Hands of the Ripper (2 page)

The Night Music is almost deafening now. Anna thinks that Daddy may have brought it to their home by his singing, for she can hear the sound of feet on the stairs, then fists on the door. The noise scares her at first but then, out of the corner of her eye, she notices that Daddy has stopped beating Mummy and that scares her more. Daddy doesn’t look quite empty yet. He has that, quivering, excited look of a man who still has lessons to give. Anna knows that look and usually it means that it’s her turn.

Someone is shouting outside the door but Anna can’t hear the words, she’s too busy staring at her daddy. Watching as he lifts the poker (which is dripping on the carpet and if it stains, oh dear, that will only make him angrier still).

‘Daddy?’ she asks, because she’s never seen him look this angry and she is scared. Scared that she won’t be able to please him, scared that she won’t be able to say the right things to make him stop. He doesn’t look like he’s even in the same room, painted red, eyes empty, he is walking towards her but is so removed that she doesn’t think she will be able to stop him doing anything.

The banging on the front door gets heavier. Anna thinks that if they hit the wood any harder they’ll break it and then what will Daddy say? She stares at the firelight on the bars of her cot, tries to fill her head with that and nothing else. But then she sees her father reflected in the metal, stretched thin, like a smear of red paint. He is raising the poker again and Anna bites her lower lip so hard she chokes a little in the blood that runs down her throat.

The door bursts open.

One

In the Rain with the Dead

JOHN PRITCHARD LOOKED
into his son’s eyes and tried to ignore what he saw in them. There is nothing more embarrassing than being pitied by one’s child.

‘I know, I know,’ he insisted, ‘the whole thing’s a con. Still, you’ve got to admit it could be interesting.’

‘A bunch of OAPs trying to chat to the gaps in their address book? Fascinating.’

Michael Pritchard stirred his tea, encouraging it to cool down. Always in such a hurry, thought his father.

‘These things aren’t like that,’ John said, ‘they’re all white teeth and peroxide highlights these days. Talking to the dead is a glamorous business.’

‘I doubt Derek Acorah makes many public appearances round here,’ observed Michael, looking down his nose at the dreary terraced houses through the rain-streaked window. ‘This place isn’t exactly the Ivy, is it?’

John had to defer to his son’s opinion, never having set foot inside the place. The small cafe they were sat in had an atmosphere as insipid as their teas. The surly Greek man behind the counter seemed to have
begrudged
them even that. He belonged to that select group within the service industry that has realised that all would be fine if only the customers could just be removed from the equation. In his hands he wound a tea towel like a Thugee scarf. The tea towel had once been printed with the Welsh flag, now the dragon was hidden beneath brown stains and every now and then the man used it to whip at his Formica counter. Perhaps, thought John, the fixtures got unruly unless he kept them on a tight leash.

‘It has a charm,’ he said.

‘No,’ Michael replied, ‘it really doesn’t.’ He took a sip of his tea and the expression he wore on his face indicated that he regretted it. He checked his watch.

‘What time is it?’ his father asked.

‘Ten past, still another twenty minutes.’

‘Sorry, shouldn’t have got here so early, you have better things to do …’

This was true but Michael was sensitive enough to deny it. ‘Who was to know? We could have spent hours looking for the place.’

‘We’d have been better getting a taxi, it’s just habit …’

‘We’ll get a cab back, doesn’t matter.’

This pitter-patter of politeness and muted affection was mirrored by the rain outside and their conversation faltered as both watched a woman with pram and shopping bags struggle through the pool of light shed from the cafe window. The bemused face of a toddler was pressed against the plastic rain cover of the pram, like vacuum-packed meat from a supermarket fridge. Somewhere there was the hiss of a bus’s hydraulic doors
and
a giggling group of teenage girls moved past, having been discharged out into the inhospitable night. One of them turned towards the window and pulled a face.

‘What you looking at?’ she shouted, stumbling as if unable to walk in a straight line while being watched by strangers.

There was a brittle flutter of laughter before they were swallowed by the dark. The pool of light in front of the two men was once again empty.

Michael took another sip of tea, having not quite learned his lesson.

