Doppelganger (27 page)

Accelerating hard. 40... 50 ...
60... 70... And still no cars in sight. I’d lost them. God, if only I’d been
seconds faster. I pictured Caroline, dead for real this time at Roger Lamelle’s
hands. Had they turned off the main road?

Then, to my relief, I saw red
tail-lights in the distance. Slowed down to match their speed. And, sure
enough, I recognised the number plate. It was Caroline’s car. I was too far
away to see anything but two heads in the front of the vehicle. Caroline was
driving at thirty mph, the correct speed for the city. I resolved to stay back.
On no account could I risk Lamelle knowing I was following. I was too busy
concentrating on driving to ring Stu or the police. Besides, I had the feeling
that there was no time to waste trying to involve anyone else.

Keeping well back. Continuing
along the suburban road heading south, towards the edge of the city. Luckily
there were plenty of streetlights, and Hartby’s nondescript Audi wasn’t likely
to be recognisable, as it might have been in daylight.

We were on the A2050, in open
countryside. On a road I knew well.

Calculating fast. I reasoned that
Lamelle would probably either be aiming to go towards the A2, and  turn right,
back towards London, or, more likely, left to make straight for Dover, with the
idea of somehow boarding a cross-Channel ferry. I knew that there was a turning
off this road onto two narrower thoroughfares that led along parallel, then
rejoined this road further down. It was a desperate strategy. But it was clear
that Lamelle was planning to kill Caroline once he’d used her, he couldn’t
possibly risk leaving her alive. Besides, he wouldn’t be able to resist another
victim, particularly one who’d eluded him before.

Fields to my right. No lights
anywhere. Alone, with only my cranked-high heartbeat for company.

I thought quickly: Caroline had
been averaging about forty mph in the main road just now. All I had to do was
outpace her and get back onto the carriageway in front of them.

I took the left turn then
accelerated fast, following the narrow winding lane and praying that I wouldn’t
miss the next right turn. I almost did, screeching to a halt as I swung the
wheel at the last minute. Then I was roaring down the road that I was certain
cut back on to the main thoroughfare I’d so recently departed from. At the end,
at the junction with the main road, I braked to a standstill.

Then I stared to the right for
lights coming along the main road. A lorry, then an estate car, came and went.

At last, in the distance, I saw
what looked like Caroline’s car. Holding my breath I waited, and then, sure
enough, I made out the Corsa’s shape and the first letter of the number plate.
I reversed a few feet, killed my lights, and gunned the engine in neutral,
determined that Lamelle wouldn’t see me until the very last second.

It was going to be down to
judgment and luck. I prayed to myself, prayed to God it would work.

Caroline’s car came closer to the
junction. My engine was revved high. Then just as it approached, I jammed the
gear lever into drive. Revelled in the gearbox’s roaring squeal of protest as I
tore forwards, aiming directly for Caroline’s passenger door.

The impact lifted Caroline’s
smaller vehicle off the road. I got a jumbled glimpse of Lamelle rolling
forwards, the airbag bursting into his chest. The crashing, splintering and
screeching went on for seconds until both cars came to a standstill, my front wing
crumpled into his buckled door panel, smoke pouring upwards into the sky,
feeling my own airbag crushing me back into the seat.

My driver’s door wouldn’t open,
but I made it out of the passenger side, running along behind both vehicles.
The driver’s door of the Corsa was flung open wide, but there was no sign of
Caroline. Lamelle was moving, trying to pull himself from the wreckage.

Then I saw her, a few feet away,
still lying on the ground, where she’d rolled into the gutter. I ran across and
saw there was blood on her chest, helped her to her feet and onto the pavement.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she said.
“His knife hand jerked, but it’s just a flesh wound.”

I held her in my arms, shaking
with relief that she was safe.

A car had pulled up and the driver
was beside us, asking if we were all right, at the same time as he was dialling
a number on his mobile phone.

“We’re fine, thanks,” I answered
him, as he gabbled to the emergency services. Muttering about two cars, and one
casualty.

