Echo

*3*

It was dangerous to allow a silence to go on too long. The impact of her words did not diminish in a vacuum, instead they grew and gained in authority. Deacon was drawn to see Lisa through her eyes, and he was struck by how appropriate her description of the girl was. Compared with the snow queen in the chair opposite, Lisa's outlined pouting lips and bottom-hugging skirt were blatantly provocative, and he felt himself belittled to have lusted after her so long in silence when lust was what she was inviting. He saw himself as one of Pavlov's dogs, lured into salivating every time his greed was stimulated, and the idea offended him.

He took his keys from his pocket and suggested that Lisa use the car to drive herself back to the office with her equipment. "I'll grab a taxi when I'm through," he said. "Leave the keys with Glen at the front desk and I'll pick them up from him."

She nodded, glad of an excuse to leave, and immediately he regretted his perfidy. It wasn't a crime to display bright plumage, rather it was a celebration of youth. She left the camera out as she repacked the case, then with a curt nod in the older woman's direction let herself out of the sitting-room door.

They both heard the rattle of garage keys being lifted from the hall table. Amanda sighed. "I was rude to her. I'm sorry. I find it hard to treat Billy's death quite as casually as you and she do." She examined her glass for a moment, as if aware that she'd given herself away, then abandoned it on the coffee table.

"You certainly seem to take it very personally."

"He died on my property."

"That doesn't make you responsible for him."

She looked at him rather blankly. "Then who is responsible?"

The question was simplistic--it was what a child would ask. "Billy himself," said Deacon. "He was old enough to make his own choices in life."

She shook her head then leaned forward, searching his face earnestly. "You said yesterday that you were moved by Billy's story, so could we talk about his life instead of his death? I know I said there was nothing I could tell you, but that wasn't strictly accurate. I know at least as much as the police do."

"I'm listening."

"According to the pathologist, he was forty-five years old, six feet tall, and although his hair was completely white when he died, it would have been dark. He was first arrested four years ago for stealing some bread and ham from a high-street supermarket, and he gave his name as Billy Blake and his age as sixty-one which, if the pathologist is right, was twenty years older than his actual age." She spoke quickly and fluently, as if she had spent a long time preparing the facts for just such a presentation. "He said he'd been living rough for ten years, but refused to give any other information. He wouldn't say where he came from and he wouldn't say if he had a family. The police checked Missing Persons in London and the South East, but nobody of his description had been reported missing in the previous ten years. His fingerprints, such as they were, weren't in the police files and he had nothing on him that could establish his identity. In the absence of any other information, the police recorded the details he gave them and for the next four years he lived and subsequently died as Billy Blake. He spent a total of six months in prison for stealing food or alcohol, with each sentence amounting to a one- or two-month stretch, and he preferred to bed down as near to the Thames as possible when he was out. His favorite pitch was a derelict warehouse about a mile from here. I've talked to some of the other old men who use it, but none of them admitted to knowing anything about Billy's history."

Deacon was impressed by the extent of her interest and effort. "What did you mean by 'his fingerprints, such as they were'?"

"The police said he'd burnt his hands in a fire at some time and left them to heal on their own. Both were so badly scarred that his fingers were like claws. They think he may have mutilated himself deliberately to avoid some previous crime catching up with him."

"Shit!" he said unguardedly.

She stood up and walked over to the glass cabinet on the far wall. "As I said earlier, there are photographs of him." She took an envelope from a shelf inside and came back with it, slipping the contents into her hand. "I persuaded the police to give me two of them. This is the best they had out of the batch the pathologist took. It's not very pleasant, and they say it's doubtful anyone would recognize him from it." She handed it across. "His face is very shrunken from lack of food, and because his forehead and jaw were so pronounced, it's likely that he was much fuller faced when he was healthy."

Deacon examined the picture. She was right. It wasn't very pleasant. He was reminded of the corpses piled high inside Bergen-Belsen when the Allies liberated it. The face was almost fleshless, so tightly was the skin drawn across the bones. She handed him the other photograph. "That's the one that was taken four years ago when he was first arrested. But it's not much better. He was skeletal even then, although it gives a slightly clearer idea of what he might have looked like."

