The Echo

by Minette Walters

  "Billy and me were friends, so if there's anything I can do to help, just say the word."

  "Yes, well, I usually find I work better on my own." He made sweeping gestures with his hands, as if to clear the desk of obstruction, and in the process uncovered an underexposed print of Billy's mug shot in which the eyes, the nostrils, and the line between the lips were the only clearly defined features.

  Terry picked it up and examined it closely. "That's clever," he said with frank admiration in his voice. "No fuss means you can see what you're looking for." He picked up another similarly underexposed print and laid the two side by side. They were very alike, with only minor variations in the spatial relationships between the features. "That's amazing." Terry touched the second photograph. "So who's this geezer?"

  Barry took off his glasses and polished them on his handkerchief. It was an indication of mental torment. He couldn't bear to have his painstaking efforts pawed by this shaven-headed thug. "He's a truck driver called Graham Drew," he snapped, moving the photographs out of Terry's reach.

  "How did you know he looked like Billy?"

  "I have his photograph on file."

  "Jesus! You really are something else. You mean you can remember all the pictures you've got?"

  "It would be irresponsible to rely on memory," Barry said severely. "Naturally, I have a system."

  "How does that work?"

  It didn't occur to Barry that the youngster's interest might be genuine. He assumed, because he had come with Deacon, that he was more sophisticated than he was and interpreted his persistent questioning as a form of teasing. "It's complicated. You wouldn't understand."

  "Yeah, but I'm a fast learner. Mike reckons my IQ's probably above average." Terry hooked a spare chair forward with his foot and dropped into it beside his new guru. "I'm not promising anything, but I reckon I'd be more use helping you than helping him." He jerked his head towards Deacon. "Words aren't my thing—know what I'm saying?—but I'm good with pictures. So, what's your system?"

  Barry's hands trembled slightly as he replaced his glasses. "On the assumption that Billy Blake was an alias, I'm working through photographs of men who have avoided police capture in the last ten years. One is looking," he finished pedantically, "for people who felt it necessary to change their identities."

  "That's well brilliant, that is. Mike said you were a genius."

  Barry pulled forward a folder from the back of the desk. "Unfortunately there are rather a lot of them, and in some cases the only record I have is a photofit picture."

  "Why're the police after this Drew bloke?"

  "He drove a cattle truck, containing his wife, two children, thirty sheep, and two million pounds of gold bullion onto a cross-channel ferry, and vanished somewhere in France."

  "Shit!"

  Barry tittered in spite of himself. "That's what I thought. The sheep were found wandering around a French farmer's field, but the Drews, the gold, and the cattle truck were never seen again." Nervously, he opened the folder to reveal prints and newspaper clippings. "We could go through these together," he invited, "and sort them into those that are worth a second look and those that aren't. They represent the hundred or so men sought by the police in nineteen eighty-eight."

  "Sure," agreed the boy cheerfully. "Then what do you say to coming out for a drink with me and Mike afterwards? Are you game, or what?"

  Deacon spun his chair round an hour later. "Oi! You two! Shift your arses! Come and read this." He cocked both forefingers at them in triumph. "If this isn't what made Billy go walkabout I'll eat my hat. It's the only damn thing in the news during the first half of May that makes a connection with what we've got already."

  Mail Diary—Thursday, 11th May, 1995

  NIGEL OFFERS SMALL CONSOLATION

  FOLLOWING her divorce from restaurateur Tim Grayson, 58, Fiona Grayson is believed to have returned to her first husband, entrepreneur Nigel de Vriess, 48. According to her friend, Lady Kay Kinslade, Fiona is a frequent visitor to Halcombe House, Nigel's home near Andover. "They have a lot in common, including two grown-up children," said Lady Kay. She drew a discreet veil over the bitter divorce ten years ago when Nigel abandoned Fiona for a brief affair with Amanda Streeter, whose husband, James, later vanished with Ł10 million from the merchant bank that also employed Nigel de Vriess. "Time heals everything," said Lady Kay. She denied that Fiona is having money problems.

