Street View
As John sat at his computer, brooding, he inevitably came back to the obvious conclusion: she’d been seeing someone else. Why else would she have asked him to move out? Now here he was, in the humiliating position of going back to live with his parents, ostensibly to give Rebecca time to ‘think things over’. What was there to think over? She’d been two-timing him, and that was that. She had denied it, but he knew she was lying. A lying slut. Thinking of her in such terms made him feel slightly better, but it wasn’t long before self-pity returned, combined with the desire for retribution. The emails he’d sent her at first had been, he had to admit, a bad idea. Their bitter tone and childish nature had shown him to be weak, and the way she had ignored them had put her in control. That wasn’t how it should be. She should show him respect. She should be made to answer for what she had done. It was only right.
Staring at the display he had an idea. Going over to physically confront Rebecca was not possible – his parents’ decision to buy a house in the Channel Islands had seen to that – so instead he brought up Google Maps, and typed in her address: the aerial view was displayed. A check on the side of the screen showed that a Street View was available, so he clicked and dragged on the little mannequin until it was on the street near Rebecca’s apartment. A couple of seconds later the view was there: he could see the exterior of the building, not a modern apartment block but a town house that had been split into two flats, upper floor and ground floor, sharing a common hallway and front door. The house was set back somewhat, and a short flight of steps led down from a porch to the street; beside the house was a small car-parking area. He could even see Rebecca’s previous car parked there: the Street View image must have been made at least six months ago. This didn’t destroy the illusion of reality though: he could imagine her in there, behind that window at the front, on the left. Her bedroom. Their bedroom. Worse, he could imagine her being there with someone else. Now frustrated as well as angry, he cleared the screen and moved on, trying unsuccessfully to erase the mental image he’d created. He didn’t sleep very well that night. He couldn’t stop his semi-conscious mind from creating a series of increasingly vivid revenge scenarios, from which he would wake partway through, a process that left him bleary-eyed and exhausted.
If anything it was worse the next day. He didn’t bother visiting any of the other sites he usually went to routinely, but instead brought up Google Maps again, and with an element of masochism went to Street View. There it was. The house. Then he frowned slightly. By an extraordinary coincidence the view had been updated: he could see someone there who he was sure hadn’t been there yesterday. Or perhaps he simply hadn’t noticed him? It was a man, standing in the porch, facing away from the building. It was impossible to tell if he had just left, or was standing waiting for someone to answer the doorbell. John zoomed in for a better look: even with Google’s policy of blurring facial details he could tell it wasn’t someone he’d seen before. He wasn’t one of the residents who’d been staying in the ground floor flat a couple of days before, when he had still been living in the house himself. A visitor, presumably. But whose visitor? The occupants of the other flat had never had anyone round that he could remember. The conclusion was clear. The man had been calling on Rebecca, or was about to.
Despite the slight facial blurring he could see him quite well. He looked to be in his late twenties, and was powerfully built, with dark hair, a long black leather jacket and dark jeans. John found his mouth twisting: he was the sort of man he would have liked to look like himself; even with the face made indistinct his strong, almost cruel features were evident, and he was clearly both muscular and self-possessed. He knew he would be just the sort Rebecca would find attractive, and his bitterness increased.
He scanned around the area for some clue as to the date, examining the trees and bushes, but all his hazy knowledge of botany could tell him was that the photograph must have been taken within the last month or so. He was pretty sure that it took at least a week for Google to process the image data before uploading it; probably more like two. Rebecca must have been seeing this guy even then. His anger was now almost stifling, and he had to force himself to relax; to unclench his fists. Forget about Google and its bloody Street View. Forget about behaving like a sodding stalker. Forget about Rebecca.
He slept better that night.
Of course his resolve wasn’t to last long. With the self-deceit of an addict he was back again the next day, bringing up the image of the house, wanting to see his suspected substitute.
The man was no longer there.
He sat there for a while, trying to sort things out. It was one thing to be uncertain whether he’d missed seeing the man on the first day; rather another that he should have imagined him altogether on the second occasion. What the fuck was Google doing anyway, updating the Street View again? He was vaguely aware that people could complain to Google about their appearance in one of the Street View shots, and that the shot would be altered or replaced, but he didn’t know the details. Under what circumstances would they do so? Surely they would have to be compelling ones, or everyone would be requesting it. But John was a young man given more to impulse and emotion than to speculation, so it wasn’t long before he was focusing his attention on the house again, and Rebecca’s window. The bitch. She had been fucking someone else, he was now absolutely sure of it now. And the man he’d seen in the Street View was the one. He’d seen his photograph, and the bastard had had it removed to prevent detection.
