“Are you Yolanda?” Barbara asked.
In reply, she put her hands to her ears. She clamped her eyes shut. “Yes, yes, all right!” She had an odd, low voice. She sounded like a man. “I bloody well hear you, don’t I!”
“Sorry,” Barbara said, although, to her thinking, she hadn’t spoken loudly at all. Psychics, she thought, must be sensitive to sound. “I didn’t mean—”
“I’ll tell her! But you must stop roaring. I’m not deaf, you know.”
“I didn’t think I was loud.” Barbara dug out her ID. “Scotland Yard,” she said.
Yolanda opened her eyes. She didn’t cast even a glance in the direction of Barbara’s warrant card. Rather she said, “Quite a shouter, he is.”
“Who?”
“He says he’s your dad. He says you’re meant to—”
“He’s dead,” Barbara told her.
“Of course he is. I could hardly hear him otherwise. I hear dead people.”
“Like in ‘I see dead people’?”
“Don’t be clever. All right! All right! Don’t be so loud! Your dad—”
“He wasn’t a shouter. Not ever.”
“He is now, luv. He says you’re meant to call on your mum. She’s missing you.”
Barbara doubted that. Last time she’d seen her mother, the woman had believed she was looking at their longtime neighbour Mrs. Gustafson, and her resultant panic—in her final years at home she’d grown to fear Mrs. Gustafson, as if the old lady had somehow morphed into Lucifer—had not been assuaged by anything Barbara had attempted, from showing her identification to appealing to any of the other residents among whom Mrs. Havers lived in a private care home in Greenford. Barbara had not yet been back. It had seemed, at the time, the course of wisdom.
“What shall I tell him?” Yolanda asked. And then with her hands over her ears once again, “What? Oh, of course I believe you!” And then to Barbara, “James, yes? But he wasn’t called that, was he?”
“Jimmy.” Barbara shifted uncomfortably on her feet. She looked at Winston who himself seemed to be anticipating an unwelcome message from someone in the great beyond. “Tell him I’ll go. Tomorrow. Whatever.”
“You mustn’t lie to the spirit world.”
“Next week then.”
Yolanda closed her eyes. “She says next week, James.” And then to Barbara, “You can’t manage sooner? He’s quite insistent.”
“Tell him I’m on a case. He’ll understand.”
Apparently he did, for once Yolanda communicated this matter into the spirit world, she breathed a sigh of relief and gave her attention to Winston. He had a magnificent aura, she told him. Well developed, unusual, brilliant, and evolved. Fan-tas-tic.
Nkata said politely, “Ta,” and then, “C’n we have a word, Miss—”
“Just Yolanda,” she said.
“No other name?” Barbara asked her. This would be for the record and all that. Because as this was a police matter …Yolanda would surely get the point, eh?
“Police? I’m legal,” Yolanda said. “Licenced. Whatever you need.”
“I expect you are. We’re not here to check your business details. So your full name is … ?”
It turned out—no surprise—that Yolanda was a pseudonym, Sharon Price not having quite the same cachet when it came to the psychic trade.
“Would that be Miss or Missus Price?” Nkata asked, having his notebook out and his mechanical pencil poised. It would be missus, she confirmed. Mister was a driver of one of London’s black cabs and the children of mister and missus were both grown and flown.
“You’re here because of her, aren’t you?” Yolanda said shrewdly.
“You knew Jemima Hastings, then, yeah?” Nkata said.
Yolanda missed the tense of the verb. She said, “Oh, I know Jemima, yes. But I didn’t mean Jemima. I meant her, that cow over Putney. She actually rang you, didn’t she? She’s got her nerve.”
They were all still standing in the anteroom, and Barbara asked was there a place they could sit for a proper conversation? To this Yolanda waved them through the beaded curtain, where she had a setup that walked a tightrope between analyst’s office with a fainting sofa along one wall and a séance locale with a round table in the middle and a thronelike chair at twelve o’clock, obviously meant for the medium. Yolanda went for this and indicated Havers and Nkata were meant to sit at three and seven o’clock respectively. This had to do with Nkata’s aura, evidently, and with Barbara’s lack of one.
