What the dead want, p.8
What the Dead Want, page 8
‘That’s me. The formerly bit as well.’
‘You were living with Sharon Golding and her sons in May 2020?’
The smoke of the cigarette rose to a tobacco-stained ceiling. John Newton’s arms were covered in blue tattoos. Ridpath couldn’t make out the designs but they were simple with only one colour: prison blue.
On the knuckles of his right hand the letters G-O-O-D were etched in the same colour. Ridpath couldn’t see the left hand, but he’d lay a thousand quid it had E-V-I-L tattooed there.
Prison tattoos. Never the most original.
‘I was living with her right until she chucked me out.’
‘Really? She told us you left.’
‘Nah, I was chucked out. She changed the locks too so I couldn’t go back.’
‘Why did she chuck you out?’
John Newton shrugged his shoulders again. It seemed to be his default response to life. ‘I dunno, ask her.’
Ridpath scratched his head. No point continuing this line at the moment. He changed tack. ‘What happened on the morning of May 22nd?’
‘The day Andy disappeared?’
Ridpath nodded.
Another shrug. ‘I dunno. I was in bed, I’d had a few the night before. I heard Andy and his mum arguing…’
‘What about?’
‘I dunno. Anything and everything. They were always arguing. Like cat and dog they were. I stayed out of it. Not my place to get involved, was it?’
‘So what happened after the argument?’
‘I heard the door slam and the place went quiet.’
‘What time was that?’
‘About eleven o’clock-ish.’
‘And what did you do then?’
‘I turned over and went back to sleep, didn’t I? I couldn’t be arsed dealing with their rows. Anyway, I told all this to youse lot already. First to the young woman and then to the older detective, the one who kept bludging fags off me.’
‘We’re relooking at the events,’ Ridpath said blandly. ‘Did you see Andy again?’
John Newton shook his head, the long grey-flecked hair becoming even more unruly. ‘Nah, never saw him afterwards. Should have gone looking for him, I suppose, but I was knackered and I thought he was round at his grandad’s. He were always going round there, spent the night there a lot.’
‘So that’s where you thought he went?’
‘Yeah, the old man only lived two streets away.’
‘Didn’t anybody think to check up on him. He was only fourteen after all.’
‘Andy was a strange boy, older than his years if you know what I mean. He used to go out at all times of the night and day, even in lockdown. Andy didn’t see the rules applying to him. He was street-smart was Andy, knew what he was doing, knew his way around. Only thing he really cared about was his football. Loved the game. Well, all kids do at that age, don’t they? Went everywhere with his ball.’
Ridpath remembered it was certainly true of him. His games of football were occasionally interrupted by the useless bits of life. Like sleeping, eating and school.
‘And you stayed in the house for the next few days?’
‘Yeah, didn’t go out. We’d been to the supermarket a couple of days earlier and got all the booze, fags and food we needed. No need to go out. Sharon will confirm it. We watched the telly, and had a few drinks. It was always better when Andy wasn’t around.’
‘Why?’
‘No arguments. No stroppy teenager slumped in the corner, moaning all the time.’
Ridpath thought of his stroppy teenager. He wasn’t looking forward to the chat he would have with Eve later.
‘What do you think happened to Andy, Mr Newton?’ asked Emily.
Another shrug of the shoulders. ‘I dunno, but I will say this. I think he’s still alive somewhere, laughing at you lot, running around to try and find him.’
‘A strange thing to say.’
‘Is it?’ Another shrug. ‘Well, Andy was a bit strange if you ask me.’
‘What do you mean?’
John Newton’s eyes narrowed. ‘I could never figure him out. Andy didn’t trust anybody, he was a bit of a loner, even played football on his own. He thought he could sort everything out himself. He sort of scared me sometimes, he was so intense, unforgiving. That’s it – Andy was unforgiving.’ He laughed to himself. ‘The only people who liked Andy were his nan and grandad. I don’t think Sharon liked him much, if I’m honest.’
