Doppelganger (22 page)

Hackney appeared to be a nothing
but a morbid traffic jam beside a stream of fast-food restaurants, boarded up
shops and graffiti-covered hoardings over partially demolished buildings.
Dalston Manor Road started with a whimpering snarl near an underground station,
and Morningside Mansions was a vast high-rise monstrosity that by rights should
have been razed to the ground. I managed to find a parking space at a meter a
few roads away and pushed in coins to pay for an hour. The walk back to
Morningside Mansions was an exercise in misery. A gang of noisy youths on the
corner of the road milled about, throwing a tennis ball to each other and
swearing colourfully, the disagreeable scent of powerful ‘skunk’ marijuana
roasting the air as their spliffs rocked up and down between their lips.

Riding up to the tenth floor in
the urine-smelling lift took five minutes, and I avoided eye contact with the
truculent black boy wearing a huge orange puffa jacket, his wrists covered in
flashy metallic bangles and golden rings on every finger, cool shades shielding
his eyes.

And it was a waste of time. The
door to number 158 was answered by a blank-eyed mountain-sized man wearing
nothing but a stretched-to-the-limit vest and stained underpants, who continually
scratched his crotch, and belched in my face twice. No, he hadn’t known the
former tenants of the council flat, no he didn’t know the neighbours, and
no
,
he had no idea who Dave Boyd or his family was, nor did he care. It was just as
useless when I knocked on the neighbours’ doors: none of them even bothered to
answer; either that or they weren’t in.

Back in the car I phoned Stuart,
and asked if he could go online to find me a list of crematoriums and
cemeteries for the Dalston area. He gave me six, and I went to each of them in
turn, hoping that Dave and Marianne Boyd had held the interment of their
daughter locally.

I struck lucky at the second of
the crematoriums, Higston Wood, and found the pathetic slab of coppery metal in
the ground inscribed:
Amanda Boyd, 1990 – 2002, Let the innocent come unto
me saith the Lord
. There were flowers laid across it, not fresh, but only
about a week old. That was good: it meant that someone visited the grave
regularly.

It was a large sprawling place of
sharp modern brick walls, a chapel whose colourful brickwork and jazzy
stained-glass windows made it look more like a fast food restaurant, and an
awkward terrace where a swarm of unhappy, overdressed people were pacing around
piles of floral tributes and wishing they were somewhere else. The horrible
barbecue smell of burnt meat was in the air, making me feel sick. I watched
another gaggle of folk in dark clothes emerge from the chapel behind the
white-vestmented clergyman, who was wiping his nose with a screwed up paper
handkerchief.

Long ago I’d discovered that in
any large place of employment there are always discontented workers, who spend
their days moaning to colleagues and their evenings dreading the next day’s
labours. They were usually more adept at avoiding work than doing it, and the
telltale signs were obvious when you knew what to look for. Furtive glances at
a wristwatch. Anger behind the eyes. Defensive body language and an aura of
general hatred of the world.

Harry Kemp, assistant customer
care person, as his name badge described him, glared at me with a blend of
apathy and hostility when I said to him, “Can I ask your advice?”

“Advice?”

“I need information.”

“About what?”

I made sure no one was watching
us, then took out a twenty pound note, holding it between my fingers casually,
making sure he could see it.

“Who are you then?” His piggy
eyes were fixed on the money.

“A journalist. See the plaque on
the remains of Amanda Boyd just across there?” I pointed with the twenty pound
note towards Amanda’s resting place. “Does anyone come to visit it? Lay flowers
maybe?”

“They might do.”

I held up the twenty between us.
Then plucked another twenty from my pocket and added it to the first.

“Can you give me a description of
this person?”

His eyes gazed greedily at the
notes, as if he was mesmerised. “Add another twenty and I can give you a name
’n all.”

I did so. His hand shot out to
take the money, but I withdrew it at the last minute.

“The name?”

It was his turn to glance around
to make sure we weren’t being watched. “Wanda Pierce. Old black lady, comes
here a lot. Sweet old girl really. Does a lot of charity work locally. Someone
told me she was into that bereavement counselling lark. Beats me why anyone
wants to do that. I mean, what’s the point? Nobody pays you.”