There was the slosh of a car carving its way through the dirty water in the road.

‘What time is it now?’ asked John.

Michael sighed and checked. ‘Quarter past.’

‘Christ, time moves slower in Bowes Park.’

‘That’s Enfield Council for you.’

John smiled, trying to pretend his state of mind was nothing other than casual amusement.

His son knew him better but let it pass. ‘Where did you say Ray heard about this woman?’ he asked.

Ray was the IT technician at St. Ludovic’s, the university where John lectured. He in psychology. Ray haunted the outside spaces of the campus, even during the hours he was supposed to be off-shift, a stolid, doughy figure trailing cotton-thin lines of smoke from perpetual roll-up cigarettes.

‘She’s the shit,’ he had announced to John a couple of days earlier, passing him a piece of paper, ‘the veritable bollocks.’

‘You don’t sound like a student,’ John told him, with a gentle smile, ‘your vernacular is as contrived as a dad at a disco.’

‘They’re not called discos,’ Ray replied, ‘not for decades, old man.’

‘I am old,’ John admitted, unfolding the paper with one hand and putting on his reading glasses with the other. ‘So are you, getting older with each word, in fact. What is this?’

The flyer was cheaply produced, a childish drawing of stars interspersed with squiggles that John eventually deciphered as astrological symbols. In the midst of this scattershot attempt at artistry was a chunk of text in comic sans font: ‘Death is Not the End’ it insisted. ‘Let Aida “Granny” Golding Show You!’

‘Got it from one of the students,’ said Ray.

‘Not an English major, I hope, not with that many capitals.’

‘No, the student didn’t make it,’ explained Ray, ‘he just passed it on. That guy that thinks he’s attending Woodstock.’

‘That could be the entire student body.’

‘No, you know him, long hair, all beiges and browns, stinks of pot and poor taste.’

John knew immediately who Ray meant. ‘Shaun Vedder.’

‘Shaun Vedder. He picked it up when he was doing interviews for some coursework. One of those pitiful wastes of time you old fools like to set them. Anything to get them out from under your feet.’

‘That’s it exactly. We care not one jot for their
education
.’ John looked at the flyer again. ‘And why are you giving it to me?’

‘Because I know you’re interested in that sort of thing and, by all accounts, she’s good at what she does.’

‘Talking to the dead?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that, but according to young Vedder people make a fuss over her. She’s an open secret, the real thing, not like all these showy gits on cable telly, a proper medium working out of North London. So whatever it is she’s doing she’s doing it right.’

‘You can tell by the quality of her advertising.’

‘All part of it though, ain’t it? She’s paranormal retro chic!’

‘She’s a dab hand with a pack of crayons, for sure.’

And with that he shoved the piece of paper away in his pocket where it would have stayed were it not for the fact that he couldn’t stop dreaming about Jane. And not just dreaming …

‘He got it from one of the students,’ he said to Michael, aware that his mind had been wandering. ‘They picked it up as part of the parapsychology coursework.’

‘They do parapsychology?’

‘It’s best to get it out of their systems early on. Once we have thoroughly denied the existence of spooks we can move on to why people like to believe otherwise.’

‘And have you moved on?’

John smiled and finished his tea.

‘How’s Laura?’ John asked as they made their way out
into
the rain. Enquiring after his son’s girlfriend was the surest way he knew to get the conversation back on track.

‘She’s fine. In fact, we’re thinking of getting a place together.’

‘Oh yes?’ This was good news, something happy to focus on as they made their way along the pavement. The rain had filled the irregular surface, forcing them to step over puddles like children playing hopscotch.
One, two, buckle my shoe
, rattled around John’s head as he listened to his son list the benefits of cohabiting with the woman he loved.

‘Of course,’ said Michael, ‘there’s a part of Laura that would prefer to remain where she is. I mean, she knows her house. You should see her move around it, you’d never know …’

You’d never know she was blind, John thought, silently finishing his son’s sentence. Michael didn’t like to describe Laura in potentially negative terms, didn’t like to put anything into words that might define her as being different from anyone else. Partly this was down to Laura herself, blind since very young she refused either sympathy or concession.

