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got to her just in time.’ Keisha paused. ‘Her name was Nina. And last week she celebrated her ninth birthday. She was alive, and well.’
    Total bullshit .
    Keisha clasped her hands together and rested them in her lap, never taking her eyes off Wendell.
    ‘Would you like to call Nina’s father?’ she asked. ‘I think I could arrange that.’
    Keisha didn’t think he’d take her up on the offer, but if he did, she had Larson, her boyfriend, on standby to take the call.
    ‘No, no, that’s OK,’ Garfield said. ‘That’s quite a tale.’
    Keisha looked away and down at her hands, trying to be modest.
    ‘But I totally understand,’ she said, ‘if you’d like me to leave. Perhaps you think I am a con artist. There are plenty out there, believe me. I don’t know whether you’ve been contacted by a Winona Simpson, but she’s definitely one to watch out for. If you don’t want me to share my vision with you, I’ll leave right now and you won’t hear from me again. I just want to say, I hope the police find your wife soon, Mr Garfield, so that you and your daughter can get your lives back to normal.’
    She stood up. Garfield was on his feet, too, and when Keisha extended her hand once again he took it right away.
    ‘Thank you for your time, and I’m so sorry to have troubled you.’
    ‘What will you do?’ he said. ‘I mean, if you’ve had this so-called vision, and I’m not the kind of person who believes in that sort of thing, what will you do now?’
    ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘I’ll go and tell the police what I know, and see if there’s anyone there who cares. Sometimes, though, that has a way of backfiring. It doesn’t always work out the way it did with Nina. I’ve found that the police have a tendency to be hostile, and the tips you give them will end up being the last one they follow. I hope, for your wife’s sake, that they don’t take that attitude.’
    ‘So you’re going to the police,’ he said, more to himself than to Keisha.
    ‘Again, thank you for—’
    ‘Sit down. You might as well tell me how this works.’

Wendell

    Wendell Garfield didn’t know what the hell to make of this woman. Did Keisha Ceylon really have visions? The story about that little girl was pretty convincing, but it wasn’t enough to persuade him Keisha was genuine. There was something about her, though, that was hard to dismiss.
    His mind raced through the possibilities. The woman was trying to get money out of him, plain and simple. He had a feeling that, even though they hadn’t gotten around to the topic of money, it was coming. What better target than a husband desperate to find out what had happened to his missing wife?
    Perhaps plenty of people in his position would be willing to engage a psychic, a medium – whatever this woman wanted to call herself. This might be so even if they believed, at best, that there was only a one in a million chance that she really knew anything. Isn’t that what someone who truly loved his wife would do?
    Or maybe she wasn’t trying to con him. Maybe she really did have visions. Maybe she truly believed she had some kind of connection to people in trouble, and was here out of a sincere wish to help him. However, maybe what she had wasn’t a gift. Maybe she was a madwoman, with delusions. Her visions might be nothing more than the product of a twisted mind. In short, perhaps she was just hallucinating.
    And then, of course, there was a third possibility: that she was the real thing.
    Garfield considered that prospect highly unlikely. But what if, somehow, for reasons he did not yet understand, she was on to something? Did he want her talking to the police?
    Not really.
    The smartest course, for now, seemed to be to hear her out. He would hear what she had to say.
    Once Keisha was back in the chair, with Wendell sitting across from her, he said, ‘First of all, let me apologise if I was at all rude earlier.’
    ‘Not at all. I understand that what I do, the