  Nigel, who once described himself as "the man most likely to succeed," has had a checkered career. He made his first million by the age of thirty but, after disastrous losses in a failed transatlantic airline venture, he joined the board of Lowenstein's Merchant Bank in '85. He left in '91 "by mutual consent" after entering the computer software business through the purchase of Softworks, a small underfunded company with hidden potential. He renamed it DVS, recruited a new workforce with new ideas, and turned it round in four years to become a major player in the lucrative home computer market.

  Less successful in love, Nigel has been married twice and his name has been linked to some of Britain's most beautiful women. But Fiona clearly remembers him more fondly than most. One of his ex-lovers, actress Kirstin Olsen, described him memorably as: "undersized, tight-fisted, and performs better on top." Kirstin Olsen's new romance is Arnold Schwarzenegger lookalike Bo Madesen, voted "the sexiest hunk in the world" by readers of Hello! magazine.

  Deacon read it aloud for Terry's benefit and chuckled when the boy laughed. "It probably serves him right, but I feel sorry for the poor bastard. He obviously didn't compensate Ms. Olsen adequately for the effort she put into her orgasms."

  "Hell has no fury like a woman scorned," quoted Barry ponderously.

  "I know that one," said Terry. "Billy taught it to me." He fell into his imitation of Billy's voice and declaimed theatrically: " 'Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.' However, Terry, that doesn't mean fury as in anger, it means Fury with a capital Eff, as in the winged monsters sent by the gods to create hell on earth for sinners." He beamed at the two men and returned to his own mode of speech. "Billy reckoned they came after him every time he got pissed. It was one of his punishments, to have Furies claw at him whenever he was off his head."

  "He had a passion for hurting himself," Deacon explained to Barry. "He'd thrust his hands into a fire to cleanse them whenever they offended him."

  "The Furies sound more like DTs," said Barry.

  "Yeah, well, it was him used to claw himself, but he always said he was fighting off the Furies when he was doing it." Terry pointed a finger at the monitor screen. "So are you reckoning Billy went looking for this Nigel geezer? Why'd he want to do that?"

  Deacon shrugged. "We'll have to ask Nigel."

  "I expect this is too simplistic," said Barry slowly, "but could Billy just have wanted Amanda Streeter's address? If he didn't know she was calling herself Amanda Powell, how else would he find her?''

  "That's gotta be right," said Terry admiringly. "And that means Billy must've known James, seeing as how Amanda didn't know Billy. Know what I'm saying? So all you've gotta do now is find out the names of blokes that James knew and you'll have Billy sussed."

  Deacon shook his head in mock despair. ' 'We could work out who he was in five minutes if we knew how to access the information you already have in your head." He arched an amused eyebrow. "The man was clearly educated, he was a preacher, he was a fan of William Blake, quoted Congreve, knew his art, his classics, had views on European politics, believed in a code of ethics. Above all, he seems to have been a theologian with a particular interest in the Olympian gods and their cruel and arbitrary meddling in people's lives. So? What kind of man has those characteristics?"

  Barry removed his glasses and set to work on them again. His self-loathing had become a physical pain in the pit of his stomach, and he was afraid of what he might do this time if Deacon abandoned him. He knew the other man well enough to know that if he divulged Billy's identity now, what little inter
est Deacon had in him would vanish. Deacon would set off with Terry in hot pursuit of Fenton, leaving Barry to the terrible confusion that had reigned in his soul for twenty-four hours. He thought of what awaited him at home, and in despair he clung to the hope that his hidden knowledge offered him. Deacon didn't need to know who Billy was—not yet anyway—but he did need to know that Barry would deliver eventually. "My father was fond of misquoting Dr. Johnson," he murmured nervously, as if fearing he was about to make a fool of himself. " 'If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel,' he used to say, 'then theism is the last refuge of the weak.' I could be wrong, of course, but—" He hesitated, glanced at Terry, and fell silent.

  "Go on," Deacon encouraged him.

  "It's not fair to speak ill of the dead, Mike, particularly in front of their friends."

  "Billy was a murderer," said Deacon evenly, "and it was Terry who told me about it. I doubt he could have shown a greater weakness than that, could he?''