Could this really be the face of a forty-one-year-old? Deacon wondered. Old age had scored itself into deep lines round the mouth, and the eyes that looked into the camera were faded and yellow. Only the hair had any vitality where it sprang up from the high forehead, although its whiteness was startling against the sallowness of the complexion. "Could the pathologist have been wrong about his age?" he asked.

"Apparently not. I understand he took a second opinion when the police didn't believe him. It did occur to me," she went on, "that someone with the right computer software might be able to build on the images, but I don't know anyone who specializes in that area. If your magazine could do it, it would make a far better visual accompaniment to your article than the picture of me."

"Why haven't the police done that?"

"He didn't commit a crime before he died, so they're not interested. I believe they put his description on to a missing person's computer file but it didn't match with anyone, so they've written him off."

"Can I borrow these? We'll have some negatives made and then I can let you have them back." He tucked the photographs between the pages of his notebook when she nodded agreement. "Did the police ever come up with any other explanation for why he chose your garage, apart from the door being open on the day he went into it?"

She sat down again and folded her hands in her lap. Deacon was surprised to see how whitely her knuckles shone. "They thought he might have followed me home from work, although they never produced a valid reason for why he might have wanted to do that. If he'd singled me out as someone worth following, then he'd have asked me for help. Would you agree with that?" She was appealing to him on an intellectual level, but Deacon was more inclined to respond to the tic of anxiety that fluttered at the corner of her mouth. He hadn't noticed it before. He was beginning to understand that her composure was a surface thing and that something far more turbulent was at work underneath.

"Yes," he said. "There's no sense in following you without a reason. So? Could there have been another reason?"

"Like what?"

"Perhaps he thought he recognized you."

"As whom?"

"I don't know."

"Wouldn't he have been even more likely to speak to me if he thought he knew me?" She darted the question at him so quickly that he guessed it was one she had asked herself many times.

Deacon scratched his jaw. "Maybe he was too far gone by then to do anything other than collapse and die. Where exactly is your office?"

"Two hundred yards from the derelict warehouse where Billy used to bed down. The whole area's up for redevelopment. W. F. Meredith rents office space in a warehouse which was refurbished three years ago during the first phase. The police felt the proximity of the buildings was too much of a coincidence, but I'm not sure I agree with them. Two hundred yards is a long way in a city like London." She looked unhappy and he guessed she found this argument less convincing than she claimed.

He lifted the pages of his notebook to study the skull's-head photograph again. "Was this house a Meredith construction?" he asked without looking up. "Did you get a discount on it because you're part of the firm?"

She didn't answer immediately. "I don't think that's any of your business," she said then.

He gave a low laugh. "Probably not, but a place like this costs a fortune, and you haven't exactly stinted on the furnishings. You're not short of a bob or two if you can afford all this and shell out four hundred pounds on an unknown man's cremation. I'm curious, Amanda. You're either a very successful architect or you have another source of income."

"As I said, Mr. Deacon, it's none of your business."

Briefly the drink slurred her words again. "Shall we go back to Billy?"

He shrugged. "Presumably you'd have noticed anyone like this watching you?" he asked her, tapping the celluloid face.

She straightened slowly, a troubled expression on her face. "No, I don't think I would."

"How could you have missed him?"

"By avoiding eye contact," she admitted reluctantly. "It's the only way to escape being pestered. Even if I do give money to someone, I very rarely look at them. I certainly couldn't give a detailed description of them afterwards."

Deacon reflected on the homeless youngsters he'd interviewed already for his article, and realized he'd have trouble describing any particular individual. It depressed him to admit it, but she was right. Through sheer embarrassment, one never looked too long on the destitute. "All right," he said, "let's say it was pure coincidence that Billy chose your garage to die in, then someone must have seen him. If he was walking along the road looking for a place to hide, particularly on an estate like this, he couldn't have gone unnoticed. Did any of your neighbors come forward as witnesses?"

