The Mentalist

by Rod Duncan

  The Mentalist

  by Rod Duncan

  Published in 2007 by Crime Express

  an imprint of Five Leaves Publications

  Crime Express 3

  PO Box 8786, Nottingham NG1 9AW

  www.fiveleaves.co.uk

  © Rod Duncan, 2007

  ISBN: 978-1-907869-46-4

  Five Leaves acknowledges financial support from Arts Council England

  Typesetting and design: Four Sheets Design and Print

  Mentalist

  One who is believed to have thepower to read other people’s thoughtsand place suggestions in their minds.

  A performing artist who usesconjuring tricks to simulatesupernatural mental powers.

  Chapter 1

  In its heyday, punters might have filled the theatre and the air would have been hazy with tobacco smoke. But smoking and public access to the dress circle were both now banned, so the spotlight operator had the upper level to himself and his light left barely a trace in the air through which it passed.

  Below him, he could make out the backs of the heads of the audience. Almost half the seats were occupied, which was a good turnout for this tour.

  He looked along the spotlight beam to the man who stood centre stage. Harry Gysel, the showman who was described variously as a psychic, a fraud, or a meddler in the occult — depending on who was speaking. He was thirty-eight years old, according to the biography on his website. The narrowness of his face was accentuated by close-cropped sideburns sculpted to follow the line of his jaw.

  Tonight he wore a long, double-breasted jacket and dark trousers, conjuring an image that fitted the theatre’s Victorian past.

  He had already gone through the mind reading part of the show — telling people the jobs they did or wanted to do, telling them the makes and colours of their cars. He now had four volunteers on stage and was in the process of calling up a fifth to stand in line beside them. This one, a young woman, had eyes wide with expectation. The spotlight operator shifted the beam to include her. The other stage lights dimmed, leaving Harry Gysel and the volunteers surrounded by darkness.

  ‘You’ve come here to find the truth.’ Gysel said to the woman. His voice sounding intimate, yet clear even from the balcony.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He gripped her shoulders and turned her to face him, locking eye to eye. The spotlight operator narrowed the focus of the beam. Everything else in the room seemed to disappear. The psychic and his subject. One bubble of light in the darkness.

  ‘You’ve been thinking of someone,’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘A man,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Picture his name. See it in the air in front of you. Let his name sound inside your head. You’re missing him, am I right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Remember the sound of his voice. Keep saying his name in your mind.’

  She closed her eyes. Her shoulders sagged. ‘He’s gone from this world.’

  ‘His name…’ Gysel paused, as if waiting for the inspiration to come. ‘His name is Peter.’

  It was as if a jolt of electricity passed through Harry Gysel’s hands into her shoulders. Her head snapped up. A breath of surprise rippled through the darkness around them.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said.

  ‘He’s not gone,’ Gysel replied. ‘He is here.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘He passed over from this world. But you can still feel him.’

  There was a pause. The spotlight operator tightened the focus even further. The bubble of light contained just their upper bodies now, which seemed to hang in the darkness as if they were projections from some ghostly afterlife. The silence lengthened, becoming first uncomfortable and then mesmerising.

  ‘Do you feel him?’ Gysel asked.

  Her answering whisper breathed around the room. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you feel him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Stronger this time. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Peter is here. He wants to tell you that he misses you too.’

  She had probably been crying for some time, but it was only now that her frame began to heave with the sobs. ‘Peter. Oh Peter.’

  The spotlight operator had seen this moment in the show many times, but this time was the best.

  Gysel stepped back so suddenly that he dipped into blackness for a moment before the beam widened enough to take him in. ‘There is another in the room,’ he said. ‘Another spirit. His name is… Michael.’

  ‘Yes!’ The voice came from one of the other volunteers on the stage. A young man. ‘My father. Michael.’

  ‘Not long gone.’

  ‘Just two years,’ said the man.

  ‘He thought more of you than you imagine.’

  ‘I didn’t get to the hospital in time…’

  ‘He wants to tell you how much he admired you. He missed that chance in life so he says it now.’

  The man’s face dropped to his hands. He too was weeping. And the hysteria was infectious.

  ‘You have all lost someone,’ Gysel said to them.

  There were nods and murmured agreement. But Gysel had shifted his focus back to the first woman. ‘There is another person in your mind.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Perhaps he could have said anything and she would have gone along with it at that moment. Or perhaps he really was reading her thoughts. Either way, Gysel was going with the moment, moving away from the usual format. People in the audience were standing.

  ‘Picture the person. See him in front of you.’ Gysel paused. The held breaths of the audience electrified the silence. ‘Not a man,’ he said at last.‘You are thinking of a woman. Picture her name. She’s still in this world. But…’ a longer silence this time. The spotlight closed in once more. ‘But she is going to die?’ It was a question, said almost in surprise.

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman.

  ‘And her name is… her name is Debbie.’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman said again, her whispered voice, amplified and carried to every corner of the room. ‘Yes. I’m Debbie. I’m going to die.’