“Bit anxious about you, I am,” Yolanda said to her.
“You and everyone else.” Barbara cast a glance at Nkata. He gave her a look of deep and utterly spurious concern over her apparent lack of aura. “I’ll see to you later,” she muttered under her breath, to which he stifled a smile.
“Oh, I can see you’re unbelievers,” Yolanda said in her strange man’s voice. She reached beneath the table then, whereupon Barbara expected it to levitate. But instead the psychic brought forth the ostensible reason for her ruined vocal cords: a packet of Dunhills. She lit up and shoved the cigarettes towards Barbara, with the full knowledge, it seemed, that Barbara was a fellow in this matter. “You’re dying to,” she said. “Go ahead,” and “Sorry, luv,” to Winston. “But not to worry. Passive smoking isn’t how you’re meant to go. More than that, however, and you’ll have to pay me five quid.”
“Reckon I’d like to be surprised,” he responded.
“Suit yourself, dearie.” She inhaled with great pleasure and settled back into her throne for a proper natter. She said, “I don’t want her living in Putney. Well, not so much in Putney itself as with her and by her; I s’pose I mean in her house.”
“You didn’t want Jemima living in Mrs. McHaggis’s house?” Barbara said.
“Right.” Yolanda flicked ash onto the floor. This was covered by a Persian carpet, but she didn’t seem concerned. She said, “Houses of death need to be decontaminated. Sage burning in every room and believe you me it doesn’t do just to wave it about as one runs through the place. And I’m not talking of the sage you get in the market, mind you. One doesn’t buy a packet in Sainsbury’s from the dried herb shelf and put a teaspoonful in an ashtray and light it and there you have it. Not by a bloody long chalk. One gets the real thing, bound up properly and meant to be burnt. One lights it and appropriate prayers are said. Spirits needing to be released are then released and the place is cleansed of death and only then is it wholesome enough for someone to resume a life within it.”
Winston, Barbara saw, was noting all this down as if with the intention of stopping off somewhere for the appropriate decontaminants. She said, “Sorry, Mrs. Price, but—”
“Yolanda, for God’s sake.”
“Right. Yolanda. Are you referring to what’s happened to Jemima Hastings?”
Yolanda looked confused. “I’m referring,” she said, “to the fact that she lives in a House of Death. McHaggis—was ever a woman more appropriately named, I ask you—is a widow. Her husband died in the house.”
“Suspicious circumstances?”
Yolanda hmmphed. “You’ll have to ask McHaggis that. I can see contagion oozing out of the windows every time I go past. I’ve told Jemima she’s meant to clear out of there. And all right, I admit it, I might have been rather insistent about it.”
“Which would be why the cops were phoned?” Barbara asked. “Who phoned them? I ask because what we know is that you were warned off stalking Jemima at one point. Is our information—”
“That’s an interpretation, isn’t it?” Yolanda said. “I’ve expressed my concern. It’s grown, so I’ve expressed it again. P’rhaps I’ve been a bit …Oh, p’rhaps I took things to extremes, p’rhaps I did a bit of lurking outside, but what am I meant to do? Just let her languish? Every time I see her, it’s shrunken more, and am I meant to stand by and let that happen? Say nothing about it?”
“‘It’s shrunken more,’” Barbara repeated. “‘It’ being … ?”
“Her au
ra,” Nkata supplied helpfully, obviously on top of the situation.
“Yes,” Yolanda confirmed. “When I first met Jemima, she glowed. Well, not like you, luv”—this to Nkata—“but still more noticeably than most people.”
“How’d you meet her, then?” Barbara asked. Enough of auras, she decided, as Winston was beginning to look decidedly smug about his.
