Peter James - Looking Good Dead

A woman in her forties, wearing a black smock over a grey leotard and with slightly mad hair, stood on the other side of the door, collecting tickets. Grace took his wallet out of his pocket, dug his fingers into it and retrieved his ticket, which he had purchased several weeks earlier.

He felt nervous. A disconcerting jangling deep inside him seemed to strip away his natural confidence. It was always the same before he saw a medium or clairvoyant, or any other kind of psychic. The anticipation. The hope he held in his heart that this one might be different, that this one finally, after close on nine long years, would have the answer.

Either a message, or a location, or a sign.

Something that would tell him whether Sandy was dead or alive. That was the most important thing he needed to know. Sure, there would be all kinds of other questions that would then follow whichever answer he got. But first, please, he needed that answer.

Maybe tonight?

He handed over his ticket and followed three nervously chatting girls up the narrow staircase. They looked like sisters, the youngest in her late teens, the oldest in her mid-twenties. He passed an unpainted door marked quiet, therapy in session, and entered a room that had about twenty assorted plastic chairs squeezed in, forming an L-shape with a gap where he presumed the clairvoyant would stand. There were blue blinds, pot plants on the shelves, and a print of a Provençal landscape on one wall.

Most of the chairs were already taken. Two young girls were with their mum, a pudding-faced lady in a baggy knitted top, who seemed to be fighting back tears. Next to them sat a long-haired earth mother of about seventy in a floral top, denim skirt and glasses the size of a snorkeller’s mask.

Grace found a free chair next to two men in their late twenties, both wearing jeans and sweatshirts. One, grossly overweight, with ragged hair that reminded Grace of the comedian Ken Dodd, was staring blankly ahead and chewing gum. The other, much thinner, was sweating profusely and brandishing a can of Pepsi Cola in his hand as if it afforded him some status. Grace overheard some of their conversation; they were discussing electric screwdrivers.

Another mother and daughter entered the room and took the remaining two chairs, next to him. The daughter, thin as a rake and dressed to party in black trousers and red blouse, reeked of a scent that smelled, to Grace, of lavatory freshener. The mother, equally dolled up, looked like a computer-aged image of the daughter twenty years on. Grace was familiar with the technique; it was used frequently in the search for missing persons. A year ago he’d had a photograph of Sandy put through the process and been staggered by how much someone could change in just eight years.

There was an air of expectation in the room. Grace glanced around at the faces, wondering why they were all here; some because they were recently bereaved, he guessed, but probably most were just lost souls in need of guidance. And they had each forked out ten quid to meet a complete stranger with no medical or sociological qualifications, who was about to tell each of them stuff that could alter their entire approach to life.

Stuff that the spirits channelled through Brent Mackenzie, or so he would claim. Grace knew; he’d seen it all.

And yet he kept coming back for more.

It was like a drug: just one more fix and then he would stop. But of course he would never stop, not until the day he found out the truth about Sandy’s disappearance. Maybe the spirits would tell Brent Mackenzie tonight; maybe the clairvoyant would do what all those before him had failed to do, and pluck it out of the ether.

Roy Grace knew the reputational risk he ran by pursing his interest in mediums and clairvoyants, but he was not the only police officer in the UK to regularly consult them, not by a long way. And, regardless of what the cynics said, Grace believed in the supernatural. He had no option. He had seen a ghost – two ghosts, in fact – many times during his childhood.

Every summer he used to go and stay for a week with his uncle and aunt, in their cottage in Bembridge on the Isle of Wight. In a grand town house opposite two very sweet old ladies used to wave at him from a bay window on the top floor. It wasn’t until years later, revisiting Bembridge after a long absence, that he learned that the house had been empty for over forty years – the two old ladies who waved at him had committed suicide in 1947. And it hadn’t been his imagination; other people had seen them also, including his uncle and aunt.

The audience were quietening now; the two men beside him seemed to have finished their discussion about electric screwdrivers. It was 7.45 p.m. exactly. Behind him he heard the hiss of a ring pull being tugged on a can of drink. A mobile phone beeped an incoming text message, and he saw the earth mother delve into her macramé handbag, pull the phone out and switch it off, her face reddening.

Then the medium sauntered in, with all the presence of a man looking for the door to a pub urinal. About forty years old, standing a good six foot four inches tall, he was dressed in a baggy orange T-shirt with a string of beads around his neck, fawn chinos and shiny white trainers. He had buzz-cut hair, a few days growth of stubble, a prizefighter’s broken nose and a massive beer belly, and, Grace noticed, he was wearing a very expensive-looking watch. For some moments he appeared not to notice that he had walked into a crowded room. Grace even began to wonder whether this actually was the clairvoyant.

Then, facing the blinds, Brent Mackenzie spoke. His voice was thin and reedy, far too small for such a large man, but very earnest. ‘I’m not using my memory tonight,’ he said. ‘I want to do my best for all of you. I will have a message for each of you tonight; that’s a promise.’

Grace glanced around; just a sea of silent, rapt faces, waiting.

‘My first message is for a lady in here called Brenda.’ Now the clairvoyant turned and scanned the room. The pudding-faced mother put her hand up.

‘Ah, Brenda, love, there you are! If I said there was a move imminent in your life, would that be right?’

The woman thought for a moment, then nodded enthusiastically.

‘Yeah, that’s what the spirits are telling me. It’s a big move, isn’t it?’

She looked at each of her daughters in turn, as if for confirmation. Both of them frowned. Then she looked at the medium. ‘No,’ she said.

There was an awkward silence. After a few moments the medium said, ‘I’m being told it is a bigger move than you realize at the moment. But you are not to worry about it; you are doing the right thing.’ He nodded reassuringly at her, then closed his eyes and took a pace back.

Grace watched him, feeling uncomfortable about the man. This was a typical ploy of a medium – to manipulate what he said when it did not resonate.

‘I’ve got a message for a Margaret,’ Brent Mackenzie said, opening his eyes and scanning the room. A rather mousy little woman in her late thirties who Grace had not previously noticed put up her hand.

‘Does the name Ivy mean anything to you, darling?’

The woman shook her head.

‘OK. What about Ireland. Does Ireland mean anything?’

Again she shook her head.

‘The spirits are very definite about Ireland. I think you will be going there soon even if you don’t realize it at the moment. They say you will go to Cork. There’s someone who will change your life who is in Cork.’

She looked blank.

‘I’ll come back to you, Margaret,’ the clairvoyant said. ‘I’m being interrupted – they are very rude sometimes in the spirit world; they get very impatient when they have a message for someone. I’m getting a message here for Roy.’