by RJ Dark
‘I saw Cat Maudy pass out front, off to Mr Patel’s – she’ll want you to do a trick, and that’s the date of birth of her oldest son. The one that died.’
Cat Maudy was a Blades Edge legend, one of those idiosyncratic people who stuck out wherever they were but had been about for so long their strangeness was simply accepted. She must have been in her eighties, maybe older. When I was young, I heard she was a fighter pilot in the war, or maybe a spy. At least half the kids on the estate thought she was witch, so what we thought then probably shouldn’t be taken as gospel. But she’d managed to raise four kids and get three of them off the Edge into good careers. And then there was one who would never leave. I’m pretty sure she could have left the estate if she wanted to, but she didn’t. Instead, she stayed in her little council house, kept a beautiful garden and rescued homeless cats – high thirties at the last count. I suppose she was the stereotypical mad old cat lady in many ways, except in my mind, mad old cat ladies always smell awful. Maudy smelled of long hot summers and dry flower petals.
‘Maybe I’ll get the tea after Janine Stanbeck has been then.’
‘Need teabags.’
Well, that was that sorted.
A good choice of slogan for Mr Patel’s shop – more a small supermarket than a newsagent’s – would have been ‘none of the choice, double the cost’, but Mr Patel had gone with the more snappy ‘your local grocer.’ He had the cleanest and most ordered shop I’d ever been in. Sometimes I got the feeling he was a little bit resentful of people who came in and bought things. I think he liked stacking and displaying his wares a lot more than he liked selling them. Maybe that’s why everything was so expensive. When I entered, he was leaning over his counter talking to Cat Maudy, and he almost jumped away from her when the bell rang. I don’t think he liked being caught slacking.
‘Mr Jones,’ he said. Mr Patel had a way of enunciating every word very clearly and then raising the pitch of his voice at the end of every sentence, which turned it into a question. ‘What can I help you with?’
‘Just teabags, Mr Patel.’ Maudy smiled at me and gave me a small wave.
‘We have Tetley – they are five pounds. Or we have Mr Smart Brand’s teabags, which are also very nice and just three pounds fifty.’ Mr Smart Brand’s teabags were anything but nice and Beryl would moan about it incessantly if I bought them, but if she wanted better teabags she should have come herself. Or maybe contributed toward the petty cash.
‘Smart Brand, please.’
‘They are on the top shelf – I will get my ladder.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea, Mr Patel?’ said Maudy. Her voice was gentle, like a whisper, and she was wearing a thick fur coat despite the heat of the day. I hoped it wasn’t made from cat. ‘He hurt himself, Mr Jones.’ She pointed at Mr Patel’s arm, wrapped in a blue cast. ‘Fell off his ladder and broke his arm. Are you sure you’re all right, Mr Patel?’
‘I am fine, do not fuss,’ he said. He was a small but well-built man in his fifties with a thick head of greying hair, with the cast on his arm, he seemed somehow smaller. Pain can do that to you.
‘I can probably reach it myself, Mr Patel.’
‘It is not your shop,’ he snapped. Which was true.
‘Will you do a trick for me, Mr Jones?’ said Maudy as Mr Patel went into the back.
‘I’m a bit busy.’ Sometimes I wonder why I can’t just say no.
‘Oh, just one trick, please.’ She smiled, her face was a mass of wrinkles, but she still painted on the same make-up she must have had as a young woman, like a mask. I imagine she had been very beautiful back then; she had that air about her. I suppose that’s what made her difficult to say no to.
‘Okay, look into my eyes.’ She did. Her green eyes were starting to cloud with cataracts. ‘Now, tell me the name of your eldest boy.’
‘My Peter?’
‘Yes, Peter,’ I said. I vaguely remembered him but he’d not gone to the school on Blades Edge, so I’d only ever seen him in passing, and then he became just a face in the paper. Articles about the accident and the scourge of drunken joyriders plaguing the estate. ‘Right, I’m getting something from the spirits.’
