The Echo

by Minette Walters

  Irvine: You were arrested for stealing. Wasn't that acting against your own interests?

  Blake: I was hungry.

  Irvine: You think it's sensible to be in prison?

  Blake: It's cold outside.

  Irvine: Tell me about these chains I've made for myself.

  Blake: They're in your mind. You conform to the patterns of behavior that others have prescribed for you. You will never do what you want because the tribe's will is stronger than yours.

  Irvine: Yet you said your mind is as constrained as mine, and you're no conformist, Billy. If you were you wouldn't be in prison.

  Blake: Prisoners are the most diligent of conformists, otherwise places like this would be in perpetual riot and rebellion.

  Irvine: That's not what I meant. You appear to be an educated man, yet you live as a derelict. Is the loneliness of the streets preferable to the more conventional existence of home and family?

  Blake: (Long pause) I need to understand the concept before I can answer the question. How do you define home and family, Doctor?

  Irvine: Home is the bricks and mortar that keeps your family—wife and children—safe. It's a place most of us love because it contains the people we love.

  Blake: Then I left no such place when I took to the streets.

  Irvine: What did you leave?

  Blake: Nothing. I carry everything with me.

  Irvine: Meaning memories?

  Blake: I'm only interested in the present. It's how we live our present that predicts our past and our future.

  Irvine: In other words, joy in the present gives rise to joyful memories and an optimistic view of the future?

  Blake: Yes. If that is what you want.

  Irvine: Isn't it what you want?

  Blake: Joy is another concept that is incomprehensible to me. A destitute man takes pleasure in a butt-end in the gutter, while a wealthy man is disgusted by the self-same object. I am content to be at peace.

  Irvine: Does drinking help you achieve peace.

  Blake: It's a quick road to oblivion, and I would describe oblivion as being at peace.

  Irvine: Don't you like your memories?

  Blake: (Gave no answer)

  Irvine: Can you recall a bad memory for me?

  Blake: I've found men dead of cold in the gutter, and I've watched men die violently because anger drives others to the point of insanity. The human mind is so fragile that any powerful emotion can overturn its precepts.

  Irvine: I'm more interested in memories from before you took to the streets.

  Blake: (Gave no answer)

  Irvine: Do you think it's possible to recover from the kind of insanity you've just described?

  Blake: Are you talking about rehabilitation or salvation?

  Irvine: Either. Do you believe in salvation?

  Blake: I believe in hell. Not the burning hell and torment of the Inquisition, but the frozen hell of eternal despair where love is absent. It's difficult to conceive how salvation can enter such a place unless God exists. Only divine intervention can save a soul condemned forever to exist in the loneliness of the bottomless pit.

  Irvine: Do you believe in God?

  Blake: I believe that each of us has the potential for divinity. If salvation is possible then it can only happen in the here and now. You and I will be judged by the efforts we make to keep another's soul from eternal despair.

  Irvine: Is saving that other soul a passport to heaven?

  Blake: (Gave no answer)

  Irvine: Can we earn salvation for ourselves?

  Blake: Not if we fail others.

  Irvine: Who will judge us?

  Blake: We judge ourselves. Our future, be it now or in the hereafter, is defined by our present.

  Irvine: Have you failed someone, Billy?

  Blake: (Gave no answer)

  Irvine: I may be wrong but you seem to have judged and condemned yourself already. Why is that when you believe in salvation for others?

  Blake: I'm still searching for truth.

  Irvine: It's a very bleak philosophy, Billy. Is there no room for happiness in your life?

  Blake: I get drunk whenever I can.

  Irvine: Does that make you happy?

  Blake: Of course, but then I define happiness as intellectual absence. Your definition is probably different.

  Irvine: Do you want to talk about what you did that makes stupefied oblivion your only way of coping with your memories?

  Blake: I suffer in the present, Doctor, not the past.

  Irvine: Do you enjoy suffering?