Wait a moment. He wouldn’t have to appeal to Google to have it removed if he knew someone who worked for their imaging department, or knew whom to contact; to bribe. Hell, the guy might even be an employee himself. If John hadn’t happened to look at just the right time, he would never have known of the man’s existence. His bitterness was mixed with a certain rueful admiration for the skilful way he’d operated: he was the sort of man who could get away with murder.
It was not long after that that he learned of Rebecca’s death.
It was the police who told him. She had been found strangled in her – their – flat the day before. No, they were quick to assure him, he was not being arrested, nor was he facing any charges. Thanks to his living in Jersey with his parents at the time of the murder, there was no possibility of his being a suspect; the only way he could have travelled to the English mainland would have been by ferry or by air. They just wanted to ask him a few questions about Rebecca, and anything that he knew that might help them find her killer. Did he suspect she might have been seeing someone else? He had suspected, yes. Did he have any idea who that person might be? A hesitation. No, he had no idea. Had she any enemies? None that he knew of.
They had left it at that. If they had been surprised by his lack of emotion on being told the news they gave no indication. They had departed, with the promise that they would keep him informed, and with the request that he should contact them if anything else occurred to him.
John sat there, thinking things over. So, vengeance had come to his faithless Rebecca; more quickly and more violently than he could have expected. But he did not feel pity; only a sense of vindication, of justice having been done. She had accused him of being jealously possessive and paranoid, but that Street View image had shown him to be correct, and her to be a liar.
He was sure that the mysterious man in that single image had been Rebecca’s killer. It was ironic that the very man who had been his competitor had turned out to be the agent of his revenge. Rather than feeling jealousy, he now found a common identity with him, as if this man was his alter ego; a manifestation of his real nature. He had behaved just as John would have done if he hadn’t repressed his true self.
Which brought him on to the other matter. The thing he hadn’t told the police. Rebecca’s taste for erotic asphyxiation. He remembered what a buzz he’d got from closing his hands around her throat, and she had enjoyed it even more. Could her death at the hands of her lover have been a case of passion going too far? It was almost poetic. He wondered what had passed through her mind in the minutes before her death. He wondered what it had felt like for the man. He wished he could have been there; to have held her slender neck between his own hands. He could visualise her face now, he could imagine looking down at her frightened eyes, feeling her struggle helplessly beneath him: it was almost as if he had strangled her himself.
With this came the realisation. He knew now why he hadn’t seen the other man after his single appearance in that Street View. What he had seen was his alter ego; his doppelgänger, entering Rebecca’s flat to do what he himself would never have had the nerve or physical strength to do.
He wondered if it would manifest itself again. There was no way of knowing – at least until he found a new girlfriend.
NOTES
I wrote this story for Emily’s 21st birthday, but the inspiration came during an online conversation with my other illegitimate daughter, Shannon, while on Gchat with her on 18 March 2010 (I’d formally acknowledged paternity of both early in 2009, shortly after the mass migration from the ruins of Journalspace to Blogger). I’d fed her address into Google Maps, then descended to Street View, so I could see what type of neighbourhood she lived in so I could make disparaging remarks, as a father should. It turned out to be her previous address, but that was irrelevant. What matters is my remark to her: There's even a guy in an orange shirt walking past. (Indeed checking the link again in 2026 shows there’s still a guy in an orange shirt walking past; it hadn’t been updated since June 2009.) Shannon had even recognised him as someone who lived in the same apartment block. But I was soon wondering: What if someone were to see such a person, then to find he’d disappeared the next day?
The German doppelgänger and its various British equivalents (Yorkshire waff; Scottish waith, Welsh cyhyraeth) are inevitably death omens. Typically to see a doppelgänger is a portent of that person’s death, either one’s own or another person’s, but in this story I’ve used it as a vehicle for someone else’s death, acting as the agent of the unknowing original. Thus in this story it is not strictly his doppelgänger, but an idealised form of himself. However it’s a well-known term, and I don’t think someone of John’s limited intelligence and education would have known that, do you?
Incidentally, when a friend, a woman born in the US, proof-read the original story for me, she had assumed that ‘Jersey’ meant ‘New Jersey’ in the United States, and had corrected me; that is why in this version he refers to ‘a house in the Channel Islands’ rather than ‘a house in Jersey’. One tends to forget that one has to cater for international readers in some cases, though I ruthlessly adhere to idiomatic English and English slang. I have my principles. I am, after all, an Englishman.
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