Echo

by Minette Walters

  "How am I supposed to get it right if I don't have a measuring jug?" asked Deacon sulkily.

  "You use your intelligence and add the water a little more slowly," said Barry, pressing the soggy mess into a sieve and squeezing out the excess liquid. "It may come as a surprise to you, Mike, but you're not supposed to pour the stuffing into the turkey, you're supposed to stuff it in. That's why it's called stuffing. If you poured it in it would be called pouring."

  "All right, all right, I get the message. I'm not a complete idiot."

  "I told you he couldn't cook," said Terry self-righteously.

  Barry turned his indignation on the boy and lifted a tiny sprout from the meager pile on the draining board. "What's this?" he demanded.

  "A sprout."

  "Correction. It was a sprout. Now it's a pea. When I said take off the outer leaves, I meant one layer, not two centimeters' worth. We're supposed to be eating these, not swallowing them with a glass of water."

  "You need a drink," said Deacon's shaven-headed incubus prosaically. "You aren't half ratty when you're sober."

  "A drink?" Barry squeaked, stamping his little feet. "It's nine o'clock in the morning and we haven't even got the turkey in yet." He pointed a dramatic finger at the kitchen door. "Out of here, both of you," he ordered, "or you can forget lunch."

  Deacon shook his head. "We can't do that. I've invited Lawrence Greenhill over. He'll be very disappointed if there's nothing to eat." He watched fury rise like a red tide in Barry's face and flapped his hands placatingly as he backed towards the kitchen door. "Don't panic. He's a great guy. You'll like him. I'm sure he won't mind waiting if the meal isn't ready on the dot of one o'clock. Look, here's an idea," he said, as if he was the one who had thought of it. "Why don't Terry and I make ourselves scarce so that you can get on with things? We'll be back at midday to lay the table."

  "That's good," said Terry, raising two thumbs in salute, "Cheers, Barry. Just make sure you do loads of roast potatoes. They're my favorite, they are."

  Deacon caught him by the collar and hoicked him through the door before their chef vanished in a puff of spontaneously combusted smoke.

  "Where are we going?" asked Terry as they climbed into the car. "We've got three hours to kill."

  "Let's muddy some waters first." Deacon reached for his mobile and dialed Directory Assistance. "Yes, the number of N. de Vriess, please, Halcombe House, near Andover. Thank you." He took a pen from his inner pocket and wrote the number on his shirt cuff before switching off the telephone.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Phone him and ask him what he was doing at Amanda Powell's house on Saturday night."

  "Supposing his wife answers?"

  "The conversation will be even more interesting."

  "You're cruel, you are. It's Christmas Day."

  Deacon chuckled. "I shouldn't think anyone will answer. It'll be his secretary's number. Guys like de Vriess don't make their private numbers public." He squinted at his cuff as he punched the digits. "In any case I'll hang up if Fiona answers," he promised, putting the phone to his ear. "Hello?" He sounded surprised. "Am I speaking to Nigel de Vriess? ... Is he there? ... He's away? Yes, it is important. I've been trying to contact him on a business matter since Friday ... My name's Michael Deacon ... No, I'm phoning from a mobile ..." A long pause. "Would it be possible to speak to his wife? ... Can you give me a number where I can find Nigel?... Then perhaps you can give me an idea of when he'll be back? ... My home number? Yes, I should be there from midday onwards. Thank you." He gave his telephone number at the flat, then disconnected and frowned thoughtfully at Terry. "Nigel's gone away for a few days and his wife is too unwell to speak to anyone."

  "Jesus, what a bastard! I bet'cha he's ditched the poor cow for Amanda."

  Deacon drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "Except I'd put every cent I've got on that being a policeman who answered the phone, and you don't call in the police just because your notorious husband is shagging another woman."

  "What makes you think he was old Bill?"

  "Because he was too damned efficient. He cut me off after I gave my name in order to see if it meant anything to whoever was in the room with him."

  "Could of been a butler. You're likely to have a butler if you live in a mansion."

  Deacon fired the engine. "Butlers speak first," he said, "but there was silence on that line till I asked for Nigel de Vriess." He drew out into the road. "You don't think he's done a bunk, do you?"

