The Case of the Deadly Doppelgänger

by Lucy Banks

  Kester leaned forward, feeling more excited by the moment. Finally, a breakthrough. After so many dead ends, it’s about time we got lucky.

  “The archaeologist found a few other things in the grave,” Luke continued. “A rotted piece of cloth. Part of an old scabbard. And, a weird clay figure that had broken in two. Most of the markings on it had been rubbed away over time, but the guy said he thought it was some kind of poppet.”

  “What the heck is a poppet?” Kester asked. He’d always thought it was a brand of chocolate, but he was guessing that in this instance, it wasn’t. Unless the warrior asked to be buried with some snacks, he thought and bit back a giggle.

  Luke looked at Dimitri, who nodded, happy to take centre stage. “A poppet is a little figure,” he explained, “used in magic rituals. That is the right word, ritual?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” Pamela confirmed, nodding enthusiastically. “I took a course in magic ritual a few years back. Pagans used special figures, called poppets, in their spells. They sometimes represented gods or even people that they didn’t like and wanted to hurt.”

  “Like voodoo dolls?” Kester asked. He’d watched a horror film about voodoo doctors as a child and hadn’t been able to sleep for about a week afterwards.

  “Yes, similar to voodoo dolls,” Pamela said with a smile. “Sometimes, Pagans even used these figures to trap spirits. A bit like how we trap spirits in water bottles, I suppose.”

  “Only their method was rather classier,” Larry added with a sanctimonious nod.

  “What does this poppet look like, then?” Kester watched the others receive their breakfasts, inhaled the wonderful aroma of grease, fat, and meat, and felt incredibly jealous. He looked longingly at Mike’s fry-up, wondering if Mike would mind if he stole a slice of toast.

  “According to the archaeologist, it’s real simple-looking,” Luke said, oblivious to Kester’s yearning gaze at his food as he bit into his beans on toast. “Made of limestone. Looks like two identical human-shaped figures that were once stuck together, but have now snapped in two, holding their hands over their hearts.”

  “Two figures?” Kester looked up. “Two identical figures?”

  “Aha, now he gets it!” Dimitri said with a sarcastic smile. “Go on, Kester. You are the detective, you have worked it out, I can tell.”

  “This must relate to our spirit,” Kester breathed. “Two identical figures. Twins. Doppelgängers. And Pamela, you just said these poppets were used to trap spirits. That sounds like one hell of a coincidence to me.”

  Miss Wellbeloved beamed. “We were thinking exactly the same, Kester. We wondered if the spirit had been trapped in this limestone figurine, and, when it broke, it was suddenly released.”

  “So, the poor fetch has been trapped in a poppet for a couple of thousand years,” Mike said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “That’d be enough to make any spirit furious, wouldn’t it?”

  Kester thought hard. It all made a lot of sense. “What caused the poppet to break, I wonder?” he asked.

  Dimitri shrugged. “It could happen over time, the land shifting, you know.”

  “Yes, the coastline around here erodes frequently,” Pamela added. “Or it could have just happened through impact. Or,” she said significantly, “if someone was nosing around up there, digging up graves like we were.”

  “Someone like the Lyme Regis Ancient History Club, you mean?” Kester suggested.

  “Hey, we all thought the soil felt weirdly loose when we were digging up the skeleton, didn’t we?” Mike said suddenly, looking excited.

  “So perhaps someone had dug it up already, then replaced the soil,” Miss Wellbeloved said breathlessly.

  They all nodded. Kester whistled and leaned back in his chair. “Wow. That’s intense. But why would they cover the grave back over, then? Wouldn’t they want to tell the whole town what they’d discovered?”

  “It depends who discovered it, I suppose,” Pamela said. “And whether they realised that they’d disturbed a spirit or not.”

  Kester swallowed. The new information answered a lot of questions but left still more unanswered. They now knew the spirit was old, angry, and murderous, and targeting a particular group of people. But where was it hiding? And what kind of spirit was it?