  Blake: Yes, if it inspires compassion. There's no way out of hell except through God's mercy.

  Irvine: Why enter hell at all? Can you not redeem yourself now?

  Blake: My own redemption doesn't interest me.

  (Billy refused to say anything further on the subject and we talked for several minutes on general subjects until the session ended.)

  *6*

  There were two Christmas cards on Deacon's desk one morning. The first was from his sister, Emma. "Hugh keeps seeing your byline in The Street so we're assuming this will find you," she had written. "We are none of us getting any younger, so isn't it time we called a truce? At least ring me if you won't ring Ma. Surely it's not that difficult to say sorry and start again." The other was from his first wife, Julia. "I bumped into Emma the other day and she said you're working for The Street. Apparently your mother's been very ill this last year but Emma has promised she won't tell you because Penelope doesn't want you coming back out of guilt or pity. As I've made no such promise, I thought you should know. However, unless you've changed radically in the last five years, you'll probably tear this up and do nothing about it. You were always more stubborn than Penelope."

  As Julia had predicted he tore up her card, but stood Emma's on his desk.

  Despite spending long hours on Paul Garrety's computer in an attempt to make a match between Billy Blake's image and James Streeter's, Deacon got nowhere. Paul pointed out that it would always be a waste of time unless he could find a better picture of James. "You're not comparing like with like," he explained. "Billy's shots are full-face and the one of James is three-quarter. You need to go back to his wife and see what she's got in the way of old snapshots."

  "It's a waste of time, period," said Deacon in disgust, tilting back his chair and staring at the faces. "They're two different men."

  "Which is what I've been telling you for the last three days. Why can't you accept it?"

  "Because I don't believe in coincidences. It makes sense if Billy was James and none at all if he wasn't." He ticked the points off on his fingers. "James had a reason to seek out his wife—a stranger didn't. Amanda paid for his funeral out of guilt, but her guilt is only logical if she was burying her husband—illogical if she was burying a stranger. She's obsessed with finding out who Billy was, but why if he was completely unknown to her?'' He rapped out a tattoo on the desk. "I think she's telling the truth when she says she didn't know he was there. I also think she's telling the truth when she says she didn't recognize him. But I'm convinced she rapidly came to the conclusion afterwards that the man who died in her garage was James."

  Paul was doubtful. "Why didn't she tell the police?"

  "Out of fear that they'd think she locked him in the garage on purpose."

  "Then why get you interested? Why not let the story die?"

  Deacon shrugged. "I can think of two reasons. The first, simple curiosity. She wants to know what happened to James after he walked out of her life. The second, freedom. Until he's declared officially dead, she'll always be tied to him."

  "She could divorce him tomorrow on the grounds of desertion."

  "But as far as everyone else was concerned he'd still be alive, which means people like me would always be turning up on her doorstep asking questions."

  Paul shook his head. "That's a crap argument, Mike. Now if you'd said she wanted him declared dead for mercenary reasons, I'd probably go along with yo
u. Let's say he spoke to her before he died and told her how to lay her hands on his fortune. As his widow she'd inherit the lot. Think on that, my friend."

  "My theory only works if she didn't speak to him," declared Deacon mildly. "We're into a whole new ball game if she did. In any case, it looks to me as if she got her hands on the fortune a long time ago."

  "You've never been in the ball game, chum. That guy—he tapped the photograph of Billy Blake—"is not James Streeter."

  "Then who was he and what the hell was he doing in her garage?"

  "Get Barry on to it. He's your best bet."

  "I've tried already. He doesn't know. Whoever Billy was he's not in Barry's files."

  Paul Garrety looked surprised. "Did he tell you that?" Deacon nodded. "Then how come he strings me along for weeks before he'll admit defeat?"

  "Perhaps you've upset him," said Deacon with unconscious irony.

  With time on his hands the weekend before Christmas, Deacon telephoned Kenneth Streeter, mentioned his conversation with John, and asked if he could drive out to Bromley and have a chat with James's parents. Kenneth was friendlier and more amenable than his younger son, and made an appointment for the Sunday afternoon.

