The Echo

by Minette Walters

  *16*

  Barry's spectacles had been removed, giving him a naked look. He sat on the cell bed, head hanging forward, shoulders slumped in defeat. Deacon was told later that there a fear he might break the lenses and try to cut his wrists—he was deemed a suicide risk—which also explained his lack of belt and shoelaces. He peered blindly towards the cell door when it opened, more like a sad-faced clown than a cockroach, and his plump little body shook with dread.

  "Visitor for you," said the custody sergeant, ushering Deacon in and leaving the door open. "Ten minutes."

  Deacon watched the policeman walk away, then lowered himself onto the bed next to Barry. He expected to feel his usual antipathy but found himself pitying the man instead. It wasn't hard to imagine the sort of nightmare Barry was going through. There was precious little dignity to be found a police cell at the best of times, none at all when your first experience of it was after committing a lewd act in public.

  "It's Mike Deacon," he said, wondering how much Barry could see without his glasses. "Sergeant Harrison phoned me, told me you were in need of a friend." He fished out his cigarettes. "Are you going to let me smoke?" He watched the other's eyes fill with tears and punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Is that a yes?''

  Barry nodded.

  "Good man." He bent his head to the lighter. "We haven't much time so you're going to have to talk to me if you want my help. Let's start with the easy stuff first. You had a photograph of a man holding a child. The sergeant thinks the man's you, but I think it might be your father holding you as a toddler. Who's right?"

  "You," whispered Barry.

  "You could be his double."

  "Yes."

  "Okay, next question. Why do you carry prostitutes' cards in your pocket? Is that how you spend your time when you're not working?"

  Barry shook his head.

  "Then why were they in your pocket?" He paused for an answer, but went on when he didn't get one. "Talk to me," he said kindly. "You're not the first man in the world to be caught wanking, Barry, and you certainly won't be the last, but the police are putting the worst interpretation on it because they think you spend your time sniffing round toms."

  "Glen Hopkins gave them to me on Friday," whispered Barry.

  "Why?"

  "He said there was no shame paying for it." Distress flowed in waves from the quivering body. "But I was ashamed. I didn't like it." He started to weep.

  "I'm not surprised," Deacon said matter-of-factly. "I suppose she had one eye on the clock and the other on your wallet. We've all been there, Barry." He smiled slightly. "Even the Nigel de Vriess's of this world have to pay for it. The only difference is they call their toms lovers and their shame becomes public property." He sat forward with his hands between his knees, matching Barry's own body language. "'Look, does it make you feel any better if I tell you Glen tosses those cards about like bloody confetti? He gave me some a couple of months back when he decided my bad temper was due to lack of sex. I told him to ram them up his arse, where they belonged." He glanced sideways. "He caught you on a bad day, and you got ripped off. My best advice is to put it down to experience, and tell Glen to get stuffed the next time he tries it on you."

  "He said it was—unhealthy"—it clearly hurt him to say the word—"looking at photographs. He said the real thing was more fun. But—'' His voice tailed off.

  "It wasn't?" suggested Deacon, offering him a handkerchief to dry his tears.

  "No."

  Deacon reflected on his first sexual encounter at the age of sixteen when he had fumbled his way through the act of intercourse without caring too much about satisfying the girl because his own arousal was so intense that every thought in his head was concentrated on not ejaculating before he got inside. To this day, he couldn't think of his and Mary Higgins's loss of virginity without embarrassment. She had claimed it was the worst experience of her life and never spoke to him again.

  "You're not unusual," he said sympathetically. "Most men find their first time pretty humbling. So what happened this morning? Why did you go to Amanda's house?"

  The story was muddled but Deacon made what he could of it. After Barry's humiliation at the hands of the prostitute, his anger which should have been directed against Fatima—or even Glen—became fixated on Amanda instead. (There was a strange logic to it. He had been studying pictures of her when Glen had accused him of unhealthy practices, and in his mind's eye she had assumed the proportions of a Jezebel.)

