Echo

by Minette Walters

  "Any ideas?"

  "Only that he was so weak by the time he found my garage that he hadn't the energy to do more than crawl into the corner and hide himself."

  "Why would he want to hide?"

  She studied him for a moment. "I don't know. But if he wasn't hiding, why didn't he try to attract my attention? The police think he must have entered the garage on the Saturday, because his only opportunity to get inside was when I went to the shops that afternoon and left the doors unlocked for half an hour." Insofar as she was capable of showing emotion, she did. Her hand flickered nervously towards her mouth before she remembered the camera and dropped it abruptly. "I found his body on the following Friday and the pathologist estimated he'd been dead five days. That means he was alive on the Sunday. I could have helped him if he'd called out and let me know he was there. So why didn't he?"

  "Perhaps he was afraid."

  "Of what?"

  "Being turned over to the police for trespassing."

  She shook her head. "Certainly not that. He had no fear of the police or of prison. I understand he was arrested quite regularly. Why should this time have been any different?"

  Deacon made shorthand notes on his pad to remind himself of the nuances of expression that crossed her face as she talked about Billy. Anxiety. Concern. Bewilderment even. Curiouser and curiouser. What was Billy Blake to her that he could inspire emotion where her husband couldn 't? "Maybe he was just too weak to attract your attention. Presumably the pathologist can't say if he was conscious on the Sunday?"

  "No," she said slowly, "but I can. There was a bag of ice cubes in the freezer. Someone had opened it, and it certainly wasn't me, so I presume it must have been Billy. And one corner of the garage had been urinated in. If he was strong enough to move around the garage, then he was strong enough to bang on the connecting door between the garage and my hall. He must have known I was there that weekend because he could have heard me. The door's not thick enough to block out sound."

  "What did the police make of that?"

  "Nothing," she said. "It made no difference to the pathologist's verdict. Billy still died of malnutrition whether through willful self-neglect or involuntary self-neglect."

  He lit another cigarette and eyed her through the smoke. "How much did the cremation cost you?"

  "Does the amount matter?"

  "It depends how cynical you believe the average reader to be. He might think you're being coy about the figure because you want everyone to assume you spent more."

  "Four hundred pounds."

  "Which is a great deal more than you would have given him alive?"

  She nodded. Click. "If I'd met him as a beggar in the street, I'd have thought I was being generous if I gave him five pounds." Click. Click. She glanced with irritation at Lisa, looked as if she were about to say something, then thought better of it. Her face took on its closed expression again.

  "You said yesterday that you felt you owed him something. What exactly?"

  "Respect, I suppose."

  "Because you felt he hadn't been shown any in life?"

  "Something like that," she admitted. "But it sounds ridiculously sentimental when it's put into words."

  He wrote for a moment. "Do you have a religion?"

  She turned away as another flash exploded in her eyes. "Surely she's taken enough by now?"

  Lisa kept the camera lens on her face. "Just a couple more shots with the eyes cast down, Amanda." Click. "Yes, that's really nice, Amanda." Click. "More compassion maybe." Click. "Great, Amanda." Click, click, click.

  Deacon watched increasing irritation gather in the woman's eyes. "All right, Smith. Let's call a halt, shall we?"

  "How about a few more in the garage?" suggested the girl, reluctant to waste the end of the film. "It won't take a minute."

  Mrs. Powell stared into the blood-red depths of her glass before taking a sip. "Be my guest," she said without raising her head. "The keys are on the table in the hall, and the light comes on automatically when the garage door is lifted. I don't use the connecting door anymore."

  "I meant a few more of you," said Lisa. "I'll need you to come with me. If it's cold and damp out there a few atmospheric shots could be really good. More in tune with a wino dying of starvation."

  The woman's stillness following this remark persuaded Lisa she hadn't been listening. She tried again. "Five minutes, Amanda, that's all we'll need. You might like to stand near where you found him, look a bit upset, that sort of thing."

