by Julie Howlin
As soon as we’d finished our tea, we left the small talk behind and started talking about the case, and I could see then she was no ordinary granny. Her mind was sharp and she cut right to the chase - a true professional. No nonsense. She assured me, as Fleming had, that she would not discuss the case with anyone, not even her granddaughters, so I told her what we had.
A forty year old black woman had been found shot dead in her home. We suspected local gangs, but it then came to light she had three sons living at home, and they had all vanished. None of them had been back to the house since the shooting. We really needed to talk to the boys. It seemed likely that they knew something - perhaps one of them had even been the killer. All our leads had dried up and we needed to know where they were.
That’s when the crystal ball came out and it really started to get weird. Maggie said she could see all three sons. One, she said, was ‘in spirit’, which apparently in psychic speak means he was dead, and the other two were in hiding. They were involved in a gang, she said, but it had been a rival gang who had gone to the house and killed the mother and eldest son.
The son’s body was in water, she said, and the other two were holed up with a friend who lived above a fish and chip shop opposite a Baptist church. There was a man with an Irish wolfhound who walked past the house every day.
**
Some days later, a body of a young black male was found in the estuary and proved to be the missing eldest son. Further intelligence about known gangland ‘safe houses’ soon showed there was indeed a flat over a chip shop opposite a Baptist church and when we went to interview the occupants, we actually saw the man with the dog. It came up to me and licked my hand while I was waiting on the doorstep.
The two younger sons were afraid that they would be killed too. They were able to tell us who the killers were - big noises in the gang and drug dealing scene, well known to us and with a string of violent offences to their names. The killers are now in Belmarsh Prison. The two witnesses have moved out of London to start a new life well away from any reprisals, and somewhere where they can put their involvement with the gangs well and truly behind them.
I have to say I was quite impressed and converted to the idea that psychics can be of use. I began to look forward to the times when Fleming would send me to get information from Maggie. She was the grandmother I never had, since my mother’s mother had died when I was really little and my father’s mother was cold, distant and brittle. I think Maggie’s delicious homemade fruit cake had a lot to do with it, too.
Sometimes she blew me away with her insights. One Monday morning after Lisa had come over ‘for a talk’ one Friday and stayed most of the weekend, making me hope that perhaps it wasn’t over after all, only to leave on Sunday evening, saying that she still needed time to think. ‘Your girlfriend came back, didn’t she?’ Maggie said, and I nearly dropped my teacup in my lap.
‘Yes - she did,’ I said. ‘But she’s gone again.’
‘I’m sorry if I sound blunt, but she won’t be coming back any more. She’s not the one for you.’
‘You can’t know that,’ I said, a little too shortly. I’d been harbouring the hope that when Lisa had done her thinking, she would return, so it was not comfortable hearing this.
‘Jamie.’ (It was the first and only time she called me by my first name, rather than ‘Inspector’.) ‘Why is it you come to see me? Because I know things. Because I am psychic and my guides tell me things which help you solve cases. Well, they are telling me this woman is not the one for you.’
‘Are they telling you who is?’
Maggie smiled sadly and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘They’re not. It may be that you need some time on your own before your soul mate comes along. I sense you’ll meet her through your work, and that when you do, you’ll know.’
In spite of the faith I’d had in the professional information I’d got from Maggie Flynn, all of which had proved unerringly accurate, I found myself rejecting this and questioning whether I believed in it all anyway, certainly where anything personal was concerned. I just wanted Lisa back, and I always made a point of not getting involved with people from work.
Another time, she looked at me through narrowed eyes, and said, ‘You know something, Inspector, I think you may have a little bit of a gift yourself.’
I’d been telling her about a case I’d just solved. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
‘You get hunches, sometimes, don’t you? Feelings about things? And they turn out to be correct.’
‘I suppose,’ I said. It was true, but I’d put them down to skill, good training and experience which together give a detective his intuition.
‘That’s your gift. That’s why you’re doing this job.’
‘Are you saying I don’t need you, Maggie?’
She laughed. ‘I wouldn’t go that far. Obviously you do, Inspector, or you wouldn’t be here.’
Over the coming weeks, she suggested ways to help me free myself of my attachment to Lisa, and to develop my own intuition. At first, I tried them just to humour Maggie, but found to my surprise that some of them worked. Lisa never did come back, but thanks to Maggie’s affirmations, I’m cool with it now. The psychic exercises sometimes work, sometimes not - I still think I’m just a good detective.
Just lately, though, Maggie had been getting a little morbid. ‘I won’t be here forever, Inspector,’ she said one day as she poured the tea.
‘Don’t say that,’ I said. ‘You look as strong as an ox.’
‘It comes to us all, no matter how strong we are,’ she said, adding the sugar as she always did, ‘and I’m not getting any younger.’
‘You haven't… foreseen your own death, have you?’ I asked.