  They lived in a tired-looking terraced house in an unfashionable road, and Deacon was struck by the contrast between this and Amanda's house. Where had her money come from? He rang the doorbell and smiled pleasantly at the elderly man who opened the door. "Michael Deacon," he said, offering his hand.

  Kenneth ignored the hand but gestured him inside. "You'd better come in," he said ungraciously, "but only because I don't want our neighbors listening to what I have to say." He closed the door but kept Deacon pinned behind it in the dark hallway. "I don't take kindly to being tricked, Mr. Deacon. You gave me to understand that John would approve of my talking to you, but I spoke to him this morning and discovered that the opposite is true. I will not allow the press to drive a wedge between me and my remaining son, so I'm afraid this has been a wasted trip for you." He reached for the door handle again. "Good day to you."

  "Your son misunderstood me, Mr. Streeter. He assumed that because I said James played a part in his own destruction I was referring to the theft of the ten million pounds when in fact I was referring to his wife's rejection of him." He moved forward as the door met his back. "In simple terms, if you want your wife to stand by you when the chips are down, you don't lose her trust by having affairs."

  "She's the one who was having the affair," said the other bitterly. "She never gave de Vriess up."

  "Are you sure about that? The evidence is very flimsy." He hurried on when the pressure on his back relaxed slightly. "I suggested to John that he's been firing at the wrong targets, which is not the same as saying that James was guilty of theft. Let's say he was murdered as you and John believe, how will you get at the truth if you keep denying that James had an affair with Marianne Filbert. If the evidence was strong enough to convince the police, then it ought to be strong enough to convince you."

  A tear glittered in the other man's eye. "If we give in on that point, we have nothing left except our knowledge of James. And what use is a father's word about his son's honesty? Who would believe me?''

  "No one that matters," said Deacon brutally. "You'll have to prove it."

  "In this country it's guilt that must be proved, not innocence," said the old man obstinately. "I fought for that right fifty years ago and it's outrageous that James has been condemned without any proper hearing of the evidence."

  "I agree with you, Mr. Streeter, but to date his defense has been poorly focused. You can't fight a campaign based on a lie. If nothing else, you've alienated the one person who's best placed to help you."

  "Meaning Amanda?" Deacon nodded.

  "We believe she was party to his murder."

  "But you've no proof that he was murdered."

  "He never contacted us. That's proof enough." Deacon took the mug shot of Billy Blake from his breast pocket. "Does this man remind you of James at all?"

  Bewilderment furrowed Kenneth's brow. "How could he? He's too old."

  "He was in his mid-forties when this photograph was taken six months ago."

  Streeter pulled the door wide to examine the picture in daylight. "This isn't my son," he said. "What on earth made you think it was?"

  "He was a down-and-out, using an alias, and he died in your daughter-in-law's garage. He didn't speak to her or reveal that he was there, but she paid for his funeral and she's been trying to find out who he was ever since. The only obvious explanation for her interest is that she's afraid he may have been James."

  There was a long silence while Streeter stared at Billy Blake's face. "It can't be," he said at last, but there was less certainty in his tone. "How could he have aged so much in five years? And why would he live as a down-and-out when he was always welcome here?" "He would have been arrested if he came here. You couldn't have kept him hidden from your neighbors." "Are you trying to tell me that this is James?" "Not necessarily," said Deacon. "I'm saying that for your daughter-in-law to think it might have been, she had to believe he was still alive when this man turned up dead in her garage in June. And that means she can't have been a party to James's alleged murder five years ago."

