Hands of the Ripper (18 page)

‘Special skill?’

‘Let me tell you about when I first met her …’

Aida Golding had been finally falling asleep when the shouting had started.

‘What the hell is it now?’ she wondered and, unable to contain the anger to her curtained cubicle, spun her legs from the hospital bed and shuffled in the dark for her slippers.

Her lower abdomen cramped with the effort of being upright and she had to grit her teeth to stop from screaming herself. The pain didn’t send her back to bed, it just made her more angry. She brushed her fingers against the appendectomy scar, that awful lump of a wound. To think she had been opened and gutted. An intrusion.

She pushed her way out of the ward and along the corridor towards the sound of shouting. It was a young man, she guessed from the tone, clearly as angry as her, shouting and screaming obscenities as he was bundled away by medical staff. What the hell were they doing to him that he was kicking up such a fuss?

Turning a corner she saw a pair of double doors swing closed, several white-uniformed backs struggling through the chequered fire-glass beyond.

Abruptly the noise ceased.

‘Dosed him,’ she announced to the empty corridor, ‘should have done that in the first place.’

She peered through the glass in the doors and was confused by what she saw. Rather than a young man, the attendants were gathering around the sleeping body of a girl, maybe four or five years old. Aida glanced around the silent corridors, surely she had made a mistake? She must have been hearing someone else. Or had an attendant been making the noise? But no. The staff here were terrible but not so bad that they would wake the patients with their swearing.

One of the nurses noticed her watching and came to the door.

‘Is there a problem?’ she asked, blocking Golding’s view.

‘I was woken up.’

The nurse’s face softened. ‘Yes, I imagine a number of people were, sorry. The patient was extremely delusional.’

‘But surely …’ Golding nodded towards the doors, ‘I heard a man.’

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ the nurse replied, ‘apparently she’s been shouting like that since the police picked her up. Never seen anything like it. A girl possessed, you might say …’

‘Hardly.’ A rationalist through and through, Aida Golding did not believe in such things. ‘Why did the police have her?’

‘Can’t say,’ the nurse replied. ‘We’d have journalists packing the place out if I did. The poor little bugger’s
been
through a lot though, I’ll tell you that.’

‘Haven’t we all?’ Golding replied, but found herself drawn to the young girl’s face again. So sweet, so delicate. And yet, so full of rage. Golding was intrigued.

Aida Golding was not a maternal woman but she was certainly a curious one. There was something about the girl that drew her attention. It wasn’t just morbid curiosity, rather an innate sense that the girl represented an opportunity, albeit one she hadn’t quite put her finger on yet.

‘A girl possessed,’ she frequently muttered to herself, rolling the idea around in her head.

She made it her business to keep an eye on the girl during the following couple of days. There was no return to the angry shouting of that first night – at least not then, though it would hardly be the last time Aida Golding heard the voice – but the girl certainly seemed a positive hive of personalities.

‘She’s a right little mimic, isn’t she?’ said one of the orderlies when he noticed Golding watching one afternoon. ‘Has us all in stitches so she does. She only has to hear a voice for a little while and she copies it.’ He waved at the little girl who was sat silently in a chair much too big for her, staring up into the fluorescent lights. ‘Our little cuckoo, ain’t you?’

‘Our little cuckoo.’ Once Aida Golding had been checked out, she spared no time in returning, this time as a visitor.

‘So sad,’ she said to the nurse on little Anna’s ward. ‘The poor little thing just stares at the walls, doesn’t she?’

‘You want to hear the things she comes out with,’ the nurse leaned forward and tapped her temple. ‘It’s not a doctor she needs if you ask me.’

‘Who’s looking after her?’

‘Well, we are, best we can.’

‘No, I mean, where are her parents?’

The nurse looked uncomfortable. She was a terrible gossip and it was clear that she was very much divided between wanting to share a juicy piece of information and follow orders that she should keep her mouth shut. Finally, all she managed to admit was that the girl’s parents were dead.

She was an orphan. Aida began to think about that.

She watched the little girl, blond hair a mess from where she pulled at it all the time.

‘Piss off,’ she suddenly announced in a masculine tone. ‘I want to watch the snooker.’