  "Like James?''

  "Yes."

  "Why'd he want to do that?"

  "Because Amanda warned him that Barry saw him in her house and he's decided to run."

  "Then why hasn't she gone, too?"

  Deacon recalled the suitcase that he'd seen in her hall. "Maybe she has," he said rather grimly. "That's what we're going to find out."

  They drove into the Thamesbank Estate and parked across the road from Amanda's house. It had a deserted look about it. The curtains were open, but, despite the greyness of the morning, there were no lights inside and the car was gone from in front of her garage.

  "She could be at church," said Terry without conviction.

  "You stay here," Deacon said. "I'm going to have a look through her sitting-room windows."

  "Yeah, well, just don't forget what happened to Barry when he did that,'' said the boy morosely. "If the neighbors see you, we'll be carted off to the flaming nick to answer more bloody questions, and I ain't going without my lunch two days in a row."

  "I won't be long." True to his word he was back in five minutes. "No sign of her," he said, easing in behind the wheel and fishing out his cigarettes. "So what the hell do I do about it?"

  "Nothing," said Terry firmly. "Let the old Bill work it out for themselves. I mean you're gonna look a right plonker if you go steaming in with stories about Nigel and Amanda scarpering when all that's happened is they've holed up in a hotel somewhere to hump each other. You've got a real thing about her, except I can't decide whether you fancy her something rotten or think she's a hard-nosed bitch. On balance, I reckon you fancy her because you sure as hell don't like the fact she's still fucking Nigel." He cast a mischievous glance at Deacon's profile. "You look like you're sucking lemons every time the subject comes up."

  Deacon ignored this. "All these houses are identical and hers is the tenth. Why did Billy choose hers?"

  "Because the garage door was open."

  "Number eight's open now."

  "So what? It weren't open when Billy came here."

  Deacon looked at him. "How do you know?"

  There was a momentary pause before Terry answered. "I'm guessing. Look, are you planning to sit here all day. or what? Barry ain't gonna like it one little bit if Lawrence turns up and we ain't back."

  Despite Terry's protests, Deacon dropped in at the police station to request Sergeant Harrison's home telephone number. Sir was joking, of course. Did he think private numbers were given out to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who asked for them? Had he forgotten that it was Christmas Day and that policemen, like ordinary mortals, welcomed the peace and quiet of the precious little time they spent with their families? Deacon persisted, and finally compromised on the officer's promise to phone Harrison "at a reasonable time" to relay the message that Michael Deacon needed to talk to him on a matter of urgency regarding Amanda Streeter and Nigel de Vriess.

  "It's ten-thirty," said Deacon, tapping his watch. "Why isn't this a reasonable time?"

  "Some people go to church on Our Lord's birthday" was the sharp response.

  "But most people don't," murmured Deacon.

  "More's the pity. A God-fearing society has fewer criminals."

  "And so many whited sepulchres that you can't believe a word anybody says."

  "Do you want me to make this phone call, sir?"

  "Yes, please," said Deacon meekly.

  When they were within a mile of the flat, Deacon drew the car into a curb and killed the engine. "You've b
een lying to me," he said pleasantly. "Now I'd like the truth."

  Terry was deeply offended. "I ain't lied to you."

  "I'll hand you back to social services if you don't start talking pretty damn quick."

  "That's blackmail, that is."

  "Exactly."

  "I thought you liked me."

  "I do."

  "Well, then."

  "Well, then, what?" asked Deacon patiently.

  "I want to stay with you."

  "I can't live with a liar."

  "Yeah, but if I told the truth, would you let me stay?"

  It was a strange little echo of what Barry had said yesterday ... "Will they let me go if I tell the truth?" ... But what was truth? ... Verity?... "You mean, heads you win, tails I lose."

  "I don't get you."

  "Presumably you've spent the last three days trying to weasel your way in by not telling me the truth." Deacon toyed with the idea of revisiting Terry's behavior of last night, but thought better of it. He knew from his own experience that postmortems were bitter affairs which achieved little beyond continuing warfare.

