Free Out of Nowhere by Gerard Whelan Page A

abbot seemed almost surprised when Stephen askedhim that question.
    ‘You’re missing the point,’ he said softly. ‘Not Fräulein Herzenweg. Nobody saw her .’
    And then Stephen realised what he was implying.
    ‘Me?’ he asked, almost choking on the word. ‘Someone saw me ?’
    ‘After he left you, Philip went into a hardware shop. While he was there, he sensed someone behind him. When he turned, he saw you. You looked exactly as you had when he’d last seen you a couple of minutes before. He was annoyed that you’d managed to come up behind him without his noticing you. But he was worried because you were alone. You said nothing, but you gestured, beckoning him. He was looking right at you, and he saw what happened next.’
    Stephen didn’t want to say the words, but he was certain he knew what they were and he didn’t want Paul to say them either.
    ‘I disappeared?’ he said in a small voice.
    ‘You disappeared. Into thin air. Like a light going out. Philip overcame his shock and ran to the library. As he reached the square he saw one of your attackers come out through the library window. He ran upstairs. You saw the rest yourself.’
    Stephen hung his head.
    ‘You, of course,’ Paul said, ‘had never left the library.’
    ‘No,’ Stephen said. ‘I hadn’t.’ He looked into the abbot’s brown eyes. ‘Paul, I knew nothing of this. I swear.’
    The abbot nodded wearily.
    ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘In a way I was hoping that you did know something, however odd the explanation.’
    Stephen stared at the quilt on the bed. His mind was numb. Paul tried to say something soothing.
    ‘It’s obviously some kind of doppelgänger ,’ he said. ‘A double. I’ve heard of such things, though I must admit I always thought of them as legends. But there seems to be nothing threatening about it – quite the reverse, in fact. Your appearance yesterday saved your lives.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Stephen blankly. He was anything but convinced. It wasn’t comfortable to think that another version of you was likely to appear somewhere without your knowing about it. And Stephen had no solid identity to hold on to: what if he himself turned out to be the double?
    Mad thoughts maybe, but it wasn’t the sanest of situations. In his mind Stephen saw again the wicked little eye of the gun- barrel staring at him in the library. He saw Philip’s own wild mad eyes.
    ‘Philip doesn’t think this is harmless,’ he said.
    ‘No,’ said the abbot gravely. ‘He doesn’t. In fact, it’s given him a terrible shock.’
    ‘He was very disturbed anyway. He told you about the body?’
    ‘Yes. A mystery, certainly, but there are a lot of mysteries lately. I see no need to drag in the supernatural.’
    The abbot said the word with some distaste. Then he sighed.
    ‘Philip told me once, jokingly I thought, that if you scratch an Irishman you’ll find a superstitious peasant under his skin. They have a doppelgänger legend here too, you know. It’s called a fetch. It’s a messenger of death – a messenger from hell, somesay.’
    Ordinarily that might have sounded funny. It didn’t sound very funny now.
    ‘Who is Philip?’ Stephen asked.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘He has guns – handguns. He handles them like he knows what he’s doing. And he shoots people without hesitating. Who is he?’
    The abbot pursed his lips. He sighed.
    ‘Philip confessed to me yesterday,’ he said, ‘that he was very tempted to kill you in the library.’
    ‘I guessed that. I could see it in his face. I’m surprised he didn’t.’
    Paul nodded. He stopped for a while, collecting his thoughts.
    ‘I suppose I may tell you about him,’ he said. ‘It might help you to understand the pressure he lives under at the best of times. I won’t try to excuse him, but a man is what he is not what he was.’
    That’s easy for you to say, Stephen thought – you know what you’ve been and what you are. I’ve just found out that I may be a