‘You are so clever,’ she said. ‘Have you thought of getting a cat, Mr Jones? I’ve got thirty-eight, but I have a black one called Magic and he’d be good for you.’ I ignored her comment; Cat Maudy always wanted to give you a cat.
‘I’m getting a feeling of peace, and something about him coming to you in the spring?’ She continued staring intently into my eyes. ‘Is it July? No, that’s not spring. Definitely “J” though, so must be June?’ She nodded eyes wide, a huge smile on her face. ‘June the first. No, wait. Second. It’s all coming through now. Nineteen seventy-four?’
Maudy clapped, like a little girl. ‘Oh, Mr Jones, you are clever. You tell him I miss him so much, and I’ll always love him.’ She smiled up at me and I wondered if it was the memory of grief that clouded her eyes, not cataracts.
‘I’ll tell him, Maudy,’ I said.
‘Now, do another one, tell me what I am going to have for tea!’
I was about to say no to the second trick because that was considerably harder, then I noticed a little bit of paper sticking out of the pocket of her fur coat. It looked about the size and shape of the end of a receipt and, partly because I am a bit of a show-off, and partly because sometimes you have to keep practising old skills or you forget them, I decided to take a risk.
‘Okay then.’ I put my hands on her shoulders. ‘This coat is beautiful material, Maudy.’
‘Oh, it is,’ she said. ‘Best fake fur. It was a treat, for me. I think I deserve it.’
‘I think you do too – it feels so lovely.’ I ran my hand down the edge of the coat as Cat Maudy pulled up the collar against her face.
‘I feel quite glamourous,’ she grinned.
‘You look like a movie star,’ I said, and palmed the receipt from her pocket then lifted my hands in front of my face so I was looking at the receipt. I almost blurted out, ‘Sardine sandwiches,’ until I noticed she had bought fifty cans of sardines, so that was probably for the cats. Then the list was mostly cleaning products – also a by-product of the cats, I imagine. I started to wonder if I had made a mistake, but at the bottom of the receipt was a microwaveable lasagne for one, a ready-made salad and a surprisingly expensive bottle of champagne.
‘Do you know?’ she said.
‘It’s a bit hazy,’ I said. Her face fell. ‘But I’m getting, Italian, maybe?’ The smile returned. ‘Salad and lasagne.’
‘Oh, Mr Jones!’
‘Wait, wait, not finished yet. Also …’
At that moment, Mr Patel returned with my cheap teabags and slammed them on the counter. I let my hands drop to my side.
‘You!’ He pointed at me. ‘Stop this nonsense now – I’ll have no ghosts in my shop. You take your tea and get out, Mr Jones.’
‘Sorry, Mr Patel,’ I said, and gently pushed passed Cat Maudy to get my teabags, slipping the receipt back into her pocket as I did.
Janine Stanbeck wasn’t typical of a girl in her late twenties on the Edge. She wasn’t showing any flesh, for a start, and as the summer had hit a couple of weeks ago, most girls on the Edge were now walking round in what I thought looked like their underwear. Janine was covered, head to foot. She wore a light raincoat, made of blue shiny material – but it was old, threadbare, and I reckoned it wasn’t hers as it was too big for her. It swamped her, making her look like a child not a grown woman. She wore trainers, old too, and jeans, not jeggings, 501s maybe or decent knock-offs, though they were worn as well, and not for fashion’s sake. She was even wearing a hat; a woolly hat with a bobble on the top that was only hanging on by one bit of wool, and for some reason it got my back up. I wanted to either tear it off or to sew it on more securely. I didn’t say anything, because she wasn’t looking at me; she was digging in her pockets and looking anywhere but at me. When she found what she was looking for, a single well-used bank
note, she held it out, still looking at the floor like I was the headmaster and she was a naughty schoolgirl.
For a minute, no one moved.
‘Jackie said I should come. Said you would help.’
I took the fifty.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I said. She looked up, the skin around her eyes jaundiced with faded bruises. If you had tried to present me with a better cliché of a women from the Edge; I don’t think you could have done.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said, surprisingly soft spoken. ‘He was a Stanbeck – he beat me. I’m better off without him. Just find me my money.’