‘Didn’t she?’
‘She never knew who his real dad was. Could’ve been any of three men, she told me one night after she’d had a few. Andy asked her of course. She was honest and told him she didn’t know. That was the start of another bloody argument, a big one.’
‘When did this argument happen?’
‘A couple of weeks before he left. But by then it was one long row, almost non-stop, I switched off in the end. Well, you do, don’t you?’
‘What about Alan?’
‘Who?’
‘Mrs Golding’s other child.’
‘Oh him, didn’t have much to do with him. Always in his bedroom playing video games.’
Ridpath glanced across at Emily to check if she had any more questions. She shook her head and looked down.
‘Thank you for your time, Mr Newton. We’ll be back in touch if we need anything else.’
‘Is that it? You just asked the same questions as all the others.’
‘Like I said, we’ll be in touch if we need anything else.’
Ridpath stood up and placed his notebook back in his inside pocket. He made to leave when he stopped and said, ‘One last thing, you mentioned Andy going to see his grandad, but did he also go to see his grandma?’
‘Yeah, of course, but he couldn’t stay the night there.’
‘Why not?’
‘His grandma was in a care home. Sunny-something, SunnySide, I think it was called, in West Didsbury.’
Chapter NINETEEN
Emily Parkinson was leaning on Ridpath’s car smoking a Marlboro Light.
‘What did you think of him? Did he have anything to do with the disappearance of our vic?’
Ridpath glanced back towards the house. A curtain at the upstairs window flickered briefly. ‘A strange man. His relationship with Sharon Golding was interesting.’
‘By “interesting” do you mean weird?’
Ridpath tilted his head. ‘I don’t know. He had an alibi for the weekend anyway. He never left the house.’
‘An alibi provided by Sharon Golding and nobody else.’
‘What a suspicious mind you have, Em.’
‘Useful in a copper.’
Ridpath thought for a moment before coming to a decision. ‘Right, we’ve got too much to do, let’s split forces. I want you to run more checks on John Newton. Find out where he was working back in May, 2020 and what he’s been up to since. Also discover where he’s working now. You said you knew Fiona Barton from a course? Is she still in Eccles?’
‘I think so, easy to find out.’
‘Go and see her. I want her take on the investigation. There seems to be a lot of stuff missing or that wasn’t done.’
‘Like?’
‘There’s nothing in the files about checking the local pervs register. Surely, it would be the first thing to do if a child goes missing.’
‘Don’t you mean the Sex Offenders Register?’
Ridpath eyed her suspiciously. ‘Don’t go all PC on me, Em, not you too.’
‘Pervs register sounds like Charlie Whittaker speaking, not you.’
Charlie Whittaker was Ridpath’s first mentor in GMP, the man who had brought him into MIT when he qualified as a detective. An old-fashioned copper who didn’t call a spade a digging implement.
‘Yeah, well, Charlie got the job done.’
‘And managed to piss off 99 per cent of Joe Public at the same time.’ She glanced back at the house where the curtain had moved slightly again. Was somebody standing there?
‘Should we have searched the house? I could hear somebody moving about upstairs.’
‘We didn’t have a warrant, Em, and it was just a friendly chat. If you find anything, we’ll revisit Mr Newton again.’
Emily Parkinson had written everything down in her notebook. ‘What are you going to do, Ridpath?’
‘SunnySide Residential Home has come up twice now in our inquiries. I have to visit it for the coroner anyway. It might be useful to check up on Andy’s grandma.’
Emily checked her notes. ‘Irene Golding. And remember Helen saying West Didsbury nick were called to a disturbance there on the same day Andy disappeared.’
‘I need to ask them what happened.’ Ridpath made a note in his book of the grandmother’s name. He stared at the words he had written down for a long time. ‘Have you noticed, nobody has actually told us the date she died?’ he finally said.
