by David Hatton
The crowd’s excitement grew as the star of the show arrived. Jackie Wallace signed autographs and answered interviewers’ questions, streaming live to newscasters around the country. She paused as she witnessed her co-star across the bridge, smoking a cigarette and obsessively biting his nails. The medium thanked her fans and waved off any more interviews before making her way to Michael. He peered up and provided a forced smile.
‘How’re you doing, love?’
‘Not good. I guess this is really happening now.’
‘It’s just a matter of time,’ Jackie said. ‘It’s not healthy, this, you know? Sitting around waiting for the inevitable. It could take days.’
‘I have nowhere else to go. Work won’t take me back until this is all over and Robert has disappeared since they found the handbag. He’s taking this really hard.’
‘It’s amazing how people turn away in times of trouble. They can’t handle it. When my mother died, friends lost contact and nobody visited. I admit, it hit me quite hard too. I fell out with my sister and couldn’t face visiting anymore. People don’t want, or can’t, face up to the inevitability of death. Even me. Can you imagine the headlines; Psychic Medium Can’t Deal with Mum’s Death! It’s such a tragic misfortune that we don’t speak more openly about it.’
‘The only person I was close to who died before Jason was my grandma. My other grandparents all died before I was born so I never got the chance to meet them.’
‘Then I guess you’re lucky. Well you were until the last year or two. But it happens to us all at some point.’
Jackie stood up and walked over to the head of the search and pointed towards the entrance of a tunnel. Her encouragement was met with glares of disparagement. Disappointed, Jackie returned to Michael. She brushed off the seat and folded in her black baggy dress as she sat beside him. Michael’s beard had grown out, throwing forward a few wisps of ginger. He hadn’t changed since the previous day.
‘What were you doing?’
‘I was attempting to tell them where Suzanne’s body was likely to be.’
‘How do you know?’
‘As we come closer to finding Suzanne, her screams are becoming louder. I can hear her now, it’s so sad.’
‘Can you see her like you see the others? Like you see me?’
Jackie shook her head. ‘No, not yet. I only hear her calls. But I will, hopefully when she’s been found. She’s trapped at the moment.’
‘I was thinking about your visions, how you’re able to see other people like they’re alive. Solid. Real. It made me think back to when I was at university. I tried all sorts of drugs back then. It’s amazing I’m still alive, to be honest. But some of the stuff we took back then brought on the most insane hallucinations. I could see clowns and elephants walking around our living room like I can see you now. If you weren’t so accurate about some of your claims, I’d be questioning your own use of drugs.’
‘Hardcore.’
‘It all stopped when I married Suzanne. Good job it did, I couldn’t have gone on like that. Although I’m working in recruitment, it sure is tempting to go back into it. The kids at work are so under pressure to hit their sales targets, they’re quite open about their cocaine use. Some even do it at their desks.’
‘Doesn’t your boss say anything?’
‘He’s usually doing it with them. I heard at the last Christmas party he supplied it to them to get them in the mood.’
‘Wow. Well done you for not going back to that.’
‘I wasn’t a complete saint. There were times after Jason died. We needed to survive, ironic really. I’ve stopped though, it wasn’t easy, but even though my son isn’t around anymore, I’m still a dad and always will be. Dads don’t do drugs. Not good ones anyway. Saying that, I’d do anything for some escapism right now. How about you? Ever been tempted?’
‘I haven’t even smoked marijuana.’
‘No?’ Michael gasped.
‘I might look quirky, but you don’t need drugs when you see the things I do on a daily basis. I get my high from getting people like you to move on.’
A quiet moment of contemplation followed a warm smile. Jackie placed her hand on his and he leaned his head on her shoulder as they stared at the commotion surrounding the commonly calm canal.
The grumbling of her tummy prompted Jackie to look at the time. She reached into her handbag and lifted out a pack of sandwiches before handing one to Michael. He waved his hand.
‘You need to eat, love. It’s tough stuff, this. You’ll need your energy.’
A small smile indicated his appreciation. He lifted the sandwich from the tin foil and forced it down his gullet. He glanced at the activities surrounding him and bowed his head.
‘It’s not a normal day this, is it? I’m sat here with a psychic medium watching a group of divers search for my missing wife. All the while eating lunch.’
‘It’ll bring you peace, my love. You’ll be able to move on once you know the truth.’
‘What I can’t understand is… why me? I’ve already lost a son. Now this. You grow up watching the horrible stories on the news and think it won’t happen to you. Why is it happening to me and not some other poor sod?’
‘Well why not you?’ Jackie asked with an air of enlightenment.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Life’s a lottery, Michael, and you’ve got a lot more chances of this shit happening to you than winning the million pound draw.’
They fell to silence, staring at the water, which held the answers to his questions. The usually calm canal began to ripple and the diver resurfaced, pointing his thumb in the air, signalling to the superintendent.
They had found something.
*
The squeaking of wheels broke the silence of the waiting room. A trolley passed; a white sheet covered a lifeless body. Behind, a nurse dressed in blue-green scrubs pushed the corpse through white traffic doors, swinging forward and back as he disappeared into the distance.
