The Echo

by Minette Walters

  "She knows exactly where I am, but she's a tyrant with a soft center. I'll be hauled over the coals for this when I get back, but in her heart of hearts she'll be glad I was happy for half an hour. So? What did you want to talk to me about?"

  "A man called Nigel de Vriess. The only information I have on him is that he lives in a mansion in Hampshire which he bought in 'ninety-one, and was on the board of Lowenstein's Merchant Bank, which he's since left. Do you know him? I'm interested in where he got the money to buy the mansion."

  "That's easy enough. He didn't buy it because he already owned it. If I remember right, his wife took the marital home in Hampstead and he took Halcombe House, although I can't recall now if it was his first divorce or his second. Probably the second because it was a clean-break settlement. It was the first marriage that produced the kids."

  "I was told he bought it."

  "He did, when he made his first million. But that was twenty-odd years ago. He went belly-up in the eighties when he invested in a transatlantic airline that went bust during the cartel war, but he managed to hang on to the properties. The only reason he joined Lowenstein's was to buy a period of stability while the market recovered. In return for a damn good salary, he expanded their operations in the Far East and gave them footholds round the Pacific rim. He did well for them, too. They owe their place on the map to de Vriess."

  "What about this guy, James Streeter, who ripped them off for ten million?"

  "What about him? Ten million's chicken feed these days. It took eight hundred million to bring down Baring's Bank." Alan took another mouthful of whisky. "The mistake Lowenstein's made was to force the guy to run and bring the whole thing into the open. They recouped their ten million within forty-eight hours trading on the foreign-exchange markets but the bad publicity set them back six months in terms of credibility."

  Deacon took out his cigarette packet and proffered it to Alan with a lift of his eyebrows. "I won't tell Maggie if you don't."

  "You're a good lad, Mike." He took a cigarette and placed it reverently between his lips. "The only reason I stopped was because the silly old cow kept crying. Would you believe that? I'm dying in misery so she won't be miserable watching me die. And she always said I was the most selfish man alive."

  Deacon found a laugh from somewhere—though God only knew where. "She's right," he said. "I'll never forget that time you invited me out to dinner, then made me pay because you claimed you'd left your wallet at home."

  "I had."

  "Bullshit. I could see the bulge it was making in your jacket."

  "You were very young and green in those days, Mike."

  "Yes, and you took advantage of it, you old sod."

  "You've been a good friend."

  "What do you mean, been a good friend? I still am. Who bought the whiskey?" He saw a cloud pass over Alan's face and changed the subject abruptly. "What's de Vriess doing now?"

  "He bought a computer software company called Softworks, renamed it de Vriess Softworks or DVS, sacked half the staff, and turned the damn thing round in two years by producing a cheaper version of Windows for the home-computer market. He's an arrogant S.O.B., but he has a knack for making money. He started with a paper route at thirteen and he's never looked back."

  "You said he became a cropper in the eighties," Deacon reminded him.

  "A temporary blip, Mike, hence the job with Lowenstein's. Now he's back to where he was before the crash. Shares have recovered, and he's found a nice little earner in DVS."

  "There was a woman who used to work for Softworks called Marianne Filbert. Does that name mean anything to you?"

  Alan shook his head. "What's the connection with de Vriess?''

  Briefly, Deacon explained John Streeter's theory about the conspiracy against James. "I suspect his whole argument is based on wishful thinking, but it's interesting that de Vriess bought the company where James Streeter found his computer expert."

  "It's highly predictable if you know de Vriess. I imagine Softworks was put under a microscope to see if the bank's money had found its way into their books, and in the process de Vriess spotted an opportunity. He's as sharp as a bloody ferret."

  "You sound as if you admire him."

  "I do. The guy has balls. Mind, I don't like him much—few people do—but he doesn't lose sleep over trifles like that. Women love him, which is all he cares about. He's a randy little toad." He gave another chuckle. "Rich men often are. Unlike the rest of us, they can afford to pay for their mistakes."

