Doppelganger (25 page)

But more importantly I was
remembering what Roger Lamelle had said to me in the car. That rubbish about
her following him to Healey’s Woods to watch him attack a woman, rather than to
stop him. Unbelievable. It had to be.

The alternative was unthinkable.

Anyway, I could relax in the
knowledge that one of my major problems was solved. Dave Boyd, who’d repaid my
willingness to tell him the truth about his daughter’s life by doing his best
to kill me, was close to death, and my enemy Sean’s life was thankfully over.
Two evil men culled.

Roger Lamelle would surely soon
be in custody or was already dead. On a personal level,
Hero or Villain?
would be out in a matter of weeks, in time to capitalise on the massive
publicity surrounding Sean Boyd’s death. And as soon as I was able to I could
get cracking with the rest of
The Bible Killer
, and I was now able to
include first-hand parts of the text, which would undoubtedly add authenticity.

I hadn’t been in contact with
Lucy since leaving her in hospital, what seemed like days ago now. Yet I
remembered I’d promised to go down and fetch her. I phoned her using the
hospital phone.

As I told her what had happened
to me she listened in silence.

“He tried to kill you?” she
asked.

“And almost succeeded.”

“And are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you tell the
police?”

“Everything. They haven’t agreed
to reopen your case, but they’re going to look at it. Though of course, I told
them that Lamelle admitted killing Aiden Caulfield. Trouble is, unless he
admits it himself, we’re no further forward.”

“And the chances are, Roger
Lamelle’s dead?”

“That’s what the police reckon.”

“To think, that I might have been
able to clear my name. Even get compensation for all those years... Well, I’m
no worse off I suppose. At least now you believe I’m innocent. So do you think
you can come down to fetch me soon?”

A surge of anger rose up inside
me. I’d just told her that I was suffering from burns to the face and
experienced major trauma, and she expected me to drive down to Wales as if
nothing had happened.

“Not for a while. I’ve taken
painkillers and a sleeping pill. I’m smashed and I can’t drive.”

“Of course. Sorry Jack, I’m being
selfish. I didn’t mean right now – they want me to stay in a bit longer
anyway.”

*
* * *

Much later on Stuart arrived and
drove me back to town, where I brought him up to speed with everything that had
been happening to me. He grunted as he pushed chips into his mouth, looking out
of the window of the pub that was near to the Westgate Towers end of the High
Street. I’d looked at myself in the bathroom mirror at the hospital just before
leaving: one side of my face had red burn marks and my semi-shaved head was
covered in white bandages. No wonder that barman had looked at me nervously,
glad when we found a table away from the bar.

“Right mystery,” Stu said.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Chances are,
Lamelle is dead. I mean it has to be a worse trauma than slitting your wrist,
and I’ve heard that people die quickly from that kind of blood loss.”

“I heard the opposite,” Stu said,
munching away slowly. “It’s supposed to be a hard game slitting the correct
vein in your wrist, and if you cut the wrong ’un the blood flow in’t fast
enough.”

“But he circumvented looking for
veins: blood was spurting out like a tap. No, what bothers me is, why hasn’t
someone found the body? He couldn’t have gone far.”

Stu forked up some peas. “Because
I don’t reckon he’s dead. And he is a doctor. He’d know to apply a tourniquet
to the upper arm, keep it raised until he could staunch the flow.”

“But no way could he do stitches
with just one hand.”

“Now let’s think,” Stu said. “We
know he didn’t go to a hospital or a GP’s practice. But there are other
doctors. The kind of guys who’ve been struck off, and do shady patch-up jobs
for underworld characters who don’t want anyone to know about their injuries.
Gunshot wounds, especially, because hospitals are obliged to report owt like
that to the police.”

“Sophisticated microsurgery is
his only faint chance of reattaching the fingers he’s lost.”

“He’s past all that, Jack. As a
doctor he’d also know that the most sophisticated microsurgery might not be
enough to successfully reattach his fingers anyway. Besides I can’t imagine
such an operation would work unless the pieces are freshly amputated. Repairing
his hand is way down on his list of priorities. It’s a question of survival for
him now.”