‘Nor have they mentioned when the grandad passed away. But easy enough to check both dates.’
‘I’ll do it now.’
Ridpath pulled out his phone and rang Sophia. She answered after two rings.
‘Hiya, Ridpath, are you coming in today?’
‘Hi Sophia, you’re on speakerphone. I’ll try to come in later if I can.’
‘His Lordship has been asking for you again.’
‘Okay, I’ll try to make time. In the meantime, I need you to do a couple of things for me. Can you find out information on the death of an Irene Golding? She was a resident of SunnySide Residential Home and died sometime in 2020. And also her husband, an Ernest Golding, he lived on Brindley Street and died in the same year I think.’
‘Okay, will do, Ridpath.’
‘There’s one more thing, Sophia, can you check the numbers of deaths at the home?’
‘Starting from when, Ridpath?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Can you start from before the pandemic, say 2018. Get me the figures for the pandemic and the most up-to-date numbers you have.’
‘The files are current till the end of last month.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘When do you want them? And don’t say yesterday.’
‘How about the day before yesterday?’
She laughed.
‘But seriously, Sophia, I’m going to visit there this afternoon. You can message me with the details.’
‘On it, Ridpath. Anything is better than what his Lordship has asked me to do.’
‘Which is?’
‘Compile a list of all the Section 28 notices submitted by Mrs Challinor in the last twenty years since she was made head coroner.’
‘Why does he want the information?’
‘Exactly the same question I asked him. His answer was “Just do it.” Anyway, I’ll do your stuff first. His Lordship can wait.’
‘Thanks, Sophia. See you later.’
‘Not if I see you first.’
The phone went dead in Ridpath’s hands. ‘We’ll get the info before five, Em, if I know Sophia. How are you getting to Eccles?’
‘I’ll get the tram. The station is just around the corner.’
‘Great.’
Ridpath opened his car door and slipped behind the wheel.
‘But one thing, Ridpath, next time we take my car, okay?’
‘Sorry, Em, rank has its privileges and one of those is I do the driving. See you at five.’
‘To quote Sophia, “not if I see you first”.’
Chapter TWENTY
‘Do come in and sit down, Mr Lardner.’
The doctor’s office at Ashworth High Security Hospital was as empty as the man’s mind: a pine desk, two low Scandinavian chairs, a tall lamp from Ikea and bare brick walls painted white. Along one side, a row of bronze awards from the British Psychiatric Association were arrayed like soldiers at a funeral – a testimony to the man’s love of himself.
It was all deliberately austere of course, as it meant all focus was on the man himself. His pudgy, self-satisfied, bearded face sat above a red spotted bow tie and green tweed suit.
Harold Lardner glanced down at the man’s shoes. Black slip-ons. Should have been brown brogues.
He took his place on the left-hand seat, trying to get comfortable in the most uncomfortable chair imaginable.
Dr Mansell waved away Mr Francis, the guard who had accompanied Harold Lardner from his cell. The man closed the door without a word but his shadow could be seen through the plate glass, hovering still.
‘It’s good to see you again, Harold, I feel we have made tremendous progress over the last six months…’
The man’s smug self-satisfaction was sickening, like eating two whole boxes of Cadbury’s Milk Tray at one sitting. ‘We’ of course had made absolutely no progress at all. In fact, Harold Lardner had become even more convinced of the rightness of his pathology. It was the world that was wrong not him.
‘…PTSD is one of the most difficult illnesses for us to treat and your case is particularly trying. Anybody performing over 12,000 post mortems in a career is going to be negatively affected by the process and the memories. I believe your work experiences lie at the heart of your negative attitudes to the human body and humanity in general. The experience of these post-mortems being the instigator of your antisocial personality disorder.’
God, he loved the sound of his own voice.
Negative attitudes?
That was a lovely way of describing the death of a police detective from anti-freeze dripped slowly into her veins. Harold had enjoyed her death. Lesley had been one of his more competent disciples.