‘I can’t imagine Laura being afraid to learn her way around somewhere new,’ John said, ‘in fact I can’t imagine her being afraid of anything much.’

Michael smiled. ‘True enough.’

They came to a junction and ahead of them, bathed in the sickly orange of a large security light, was the Queen’s Road Community Centre.

‘And lo, the Albert Hall,’ said Michael, wiping water
from
his face as they waited for a break in the traffic so they could cross.

A lorry cut its way through the semi-flooded road, an emission-blackened teddy bear strapped to its radiator like soggy road kill. Father and son had to step back to avoid a soaking. The lorry had no more knowledge of them as it sailed away into the dark than a whale might in an ocean of little fish.

‘Much more of this,’ John said, ‘and I’ll need a medium to talk to you let alone …’ The joke soured in his mouth, bravado turned to painful awkwardness.

‘Let alone Mum,’ said Michael. ‘Yeah … Let’s not discuss that, all right?’

‘I miss her just as much as you do,’ out loud it sounded like one-upmanship, and he hadn’t meant it to. Michael knew how much he had loved Jane.

They caught their break in the traffic and ran across the wet road, kicking up great splashes as they landed on the waterlogged safety of the other pavement. Neither of them stopped running, taking outrageous leaps across the puddles in the community centre car park until they finally found the shelter of the covered porch.

‘No need to run,’ said an old man smoking in the doorway, ‘the dead aren’t going anywhere.’ He sliced off the hot tip of his roll-up using a long and yellow thumbnail and put the remains in the pocket of his jacket to finish off later. Giving himself a nod of pride at a job well done he shuffled inside the hall, leaving a trail of muddy footprints, like dance instructions, in his wake.

‘Two is it?’ asked a young man sat behind a fold-out
table
. He flexed a book of pink raffle tickets in his hands as if warming them up.

‘Yes please.’ John had his wallet ready, the least he could do was cover the price of Michael’s ticket, then at least it need cost him only his time.

‘That’ll be twenty pounds please,’ said the young man, rather defensively as if anticipating an argument over price. Perhaps it was the disapproving look on Michael’s face, he wasn’t one to hide his feelings and he sighed as his father paid. He gets that from his mother, John thought, she was never shy about showing displeasure either. Many was the rude waiter or belligerent telemarketer that had discovered that for themselves over the years.

‘Sit wherever you like,’ said the young man, giving his raffle tickets another vicious throttling. ‘But stick to the cardboard.’

John wondered what the man was talking about but as they passed into the main hall it soon became obvious: flattened cardboard boxes had been laid out as impromptu matting to soak up the wet from people’s feet. There was also a leaking roof to contend with. Dotted throughout were chains of water droplets, dripping musically into strategically placed saucepans. The effect was that of an enthusiastic, if tone deaf, orchestra of children with toy drums.

‘Charming,’ said Michael as they filed along a row of plastic chairs near the back. They sat down and waited for the evening’s demonstration to begin.

The hall was half full, with more and more coming in as the start time approached. One by one they ambled
in
, shaking off the rainwater and then making their way to a seat, taking stretched steps from one patch of cardboard to the next, reminding John of children playing pirates.

‘Have you seen her before, dear?’ asked an elderly lady to John’s right. She had that flatulent smugness that ladies of a certain age were prone to, inflating her face and nodding at every opportunity for proving herself right in conversation.

‘No,’ John admitted, ‘though I hear she’s good.’

‘None better, if you ask me.’ She gestured vaguely around the hall. ‘Most of this lot follow her around, seeing most of the demonstrations. Never been here before. Mind you,’ she glanced at a nearby saucepan of rainwater, ‘I dare say I won’t come again either.’

‘The weather is particularly bad, there’s flooding in some parts of the country according to the news.’

‘That’s as maybe but you’ve got to have some standards. We like it when she does Islington, they have a better class of hall in Islington.’

‘We?’

‘My dear Henry,’ she waved at the air as if to disengage a cobweb from her cheek. ‘He doesn’t just turn up at any old venue, don’t imagine he’ll lower himself to attending this place.’

It took John a moment to realise Henry was dead. ‘He was your …?’