by Adams, Guy
‘I beg your pardon?’ he asked, getting to his feet. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘My local Big Issue seller by the looks of you,’ said the plummy young thing, offering the sort of scoffing snort he had always favoured when dealing with undergraduates during his Oxford days. ‘Now piss off before I call the police on you.’
As things worked out, the young man would call the police – and Probert would find himself under the considerable scrutiny of the tabloid press, not for the first time in his life – but it wasn’t for loitering on pavements. It was for sticking the young man’s head through the passenger side-window of a conveniently located BMW. He would claim in court that the young man had attacked him first, something his not inconsiderable influence managed to make stick legally, if not necessarily in the court of public opinion.
Probert arrived at the recent crime scene to find Aida Golding sat in the back of a police car while a handful of other officers worked their laborious way through collecting the names and addresses of all those in attendance. She waved him over and opened the door to let him in.
‘Don’t tell me they’ve bloody arrested you,’ he said.
‘Of course not,’ she replied, ‘I just couldn’t bear sitting around with that lot. She pointed at the crowd of audience members that were milling around inside the hall. ‘I wanted some privacy.’
He looked over towards the doors, noting with disgust where the position of Alasdair’s body had been marked up prior to his being zipped up into a body bag and removed. In the light that spilled from the hall he could clearly see the dark shadow of a bloodstain that seeped across the tarmac.
‘Dear God,’ he whispered.
Golding lit a cigarette and for a moment he was reminded of Jimmy Barrowman.
‘You’re probably not allowed to smoke in here,’ he said.
‘Like that’s the worst of my problems. Have you called your lawyer?’
‘Yes, though he says – quite rightly – that you’ve nothing to worry about. You’ve got the best alibi in the world, you were being watched by a hundred-odd people while the murder was being committed. What can they possibly accuse you of?’
‘I’m not worried about that,’ she snapped. ‘Of course I didn’t kill Alasdair, why would I? I loved him.’
That surprised Probert who, like most people, had assumed their relationship to be of an altogether different nature. He was quick to recover. ‘Well, what’s the problem then?’
‘Aside from my reputation?’
‘This lot will forgive you anything, you know that. It’ll take more than a few morbid press reports to keep them away.’
‘You’re probably right. But my main worry is far more pressing. First Goss and now Alasdair …’
‘Goss was a suicide, surely.’
‘Don’t be stupid, you still think that after tonight? I’m telling you, someone’s out to get me and I think I know who.’
‘Who?’
‘Let me tell you about Anna …’
Eleven
Picking Scabs
AFTER THE NERVES of earlier, Anna begged the need for an early night. Glancing at the clock John had to admit it was very early indeed but if she wanted her bed then she was welcome to it.
He took his time clearing up, listening quietly to the radio and relishing the first time this old house of his had known warmth for some months. It would be no bad thing at all, he decided for there to be more people between these walls. He had let himself rattle around in here with his ghost for too long. The sooner Michael and Laura could move in the better. For that matter, there was no rush for Anna to move out, they’d all got along incredibly well. People, he decided, that’s what I need, lots and lots of people. The more the merrier.
For a moment he thought he imagined Jane had something to say on the matter, a glimpse out of the corner of his eye and the sound of the front door latch clicking into place.
‘Hello?’ he called. But there was nobody there. He slipped the deadlock on the front door and went back into the friendly heat of the kitchen.
*
Glen Logan flicked through the channels on the TV and settled for a comedy panel game. After a few sips of his lager, staring at the telly as the same old comics plundered recent news for laughs, he realised he’d watched it only a couple of nights ago. With a sigh he went on the hunt again.
‘Just leave it alone, would you?’ Sacha asked, ‘find something and stick with it. Or can’t you manage that?’
‘Been going out with you long enough, haven’t I?’ he replied. A thought that drove him to finish off his beer and, crushing the can, head into the kitchen in search of another one. The fridge was bare.
‘Bollocks.’
‘What’s wrong now?’
‘Out of beer.’
‘Well, if you didn’t drink so much …’
Glen didn’t listen to what followed on after that, he was only too accustomed to tuning out the white noise of Sacha’s complaints.
‘Want anything?’ he asked, grabbing the house keys from a fruit bowl in the centre of the kitchen worktop.
‘Are you even listening to me?’
‘If you’re telling me what you want from the corner shop, yes, otherwise no.’
‘Fucking pig.’
‘I’ll see if they’ve got any.’
Grinning at his joke, he jogged down the stairs, grabbed his jacket off the hook by the front door and headed out into the rain.
It was only a few minutes to the shop but he was already regretting it by the time he’d walked a couple of doors down. Was it really worth this soaking just to get a few beers down his neck? He’d need something stronger just to get the warmth back into his bones.
As he crossed the road, a car was heading up the street. Was this Alasdair, maybe? Back early? The car pulled up towards him and then drew to a halt in the middle of the road. The driver stared at him through the windscreen.
‘Got a problem, mate?’ he asked, returning the man’s stare. Pissing down or not, you had to make your stand, didn’t you?
‘Oi!’ suddenly there was someone beside him. A flash of movement and they punched him in the stomach.
‘Motherfucker,’ Glen said, never one to talk an assailant down. His attacker was dressed in a bizarre mixture of clothes. Long raincoat over a tracksuit, wool hat pulled tight over the skull. They were running right past him, not interested in continuing the fight having got in one sound blow. ‘Come here!’ he shouted reaching out to grab their coat. The figure turned, and again its arm lashed out, moving so quickly Glen barely registered it. His hand felt like it was on fire.
‘What the fuck?’ he looked at his hand and tried to understand what had happened to it. The index finger was missing entirely above the first knuckle, middle and ring fingers splayed at an unconscionable angle. His hand was streaming with blood, the rain constantly washing it away from the wounds so he could see the clean pink meat and bone beneath.
He looked down at where he had been punched and saw even more blood.
‘Fucking knife,’ he realised. ‘Fucking stabbed me with a fucking knife.’
He tried to step forward but found his legs were shaking too much. A great stream of his blood was puddling between his legs before trickling away down the street. ‘Bleed to fucking death,’ he correctly surmised. ‘Going to fucking bleed to death.’
‘Who’s Anna?’ asked Probert, wafting away some of the cigarette smoke and glancing towards the hall to check on the progress of the police.
‘That’s the question,’ Golding replied, with a smile. ‘But I know. I know her better than she does herself.’ She threw the cigarette out of the window and settled back into the seat.
‘Anna has been helping me for years now, but that’s only fair, after all I rescued her. Or maybe I never did.’
‘Aida,’ said Probert, his patience already fatally short after her threats over the phone, ‘you’re not making sense. Who is this Anna?’
‘Sandy, you
met her last night. Her real name’s Anna, she’s my foster daughter.’
‘What?’
Golding ignored him. ‘I adopted her when she was four, she was the daughter of Douglas Reece.’
‘You mentioned him earlier, who …? Oh … the East End Ripper!’
‘Yes, precisely why I invited Father Goss. Having done my research into Anna’s background it seemed a waste not to put it to good use. Besides, an appearance from Reece suited Anna’s special skill only too well.’
‘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.