"No one's mentioned it."

"Did the police ask?"

"I don't know. It was all over in three or four hours. As soon as the doctor arrived and pronounced him dead, that was effectively it. The doctor said he'd died of natural causes, and the PC who answered my nine-nine-nine call claimed they'd all known it was only a matter of time before Billy Blake turned up as a bundle of rags somewhere. His words were: "The silly old sod has been committing slow suicide for years. People can't live the way he did and expect to survive."

"Did you ask him what he meant by that?"

"He said the only time Billy ate properly was when he was in prison. Otherwise he survived on a diet of alcohol."

"Poor bastard," said Deacon, eyeing her glass. "I suppose life under anaesthetic was more bearable than life without."

If she understood the personal import of his remark, she didn't show it. "Yes" was all she said.

"You suggested Billy Blake wasn't his real name, but one he adopted four years ago when he was first arrested. So where did he get the money to buy the alcohol? He'd need to register to get welfare payments."

She shook her head again. "I asked the old men in the warehouse about that, and they said he survived on charity rather than government handouts. He used to draw pavement paintings down on the Embankment near the river cruisers, and he earned enough from the tourists to pay for his drink. It was only in the winter when the sightseers dried up that he resorted to stealing and, if you look at his prison record, you'll find that all his stretches were done during the winter months."

"It sounds as though he had his life pretty well organized. "

"I agree."

"What sort of things did he draw? Do you know?"

"He did the same picture each time. From the way the men describe it, he drew the nativity scene. He also used to preach to the passersby about the damnation to come for all sinners."

"Was he mentally ill?"

"It sounds like it."

"Did he use the same pitch each time?"

"No. I gather he was moved on fairly regularly by the police."

"But he only drew the one picture?"

"I believe so."

"Was it any good?"

"The old men said it was. They described him as a real artist." Unexpectedly she laughed, and mischief brightened her eyes. "But they were drunk when I spoke to them, so I'm not sure how valid their artistic judgment is."

The mischief vanished as quickly as it came, but once again Deacon fell prey to his fantasies. He persuaded himself that she was ignorant of real desire and that she needed an experienced man to release her passion ... "What else have you managed to find out?"

"Nothing. I'm afraid that's it."

He reached forward to switch off his tape recorder. "You said Billy's story needs to be told," he reminded her, "but everything you know about him will fit into two or three sentences. And if I'm honest I'd say he doesn't justify even that much space." He reflected for a moment, collating the information in his head. "He was an alcoholic and a petty criminal who lied about his age and used an alias. He was running away from someone or something, probably a wife and an unhappy marriage, and he descended into destitution because he was either inadequate or mentally ill. He had some ability as an artist, and he died in your garage because you live near the river and the door happened to be open." He watched his abandoned cigarette expire in a long curl of ash in the saucer. "Have I missed anything?"

"Yes." The movement at the side of her mouth became suddenly more pronounced. "You haven't explained why he was starving himself to death or why he burnt his hands to claws."

He made a gesture of apology. "That's what chronic alcoholics with severe depression do, Amanda. They drink instead of eating, which is why the pathologist included self-neglect as a cause of death, and they mutilate themselves as a way of externalizing their anguish about a life that holds no hope for them. I think your Billy was clinically ill and, because he drank to make himself feel better, he ended up dead in your garage."

He could see from the resigned expression on her face that he hadn't told her anything she hadn't already worked out for herself, and his curiosity about her increased. Why this idee fixe about Billy Blake's life? There was something much deeper driving her, he thought, than simple compassion or high-minded sentiment about a man's value to society. "I couldn't get anyone even remotely interested in trying to find out who he might have been," she murmured, bending her head to the bowl of potpourri and sifting the petals idly between her fingers. "The police were polite but bored. I've written to my MP and to the Home Office, asking for some attempts to be made to trace his family, and had replies saying it's not their responsibility. The only people who were at all sympathetic were the Salvation Army. They have his description in their files now and have promised to contact me if anyone tries to trace him, but they're not optimistic about it." She looked very unhappy. "I simply don't know what else to do. After six months, I've reached a dead end."