“No,
two casualties
,” I
told him, pointing to the Corsa.

“Oh right mate, I didn’t see
anyone else. In the back seat are they?”

“No, the passenger in front.”

Caroline and I both looked
across. As we heard the sirens of the approaching vehicles it was clear that
the other car was already empty.

*
* * *

“Not to worry, he can’t get far,”
said the burly police sergeant, as we sat on the pavement, waiting for the
ambulance to come and check Caroline’s wound, though she protested there was no
need.

“He may be on foot, but he’s
desperate,” I said.

“Don’t fret, lad. After all,
where’s he going to hide?” the policeman said reasonably. “We’ll get him within
minutes. You two must be shattered. I’ve got your details. Best thing is for
you to get checked over by the medics.” He looked across at the two wrecked
cars. “You’re saying you deliberately rammed the other car, sir?”

“Yes. Roger Lamelle is the Bible
Killer. If I hadn’t stopped him he’d have killed Caroline. Can you contact DI
Farley?”

He nodded and dialled a number
and spoke for a long time.

“DI Farley is on his way, sir.
He’d be grateful if you wouldn’t mind waiting, unless of course the young lady
needs to get to hospital urgently.”

Within minutes the entire area
was swarming with uniformed police, and a wholesale search had been instigated.
Farley had repeated the platitudes I’d heard earlier about how Lamelle couldn’t
get away.

I held Caroline in my arms. She
was trembling, the shock had finally got to her.

“I’ll never forget what you did
for me tonight,” I whispered to her.

“Take me home, Jack. I can’t stop
shaking. I feel sick. Some of the things he said to me were unbelievable. He
was telling me about the awful things he did to those girls’ bodies...”

I called a cab to take us back
home.

*
* * *

Next day I hired a car and drove
down to Wales and collected Lucy. She was sleeping when I arrived, and, once
settled in the warm car, she slept again, a smile on her face. It was a relief
to me, for I didn’t know what on earth I could possibly say to her.

Alone on the journey I’d
reconciled myself to the fact that our affair was doomed. But when she was in
the car, lying back in the seat and lost in slumber, I remembered the feelings
I’d always had for her that just wouldn’t go away. Was our relationship really
so impossible?

When I saw her slumbering
peacefully I persuaded myself that we had a chance. We
really
had a
chance. Okay, so Lucy was selfish, moody, difficult in so many ways, but did it
really matter? I could learn to make allowances for her, to adapt, after all I
was hardly perfect, was I? Although I had strong feelings for Caroline, and
she’d risked her life for me, something told me that my love for Caroline was
never going to match the emotions I felt for Lucy. And right then I couldn’t
imagine feeling this way about any other woman in the world. Ever. 

I thought again of what Roger
Lamelle had said in the car, that Lucy had been partly responsible for poor
little Aiden’s death, that he had merely aided and abetted the murder. Could it
be true? It was dark, I was worn out from the long drive and the stress of all
that had happened. But no, I realised, No, it
couldn’t
be true.

We’d arrived and she woke up and
stretched in the car, as I walked round and opened the door. We were outside
Mad
about the
Book
, and I just had to carry her case upstairs.

I realised that I was never ever
going to be able to ask her the question that was in my mind. If she once again
believed that I doubted her integrity, that in one mistaken moment she might
have accidently killed Aiden, our affair was doomed. Yet could I really go on
loving her, not knowing the truth?

In her flat, as she bustled
around, switching on the kettle and checking her post, I felt a deep sadness,
remembering the first time I’d come here, the beginning of my love affair.
Since that time, both of us had changed. Maybe, I thought with a fresh surge of
optimism, we could go back to the way we were when I had no idea she was Megan
Foster?  How I longed for that innocent period, before I knew what I knew now.

I was in the tiny living room,
channel-hopping to see what was on television, and Lucy was in the kitchen,
making us something to eat. Suddenly all the lights went out.

“Jack?” she called out. “Jack,
what’s happened?”

“Power cut or a blown fuse.”

“Bugger! Just when we–”

The single blood-curdling scream
cut short her words.

