The Echo

by Minette Walters

  The board's decision, a mistaken one as events proved, was to authorize a clandestine in-house investigation in order to avoid panicking the bank's customers. It was badly handled, with its secrecy compromised from the start, and the outcome was a failure to identify the responsible employee, while at the same time alerting him/her to the existence of the investigation. When James Streeter chose to run on the night of 27 April, the conclusion drawn was that he had 'got away' with a fortune, particularly as his abrupt departure followed within hours of the board's reaching its belated decision to turn the investigation over to the police.

  However, despite lengthy questioning of his wife and a prolonged investigation into his financial affairs, no trace of Streeter or the stolen money has ever been found. Sceptics argue that his escape route was in place for weeks, months or even years, and that the ten million pounds were transferred out of the country into a safe haven abroad. Supporters, most notably his parents and brother, argue that James was a scapegoat for someone else's criminal activity, that he was murdered to shield the real culprit further investigation. In defence of their son, they quote a handwritten facsimile that was sent from James's office at 3.05 p.m. on Friday, to his brother's office in Edinburgh.

  Dear John [it reads], Dad's pushing me to rent a room for the Ruby Wedding 'do'. He's suggesting the Park Lane, but I remember Mum saying that if they ever celebrated a major anniversary she'd like to go back to the hotel in Kent where they had their reception. Am I imagining this? And did she ever mention the name of the hotel to you? Dad says it was somewhere in Sevenoaks but, needless to say, can't remember details. He claims his memory's going, but I suspect he was pissed as a rat the whole day and never knew where he was. I've tried the aunts and uncles, but none of them can remember either. Failing all else, I think we'll have to blow the surprise and ask Mum. You know what she's like. It'll offend her Puritan soul if we spend a fortune on something she doesn't really want, and then she won't enjoy herself. I know it's still a long way off, but the earlier we book the less likely we are to be disappointed. I shall be home all weekend, so give me a bell when you can. I've told Dad I'll call back Sunday lunchtime. Cheers. James.

  "Whatever the police may argue," says John Streeter, "my brother would not have written that fax if he was planning to leave the country the same evening. There were a hundred better ways of allaying official suspicion about his alleged intentions. More likely he'd have referred to the visit that I and my family were making to him in May. 'See you in two weeks' would have been far more telling than 'give me a bell when you can.' And why mention Dad? He couldn't afford to have two members of his family worried about nonexistent phone calls."

  The police take a more sceptical view. They cite the climate of suspicion that already existed in Lowenstein's and James's need to neutralize concern about his movements that weekend. Despite the supposed secrecy of the bank's in-house investigation, most of the employees noticed that security had been stepped up and that reports and transactions were being closely monitored. Gossip suggested at least two people in Streeter's department are on record as saying they knew before he fled that some kind of fraud had been done and that suspicion centred on them. If, as police believe, Streeter was biding his time until the investigation became serious enough to him to run, then the fax to his brother was part of the smoke-screen he threw up to the Lowenstein investigation. Almost every call in the weeks preceding his disappearance contained invitations to business colleagues for dates in April, May and June. His wife told that around the beginning of April James was uncharacteristically sociable, encouraging her to organize dinner parties and weekend visits with friends, work colleagues and relations until July. According to the police, he was working to an agenda. They point to the fact that his secretary was instructed very early on in the investigation to keep his desk diary up to with social engagements, including private ones, and it is noticeable that April, May, June and July 1990 are significantly fuller than in the previous year. His brother admits this behaviour was unusual.

  "We were surprised when they invited us to stay over. James always said he found entertaining tiresome. The police argue that it was a successful ruse to lull the investigators into believing he had no idea the fraud had been discovered and would still be available for questioning through to July. But it is equally logical to argue that, because he was as worried by the rumours as everyone else at Lowenstein's he acted out of character in trying to prove his commitment and dedication. Certainly, he wasn't the only employee to up his work schedule during that period and most of those diary dates refer to business meetings."

  His family go on to quote Streeter's computer illiteracy as further evidence of his innocence in this unsolved mystery. "James simply didn't have the skill to work that fraud," says John. "His complete aversion to modern technology became something of a joke over the years. He could use a calculator and a fax machine but the idea of him being able to reprogram the bank's computer is laughable. When and where did he learn how to do it? He had no computer at home, and no one has ever come forward claiming to have taught him."

  But others have raised doubts about Streeter's alleged ignorance. There is evidence that he had an affair with a woman called Marianne Filbert, who was employed as a computer programmer by Softworks Limited. Softworks was invited to produce a report on Lowenstein's computer security in 1986, but they failed to complete the task and the report was never presented. James Streeter's detractors point to Marianne Filbert's access to that half completed report as the key to the fraud, while his supporters dispute that he even knew Filbert. Alleged or otherwise, the affair was certainly over before the fraud was discovered because Filbert moved to America in August 1989. However, James Streeter's secretary has stated that on several occasions she found him using her word processor for personal correspondence, and colleagues testify easy understanding of the computer spread function. "It took him no time at all to find an entry I'd made," claimed one member of his department. "He said any fool could work the system if you told him which buttons to press."

