The Echo (13 page)

It was the twenty-first of December, Deacon was crawling in a slow-moving traffic jam and his mood grew blacker as the compulsory office party drew nearer. God, how he loathed Christmas! It was the ultimate proof that his life was empty.

He had spent the afternoon interviewing a prostitute who, under the guise of "researcher," claimed to have had regular access to the Houses of Parliament for paid sex romps with MPs.
Good God almighty! And this was news?
He despised the British thirst for sleaze which said more about the repressed sexuality of the average Briton than it ever did about the men and women whose peccadillos were splashed across the newspapers. In any case, he was sure the woman was lying (if not about the paid sex sessions then certainly about the regular access) because she hadn't known enough about the internal layout of the buildings. He was equally sure that JP, who was of the "never let the facts get in the way of a good story" school of journalism, would have him chasing the sordid little allegations for weeks in the hopes there was some truth in them.
AH, JESUS!
Was this all there was?

He put his depression down to Seasonal Adjusted Disorder-SADness-because he couldn't face the alternative of inherited insanity. Every damn thing that had ever gone wrong in his life had happened in bloody December. It couldn't be coincidence. His father had died in December, both his wives had abandoned him in December. He'd been sacked from
The Independent
in December. And why? Because he couldn't steer clear of the booze at Christmas and had punched his editor during a disagreement over copy. (If he wasn't careful he was going to punch JP over the very same issue.) In the summer, he was objective enough to recognize that he was caught in a vicious circle-things went wrong at Christmas because he was drunk, and he got drunk because things went wrong-but objectivity was always in rare supply when he most needed it.

He abandoned a congested Whitehall to drive up past the Palace. The bitter east wind of the past few days had turned to sleet and beyond the metronome clicking of his windshield wipers was a London geared for festivity. Signs of it were everywhere, in the brilliantly lit Norwegian spruce that annually supplanted Nelson's domination of Trafalgar Square, in the colored lights that decorated shops and offices, in the crowds that thronged the pavements. He viewed them all with a baleful eye and thought about what lay ahead of him when the office shut for Christmas.

Days of waiting for the bloody place to reopen. An empty flat. A desert.

JP decided the prostitute's story had "legs" and told him to rake as much muck as he could.

If there was any gaiety about the office party, then it was happening in another room. Feeling like a trespasser at some interminable wake, Deacon made a half-hearted pass at Lisa and was slapped down for his pains.

"Act your age," she said crossly. "You're old enough to be my father."

With a certain grim satisfaction, he set out to get very drunk indeed.
 

It was nearly midnight. Amanda Powell would have ignored the ringing of her doorbell if whoever was doing it had had the courtesy to remove his finger from the buzzer but after thirty seconds she went into the hall and peered through the spy hole. When she saw who it was, she glanced thoughtfully towards her stairs as if weighing the pros and cons of retreating up them, then opened the door twelve inches. "What do you want, Mr. Deacon?"

He shifted his hand from the bell to the door and leaned on it, pushing it wide, before lurching past her to collapse on a delicate wicker chair in the hall. He waved an arm towards the street. "I was passing." He made an effort to sound sober. "Seemed polite to say hello. It occurred to me you might be lonely, what with Mr. Streeter being away."

She looked at him for a moment then closed the door. "That's an extremely valuable antique you're sitting on," she said evenly. "I think it would be better if you came into the drawing room. The chairs in there aren't quite so fragile. I'll call for a taxi."

He rolled his eyes at her, making himself ridiculous. "You're a beautiful woman, Mrs. Streeter. Did James ever tell you that?"

"Over and over again. It saved him having to think of anything more original to say." She put a hand under his elbow and tried to lift him.

"It's really bad what he did," said Deacon, oblivious to the sarcasm. "You probably wonder what you did to deserve him." Whiskey gusted on his breath.

"Yes," she said, drawing her head away, "I do."

Tears bloomed in his eyes. "He didn't love you very much, did he?'' He put his hand over hers where it lay on his arm and stroked it clumsily. "Poor Amanda. I know what it's like, you see. It's very lonely when no one loves you."