  "I reckoned you needed time to get to know me. It took Billy a couple of months before he realized I was the next best thing to sliced bread. Anyway, you can't kick me out. Not yet. I ain't learnt to read, and I want to earn that money you promised to pay me."

  "You've already cost me a fortune."

  "Yeah, but you're rich. Your ma's house alone has gotta be worth a bob or two, so you can easily afford another mouth to feed."

  "I told her to sell it."

  "She won't, though. She's well gutted about tearing up your dad's will and giving your fortune away to your sister. When the time comes-which is the few months she's given herself-she'll fade away. She's made up her mind to it. and there ain't nothing you can do to stop it unless you make it worth her while to stick around a bit longer."

  "And how do I do that?"

  A sort of ancient wisdom glimmered in the boy's pale eyes. "Billy said it's curiosity that keeps people alive, being as how we all want to know what happens next. And them that kill themselves or lie down and die before they need to reckon there's nothing left to be curious about." He spoke seriously. "You and your ma ain't got nothing to talk about except the stuff that made you angry enough to walk out on her, so you've got to give her something else to think about. Like me. She'd be well excited if you told her you was gonna keep me. She'd be on the phone all the time sticking her nose into our business."

  "That's enough to put me off the idea for good."

  "Except if you don't give her a reason to talk to you, then another five years'll go by. And you don't want that any more than she does."

  "Are you sure you're only fourteen?" Deacon asked suspiciously. "You talk like a forty-year-old sometimes."

  Terry looked injured. "I'm mature. Anyway, I'm nearer fifteen than fourteen."

  "Social services won't allow you to stay with me," said Deacon, handing him a cigarette. "If I expressed even mild interest in taking care of you they'd label me a pedophile. It's dangerous these days for men to like anyone under the age of sixteen." He held a match to the tip. "Also, I'm responsible. I shouldn't let you smoke these damn things for a start."

  "Give over. I didn't get none of this grief from Billy. He just took me on board like I was his long lost kid. I ain't asking you to adopt me, and chances are I'll be off out of it in a couple of months. Look, I just want to stay for a while longer, learn to read, meet Mrs. D again. It's a free country and if you ain't doing nothing wrong, 'cept giving a homeless bloke a bed, why should the bastards at social services interfere?"

  "Because that's what they're paid for," said Deacon cynically, staring through the windshield. "How much is it going to cost me to keep a six-foot-tall teenager in food, clothes, beer, and cigarettes for weeks on end?"

  "I'll go begging. That'll help out."

  "No way. I'm not having a beggar in my flat or an illiterate with an impoverished vocabulary. You need educating." Don't say it, Deacon... "You're going to bankrupt me, probably land me in prison, and at the end of it all you'll rugger off leaving me to wonder what the hell came over me."

  "I ain't like that. I stood by Billy, didn't I? And he weren't half as easy to like as you are."

  Deacon glanced at him. "If you put one foot out of line and drop me in it with social services or the police, I'll come after you with an axe the minute I'm out of prison. Is that a deal?'' He held out his hand, palm up.

  Terry gripped it excitedly. "It's a deal. Now can I phone Mrs. D and wish her Happy Christmas?" He reached for the mobile. "What's her number?"

  Deacon gave it to him. "You really like her, don't you?" he said curiously.

  "She's an older version of you," said Terry matter-of-factly, "and I ain't never met two people who treated me straight off with respect. Even old Hugh was okay, so maybe you're none of you as bad as you like to make out. Have you ever thought of that?"

  *19*

  What Terry had withheld was that he had seen Billy W again before he died, just once, at the warehouse. It was early in the morning and the boy had been sitting on the scrubland at the back, staring out over the river. There had been a dawn mist over the water, which the warming sun had begun to burn off. He described himself as feeling "fucking depressed."

