I
“ A ND EXACTLY HOW many times have you died, Mr. Singer?”
“Fourteen. That’s fourteen I’ve managed to uncover. They say that each human being has lived about twenty incarnations. But it’s the last one I’m telling you about. See, I died by violence. I was murdered.”
Detective Constable Susan Gay made a note on the yellow pad in front of her. When she looked down, she noticed that she had doodled an intricate pattern of curves and loops, a bit like Spaghetti Junction, during the few minutes she had been talking to Jerry Singer.
She tried to keep the skepticism out of her voice. “Ah-hah. And when was this, sir?”
“Nineteen sixty-six. July. That makes it exactly thirty-two years ago this week.”
“I see.”
Jerry Singer had given his age as thirty-one, which meant that he had been murdered a year before he was born.
“How do you know it was nineteen sixty-six?” Susan asked.
Singer leaned forward. He was a remarkably intense young man, Susan noticed, thin to the point of emaciation, with glittering green eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. He looked as if the lightest breeze would blow him away. His fine red hair had a gossamer quality that reminded Susan of spiders’ webs. He wore jeans, a red T-shirt, and a gray anorak, its shoulders darkened by the rain. Though he said he came from San Diego, California, Susan could detect no trace of suntan.
“It’s like this,” he began. “There’s no fixed period between incarnations, but my channeler told me—”
“Channeler?” Susan interrupted.
“She’s a kind of spokesperson for the spirit world.”
“A medium?”
“Not quite.” Singer managed a brief smile. “But close enough. More of a mediator, really.”
“Oh, I see,” said Susan, who didn’t. “Go on.”
“Well, she told me there would be a period of about a year between my previous incarnation and my present one.”
“How did she know?”
“She just knows . It varies from one soul to another. Some need a lot of time to digest what they’ve learned and make plans for the next incarnation. Some souls just can’t wait to return to another body.” He shrugged. “After some lifetimes, you might simply just get tired and need a long rest.”
After some mornings, too, Susan thought. “Okay,” she said, “let’s move on. Is this your first visit to Yorkshire?”
“It’s my first trip to England, period. I’ve just earned my degree in dentistry, and I thought I’d give myself a treat before I settled down to the daily grind.”
Susan winced. Was that a pun? Singer wasn’t smiling. A New Age dentist, now there was an interesting combination, she thought. Can I read your Tarot cards for you while I drill? Perhaps you might like to take a little astral journey to Neptune while I’m doing your root canal? She forced herself to concentrate on what Singer was saying.
“So, you see,” he went on, “as I’ve never been here before, it must be real, mustn’t it?”
Susan realized she had missed something. “What?”
“Well, it was all so familiar, the landscape, everything. And it’s not only the déjà vu I had. There was the dream, too. We haven’t even approached this in hypnotic regression yet, so—”
Susan held up her hand. “Hang on a minute. You’re losing me. What was so familiar?”
“Oh, I thought I’d made that clear.”
“Not to me.”
“The place. Where I was murdered. It was near here. In Swainsdale.”
II
B ANKS WAS SITTI NG in his office with his feet on the desk and a buff folder open on his lap when Susan Gay popped her head around the door. The top button of his white shirt was undone and his tie hung askew.
That morning he was supposed to be working on the monthly crime figures, but instead, through the half-open window, he listened to the summer rain as it harmonized with Michael Nyman’s soundtrack from The Piano , playing quietly on his portable cassette. His eyes were closed and he was daydreaming of
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