  Had he known less about her it wouldn't have mattered, but his interest in Billy Blake and James Streeter had led him to build up a file of press cuttings on her. The reasons for why he should have wanted to go out to her house and confront her were obscure, but they seemed to lie in his total confusion about whether he had hated or enjoyed the sex act. He wouldn't have gone at all had Deacon and Terry not filled him with dutch courage on Saturday night. Tight as a tick, he had waved them off in a taxi then called one for himself and told the driver to take him to the Thamesbank Estate.

  He wasn't very sure now what his intentions were—certainly he hadn't expected to find her lights on—but at two o'clock in the morning he had stood in her garden and watched through her open curtains as she made love to a man on her sitting-room carpet. (Deacon asked him if he recognized the man, but Barry said no. Interestingly, he described him in detail but barely mentioned Amanda.)

  "It was exciting," he said simply.

  Yes, thought Deacon, it would have been. "But illegal," he said. "I'm not sure if you can be charged with voyeurism, but you can certainly be charged with trespass and indecent behavior. Why did you go back this morning, anyway? It was broad daylight, so you were bound to be spotted."

  The simple explanation was that Barry had put the envelope of photographs on the ground the night before (to keep his hands free, Deacon guessed) and forgotten them. The more complex explanation seemed to concern his extraordinarily ambivalent attitude to living with his mother ("I don't want to go back," he kept saying), his barely remembered love of his father, and a half-understood desire to rekindle his excitement of a few hours earlier. But the house was clearly empty, and the only excitement left to him was to desecrate Amanda's photograph. "I'm so ashamed," he said. "I don't know why I did it. It just—happened."

  "Well, if you want my opinion, it's a good thing the police caught you," said Deacon bluntly, squeezing the burning tip out of his cigarette. "Maybe it'll persuade you to wise up to the facts of life. You've got more going for you than to end up as some grubby little man who can only get a hard-on outside a window. Admittedly I'm no psychiatrist, but I'd say there are a couple of areas you need to sort out pretty damn quick. One, get out from under your mother and, two, come to terms with your sexuality. There's no sense in directing your anger against women if your preference is for men, Barry."

  Helplessly, Barry shook his head. "What would my mother say?"

  "A hell of a lot, I should imagine, if you're silly enough to tell her." Deacon clapped him on the back. "You're a grown man, Barry. It's time you acted like one." He smiled. "What were you planning to do, as a matter of interest? Wait till she was dead before you could be the person you wanted to be?''

  "Yes."

  "Bad plan. That person would have died long before she did." He stood up. "Are you going to let me tell the sergeant what you've told me? Depending on what he says, you may want a solicitor with you when he questions you. And you'd better be prepared for the fact that Glen Hopkins will be asked to confirm that he gave you those cards on Friday. Are you ready for all that?"

  "Will they let me go if I tell the truth?"

  "I don't know."

  "Where will I go if they do? I can't go home." His eyes welled again. "I'd rather stay here than go home."

  Godalmighty! Just don't say it, Deacon. "You can use my sofa while we sort something out." We-ell ... It was Christmas... And...

  Barry knew who Billy Blake was...

  Harrison was skeptical. "You're being naive. I know th
e type. It's the classic profile of a sex criminal. A repressed loner with an unhealthy appetite for spying on people. Lives with his mother but doesn't like her. Can't make adult relationships. First offense is exposing himself in public. We'll be banging him up for rape and/or child molestation next."

  "On that basis you'll be locking me up as well," said Deacon with a friendly smile. "I'm a loner. I disliked my mother so much that I didn't speak to her for five years. I can't make successful adult relationships—as evidenced by my two divorces—and the worst offense I ever committed, judging by the thrashing I received, was when I bought a pornographic magazine at the age of twelve and attempted to smuggle it into my house with the intention of admiring my erections in front of a mirror."

  The sergeant chuckled. "It's a serious point, though. You were twelve, Barry's thirty-four. You were going to practice in your bedroom, he was practicing in somebody else's garden. At twelve, the damage you can do to someone else is hopefully limited by your size. At thirty-four, you're likely to be very dangerous indeed, particularly if you're thwarted."