“Where can I find her?”

“Wait around and she might even
turn up. Hold up, it’s your lucky day – there she is!”

I gave him the sixty quid and
followed the lady who was walking sedately along, carrying a bunch of flowers.
Sure enough, she walked back to where Amanda’s grave plaque was, and removed
the shrivelled bunch of flowers and replaced them with the new ones. She stood
up, head bowed, as if she was praying. I waited until she began to move on
before walking up beside her.

“Excuse me, are you Wanda
Pierce?” I asked.

She turned and gave me a
beautiful smile. Her clothes were immaculate, a neat dark trouser suit, clean
black pump shoes and spectacles below silky black hair that was too straight to
be anything other than a wig.

“Yes, that’s me.” In contrast to
wily Harry, Wanda’s voice was devoid of double meanings.

“Do you mind me asking you – were
you a friend of Amanda Boyd?”

“A friend? No not really.”

“It’s just that I’m writing a
book about her family. I know she died in 2002, but I don’t know any details.
I’m in touch with the mother, but I didn’t want to ask her something so
personal. I don’t want to upset her any more than I have to, you see.”

“It’s my granddaughter who was
her friend,” Wanda explained, “Little Mandy’s best friend, she was, but she’s
working in the daytime, so it’s hard for her to get here when the place is
open. My Deirdre, she always remembers her. She never really recovered from her
death. Poor child. They were both just 12 years old. I ask you, where is the
justice in the world?”

I nodded. “Do you think your
granddaughter would mind talking to me?”

“You’re not going to write a lot
of bad things? Scandal and such?”

“Oh no. Believe me, Mrs Pierce, I
want to set the record straight.”

“You can come to our flat tonight
about six if you like,” she invited. “I’ll give you my address.”

*
* * *

Deirdre Pierce was a very
different proposition to her grandmother. At nineteen she was upfront and
bouncing with the vitality of youth, had grace and beauty and a ready charm,
and she moved swiftly. The flat was small but beautifully decorated: pure white
walls and white carpet and large white leather sofa and chairs, with colourful
cushions.

“Do you know why Amanda killed
herself?” I asked.

She nodded grimly. “Her uncle.”

Thank heavens, I thought.
Amanda
had told someone
.

“Please go on.”

“I dunno as how I should, you
know? Her dad, her uncle, they’re gangsters, you know? Like, they kill people
without even stopping to think about it.”

“I know. Frankly, that’s why I’m
here. Sean Boyd wants to kill me.”

I give Deirdre an abbreviated
version of events, and she listened attentively, nodding every now and again.

“Amanda was in a real jam, yeah?”
she said at last. “Scared to tell her mum what was happening. Scared of her
uncle. And then, when she thought she was pregnant, she went absolutely radio
rental. She’d read about induced abortions, and how the drug her mum was taking
might do the job. She thought that it was all her fault, like? Sean Boyd had
told her that she’d tempted him. He is one evil piece of shit.”

“I need to convince Dave Boyd of
that.”

“Won’t be easy.”

“I don’t suppose you would come
with me to talk to him?”

“No way man!” She thought for a
few moments. “Wait there.”

She came back five minutes later
with a mobile phone, an old model, in bright pink with a decoration of a white
rabbit on the corner, the kind of phone a child might carry.

“Amanda gave me her phone.
There’s a picture she took on it when her uncle wasn’t looking. She wanted to
show someone, but she didn’t know who to talk to. Here, let me show you.”

She pressed the buttons and the
screen came alive with a picture of Sean Boyd, naked, his penis furiously
erect, and a smile on his face.

“Can I borrow this?”

“You can have it, man. I’ve only
been keeping it all this time in the hope I could prove what he did to her. I
didn’t trust the police not to lose it, know what I mean? You never know who
knows who. But if you can give it to Dave Boyd, he might even recognise it as
his daughter’s phone.”

“And then he’ll know the truth.”

She smiled, and the wide open
frankness of her expression reminded me of her grandmother.

“Thank you, Deirdre. I promise
I’ll let you know what happens.”

I phoned the hospital in Swansea.
Lucy had regained consciousness and the signs were good.

