Echo

by Minette Walters

  Harrison digested this in silence for a moment. "There still isn't," he pointed out. "Everything your friend said is presumably in the public domain. What was to stop you or Barry from looking it up and then using it to compromise Mrs. Powell?"

  "Nothing at all," said Deacon evenly, lighting another cigarette. "In fact, that's exactly what I was planning to do after Christmas. The first opportunity I had I intended to make an appointment to interview de Vriess. You'll have to take my word for it that the only research I've done on him so far was to treat Alan Parker to a drink last Sunday and ask him how de Vriess funded the purchase of his mansion in Hampshire, which is the area that's been exercising the brains-and curiosity-of the Streeter family."

  "And I'd never even heard of him before last night," put in Barry tentatively.

  Deacon retrieved his notes from the kitchen, and shut the door hurriedly on the heavy fetid air that seeped out of it like sump oil. He handed the Mail Diary piece to Harrison and explained briefly why he'd been looking for it, or something like it. "We're after anything that might connect Billy Blake to Amanda Powell," he finished.

  "Have you found a connection?"

  Deacon's expression was neutral. "We're still working on it. As I told you this afternoon, the most likely explanation is that Billy was her husband. But we can't prove it."

  There was a long pause while Harrison considered the implications of what Deacon had told him.

  "If Billy was James, then her in-laws are wrong," he pointed out. "She and de Vriess couldn't have murdered him five years ago if he was still alive in June."

  Deacon grinned. "Even we amateurs worked that one out, so I'm beginning to think it's the crux of the whole thing. It's so blindingly obvious, after all."

  He resumed his position against the wall and told Harrison at length how he believed Amanda had seized upon the fortuitous death of a strange man in her garage, who bore an odd resemblance to her husband, to clear herself of lingering suspicions of murder and at the same time formalize her position as a widow. "My only role, as I see it, was to be the objective observer who generated official interest," he finished. "But she must be very worried now if she thinks Barry saw her and Nigel together. She can't afford doubts being raised about her relationship with him."

  Harrison clearly found the arguments convincing and asked if he could borrow the photographs of Billy's mug shot and the young James Streeter. "How would you expect her to react when I show her these?" he queried, tucking them into his coat pocket.

  But Deacon shook his head. "I've no idea," he said honestly, remembering how her nails had dug into his chin when he had made the suggestion himself.

  "Why didn't you tell Mr. Harrison about Billy being this Fenton geezer?" asked Terry after the DS had gone.

  "Do you know what a scoop is?"

  "Sure."

  "That's why I didn't tell him."

  "Yeah, but you just gave him a load of bull instead. I mean, Amanda ain't stupid, is she? She can't never have thought it'd be that easy to have James declared dead. The old Bill'd need loads more proof than a couple of snapshots."

  Deacon grinned. "She called me a clever man when I put the theory to her."

  "Do you fancy her?"

  "What on earth makes you think that?''

  "Why else'd you want to pass out on her sofa?"

  Deacon rubbed his jaw. "She has the same blue eyes as my mother," he said reflectively. "I felt homesick."

  Harrison dropped in at the station before going on to Amanda's house. He made a few inquiries of his colleagues, then put through a call to PC Dutton in Kent. Had Mrs. Powell been informed of Barry Grover's release? Yes. And how much information had Dutton given her about him? A full description, was the answer, and details of when he had been outside her house. Was this wrong? There had been nothing on the faxed information requesting confidentiality, and Mrs. Powell had pointed out quite reasonably that she needed to know who to look for in case he troubled her again.

  Harrison had worked himself into a fine fury by the time he reached the Thamesbank Estate.

  The WPC, who was minding Amanda pending Harrison's return from reinterviewing Barry, answered the door. "Where is she?'' demanded the sergeant, pushing past her.

  "In the sitting room."

  "Right. I want a witness to this. You'll make notes of everything she says and if you bat one eyelid at what I say, you'll damn wish you hadn't. Have you got that?" He shouldered open the door to the sitting room and sat himself squarely on the sofa facing Amanda. "You've been lying to me, Mrs. Powell."

  She drew away from him.

  "There was a man in this house last night."