He watched her for several moments, fascinated by the play of expressions that crossed her face. He guessed that her look of unhappiness probably translated as deep despair for someone more demonstrative. "If it's that important, why don't you hire a private detective?" he suggested.

"Have you any idea how much they charge?"

"You've explored the possibility then?"

She nodded. "And I could never justify the expense. I was told it could take weeks, even months, and there's no guarantee of success at the end of it."

"But we've already established that you're a rich woman, so who would you be justifying the expense to?"

A flicker of emotion-embarrassment?-crossed her face. "Myself," she said.

"Not your husband."

"No."

"Are you saying he wouldn't mind if you spent a fortune trying to trace a dead stranger's family?" The elusive Mr. Powell intrigued him.

She didn't say anything.

"You've already recognized Billy's worth by paying for his funeral. Why isn't that enough for you?"

"Because it's life that matters, not death."

"That's not a good enough reason, or not for the kind of obsession you've developed."

She laughed again, and the sound startled Deacon. It was pitched far too high, but he couldn't decide if it was drink-or fear?-that had introduced the note of hysteria. She made a visible effort to bring herself under control. "You know about obsession, do you, Mr. Deacon?"

"I know there's something else to this story that you haven't told me. You seem to be going to extraordinary lengths to try to identify Billy Blake and trace his family. Almost," he said thoughtfully, "as if you felt under an obligation. I think you did speak to him, and I think he asked you to do something. Am I right?"

She stared through him with the same expression of disappointment that his mother had shown the last time he saw her. He had wished so often that he'd tried for a reconciliation then that he reached out now, in a strange, confused transposition, to do for a stranger what he hadn't done for Penelope. He put a sympathetic hand on Amanda's arm but her skin was cold and unresponsive to his touch, and if she noticed the gesture at all, she didn't show it.

Instead she leaned her head against the back of her chair to stare at the ceiling, and Deacon had a sense of doors closing and opportunities lost. "Could you retrieve my garage keys when you return to your office?" she asked politely. "Unless your friend is still out there, she's taken them with her."

"What did he say to you, Amanda?"

She glanced at him for a moment, but there was only boredom in her eyes. He was no longer of any interest to her. "I've wasted your time and mine, Mr. Deacon. I hope you find a taxi without too much trouble. It's usually easier if you turn left out of the entrance to the estate and walk up to the main road."

He wished he was better at reading a woman's character. He was sure she was lying to him, but women had lied to, him for years and he had never known when they were doing it.

There was a note with the two sets of keys at the front desk. What a cow! Hope she didn 't eat you alive after I left. I put her stupid keys in my pocket and forgot about them. Here they are with your car keys. Thought you should return them rather than me! If you're interested, I left the film with Barry. He said he'll develop it tonight. See you tomorrow. Love, Lisa.

Deacon decided he was in no hurry, and wandered up to the third floor where Barry Grover doubled as film processor and archives' librarian. He was a somewhat pathetic character in his early thirties, very much a loner, short, potbellied, and bug-eyed behind magnifying lenses, who pored over the picture cuttings in his library with the avidity of a collector, and haunted the offices till all hours in preference to going home. The female staff avoided him wherever possible and invented malicious gossip behind his back. Over the years they had described him variously, and always with conviction, as a pedophile, a Peeping Tom, or a flasher, because it was the only way they could account for his infatuation with pictures. Deacon, who found him as unsympathetic as the women did, nevertheless felt sorry for him. Barry's was a peculiarly barren life.

"Still here?" he said with false bonhomie, as he shouldered open the door and caught the man bent over a newspaper clipping on his desk.

"As you say, Mike."

He propped a buttock on the edge of the desk. "Lisa told me you were developing her film. I thought I'd drop in to see how it turned out."