According to my research for
Hero
or Villain?
Dave Boyd’s part of the Boyd brothers’ empire was operated from
a carpet warehouse on an industrial estate in Sutton, Surrey. This was
information I obviously couldn’t use in the book, needless to say, because
Care
for your Carpets
was ostensibly a legitimate business, and, in fact, it
was. The floor-covering retailer had a big showroom, vast stocks of floor
materials in the warehouse and a team of self-employed fitters.

Members of the public rarely
stopped to wonder why bigger, more prosperous competitors went bust, when they
were often able to undercut
Care for your Carpets
’ prices. The truth
was, it didn’t matter if the books balanced or not: making a loss on this
business could be set against the profits of their other legitimate businesses,
besides which, stock could occasionally be bought for cash from foreign
dealers, which was a brilliant way of disposing of ready ‘unaccounted for’
money gleaned from Dave Boyd’s more dubious activities. Money laundering,
combined with a potential as a tax loss, made the carpet enterprise both
convenient and lucrative.

The coming confrontation was so
terrifying that the best way of dealing with it was by not thinking about it at
all. Just going there and getting it over with was all I could do. Nor would
there be any point in seeing my gun-dealer friend and getting another firearm
to protect myself: anyone lucky enough to be granted an audience with Dave Boyd
was likely to be painstakingly frisked at the entrance. I didn’t know that much
about Dave, it was Sean’s life that I’d studied in detail. However, I did know
that while the brothers ran separate operations they had an uneasy alliance,
but at various times in the past there’d been bad blood between them. But as
far as I could gather, since Dave had come out of prison, they’d controlled
their separate empires without stepping on each other’s toes.

I parked on a yellow line behind
the
Care for your Carpets
premises at six that evening.

I hadn’t worked out a plan, and
there was no way of knowing if Dave Boyd was there, or, if he was, if he’d
agree to see me.

The front of the building had a
huge steel shutter that was already pulled down, but a hatch to one side had a
door in it. A diminutive man in a shabby suit was backing out, a bunch of keys
in his hands.

“Sorry mate, we’re closed,” he
said as I approached.

“I’ve got an appointment with
Dave Boyd,” I told him.

“Mr Boyd?” He turned to look at
me. He was a skinny individual, around forty, his dark brown hair receding from
the front, and a network of frown lines working overtime along his forehead.

“Is he in?”

“I dunno. I don’t have nuffink to
do with Mr Boyd’s other affairs, me, I just handle the carpet sales.”

“But he is in charge?”

“Yeah, but as I say, I don’t have
nuffink to do with him, not as such.”

“Can you call him?”

“Have a heart mate, I was going
home. He’s not the kind of guy you ring – he rings you when he wants you, not
the other way around.”

“One call, please. I’ve come a
long way, and it’s very important.”

“I thought you said as how you
had an appointment?”

“I have.”

He shook his head gloomily and
pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and made a call. I noticed how he stood
up straighter as he spoke, more furrows grew along his forehead, and his mouth
was a tight line of worry.

“What’s your name, mate?” He
turned towards me.

“Albert Douglas.”

Using the dead man’s name, the
man his brother had murdered for allegedly raping Dave’s daughter, would be
bound to get a reaction. I could only hope that Dave Boyd’s curiosity would get
the better of him.

It did.

The small man disappeared
gratefully after taking me inside and telling me to go up the stairs and into
the office, which was the first door on the left. I hadn’t reached the top of
the steps before two large men appeared. They met me at the top, grabbing an
arm each and propelled me briskly into the room. As I’d expected, I was frisked
for weapons.

As big as his brother, Dave Boyd
had a broad bald dome of a head and a generous mouth with lines at its corners,
as if he was used to smiling a lot. He was wearing a dark grey suit, and the
hands that projected from the crisp white shirt cuffs were huge, the knuckles
scarred. As he opened his mouth I noticed there was a small gap between his
front teeth, and the other incisors were large, white and sharp, giving him the
appearance of a friendly Rottweiler.

He wasn’t smiling today. His
expression was murderous, in contrast to the blankly obedient poker faces of
the two men either side of me.