‘Oh, no, Inspector. We psychics never get information about our own lives. But we all die eventually and we have to think about what will happen when we're gone. I just want you to know that I’m teaching my granddaughter so she can take over from me when I’m gone. This is important work, Inspector, as you know. Tabitha will be excellent at it. She doesn’t know it yet. She hasn’t got much confidence in herself, but when I can convince her she’s ready, I’ll introduce you to her. I just want you to know this in case I pass suddenly - she is my successor - my guides have told me so, but I know if you asked her to do it now she’d say no. I’m just telling you that you’d need to keep on at her and not give up.’ Maggie picked up a pen and wrote something on a Post-it note and gave it to me. ‘This is her number. Keep it somewhere safe, just in case.’
‘I will,’ I said, putting it in my wallet. ‘But I’m sure I won’t be needing it for a long time yet.’
How wrong I was.
6 CLARE
Clare sat on the sofa with Persia, trying to get her head round what the spirit girl had just told her.
‘How can I be dead and not know it? Why do I feel so well?’ Clare frowned.
‘Because you don’t have a physical body now. It’s the physical body that gets diseases and illnesses, and needs regular rest. Your spiritual body doesn’t.’
Clare sat and thought for a moment. ‘Okay, I think I get that. But I thought that when you die all your dead relatives come for you. Where are mine?’
‘As I told you, you really weren’t supposed to die yet,’ Persia explained, crossing her ankles on the coffee table in front of them. ‘So they weren’t expecting you and hadn’t arranged to be there. We don’t just sit on clouds playing harps all day over there, you know. People work, study, spend time with friends - so it was down to me to come and find you since I was here anyway, trying my damnedest to stop you from getting yourself killed.’
‘Will Mark be all right?’ Clare asked plaintively, glancing at the bedroom door. She knew he was behind it, asleep at last, having cried himself to sleep every night for the last week. It had been agony not being able to reach out and comfort him.
‘I don’t know,’ Persia said. ‘I’ve got an emergency meeting with his spirit guide next week
so we can figure out what happens to him now. Though it’s up to him whether he acts on anything we try to suggest.’
‘I wish I could talk to him,’ Clare said. She could only listen as he tried to talk to her, which he had been doing a lot.
‘Clare, Clare, I’m sorry. I'm sorry I called you a slag. I'm sorry I said I didn't care if your plane crashed. I wish I could take it back. I’d give anything to hear you say you forgive me.’
Clare had shouted back, ‘I DO forgive you! I love you, Mark! Why can’t you hear me?’
No matter how hard she tried, she could not make him hear. She had even tried to pick up a vase and throw it to attract his attention, but her hand had just passed right through it.
‘What can I do, Persia?’ she asked, desperately. ‘Is there any way to get through to him?’
‘Well...’ Persia began, but never finished her sentence. She was interrupted by a pounding on the front door that made even Persia jump out of her ethereal skin.
When Mark did not answer, a man’s voice came through the letterbox. ‘Mark Rees, we know you’re in there! Open this door!’
When that failed to rouse him, there was a kick and the sound of splintering wood and five police officers wearing high visibility jackets and carrying truncheons burst into the kitchen.
Clare leapt to her feet. ‘How dare you! You’ve broken my door, you...’
‘They can’t hear you, Clare.’ Persia was still sitting on the sofa, her feet on the coffee table. ‘Nobody can, remember?’ Clare glared at her.
A bleary-eyed Mark emerged from the bedroom. ‘What the...’ he said. He was unshaven and swaying on his feet through sheer exhaustion.
Two police officers came forward and seized him by the arms - another snapped handcuffs on him. A fourth officer spoke. ‘Mark Rees, you are under arrest for the murder of Clare Mulholland. Do you have anything to say?’
Mark swayed even more, and for a moment Clare thought he was going to faint, but he steadied himself and looked the officer in the eye. ‘I didn’t kill her!’ he said. ‘What evidence have you got?’
‘You don’t have an alibi for that night, Mr Rees, and we have witnesses who say they heard you say to her that very same day that you wished she was dead.’
‘Look, we were arguing - couples argue - I didn’t mean...’
‘Save it for the trial, buddy.’
Clare was on her feet, weaving her way between the police officers and trying to find anyone who could hear her. ‘He didn’t kill me! It was passenger 27B! It wasn’t Mark! Let him go! He’s innocent!’
But none of them could hear her. She screamed after them to no avail. Persia remained seated on the sofa, shaking her head.
Mark was escorted to a police car and driven away. Clare returned, frustrated. ‘This isn’t fair! He didn’t kill me! How can I get them to listen?’
‘You can’t,’ Persia said.
‘But it isn’t fair! He can’t get the blame for this when the one who killed me is still out there!’
‘Perhaps it’s part of Mark’s life plan, to spend some time in prison,’ Persia shrugged.
‘Don’t give me that. I wasn’t supposed to die, you said. My relatives couldn’t get here to meet me so how could Mark have planned this? There must be something we can do! There must be someone who can do something!’
‘I don’t think so,’ Persia said.
‘God, must you always be so smug and infuriating? What about these people who do séances and things? Can’t we go to a séance and tell them through the Ouija board?’
‘Good thinking,’ said Persia. ‘We could probably arrange that. But evidence by Ouija board isn’t exactly admissible in a court of law.’
‘You mean we can’t do anything?’