  "Life weren't the same when old Billy weren't around. Okay, he were a pain in the butt most of the time, but I'd kind of got used to him. Know what I mean? Lawrence got it about right. It were like having a dad about the place-nah, more like a granddad. Anyway, I turned round at one point and the bastard was sitting next to me. It gave me a shock because I hadn't heard him coming. Matter of fact, I don't know how I didn't have a heart attack." He paused to reflect. "To be honest, I thought he were a ghost," he went on. "He looked about as bad as I'd ever seen him-with white skin and lips that looked as if there was no blood in them." He shuddered at the memory. "So I asked him what he'd been doing and he said 'toning.' "

  Deacon waited. "Did he say anything else?" he asked when Terry didn't go on.

  "Yeah, it didn't make much sense, though. He said 'un-toned sin's the invisible worm."

  Pensively, Deacon stroked his jaw. "I should think he said 'atoning' and 'unatoned.' The atonement of sins is the same as repentance." He brooded for a while, searching through his memory for word associations. "Blake wrote a poem called The Sick Rose," he said at last. "It's about a beautiful rose that's dying inside because an invisible worm is eating away at its heart." He stared out of the windshield. "You can interpret its symbolism any way you like, but Billy presumably interpreted the worm as unexpiated sin." He paused again. "He can't have been talking about his own atonement because he was torturing himself for his sins," he said slowly, "which leaves only Amanda. Do you understand all that?''

  "Sure, I'm not totally dumb, you know, and you said she reeked of roses. In any case, it was her place he made me take him to."

  "How do you mean 'made'?"

  "He just set off. All I could do was follow. He didn't say a word the whole way, then just walked in her garage and shut the door behind him."

  Deacon regarded him curiously. "Did you know it was her house?"

  "No. It was just a house."

  "How did Billy know the garage door would be open?"

  Terry shrugged. "Luck?" he suggested. "None of the others were."

  "Did he say anything before he went into it?"

  "Only goodbye."

  Deacon shook his head in bewilderment at the boy's apparent acceptance of Billy's bizarre behavior. "Didn't you ask him what he was doing? Why he wanted to go there? What it was all about?''

  " 'Course I did, but he didn't answer. And he looked that ill, I thought he'd peg out on me at any moment, so I weren't keen to make matters worse by pestering. You couldn't never stop Billy doing what he wanted to do."

  "But weren't you worried when he didn't come back to the warehouse? Why didn't you go and fetch him?"

  The injured lo
ok reappeared on Terry's face. "I did, sort of. I went and hung around the entrance to the estate the next day but there weren't no sign of him, and I was too scared to go in there two days in a row in case the cops came down on me like a ton of bricks for casing the joint. Anyway, I was afraid of getting Billy in shit if he were holed up somewhere cozy. So me and Tom talked it over and we'd got to the point of thinking we'd go round and suss the place out, when Tom read in a newspaper that Billy'd snuffed it in Amanda's garage." He shrugged. "And that were the end of it."

  "Can you remember which day you took Billy there?"

  Terry looked uncomfortable. "Yeah, but Tom reckons I was stoned most of that week and got everything muddled. It ain't true, but it's the only thing that makes sense. Me and him went all the way to the cemetery after Amanda told us she'd done the honors for Billy, just to make sure she weren't lying about it, and it was there in black and white. Billy Blake, died June twelfth, nineteen ninety-five."

  Deacon flicked through his diary. "The twelfth was a Monday, and the pathologist estimated he'd been dead five days when the body was found on the following Friday. So, which day did you see him?"

  "The Tuesday. And it was the Wednesday I hung about outside the estate, the Thursday me and Tom talked it over, and the Friday we reckoned we'd go round to take a butcher's. It were about eight o'clock at night, we was on our way, Tom lifts an Evening Standard from a bin, and there's this steaming great headline saying: Homeless man starves to death. So he reads it and goes: 'Jesus, you're an arsehole, Terry, the bastard's been dead for days and you've suckered me into looking for a corpse.' "

  Deacon was silent for so long that Terry eventually spoke again. "Yeah, well, maybe Tom was right. Maybe it was the Tuesday before, and I was so stoned I let a whole week go by before I did anything."

  "According to the police he went into the garage on Saturday the tenth."

  "It weren't a Saturday when I saw him," said the boy decidedly. "Saturdays are good tourist days, so I'd've been out begging."

  Deacon felt for the key in the ignition. "How long after Billy died did Amanda come asking questions?"