“At the ice rink. Well, not at the ice rink per se, naturally. More like from the ice rink. Abbott introduced us. We have coffee together sometimes in the café, Abbott and I. And I run into him in the shops as well. He’s got something of a pleasant aura himself—”
“Right,” Barbara murmured.
“—and as he gets such grief from his wives—well, this would be his former wives, wouldn’t it—I like to tell him not to worry so about that. A man can only do what a man can do, eh? And if he doesn’t make enough to pay them all support, then he isn’t to drive himself into the grave over it. He does what he can. He teaches, doesn’t he? He walks dogs in the park. He tutors children in reading. What more can those three tarts expect from him?”
“What more indeed,” Barbara said.
“Who’d this bloke be?” Winston asked.
Abbott Langer, Yolanda told them. He was an instructor at the Queen’s Ice and Bowl, which was just up the street from this market in which they sat.
It turned out that Jemima Hastings had been taking ice-skating lessons from Abbott Langer and Yolanda had encountered the two of them having a post-lesson cup of coffee in the Russian café inside this very market. Abbott had introduced them. Yolanda admired Jemima’s aura—
“Bet you did,” Barbara muttered.
—and she’d asked Jemima a few questions which stimulated conversation which in turn prompted Yolanda to hand over her business card. And that was that.
“She’s come to see me three or four times,” Yolanda said.
“About what?”
Yolanda managed to draw in on her cigarette and look aghast simultaneously. “I don’t speak about my clients,” she said. “This is confidential, what goes on in here.”
“We need a general idea … ?”
“Oh don’t you just.” She blew out a thin stream of smoke. “Generally she’s like all the rest. She wants to talk about a bloke. Well, don’t they all? It’s always about a bloke, eh? Will he? Won’t he? Will they? Won’t they? Should she? Shouldn’t she? My concern, however, is that house she lives in, but has she ever wanted to hear about that? Has she ever wanted to hear about where she ought to be living?”
“Where would that be?” Barbara asked.
“Not there, let me tell you. I see danger there. I’ve even offered her a place with my mister and me at a bargain rate. We’ve got two spare rooms and they’ve both been purified, but she hasn’t wanted to leave McHaggis. I admit I might have been a bit persistent about the matter. I might have stopped in to speak to her about it now and then. But that was only because she needs to get out of that place and what am I meant to do about that? Say nothing? Let the chips fall? Wait until whatever is going to happen happens?”
It came to Barbara that Yolanda had not caught on that Jemima was dead, which was rather curious since she was supposedly a psychic and here were the rozzers asking questions about one of her clients. On the one hand, Jemima’s name had not been released to the media since they’d not yet tracked down her family. On the other hand, if Yolanda was in conversation with Barbara’s own father, wouldn’t Jemima’s spirit be doing some serious shouting from the netherworld as well?
Barbara shot Nkata a look upon the consideration of her father. Had the louse actually tracked down Yolanda and phoned her in advance with pertinent details of Barbara’s life? She wouldn’t have put it past him. He would have his joke.
She said, “Yolanda, before we go on, I think I need to clarify something: Jemima Hastings is dead. She was murdered four days ago in Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington.”
Silence. And then, as if her bum were on fire, Yolanda shot up from her throne. It toppled backwards. She cast her cigarette to the carpet and ground it out—at least Barbara hoped she ground it out as she didn’t fancy a fire—and she flung out her arms. She cried out as if in extremis, saying, “I knew! I knew! Oh forgive me, Immortals!” And then she fell straight across the table, arms still extended. One hand reached towards Nkata and the other towards Barbara. When they didn’t twig what she wanted, she slapped her palms against the tabletop and then turned her hands towards them. They were meant to clasp hers.
“She’s here among us!” Yolanda cried. “Oh tell me, beloved one. Who? Who?” She began to moan.
“Jesus on white bread.” Barbara looked at Winston, aghast. Were they meant to ring for help? Nine, nine, nine or whatever? Should they dash her with water? Was there sage anywhere handy?
“Dark as the night,” Yolanda whispered, her voice hoarser than before. “He is dark as the night.”