Some argument she had heard over the channel on the television, Aida assumed.

The voice wasn’t perfect. Now Aida knew who was speaking she could hear deficiencies – the girl was, after all, working with equipment that wasn’t fully developed – but the change in character was astonishing.

‘Never comes,’ a woman’s voice this time, aged and as light and brittle as an autumn leaf, ‘got not time for his old ma.’

‘Amazing,’ Golding whispered.

‘My name is Legion,’ mumbled one of the patients, an elderly man who wheeled a bottle of oxygen around with him, ‘for I am many.’

‘Don’t start with all that again, Father,’ said the nurse, ‘save the sermons for church, eh?’

‘She’s no child of God,’ he proclaimed, with such vigour that he had to snatch at his oxygen mask and take a few puffs.

‘That’s a horrible thing to say,’ the nurse replied. ‘Whatever her father was like, we’re all children of God.’

‘My name is Legion,’ the girl repeated, capturing the breathy tone of the old priest. ‘My name is Legion …’

For I am many …
Aida thought.

The man that had been staring at Glen had got out of his car and was running towards him.

‘Need help,’ explained Glen, ‘need hospital.’

The man said nothing but helped him over to his parked car, leaned him against the vehicle and opened the back door.

‘Got to get me to hospital,’ repeated Glen. ‘Fucking bleeding to death.’

There was the rustle of plastic. Jesus, thought Glen, here he was, dying on his feet and this prick wanted to make sure his upholstery stayed clean.

‘Look,’ he said, turning onto his side and trying to keep his intact left hand pressed hard against the wound in his stomach, ‘no time. Need hospital.’

‘Got to be careful,’ the man replied, ‘got to be clean.’

Trust me to get stuck with some special needs prick, thought Glen.

‘No,’ he said, trying to sound more in control than he felt, ‘need to go now. Fuck the upholstery. If you’re that worried, I’ll pay.’

‘Yes,’ agreed the man, ‘pay.’

He reached out towards Glen and pulled him towards the back seat. ‘In.’

‘Steady,’ Glen argued but was too weak to kick up any fuss and toppled onto the back seat, the plastic rumpling beneath him. He listened as the driver got in and continued to drive up the street. ‘Need to turn round,’ said Glen, ‘closest hospital is …’

‘No hospital,’ said the driver, pulling the car into an empty space further up the street. He turned the car engine off and got out.

‘What the fuck?’

He heard the boot open as the driver retrieved something. Then the back door opened and the man climbed in, pulling himself on top of Glen and dumping the bag he’d fetched from the boot into the footwell.

‘What the fuck?’ Glen asked again, trying to push the man off. He was too weak, he could barely move as the man pushed him back against the seat. He knelt on his arms, grinding what remained of his right hand under his knee.

Glen screamed but the sound was cut off by the driver pressing his hand against Glen’s mouth.

The hand stank of disinfectant, the skin was shiny and pink.

‘Lucky,’ said the driver, ‘lucky, lucky, lucky.’

Trevor Court had never considered himself a lucky man. Certainly not as far as his dealings with Aida Golding were concerned. He should never have gone to the show, of course. He realised that now, but at the time it had seemed such a funny opportunity. He had glimpsed the poster in the church and wondered to himself about the lovely little friends he could hear from. How delicious, he had thought, imagining the world of the dead brought close enough to touch. It was a world he thought about a great deal. A world he had conducted plenty of business with. Starting of course with young Leonard. Golden Boy Leonard. Leonard whose shadow had always fallen so long and so dark. Well, he had soon stepped out from that shadow hadn’t he?

And somehow she had known. She had picked him out. He’d been sat in the dark, imagining the spirits floating around him when all of a sudden he’d heard his name. Even then he might have been able to ignore it but the silly woman next to him – who had asked him his name when he first sat down, nosy, nosy creature – had forced him to speak. She had pushed him in front of Aida Golding’s attention and then he couldn’t get free.

And it had been Leonard, of course. He had known that as soon as he saw the look on the witch’s face. Golden Boy Leonard trying to make his brother scared again. Golden Boy Leonard telling tales.