  Nevertheless, there remain several unanswered questions about James Streeter's disappearance that, in the opinion of this author, have never been adequately addressed. If we assume he was guilty of embezzling 10 million pounds from Lowenstein's Merchant Bank, how did he know that the decision to involve the police was taken by the board on 27th April? The police allege that he had always planned to abscond if his fraud came to light and it was mere coincidence that his escape was scheduled for the day of the decisive board meeting. But, if that was true, why did he wait out the six weeks of the "in-house" investigation? Unless he had access to documents, which the police admit is unlikely, then he could not have known the investigation was failing. And isn't it pushing the bounds of coincidence a little far that the last weekend in April, as recorded in James's office diary, was also the only weekend in April when his wife would be away, fulfilling a long-standing engagement with her mother, thus giving James—or someone else—two whole days to 'make good' his disappearance before his absence was reported?

  The police argue that he chose that weekend to run because his movements could not be monitored, and that he would have gone whatever decision the board had reached, but this is to ignore the relationship that existed between James and his wife. According to Kenneth, one of the reasons the marriage was stormy was because the two people involved had more commitment to their careers than they had to each other. "If James had said he had to fly to the Far East on Friday for a business meeting the following Monday, his wife wouldn't have turned a hair. That was what their lives were like. He didn't need to choose the one weekend she was away. Her absence only becomes important if someone else chose it."

  The police argument also ignores the fax James sent to his brother: "I shall be home all weekend, so give me a bell when you can. I've told Dad I'll call back Sunday lunchtime." The fact that John did telephone, but wasn't worried when there was no answer, may, as the police claim, have bee
n entirely predictable, but it was a strange gamble for a guilty man to take. If we put that beside Kenneth Streeter's claim, tested and verified by a lie detector, that James promised to phone him on the Sunday with John's contribution to the Ruby Wedding debate, then the gamble becomes entirely unnecessary. Had John and Kenneth followed up the promised phone calls, then James's absence might have been discovered earlier.

  The Streeters' defence of their son relies heavily on a conspiracy theory—someone more highly placed than James and with access to privileged information manipulated decisions and events to exposure—but without evidence to prove their case, their campaign to clear their son's name was a hopeless one. Sadly, conspiracy theories work better in fiction than they do in real life, and on any objective reading of the evidence the conclusion must be that James Streeter did steal ten million pounds before running away and leaving his family to reap the bitter harvest of his betrayal.

  Despite the Streeters' claims to the contrary, both James Streeter and Peter Fenton would appear to be genuine abscondees. They were mature men with settled backgrounds whose disappearances were bound to cause a stir within their communities and so provoke exhaustive investigations. However this is not true of the next two 'missing persons': Tracy Jevons, a troubled fifteen-year-old with a known history of prostitution; and Stephen Harding, a backward seventeen-year-old with a string of convictions for car theft...

  *2*

  Six months later in the middle of a cold, wet December, when flaming June and its sweltering heat were a distant memory, Mrs. Powell was telephoned by a journalist from The Street, a self-styled politically left-of-center magazine, who was compiling a feature on poverty and the homeless and wondered if she would agree to do an interview about Billy Blake. He gave his name as Michael Deacon.

  "How did you get this number?" she asked suspiciously.

  "It wasn't difficult. Your name and address were all over the newspapers six months ago, and you're in the telephone book."

  "There's nothing I can tell you," she said. "The police knew more about him than I ever did."

  He was persistent. "I won't take up much of your time, Mrs. Powell. How about if I came round tomorrow evening? Say eight o'clock."

  "What do you want to know about him?"

  "Whatever you can tell me. I found his story very moving. No one seemed to be interested in him except you. The police told me you paid his funeral expenses. I wondered why."

  "I felt I owed him something." There was a short silence. "Are you the Michael Deacon who used to be with The Independent?"

  "Yes."

  "I was sorry when you left. I like the way you write."

  "Thank you." He sounded surprised, as if compliments were a rarity. "In that case, surely I can persuade you to talk to me? You say you felt you owed Billy something."

  "Except I don't have the same liking for The Street, Mr. Deacon. The only reason someone from that magazine would want to interview me about Billy would be to score cheap political points off the government, and I refuse to be exploited in that way."

  This time the silence was at Deacon's end while he reassessed his strategy. It would be helpful, he thought, if he could put an age and a face to the quiet, rather controlled voice of the woman he was talking to, even more helpful if he genuinely believed this interview would produce anything of value. In his view the whole exercise was likely to be a waste of time and he was even less motivated than she was to go through with it. However...

  "I don't make a habit of exploiting people, Mrs. Powell, and I am interested in Billy Blake's story. Look, what have you got to lose by seeing me? You have my word that we'll abandon the whole thing if you don't like the way the interview's going."

  "All right," she said, with abrupt decision. "I'll expect you tomorrow at eight." She rang off without saying goodbye.