  "You always were a cynical bastard," said Deacon affectionately.

  "I'm dying of liver cancer, Mike, but at least my cynicism remains healthy."

  "How long have you got?"

  "Six months."

  "Are you worried about it?"

  "Terrified, old son, but I cling to Heinrich Heine's dying words. 'God will forgive me. It's His job.' "

  Barry Grover held the snapshot of James Streeter under the lamplight and examined it carefully. "It's a better angle," he said grudgingly. "You'll have more chance of making comparisons with this than with the other one."

  Deacon perched casually on the edge of the desk, looming over Barry in a way the little man hated, and planted a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. "You're the expert," he said. "Is that Billy or not?"

  "I'd rather you didn't smoke in here," muttered Barry, poking fussily at his "In the interests of my health please don't smoke" notice. "I have asthma and it's not good for me."

  "Why didn't you say so before?"

  "I assumed you could read." He shoved a folder against Deacon's hip in an attempt to dislodge him from the desk, but Deacon just grinned at him.

  "The smell of cigarette smoke is preferable any day to the smell of your feet. When did you last buy yourself a new pair of shoes?''

  "It's none of your business."

  "The only color you ever wear is black and, believe me, if I've noticed that then the whole damn building's noticed it. I'm beginning to think you only have one pair which probably explains your asthma."

  "You're a very rude man."

  Deacon's grin broadened. "I suppose you were out on the razzle last night? Hence the lousy mood."

  "Yes," lied the little man bitterly. "I went for a drink with some friends."

  "Well, if it's a hangover I've got some codeine in my office, and if it's not, then buck up for Christ's sake, and give me an opinion on this picture. Does it look like Billy to you?"

  "No."

  "They're pretty alike."

  "The mouths are different."

  "Ten million buys a lot of plastic surgery."

  Barry took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ' 'If you want to identify someone, you don't just compare a couple of photographs and dismiss anything that doesn't fit as plastic surgery. It really is a little more scientific than that, Mike."

  "I'm listening."

  "Lots of people look like each other, particularly in photographs, so you have to examine what you know about them as well. It's quite pointless finding similarities in faces if one belongs to a man in America and the other to a man in France."

  "But that's the whole point. James went missing in nineteen ninety, and Billy didn't surface at a police station until 'ninety-one, with his fingers like claws because he'd been burning off his prints. It's certainly possible that they're one and the same."

  "But highly improbable." Barry looked at the photograph again. "What happened to the rest of the money?"

  "I don't follow."

  "How could he become a penniless derelict within months of having his face altered by plastic surgery. What happened to the rest of the money?''

  "I'm still working on that." He interpreted Barry's expression correctly as one of scathing disbelief, although as usual it looked rather silly on the owlish face. "Okay, okay. I agree it's improbable." He stood up. "I promised to send that snapshot back today. Do you have time to make a negative for me?"

  "I'm busy at the moment." Barry shuffled pieces of
paper around his desk as if to prove the point.

  Deacon nodded. "No problem. I'll find out how Lisa's placed. She can probably do it for me."

  After he'd gone, Barry drew his own full-face photograph of James Streeter from his top drawer. If Deacon had seen this version, he thought, there'd have been no stopping him. The likeness to Billy Blake was extraordinary.

  Purely out of curiosity, Deacon phoned Lowndes Building and Development Corporation and asked to speak to someone about a block of flats they'd converted on the Thames at Teddington in 'ninety-two. He was given the address of the flats, but was told there was no one available to discuss the mechanics of the conversion. "To be honest," said a flustered secretary, "I think it may have been Mr. Merton who saw it through, but he was sacked two years ago."

  "Why?"

  "I'm not sure. Someone said he was on cocaine."

  "Any idea how I can contact him?"

  "He emigrated somewhere, but I don't think we have his address."

  Deacon penciled Mr. Merton in as someone to follow up after Christmas, alongside Nigel de Vriess.