“So who the fuck are you, and why
are you pretending to be that dirty fucking little nonce that hurt my
daughter?” His voice was like a ton of gravel tumbling down a mountainside.

I took a breath. “I’m Jack
Lockwood. I’m writing a book about your brother. He’s got a contract out on me
because he thinks I’m going to divulge the fact that he sexually assaulted your
daughter Amanda, as a result of which she became pregnant and accidentally
killed herself in an attempt to abort the foetus. I knew nothing about it until
yesterday. But I’m telling you the truth now because it’s the only way I can
think of to save my own life.”

Dave Boyd’s face became almost
puce with rage. He stood up, kicking his chair behind him so that it careered
into the wall, and strode around the desk to stand in front of me, so that our
faces were barely inches apart.

He punched me in the stomach. His
henchmen held my arms rigidly, keeping me upright, as I sagged almost to my
knees, kept aloft by their arms alone. For a moment everything went black and a
tidal wave of pain washed over me, as I retched helplessly, dangling forwards.
After a few seconds the darkness that almost engulfed me receded and my vision
cleared. I was hauled upright again.

He grabbed my shirt-front and
shook me backwards and forwards until I was dizzy, then punched me in the
mouth. I felt my lip split and tasted blood.

“I heard those filthy rumours all
right, but I knew they were all
shite, invented by our enemies!
”

His face was so close that his
spittle splashed my bloodied lips. “No one ever dared say it to my face, they
knew what would happen. No wonder Sean wants to bury you. Reckon I’ll save him
the trouble, you dirty foul-mouthed fucker!” Dave Boyd went back to his desk,
opened a drawer, and took out a cut-throat razor. He opened out the blade and
it flashed in the fluorescent light, a mirrored keen edge of shining blazing
steel. “Sean told me as how there was some shitty little writer he’s been
trying to bury. Before I kill you I think I’ll slice your dirty lying tongue
out. Then I’ll cut through your windpipe, and rip open your carotid artery.”

He put the razor down and took
off his jacket and carefully rolled up his sleeves. Then walked towards me
again.

“I can prove it.” I tried to
shout but my voice was nothing but a croak.

“Course you can.” Dave Boyd’s
knuckles were blanching as he gripped the razor’s ivory handle in his right
hand and ran a fingertip along its edge, smiling to himself at the tiny nick
he’d made and the release of a hairline ribbon of blood. I could smell my own
sweat, mixed with the pungent aftershave of my guards, as they tightened their
grip in preparation for my imminent surgery. My heartbeat was drumming in my
ears. I tried to control my breathing.

“Look in my right-hand jacket
pocket. There’s Amanda’s phone – bright pink, with a rabbit on the front.”

Boyd stopped walking. His face
lost all expression. “Our Mandy’s phone? How do you know about that? She
treasured that phone. It went missing. We never knew what happened to it.”

“Her friend gave it to me today.”

There was a pause. Boyd nodded to
the man on my right to look in my pocket. As his hand withdrew, holding the
pink phone, Boyd’s face registered shocked amazement.

“Give it here.”

Held in his vast fist, the
child’s phone looked like an infant’s toy.

“Look at the pictures.”

He pressed the buttons. “Don’t
work. Battery’s dead.”

I closed my eyes in fury.

Stupid stupid stupid!
Why
hadn’t I thought about it? Deirdre must have used the last of the phone’s power
showing the image to me this morning.

Wordlessly, Boyd shook his head
slowly and walked across to a cupboard, opened it and rummaged around until he
found a charger and plugged it in, then fixed the phone to the other end. There
was silence while he fiddled with the buttons.

From across the room I could see
the screen come alive. Slowly he pressed the tiny keys, using the edge of his
thumbnail. Sadly wistful, he wiped away tears, as he was obviously looking at
the other pictures, the ones that were personal to the child, that would prove
to him it was, without doubt, his daughter’s phone.

I could hear him gasp when he’d
come to the picture of his brother. I remembered it, the large grey-haired man,
smirking and naked, his hairy pot belly above that vile engorged member.

Dave Boyd swayed on his feet and
closed his eyes. Tears were streaming down his face. He swiped the back of his
fist across his eyes to dry them, sniffing loudly.