"I'll get the contact sheets for you." Barry scuttled hurriedly out of the room like a fleshy white cockroach, and Deacon, watching him critically, decided it was the way he moved that set people's teeth on edge. There was something very effeminate about the rapid little steps he took, and he wondered, not for the first time, if Barry's problem had more to do with unresolved homosexuality than the heterosexual perversions of which the women accused him.

He lit a cigarette and turned the clipping that Barry had been reading towards himself.

The Guardian * 6th May, 1990

BANKER'S WIFE RELEASED

Amanda Streeter, 31, was released without charge yesterday following two days of police questioning. "We are satisfied," said a police spokesman, "that Mrs. Streeter was not implicated in the theft of ten million pounds from Lowenstein's Merchant Bank, nor has any knowledge of her husband's whereabouts." He confirmed that James Streeter, 38, is believed to have left the country sometime during the night of 27th April. "His description has been circulated around the world and we expect him to be found within days. As soon as we are notified of where he is, extradition procedures will begin."

Amanda Streeter's solicitor issued the following statement to the press. "Mrs. Streeter has been deeply shocked by the events of the last eight days and has given the police as much assistance as she can in their search for her husband. Now that she has been ruled out of the investigation, she asks to be left in peace. There is nothing she can add to the information that is already in the public domain."

The allegations against James Streeter are that, over a period of five years, he used his position at Lowenstein's to falsify accounts and steal over ten million pounds. The alleged irregularities came to light some six weeks ago but the details were kept "in-house" to avoid panicking the bank's customers. When it became clear that the bank's own investigation was going nowhere, the Board decided to call in the police. Within hours of the decision being taken, James Streeter disappeared. Charges are being brought against him in his absence.

"I recognized her face."

Deacon hadn't heard Barry return and was startled by the sudden, breathy voice in the silence. He watched the man's fat finger push the clipping to one side and point to a grainy photograph underneath.

"That's her with her husband before he ran. Lisa called her Mrs. Powell, but it's the same woman. You probably remember the case. He was never caught."

Deacon stared down at the photograph of Amanda Powell-Streeter, aged thirty-one. She was wearing glasses, her hair was shorter and darker, and her face was in three-quarter profile. He wouldn't have recognized her, yet, knowing who it was, he saw the similarities. He looked thoughtfully at the husband for a moment or two, searching for a resemblance with Billy Blake, but nothing in life was ever that easy. "How do you do it?" he asked Barry.

"It's what I'm paid for."

"That doesn't explain how you do it."

The other man smiled to himself. "Some people say it's a gift, Mike." He placed the contact sheets on the desk. "Lisa's done a lousy job with these. There are only five or six that are good enough to pass muster. She needs to do them again."

Deacon held the sheets to the light and examined them closely. They were uniformally bad, either out of focus or so poorly lit that Amanda Powell's face looked like granite. There were six perfect shots of an empty garage at the end of the sequence. He stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray on Barry's desk which was placed beside a prominent notice saying: In the interests of my health please don't smoke. "How the hell did she manage to produce crap like this?" he asked crossly.

Fastidiously, Barry emptied the ashtray into his wastepaper basket. "Obviously there's something wrong with her camera. I'll call it in for service tomorrow. It's a shame. She's usually very reliable."

Considering how bad Lisa's photographs were, it was even more extraordinary that Barry had been able to make the connection. Deacon fished his notebook from his coat pocket and isolated the two photographs of Billy Blake. "I suppose you don't recognize him?"

The little man took the prints and placed them side by side on his desk. He examined them for a long time. "Maybe," he said at last.

"What do you mean, 'maybe'? Either you do or you don't."

Barry looked put out. "You don't know anything about it, Mike. Supposing I played a bar or two of Mozart to you, you might be able to identify it as Mozart, but you'd never be able to say which of his works it came from."

"What's that got to do with identifying a photograph?"

"You wouldn't understand. It's very complicated. I shall have to work on it."

