by Ashley Dyer
In a sense, Kara had outgrown her student peers: Hadn’t she been on the cusp of a new and brilliant career? Her housemates, her academic tutor, and her agent had all said that she was completely focused on her acting. Which in the short term meant her audition.
With a guilty pang, Ruth remembered that she’d intended to check out the list of psychics whose performances Kara may have attended around the time she disappeared—they still didn’t have a definitive date. Cursing mildly, Ruth grabbed the mouse and clicked through her files. She had street addresses for two of the psychics. She scribbled them into her notebook, shut down her computer, snatched up her mobile, and was out of the office in under a minute.
Wilson Daventry ran a gift shop on the Albert Dock. His website offered psychic insights, crystal therapy, Reiki, and Tarot card readings. His shop supplied a range of New Age paraphernalia, from crystals and Celtic jewelry to angel figurines and yoga mats.
A girl with blue hair, sleeve tattoos, and facial piercings fronted the place, but when Ruth asked for the boss by name, he shimmied from the back of the shop through the crystal-beaded curtain in a rainbow of refracted light.
He took Ruth’s hand between both of his and stared deep into her eyes. With a look of intense compassion, he nodded, his hand tightening fractionally as he said, “I sense a dark presence near you.”
“Oh,” Ruth said, giving him nothing.
She had read enough of Kara’s research to know that the way these people worked was to unsettle. And as a cop, she knew that people who are unsettled often reveal more than they intend to. So she controlled the urge to try to liberate her hand, and stared back into his eyes, summoning her most fathomless gaze.
“I’m also sensing resistance,” he said, with a sad smile.
She flashed her warrant card, and Daventry let her hand slip from his.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?”
He held back the bead curtain and ushered her through to his consultation room. It was simply laid out, with two chairs either side of a Tarot card table draped with purple velveteen. Judging by the cards fanned out on the table, Daventry had been practicing when she arrived. Beyond his chair was a large window with a view across the inner dock. Light dazzled in myriad colors from crystals hung by fine threads in the windows and over the table. Daventry moved around to the far side of the table, turned and paused, his fingertips just grazing the velveteen.
Before he could fully take control of the situation, Ruth took a print of Kara from her pocket and offered it to him.
“Do you know this woman?” she asked.
He studied it. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“She may have been at your reading last November—the one at the Unity Theatre.”
He shook his head, doubtful. “I wish I could help.” He took the picture. “Tragic, what happened.”
“Is this you sensing things again?”
He handed the photo back. “This is me keeping up with current affairs,” he said, with the slightest hint of a self-deprecating smile. “I watch the news.”
Second on Ruth’s list was Mrs. Jasmine Hart. She lived in a Victorian redbrick midterrace near Newsham Park, east of the city center. It was larger than Ruth’s own home, but not grand by any means, so Mrs. Hart clearly wasn’t making a fortune from her spiritual insights.
She invited Ruth into the front sitting room and went off to brew coffee.
Two plain rectangular sofas were set either side of a dark wood coffee table with a box of tissues and a silver business card stand set dead center of it. A single wingback armchair stood to one side of the fireplace and a fire burned in the hearth—living flame, but the tiles and surround looked authentic Victorian. The mantel was covered with thank-you cards—the only sign of clutter in the room. Ruth took a squint at a few—all from grateful clients, thanking Jasmine for giving them solace, or advice.
A rattle of crockery warned of Mrs. Hart’s return, and Ruth opened the door wide to let her through.
“Sit yourself down, Sergeant.” Jasmine Hart was a short, dumpy woman in her midforties; her accent was broad Lancashire, but she spoke in gentle tones she had obviously worked hard to perfect. “It’s warmest by the fire.” She nodded to the armchair close to the fireplace.
Old-fashioned courtesy, Ruth thought.
Mrs. Hart set down the tray of coffee on the table, nudging the box of tissues out of the way and moving the silver business card stand off to one side.