  It was the twenty-first of December, Deacon was crawling in a slow-moving traffic jam and his mood grew blacker as the compulsory office party drew nearer. God, how he loathed Christmas! It was the ultimate proof that his life was empty.

  He had spent the afternoon interviewing a prostitute who, under the guise of "researcher," claimed to have had regular access to the Houses of Parliament for paid sex romps with MPs. Good God almighty! And this was news? He despised the British thirst for sleaze which said more about the repressed sexuality of the average Briton than it ever did about the men and women whose peccadillos were splashed across the newspapers. In any case, he was sure the woman was lying (if not about the paid sex sessions then certainly about the regular access) because she hadn't known enough about the internal layout of the buildings. He was equally sure that JP, who was of the "never let the facts get in the way of a good story" school of journalism, would have him chasing the sordid little allegations for weeks in the hopes there was some truth in them. AH, JESUS! Was this all there was?

  He put his depression down to Seasonal Adjusted Disorder—SADness—because he couldn't face the alternative of inherited insanity. Every damn thing that had ever gone wrong in his life had happened in bloody December. It couldn't be coincidence. His father had died in December, both his wives had abandoned him in December. He'd been sacked from The Independent in December. And why? Because he couldn't steer clear of the booze at Christmas and had punched his editor during a disagreement over copy. (If he wasn't careful he was going to punch JP over the very same issue.) In the summer, he was objective enough to recognize that he was caught in a vicious circle—things went wrong at Christmas because he was drunk, and he got drunk because things went wrong—but objectivity was always in rare supply when he most needed it.

  He abandoned a congested Whitehall to drive up past the Palace. The bitter east wind of the past few days had turned to sleet and beyond the metronome clicking of his windshield wipers was a London geared for festivity. Signs of it were everywhere, in the brilliantly lit Norwegian spruce that annually supplanted Nelson's domination of Trafalgar Square, in the colored lights that decorated shops and offices, in the crowds that thronged the pavements. He viewed them all with a baleful eye and thought about what lay ahead of him when the office shut for Christmas.

  Days of waiting for the bloody place to reopen. An empty flat. A desert.

  JP decided the prostitute's story had "legs" and told him to rake as much muck as he could.

  If there was any gaiety about the office party, then it was happening in another room. Feeling like a trespasser at some interminable wake, Deacon made a half-hearted pass at Lisa and was slapped down for his pains.

  "Act your age," she said crossly. "You're old enough to be my father."

  With a certain grim satisfaction, he set out to get very drunk indeed.

  *7*

  It was nearly midnight. Amanda Powell would have ignored the ringing of her doorbell if whoever was doing it had had the courtesy to remove his finger from the buzzer but after thirty seconds she went into the hall and peered through the spy hole. When she saw who it was, she glanced thoughtfully towards her stairs as if weighing the pros and cons of retreating up them, then opened the door twelve inches. "What do you want, Mr. Deacon?"

  He shifted his hand from the bell to the door and leaned on it, pushing it wide, before lurching past her to collapse on a delicate wicker chair in the hall. He waved an arm towards the street. "I was passing." He made an effort to sound sober. "Seemed polite to say hello. It occurred to me you might be lonely, what with Mr. Streeter being away."

  She looked at him for a moment then closed the door. "That's an extremely valuable antique you're sitting on," she said evenly. "I think it would be better if you came into the drawing room. The chairs in there aren't quite so fragile. I'll call for a taxi."

  He rolled his eyes at her, making himself ridiculous. "You're a beautiful woman, Mrs. Streeter. Did James ever tell you that?"

  "Over and over again. It saved him having to think of anything more original to say." She put a hand under his elbow and tried to lift him.

  "It's really bad what he did," said Deacon, oblivious to the sarcasm. "You probably wonder what you did to deserve him." Whiskey gusted on his breath.

  "Yes," she said, drawing her head away, "I do."

  Tears bloomed in his eyes. "He didn't love you very much, did he?'' He put his hand over hers where it lay on his arm and stroked it clumsily. "Poor Amanda. I know what it's like, you see. It's very lonely when no one loves you."