  “So,” he began as he tried to make sense of it all. “Surely it must be a fetch then? Miss Wellbeloved, you said that fetches linked themselves to Ireland or Scotland—”

  “It’s rarer to find them in Scotland,” she interrupted.

  “Yeah, but still. This ancient Celtic warrior comes from Scotland. Isn’t it safe to presume that the fetch came from Scotland with the warrior, then was imprisoned here for centuries? And now he’s roaming around Lyme Regis, furious with humans for trapping it for so long?”

  Miss Wellbeloved took a deep breath. “The thing is,” she said slowly, “a fetch is a very particular type of spirit. It’s deeply wedded to a particular location. If it can’t be in that location, it weds itself to a person.”

  “Like the Celtic warrior?” Kester suggested.

  Miss Wellbeloved nodded, then shook her head. “Well, yes,” she admitted, “it’s entirely possible that the fetch could have been trapped down there all this time. But when it escaped, it would have either needed to return to Scotland, which it would have struggled to do, or find another person from Scotland to latch on to.”

  Kester frowned. “What about Grace McCready? She’s from Scotland.”

  Pamela leant across, and squeezed his arm. “Yes, but she would need to be from the exact same place the fetch came from originally.”

  “Which, in this case, is this Angus region, right?” Luke asked. “If the archaeologist’s findings can be trusted.”

  Kester shook his head. He could tell that the others were sceptical, but they hadn’t been the ones in Grace McCready’s house, with its eerie silence and sense of watchfulness. Maybe they’re right, he thought, taking a deep breath. He knew how easy it was to get excited about a possible lead, only to find out that it was a red herring. But still, it niggled away at him, the nagging feeling that Grace McCready was the key to all of this.

  “The main thing,” Larry said as he dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin, “is that this spirit is incredibly old, extremely powerful, and very angry. Which puts us all in a worrying position, doesn’t it?”

  “Yep!” Mike agreed. He swallowed his last mouthful, gave his stomach a contemplative pat, then belched.

  “Well, let’s focus on the positive,” Miss Wellbeloved said, looking deliberately in Larry’s direction. “I feel like we’re making some progress, which is good.”

  Kester gulped. He thought back to his last experience with an old, angry spirit, back in Exeter. That particular event had ended up with Serena nearly being killed, Pamela and Miss Wellbeloved being lobbed around a room like rag dolls, and Mike accidentally burning someone’s house down. He dreaded to think what would happen this time.

  Resting his chin on his fingers, he studied the quiet street outside. As usual, it was deserted. The thin hand of the waitress emerged in front of his line of vision, complete with a plate full of sausage sandwiches, which instantly made him feel much better. He made room for the plate, choosing to ignore his feelings of disquiet and focus on the important task of eating instead.

  The others joined him, steadily munching their breakfasts until they were all finished.

  “Anything else to report?” Kester asked as he ate the last bite of sandwich. Now that he’d eaten the sandwich, he rather wished he hadn’t. It sat heavily in his stomach, like a bowling ball.

  “Yes actually, there’s more good news,” Miss Wellbeloved replied. She whipped out a pocket mirror and started checking her teeth. “The newspapers made no mention of anything supernatural in this morning’s edition. They simply focused on it being a suicide, as a result of Peter Ho
pper being in mourning for his friends.”

  “That’s great,” Kester said. “Does that mean the government will back off a bit now?”

  “Let’s hope so. However, even better—Philpot hired some undercover men to log on to the local newspaper website and leave comments, declaring how ridiculous the whole supernatural angle was.”

  Kester laughed. “What, the government was actually trolling the local paper? What about The Serial Suspector?”

  “No point trolling The Serial Suspector,” Mike said. “Everyone who reads it is probably a trolling lunatic anyway.”

  “But the best part about trolling the local paper,” Miss Wellbeloved continued, “is that lots of the local people started joining in, criticising the press for running such a silly story. So that’s great news.”

  Larry gave a significant cough. “Looks like things might be finally improving for us all, eh?” The forced brightness of his tone made Kester smile. He’s having a go at being optimistic for a change, he thought. Who would have thought that he’d actually listen to what somebody told him?