Deacon felt suitably put in his place. And not for the first time that night. But thoughts of Barry were less likely to haunt him than thoughts of a woman who reminded him of his mother. "How about making some good negatives for me? The chances are he looked nothing like this when he was fit and healthy, but we might be able to do something on the computer to flesh out the face a bit. That would give you a better base to start from, wouldn't it?"

"Possibly. Where did the prints come from?"

"Mrs. Powell. He died in her garage under the name of Billy Blake, but she doesn't think that was his real name." He gave Barry a quick summary of what Amanda had told him. "She has a bee in her bonnet about trying to identify him and trace his family."

"Why?"

Deacon touched the newspaper clippings. "I don't know. Perhaps it has something to do with what happened to her husband."

"I can make the negatives easily enough. When do you want them?"

"First thing tomorrow?"

"I'll do them for you now."

"Thanks." Deacon glanced at his watch as he stood up and saw with surprise that it was after ten o'clock. "Change of plan," he said abruptly, reaching for Barry's coat from a hook behind the door. "I'm taking you for a drink instead. Christ, man, this bloody magazine doesn't own you. Why the hell don't you tell us all to get stuffed occasionally?"

Barry Grover allowed himself to be drawn along the pavement by Deacon's insistent hand on his shoulder, but he was a reluctant volunteer. He had been on the receiving end of such spontaneous invitations before. He knew the routine, knew he had been invited only because Deacon's irregular conscience had struck, knew he would be forgotten and ignored within five minutes of entering the pub. Deacon's drinking cronies would be lining the bar, and Barry would be left to stand at the side, unwilling to intrude where he wasn't wanted, unwilling to draw attention to himself by leaving.

Yet, as usual, he was prey to a terrible ambivalence as the pub drew closer, because he both feared and yearned to go drinking with Deacon. He feared inevitable rejection, yearned to be accepted as Deacon's friend, for Deacon had shown him more casual companionship since he'd arrived at The Street than Barry had known in years. He told himself that to be accepted just once would suffice. It was such a small ambition for a man to hold, after all. To feel part of a social group for a single night, to tell a joke and raise a laugh, to be able to say the next morning: I went for a drink with a mate.

He stopped abruptly outside the pub and started to polish his glasses furiously on a large white handkerchief. "After all, Mike, I think I'd better get home. I hadn't realized how late it was and, if I'm to do those negatives for you, I can't afford to oversleep."

"You've time for a pint," said Deacon cheerfully "Where's home? I'll drop you off afterwards if it's on my way."

"Camden."

"It's a deal then. I'm in Islington." He clapped a friendly arm across Barry's shoulders and escorted him through the doors of The Lame Beggar.

But the fat little man's forebodings were well-founded. Within minutes, Deacon had been subsumed into a raucous pre-Christmas drinking throng, while Barry was left to blink his embarrassment and his loneliness in feigned insouciance by the wall. It was when he realized that Deacon was too drunk to drive him home, or even to remember the offer, that a terrible sense of injustice began to grow in him. Confused feelings of hero-worship turned angrily to bitter resentment. Hell could freeze over, as far as he was concerned, before Deacon would ever learn from him who Billy Blake really was.

11.-oo p.m.-Cape Town, South Africa

It was a warm summer night in the Western Cape. A well-dressed woman sat alone in the glass-fronted restaurant of the Victoria and Alfred Hotel, toying with a cup of black coffee. She was a regular customer, although little was known about her other than that her name was Mrs. Met-calfe. She always ate and drank sparingly, and it was a mystery to the waiters why she came at all. She seemed to take little pleasure in her solitary meal, and preferred to turn her back as far as possible on her fellow diners. She chose instead to gaze out over the harbor where, had it been daylight, she would have seen the seals that play among the moored ships. The night held fewer diversions and, as usual, her expression was bored.

At eleven o'clock, her driver presented himself at reception and, after settling her bill, she left. Her waiter pocketed his customary handsome tip and wondered, not for the first time, what brought her here every Wednesday evening to spend three hours doing something she found so uncomfortable.

Had she been remotely friendly, he might have asked her, but she was a typical tight-lipped, skinny white woman and their relationship was a professional one.