Doppelganger by Geoffrey West Page A

countryman in his element.
    “Never.”
    “Well you got the right vehicle
for it. Never make it in an ordinary car, but yours should do it easy. Love
them Land Rovers I do, built like a bloody tank, and they’ll tackle anything.
All you gotta do is, build up your revs at the bottom and go for it in second
gear. Watch out for mud, you might slide about a bit, but I think you’ll make
it okay. It’s these rains, see, washed away part of the road last summer.
Before that, they had tippers and trucks and all sorts going up and down there
– renovating the Manor, so I gather. Some townie with more money than sense
doing it up as a country retreat.”
    “Well, thanks.”
    “Tell you what, my friend, how
about if I wait and watch? If you get stuck in the mud I’ll nip back to my farm
and fetch the tractor to tow you out.”
    “That’s really kind of you.”
    “You’re in the countryside now
boy, we all mucks in. Give it a go then.”
    So I did. I could have done
without this obstacle at the end of such a trying day, but I did as my kind new
neighbour suggested. Accelerated hard, then plunged forwards. I climbed and
climbed until I felt the engine’s impetus failing, but, even though I felt the
car slide, I made it to the top. Then, once past the peak, it was almost as
hair-raising, braking in low gear downwards, with the vehicle slewing sideways,
practically into the deep ditch on one side. As the farmer had advised me, I
drove on for a long time after the going was flat. Finally, when I’d almost
given up hope, I saw the house in the distance.
    I turned through a gap in the
high stone wall and parked in front of what looked like a ruined castle,
complete with castellated towers. After parking, I walked under the tumbledown
gatehouse, to the inner courtyard. It was just as Ann had said. There was a
brand new section of wall grafted onto the old one, in the centre of which was
a beautiful dark timber varnished front door.
    I went back to the car and sat
there for a moment, trying to take it all in. This place, apparently at least
five miles from any village, was going to be my home for the next few weeks.
    What an unholy mess my life was.
The woman I was in love with was in York, while I had to write a vicious
gangster’s unauthorised memoirs while pondering on the prospect of being a dead
man myself very soon. I picked up the Glock and weighed it in my hand, hoping
against hope I wouldn’t have to use it. The balance felt good, the weight just
right. I gripped and aimed two-handed, just as I’d been taught to at the gun
club, many years ago.
    As I carried my suitcase and a
handful of papers through the doorway, which mercifully unlocked after the
third try from the brand new key, I found the light switch to my left.
Astonishingly, the interior seemed more as if it had leapt from the pages of an
interior design magazine. A host of halogen ceiling lights sparkled down,
delivering pure breathlessly-bright whiteness.
     
    *
* * *
     
    The interior of my new temporary
home was every bit as fantastic as Ann had described it. The following morning,
after one of the most restful night’s sleeps I’d had in ages, I got out of the
luxurious king-sized bed and took a look around.
    The bedroom, on the first floor,
led off a corridor behind the mezzanine gallery that looked down on the huge
entrance hall. Magnificent huge stained-glass windows now lit the ultra-modern
maple-wood staircase and hallway, bathing everything in sunlight, tinted blue
and green according to the windows’ hue. There were four double bedrooms
including my own, and each of them had pristine cream-and-white décor, and
floor-to-ceiling cupboards, and there was thick cream carpeting on the floors.
    Downstairs I found a space-age
kitchen that was absolutely huge, with acres and acres of work surfaces and a
big table in the centre, around which there were six chairs. The living room
had relaxing amber-yellow walls and a white ceiling, and a lot of