Ruth explained the reason for her visit as Mrs. Hart poured the coffee, and she responded in a quiet, sympathetic manner. She wore her midbrown hair loose to her shoulders, and occasionally tucked it carefully behind her ears when she needed to give herself time to think. The left hand bore no wedding ring, but Ruth guessed that married status was desirable in female psychics. She handed Mrs. Hart the photograph of Kara, and the woman took it with no hint of drama.
“Yes, I do remember her,” she said. “Last November. I did a Psychic Night at the Epstein Theatre. A young lass was causing bother, tinkering with an e-tablet.” She stared at the photograph. “Seeing this, I realize now it was Kara. That’s when she went missing—November?”
Ruth nodded. “What sort of bother?”
Mrs. Hart paused, a frown creasing three parallel lines between her eyebrows.
“She said she was making notes, but it was causing . . . problems.”
“Members of the audience complained?” Ruth said.
Mrs. Hart tucked a stray lock behind one ear. “Not as such . . .”
Ruth tilted her head, waiting patiently.
“You see—” The psychic broke off, and when she spoke again it was in low tones, imparting a confidence. “Electromagnetic sources can interfere with the spirit messages, and I was pretty sure Kara was secretly recording the session.”
Ruth held back from asking if Mrs. Hart had experienced any psychic “interference” from the radio mics she must have used at her gig and instead made a note to have the techs search for the recording on Kara’s tablet.
She widened her eyes. “What did you do?”
“I asked her to leave. Thing is, love, some folk in the audience are in a very vulnerable state when they attend a reading. I have to consider their feelings—respect their privacy.”
“Of course . . .” Ruth sympathized. “And Kara was alone?”
“She was. You’ll want to know if I saw the poor lass speaking to anyone afterward.” She gave a regretful grimace. “I’m afraid I didn’t. See, the session ended at ten, and Kara was long gone by then.”
“Do you remember when she was asked to leave?”
Another wince of regret. “Sorry, love. But you could ask Harry—my manager.” She slid a business card from the holder on the coffee table and handed it to Ruth. “It was just before the interval, so probably around eightish. I lose track of time during the sessions.”
The card listed a mobile number and website address for Mrs. Hart, and an e-mail address for Harry Rollinson.
“How are you doing with the investigation?” Mrs. Hart asked.
Here we go . . . “I’m afraid I can’t discuss that,” Ruth said.
“Oh, of course not, love. Confidences—I understand that. But you’re doing all right, are you? It was your colleague was attacked, wasn’t it?”
“As I said—”
“Shot, wasn’t he?”
Ruth said, “I’ll give your manager”—she glanced at the business card, although she remembered his name perfectly well—“Mr. Rollinson, a bell.”
You’re letting her rattle you, Ruth.
Mrs. Hart raised her hand, palm down, hovering around the crown of her own head. “I’m getting . . . pain,” she said.
“He has been recovering at a specialist head injuries unit,” Ruth said.
Mrs. Hart’s hand dropped to her lap, and she tilted her head, as if listening to something far off. After a moment she said, “Oh,” an astonished look on her face. “He wasn’t shot in the head, w
as he, love?”
They had kept that out of the news bulletins. Ruth wasn’t sure what had betrayed her—muscle tension? Something in her tone of voice? As a person who habitually read others’ body language it wasn’t a very pleasant feeling being read.
“I am sorry, love,” the woman said. “I’ve made you uncomfortable, haven’t I?”
And there she goes again. “Of course not,” Ruth said. “But I am pushed for time, so . . .”
She left a minute later.
Back at headquarters, she searched the web for Jasmine Hart’s audio and video podcasts and was surprised to find that Jasmine Hart had her very own YouTube channel. Ruth ran a few of the recordings—mostly short clips from her shows, and mainly poorly disguised adverts for Mrs. Hart’s business.
But a link farther down the Google search results caught her eye.