  She leaned forward to sift the rose-petal potpourri, scattering the scent through her slender fingers. "You're quite wrong, Sergeant. I was on my own."

  Harrison ignored this. "We've tentatively identified your-" he chose the next word carefully-"companion-as Nigel de Vriess. Will he also deny being here?''

  Something shifted at the back of her eyes, and he felt his vestigial hackles rise in response. She reminded him suddenly of a bad-tempered Siamese cat his grandmother had once owned. As long as it was left alone, it had been beautiful; touched, it had clawed and spat. When it tore deep tramlines in her face one day, his grandmother had had it put down. "Beauty is as beauty does," she had remarked without regret.

  "I would imagine so," Amanda remarked.

  "When did you last see him?"

  "I've no idea. It's so long ago I couldn't possibly say."

  "Before or after your husband went missing?"

  "Before." She shrugged. "Long before."

  "So if I ask his partner where Nigel was last night, she'll probably say he was at home with her?"

  The tip of her pink tongue played across her lips, moistening them. "I wouldn't know."

  "I will be asking her, Mrs. Powell, and I'm sure she'll ask me why I'm asking."

  She shrugged again. "I have no interest in either of them."

  "Then why were you so determined to discredit Barry Grover earlier?"

  She didn't answer.

  Harrison dipped a hand into his pocket. "Tell me about Billy Blake," he invited. "Did you recognize him when you found him in your garage?"

  She took the change of tack with only the mildest of frowns. "Billy Blake?" she echoed. "Of course I didn't recognize him. Why would I? He was a stranger."

  He produced the borrowed photographs, and aligned them carefully on the coffee table. "The same man?" he suggested.

  Her shock was so extreme that he couldn't doubt it was genuine. Whatever else she might be guilty of, he thought, it had clearly never crossed her mind that Billy Blake might be mistaken for her missing husband.

  But then Deacon had omitted to mention that she'd heard that very same theory on Thursday night.

  Deacon replaced the telephone receiver with a gleam of amusement in his dark eyes. "Harrison's pissed off with being sent on wild-goose chases," he remarked. "Apparently, Mrs. Powell looked poleaxed when he showed her the photos."

  "I'm not surprised," said Terry. "Like Barry said, if you forget the difference in age, it takes a computer to tell them apart. Maybe she's shitting bricks right this minute because she's suddenly clicked that it might've been James after all."

  "No," said Deacon slowly, "she didn't blink an eyelash when I suggested it to her. She's always known it wasn't him, so why throw a wobbly for Harrison?" He looked at his watch. "I'm going out," he said abruptly. "You two can watch a late movie till I get back."

  "Where are you going?'' demanded Terry.

  "Never you mind."

  "You're planning a Peeping Tom act like old Barry, ain't you? You're going to sneak into her garden and drool while she gets rogered by Nigel."

  Deacon stared him down. "You've got a grubby little mind, Terry. Unless Sergeant Harrison's blind as a bat, Nigel de Vriess is long gone." He leveled a finger at the boy. "I won't be more than a couple of hours, so behave yourself. I'll skin you alive if you
try anything while I'm out of this flat."

  Terry flicked a thoughtful glance in Barry's direction. "You can trust me, Mike."

  The traffic was thin at that time of night, and it took only half an hour to drop down through the City and head east along the river to the Isle of Dogs. He kept a wary eye on his rearview mirror, regretting his decision to open the second bottle of wine. Lights blazed in Amanda's house, and he toyed with the idea of acting out Terry's fantasy by sneaking round the back and peeping through her sitting-room windows. The idea was more attractive than he liked to admit, but he abandoned it for fear of the consequences. Instead he fulfilled one of Billy's prophecies. "You will never do what you want because the tribe's will is stronger than yours.''

  He rang the doorbell and listened to the sound of her footsteps in the hall. There was a brief silence while she put her eye to the peephole. "I'm not going to open this door, Mr. Deacon," she said from the other side, "so I suggest you leave before I call the police."

  "I doubt they'll come," he said, stooping to smile amiably into the peephole. "They're bored with the both of us. At the moment they can't decide which of us is telling more lies, although you seem to have the edge. Sergeant Harrison's deeply put out by your refusal to admit that Nigel de Vriess was in this house last night."

