Ghosts Know Read Online Free PDF Page B

herself.”
    “You weren’t even sure what colour Josie’s hair was until you were told. Glasses could be spectacles or glassware, and it’s an easy bet that some of those would have been broken in the past. You claimed Josie liked to talk and when her niece told you she hadn’t you made out she’d changed in the afterlife.”
    “I guess you’re paid to think that way.” Jasper’s gaze has grown infuriatingly tolerant. “I just wonder,” he says, “what your listeners think.”
    “Let’s find out, shall we?” Christine has entered a caller’s details on the monitor. “Martine from Longsight,” I say. “You’ve a question for Frank Jasper.”
    “First of all I want to say I’m shocked how rude you’re being to your guest. Did Mr Jasper know this was how you were going to treat him?”
    “I’m sure Frank did some research.” As he shakes his head I say “Go ahead and speak to him.”
    “I’m not finished with you yet. You’re trying to twist things to discredit him. He didn’t just say the lady’s aunt’s name before the lady said anything. He said her aunt meant a lot to her and there was unfinished business, and that turned out to be the will she didn’t make.”
    “The way he phrased it, Will could have been somebody’s name.”
    “Oh, Mr Wilde, how determined you are not to believe anything you aren’t paid to believe.”
    “It’s got nothing to do with money.” Rather than say this despite the provocation, I ask her “Are you ready to talk to my guest yet?”
    “I’m here for you whenever you’re ready,” Jasper says, “and please do call me Frank like all my friends do.”
    “Well, thank you very much.” At first the privilege seems to have robbed her of words, and then she says “Do you think some people have a gift like yours even if they don’t know?”
    “It could be everybody has if they search deep enough within themselves.”
    “Would you want that?” I wonder. “You’d be out of a job.”
    “It isn’t just a job, Graham.”
    “Maybe you could run courses for budding psychics.” His wistful expression as much as his comment has provoked my retort. “Any other questions?” I ask the caller.
    “Do you think you have the gift, Martine?” Jasper intervenes.
    “I’d love to find I did. Can you tell over the air? Would you be able to give me a reading now, Mr Jasper, Frank?”
    “He can’t do that, Martine, sorry.”
    Christine gazes at me through the window as Jasper says “How come you’re speaking for me, Graham?”
    “I’m saving you can’t do that on my programme.”
    Perhaps he sees why, though I don’t know whether Christine realises he could have planted Martine to ask for the reading “Okay, Martine,” he says. “When can you come to the Palace? Name your night and I’ll fix up free tickets for you and a friend.”
    “We don’t do that on here either.”
    Christine frowns, because we’ve given away tickets to shows in the past. This time Jasper doesn’t protest, perhaps for fear I’d point out that he could research Martine’s background—there can’t be many people of that name in a single district of Manchester. “Then just tell the front of house I sent you,” he says, “and there’ll be tickets.”
    “Thanks for your call, Martine. Shall we hear some more of your performance, Frank?”
    “Sure, let people make up their minds.”
    I let the playback run until he tells Josie’s niece her aunt is with her. “What would you say you were doing there, Frank?”
    “Just exactly what everyone heard.”
    “You told the lady her aunt had lost something valuable. Not much of a deduction when she’d told you her aunt was careless with her spectacles. And you could have seen from her face they’d been accused of stealing it, the family you weren’t sure about until she said who was who. Someone cynical might say she told you more than you told her.”
    “I don’t know why anyone that cynical would come to see me. Don’t