  "But you can't charge him with what he might do. At worst, you've got him for trespass and indecency, and that's not going to keep him off the streets for long. Look," he said persuasively leaning forward, "you can't label a man a pervert for one aberrant episode. It wouldn't have happened if Glen Hopkins had kept his stupid ideas to himself, or if Barry had had more sense than to try something he wouldn't enjoy. The poor guy's hopelessly confused. He loved his father, who died when he was ten, he's terrorized by his mother, and he's just paid a hundred quid to lose his virginity to a woman who treated him like a lump of meat. On top of all that, Terry and I got him drunk—for the first time in his life as far as I can make out—and he found himself watching live sex inadvertently." He gave a low laugh. "Then you turned up on his doorstep this morning and scared him out of his wits because he thought Amanda must have seen him. He only went back for his photographs, for God's sake, and had a quiet wank in her absence because he was still aroused. Is this really the profile of a classic sex criminal?"

  Harrison tapped his pen against his teeth. "He was trying to break into Mrs. Powell's garage. Where does that fit in?"

  Deacon frowned. "You haven't mentioned that before."

  "It's how we caught him. Her neighbors reported a possible intruder, and we sent out a patrol car." He pushed a piece of paper across the table. "It's all there in black and white."

  Deacon read the incident report. "This man's described as six feet tall, thin, and wearing a dark coat. Barry's about six inches shorter, fat, and the only coat I've ever seen him in is a blue anorak. It's in his cell at the moment."

  The sergeant shrugged. "I wouldn't rely on that description. The neighbors are in their eighties."

  Deacon studied him with amusement. "God help you if my mother heard you say that. Surely you can see there were two different men? You've nicked the easy one—the wally—my best advice, if you want a result, is to look for the tall guy."

  "If he exists," said Harrison cynically.

  Terry was bored to distraction by the time Barry and Deacon emerged from the inner recesses of the police station. "You've been two hours," he said crossly, pointing to the clock in the waiting area. ' 'What did Barry do, then? It must have been something pretty bad if it took this long to sort."

  Deacon shook his head. "He was watching Amanda's house, and got nicked in mistake for a man who tried to break into her garage half an hour earlier. It's taken all this time to establish that he doesn't answer to the description of a tall, skinny bloke in a dark coat."

  "No kidding! You want to get Lawrence on to it. He'd soon sort these bastards out. That's harassment, that is, banging up a bloke for no reason. You all right, Barry? You don't look too good."

  Deacon shoved him through the front door into the freezing evening air before the desk sergeant could set him straight. "Barry's coming home with us," he murmured in Terry's ear. "His family kicked up rough because we sent Harrison round there this morning, so I've said he can sleep on the sofa for a day or two. Do you have a problem with that?"

  "Why would I?" asked the boy suspiciously.

  "It'll be crowded with three of us."

  "Do me a favor," he said scornfully. "The warehouse was crowded." He looked expectantly at Barry who had followed them out. "I hope you can cook, mate, because Mike's sodding useless. He can't even boil an egg without burning it."

  Barry looked nervous. "Only self-taught, I'm afraid."

  "Yeah, well, me and Mike ain't been taught at all, so you get the job." He jerked his head impatiently towards the car. "Let's get going, then, shall we? I'm starving. You realize we ain't had nothing to eat since seven o'clock this morning?''

  While Terry escorted Barry into the kitchen and kept him captive there until he cooked something edible, Deacon took the telephone into his bedroom and made a call to Lawrence. "I'm sorry to keep bothering you," he said, "but I need some advice and I don't know who else to ask."

  "I'm honored," said Lawrence.

  "You haven't heard what the problem is yet." As briefly as he could he related the details of Barry's arrest. "I persuaded them he deserved a second chance, so they gave him one hell of a bollocking and released him. As long as nothing else comes to light, he's in the clear."

  "So what's the problem?"

  "I said he could stay here with me and Terry."

  "Dear, dear. A latent homosexual who performs acts of gross indecency living cheek by jowl with a disturbed adolescent who will probably have no compunction at all about leading him on in order to blackmail him. You certainly have an appetite for trouble, Michael."