‘Money?’
‘Yeah,’ she blinked, hard, and I saw nothing but scorn there. ‘Jackie says you can talk to the dead – they obviously don’t tell you much, do they?’
‘I don’t tend to do research.’ This was a lie, but she had no need to know that. ‘We do a consultation and see what comes through, then we go from there. There’s no guarantee of—’
‘All I need is for you to contact Lawrence.’
‘Larry,’ I said, and she flinched.
‘I thought you didn’t do research.’
‘It just came through, together with feelings of …’
‘Violence? He tended to punch people who called him Larry to his face.’
Thanks, Beryl.
‘Death can change people.’
‘Well, any change in Lawrence can only be for the better. Death was definitely a move in the right direction for me.’
‘This isn’t my usual sort of consultation.’
‘Are you saying you can’t help?’ A sneer.
I will kill you for this, Jackie.
‘Of course not. Jackie says you need the help of the spirits, and I am glad to give it.’
‘Right.’ She stared into my face. ‘What do we do then?’
There was a level of aggression behind those words that hadn’t been there when she came in. I’d taken her desire not to look at me for shyness, when the truth is I think she felt stupid. She didn’t, for one second, believe I was what was written above the shop doorway: Malachite Jones – Psychic Medium (As seen on TV). That didn’t bother me too much, not many people did; people came to me as a last resort and I had to win them over. Janine was desperate; most people that came to me were, but mostly they were downtrodden, beaten and heavy with grief. Not her though, she might look like she was, but looks aren’t everything. She needed my help, and I think she hated it.
She gave me her coat and hat. Under the coat, she wore a nondescript jumper. Under the hat, she had cut her hair short. Everything said she was a woman trying not to be seen, not to be noticed.
Cold reading, which is what I do, is an art. It’s about picking up enough from someone to appear like you know everything about them when you don’t. It’s mostly about averages, small details and willingness for the mark to believe. The best way to get it wrong is to start off with a load of preconceptions. To cold read, you have to start cold and I’d got off on the wrong foot with Janine Stanbeck. I’d read into her what I thought a Blades Edge girl should be when she was nothing of the sort. She was hiding, that was plain. But she wasn’t shy or weak or downtrodden. She was angry.
‘So? What do we do?’ she said.
2
HOW TO CONTACT THE DEAD
You will need:
Mood lighting
Scented Candles
Heavy fabrics (velvet is always good)
Old furniture
Crystals
Phrenology head
A soft voice
An understanding of human nature
A willingness to listen
Patience
A good researcher
An earpiece
Google
She was impatient. Not obviously so. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever met anyone as contained as Janine Stanbeck, and I wondered what her home life must have been like that she had to keep so much of herself hidden. There was no overflow from her. People usually gave something away but she sat in my client’s chair (Louis XV-style balloon-backed) and revealed nothing. Only stared at the desk. I waited for her to speak first.
‘I thought you’d have a crystal ball.’
‘That’s only really for theatre. I’m not running a con.’
‘I told you to get a crystal ball.’ Words in my ear; Beryl, sat in the back room at her computer, listening in. She was only meant to interject with useful information, but I’d given up trying to tell her that.
‘So, contact the other side or whatever and then tell me where my money is.’
‘What money?’
Thanks, Beryl.
‘It doesn’t work like that, Janine. I can’t just deliver an answer. The spirits talk in loops and riddles a lot of the time.’
She stared at me. Blue eyes, no make-up. The start of frown lines on her forehead.
‘Then how does it work?’
‘We need to establish contact, work up a rapport.’
‘Are you trying to chat me up?’
‘No.’
‘You would though.’
‘It sounds like you’re trying to chat me up.’
‘She knows you’re a fraud, Mal.’
‘This only works if you commit yourself to it, Janine.’
I try to use the client’s name a lot, to establish a connection, but she looked at me like she was channelling every resentment she had ever felt and was passing them on to me.
‘You can walk out, Janine, but you’ve already paid for an hour.’
She was still staring.