‘I saw them as experiments, they were no longer human beings, Dr Mansell,’ he said blandly.
‘When did that begin? I mean seeing people as experiments not human beings?’
Harold Lardner sighed. Here we go again, trying to find a motive for what he had done, missing the obvious one that was staring the stupid man in the face. He decided to lead him down a psychological garden path.
‘The experiments began when I was young. I remember I used to set traps for birds and then put them in a cage.’
The doctor leant forward. ‘And how old were you then?’
‘About ten years old. Father had died and there was just myself and Mother living in the old house in Bowdon. Of course, she drank far too much.’
The doctor could barely contain his excitement. ‘What did you do with the birds?’
I didn’t do anything with them because I’m making it all up, thought Lardner but he answered, ‘I used to put Mother’s cat in the cage. I liked to watch the birds become more agitated, their wings fluttering wildly as they tried to escape. The cat used to just wait and watch. I remember the end of his white tail waving sensually like a snake before he pounced.’
‘And what did you do with the bodies?’
‘The birds’ bodies?’
The doctor nodded.
‘I used to cut them up, removing the heart and the liver and the other organs and laying them out on a tray next to their heads.’ For once, he told Mansell the truth. That is exactly what he did, practising for later life.
Lardner finished and a long silence dragged on between them before the doctor asked, ‘Did you enjoy killing the birds?’
‘I think “enjoy” is the wrong word. It was just something I did, something I was good at.’
The doctor scribbled his notes in his blue book. ‘And later when you were at school, did these experiments with the cats continue?’
‘No, they had stopped by then.’
‘Why?’
For a second, Lardner thought about telling him the truth. He stopped experimenting on animals and started on humans. School was such a wonderful place to be at that time. There were always vulnerable pupils to pick on and the teachers didn’t care, particularly as he was always the top of his class.
Instead he answered, ‘I don’t know. I was being bullied remorselessly because I was bright. I went into my shell and just concentrated on my work.’
‘And your mother was still drinking?’
‘Like a fish. Usually a bottle of vodka a day, maybe more.’ Actually, his mother was teetotal. The mere smell of alcohol made her sick.
More notes in his little blue book. ‘And when your mother died, what did you do?’
‘I watched her die. It took a long time, the cancer slowly spread throughout her body, absorbing her, killing her with its pain.’
‘Was that when you became a doctor?’
But I didn’t become a doctor, you stupid man, I became a pathologist. I loved death. Loved being surrounded by it, smelling it every day as part of my work.
‘Was that when you became a doctor?’ Mansell repeated.
‘Yes, I wanted to help others, prevent the suffering my mother endured. But I found I was good at anatomy and pathology so that was where I specialised.’
The doctor smiled. ‘Not surprising given your childhood. How many post-mortems were you performing each week?’
‘Sometimes as many as ten a week.’
The doctor shook his head. ‘No wonder the human body lost its essential humanity for you. These people became objects, you disassociated their bodies from their lives.’
The man took a deep breath and Harold Lardner knew he was about to embark on one of his interminable lectures.
‘Freudian analysis centres its motivational theory on the pleasure principle, whereas Adlerian individual psychology focuses on what is generally called the will to power. I, on the other hand, have turned my back on both those eminent gentlemen, describing a new type or class of neurosis, a new sort of suffering that does not represent an illness in the proper sense of the term, I have called this new psychosis the egotistical vacuum, where life takes on a total lack, or loss, of essential and existential humanity. Now Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is usually used…’
It was at this point Harold Lardner normally tuned out from the doctor’s voice, focusing instead on the pleasure he obtained from killing people or ordering others to do the work for him.
‘Have the nightmares come back?’
The doctor was staring at him.
‘Pardon?’
‘Have the nightmares come back?’
‘Not since I have been using the techniques you told me. I found them extremely useful, particularly listening to the meditation tapes of your voice before I go to sleep.’