“Jasmine Hart—FAKE.” was the main title. The description read: “See the other side of Jasmine Hart’s contacts with the ‘Other Side.’”
Ruth clicked the link to a YouTube channel calling itself “Psychic Tricksters” and found a recording of Jasmine’s run-in with Kara. Far from “asking her to leave,” Kara had been physically bundled out of the place by an older man. Was this Rollinson? He tried to grab Kara’s e-tablet, but she held on to the device, clasping it to her chest, while he pushed, prodded, and shoved her down the center aisle of the theater to the exit, amid gasps of shock and disapproval from the audience.
A Google search for Harry Rollinson trawled up a couple of teenagers and twentysomethings on Facebook—all way too young to be the man in the video. Rollinson was listed on Jasmine’s website, but there were no photographs. Which was not suspicious in itself, but the fact that the man apparently had no Web presence, and only one client—Jasmine Hart—was odd.
She played the video again and watched the big bear of a man bully and shove a frightened-looking Kara out of the theater. A man with a temper like that—a man willing to lay hands on a woman—would likely have a record, she reasoned, so she checked the Police National Computer Names File. There were several Henry Rollinsons—two of whom were too old to be her guy—as well as a Henry Rollinson, aka Brian Rollinson, aka Brian Henry Rollinson, aged sixty-seven. About the right age, judging by the video, and the multialiased Mr. Rollinson had convictions for common assault, assault and battery, and fraud.
The Names File on the PNC provided links to fingerprints and DNA records, but it didn’t carry digital information like photos. So she put in a request for photographs and closed the database, returning to Jasmine’s website to check out her events page. Mrs. Hart had a psychic reading back at the Epstein Theatre in the center of the city that night. Ruth intended to be there.
The final psychic on Kara’s list was an act calling himself “Shadowman.” His website and Facebook pages showed a man photographed, predictably enough, in shadow, and his website made a huge deal of telling people not to bring phones or cameras to the gigs. “Bags will be searched and phones confiscated until after the performance,” the booking terms warned.
Shadowman had no events upcoming, and although the testimonials page on his website referred to events in named towns, there were no named venues. Publicity hype, Ruth decided—probably all invented. An invitation on the homepage to complete a questionnaire entitled “How psychic are you?” intrigued her, though. Clickbait.
“Okay,” she murmured. “I’ll bite.” She clicked the link.
But before she could get to the questions, she was required to submit her e-mail address. Ruth closed the questionnaire, preferring to have their first encounter on her own terms, which meant not giving him the opportunity to research her. Shadowman’s contacts page gave an e-mail address for potential clients and events organizers together with a landline number. She dialed the landline and was put through to an answering service based at a business center in north Liverpool. She left a message asking for a return call on her mobile number, without mentioning that she was police.
She was about to head off to the briefing room, when her mobile buzzed. A text message from DC Ivey. “Meet me at Cow & Co. caff, 5 mins.”
She took a shortcut through the car park and was there in under three. It was five p.m., already dark, and her breath steamed in the freezing air. The café was in a quiet square near the redbrick façade of Chancery House, another of the city’s turnaround stories—what had once been a refuge for the destitute was now a luxury apartment complex beyond the financial reach of most Liverpudlians.
She ducked inside the tiny café and saw Tom Ivey skulking in a corner. He pointed to the two cups on the table and she went straight over, shrugging off her coat.
Ruth sipped her cappuccino with her back to the door, while DC Ivey talked her through Adela Faraday’s postmortem results. The approximate time of death had been determined by Adela’s last known sighting, which was at the Old Bank Hotel, the night Greg Carver was shot. The snow covering her body confirmed TOD that same night. Adela had had rough, but possibly consensual, sex around time of death.
Ruth swallowed down a wave of nausea. “Cause of death?”
“She was beaten and shot,” he said. “It was the bullet killed her.”
She set her cup down, careful that it didn’t clatter against the saucer rim. “What caliber of bullet?” she said.