With an abrupt movement, she curled the fingers of her other hand and dug her sharp nails in under his chin. "Are you going to get up before you break my chair, Mr. Deacon, or am I going to draw blood?"

"It's only money."

"Hard-earned money."

"That's not what John and Kenneth say." He leered at her. "They say it's stolen money, and that you and Nigel murdered poor old James to get it."

She kept up the pressure under his chin, forcing him to look at her. "And what do you say, Mr. Deacon?"

"
I
say you'd never have thought Billy was James if James was already dead."

Her face became suddenly impassive. "You're a clever man."

"I worked it out. There are five million women in London, but Billy chose you." He wagged a finger at her. "Now, why did he do that, Amanda, if he didn't know you? That's what I'd like to know."

Without warning, she got going with her nails again, and he focused rather unsuccessfully on the frosty blue eyes.

"You're so like my mother. She's beautiful, too." He struggled upright under the painful prodding of her fingers. "Not when she's angry, though. She's horrible when she's angry."

"So am I." Amanda drew him through the sitting-room door, then pushed him unceremoniously onto the sofa. "How did you get here?"

"I walked." He curled up on the sofa and laid his head on the arm.

"Why didn't you go home?"

"I wanted to come here."

"Well, you can't stay. I'll call a cab." She reached for the telephone. "Where do you live?"

"I don't live anywhere," he said into the cream leather. "I exist."

"You can't exist in my house."

But he could and he did, because he was already unconscious, and nothing on earth was going to wake him.
 

He opened his eyes on grey morning light and stared about him. He was so cold that he thought he was dying, but lethargy meant he did nothing about it. There was pleasure in passivity, none at all in action. A clock on a glass shelf gave the time as seven-thirty. He recognized the room as somewhere he knew, but couldn't remember whose it was or why he was there. He thought he could hear voices-
in his head?
-but the cold numbed his curiosity, and he slept again.
 

He dreamt he was drowning in a ferocious sea.

"Wake up! WAKE UP, YOU BASTARD!"

A hand slapped his cheek and he opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor, curled like a fetus, and his nose was filled with the putrid smell of decay. Bile rose in his throat. "Devourer of thy parents," he muttered. "Now thy unutterable torment renews."

"I thought you were dead," said Amanda.

For a moment, before memory returned, Deacon wondered who she was. "I'm wet," he said, touching the saturated neck of his shirt.

"I threw water over you." He saw the empty jug in her hand. "I've been rocking you and pushing you for ten minutes and you didn't stir." She looked very pale. "I thought you were dead," she said again.

"Dead men aren't frightening," he said in an odd tone of voice, "they're just messy." He struggled into a sitting position and buried his face in his hands. "What time is it?"

"Nine o'clock."

His stomach heaved. "I need a lavatory."

"Turn right and it's at the end of the hall." She stood aside to let him pass. "If you're going to be sick, could you make sure you wipe the bowl round afterwards with the brush? I tend to draw the line at cleaning up after uninvited guests."

As Deacon weaved along the corridor, he sought for explanations.
Dear God, what the hell was he doing here?

She had opened the windows and sprayed the room with air freshener by the time he returned. He looked slightly more presentable, having dried his face and straightened his clothes, but he had the shakes and his skin was the queasy grey of nausea. "There's nothing I can say to you," he managed from the doorway, "except sorry."

"What for?" She was sitting in the chair she'd sat in before, and Deacon was dazzled by how vibrant and colorful she was. Her hair and skin seemed to glow, and her dress fell in bright yellow folds about her calves, tumbling like a lemon pool onto the autumn leaves of the russet carpet.

Too much color.
It hurt his eyes, and he pressed on his lids with his fingertips. "I've embarrassed you."

"You may have embarrassed yourself, but you certainly haven't embarrassed me."

So cool, he thought.
Or so cruel?
He longed for kindness. "That's all right, then," he said weakly. "I'll say goodbye."

"You might as well drink your coffee before you go."

He longed for escape as well. The room smelt of roses again and he couldn't bring himself to intrude his rancid breath and rancid sweat into the scented air.
What had he said to her last night?
"To be honest, I'd rather leave now."