“So, these unregistered doctors.
Do you know any?”

“Aye, matter of fact I do. Only
one around here. And he’s not that far from here. Let’s go and see him.”

“Surely the police will already
have thought of dodgy doctors?”

“Have a job finding their own
arses to wipe, some of ’em. I told them what we found out, and what do they do?
Fuck all. Just bleated on about needing evidence and how all we found out about
him being in the same class as Megan Foster didn’t mean a thing. And, to be
fair, until he kidnapped you they’d got nowt to link him to the killings. Even
if they catch him, it’ll be your word against his.”

“There’s DNA left at some of the
murder scenes. That should match to the blood he left in my car.”

We left the pub and Stu drove
fast, and soon we were in a leafy suburban middle-class part of town.

“Are we phoning him?” I asked.

“No way. Dennis dun’t like
keeping appointments, and if we gave him warning he’d be gone.”

“What sort of person is he?”

“Wait and see.”

The seedy 1950s block of flats
had been built at the end of a road of semi-detached houses, and was separate
and unloved, with a scrubland of grass in front. Once past the entrance
vestibule, Stu and I trudged up flight after flight of stairs in the grim concrete
building. After each couple of worn-stair-carpeted flights, we would pass a
door with a Yale lock, and a number on it. The corridors and stairway were
painted dark brown, and there was the rank odour of second-hand cooking with a
hint of disinfectant and cat pee.

We stopped outside a dark green
door, with number 13 on it and Stu pressed the doorbell. To the right was
another flight of steps.

“Yes?” The door had opened three
inches, and the face in the crack was fat, bespectacled, and wary.

“Remember me, Dennis?” Stu asked.
“Stu Billingham. Journalist. You spoke to me a couple of years ago.”

“Journalist? No, I don’t remember
you. I don’t like journalists.”

Dennis had a high reedy voice,
and sweat had broken out on his brow, below the mostly bald pate with its
fringe of lank silver hair. The chain was preventing the door being fully open.

“We want your help. We’ll pay,”
Stu said.

There was a pause. The door
closed an inch, we heard the chain being slid off, and it swung open
completely. We followed him inside.

Dennis Hartby was a big broad
man, whose breath smelt of liquor. He was wearing an ancient green jersey and
shapeless brown trousers that kept slipping below his ample belly. There were
several empty bottles on the table, as well as the remains of a couple of
takeaways meals, the yellow rice solid on the plastic plate, the greenish sauce
all but evaporated. A laptop computer was open on the table, and I got a
glimpse of gyrating naked women on its screen. All around were discarded
clothes and newspapers, interspersed with CDs and cardboard boxes. The room
smelt of mustiness, body odour and misery.

“So what do you want?” Hartby
asked, looking from one to the other of us.

“Have you treated any patients
recently?” Stu asked.

“I don’t have patients.”

“But you’re a doctor?”

He shook his head. “Not anymore.”

“We need to know if you treated –
or rather gave some help to – a man last night. A man who lost most of his hand
– he’d have been bleeding a lot, was probably in a right bad way.”

Dennis looked uncomfortable, his
eyes shifting to right and left. “Of course not. If a man lost his hand he’d
obviously need to go to a hospital with proper facilities. What could I
possibly do to help someone with injuries like that?”

“Stitch up the stump as best you
could,” I said, surprised to see how the ex-doctor appeared to be truculent,
self righteous and overly defensive. “You could have cleaned up the wound and
dressed it properly, maybe given him oral antibiotics to prevent infection such
as septicaemia, given him somewhere to rest and recover. If he couldn’t go to
hospital he’d need someone to stop him bleeding to death – a way of buying time
until he could get his injuries treated properly.”

“No. I wouldn’t dare touch
somebody with injuries such as that. It would be illegal and totally
irresponsible.”

“Not even if he was dying, and
there was no time to get him to hospital anyway?”

“I’d give him first aid and call
an ambulance. I’m sorry. I wish I could help you, but I honestly can’t.”

“So you won’t mind us taking a
look round your flat?” I asked pleasantly.