  The Street offices were a tired reminder that its namesake, Fleet Street, was once the glorious hub of the newspaper industry. The building still carried the masthead above its front door, but the letters were faded and cracked and few passers-by even noticed them. As with most of the broadsheets which had moved into cheaper, more efficient premises in the Docklands, the writing was on the wall for The Street, too. A new dynamic owner with ambitions to become a media tycoon waited in the shadows with plans to revamp the magazine by achieving lower costs, improved production and a twenty-first century image through one galvanizing leap into pristine property in an outer London suburb. Meanwhile the magazine struggled on with outmoded work practices in elegant but impractical surroundings under an editor, Jim Pearce, who hankered after the good old days when the rich exploited the poor and everyone knew where he stood.

  JP, still ignorant of what awaited them in the first few weeks of the new year (in his case enforced early retirement) but increasingly worried about the present owner's refusal to discuss anything that smacked of long-term strategy, sought out Deacon in his office the following afternoon. The only concessions to modernity were a word processor and an answering machine; otherwise the room looked as it had done for thirty years, with purple walls, an oak-panelled door covered in sheets of cheap white hardboard to smooth out unsightly bumps, orange floral curtains at the window, all of which were the height of interior design in the heady, classless days of the 1960s.

  "I want you to take a photographer with you when you interview Mrs. Powell, Mike," said Pearce in the belligerent tone that grew more ingrained as each worrying day passed. "It's too good an opportunity to miss. I want tears and breast-beating from a Thatcherite who's seen the light."

  Deacon kept his eyes on his computer screen and continued typing. At six feet tall and weighing over 180 pounds, he wasn't easily bullied. In any case, he'd lied to Mrs. Powell, and he didn't particularly want her to know it. "No way," he said bluntly. "She did a runner the last time photographers turned up looking for pictures, and I'm not giving up precious time to go out and interview the silly cow only to have her slam the door in my face when she sees a camera lens."

  Pearce ignored this. "I've told Lisa Smith to go with you. She knows how to behave, and if she keeps the camera out of sight till she's inside, the two of you should be able to talk Mrs. Powell round." He cast a critical eye over Deacon's crumpled jacket and five o'clock shadow. "And, for Christ's sake, smarten yourself up, or you'll give the poor woman the screaming habdabs. I want a rich well-fed Tory weeping over the iniquities of government housing policy, not someone scared out of her wits because she thinks a middle-aged mugger's come through her door."

  Deacon tilted back his chair and regarded his boss through half-closed lids. "It won't make any difference what her blasted political affiliations are because I'm not including her unless she has something pertinent to say. She's your idea, JP, not mine. Homelessness is too big a social problem to be cheapened by one fat Tory weeping into her lace handkerchief." He lit a cigarette and tossed the match angrily into an already overfull ashtray. "I've sweated blood over this and I won't have it turned into a slanging match by the subs. I'm trying to offer some solutions here, not indulge in yah-boo politics."

  Pearce prowled across to the window and stared down on a wet, grey Fleet Street where cars crawled bumper-to-bumper in the driving rain and the odd window showed an ephemeral gaiety with lighted Christmas trees and sprayed-on snow. More than ever he had a sense of chapters ending. "What sort of solutions?"

  Deacon searched through a pile of papers on his desk and removed a typed sheet. "The consensus sort. I've taken views from politicians, religious leaders, and different social lobby groups to assess how the picture's changed in the last twenty years." He consulted the page. "There's across-the-board agreement that the figures on family breakdown, teenage drug and drink addiction, and teenage pregnancies are alarming, and I'm using that agreement as a starting point."

  "Boring, Mike. Tell me something new." He watched a progression of raised black umbrellas pass below the window, and he was reminded of all the funerals he'd attended over the years.
r />   Deacon took in a lungful of smoke as he studied JP's back. "Like what?"

  "Tell me you've got a statement from a government minister saying all single mothers should be sterilized. Then maybe I'll let you off your interview with Mrs. Powell. Have you?" His breath misted the glass.

  "No," said Deacon evenly. "Oddly enough I couldn't find a single mainstream politician who was that stupid." He squared the papers on his desk. "How about this for a quote? The poor are always with us, and the only way to deal with them is to love them."

  Pearce turned round. "Who said that?"

  "Jesus Christ."

  "Is that supposed to be funny?"

  Deacon gave an indifferent shrug. "Not particularly. Thought-provoking, perhaps. In two thousand years no one's come up with a better solution. Certainly no politician anywhere at any time has managed to crack the problem. Like it or not, even communism has its share of paupers."

  "We're a political magazine, not an apologist for born-again Christianity," said JP coldly. "If mud-slinging offends you so much then you should have kept your job on The Independent. Think about that the next time you tell me you don't want to get your hands dirty."

  Thoughtfully, Deacon blew a smoke ring into the air above his head. "You can't afford to sack me," he murmured. "It's my byline that's keeping this rag afloat. You know as well as I do that, until the tabloids raided my piece on the health service for scare stories about chaos in the A and E departments, ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of the adult population of this country had no idea The Street was still being published. I'm a necessary evil as far as you're concerned."