  The only sound in the room was the ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece, and it grew louder as Mrs. Powell's silence lengthened. She seemed to Deacon to be waiting for something, and he held his breath and waited with her. It startled him to hear her speak. "I'm sorry," she said to the girl, "but you and I are very different animals. I could no more pose weepy-eyed over where Billy died than I could wear your fuck-me clothes or your fuck-me makeup. You see, I'm neither so vulgar nor so desperate to be noticed."

  There were too many sibilants in the last sentence, and her careful diction abandoned her. With a slight shock, Deacon realized she was drunk.

  *3*

  It was dangerous to allow a silence to go on too long. The impact of her words did not diminish in a vacuum, instead they grew and gained in authority. Deacon was drawn to see Lisa through her eyes, and he was struck by how appropriate her description of the girl was. Compared with the snow queen in the chair opposite, Lisa's outlined pouting lips and bottom-hugging skirt were blatantly provocative, and he felt himself belittled to have lusted after her so long in silence when lust was what she was inviting. He saw himself as one of Pavlov's dogs, lured into salivating every time his greed was stimulated, and the idea offended him.

  He took his keys from his pocket and suggested that Lisa use the car to drive herself back to the office with her equipment. "I'll grab a taxi when I'm through," he said. "Leave the keys with Glen at the front desk and I'll pick them up from him."

  She nodded, glad of an excuse to leave, and immediately he regretted his perfidy. It wasn't a crime to display bright plumage, rather it was a celebration of youth. She left the camera out as she repacked the case, then with a curt nod in the older woman's direction let herself out of the sitting-room door.

  They both heard the rattle of garage keys being lifted from the hall table. Amanda sighed. "I was rude to her. I'm sorry. I find it hard to treat Billy's death quite as casually as you and she do." She examined her glass for a moment, as if aware that she'd given herself away, then abandoned it on the coffee table.

  "You certainly seem to take it very personally."

  "He died on my property."

  "That doesn't make you responsible for him."

  She looked at him rather blankly. "Then who is responsible?"

  The question was simplistic--it was what a child would ask. "Billy himself," said Deacon. "He was old enough to make his own choices in life."

  She shook her head then leaned forward, searching his face earnestly. "You said yesterday that you were moved by Billy's story, so could we talk about his life instead of his death? I know I said there was nothing I could tell you, but that wasn't strictly accurate. I know at least as much as the police do."

  "I'm listening."

  "According to the pathologist, he was forty-five years old, six feet tall, and although his hair was completely white when he died, it would have been dark. He was first arrested four years ago for stealing some bread and ham from a high-street supermarket, and he gave his name as Billy Blake and his age as sixty-one which, if the pathologist is right, was twenty years older than his actual age." She spoke quickly and fluently, as if she had spent a long time preparing the facts for just such a presentation. "He said he'd been living rough for ten years, but refused to give any other information. He wouldn't say where he came from and he wouldn't say if he had a family. The police checked Missing Persons in London and the South East, but nobody of his description had been reported missing in the previous ten ye
ars. His fingerprints, such as they were, weren't in the police files and he had nothing on him that could establish his identity. In the absence of any other information, the police recorded the details he gave them and for the next four years he lived and subsequently died as Billy Blake. He spent a total of six months in prison for stealing food or alcohol, with each sentence amounting to a one- or two-month stretch, and he preferred to bed down as near to the Thames as possible when he was out. His favorite pitch was a derelict warehouse about a mile from here. I've talked to some of the other old men who use it, but none of them admitted to knowing anything about Billy's history."

  Deacon was impressed by the extent of her interest and effort. "What did you mean by 'his fingerprints, such as they were'?"

  "The police said he'd burnt his hands in a fire at some time and left them to heal on their own. Both were so badly scarred that his fingers were like claws. They think he may have mutilated himself deliberately to avoid some previous crime catching up with him."