  Miss Wellbeloved narrowed her eyes, then delivered a wisp of a smile. “Yes. I think you could say that.”

  “One might almost think we stand a chance of solving the case.”

  She stared at him, scrutinising his expression, then burst into laughter. “You might be right, Larry. And why the sudden change of heart? You were all doom and gloom before.”

  He cleared his throat again, tugged at his shirt collar, then muttered something inaudible.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said, I’d like to formally apologise for my behaviour earlier.”

  A gasp erupted around the table. Higgins reddened. “Alright, alright, you don’t have to make such a big thing about it,” he grumbled, picking at a crumb on the table. “I have been a bit negative, and I admit that it hasn’t helped. So you have my apology, Jennifer, if you’ll accept it.”

  “Of course I will.” She reached over and clasped him on the hand. “Thank you. Let’s move forward as a team, shall we?”

  He looked at her hand and simpered.

  Kester cringed. The sight of a sickly-sweet Higgins was even worse than a grumpy one. “I’m going to head back, to get prepared for my interview,” he announced as he pushed his chair back with a metallic shriek.

  Miss Wellbeloved nodded approvingly. “Absolutely. Good luck, Kester. This means a lot to your father.”

  Who might have at least rung me to wish me good luck, he thought. Goodness knows I could do with it. The prospect of talking to an actual, real genie was making him break out in a nervous sweat.

  “Don’t let her scare you,” Higgins said with a jovial little wave. “Because my word, she really is terrifying. An excellent teacher, of course, but enough to give anyone nightmares.”

  “Thanks for that,” Kester mumbled, yanking the door open. “I’ll see you all later. I presume you’re going to go and visit Grace McCready after you’ve finished here?”

  “That’s right,” Miss Wellbeloved said. “I think she needs further investigation, especially after what you said about her house, Kester. We’ll meet you back at the hotel. Then I suppose we need to think about where we’re going to stay for the next few nights.”

  “I spotted a few nice comfortable benches down by the promenade,” Mike added.

  Kester grimaced, then stepped out into the cold. No, thank you very much, he thought. Staying in their current hotel had been quite bad enough. Looking down the street, he could see a small crowd gathered in a huddle on the pavement and wondered if it was to do with Peter Hopper. Surely people in Lyme Regis are starting to get rattled now, he thought, marching back up to the hotel. If I lived here and was over the age of sixty, I’d definitely be concerned.

  The hotel was unsettlingly silent when he entered. The familiar odour of mould and burnt toast immediately hit him, but there was no sign of the proprietor. Presumably, he’s somewhere out back, skulking around, Kester thought as he twisted his head around the dark corridor. The whole place was deserted. It was slightly creepy, but then, everything seemed a little bit sinister at the moment, especially when feeling utterly exhausted and rather over-sensitive.

  Maybe Mr Onions is the murderer, Kester thought, tiptoeing up the stairs. Wouldn’t that be a great horror story, that we’ve been living in the same hotel as the murderer all along and chasing after doppelgänger spirits that didn’t really exist? Though somehow, he couldn’t quite envisage it. Even though the old man had been rather odd, he moved with roughly the same speed as a three-toed sloth, which would presumably be a hindrance to any self-respecting killer.

  Plus, you’re not going to be able to get away from the fact that there’s something supernatural at work in Lyme Regis, he chastised himself as he entered the bedroom. You’ve had months to get used to this whole ghost thing now, so you may as well start accepting it. He looked across at his laptop, still perched on the pillow of his bunk, and swallowed. Especially as you’ve got to talk to a three-thousand-year-old spirit in about half an hour’s time.

  To take his mind off things, he opened Anya’s email, scanning the contents for evidence that she might still be annoyed at him. Thankfully, her tone still seemed fairly upbeat, though she said she wouldn’t be able to see him next Wednesday, as she had a book club event to go to. She’s always at that bloody book club, he thought with a wry smile. That’s probably why I like her so much. I’ve finally found someone whose love of books equals my own.