‘So maybe give it a go?’
And more staring.
‘Your husband was knocked off his bike, right? But I’m getting that it may not have been an accident.’
A small smile appeared on her face.
‘If you want me to believe you can help, Malachite’ – amusement in her voice at my name – ‘then tell me something that isn’t gossip on the estate.’
‘I don’t care if you believe me or not, Janine. That’s not why I am doing this. Jackie told me you need help but you don’t have to stay.’ Calling their bluff early is always good. Because if they do walk out, you basically get an hour off.
‘She did two months for selling weed when she was fifteen. Had her own little circle of dealers at her school, bloody posh one too.. Sealed records, no one knows. That should impress her.’
And that is why I pay Beryl.
‘I’m wasting my time here.’ She was standing, going to leave. I needed to get her attention.
‘Have you ever been in prison?’
She froze. Something there on her face; not curiosity, almost anger, or maybe it was fear. People are funny about their secrets, that’s why they’re secret. Then she shook her head. Sat back down.
‘You’re fishing, saying that cos I’m from the Edge.’ She picked up her bag from the floor and put it on her lap. She had the biggest handbag I had ever seen, proper shoplifters bag and it looked stuffed to the gills ‘People think everyone from the Edge has been in prison, Mr Jones.’
‘You weren’t on the Edge then, though, were you?’
She sat a little straighter. Put her bag back on the floor. A shiver ran through her and she tapped the desk with her fingernail. It was very well manicured.
‘Okay. You could have spoken to people that knew me back then.’ She stared. ‘But you’ve not had much time to do that.’ She sat back and crossed her legs. Crossed her arms. ‘So, I’ll listen.’
‘Have you brought anything belonging to the deceased, Janine?’
‘Here.’ She leaned over, and I heard the rustle of her massive handbag. Then she placed a black crash helmet on the desk. It had a lot of scratches down one side. ‘He was wearing that when he died. He loved that stupid bike – it’s even in his will that we cremate the bastard in his bloody helmet and leathers. That enough for you?’
‘Well, it’s a start.’ I laid my hands on the crash helmet. It was icy cold.
I closed my eyes for a moment.
Saw a forest full of the dead.
Every reading is a journey along an unseen path; sometimes it takes strange twists and turns. You walk, you talk, ask questions, see a sign, a broken branch that leads you in a certain direction, follow it until you find the beautiful sun-filled clearing where the client is filling out all the information for you – but thinking you have done it. It’s a numbers game, really. Say enough and eventually you’ll hit something. Sometimes it’s easy. Especially with those who are keen to believe, who will do the work on your behalf without ever realising it.
Sometimes it’s not.
Janine was the second type.
Love, career and money are the three big paths. If you wander far enough down those paths, then you will usually hit upon something that the client is looking for. Or you may not, but you might find out some interesting things on the way, branch off down those interesting paths, go the roundabout way to your destination. Sometimes I’m lucky and I hit something at the off, but I don’t like trusting to luck.
It might seem like she had done me a favour by saying it was money she wanted to know about, but she hadn’t. She’d closed off two paths, and there’s a lot to be found just nosing around. Though she didn’t look like a woman who had much time for curiosity.
‘It was a lot of money,’ I said.
‘Of course it was a lot. Otherwise I wouldn’t spend fifty quid I don’t have.’
‘His savings …’ I said.
She rolled her eyes. Usually people are more polite, they try to hide their disbelief, but she didn’t care. Not savings then.
‘You’ve always wanted savings, right?’
She stared at me. ‘Who doesn’t?’
‘And this money was your way out.’
She stared more.
‘But you need to know where it is.’ Sometimes you can feed people back things they have already told you and it impresses them because people forget what they’ve said surprisingly quickly.
‘I told you that.’ Not always though. ‘I really am wasting my time here, aren’t I?’
‘No, but sometimes contacting the spirits is a lottery.’
Wide eyes. Shock. And there it is. The wood among the trees. The needle in the haystack. I can be gentle now because I have something. I can be calmer cos I’m not flailing about hoping for a hit.