  "He wasn't."

  "Barry saw him."

  "Your friend's sick."

  He leaned his shoulder against the door and took out a cigarette. "A little confused, perhaps, like me. I had no idea I'd frightened you so much on Thursday night, Amanda, not when you were so charming to me the next morning." He paused, waiting for an answer. "Sergeant Harrison's surprised you didn't call the police when I passed out on the sofa. It's what most women would have done when faced with a violent and abusive intruder."

  "What do you want, Mr. Deacon?"

  "A chat. Preferably inside, where it's warmer. I've found out who Billy was."

  There was a long silence before the chain rattled and she opened the door. The light in the hall was very bright and he was taken aback by her appearance. She seemed unwell. Her face was drawn and colorless, and she looked nothing like the radiant woman in the yellow dress who had dazzled him three days ago.

  He frowned. "Are you all right?"

  "Yes." She was staring at him rather oddly, as if she expected to see a reaction in his eyes, and relaxed visibly when he showed none. She stepped back. "You'd better come in."

  He looked around the hall and noticed a suitcase at the bottom of the stairs. "Going somewhere?''

  "No. I've just come back from my mother's."

  "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing."

  He followed her into the sitting room and noticed immediately that the scent of roses was absent. Instead, the window was open and the rotten smell of the exposed riverbanks seemed to be drifting in on the night air. "The tide must be out," he said. "You should have kept one of the flats in Teddington, Amanda. There's no tide above the locks."

  What little color remained in her face leached out of it. "What are you talking about?"

  "The smell. It's not very pleasant. You should shut your window." He lowered himself onto the sofa and lit his cigarette, watching her as she sprayed the room with air freshener before fluttering the potpourri between her fingers to disperse its scent.

  "Is that better?'' she asked him.

  "Can't you tell?"

  "Not really. I'm so used to it." She took the chair opposite. "Are you going to tell me who Billy was?"

  The tic was working furiously at the corner of her mouth, and he wondered why she was so agitated and why she looked so deathly pale. Whatever he may have told Harrison, it would take more than Barry's chance sighting of her with Nigel de Vriess to give credence to the Streeters' theories of conspiracy to murder. She had impressed him as a woman of cool composure, and he was puzzled by her lack of it now. The paradox was that he found her infinitely less attractive in despair-so much so that he wondered why he had ever lusted after her-but a great deal more likable. Vulnerability was a quality he recognized and understood.

  "His name was Peter Fenton. You probably remember the story. He was a diplomat-believed to have been a spy-who vanished from his house in nineteen eighty-eight and was never seen again. Not as Peter Fenton, anyway."

  She didn't say anything.

  "You don't seem very impressed."

  She pressed her hands to her lips for a moment, and he realized that her silence owed more to the fact that she couldn't speak than that she didn't want to. "Why did he come here?" she managed at last.

  "I don't know. I hoped you would tell me. Did you or James know him?"

  She shook her head.

  "Are you sure? Do you know everyone James knew?"

  "Yes."

  Deacon took the Mail Diary piece on de Vriess from his pocket and handed it to her. "Billy read that three weeks before he ended up dead in your garage. Let's say he went to Halcombe House with the intention of getting Amanda Streeter's address out of Nigel because he didn't know you were calling yourself Amanda Powell, or that you lived and worked within a mile or so of where he was dossing." He thought for a moment, and, in the absence of an ashtray, tapped ash into his palm. "The fact that he arrived here meant Nigel must have told him how to find you, which makes your lover a bit of a bastard, Amanda. Firstly, for giving out your address to the first drunken bum who asks for it, and secondly, for not telling you to expect a visitor. He didn't, did he?"

  She licked her lips. "How do you know Billy read this?"

  Deacon lied. "One of the men at the warehouse told me. So what's it all about? Why should Peter Fenton be so intent on finding Amanda Streeter? And why would Nigel help him? Did they know each other?"

  She rubbed her temples with trembling fingers. "I don't know.''

  "Okay, try this. What might Peter have known about you that sent him chasing after you when he read your name in the newspaper? Maybe he had something on you and Nigel, and Nigel wriggled out by persuading him it was you he needed to talk to?"