  Barry replaced his glasses and peered at them both with a look of immense satisfaction. "I thought it must be something like that. You see, his character was flawed. He ran away. He was a drunk. He killed himself. These are not the attributes of a strong man. Strong men face their problems and resolve them."

  "He might have been ill. Terry describes him as a nutter."

  "You told me he'd been living as Billy Blake for a minimum of four years."

  "So?"

  "How could a mentally ill man maintain a false identity for four years? He would forget the rationale behind it every time he hit rock-bottom."

  It was a good point, Deacon admitted. And yet... "Doesn't the same logic apply to a drunk?"

  Barry turned to Terry. "What did he say when he'd been drinking?''

  "Not much. He usually passed out. I reckon that's why he did it."

  I define happiness as intellectual absence...

  "You told me he used to rant and rave when he was drunk," Deacon reminded him sharply. "Now you're saying he passed out. Which was it?''

  The boy's expression was pained. "I'm doing my best here, okay? He ranted when he was half-cut, and passed out when he was paralytic. But half-cut doesn't mean he didn't know what he was saying. That's when he got going on the poetry and the day sex machine crap—"

  "The what?" demanded Deacon.

  "Day—sex—machine," repeated Terry with slow emphasis.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "How the hell should I know?"

  Deacon frowned while his mind tried to make sense of the sounds. "Deus ex machina?" he queried.

  "That's it."

  "What else did he say?''

  "A load of bull usually."

  "Can you remember his exact words and how he said them?''

  Terry was becoming bored. "He said hundreds of things. Can't we go and have a drink? I'll remember better once I've had a pint. Barry wants one, too, don't you, mate?"

  "Well—" the little man cleared his throat. "I'd need to put things away first."

  Deacon looked at his watch. "And I need to make a photocopy of this piece on de Vriess. How about giving us ten minutes' worth of Billy in a rant, Terry, while Barry and I finish off? Then we'll go pubbing and forget about it for the rest of the evening."

  "Is that a promise?''

  "That's a promise."

  Terry's performance was a tour deforce which Deacon captured on a tape cassette. The youngster had an extraordinary talent for sustaining a different voice from his own but whether it sounded anything like Billy was impossible to tell. He assured Deacon it was a perfect imitation until Deacon replayed the first thirty seconds and Terry collapsed in heaps of laughter because he sounded like an "upper-class twit." The content of the speech was largely irrelevant, insofar as it was a repetition of Billy's belief in gods and retribution together with the few snippets of poetry that Terry had already recalled for Deacon. Also, and disappointingly, Terry left out any reference to deus ex machina because, as he said afterwards, he'd never really understood what Billy was talking about so it made it more difficult to remember the words he'd used.

  Deacon, who had been thoroughly entertained by the entire proceedings, gave him a friendly punch on the arm and told him not to worry about it. However, Barry, to whom most of it was new, had listened with grave attention, and rewound the tape to isolate a small passage which followed a listing of gods.

  "...and the most terrible of all is Pan, the god of desire. Close your ears before his magical playing drives you insane, and the angel comes with the key to the bottomless pit and casts you down forever. You will wait in vain for the one who descends in clouds to raise you up. Only Pan is real..."

  "Couldn't 'the one who descends in clouds to raise you up' be Billy's deus ex machina?" he suggested. "Think of pantomimes and the good fairy emerging from dry ice vapor to wave her wand and effect a happy ending."

  "And if it is?'' Deacon prompted him.

  "Well—" Barry marshaled his thoughts—"Pan was a Roman god, but if I remember correctly 'the angel with the key to the bottomless pit' comes from the Book of Revelation which is of Judaeo-Christian inspiration. So Billy seems to have believed that it was the pagan gods who ensnared men into sin, but the Judaeo-Christian gods who exacted punishment. Which must have left him very confused about where salvation lay. Should he placate the pagan gods, as he seems to have done with this business of burning his hand, or the Christian God through his preaching?"

  "Where does the 'one descending in clouds' fit in?"

