“She used to be married to a policeman,” Cara explained.
“Did she?”
“But you know how it is. She got involved in his work. She tried to help out. You do, don’t you? But she got strangled once too often. She lived through the Yorkshire Ripper, she had all sorts of hoaxers coming through, she used to report them to his seniors but it didn’t stop her having to walk about all day with an axe in her head. She gave him an ultimatum, get out of the CID, or we’re history.”
“I suppose he wouldn’t quit,” Colette said.
“So he was history.” Al sounded awed.
“She left him, moved down south, never looked back.”
“She must be older than she says, if she was married when it was the Yorkshire Ripper.”
“We’re all older than we say.” Gemma was back. “And some of us, my dears, are older than we know. The windows are intact. They must have got in upstairs. The back door is locked.”
“Funny, to come in upstairs, if you’re going to make off with the furniture,” Colette said.
Alison said, “Colette is nothing if not logical.” She called out, “Pikey Pete? You bin in here?” She dropped her voice. “He’s part of a gang that used to run about round here, Mrs. Etchells knew them all. He’s what you call a totter, collects old furniture, pots and pans, anything of that sort.”
“And he’s in Spirit, is he?” Gemma said. She laughed. “That explains it, then. Still, I’ve never seen such a wholesale teleportation of anybody’s goods, have you?”
“It’s a shame,” Al said. “It’s just plain greedy, that’s what it is. There are people earthside could have used the things she had. Such as nutmeg graters. Toby jugs. Decorative pin cushions with all the pins still in. She had a coffee table with a glass top and a repeat motif of the Beatles underneath, printed on wallpaper—it must have been an heirloom. She had original Pyrex oven dishes with pictures of carrots and onions on the side. She had a Spanish lady with a flouncy skirt that you sat on top of your spare loo roll. I used to run to her house when I wanted to go to the toilet because there was always some bloke wanking in ours. Though God knows why they were wanking because my mum and her friend Gloria was always ready to give them hand relief.”
Mandy put an arm around her. “Shh, lovey. Not easy for you. But we all had it rough.”
Alison scrubbed the tears out of her eyes. Pikey Paul was crying in the bare corner of the room. “It was me what gave her that Spanish lady,” he said. “I won it on a shooting stall in Southport on the pleasure beach. I’d a lift all the way from Ormskirk and down the East Lancs Road, and then I had the malfortune to be picked up by a chap in a truck called Aitkenside, which was the origin of the sad connection between my fambly and yours.”
“I’m sorry, Pikey Paul,” Alison said. “I do sincerely apologize.”
“I carried it all the way down the country wrapped in a cloth, and Aitkenside he would say, what’s that you’ve got between your legs, employing the utmost ambiguity, till finally he made a dive for it. So I held it out of the way, the dolly, above my head while Aitkenside had his way, for I wasn’t about to get Dolly spoiled, and I had a good inkling as to his nature, for those men’s men they are all the same.”
“Oh, I do agree,” said Alison.
“For it is all they can think of, those men’s men, rifling about in a boy’s tight little matador pants till they can find his wherewithal. But still and all it was worth it. You should have seen Irene smile, when I gave her the presentation. Oh, Paul, she said, is that dolly all for me? I never told her of the perils I’d been assaulted with. Well, you don’t, do you? She was a lady. I don’t say you’re not, but Mrs. Etchells wouldn’t have understood a thing like that. Whereas now it’s more the modern style. They’re all at it. They don’t like to miss any pleasure. They’re having extensions so they can fuck themselves, and whores will be out of business.”
“Pikey Paul!” said Alison. “Keep it low! Don’t talk so obscene. You never used to have such a filthy tongue in your head!”
“They’re queueing up for multiple tongues,” Paul said. “I seen ’em. What I say is mild, believe me. You want to hear ’em in the years to come. No sentence will be clean.”
“I can believe it,” Alison said. She began to cry. “All the same, Paul, I wish I’d had a spirit guide like you. Morris never brought me a present. Not so much as a bunch of flowers.”
“You should have kicked him out,” Paul said. “You should have kicked him out like Mrs. Etchells kicked him out. Soon as she saw my Spanish dolly, she hoisted him up in her arms—she was sinewy in those days, and you know how squat he is—she carried him down the road and she dumped him in a skip. Then she come back and cooked us some pancakes. I was uncommonly fond of pancakes with syrup, but now I lay off ’em, as I’ve to watch my waistline, which don’t we all. Now I was looking for a place to call my own, and I had a billet where I could come and go, ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies, she was easygoing, was Mrs. Etchells. We was suited—that’s how you could express it. Little op, chain of love, joys of motherhood, she never varied it and why should she? Meanwhile I got on with my own life. She had a stack of testimonials, handwritten, some of them in real fountain pen by titled people, stacked up in that sideboard there.”
“What sideboard?” Al said.
“That sideboard that one of my fambly has removed, namely Pikey Pete.
To sell it on.”
“He should be ashamed,” Alison said. The Sensitives, acting on instinct or by training, had formed a semicircle around Al, aware that she was experiencing a manifestation. Only Colette walked away, bored, and stood with drooping head, her fingers flaking yellowed paint from the front windowsill. Silvana rubbed and rubbed at a spot below her jawline: trying, perhaps, to ease her teak-coloured line of tan into the tint of her flesh. The women stood, patient, till Pikey Paul vanished in a dull red flash, his suit of lights depleted, bagged at the knee and sagged at the seat, his aura—trailing on the air—resembling no more than a greasy smear of old-fashioned men’s hair cream.
“That was Pikey Paul,” Al said. “Mrs. E’s guide. Unfortunately he didn’t say anything about the will.”
“Okay,” said Cara. “Dowsing it is. If it’s here at all, it can only be under the lino or slid behind the wallpaper.” She opened her beaded satchel and took out her pendulum.