Panicking, I dived for the
kitchen door, tripping over the pile of books on the floor in the darkness.
When I’d struggled up and reached the kitchen, I saw that light from the
outside window was spilling through, enough to illuminate the scene in front of
me. As I drew closer I could see Lucy, with a man behind her, the razor sharp
tip of one of her special woodwork chisels held against her throat. The man’s
other hand, I could see, was barely a bandaged stump, with just one finger
projecting from the white cloths.

“Shall I kill her quickly or
slowly?” Roger Lamelle asked me. “You choose.”

Time stood still. All I could
hear was the slowly dripping tap in the sink, and the heartbeat thudding in my
ears as the unreality of the situation dawned on me. I heard another sound,
more subtle than the dripping tap. A bubbling noise, a slow
burble burble
,
and I realised that the soup that Lucy had put on the stove was boiling.

“She followed me here, to
Canterbury,” Roger said, the chisel pressed hard against Lucy throat. “What I
told you in the car was true, Jack. Megan did partly murder little Aiden. I
helped her, but she started it. I merely finished the job.”

And all at once I knew that
nothing in the world mattered but saving Lucy, holding her in my arms and
telling her that I loved her and would stay with her all my life. I didn’t care
about what she’d done in the past. That knowledge felt sure and it felt right.

But if Lamelle had his way it was
never going to happen.

“Jack,” Lucy said quietly in the
darkness. “Just leave now. Once he’s killed me, he’ll kill you, you know that’s
what’s going to happen. If you get away now, you can survive.” Tears welled up
in her eyes as she spoke. “
Survive, Jack!
Forget about me.”

I stood there, wondering what I
could do.

“
Do it for me, Jack!
” She
was crying now. “Remember me, remember that I loved you more than I’ve ever
loved anyone in my life before.” She was sobbing so much she could hardly
enunciate the words. “I love you Jack. I’m going to die, and all I care about
is telling you how much I love you.
How much I’ve always loved you
...
I’ll love you for as long as I live...”

“How touching,” Roger said, the
chisel’s tip etching its way into her neck, a tear of blood spilling down
across the metal. “But Jack here was prepared to abandon you, did you know that
Megan?”

“Abandon me?”

“Didn’t you know? He’s got a new
girlfriend now. Caroline Lawrence. She stayed at his house last night. I was
watching her car arrive.”

“He’s lying.”

“Come on, Jack. She might as well
know the truth about you before she dies.”

I was moving closer to them, the
saucepan of boiling soup was to the left of me. I groped for the saucepan’s
handle, lifted it in the air in the darkness.

“Listen to me, Lucy. He’s lying.
Caroline did stay at my flat but nothing happened.”

There was no sound but Lucy’s
soft whimper, then her sobs. The sobs grew louder. I wondered if he’d be able
to see what I was planning to do. Then I heard Roger Lamelle begin to laugh.

His laughing went on for what
seemed like an eternity as I moved closer.

But it ended.

With a snarl of rage.

I dropped the saucepan and leapt
forward to see Lucy’s hand over Lamelle’s, blood squirting out underneath her
fingers. A second later, she had ducked out of his grip, and I saw the flick
knife I remembered she always carried in an ankle strap, sticking out of the
back of his hand. He was still holding the chisel.

Knocking him to the floor was
easy. So was pulverising his face with my fists. When he’d stopped moving I sat
back on my heels.

“It’s okay, Lucy,” I said. “It’s
over.”

“Wait there, watch him, I’ll go
to the mains and switch the lights back on.”

When it was illuminated the scene
in front of us was surreal. Blood was everywhere, so was the spilt soup,
lending an even more macabre touch to the scene. Lamelle’s face appeared to be
practically pulped, a mass of blood and broken tissue, his only hand twitching
regularly, Lucy’s flick-knife still deeply embedded in the flesh, the chisel
beside it. My knuckles were torn and hurt, searing agony shooting up through my
hands and arms.

I stood up, looked towards Lucy
to check she was all right. She stumbled as she came across the room.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She nodded.