The waiting room was vacant. Two small benches lay parallel to each other. A glass table sat in the middle of the room with unread magazines on top. Nobody who visited the waiting room had ever felt the desire to read; instead the materials provided an aesthetically comforting break from the reminders of why its inhabitants had arrived. The surrounding white tiled walls held posters and leaflets, offering support to all who passed through.
Michael Walker waited alone. Despite all that had unfolded in the past few hours, his focus remained on the tiles. He’d never witnessed tiles so white, so clean, untarnished. They appeared almost new, but a framed newspaper cutting confirmed the hospital had been opened a decade before by a royal. The curious consultant inspected the walls, lightly rubbing his finger above the smooth grout. He hadn’t noticed the impeccable tiling two years before when he sat in the same spot; he had Suzanne to console back then. Now he waited alone with no one to distract him from the events unfolding around him.
Several calls to his brother went unanswered. He had the option to leave a message but he couldn’t bear to reveal the nature of his call over a voicemail. He struggled to say it out loud at all. It wasn’t even confirmed that it was Suzanne; it wasn’t last time. Why unnecessarily upset others when he didn’t know for certain himself?
Moments after the rise of the diver, the action exploded surrounding the usual tranquil waterside. Gawping bystanders were hurried along by the police; they hurried to the balcony of a nearby bar overlooking the crime scene. Within an hour, a small crane arrived; a square wooden crate, covered on either side with black rubber sheets, was lowered into the water and pulled out minutes later. The findings were hurriedly placed inside a black van, which sped out of the area as soon as the back doors closed.
Michael rushed to the policeman on duty, desperate to see the person exhumed from the waters beside him. He was ushered aside and told to go home until they had further information.
A visit to Bootle Street Police Station had little to offer
. The rotund officer from his first visit sat behind his desk munching on his lunch and reading a newspaper. He peered up and saw the widower and smiled.
‘Oh here he is,’ the officer laughed. ‘Ghost busters alert!’
‘Do you mind? They’ve just found a body exactly where I told you it was. That could be my wife.’ Michael choked and his eyes watered. The officer gulped and turned away.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, lifting his head gently. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I need to know any information about that body found in the canal in Castlefield earlier today.’
‘Just take a seat and I’ll have someone with you shortly.’
Two hours passed. During that time, Michael paced the room up and down, pulling at his already thinning hair. He shared the room with parents waiting to bail out their kids and a distressed man who appeared to be on the verge of a breakdown. The officer leading the operation in Castlefield walked in and stepped in Michael’s pacing tracks.
‘Mr Walker. We believe this could be Suzanne.’
‘We’ve said that before.’ Michael shrugged.
‘Will you come and identify her?’
An hour later, Michael stood rubbing his fingertips over the grey grout attempting to source a crack in the perfection. Detective Morgan stepped into the room and double glanced at the man inspecting the walls like a prisoner planning his escape. Little surprised her these days; she’d witnessed thousands of people torture themselves in the waiting room before she delivered a lashing of bad news. Some convinced themselves that the police had got it all wrong, others accepted their loss before they’d even seen the body. And then there were people like Michael, who appeared emotionally numb and distracted themselves until the inevitable occurred.
She peered over the magazines behind him, still intact since their collection from the shop a year before. At first she replaced them weekly but over time she learned that nobody wanted to read gritty real-life stories; their own lives were dramatic enough.
‘Mr Walker?’
Michael jumped and turned around.
‘We’re ready for you.’
A pale-faced Michael nodded his head and followed the detective down the corridor. His obsession fell onto the copper’s suit which had frayed at the bottom of her jacket; a loose thread tugged at his attention. Covered bodies lay out in the corridors and frantic families poured out of the viewing rooms. The wailing penetrated Michael’s ears but their cries became muffled as he obsessively latched on to the fraying suit which stormed up the corridor before him.
The detective paused and turned around, placing a hand over Michael’s arm. Her warm hand on his bare arm broke him from his trance.
‘We’re here, Mr Walker. If you need an extra few minutes, you only need to ask.’
‘No, let’s get this over with.’
The door opened to reveal a dark empty space with a dim blue flickering light above him to guide his way into the vacant space. Before him, a theatrical set of red velvet curtains covered a back wall.
‘Mr Walker, when you’re ready, we’ll open the curtains to reveal the body we’ve found today. You can have as long as you like, but you simply need to provide us a yes or a no as to whether the person before you is Suzanne Walker. Do you understand?’
Michael nodded, swallowing the lump of responsibility in his throat.
‘Are you ready, Mr Walker?’ The tilted head returned. He nodded towards Morgan, taking a deep breath to prepare himself for the main event.
The curtains slowly opened, automated by a remote. Behind a glass shield, a woman’s corpse lay lit up by the lights above her. Her pale face was bloated, her skin almost blue, wrinkling in patches. She lay beneath a royal blue duvet, her head softly placed onto a white pillow. Behind, a black screen allowed the sleeping woman to form the centrepiece of the viewing platform as she lay in state.