  With an abrupt movement, she curled the fingers of her other hand and dug her sharp nails in under his chin. "Are you going to get up before you break my chair, Mr. Deacon, or am I going to draw blood?"

  "It's only money."

  "Hard-earned money."

  "That's not what John and Kenneth say." He leered at her. "They say it's stolen money, and that you and Nigel murdered poor old James to get it."

  She kept up the pressure under his chin, forcing him to look at her. "And what do you say, Mr. Deacon?"

  "I say you'd never have thought Billy was James if James was already dead."

  Her face became suddenly impassive. "You're a clever man."

  "I worked it out. There are five million women in London, but Billy chose you." He wagged a finger at her. "Now, why did he do that, Amanda, if he didn't know you? That's what I'd like to know."

  Without warning, she got going with her nails again, and he focused rather unsuccessfully on the frosty blue eyes.

  "You're so like my mother. She's beautiful, too." He struggled upright under the painful prodding of her fingers. "Not when she's angry, though. She's horrible when she's angry."

  "So am I." Amanda drew him through the sitting-room door, then pushed him unceremoniously onto the sofa. "How did you get here?"

  "I walked." He curled up on the sofa and laid his head on the arm.

  "Why didn't you go home?"

  "I wanted to come here."

  "Well, you can't stay. I'll call a cab." She reached for the telephone. "Where do you live?"

  "I don't live anywhere," he said into the cream leather. "I exist."

  "You can't exist in my house."

  But he could and he did, because he was already unconscious, and nothing on earth was going to wake him.

  He opened his eyes on grey morning light and stared about him. He was so cold that he thought he was dying, but lethargy meant he did nothing about it. There was pleasure in passivity, none at all in action. A clock on a glass shelf gave the time as seven-thirty. He recognized the room as somewhere he knew, but couldn't remember whose it was or why he was there. He thought he could hear voices—in his head?—but the cold numbed his curiosity, and he slept again.

  He dreamt he was drowning in a ferocious sea.

  "Wake up! WAKE UP, YOU BASTARD!"

  A hand slapped
his cheek and he opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor, curled like a fetus, and his nose was filled with the putrid smell of decay. Bile rose in his throat. "Devourer of thy parents," he muttered. "Now thy unutterable torment renews."

  "I thought you were dead," said Amanda.

  For a moment, before memory returned, Deacon wondered who she was. "I'm wet," he said, touching the saturated neck of his shirt.

  "I threw water over you." He saw the empty jug in her hand. "I've been rocking you and pushing you for ten minutes and you didn't stir." She looked very pale. "I thought you were dead," she said again.

  "Dead men aren't frightening," he said in an odd tone of voice, "they're just messy." He struggled into a sitting position and buried his face in his hands. "What time is it?"

  "Nine o'clock."

  His stomach heaved. "I need a lavatory."

  "Turn right and it's at the end of the hall." She stood aside to let him pass. "If you're going to be sick, could you make sure you wipe the bowl round afterwards with the brush? I tend to draw the line at cleaning up after uninvited guests."

  As Deacon weaved along the corridor, he sought for explanations. Dear God, what the hell was he doing here?

  She had opened the windows and sprayed the room with air freshener by the time he returned. He looked slightly more presentable, having dried his face and straightened his clothes, but he had the shakes and his skin was the queasy grey of nausea. "There's nothing I can say to you," he managed from the doorway, "except sorry."

  "What for?" She was sitting in the chair she'd sat in before, and Deacon was dazzled by how vibrant and colorful she was. Her hair and skin seemed to glow, and her dress fell in bright yellow folds about her calves, tumbling like a lemon pool onto the autumn leaves of the russet carpet.

  Too much color. It hurt his eyes, and he pressed on his lids with his fingertips. "I've embarrassed you."

  "You may have embarrassed yourself, but you certainly haven't embarrassed me."

  So cool, he thought. Or so cruel? He longed for kindness. "That's all right, then," he said weakly. "I'll say goodbye."