“The slug was a bit mashed up, but it’s probably a .22.” She felt his eyes on her. “Recovered from her heart.”
It was hot in the confined space of the café, but Ruth felt suddenly cold. She nodded, her mind racing, but she kept her expression impassive.
“I can’t help you anymore,” Ivey said.
She looked him in the eye “Why?” she said, thinking about the bullet lodged in Carver’s back, feeling a ripple of contraction in the muscles around her mouth, and hoping Ivey hadn’t see it.
“Adela Faraday was shot; so was Carver,” he said, clearly surprised he needed to explain. “Two people who know each other, shot in the chest, by a small-caliber pistol. Probably around the same time. What are the odds of it being a coincidence?”
Vanishingly small, she thought.
“Did you trace the other numbers on Adela’s burner phone?”
He leaned forward, his shoulders hunched. He was so close she could see a tiny crystal of sugar caught on his upper lip. “I can’t help you,” he repeated.
She pinched his jacket lapel between her thumb and forefinger and leaned in, closing the gap. “Then why are you here?” she whispered.
He flushed, sat back. “I just . . . I didn’t want you to hear it from Jansen.”
“Have you questioned Carver?”
“Sarge—”
“Hey,” she interrupted. “You wouldn’t have the link to Carver if it wasn’t for me.” She saw him begin to waver, and added, “You know you can trust me.”
“Jesus, Sarge, you’re killing me.” He rubbed his right eye with the pad of his thumb, and she realized he was soothing a tremor in the eyelid.
She held still, keeping her eyes on his face. “Tom . . .”
He sighed. “It’ll be on the news, anyway,” he said, half to himself. He took another breath. “But you didn’t get this from me.”
She widened her eyes as if to say, Goes without saying.
Again, he hesitated, but then blurted out, “One of the phone numbers belongs to Councillor Hill.”
“The leader of the council?” She felt a tiny glimmer of hope.
He nodded. “Jansen asked him to come in, but he refused.”
“And?” A pulse throbbed behind her eyes.
“He’s about to be arrested.”
Chapter 33
DCI Parsons wanted an explanation for Ruth’s late arrival at the evening briefing. She made an excuse of her interviews with the psychics, earning a few Brownie points when she pulled up the YouTube video of Kara’s altercation with Rollinson at Jasmine Hart’s psychic performance.
“Okay, bring him in,” Parsons said.
“Mr
s. Hart is performing tonight,” Ruth said. “I’d like to see for myself how he operates—get some more out of them before we make things official.”
Parsons thought about it. “All right. But I want him formally interviewed—here at the station—tomorrow morning.”
“Absolutely,” she said.
The remainder of the debrief was more nothing: nothing from the canvass, nothing from the TV appeals, nothing from the stop and question.
They were about ready to go home for the night when Parsons said, “One piece of good news . . .”
Heads came up, eager for something other than disappointment to pack up and lug home from the day’s graft.
“The Adela Faraday MIT have made an arrest.”
Murmurs of surprise, a few sly glances in Ruth’s direction, half the team thinking it must be Carver. She stayed calm and affected polite interest, waiting for the DCI to tell them that the suspect was Councillor Hill. Hearing the councillor’s name, the more loyal detectives on the team exchanged satisfied nods; John Hughes, her old friend from the Crime Scene Unit, smiled over at her; a few of the younger members of the team were already thumbing their smartphones, trawling for news reports. Ruth made eye contact with Parsons and lifted her chin in a gesture of thanks. With Carver off the list of suspects, the team had the boost it needed to start the next day with renewed purpose.
She only wished she could be as sure that Greg Carver was innocent.
Parsons called her over as the room emptied.
“Good work on the psychic connection,” he said. “You were right—it does narrow down the time frame.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’d like you to take someone with you this evening, though.”
“I want to keep a low profile, observe, rather than participate,” she said. “On my own, I’ll be just another face in the crowd.”