Well, he would be, Barbara thought, if for no other reason than they always were.
“Attended by his partner the sun, he comes upon her. Together they do it. He was not alone. I see him. I see him. Oh my beloved!” And then she screamed. And then she fainted. Or she seemed to faint.
“Bloody hell.” Nkata whispered the words. He looked to Barbara for direction.
She wanted to tell him that he was the one with the brilliant aura, so he should damn well be able to sort out what to do. But instead, she got to her feet and he did likewise and together they righted Yolanda’s throne, seated her, and got her head down between her knees.
When she came to, which happened with an alacrity suggesting she’d not actually fainted in the first place, she moaned about McHaggis, the house, Jemima, Jemima’s questions about him and does he love me, Yolanda, is he the one, Yolanda, should I give in and do what he asks, Yolanda. But aside from moaning “dark as the night that covers me,” which to Barbara sounded suspiciously like a line from verse, Yolanda was able to relay nothing else. She did say that Abbott Langer was likely to know more because Jemima had been quite regular about her skating lessons and he’d been impressed with her devotion to the ice.
“It’s that house,” Yolanda said in summation. “I tried to warn her about that house.”
FINDING ABBOTT LANGER was a simple matter. The Queen’s Ice and Bowl was just up the street, as the psychic herself had said. As its name suggested, it combined the pleasures of ten-pin bowling and ice skating. It also offered a video arcade, a food bar, and a noise level guaranteed to coax migraines from individuals previously immune to them. This came from all directions and comprised an utter cacophony of sounds: rock ’n’ roll from the bowling area; shrieks, bleeps, bangs, buzzers, and bells from the video arcade; dance music from the skating rink; shouts and screams from the skaters on the ice. Because of the time of year, the place was aswarm with children and their parents and with young teenagers in need of a location in which to hang round, send text messages, and otherwise look cool. Also, due to the ice, it was quite pleasant in the building itself, and this brought in more people off the street, if only to lower their body temperature.
Perhaps four dozen people were on the ice, most of them clinging to the handrails at the side. The music—what could be heard of it above the din—seemed designed to encourage smooth strokes of the feet, but it wasn’t working very well. No one, Barbara noted, save the skating instructors, was keeping time. And there were three of these, obvious by the yellow waistcoats they were wearing, obvious by the fact that they were the only ones who seemed able to skate backwards, which looked to Barbara like an admirable feat.
She and Winston stood against the rail, watching the action for a moment. Several children among the skaters appeared to be taking lessons in an area in the middle of the ice reserved for them. They were being coached by a largish man with a helmet of hair that made him look like an Elvis impersonator. He was far bigger than one associated with ice skaters, well over six feet tall and built like a refrigerator: not
at all fat, but solid. He was difficult not to notice, not only because of the hair but also because he was—despite his bulk—remarkably light on his feet. He turned out to be Abbott Langer, and he joined them briefly at the side of the rink when one of the other instructors went out to fetch him.
He had to complete the lesson he was giving, he said. They could wait for him here—“Watch that little girl in pink …She’s heading for the gold.”—or they could wait for him in the food bar.
They chose the food bar. Since it was past teatime and she’d not even had lunch, Barbara selected a ham salad sandwich, salt-and-vinegar crisps, a flapjack, and a Kit Kat bar for herself, as well as a Coke to chase everything down. Winston—how could she possibly be surprised by this?—chose an orange juice.
She scowled at him. “Anyone ever comment on your revolting personal habits?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “Only on my aura,” he replied. “That your dinner, is it, Barb?”
“Are you out of your mind? I’ve not yet had my lunch.”
Abbott Langer joined them as Barbara was finishing up her meal. He’d put protective covers on the blades of his ice skates. He had another lesson in half an hour, he said. What could he do for them?
Barbara said, “We’ve come from Yolanda.”
“She’s completely legitimate,” he said at once. “Is this a reference? D’you mean to use her? Like on the telly?”
“Ah …no,” Barbara said.