  "Shit!" he said unguardedly.

  She stood up and walked over to the glass cabinet on the far wall. "As I said earlier, there are photographs of him." She took an envelope from a shelf inside and came back with it, slipping the contents into her hand. "I persuaded the police to give me two of them. This is the best they had out of the batch the pathologist took. It's not very pleasant, and they say it's doubtful anyone would recognize him from it." She handed it across. "His face is very shrunken from lack of food, and because his forehead and jaw were so pronounced, it's likely that he was much fuller faced when he was healthy."

  Deacon examined the picture. She was right. It wasn't very pleasant. He was reminded of the corpses piled high inside Bergen-Belsen when the Allies liberated it. The face was almost fleshless, so tightly was the skin drawn across the bones. She handed him the other photograph. "That's the one that was taken four years ago when he was first arrested. But it's not much better. He was skeletal even then, although it gives a slightly clearer idea of what he might have looked like."

  Could this really be the face of a forty-one-year-old? Deacon wondered. Old age had scored itself into deep lines round the mouth, and the eyes that looked into the camera were faded and yellow. Only the hair had any vitality where it sprang up from the high forehead, although its whiteness was startling against the sallowness of the complexion. "Could the pathologist have been wrong about his age?" he asked.

  "Apparently not. I understand he took a second opinion when the police didn't believe him. It did occur to me," she went on, "that someone with the right computer software might be able to build on the images, but I don't know anyone who specializes in that area. If your magazine could do it, it would make a far better visual accompaniment to your article than the picture of me."

  "Why haven't the police done that?"

  "He didn't commit a crime before he died, so they're not interested. I believe they put his description on to a missing person's computer file but it didn't match with anyone, so they've written him off."

  "Can I borrow these? We'll have some negatives made and then I can let you have them back." He tucked the photographs between the pages of his notebook when she nodded agreement. "Did the police ever come up with any other explanation for why he chose your garage, apart from the door being open on the day he went into it?"

  She sat down again and folded her hands in her lap. Deacon was surprised to see how whitely her knuckles shone. "They thought he might have followed me home from work, although they never produced a valid reason for why he might have wanted to do that. If he'd singled me out as someone worth following, then he'd have asked me for help. Would you agree with that?" She was appealing to him on an intellectual level, but Deacon was more inclined to respond to the tic of anxiety that fluttered at the corner of her mouth. He hadn't noticed it before. He was beginning to understand that her composure was a surface thing and that something far more turbulent was at work underneath.

  "Yes," he said. "There's no sense in following you without a reason. So? Could there have been another reason?"

  "Like what?"

  "Perhaps he thought he recognized you."

  "As whom?"

  "I don't know."

  "Wouldn't he have been even more likely to speak to me if he thought he knew me?" She darted the question at him so quickly that he guessed it was one she had asked herself many times.

  Deacon scratched his jaw. "Maybe he was too far gone by then to do anything other than collapse and die. Where exactly is your office?"

  "Two hundred yards from the derelict warehouse where Billy used to bed down. The whole area's up for redevelopment. W. F. Meredith rents office space in a warehouse which was refurbished three years ago during the first phase. The police felt the proximity of the buildings was too much of a coincidence, but I'm not sure I agree with them. Two hundred yards is a long way in a city like London." She looked unhappy and he guessed she found this argument less convincing than she claimed.

  He lifted the pages of his notebook to study the skull's-head photograph again. "Was this house a Meredith construction?" he asked without looking up. "Did you get a discount on it because you're part of the firm?"

  She didn't answer immediately. "I don't think that's any of your business," she said then.

  He gave a low laugh. "Probably not, but a place like this costs a fortune, and you haven't exactly stinted on the furnishings. You're not short of a bob or two if you can afford all this and shell out four hundred pounds on an unknown man's cremation. I'm curious, Amanda. You're either a very successful architect or you have another source of income."