I crossed into the other room for
my mobile phone and dialled. On my return I was surprised to see Lucy occupying
the position I’d just been in, straddled across Lamelle’s prone body. His
shallow breathing was obvious, the chest moving slowly up and down.

Lamelle began to moan. His hand
twitched, he was beginning to stir. He opened his eyes. His moans gained
momentum, morphing into a ghastly feral shriek that was getting louder and
louder.

“You don’t have to watch,” she
muttered. “Go out of the room if you like.”

I saw that in her hands was a
long kitchen knife she’d obviously brought into the room. She held it in her
two palms, gripping it tightly, blade pointed downwards.

“What do you mean?” I asked her,
not realising what she was saying. I’d just dialled 999.

“Cut the call,” she said.

“But we’ve got to–”

“I SAID CUT THE CALL!”

But it was too late.

Emergency. Which  service do
you require caller?

Weirdly, crazily, it was déjà vu.
The operator’s disembodied voice took me back to the beginning of my adventure,
when I’d just run down Caroline Lawrence, and had called the emergency services.
When I’d been cold and scared and lonely, kneeling on a windswept road in the
rain, thinking I’d just run over and killed a pedestrian...

What service do you require?
If you don’t reply an automatic scan will be launched to track your whereabouts...
’

I pressed the cut-off button.

Lucy looked different somehow as
she held the knife above her head, the point downwards, its dagger blade
shimmering in the light.

“Jack, this man has been
responsible for thirteen deaths to my knowledge, what’s more he destroyed my
life.”

“So this is it,” I said,
reasonably. “It’s over for him.”

“Yes. So you
do
understand.”

Before I realised what she was
going to do, the knife came up in an arc above her head. I ran forward to stop
her.

But I was too late.

She plunged the knife into his
chest, to within an inch of the hilt.

I stepped back in horror. To see
her withdraw the sharp knife, then repeat the process again and again.

Over and over again she plunged
the knife into Lamelle’s chest, until what had been a shirtfront was nothing
but a mass of oozing redness.

Of course there was no point, for
Roger Lamelle had died already. The cadaver was a pulp, a shell of mushy gore.

I stood back, awed and shocked.

Lucy staggered back and sat on
the floor. She didn’t say anything, just turned towards me.

Which was when I saw the blood on
her jeans. Just at the waist. Below where the dagger-like chisel had been
thrust into her abdomen, surely Roger Lamelle’s final instinctive act,
committed as she’d leaned across his body.

Lucy followed my horrified gaze,
unaware until now of what had happened to her. Before I could stop her she’d
pulled out the chisel, creating a spurt of blood, pulsing fast, spreading
everywhere, pooling at the floor in front of her. Lucy’s hands flew across the
wound trying to stem the flow.

“Jack,” she said as I rushed
across to her and covered her blood-soaked fingers with my own, desperately
trying to close the wound. “I meant what I said.
I will always love you
...
You’re everything I’ve ever...” The words ended, as her eyes grew wide with
fear as blood bubbled out of her lips. She fell forwards into my arms.

*
* * *

Lamelle deserved his end, of
course he did. But the sheet depraved savagery of Lucy’s final attack was
something I would never be able to forget. But could I really blame her? I’m
ashamed to say that a part of me had enjoyed watching him die.

When the police and ambulance
arrived, I lied. Of course I lied.

Afterwards, while I waited in the
hospital corridor and the doctor came outside with a grim face to tell me the
worst, I’d already guessed that Lucy’s wound would have proved too much. The
doctor was going on about internal injuries, and the impossibility of
survival...

*
* * *

They let me sit with her, and
alone with Lucy’s body in the side ward, I held her hand and wept for all the
days and nights ahead that I would never share with her. 

Back at Herring Row police
station, in the interview room, my lawyer, David, was sitting beside me as DCI
Fulford, my old enemy, began the questions.

“So, Dr Lockwood, let’s get this
straight,” Fulford said, adjusting his heavy black-framed glasses, “Roger
Lamelle was already in Ms Green’s flat, waiting for her when you went in?”

