Doppelganger Read Online Free

and echoing corridors on the
outer edges of Surrey.
    “Come on, Jack, this is me, Stu,
you know I’m on your side. All I want is a juicy quote. Any truth in the rumour
that she was a victim of the Bible Killer?”
    “Ask the police Press Office.”
    “She was escaping from the
bastard and ran out in front of your car?”
    “The police didn’t tell me
anything.”
    “But that’s your informed
opinion?”
    “That’s my totally uninformed opinion.”
    Stuart’s meaty fist grabbed my
shoulder as I tried to push him out of the way. “But they held you overnight,
did they not?”
    “No comment.”
    He shook his head sadly, hand
still resting on my arm. “Why did they hold you?”
    “The police released me without
charge, and the woman’s recovering in hospital.”
    “And the police reckon she was a
Bible Killer victim?”
    “As I said, Stu, ask their Press
Office.”
    “I like it. Bestselling true
crime author involved in the kind of life-and-death drama he normally only
writes about. Psychologist, Dr Jack Lockwood saved the life of the Bible
Killer’s latest victim .”
    Later, as I accelerated up the
road, I thought back to the years I’d known Stuart: his bluff remarks, tedious
jokes, and crass insensitivity. He was different to me in almost every way.
    I often wondered why he was my
best friend.
     
    *
* * *
     
    You’ll find my small 17th-century
house, which was once the gatehouse of a large, now-demolished estate, at the
end of an unmade road. I live alone, and there’s a part-built extension at the
back that I’ve never got around to finishing. I parked in the front drive and
walked through to my kitchen breakfast room which has a view out across the
Glossop Valley below.
    I had a snack and went to bed to
make up for my sleepless night. When I woke up it was evening. Had the woman
I’d hit with my car really been the latest intended victim of the Bible Killer?
She’d clearly been attacked, beaten about the head, perhaps half strangled, and
when she’d run in front of my car it had seemed as if she’d been running for
her life. And she’d mentioned someone pursuing her.
    So far, if indeed she was a Bible
Killer victim, she was the only one of his victims to survive, and it would be
a massive breakthrough if she could supply any clues as to his identity. By
‘his’, I of course meant his or her identity: serial killers can be females
too, though it’s normally considered a male crime. The girl I’d knocked down
with my car had said: Don’t let him get me but could I be sure she’d said
‘him’? Everything about that night was so confused it could equally have been
her.
    I thought back to the research
I’d done on the Yorkshire Ripper. Only a couple of Peter Sutcliffe’s victims
had survived, one of them had been attacked from behind and hadn’t seen the
man, the other had given a fairly good description; but, because the police
hadn’t linked her attack with the Ripper, no one had followed it up. After
being beaten on the head with a hammer, one of the women had suffered from
depression ever since. I’d even uncovered a theory that Sutcliffe himself had
been involved in a road accident and sustained personality-changing head
injuries as, curiously, had the mass murderer Fred West, who’d allegedly
acquired such an injury resulting from a motorcycle accident.
    I could only hope that last
night’s victim’s injuries weren’t going to affect her in any permanent way.
Stuart had told me her name: Caroline Lawrence.
    It was 6 o’clock in the evening,
probably around the time that hospital visiting was allowed. The police had
told me she was in St Aiden’s Hospital, so I drove back along the A2 to
Canterbury, arriving at St Aiden’s reception desk half an hour later.
    “She’s in Edith Grendel Ward,”
said the receptionist, dismissing me as she turned to the next person in the
queue. “Sixth floor.”
    As I rode up in the lift I
reflected that it was unlikely the ward sister would