  "As I said, Mr. Deacon, it's none of your business."

  Briefly the drink slurred her words again. "Shall we go back to Billy?"

  He shrugged. "Presumably you'd have noticed anyone like this watching you?" he asked her, tapping the celluloid face.

  She straightened slowly, a troubled expression on her face. "No, I don't think I would."

  "How could you have missed him?"

  "By avoiding eye contact," she admitted reluctantly. "It's the only way to escape being pestered. Even if I do give money to someone, I very rarely look at them. I certainly couldn't give a detailed description of them afterwards."

  Deacon reflected on the homeless youngsters he'd interviewed already for his article, and realized he'd have trouble describing any particular individual. It depressed him to admit it, but she was right. Through sheer embarrassment, one never looked too long on the destitute. "All right," he said, "let's say it was pure coincidence that Billy chose your garage to die in, then someone must have seen him. If he was walking along the road looking for a place to hide, particularly on an estate like this, he couldn't have gone unnoticed. Did any of your neighbors come forward as witnesses?"

  "No one's mentioned it."

  "Did the police ask?"

  "I don't know. It was all over in three or four hours. As soon as the doctor arrived and pronounced him dead, that was effectively it. The doctor said he'd died of natural causes, and the PC who answered my nine-nine-nine call claimed they'd all known it was only a matter of time before Billy Blake turned up as a bundle of rags somewhere. His words were: "The silly old sod has been committing slow suicide for years. People can't live the way he did and expect to survive."

  "Did you ask him what he meant by that?"

  "He said the only time Billy ate properly was when he was in prison. Otherwise he survived on a diet of alcohol."

  "Poor bastard," said Deacon, eyeing her glass. "I suppose life under anaesthetic was more bearable than life without."

  If she understood the personal import of his remark, she didn't show it. "Yes" was all she said.

  "You suggested Billy Blake wasn't his real name, but one he adopted four years ago when he was first arrested. So where did he get the money to buy the alcohol? He'd need to register to get welfare payments."

  She shook her head again. "I asked the old men in the warehouse about that,
and they said he survived on charity rather than government handouts. He used to draw pavement paintings down on the Embankment near the river cruisers, and he earned enough from the tourists to pay for his drink. It was only in the winter when the sightseers dried up that he resorted to stealing and, if you look at his prison record, you'll find that all his stretches were done during the winter months."

  "It sounds as though he had his life pretty well organized. "

  "I agree."

  "What sort of things did he draw? Do you know?"

  "He did the same picture each time. From the way the men describe it, he drew the nativity scene. He also used to preach to the passersby about the damnation to come for all sinners."

  "Was he mentally ill?"

  "It sounds like it."

  "Did he use the same pitch each time?"

  "No. I gather he was moved on fairly regularly by the police."

  "But he only drew the one picture?"

  "I believe so."

  "Was it any good?"

  "The old men said it was. They described him as a real artist." Unexpectedly she laughed, and mischief brightened her eyes. "But they were drunk when I spoke to them, so I'm not sure how valid their artistic judgment is."

  The mischief vanished as quickly as it came, but once again Deacon fell prey to his fantasies. He persuaded himself that she was ignorant of real desire and that she needed an experienced man to release her passion ... "What else have you managed to find out?"

  "Nothing. I'm afraid that's it."

  He reached forward to switch off his tape recorder. "You said Billy's story needs to be told," he reminded her, "but everything you know about him will fit into two or three sentences. And if I'm honest I'd say he doesn't justify even that much space." He reflected for a moment, collating the information in his head. "He was an alcoholic and a petty criminal who lied about his age and used an alias. He was running away from someone or something, probably a wife and an unhappy marriage, and he descended into destitution because he was either inadequate or mentally ill. He had some ability as an artist, and he died in your garage because you live near the river and the door happened to be open." He watched his abandoned cigarette expire in a long curl of ash in the saucer. "Have I missed anything?"