  She withdrew into her chair and closed her eyes. "Billy never spoke to me. I didn't know he was here until he was dead. I don't know who he was, or why he came to my house. Most of all, I don't know why-" She fell silent.

  "Go on."

  "I feel ill."

  Deacon glanced towards the window. "Tell me about Nigel," he prompted. "Why would he give your address to Peter without telling you he'd done it?"

  "I don't know." She gave a troubled shake of her head. "Why do you think he knew him as Peter Fenton? It was Billy Blake who died in my garage."

  "Okay. Why give your address to Billy?"

  "I don't know," she said again. "What sort of man was he?" Her eyes opened wide, and Deacon feared she was about to vomit.

  "If you mean Billy, he was a fine man." He took a handkerchief from his pocket. "I find it's easier to hold on," he said with a faint smile, "but you know where the lavatory is if you need it." He waited till her gagging ceased. "A psychiatrist who had three sessions with him described him as half-saint, half-fanatic. I've read a transcript of part of their interview. Billy believed in the salvation of souls and the mortification of the flesh, but he felt himself to be personally damned." He studied her for a moment. "From my own experience of him, through the medium of Terry Dalton-a youngster he befriended and cared for-I'd say Billy was a man of honor and integrity despite being a drunk and a thief."

  "Why should any of that make him want to come here?''

  Deacon got up and went to the window to toss his cigarette butt into the garden. The air that blew in was sweet and clean and smelled faintly of the sea. He turned back into the cloying atmosphere of her spare, minimalist surroundings and he began to understand why her car was always parked in her driveway, why she drenched the rooms in rose-scented spray, and, ultimately, why six months after Billy's death she had been so desperate to find out who her uninvited guest had been. He had had an inkling of it once before, but hadn't believed it.
He held the back of his hand to his nose, and he saw recognition in her eyes because he was reacting the way she had expected when he first entered the house. "What did you do to him, Amanda?"

  "Nothing. If I'd known he was there, I'd have helped him as I helped you."

  She had put on a hell of a performance for Harrison in the last few hours, but was she acting now? Deacon didn't think so, but then he was no judge. "Why did you lie to Harrison about me and Barry?" he asked, opening all the windows to let in the freezing air. Anything was better than the sweet, sickly smell of death.

  She shook her head, unable to cope with the sudden switch of direction.

  "Are the Streeters right? Did you and Nigel work the fraud and then murder James?''

  She lowered the handkerchief. "James worked the fraud. Everyone knows that except his family. They were so proud of the success he made of his life that they forgot what he was really like. He loathed them, never went near them in case their penny-pinching poverty rubbed off on him." She sounded very bitter. "He was always on the make, always after insider knowledge of stocks that might double in value overnight. I've never been less surprised about anything than when the police told me he'd embezzled ten million pounds."

  "Where did he get the knowledge to bypass the computer system? Did Marianne Filbert help him?''

  Amanda shrugged. "She must have. Who else was there?"

  "Nigel de Vriess?" he suggested. "It's too much of a coincidence that he bought out Softworks after James and Marianne disappeared."

  She rested her head against the back of her chair. "If Nigel was involved," she said wearily, "then he covered his tracks extremely well. He was investigated along with everyone else, but all the evidence pointed to James. I'm sorry the Streeters can't see that, but it is the truth."

  "If you dislike James so much, why are you still married to him?"

  "I didn't want any more publicity. And why get divorced if you don't want to marry again?" Unexpectedly she smiled. "There's a simple explanation for everything, Mr. Deacon, even this house. Lowndes, the company who developed the Teddington flats, also built this estate. I negotiated a straightforward exchange. I gave them full title to the Teddington property in return for full title to this house. And they did rather better out of the deal than I did. Converting the school was easy because I'd already done the drawings and obtained planning permission, and the flats were sold even before they were finished. Lowndes had far more trouble shifting these houses because they'd over-priced them, and the housing market was in the doldrums in nineteen ninety-one. You may not believe it, but I did them a favor by taking this one off their hands." Her voice took on its bitter note again. "If the bank hadn't threatened to pull the rug out from under me because of the uncertainty over James, I'd have made a great deal more by seeing the development through than accepting this house in lieu."