So when she
told me that a close friend was seriously ill, and she’d promised the friend’s
husband that she’d go up to York and look after her dolls’ house shop for her,
I couldn’t hide my feelings.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

It was just after I’d kissed her
for the first time. She was in my arms, and I was looking into her half-closed
eyes. “I don’t want you to go. I want to see you tomorrow. And the next day.
And the day after that...”

“Jack, you don’t even know me–”

“I do. The moment I set eyes on
you I knew you, something about your face was already there, in my mind. I’ve
never felt like this before in my life. I knew your face before I even saw it,
and I was obsessed with you from the moment I saw you.”

“I didn’t like you at first.” She
pulled me closer, speaking in an urgent whisper. “Yet there was something that
disturbed me about you. And I couldn’t forget you.”

“York isn’t that far. Can I come
and see you?”

“Of course.” A tear appeared at
the corner of her eye. “I
want you
to come and see me. I never dreamed
this could happen. So fast. And I’m so sure about how I feel. It’s mad, crazy.
Anyway, didn’t you say you’ve got to work on your book urgently?”

“Yes, that’s true, I have. I’d
better leave you in peace. You’ve got to get up early.”

She looked into my eyes. “Believe
me, I don’t normally do this. I swear that this isn’t like me. I usually get to
know a guy for ages before...”

“What?” She felt warm in my arms,
her body was soft and yielding, melting against mine. “What are you trying to
say?”

“I don’t want you to go home
tonight,” she whispered. “Stay with me?”

That night, the first time we
were together, was the most amazing experience of my life. I remember waking in
the early hours and her telling me more about her childhood, her parents, the
village where she grew up. As I held her hand I noticed that the third finger
of her left hand was slightly shorter than the rest, by about half-an-inch, and
the nail was missing.

“It was an accident,” she told
me, pulling her hand away.

“What happened?”

She closed her eyes, shook her
head as if she was trying to suppress the memory. “I was with my father in his
workshop – he had a workroom with woodwork machinery in the cellar of our
house. Daddy was always making things out of wood, that’s what gave me the idea
to do the same thing. He made me a dolls’ house, and all the furniture to go
inside...” She looked up at me, smiling at the memory. “How I loved to watch
him. I’d go down to watch him for hours, cutting all the timber and drilling
and sanding. One day I was on my own down there. I’d seen him switch on the
circular saw so many times that it was almost like second nature to me. I
copied what he did. My finger was too close.”

I recoiled at the mental picture,
trying to blank out the scene.

“There was hardly any pain at
first. All I can remember now is the blood and the panic and my mum screaming
and poor Dad crying – I’d never seen him cry before. Then the frantic car
journey to hospital. All I lost was the top bit. It healed up fairly quickly.”

“You were lucky.”

“I was stupid. Nowadays I keep my
hands well away from the blade. But it’s not machinery that scares me now, it’s
people. The idea of being attacked. You must think I’m ridiculous, Jack. Scared
of my own shadow.”

“You’re just sensitive. More
aware of the dangers that everyone’s afraid of, that’s all. Maybe you’re more
realistic than most.”

She nodded. “Do you know, Jack, I
have this awful premonition. The feeling that I’m going to be killed.”

“What?”

I felt a cold shiver run along my
spine.

“It’s stupid. There’s no logic to
it. But that’s why I’m paranoid about my personal safety I suppose. I have this
terrible feeling that I’m going to be murdered one day. I suppose that’s why
this business in town is upsetting me so much.”

There was nothing I could say.

I noticed the first whisper of
dawn through a crack between the curtains. A single bird began singing. Lucy’s
voice went on, quiet, reasonable, as eerily dreadful as the sound of weeping.
“I’ll be thirty eight very soon. And ever since I was young I had this feeling
about the number thirty eight – a horrid sort of obsession, I suppose. I have
this awful foreknowledge that I’m not going to live to see that day.”