“He must have been.”

“He held her with that specially
sharp chisel’s tip at her throat. What did ye do?”

“Lucy stabbed him in the hand–”

“With the illegally held
flick-knife she kept strapped to her ankle?”

“Yes.”

“Why did she carry a weapon like
that?”

“How would I know?”

“Then what happened?”

“I overpowered him, knocked him
to the floor. Punched him in the face.”

“You smashed his jaw, broke his
nose, shattered his cheekbone. Was that degree of violence really necessary?”

I stared him out. Fulford cleared
his throat.

“So what happened after that?” he
continued.

“There was a struggle, during
which I managed to get a knife and I stabbed him with it.”

“You stabbed him with it?”

“That’s what I said.”

I’d thought to grip the knife’s
handle before the police came, so that it would have my fingerprints on it.

“Did you have to stab him so many
times? For Christ's sake man, you can only die once!”

“He was an animal.”

“Stabbing a man whose already on
the floor that many times sounds like a frenzied attack to me. Frankly Dr
Lockwood, it sounds like the act of someone who’s completely out of control,
someone
who has lost his reason
. And you do have a history of psychiatric illness,
do ye not?”

“Can these questions wait?”
David, sitting beside me, said. “My client needs to rest.”

“Aye. But this is not over. I’ve
not finished with you, boy!”

 “Nor I with you, Chief
Inspector. I flushed out your killer, when you were too blinkered to carry out
a proper investigation.”

“And aren’t you the clever man?”

“It’s certainly something you’ll
never be accused of. Your investigation has been a pathetic fiasco.
You
should be ashamed
.”

Fulford glared at me with hatred.
Then I saw the fear behind his eyes, the anticipation he obviously felt for his
failure, his awareness of how utterly ineptly he’d handled the case from start
to finish, having his own BIA feed information to the killer. In that moment I
felt truly sorry for him: I could see he was a broken man.

“I’m sorry, Chief Inspector. I’m
truly sorry for what I said. I know you did your best.”

“
Keep your sympathy, Dr
Lockwood
,” he spluttered.

I knew he would always hate me.

He stood up abruptly and left the
room.  In one second I saw, or I thought I saw, the tremble of his lower lip, a
precursor to an emotional breakdown. A man like Fulford couldn’t possibly sob
in front of anyone else, least of all me, the man who’d unwittingly exposed his
abject failure and ineptitude. He was going to have to live with the knowledge
that because of his incompetence, several woman had died unnecessarily.

Weariness overtook me, and I felt
my eyelids closing. The aches and pains of all my trials and tribulations of
the past few days culminated in a surge of searing agony as I pulled myself to
my feet.

*
* * *

One day you’ve got it all, the
next you’re fucked.

That’s life. Or
C’est la Vie
,
as the late Dr Roger Lamelle would have said.

I thought back to a few weeks
ago, when I’d first fallen in love with Lucy. And my memories of the short time
we’d had together. Nothing was going to take those memories away. But every
time I thought of her now I couldn’t get the image of her repeatedly stabbing
Lamelle out of my mind, no matter how hard I tried, and the image of her
savagery repelled me. Maybe time would take care of it, lessen the horror of
those dreadful images, make me remember the good things about her. Her laugh, her
sense of humour, her feistiness, her sheer intelligence and stimulating
conversation. And the magic that had happened between us whenever we were
together.

The memory of the first time I
fell in love with her. Yes, that was still there, that was still intact, a
memory I could grab and hold onto in the long, cold lonely nights ahead.

And Caroline?

Caroline Lawrence is a sweet
kind-natured girl, who had risked her life for me. But if the resurgence of my
feelings for Lucy taught me anything it showed me that with Caroline there was
just no spark, or rather the spark wasn’t strong enough for me to want to make
a commitment, and it wouldn’t be fair to lead her to believe I ever could. The
previous evening I had let her down gently, explaining that I needed time alone
to sort out my feelings. I don’t know if she understood, but if she didn’t
understand then, I knew she would in time.