Elizabeth George - This Body of Death

She doubted that. He was as smooth as icing on a cake, he was. She said, “It is. Mind you remember that,” as they left the lift together.

The most important belonging of Jemima Hastings inside the bag was the mobile phone, and this Isabelle handed over to John Stewart with orders to deal with it, to listen to voice messages, to trace calls, to read and make note of any and all texts, and to get his hands on the mobile’s records. “We’ll want to use the mobile phone towers as well,” she added. “The pinging, or whatever the hell they call it.” The rest of the contents she and Lynley went through together, most of it seeming to be perfectly straightforward: a small folding map of London, a paperback novel showing a predilection for historical mysteries, a wallet holding thirty-five pounds along with two credit cards; three biros, a broken pencil, a pair of sunglasses in a case, a hairbrush, a comb, four lipsticks, and a mirror. There was also a list of products from the cigar shop, along with an advertisement for Queen’s Ice and Bowl-“Great Food! Birthday Parties! Corporate Events!”-an offer for membership to a Putney gym and spa, and business cards from Yolanda the Psychic, London Skate Centre, Abbott Langer Professional Ice Instructor, and Sheldon Pockworth Numismatics.

This last gave Isabelle pause as she tried to recall what numismatics referred to. She came up with stamps. Lynley said coins.

She told him to check it out. He said, “Along with Yolanda? Because I still think-”

“All right. Along with Yolanda. But I swear she has nothing to do with this, Thomas. A woman did not commit this crime.”

LYNLEY FOUND YOLANDA the Psychic’s place of business in Queensway with little trouble although he had to wait outside the faux mews building where she plied her trade because a sign on the door declared IN SESSION! NO ENTRY!, and from this he assumed that Yolanda was in the process of doing whatever it was that psychics did for their clients: tea leaves, tarot cards, palms, or the like. He fetched himself a take-away coffee from a Russian café tucked in the junction of two of the indoor market’s corridors, and he returned to Psychic Mews with cup in hand. By that time, the sign had been removed from the door, so he finished the coffee quickly and let himself in.

“That you, dearest?” Yolanda called from an inner room, shielded from the reception area by a beaded curtain. “Bit early, aren’t you?”

“No,” Lynley replied to her first question. “DI Lynley. New Scotland Yard.”

She came through the curtain. He took in her startling orange hair and her tailored suit that he recognised-with thanks to his wife-as either vintage Coco Chanel or a Coco Chanel knockoff. She wasn’t what he had expected.

She stopped when she saw him. “It throbs,” she said.

He blinked. “Pardon?”

“Your aura. It’s taken a terrible blow. It wants to regain its strength but something’s got in the way.” She held her hand up before he could reply. She cocked her head as if listening to something. “Hmm. Yes,” she said. “It’s not for nothing, you know. She intends to return. In the meantime your part is to become ready for her. That’s a dual message.”

“From the great beyond?” He asked the question lightly but, of course, he thought at once of Helen, no matter the irrationality of applying the idea of return to someone so completely gone.

Yolanda said, “You’d be wise not to make light of these matters. Those who make light generally regret it. What’d you say your name was?”

“DI Lynley. Is that what happened to Jemima Hastings? Did she make light?”

Yolanda ducked behind a screen for a moment. Lynley heard the scratch of a match. He thought she was lighting incense or a candle-either seemed likely and there was already a cone of incense burning at the crossed legs of a seated Buddha-but she emerged with a cigarette. She said to him, “It’s good that you gave it up. I don’t see you dying because of your lungs.”

He absolutely refused to be seduced. He said, “As to Jemima?”

“She didn’t smoke.”

“That didn’t much help her in the end, did it?”

Yolanda took a heavy hit from the tobacco. “I already talked to the cops,” she said. “That black man. Strongest aura I’ve seen in years. P’rhaps ever, to tell you the truth. But that woman with him? The one with the teeth? I’d say she has issues impeding her growth, and they aren’t exactly dental. What would you say?”

“May I call you Mrs. Price?” Lynley asked. “I understand that’s your real name.”

“You may not. Not on these premises. Here, I’m Yolanda.”

“Very well. Yolanda. You were in Oxford Road earlier today. We must talk about that, about Jemima Hastings as well. Shall we do it here or elsewhere?”

“Elsewhere being…?”

“They’ll have an interview room at the Ladbroke Grove station. We can use that if you prefer.”

She chuckled. “Cops. You best be careful how you act else it’ll disappear altogether. There’s such a thing as karma, Mr. Lynley. That’s what you said your name is, didn’t you?”

“That’s what I said.”

She examined him. “You don’t look like a cop. You don’t talk like a cop. You don’t belong.”

How true, he thought. But this was hardly a startling deduction for her to have made. He said, “Where would you like to talk, Yolanda?”

She went through the beaded curtain. He followed her.

There was a table in the centre of the inner room, but she didn’t sit there. Instead, she went to an overstuffed armchair that faced a Victorian fainting sofa. She lay upon this latter and closed her eyes, although she still managed to smoke her cigarette unimpeded. He took the chair and said to her, “Tell me about Oxford Road first. We’ll get to Jemima in a moment.”

There was little enough to tell, according to Yolanda the Psychic. She’d been in Oxford Road because of its inherent evil, she declared. She’d failed to save Jemima from it despite her warnings to move house, and with Jemima having fallen victim to its depravity, she was duty bound to try to save the rest of them. Clearly, they weren’t about to leave the place, so she was trying to purify it from without: She was burning sage. “Not that that bloody woman will listen to anything I try to tell her,” she declared. “Not that she would even begin to appreciate my efforts on her behalf.”

“What sort of evil?” Lynley asked.

Yolanda opened her eyes. “There aren’t different sorts of evil,” she replied. “There’s just it. It. Evil. So far it’s taken two people from that house, and it’s after more. Her husband died there, you know.”

“Mrs. McHaggis’s husband?”

“So you’d think she’d purify the place, but will she? No. She’s too much the dim bulb to see the importance. Now Jemima’s gone as well, and there’ll be another. Just you wait.”

“And you were there solely to perform a”-Lynley sought the term that best fit burning sage in someone’s front garden and settled on-“a rite of some kind?”

“Not of ‘some kind.’ Oh I know what your sort think about my sort. You’ve no belief till life brings you to your knees and then you come running, don’t you?”

“Is that what happened to Jemima? Why did she come to see you? Initially, I mean.”

“I don’t speak about my clients.”

“I know that’s what you told the other officers, but we’ve a problem, you see, as you’re not a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a solicitor…? There’s no privilege to invoke, as far as I can tell.”

“Which means exactly what?”

“Which means your failure to disclose information can be seen as impeding a police investigation.”

She was silent, digesting this. She drew in on her cigarette and blew the smoke heavenward, thoughtfully.