‘Let me think about it,’ said Persia.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ Persia said, after a long pause. ‘But I need to consult one of my colleagues over on the other side. I don’t think there is anything we can do from here. If you want to help Mark, we have to leave here and go home.’
‘And if I do that, I’ll never...’
‘No. You won't. The choice is yours. You come with me and help him or you stay here and watch over him while he spends his life in prison. Which is it to be?’
7 tabitha
The free newspaper I picked up on the way to the office carried the story of Wendy Smith, the young woman who’d been found strangled in the park on Friday and sent my mother into a frenzy of worry. I read it on the train and wished I hadn’t.
Wendy Smith had not been on her way to work, but had been out walking her dog. The alarm was raised when the dog arrived home without her. An early morning jogger found her body on his morning run. There appeared to be no motive. Wendy had not been robbed. Whether she had been sexually assaulted was not known. She was just an ordinary woman with no known vices who had been unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were linking the case with a couple of others because there was some sort of sign left by the killer - a modus operandum, I think they call it, but they couldn’t say what it was because they didn’t want to encourage copycats. So this guy (I assumed it was a guy, they usually are) was still out there, and in my neighbourhood.
I'm not afraid of death. I knew that Wendy Smith was in the spirit world being healed of her trauma before she started work on choosing her next life. I guess I’m scared of the means of passing - whether it would be long, drawn-out and painful, not to mention the effect it would have on Mum, Dad, my best friend Jess, and, I liked to think, on Daniel.
The police had no leads, the paper said. I wondered if this was the sort of case they would have contacted Maggie Flynn about. They wouldn’t have the option this time, and they probably didn’t know it yet. ‘That nice young detective’ that Gran had mentioned a lot recently, was probably wondering why he couldn’t get hold of Maggie Flynn, not realising that this time, he was actually going to have to use his brain. ‘He’s such a nice young man,’ Gran used to say. I’d estimated Inspector Fleming to be in his fifties, but I supposed that Gran, being in her eighties, probably saw that as young.
By now I had reached the building where I work. I work for an Internet mail order company called wegotanythingyouwant.co.uk. My job title is Customer Service Clerk, which basically means I’m one of a small number of people who get abused over the phone when our customers don’t get exactly what they want exactly when they want it. Every other caller shouts at me about something that is not my fault and that I can’t actually do anything about. It’s enough to give me a telephone phobia for the rest of my life – but it pays the rent.
My colleague Sarah greeted me as usual with, ‘Nice weekend?’
‘No, not really,’ I said. ‘My gran died on Saturday morning.’
I saw her deflate, not knowing how to cope with this disruption in her routine. Generally, she would breeze into the office, put the coffee machine on, ring to check with her child-minder that little Tarquin and Pia were all right, and then she greeted everyone with, ‘Nice weekend?’ To which the correct answer was, ‘Yes, thank you, and you?’ which was Sarah’s cue to launch into a blow by blow description of the new words Tarquin had learned since Friday, how many times she had to get up to Pia in the night, and how tired she was. My answer didn’t fit her script, and so she didn’t know what to say.
‘Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. Was she very old?’
‘Not old enough,’ I replied.
Sarah opened her mouth, as if she knew she should say something else, but didn’t know quite what, but before she could ask any more inane questions, our boss, Robert, swept in. ‘Nice weekend?’ Sarah asked him.
‘Yeah, fine,’ he said, flicking through his mail for any interesting looking letters before dumping the boring looking stuff in my in-tray. ‘You?’
‘Not bad. Tarquin can say ‘dishwasher’ now. Well, actually he says ‘disswasser’ but I know what he means. He holds his juice cup out to me and says it. And I only had to get up to Pia once
last night...’
I left them to it and went to get a coffee. When I got back to my desk, Sarah had finished boring for England about her children, so I steeled myself to go and ask Robert for a day off for Gran’s funeral.
I tapped on his office door. ‘Come,’ came his muffled voice and I went in. Robert was sitting at his desk, which was empty except for a couple of files, an in-tray with a couple of sheets of paper in it, his phone, coffee mug and a Blackberry. I thought I saw him quickly closing a drawer as I entered. He had removed his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair. He’d turned up the sleeves of his pink shirt and loosened the matching pink and grey striped tie. He was talking on the telephone, and left me standing there like a sore thumb while he finished his conversation. He wrote notes on a piece of paper with his gold ballpoint pen, and then made some expansive doodles on the bottom of the page as he listened to the caller.
‘Yes, buy those for me. Keep me posted about the other thing. I’ll call you later.’ He put the phone down and looked at me.
‘Yes, Tabitha?’ He made me feel as if I was an intruder.
‘Can I have a word, please?’
‘Sit down,’ he waved at the chair in front of his desk. I noticed that he seemed a little harassed - probably not by me, but my interruption of his business was unlikely to be welcome. He put his notes face down in his in tray and smoothed his short brown hair with a well-manicured hand. Then he clasped his hands together in front of him. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘My grandmother died,’ I said. ‘On Saturday morning.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said, and I think he really meant it. ‘Were you close?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I’m glad you told me - are you OK to be at work?’
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘In fact, I think I’d rather be here than sitting at home thinking about it. But I do want to go to her funeral.’