  *

  The energy was draining from Harry Gysel even before the curtain had fully closed. He staggered into the wings and propped himself against a wall. One of the stagehands pushed past. ‘Good one,’ he said.

  But the last bit of the show had gone very wrong.

  There were moral questions about what Harry did. When asked, he would point out that the punters left happier than they came in. But with that last volunteer he’d made a mistake. He should have got her name at the start. Alarm bells should have rung when she said it was someone about to die. He could have backed away even then. Hell, the woman was so suggestible, he could have taken her off along another track altogether. She would have agreed to anything.

  ‘Harry, sweetheart. That was the best.’

  He opened his eyes to see Davina, his agent, approaching along the narrow corridor. She bent in to kiss the air on either side of him and he saw the makeup that hid the creases of her face. For that moment the illusion of youth vanished. Then she pulled away.

  ‘What a show! You must do that again.’

  ‘It was wrong,’ he said.

  ‘Did you hear the audience react?’

  ‘It was unethical.’

  ‘Has she got a disease or something? How did you know, sweetie?’

  ‘I’m psychic,’ he said. And then: ‘Did we make much money tonight?’

  She shook her head. ‘The hall was half full. After paying the theatre and your overheads there’s not much left. At least you broke even.’

  Harry didn’t ask what was covered in the overheads category. Mainly her fee, he suspected. ‘I need some cash, Davina.’

  ‘For so
mething exciting?’

  ‘I need to buy a mobile.’

  ‘You’ve got one already.’

  ‘It’s for someone else.’

  ‘Sounds interesting.’

  She opened her red leather handbag and fished around inside it, the tip of her tongue running across her lips as she extracted a fifty-pound note. He reached out to take it.

  She didn’t let go. ‘I’ve a friend who wants to meet you.’

  ‘But I just need to sleep,’ he pleaded.

  Davina winked. ‘She said the show was hot.’

  For a moment he stood, dumbly, joined to his agent by the fifty-pound note. ‘OK. I’ll see her.’

  Davina released her grip. ‘Good boy. She’s waiting in the lobby.’

  ‘I’m just going to talk with her,’ he said.

  Davina closed her bag. ‘Do you think that volunteer would do a press interview?’

  ‘That volunteer — Debbie — you know she could sue us? For mental trauma or something.’

  ‘Great publicity if she did.’

  ‘I don’t want that kind of publicity.’

  ‘You want any kind.’

  She didn’t add that the alternative was kissing his career goodbye. She didn’t need to.

  ‘Is Debbie really going to die?’ Davina asked.

  He looked into his agent’s eyes. ‘Aren’t we all?’

  Harry woke with his face pressed against someone else’s pillow. It was lilac, and carried a feminine scent. He tried to go back to sleep, but the light was on. Davina’s friend was stepping around the bed, pulling a brush through her hair.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked.

  ‘My bus leaves in ten minutes,’ she said.

  ‘Any chance of a coffee?’

  She scooped his clothes from the floor and dropped them next to his face. They were crumpled.She left the room. He heard the squeak of a tap and water splashing.

  He was still buttoning his shirt as he stepped into the kitchen. He found her finishing a slice of toast.

  She said, ‘You’ll have to find a café or something.’

  He looked at her. She wasn’t pretty, but there was something about her physique that carried a basic attraction.

  ‘Last night…’ he began.

  For a moment she smiled. ‘It was great.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But, I can’t leave you to lock up.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll get my shoes. Maybe tonight youcould come round to my place. It’s only a couple ofmiles.’

  ‘I’m busy tonight.’

  She was sweeping him towards the front door.Then they were outside in the chill October dawn.The road was still wet from last night’s rain.

  ‘That’ll be my bus now,’ she said, and ran.

  Only after she’d gone did he realise that he couldn’t remember her name.

  There was a warm fug of vinegar and frying bacon in the café. The sun had risen above the slate roofs outside, turning the plate glass windows golden and lighting the steam that rose from Harry’s mug. He often came here. The sound of the espresso machine and the chink of crockery were somehow comforting. He stretched, making his chair creak.

  There was nothing wrong with café breakfasts. He’d got used to them since the divorce — even more so when he started touring.

  The tours had been pub shows at first — a hundred and fifty quid in his pocket and no word to the social security. He could get by on that, more or less. Then Davina spotted him and he made the step up. This was the end of his second season with her, but so far no sign of the breakthrough. She wouldn’t stick with him for a third.

  ‘Egg beans and toast!’ called a voice.

  Harry put his hand up and a plate of food was placed on the table in front of him. He cut through the toast with his knife and pierced the runny yolk of the egg. He wasn’t ready to give up the touring life just yet.

  The café door opened and a man stepped inside, haloed by the low sunlight. There were people who believed in auras, to whom such a sight might have been a portent. Harry had believed in auras once. He’d believed in lots of things. He couldn’t remember what that felt like any more.

  The man stepped towards him. His hair was short cropped and greying. He wore an expensive suit and seemed out of place in the café. Harry raised a hand to shade his eyes.