The witness stared, placing his hands over the glass which separated him from the breathless body before him; his print stained the window as he pulled away. The detective beside him handed him a tissue and he wiped the moisture from his eye.
The person before him was not somebody he recognized. The warm glow of his wife was nowhere to be seen. But there was no doubt regarding her identity.
‘Mr Walker, is this your wife?’ the detective asked with a shaky voice.
‘Yes.’ Michael fell down to the detective’s knees and cried onto her legs. The cop placed a hand over his head and stroked his hair softly with one hand, while with the other she pressed the remote, drawing a closure to Suzanne’s final curtain call. The room grew dim, and the flickering light buzzed as it burnt its last ray above the weeping widower before casting them into the dark.
A pane of glass, ten inches wide and two in height, provided a glimpse into the interview room. Inside the suspect sat patiently, ignoring the chuckles outside. Her eccentricity was boasted through her purple two-piece suit with a crystal brooch covering her right breast. A fascinator was clipped onto her hair, dangling a pair of blue velvet scales forming the Libran zodiac symbol. She rolled her fingers along the desk and sighed.
Laughter roared down the halls. Jackie’s image had been cut out of a tabloid newspaper and stapled to a dartboard. A moustache was penned on her top lip and punch holes into her cheeks.
Detective Rebecca Morgan broke up the chuckling officers, pushing them away from the spyhole.
‘Come on, boys,’ she said. ‘Regardless of what you think of her, she deserves our respect. At the least she’s a suspect, at the most she’s an informant.’
‘I bet she’s predicting whether she’s going to be charged. I must be psychic as even I know exactly where she’s going. Straight to Strangeways.’
‘There’s something certainly strange about her ways!’
‘I bet she’s asking the ghosts to help her escape.’
‘She didn’t predict being arrested, did she? Otherwise she’d be on the run by now.’
‘Enough,’ Morgan barked and pointed towards the kitchen. ‘Now clear off. I assume some of you have work to do.’
The officers dispersed. Her furious face grew as red as her fiery hair. A charcoal grey suit separated her from her uniformed colleagues as she stormed through the crime scenes of Manchester.
‘I thought better of you.’ She turned to Detective Graham Scott. His mousy hair held evidence of his blonde youth as the sun brought new life to his otherwise dull locks. His mane was as mundane as his suit; jet black and off the rack.
‘You keep saying this. Maybe you shouldn’t expect so much.’
A smirk between them lingered before she turned her head away and composed herself.
‘So what do ya reckon?’
‘I’m intrigued, I have to say. She’s a clear suspect and one I think we should charge but I want to know why. She’s the obvious target, why come and expose herself like this?’
‘How do you know she’s not the real deal?’ Morgan quizzed.
‘You are kidding?’ Scott choked on his take-out coffee. ‘You’re not a believer are you?’
‘Well since they decided to promote you, I’m inclined to believe anything is possible.’
‘Cheeky.’
‘She’s good, you know? My sister went to see her a few months ago. Managed to tell her all sorts about our dad’s death. God knows how she did it.’
‘And what do you believe?’
‘I’m not a believer in the afterlife. I just know she’s very good at what she does at obtaining information. Just because she knew where the body was, it doesn’t make her the killer.’
‘Come on then, let’s see what she has to say.’
They stepped inside the room, their entrance delivering a sigh of relief to Jackie, who’d waited for nearly an hour before their arrival. They sat down across from her, a table keeping them apart. On the desk, a recording device rolled and cups of water were placed before every seat.
‘Ms Wallace, you’ve declined your right to legal representation.
Do you still stand by this?’
‘Only guilty people request lawyers, Detective…?’ Jackie paused.
‘Morgan.’
‘… Detective Morgan, and I’m not guilty.’
‘OK, well would you like to tell me where you were on the 5th December 2011?’
‘I was at the Sleep Tight Hotel on Deansgate. I was on stage doing my show.’
‘What time did you leave after the show?’
‘The next morning, I always stay at the hotel. The room’s free and it’s a bind to-ing and fro-ing back and forth to my home in Chorlton all the time with all that equipment. It’s nice to retire to my room after it’s finished. It takes it out of me speaking to the dead all evening. Grief is exhausting. If you need witnesses I have plenty. Just take a trip to the hotel. You’ll soon find enough people who can tell you where I was that night.’
‘We did and your story checks out.’
‘Then why am I in here then, my dear?’ Jackie asked.
‘Because something isn’t quite right.’ Scott took over. ‘The last time Suzanne Walker was seen alive she spent the evening at your show. You then declare you know where her body is and what do you know? It’s there. What does that tell us?’
‘That I’m the killer.’
‘Is that a confession?’
‘No, I’m merely telling you what you’re already thinking. Except you’re wrong. I’m not the killer. I’m a psychic medium. I can tell you a lot about what you’re thinking. You, Mr Scott, are wondering how soon you can leave here tonight so you can get home and fondle Miss Morgan here. While Miss Morgan is wondering how she can let you down gently.’
The detectives looked to each other and grew red.
‘Tell me I’m wrong,’ Jackie said with an arched eyebrow.
‘That’s none of your business,’ Morgan snapped.