“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.

Lynley went on. “So my suggestion is that you tell me whatever seems relevant. Why did she come to see you?”

Yolanda continued silent for a moment. She seemed to be tossing round the ramifications of speaking or not speaking. She finally said, “I told the others already: love. It’s why they usually come.”

“Love for whom?”

Again a hesitation before she said, “The Irishman. The one who works at the ice rink.”

“Frazer Chaplin?”

“She wanted to know what they always want to know.” Yolanda moved restlessly on the sofa. She reached for an ashtray beneath it and stubbed out her cigarette. She said, “I told the others that, more or less. The black man and the woman with the teeth. I don’t see how going over it all again with you is going to make a difference.”

Lynley gave passing wry thought to how Barbara Havers would react to being called “the woman with the teeth.” He let the thought go. He said, “Call it a new perspective: mine. What, exactly, did you tell her?”

She sighed. “Love’s risky.”

Isn’t it just, Lynley thought.

“I mean as a topic,” she went on. “One can’t make predictions about it. There’re too many variables, always the unexpected bits, especially if one doesn’t have the other person there to…well, to scrutinise, you see. So one keeps things vague, in a manner of speaking. That’s what I did.”

“To keep the client coming back, I should guess.”

She glanced his way, as if to evaluate his tone. He kept his face impassive. She said, “This is a business. I don’t deny it. But it’s also a service that I provide and, believe me, people need it. ’Sides, all sorts of things come up when I’m engaged with a client. They come to see me for one reason, but they find others. ’S not me keeping them coming back, I can tell you that. It’s what I know. It’s what I tell them that I know.”

“And Jemima?”

“What about her?”

“She had other reasons, beyond her questions about love?”

“She had.”

“And what were those?”

Yolanda sat up. She swung her legs round. They were chunky, without ankles, a single plane from her knees to her feet. She plopped her hands down on either side of her thighs as if for balance, and while she held herself straight, her head was lowered. She shook this.

Lynley thought she meant to refuse, no more information, sir. But instead, she said, “Something’s standing between me and the others. Everything’s gone quiet. But I intended no harm. I didn’t know.”

Lynley felt strongly disinclined to play along. He said, “Mrs. Price, if you know something, I must insist-”

“Yolanda!” she said, her head rising with a jerk. “It’s Yolanda in here. I’m having enough trouble with the spirit world as it is, and I don’t need someone in this room reminding them I’ve another life out there, d’you understand that? Ever since she died-ever since I was told that she died-it’s gone quiet and dark. I’m going through the motions, I’ve been doing that for days, and I don’t know what I’m failing to see.” Then she rose. The room was dim and gloomy, likely in keeping with her line of work, and she went to the curtained entry where she switched on an overhead light. The illumination brought the dismal little space into unforgiving relief: dust on the furniture, slut’s wool in the corners, secondhand belongings that were chipped and cracked. Yolanda paced the small area. Lynley waited although his patience was wearing thin.

She finally said, “They come for advice. I try not to give it directly. That’s not how it works. But in her case, I could feel something more and I needed to know what it was in order to work with her. She had information that would have helped me, but she didn’t want to part with it.”

“Information about whom? About what?”

“Who’s to tell? She wouldn’t say. But she asked where she should meet someone if hard truths had to be spoken between them and if she feared to speak them.”

“A man?”

“She wouldn’t tell me that. I said the obvious, what anyone would say: She must choose a public place for her meeting.”

“Did you mention-”

“I did not tell her that cemetery.” She stopped her pacing. She was on the other side of the table and she faced him across it, as if she needed the safety of this distance. She said, “Why would I tell her that cemetery?”

“I take it you didn’t recommend her local Starbucks either,” Lynley pointed out.

“I said choose a place where peace predominates and where she could feel it. I don’t know why she chose that cemetery. I don’t know how she even knew about it.” She resumed her pacing. Round the table once, twice, before she said, “I should have told her something else. I should have seen. Or felt. But I didn’t tell her to stay away from that place because I didn’t see danger.” She swung round on him. “Do you know what it means that I didn’t see danger, Mr. Lynley? Do you understand the position that puts me in? I’ve never doubted the gift for a moment, but now I do. I don’t know truth from lies. I can’t see them. And if I couldn’t protect her from danger, I can’t protect anyone.”