Well, Trevor would not be standing for that. He couldn’t kill Leonard twice, of course, however much he
might
wish to. But he’d make sure the dead boy’s tittle-tattle fell on deaf ears.

He reached for the sack and pulled out a long-bladed screwdriver.

‘So lucky,’ he repeated and went about his business.

‘You wanted to adopt her?’ asked Probert, ‘I would have thought that was the last thing you’d do.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Although I suppose her condition could have advantages in your line of work.’

‘It was what first gave me the idea. Up until then I’d been scratching a living in an office. Town and Country Planning.’

Despite their situation, Probert couldn’t help but laugh. ‘So normal, how you must have hated it.’

‘It served its purpose. It offered just the sort of stability the authorities like to see when considering a foster home.’

‘I dare say they lapped it up.’

‘Honestly? I think they’d have given her to anyone. Considering her mental state and background, she was hardly going to be an easy prospect to live with.’

‘I’m sure she was quite a handful …’

Anna felt as if the dark could smother her. The air was so thin and the absence of light so complete that it was like being trapped inside your own head and that was one place Anna did not want to be. If she was good and practised her voices for Mummy then Mummy would
let
her out later. Maybe she would even be allowed to stay out all evening.

‘Bad girls get nothing,’ she said in an excellent imitation of her foster mother’s voice.

The older she got, the more precise her voices were becoming. And not just the voices, but the characters that went with them. Some days, down here in the dark, she would spend hours escaping the only way she knew how: into the mind of someone else.

She would become Bad Father, yelling and cursing, pounding her fists into the walls.

Or Soft Mother, singing sweet lullabies and crying and begging for things to stop.

Or Father Legion, seeing the devil in every shadow.

Or Nurse Sleepnow, pushing pills into the mouths of her imagined patients.

There were many of them, all different in tone and posture. Often, she played at them so hard she lost herself and the day went away all on its own. She would wake in the morning, let the voices come and before you knew it night had returned and with it food and the chance to stretch her legs for a while. If only she could learn to control them. That’s what made Mummy really cross. When the voices came they often said whatever they wanted and Mummy didn’t like that at all.

‘That’s no use,’ came an approximation of Aida Golding once more, ‘that gets me nowhere.’

Mummy didn’t understand. It wasn’t that Anna just copied voices, she copied people and people don’t always do as they’re told.

*

‘I managed,’ said Golding. ‘Though I must admit I wasn’t a natural mother.’

There was a tap on the window. ‘Mrs Golding?’

Aida wound down the window to talk to the police inspector on the other side. ‘Yes?’ she asked.

Unbelievable, thought Probert, She owns wherever she find herself in. Has anyone sat in the back of a police car ever seemed more in control of themselves?

‘You can head home now, Mrs Golding,’ the Inspector said, ‘we’ll take a further statement in the morning.’

Golding turned to Probert. ‘We’ll go home and I’ll finish telling you what you need to know.’

She led him through the rain to her car, both stepping automatically to the passenger’s side.

‘For God’s sake,’ Golding lowered her head, the rain plastering her perm almost straight on her head.

Probert, hardly inclined to feel pity for her given everything she had done to him, nonetheless did so. ‘Give me the keys, he said, ‘I’ll drive.’

She handed them over and they climbed in, cranking up the heater until the cabin had the atmosphere of a sauna.

‘Where to?’ he asked.

She thought for a while. ‘I just want to go home.’

‘I can find that,’ he replied and slowly reversed out onto the main road.

The audience had been released and allowed to go home and people were milling around the car. He fought to avoid eye contact, only too aware that most of them were staring inside the car, trying to see Aida
Golding.
They were lost, he realised, confused and unsure how to feel about the woman next to him. Was she really the spiritual queen she presented herself as or something altogether less wholesome? Whether she was the one to kill Alasdair or not, her proximity to the terrible event made them suspicious. She must have done something to bring such horror to her door. And he was slowly beginning to realise just how much. Had he felt sympathy for her earlier? Yes, he had, but no more. She was a crook and a manipulator of people. What kind of person would evoke the memory of Thana just to line her pockets? Or Douglas Reece, for that matter. The more he thought about it, the more he began to realise that Golding deserved the very worst fate might have in store.