Tanner was always happy to step in front of the cameras, but James had never felt comfortable with that aspect of the job. He knew now that if he got the promotion to Detective Chief Inspector then it was something he’d have to get used to whether he liked it or not.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

‘We’ll leave in fifteen minutes,’ James said to Abbott as soon as the briefing was over. ‘I need to make a call. While I do that can you get the addresses for Libby and Ethan Prescott so we can put them into the satnav?’

James went back to his desk and looked up the number for the psychic medium, Lisa Doyle. He had last spoken to her at the end of the investigation into the farmhouse massacre a year ago and what she’d said to him back then he would never forget.

She’d claimed she’d had a vision of James standing over someone’s blood-covered body and said that a voice in her head had told her that he and his colleagues would soon be having to confront another tidal wave of death and destruction.

She turned out to be right in one respect as it wasn’t long before he was staring down at the body of a man who’d been brutally stabbed to death. But since then, he’d investigated three more murders, not including the current case, and he didn’t reckon that amounted to a tidal wave of death and destruction.

Before he met the widow Doyle, he’d never believed in all that psychic stuff. But she made such an impression on him that he now maintained an open mind on the subject.

His number must have been saved in her phone because she greeted him by name.

‘Well, hello Detective Inspector Walker. Believe it or not, I’ve been wondering whether or not I should ring you.’

‘Really?’ James said, surprised.

‘Yes. I caught up with the news last night and learned about that terrible murder at the hotel on Lake Windermere. They said you were leading the investigation.’

‘I am. In fact, that’s why I’m calling.’

‘Let me guess. You’ve been told that poor Miss Elliott came to see me just after Christmas.’

‘That’s right. She’d cut out a feature about you that appeared in Cumbria Life magazine and had scrawled what I assumed was an appointment note on it.’

‘I remember it well, Detective Walker, mainly because she got quite upset. That was why after I saw what had happened to her it occurred to me that perhaps I should tell you about it.’

‘Okay, well, start at the beginning. Did she come all the way to your home in Sedbergh for a session?’

‘She didn’t have to. I spent that day doing tarot card readings at a hall in Ambleside as a post-Christmas event. It was mentioned in the article.’

‘Had she met with you before?’

‘No, it was the first time, and I got the impression she’d never seen a psychic before.’