  ‘Mr Gysel?’ the man asked.

  Harry put down his fork and stood.

  ‘Are you Harry Gysel?’

  Only then Harry realised what the man was.

  ‘You’re a police officer?’

  ‘Yes.’ He flourished his ID. ‘Chief Inspector Morgan. I need to ask you some questions.’

  Harry felt off-balance. Chief Inspector sounded like a senior rank. ‘I’m having breakfast,’ Harry said.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. This is very serious.’

  A picture came unbidden into Harry’s mind — the face of the young woman whose eyes he’d stared into on stage the night before. ‘Debbie?’ he asked.

  Morgan paused before answering. ‘Yes sir,’ he said. ‘She’s dead.’

  Harry knew that the mind and personality were functions of the brain. The brain communicated with the body through nerves and through glands that sent out chemical messages, telling the heart to beat faster, the face to flush, pores to open. Each hard-wired response had its own name — guilt, shock, anger, love.

  He was sweating. If he’d been connected to a lie detector, all the needles would have been jumping. And his awareness of what was happening was injecting even more chemical messages into his bloodstream.

  Other detectives had been waiting outside the café. They’d chauffeured Morgan and Harry to the theatre then backed off respectfully, leaving them alone on the stage.

  There were casual-sounding questions about his show, about how he chose his volunteers. Harry found himself staring at Morgan’s black shoes, which were dulled by smears of dried mud.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’ Morgan asked.

  Harry looked up. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Do you have anything else to tell me?’

  ‘It’s a shock, that’s all.’

  ‘You said you didn’t know her.’

  ‘Only last night. In the show.’

  There was a metallic sound from the dress circle. They both turned to look. The house lights were up, revealing the two levels of empty seating. The spotlight operator from last night was pulling a gel plate from the front of the lens. He waved, acknowledging them, then put the plate into a carrying case and walked to the exit. The door swung closed behind him.

  ‘Do you get fan mail?’ Morgan asked, jolting Harry back to the moment.

  ‘Some.’

  ‘Had she written to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t need to check?’

  ‘I don’t get that much.’ Harry ran a hand through his hair. ‘I would have remembered — if I’d seen her before.’

  ‘Did you find her attractive?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘I’m trying to understand. I’d assumed you’d want to help. Puzzling, don’t you think? You meet this woman, Debbie, for the first time last night. You tell her she’s going to die. And within a few hours…’

  ‘I do want to help,’ Harry said. And then: ‘How did she die?’

  Morgan paused before answering. ‘The circumstances are suspicious. Are you really a psychic?’

  ‘That’s my job. I do shows. I…’

  ‘But is it real?’

  Morgan had been shifting his weight slowly from one foot to the other throughout the interview, as if in some discomfort. But now he stopped. Harry could see the man’s locked-in tension. This wasn’t the shallow questioning of a journalist.

  A woman had died and Harry wanted to help. Really he did. But whatever information he gave would leak. The press loved psychic stories and they had their contacts among the police. Until that moment, Harry hadn’t decided how much to reveal. Now he made his decisio
n.

  ‘I read minds,’ he said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t discuss my methods, but I could show you.’

  *

  ‘How am I supposed to write that one up?’ Morgan asked the empty theatre after Harry Gysel had gone. Even though he was a senior officer, he was still beholden to the computer, the Home Office Large and Major Crimes System. It had to be fed with reports. Every interview ended up as signals in its electronic brain.

  It occurred to Morgan that there had been no-one else present. If he were to skip the last bit, the psychic demonstration, no one would know. And yet it was the crux of the matter, the way to understand what had happened on stage the night before.

  There were people who believed they were reading the minds of others but who were picking upon subtle hints of body language. There were also frauds and tricksters. All Morgan’s training told him there was no such thing as a genuine psychic. He hated the fact that Gysel had put him in this position.

  ‘What did I see?’ he asked, speaking aloud again.

  Morgan’s mother had died two years before. Her obituary had appeared in the local paper. Gysel could have researched the matter if he’d known he was going to be questioned. But where did that logic lead? Gysel had been nervous. But when he started the demonstration, the man’s demeanour changed. His face became calm.

  ‘Is your mother still in this world?’ he’d asked.

  Morgan had shaken his head, resenting the question.

  ‘Picture her in your mind.’

  It’d felt strange staring into Gysel’s face. The man’s gaze didn’t waver, though Morgan found himself blinking and shifting his focus from one of Gysel’s eyes to the other then back. Had he given it away? Had he accidentally mouthed it?

  Gysel then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a blank index card and a pencil, which he held behind his back so Morgan couldn’t see what he was writing. He then slid the pencil back into his pocket and held the card in front of him, face down.

  ‘What was your mother’s middle name?’ he asked.

  ‘Emily.’

  ‘And you want to know if I’m really psychic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What if I was? How would it change things?’

  It was a question Morgan hadn’t anticipated. He looked down at his hands. Did he somehow want to believe Gysel was real? ‘I just need to know,’ he said