  Deacon sighed. "I knew I could rely on you to be objective. So what do I do? Barry's under strict instructions not to tell Terry why he was arrested, but Terry's no fool and he'll have worked it out for himself by tomorrow."

  Lawrence's happy laugh rippled down the wire. "Start praying?"

  "Ha! Ha! How about this? Come to Christmas lunch tomorrow and help me keep the peace. Being a lonely old Jew without family who rarely feels useful, you can't possibly be doing anything. Can you?"

  "Even if I were, my dear chap, I couldn't resist so charming an invitation."

  DS Harrison was shrugging on his coat when a colleague popped his head round the door to say there was a Mrs. Powell to see him. "Tell her I've gone," he growled. "Dammit, I've already lost six hours' leave because of her blasted trespassers."

  "Too late," said the colleague with a jerk of his head. "Stewart told her you're here, and she's waiting down the corridor."

  "Damn!" He followed the other man out. "Detective Sergeant Harrison," he introduced himself to the woman. "How can I help you, Mrs. Powell?" She was quite a looker, he thought, a great deal more attractive in the flesh than in her photograph, and he wasn't surprised that watching her make love on her carpet had set Barry's hormones racing.

  She gave an uncertain smile. "I'm frightened to go home," she said simply. "I live alone"—she gestured unhappily towards a window—"and it's dark. This man you caught in my garden? He is locked up, isn't he?"

  Harrison shook his head. "We've released him pending other inquiries. But our understanding was that you wouldn't be home until after Christmas, and we asked Kent police to inform you of our decision together with our reasons for doing it. There's obviously been a breakdown in communications." He wiped a hand over his face in irritation. "I don't think you've anything to fear, Mrs. Powell. In our opinion, the man acted out of character after getting drunk and won't be troubling you again. He's currently staying with a friend of his, Michael Deacon, whom I think you know, and we don't anticipate any further trouble."

  Her eyes opened wide in alarm. "But Michael Deacon forced his way into my house only four days ago when he was drunk." She shivered suddenly. "I don't understand. Why did no one talk to me about any of this? I've never heard of this man Barry Grover, but if he's a friend of Mr. Deacon's—" She caught at Harrison's sleeve. "I know someone's
been watching me," she said urgently. "I've seen him at least twice. He's a short man with glasses and he wears a blue anorak. He was standing outside my house about ten days ago when I turned into my drive, and he walked away when he saw me. Is that the man you arrested?"

  Harrison frowned uncomfortably. "It certainly sounds like him, but he claims he didn't go near your house until Saturday night."

  "He's lying," she said flatly. "I saw him again about a week ago. It was very dark, but I'm sure it was the same person. He was standing under a tree at the entrance to the estate, and his glasses caught my headlamps as I drove in."

  "Why didn't you call the police?"

  She pressed trembling fingers to her forehead as if she had a headache. "You can't report every man who looks at you," she said. "It only becomes frightening when they start to behave oddly. According to the policeman who came to tell me about the arrest, he was exposing himself over a photograph of me." Her voice rose slightly. "If that's true, why aren't you prosecuting him? He's not going to stop now, not if he's been allowed to get away with it. By letting him go, you've given him the right to terrorize me."

  Harrison turned back to his office and opened the door for her. "I'll need a statement from you, with details of when and where you saw him previously. And you'd better include this incident with Michael Deacon." He checked his watch surreptitiously and stifled a sigh. His wife would not forgive him for this.

  Terry took his silver foil wad out of his pocket. "Who wants a spliff?" he asked.

  "I told you to get rid of that," said Deacon.

  "I did. Up my arse till the heat was off." He glanced at Barry. "Barry wants one, don't you, mate? Matter of fact, he deserves one after that meal," he told Deacon. "Bloody brilliant it was. Knocks spots off anything you've managed to produce." He set to work splitting the tobacco out of Deacon's Benson and Hedges. "So what were you doing round Aye-mander's place, Barry? I don't buy that cobblers you and Mike gave me earlier. Even the fuzz don't take six hours to tell the difference between a short, fat bloke and a tall, skinny one." He paused momentarily to fix his pale—and intimidating—gaze on the man opposite. "You looked shit scared when you came out."