  "I think that's his symbolic view of salvation. He talks about waiting 'in vain' so he obviously doesn't believe in it—or not for himself anyway—but if it does happen it will be in the form of a deus ex machina, a sudden amazing apparition who reaches into the bottomless pit to raise him up."

  "Poor bastard," said Deacon with feeling. "I wonder what sort of murder it was that made him think he was beyond the pale of salvation?" He shivered suddenly and noticed that Terry was rubbing his hands in an effort to keep warm. "Come on, it's damn cold in here. Let's go and get that drink."

  Barry watched Terry play the fruit machines with money supplied by Deacon. "He's a nice lad," he said.

  Deacon lit a cigarette and followed his gaze. "He's been living on the streets since he was twelve years old. It sounds as if he has Billy to thank for the fact that he's as straight as he is."

  "What will you do with him when Christmas is over?"

  "I don't know. He needs educating but I can't see him agreeing to going back into care. It's a bit of a poser really, one of those bridges you only cross when you come to it." He turned back to Barry. "Was he helpful on the photographs?"

  "A little quick to discard the improbables, but it doesn't seem to register with him that Billy was much younger than he looked. I had to rescue one or two." He took an envelope from his pocket which contained various prints. He spread them across the table. "What do you think of these?"

  Deacon isolated a high-quality photocopy of a young fair-haired man staring directly into the camera. "I recognize this one. Who is he?"

  Barry tittered happily. "That's James Streeter, taken twenty-odd years ago when he graduated from Durham University. He was brought up in Manchester so, out of interest, I applied to the local newspapers and one of them produced that. It's extraordinary, isn't it?"

  "He's a dead ringer for Billy."

  "Only because he was thinner and appears to have had his hair bleached."

  Deacon took out his print of Billy and laid it beside the young James Streeter. "Have you compared these two on the computer?"

  "Yes, but they're not the same man, Mike. It's a closer match because we're looking at a similar relationship between camera angle and subject, but the differences are still obvious. Most notably the ears." He picked up the cigarette packet and placed it across the bottom half of Billy's face with the upper edge touching the bottom of an earlobe. "It is all about angle, of course, but Billy's lobes are larger than James's and their bottom edge is roughly in l
ine with his mouth." He moved the packet to the other photograph and placed it in the same relative position. "James has hardly any lobe at all, and the bottom edge is in line with his nostrils. If you synchronize the eyes, nose, and mouth on the computer, the ears immediately part company, and if you tilt the angles to synchronize the earlobes then the rest parts company."

  "You're pretty good at this, aren't you?"

  Pleased color tinged Barry's plump cheeks. "It's something I enjoy doing." He nudged the other prints, artfully isolating a profile shot of Peter Fenton. "Do you recognize anyone else?"

  Deacon shook his head. He took a last look at James Streeter, then pushed the photographs aside. "It's a wild-goose chase," he said dispiritedly. "I'm beginning to think Billy's a side issue, anyway."

  "In what way?"

  "It depends what Amanda Powell's agenda was when she told me about him. She must have known I'd find out about James, so whose story am I supposed to be investigating? Billy's or James's?" He drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. "And where does Nigel de Vriess fit in? Why would he give Amanda's address to a complete stranger?"

  "Perhaps he doesn't like her," said Barry, tacitly disclosing his own prejudices.

  "He did once. He left his wife for her. In any case, however much you dislike someone, you don't give their address to any old nutter who turns up." He eyed Barry curiously. "Do you?"

  "No." Barry looked uncomfortably at the photograph of Peter Fenton. "I suppose it's possible they knew each other from before."

  Deacon followed his gaze. "Nigel and Billy?"

  "Yes."

  He looked skeptical. "Wouldn't he have told Amanda who he was? Why talk to me if Nigel could have given her his name?"

  "Maybe they're no longer in contact."

  Deacon shook his head. "I wouldn't bet on that. She's not the type a man could forget very easily. And de Vriess likes women."

  "Do you like her, Mike?"

  "You're the second person to ask me that"—he held the other's gaze for a moment—"and I don't know the answer. She's out of the ordinary, but I don't know whether that makes her likable or ruddy peculiar." He grinned. "She's damn fanciable. I'll say that for her."