  "Then what happened to him?" asked the older man in despair. "He wasn't a thief, Mr. Deacon. He was brought up to earn money honestly, and it simply wouldn't have occurred to him to take shortcuts. You see, he wanted the status that wealth brings, just as much as he wanted wealth itself, so theft and the danger of imprisonment would never have attracted him." He gave another bewildered frown. "At the time he disappeared, he and Amanda had just sunk all their capital into an old school on the Thames at Teddington which they were planning to develop into luxury flats, and James was as excited about it as she was. They stood to make a handsome profit if the project went through. But why would he be excited by half a million if he was already sitting on ten?"

  Because it represented a legitimate way to start laundering the rest, thought Deacon cynically. "What happened to the project?"

  "It was completed in 'ninety-two by a construction firm called Lowndes, but we can't find out if Amanda saw it through herself or whether Lowndes bought the property from her. We've written several letters of inquiry, but we've never had an answer. Either way, we'd like to know how she put together enough money to buy her present house in 'ninety-one. If she sold the school first, she couldn't have raised more than the four hundred thousand she and James put towards the purchase of it. But it was probably a great deal less after nine months' interest on bank loans, and certainly not enough to buy into an expensive estate on the Thames. If she didn't sell the school but saw the project through, then she'd have had no capital at all in 'ninety-one." He smiled unhappily. "You see now why we're so suspicious of her."

  "Perhaps she and James had other investments which they never told you about."

  But Kenneth wouldn't accept that. Four hundred thousand was already more spare capital than most young couples could lay their hands to, he pointed out, and it was honestly earned. James had cashed in his stocks and shares to support the project. Deacon acknowledged the point with a smile while his mind pursued its own line of thought. It would explain why Amanda hadn't wanted a divorce. If the investments were jointly owned, she had access to everything as long as she didn't dissolve the partnership before he could be legally presumed dead after seven years. And if there were other investments in James's name—dishonestly earned?—then she had another two years to wait before she could inherit as his widow.

  How much simpler if he'd died in her garage six months ago...

  "'Do you have a photograph of James that you could lend me, Mr. Streeter? Preferably a full-face one. I can let you have it back by Tuesday."

  ...and how frustrating if she couldn 't prove it...

  "The police must have searched James's bank accounts at the time he disappeared," he said, taking the snapshot Kenneth Streeter produced for him. "Di
d they find anything that shouldn't have been there?"

  "Of course not. There was nothing to find."

  "Have you told them your suspicions about Amanda's newfound wealth?"

  A look of weariness crossed the older man's face. "So regularly that I've had an official caution for wasting police time. It's harder than you think to prove a man's innocence, Mr. Deacon."

  He phoned an old colleague, now retired, who had spent most of his working life on the financial desks of different newspapers, and arranged to meet him that evening in a pub in Camden Town. "I'm supposed to be off the bloody booze," growled Alan Parker down the wire, "so I can't invite you here. There's not a drop worth drinking in the house."

  "Coffee won't kill me," said Deacon.

  "It's killing me. I'll see you in the Three Pigeons at eight o'clock. Make mine a double Bells if you get there first."

  Deacon hadn't seen Alan for a couple of years and he was shocked by the sight of his old friend. He was desperately thin and his skin had the yellow tinge of jaundice. "Should I be doing this?'' Deacon asked him as he paid for their whiskies.

  "You'd better not tell me I look like death, Mike."

  He did, but Deacon just smiled and pushed the Bells towards him. "How's Maggie?" he asked, referring to Alan's wife.

  "She'd have my guts for garters if she knew where I was and what I was doing." He raised the glass and sampled a mouthful. "I can't get it through to the silly old woman that I'm a far better judge of what's good for me than the blasted quacks."

  "So what's the problem? Why have they ordered you off the booze?"

  Alan chuckled. "It's the newest form of tyranny, Mike. No one's allowed to die anymore so you're expected to live out your last months in misery. I mustn't smoke, drink, or eat anything remotely tasty in case it kills me. Apparently, dying of boredom is politically correct while succumbing to anything that gives you pleasure isn't."

  "Well, don't peg out here, for God's sake, or Maggie will have my guts for garters. Where does she think you are as a matter of interest? Church?"