“Matter of fact I would! What
right do you have to charge into my home and–”

I took no notice of him, and as
Stu tried to keep him occupied, I opened every door and looked inside. A filthy
kitchen, stinking of stale food, a bathroom with a foul shower curtain, and a
second bedroom with just a bed with no mattress, bare unpainted walls and no
carpet. I searched the flat twice. No trace of anyone.

I went back into the kitchen,
forced myself to open the swing-bin lid, but there was only kitchen rubbish, no
blood-soaked swabs or bandages.

Dennis looked relieved as I
returned, shaking my head to Stu.

“Sorry to have troubled you Dr
Hartby,” I said, as we walked to the door.

“I told you, I’m not a doctor!”

*
* * *

In the car a wave of tiredness
overwhelmed me. I closed my eyes.

“Get some sleep before you
collapse,” Stu observed. “I’ll take you back home now.”

My mobile rang. It was Lucy.

“Jack? I wanted to say sorry
about earlier.”

“It’s okay.”

“All this has upset me so much.
That’s what it’s been like for me these past weeks. And hearing that Lamelle
actually told you the truth about Aiden, and now he’s probably dead and can’t
corroborate it. It’s so upsetting, so awful. I know I reacted badly. I know I
hurt you.”

“Sure.”

“I’m always saying hurtful things
to you Jack, and I’m sorry. I don’t mean to . It’s just that I love you so much
I lash out sometimes. I don’t mean it. I never mean it.”

“It’s okay.”

“They want me to stay in for
another night, but tomorrow I’ll get a cab all the way home. Should be with you
around tea time.”

“Great, sleep well.”

“Miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“And Jack?”

My eyes were closing with
tiredness.

“I love you. I love you, Jack.”

Stu, sitting beside me, driving and
minding his own business, looked straight ahead.

She cut the connection. Just as I
was about to lie back in the seat and give way to sleep, there was the ping
noise, telling me I’d got a text message. It was from Caroline:

Are you okay? I went to the hospital
but they told me you’d checked out. Please Jack, you mustn’t rush around until
you’re completely better. You must go straight home and get some rest. Can I
come and see you and just relax with you? I think about you all the time. I
want to be with you xx

Without pausing to think, I
texted her back.

Missing u 2. Can you come to my
house in half an hour?

I hesitated for a moment,
wondering if I was doing the right thing. Then pressed send, smiling to myself
as I watched the flickering message sending words on the screen and the little
spinning circle, then feeling a warm sense of satisfaction as message sent
appeared. As I drifted into sleep I thought of the way Caroline had held my
hand last night. The smell of her hair.

Once back at my house, I switched
off my mobile phone and unplugged the land line. The last thing I needed was
another call from Lucy.

Shortly afterwards, Caroline
arrived, and as she came into my arms there was none of the hesitation, the
prickly awkwardness of my first encounters with Lucy. Caroline demanded
nothing, she didn’t push me.

We opened a bottle of wine and
she told me all about her fiancée Geoff, how they’d been going out together for
years, but they weren’t right for each other. I told her about Lucy, but I
found myself defending her, unable to tell Caroline Lucy’s secret, but
explaining how she’d suffered all her life.

“You still love her?” Caroline
said in a low voice, sipping her wine.

I nodded. “I don’t know why. I
do. It’s just there. I can’t turn my feelings off.”

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t
know.”

She stood up and swayed slightly.
“I’m prepared to wait for you, Jack.” She put a hand up to her head. “Look, I’m
sorry, but I’ve had too much to drink to drive tonight. Can I stay here?”

“Sure.”

I made up the spare bed, and
wondered if she’d stay there, or wander up to my bedroom, and, if she did, would
I have the strength of character to resist her advances? I like to think I
would. I liked Caroline. But she was young, innocent, and, for me, there just
wasn’t enough chemistry for me to want to have a lasting relationship with her.

*
* * *

I didn’t go to bed, just dozed
off on the sofa in the sitting room. Then, during a moment of wakefulness,
something ran through my mind. I’d been thinking idly about what had happened
in the past few hours, and something made me remember the visit that Stu and I
had made to Dennis Hartby, the struck-off doctor. I thought back to his
behaviour.