  For the remaining few minutes, he readied himself for the interview and ran through a few responses in his head. His heart was starting to hammer hard against his ribcage, despite his best attempts to calm himself.

  “It’d help if I had any idea what to expect,” he whispered, staring at the laptop screen and biting his lip. As if in response, a familiar beeping tune alerted him to the fact that there was an incoming Skype call. Gulping, he quickly answered it and braced himself for the worst.

  “Er . . . hello?” He stared at the screen in confusion. Whatever he’d been expecting, it certainly wasn’t this. All he could see was an office, an impressive bookshelf stuffed with ancient texts lined up in neat rows, but no actual person or spirit to talk to. The screen flickered, momentarily freezing. Bloody reception, Kester thought, feeling more anxious than ever. What should I do, hang up and try again later?

  “Good morning, Kester. I trust you are well?”

  The voice sounded like a flood of ball bearings rolling across sand—smooth yet metallic. It most definitely didn’t sound human. Kester squinted, then gasped. His heart plummeted. My god, what the hell is that thing? he thought desperately, eyes widening with disbelief and fright.

  Say something! You have to say something! he reminded himself, aware that the silence had dragged on for far too long already. “Oh, er . . . hello there, Doctor . . . Doctor . . .” Oh Christ, I’ve forgotten her name! It was hardly surprising, but nonetheless absolutely mortifying. Now that he could see the genie, he’d lost his ability to speak or even think properly. What sort of spirit is this? he thought, scarcely able to comprehend the sight in front of him. And how do I even begin to start talking to it?

  A shifting mist rolled impatiently in front of the screen, glimmering icy-blue every so often before fading to nothing. When it paused, Kester could make out the vague shape of a head, complete with two terrifyingly black eyes, which bored through the screen like lasers.

  “Dr Barqa-Abu,” the genie reminded him as she roved and shifted with cobra-like precision. He got the uncomfortable feeling that she wasn’t terribly impressed with him, which didn’t help to steady his nerves at all. “Kester,” she continued, “I presume this is the first time you’ve spoken to a Jiniri?”

  “A what? Sorry, I . . .”

  “A Jiniri? One of the Djinn? I would have presumed, being Julio Ribero’s son, that you would be more tha
n familiar with us.”

  Gosh, I’m messing this interview up even more badly than I thought I would, he realised and tugged at his shirt. A moment ago, the room had seemed chilly, but now he thought he might melt in the heat.

  “I’m very sorry, Dr Barqa-Abu,” he said, hoping he’d pronounced it right. “You’re right, I’ve never met a Djinn before. I’m probably coming across as a bit of an idiot.”

  The shape stopped moving, which enabled him to see her face more clearly. Upon reflection, he wished she’d return to moving around instead. When she was still, he could grasp the outline of her features: sharp, bone-like, and severe. And those eyes! he thought with rising horror. They were just pits of darkness in the misty face: empty, endless, terrible holes. I know I shouldn’t be prejudiced, he thought, but she really is like something out of a nightmare.

  “You are not an idiot,” she concluded finally, roving restlessly once more. “It is common to be uncomfortable around a Djinn to begin with. Shall we begin talking about your application?”

  “Yes, please, by all means,” he bumbled. His voice emerged uncomfortably high-pitched, like a terrified mouse. I must sound like an absolute pillock, he realised with a sinking heart. I might as well hang up now and save myself the pain of messing it up any more.

  Dr Barqa-Abu moved closer to the screen. He wished she hadn’t, and instinctively shrank back, worried she might somehow slip through the monitor and out into his room.

  “I am intrigued by your role in your father’s agency,” she began. “Could you tell me more about that?”

  Kester coughed and loosened his collar. “Um, well, I’ve only been working with my father for four months. To be honest, I didn’t even know I had a father until then. I just lived with my mum in Cambridge.”

  “Yes, the great Gretchen Lanner, is that correct?”

  He nodded. The mention of his mother’s name helped to calm him down a fraction.

  “I was sorry to hear of her death. Your mother was a formidable student.”