Doppelganger by Geoffrey West Page A

cubicles at the
back of the pub. “Five minutes is all you get.”
    He told me about the latest
victim, Rebecca Fenton. This time her head had been more or less pulverised,
literally smashed to a wet, fragments-of-skull-filled, mess, most likely by a
hammer or heavy metal object. This time, as well as a Bible laid open on her
chest, there was a copy of TS Elliott’s book Murder in the Cathedral, and a note
saying, “As Thomas died, so did she”. Murder in the Cathedral is
a dramatised account by the famous English poet T S Elliot, summarising the
life and death of St Thomas. The shock and outrage of St Thomas’s barbaric
death and his subsequent sainthood, was the reason why Canterbury has been a
magnet for pilgrims since medieval times.
    Apart from the method of her
murder, Dave couldn’t tell me much more. Anna wasn’t a religious person, had no
affiliation to any church that her family knew of, so why someone should
compare her to one of the world’s most famous sainted martyrs was anyone’s
guess.
    “Millie V reckons he’s someone
perfectly ordinary, probably a dull character, who can hide behind a façade of
respectability,” Dave concluded, “and he’s obviously a religious obsessive,
though that may be something he keeps private.”
    “And what do you think?”
    “She’s pissing in the wind like
the rest of us, but faffs around inventing bollocks to try and impress Fulford.
A lot’s riding on this case for Fulford. He hates the media, as you may have
gathered, and he’s not big on police politics. He retires next year, and if he
could solve this case it would be a massive boost to his ego, whereas if he
fucks it up he’ll be remembered as the incompetent twat who let people be murdered
unnecessarily. Underneath his bluster he’s shit-scared of messing up, and he
can’t take the pressure. He’s nervous. Jittery.” Dave sipped his beer. “And
that kind of feeling rubs off on the team. He bawls people out for no reason,
he gets excited if there’s the tiniest slip-up. Between you and me Jack, I
haven’t got a good feeling about this business. We need more troops, more
resources, the budget won’t stretch to the overtime we need. For instance,
there was a string of similar killings in Nottingham a few years ago, and I
think we should liaise with the team working on that, see if there are
similarities. Fulford won’t even consider it. He’s so petrified of getting
things wrong, he’s scared of taking any initiatives.”
    “That’s bad.”
    “It’s not bad. It’s disastrous.”
     
    *
* * *
     
    The phone was ringing when I
opened the door to The Gatehouse. It was silent for a few moments, so I thought
it was a wrong number. But just as I was about to hang up, a gravelly voice
whispered. “You taking the hint, Jack? Are you abandoning the book?”
     “Who is this?”
    “Yes or no, you fucker?”
    “Tell me who you are.”
    “Does that mean you’re not giving
it up? We meant what we said. You won’t know when it’s going to happen. A
bullet or a knife. Or you’ll get pushed under a train–”
    “You’ve made your point.”
    “Then make the right decision,
mate.”
    When the phone rang again I
snatched it up quickly, heart racing. It was Douglas Hosegood’s wife, Cecile.
    “Cecile,” I said in surprise.
“Good to hear from you.”
    I’d always considered her a
lovely person. Naturally kind and charming and also highly intelligent, Cecile
was a reasonably accomplished poet, well known on both sides of the Atlantic.
She’d always been kind to me, protective in the same way that Douglas, my old
friend the writer who’d helped my early career, had been. Something in her
voice scared me.
    “It’s Douglas.” I could tell she
was close to tears. “You know he had a heart bypass operation five years ago?
In the last couple of months he’s gone down and down. They say he’s got to have
another bypass as soon as possible. He’s got it into his head that he’s not
going to