After a long time, he unplugged
the charger, walked back to the desk and carefully placed the phone in a drawer
which he locked. Then he looked up at me and the guards, as if he’d forgotten
we were there.

“So what do you want?” he asked
me.

“To stay alive.”

“Nothing else?” He glared at me.
“You’re a writer or a journalist or summink, aren’t you? How do I know you’re
not going to use this story after everything dies down and you’re off the
hook?”

“Because if anything concerning
this business was ever printed without corroborative facts, you could sue the
writer and the publishers, and you’d win.” I nodded towards his desk.
“Remember, you’ve got the only proof of what happened. There’d also be no
public interest in this kind of a story. And finally because I know that if I
ever did a despicable thing like publicising any hint of what your brother did
to your child, you’d undoubtedly kill me – with very good reason.”

He stared at me for a long time,
weighing things up. “Jack Lockwood. Name rings a bell. You write books about
bent coppers, don’t you?”

“Amongst other things.”

“Had a look through one once.
Seemed pretty fair. You seem straight.”

“I don’t tell lies and I don’t
invent facts. And I certainly don’t desecrate the memory of innocent children.”

After a pause he nodded.

“Get rid of him.” He said to the
men holding me.

“You mean?” The man beside me
looked doubtful.

“No, not that, you cretin. Just
see him to the pavement. Shut up shop. And you, Jack!” He stared at me. “You
done me a favour, I owe you. And I’ll see you straight. But get out of my sight
and lie low for a couple of days. Sean’s contract on you don’t mean nothing
now. I’ll sort things, but it’ll take a few days. Use your nous, yeah? Fuck off
and bury yourself under a stone until all this dies down, get me?”

“I get you.”

He walked across to the far desk
and unlocked a drawer, out of which he produced a snub-nosed Smith and Wesson
.38 revolver, a prize of gleaming silver steel with chunky wooden grips. He
produced a box of shells and loaded the weapon, then handed the gun to me.

“Used one before have you, writer
boy?” Boyd asked me, staring me full in the eyes.

“Yes.”

“Get rid of it after a week,
yeah? You won’t need it no longer than that.”

“Sure.”

“Doubt you’ll need it at all.”

But he was wrong.

*
* * *

As I drove away, heading back to
Wales, I reflected that I really couldn’t trust Dave Boyd. The reality was, he
would be far happier if I was dead, so that my knowledge of the truth behind
his family tragedy was buried with me. There was a distinct possibility that
he’d say nothing to his brother until I had been killed, and only then would he
take fraternal reprisals. After having met Dave Boyd, the only thing I was sure
about was that he believed the truth about what his brother had done, and he
was going to deal with him summarily. As for his promise that I would be safe,
it was a gamble. And relying on Dave Boyd’s decency and humanity was a gamble I
was likely to lose.

Anyway, all I could do was wait
and hope that Dave would be as good as his word. At least he’d given me a gun
to protect myself, which surely counted for something.

I drove down to Brecon, reaching
the hospital at ten that night.

Lucy was sitting up in bed, still
attached to wires and tubes. When she looked up at me, there was a coldness in
her eyes that scared me.

“Why have you come?” Her voice
was hoarse, croaky. “Feeling guilty?”

“Yes.” I sat down in the chair
beside her bed.

“Nothing’s changed. You wish
you’d never met me. Okay Jack, that’s fair enough. I feel the same. You didn’t
have to come.” She began to cry. “It’s only torturing me even more...”

I took her hand. She tried to
pull away. Her eyes looked weary and haggard, as if she needed sleep badly.

“Listen, Lucy, I believe you.” I
said urgently. “
I believe you didn’t kill Aiden Caulfield
.”

“Nice pretence, Jack. I could
almost think you meant it.”

“I do. You didn’t kill him. And
I’m going to help you prove it.”

Still she wouldn’t look at me.
“Why now? What has suddenly changed, Jack?”

“I went to your flat. I found the
file on the murders in Huddersfield and Nottingham. Stu managed to trace the
boy Robert Althouse, found his name had been changed to Lamelle.”