Kelly turned her phone around. She’d googled the guru as she waited for Paul Burlington.
‘The spiritual guide Jamie was watching before he died.’
‘Ah, him.’ Emma nodded.
They looked at the screen and Kelly pressed play. The sage was a small thin man with tiny spectacles and messy hair. He looked of Indian origin.
Kelly informed Emma of the man’s background as they watched him practising meditation whilst in a distinctly impractical yoga pose.
‘Born and raised in Canada, to an Indian mother and American father, he travelled extensively and dropped out of his engineering degree at Stanford. After wandering for ten years, he wrote a book and it sold ten million copies.’
‘I think there was a poster of him up in the lecture hall,’ Emma said.
Kelly raised her eyebrows. ‘He’s done some work for Hampton-Dent too, group wellness retreats, according to their website.’
‘It’s such a cliché isn’t it?’ Emma said, which took Kelly by surprise because she thought, unlike herself, Emma was the type to buy into this stuff. They watched him on screen and Kelly felt her eyelids grow heavy. Clem Allins spoke about contemplation, his voice was calm and demonstrably zen, he wore loose clothes and changed position like an elegant leggy giraffe gliding across the plains. He lurched and dipped.
‘That’s quite beautiful,’ Emma said.
Kelly stared at her. Hormones got to every mother in the end. Even ultra-fell running legends weren’t immune and Kelly felt rather relieved that it wasn’t just her who turned to mush because she was pregnant. She put her arm around her junior and squeezed her.
‘Has this case changed your view of all this wellness stuff?’
Emma laughed. ‘Dan’s always telling me they’re full of crap, these self-styled teachers. And their supplements have the same additives in them as kids’ sweets, but I take them mainly on long endurance runs, which I’m not doing at the moment because I feel so shit. I’m a sucker for a good ad campaign, what can I say, but yes I think it’s made me wary.’
‘Answer me this,’ Kelly asked. ‘Why do fit and healthy people like you, and all of these people here, need reminding to keep fit and healthy when you already do it?’
‘Because they sell health, they don’t practise it,’ Emma said. ‘We’re millennials; we fall for branding and believe we need something else to make us whole.’
Kelly stared at her. Now she understood why Sandy Cooper didn’t practise what she preached. The reality of a fairytale was never the same as the promise.
Did Jamie’s rose-tinted spectacles fall off?
‘What does that make me? A dinosaur? I thought I was a millennial.’
‘I think you’re the tail end of Gen X. You’re… sturdy.’ Emma winked.
Kelly pretended to slap her playfully. She hopped off the table and looked at her notes.
Then her phone buzzed and it was Fin.
Kelly answered it chirpily.
Fin had returned to Skelwith Bridge this morning to continue the inquiries around the local area.
‘I’m at Angelina Robbins’ cottage in Chapel Stile,’ he said.
‘Something come up?’ Kelly asked.
‘Well there are photos of her with Jamie everywhere; I think it’s safe to say they were close.’
‘Good, anything else?’
‘There’s a photo attached to the fridge with a magnet that I think you should see; I’ve sent it to your phone. Jamie bought this place seven years ago. Her studio is full of incredible work,’ Fin added.
‘It sounds like it’s a tough visit,’ Kelly said. She acknowledged that rifling through the detritus of somebody’s life after they’d been brutally murdered wasn’t easy. ‘Wait, I’ve just got it.’
Kelly switched screens and opened the text from Fin.