"I expect you would," she said with emphasis, "but at least show me the courtesy of drinking the coffee I made for you. It will be the politest thing you've done since you entered my house."

He came into the room but didn't sit down. "I'm sorry." He reached for the cup.

"Please-" she gestured towards the sofa-"make yourself comfortable. Or perhaps you'd prefer to have another go at breaking the antique chair in the hall?''

Had he been violent?
He gave a tentative smile. "I'm sorry."

"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that."

"What else can I say? I don't know what I'm doing here or why I came."

"And you think
I
do?"

He shook his head gently in order not to incite the nausea that was churning in his stomach. "This must seem very odd to you," he murmured lamely.

"Good
lord
, no," she said with leaden irony. "What on
earth
gives you that idea? It's quite the norm for me these days to find middle-aged drunks slumped in heaps on my floors. Billy chose the garage, you chose the drawing room. Same difference, except that you had the decency not to die on me." Her eyes narrowed, but whether in anger or puzzlement he couldn't tell. "Is there something about me and my house that encourages this sort of behavior, Mr. Deacon? And will you sit
down
, for Christ's sake," she snapped in sudden impatience. "It's very uncomfortable having you towering over me like this."

He lowered himself onto the arm of the sofa and tried to reknit the fabric of his tattered memory, but the effort was too much for him and his lips spread in a ghastly smile. "I think I'm going to be sick again."

She took a towel from behind her back and passed it over. "I find it's better to try and hang on, but you know where to go if you can't." She waited in silence for several seconds while he brought his nausea under control. "Why did you say you'd devoured your parents and that your unutterable torment was renewing? It seems an odd comment to make."

He looked at her blankly as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. "I don't know." He read irritation in her face. "I don't KNOW!" he said with a surge of anger. "I was confused. I didn't know where I was. Okay? Is that
allowed
in this house? Or does everyone have to be in control of himself at all bloody times?'' He bent his head and pressed the towel over his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said after a moment. "I didn't mean to be rude. The truth is, I'm struggling a bit here. I can't remember anything about last night."

"You arrived about twelve."

"Was I on my own?"

"Yes."

"Why did you let me in?"

"Because you wouldn't take your finger off the doorbell."

Sweet Jesus! What had he been thinking of?
"What else did I say?"

"That I reminded you of your mother."

He lowered the towel to his lap and set about folding it carefully. "Is that the reason I gave for being here?''

"No."

"What reason did I give?''

"You didn't." He looked at her with so much relief in his strained, sweaty face that she smiled briefly. "Instead you called me Mrs. Streeter, talked about my husband, my brother-in-law, and my father-in-law, and implied that this house and its contents came from the proceeds of theft."

Hell!
"Did I frighten you?"

"No," she said evenly, "I'm long past being frightened by anything."

He wondered why. Life itself frightened him. "Someone at the magazine recognized your face from when you were questioned at the time of James's disappearance," he said by way of explanation. "I was interested enough to follow it up."

The tic above her lip started working again, but she didn't say anything.

"John Streeter seemed an obvious person to talk to, so I telephoned him and heard his side of the story. He has-er-reservations about you."

"I wouldn't describe calling your sister-in-law a whore, a murderer, and a thief as 'having reservations,' but perhaps you're more worried about being sued than he is."

Deacon put the towel to his mouth again. He was in no condition for this conversation, he thought. He felt like something half-alive on a dissecting bench, waiting for the scalpel to slice through its gut. "You'd win huge damages if you took him to court," he told her. "He has no evidence for his accusations."

"Of course not. None of them are true."

He drained his coffee cup and put it on the table. '"Devourer of thy parent; now thy unutterable torment renews' is a line from William Blake," he said suddenly, as if he had been thinking about that and nothing else. "It's in one of his visionary poems about social revolution and political upheaval. The search for liberty means the destruction of established authority-in other words, the parent-and the push for freedom means every generation suffers the same torment." He stood up and looked towards the window and its view of the river. "William Blake-Billy Blake. Your uninvited guest was a fan of a poet who's been dead for nearly two hundred years. Why is this house so cold?" he asked abruptly, drawing his coat about him.