Nkata said politely, “Ta,” and then, “C’n we have a word, Miss-”

“Just Yolanda,” she said.

“No other name?” Barbara asked her. This would be for the record and all that. Because as this was a police matter…Yolanda would surely get the point, eh?

“Police? I’m legal,” Yolanda said. “Licenced. Whatever you need.”

“I expect you are. We’re not here to check your business details. So your full name is…?”

It turned out-no surprise-that Yolanda was a pseudonym, Sharon Price not having quite the same cachet when it came to the psychic trade.

“Would that be Miss or Missus Price?” Nkata asked, having his notebook out and his mechanical pencil poised. It would be missus, she confirmed. Mister was a driver of one of London’s black cabs and the children of mister and missus were both grown and flown.

“You’re here because of her, aren’t you?” Yolanda said shrewdly.

“You knew Jemima Hastings, then, yeah?” Nkata said.

Yolanda missed the tense of the verb. She said, “Oh, I know Jemima, yes. But I didn’t mean Jemima. I meant her, that cow over Putney. She actually rang you, didn’t she? She’s got her nerve.”

They were all still standing in the anteroom, and Barbara asked was there a place they could sit for a proper conversation? To this Yolanda waved them through the beaded curtain, where she had a setup that walked a tightrope between analyst’s office with a fainting sofa along one wall and a séance locale with a round table in the middle and a thronelike chair at twelve o’clock, obviously meant for the medium. Yolanda went for this and indicated Havers and Nkata were meant to sit at three and seven o’clock respectively. This had to do with Nkata’s aura, evidently, and with Barbara’s lack of one.

“Bit anxious about you, I am,” Yolanda said to her.

“You and everyone else.” Barbara cast a glance at Nkata. He gave her a look of deep and utterly spurious concern over her apparent lack of aura. “I’ll see to you later,” she muttered under her breath, to which he stifled a smile.

“Oh, I can see you’re unbelievers,” Yolanda said in her strange man’s voice. She reached beneath the table then, whereupon Barbara expected it to levitate. But instead the psychic brought forth the ostensible reason for her ruined vocal cords: a packet of Dunhills. She lit up and shoved the cigarettes towards Barbara, with the full knowledge, it seemed, that Barbara was a fellow in this matter. “You’re dying to,” she said. “Go ahead,” and “Sorry, luv,” to Winston. “But not to worry. Passive smoking isn’t how you’re meant to go. More than that, however, and you’ll have to pay me five quid.”

“Reckon I’d like to be surprised,” he responded.

“Suit yourself, dearie.” She inhaled with great pleasure and settled back into her throne for a proper natter. She said, “I don’t want her living in Putney. Well, not so much in Putney itself as with her and by her; I s’pose I mean in her house.”

“You didn’t want Jemima living in Mrs. McHaggis’s house?” Barbara said.

“Right.” Yolanda flicked ash onto the floor. This was covered by a Persian carpet, but she didn’t seem concerned. She said, “Houses of death need to be decontaminated. Sage burning in every room and believe you me it doesn’t do just to wave it about as one runs through the place. And I’m not talking of the sage you get in the market, mind you. One doesn’t buy a packet in Sainsbury’s from the dried herb shelf and put a teaspoonful in an ashtray and light it and there you have it. Not by a bloody long chalk. One gets the real thing, bound up properly and meant to be burnt. One lights it and appropriate prayers are said. Spirits needing to be released are then released and the place is cleansed of death and only then is it wholesome enough for someone to resume a life within it.”

Winston, Barbara saw, was noting all this down as if with the intention of stopping off somewhere for the appropriate decontaminants. She said, “Sorry, Mrs. Price, but-”

“Yolanda, for God’s sake.”

“Right. Yolanda. Are you referring to what’s happened to Jemima Hastings?”

Yolanda looked confused. “I’m referring,” she said, “to the fact that she lives in a House of Death. McHaggis-was ever a woman more appropriately named, I ask you-is a widow. Her husband died in the house.”

“Suspicious circumstances?”

Yolanda hmmphed. “You’ll have to ask McHaggis that. I can see contagion oozing out of the windows every time I go past. I’ve told Jemima she’s meant to clear out of there. And all right, I admit it, I might have been rather insistent about it.”

“Which would be why the cops were phoned?” Barbara asked. “Who phoned them? I ask because what we know is that you were warned off stalking Jemima at one point. Is our information-”

“That’s an interpretation, isn’t it?” Yolanda said. “I’ve expressed my concern. It’s grown, so I’ve expressed it again. P’rhaps I’ve been a bit…Oh, p’rhaps I took things to extremes, p’rhaps I did a bit of lurking outside, but what am I meant to do? Just let her languish? Every time I see her, it’s shrunken more, and am I meant to stand by and let that happen? Say nothing about it?”

“‘It’s shrunken more,’” Barbara repeated. “‘It’ being…?”

“Her aura,” Nkata supplied helpfully, obviously on top of the situation.

“Yes,” Yolanda confirmed. “When I first met Jemima, she glowed. Well, not like you, luv”-this to Nkata-“but still more noticeably than most people.”

“How’d you meet her, then?” Barbara asked. Enough of auras, she decided, as Winston was beginning to look decidedly smug about his.

“At the ice rink. Well, not at the ice rink per se, naturally. More like from the ice rink. Abbott introduced us. We have coffee together sometimes in the café, Abbott and I. And I run into him in the shops as well. He’s got something of a pleasant aura himself-”

“Right,” Barbara murmured.

“-and as he gets such grief from his wives-well, this would be his former wives, wouldn’t it-I like to tell him not to worry so about that. A man can only do what a man can do, eh? And if he doesn’t make enough to pay them all support, then he isn’t to drive himself into the grave over it. He does what he can. He teaches, doesn’t he? He walks dogs in the park. He tutors children in reading. What more can those three tarts expect from him?”

“What more indeed,” Barbara said.

“Who’d this bloke be?” Winston asked.

Abbott Langer, Yolanda told them. He was an instructor at the Queen’s Ice and Bowl, which was just up the street from this market in which they sat.

It turned out that Jemima Hastings had been taking ice-skating lessons from Abbott Langer and Yolanda had encountered the two of them having a post-lesson cup of coffee in the Russian café inside this very market. Abbott had introduced them. Yolanda admired Jemima’s aura-

“Bet you did,” Barbara muttered.

– and she’d asked Jemima a few questions which stimulated conversation which in turn prompted Yolanda to hand over her business card. And that was that.

“She’s come to see me three or four times,” Yolanda said.

“About what?”

Yolanda managed to draw in on her cigarette and look aghast simultaneously. “I don’t speak about my clients,” she said. “This is confidential, what goes on in here.”

“We need a general idea…?”

“Oh don’t you just.” She blew out a thin stream of smoke. “Generally she’s like all the rest. She wants to talk about a bloke. Well, don’t they all? It’s always about a bloke, eh? Will he? Won’t he? Will they? Won’t they? Should she? Shouldn’t she? My concern, however, is that house she lives in, but has she ever wanted to hear about that? Has she ever wanted to hear about where she ought to be living?”

“Where would that be?” Barbara asked.

“Not there, let me tell you. I see danger there. I’ve even offered her a place with my mister and me at a bargain rate. We’ve got two spare rooms and they’ve both been purified, but she hasn’t wanted to leave McHaggis. I admit I might have been a bit persistent about the matter. I might have stopped in to speak to her about it now and then. But that was only because she needs to get out of that place and what am I meant to do about that? Say nothing? Let the chips fall? Wait until whatever is going to happen happens?”