The Echo (22 page)

"Why didn't you?"

"Because he asked me not to."

"Yeah, but-" The boy's puzzled eyes searched Deacon's face. "Didn't you mind if he died? I was well gutted every time Billy tried to hurt himself. I mean you feel responsible like."

Deacon held his gaze for a moment then looked down at his glass. "It's a good expression-gutted. It's exactly how I felt when I heard the shot. And, yes, of course I minded, but I'd stopped him before, and this time he said he was going to do it anyway and would rather do it with my blessing than without. So I gave him my blessing." He shook his head. "I hoped he wouldn't go through with it, but I wanted him to know I wouldn't condemn him if he did."

"Yeah, but-" said Terry again. He was more disturbed by the story than Deacon would have expected, and he wondered if there were resonances in it of his friendship with Billy. Had Terry lied about Billy not trying to kill himself? he wondered. Or perhaps, like Deacon, he had lost interest and had aided and abetted a suicide through apathy?

"But what?" he asked.

"Why didn't you say something to your Mum, give her a chance like to stop him?"

He looked at his watch. "How about we leave that question till later?" he suggested. "We've still got food to buy, and I haven't settled what I'm going to do to Hugh's nose yet." He lit another cigarette and studied his brother-in-law through the smoke for a second or two. "Why didn't Emma throw the pieces of this will away when she found them?'' He smiled rather cynically at Hugh's expression. "Let me guess. She didn't realize he'd only left her twenty thousand until she'd stuck it back together again, by which time you and your girls had seen it, too."

"She was curious. She'd have brought it home, anyway. But, yes, she hoped-we both hoped-that he'd left her enough to wipe out the debt we owe your mother. As things stand, Penelope's used money that's rightfully yours, so we're actually in debt to you. And I swear to you, Michael, it's not money we even asked for. Your mother went on and on and on about how she wanted to do something for the only grandchildren she was going to have, then I mentioned one day that we were worried about Antonia's poor grades, and that was it. Penelope set up an educational trust and Antonia and Jessica were in private boarding school within a couple of months."

Deacon took that with a pinch of salt. Knowing Hugh and Emma, there would have been endless little hints until Penelope paid up. "Are they doing well?"

"Yes. Ant's doing A levels and Jesse's doing GCSEs." He rubbed a worried hand across his bald head. "The trust was set up to pay the equivalent of twelve years' schooling-five years for Ant because she was two years older when it started, and seven for Jesse-and they've already had nearly ten between them. We're talking a lot of money, Michael. You've probably no idea how expensive private boarding education is."

"Let me guess. Upwards of a hundred and fifty thousand so far?" He lifted an amused eyebrow. "You obviously didn't read my piece on selective education. I researched the whole subject in depth, including cost. Has it been money well spent?"

Hugh shrugged unhappily, forced to consider his daughters' merits. "They're very bright," he said, but Deacon had the impression he would like to have said they were nice. "We need to sort this out, Michael. Frankly, it's a nightmare. As I see it, the situation is this: Your mother deliberately tore up your father's will and stole her children's inheritance, for which she will be prosecuted if the whole thing's made public. She has materially altered your father's estate by selling the cottage in Cornwall and by setting up a trust fund for the girls. Against that, had you inherited what Francis left you, presumably Julia would have taken half its value in her divorce settlement and Clara would have taken half what was left in hers, leaving you with a quarter share of what you inherited. For all I know, they may still be entitled to do that." He raised his hands in a gesture of despair. "So where do we go from here? What do we do?"

"You've left out your resentment at paying through the nose for Ma's private nursing care," murmured Deacon. "Doesn't that play a part in this complicated equation?"

"Yes," Hugh admitted honestly. "We accepted the trust money in good faith, believing it to be a gift, but the quid pro quo seems to be that Emma and I must fork out indefinitely for a live-in nurse, which we can't afford. Your mother claims she's dying, which means the expenditure won't go on for very much longer, but her doctors say she's good for another ten years." He pressed finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. "I've tried to explain to her that if we could afford that level of private nursing care we wouldn't have had to use her money to pay the girls' school fees, but she won't listen to reason. She refuses to sell her nouse, refuses to come and live with us. She just makes sure the weekly bill is sent to our address." His voice hardened. "And it's driving me mad. If I thought I could get away with it, I'd have put a pillow over her mouth months ago and done us all a favor."

Deacon studied him curiously. "What do you expect me to achieve by talking to her? If she won't listen to you, she certainly won't listen to me."

Hugh sighed. "The obvious way out of the mess is for her to sell the farm, invest the capital, and move into a nursing home somewhere. But Emma thinks she's more likely to accept that suggestion if it comes from you."

"Particularly if I hold Pa's will over her head?"

Hugh nodded.

"It might work." Deacon reached for his coat and stood up. "Assuming I was remotely interested in helping you and Emma out of your hole. But I have a real problem understanding why you think you're entitled to so much of Pa's wealth. Here's an alternative suggestion. Sell your own house and pay Ma back what you owe her." His smile was not a friendly one. "At least it means you'll be able to look her in the eye the next time you call her a bitch."
 

Deacon selected a frozen turkey and chucked it into the supermarket cart. He had been like a bear with a sore head since they'd left the pub, and Terry had been careful not to antagonize him further since remarking in the car that it wasn't surprising Deacon's old man had shot himself if all the women in his family were such cows.

"What would you know about it?'' Deacon had asked in an icy voice. "Did Billy make life so difficult for you that no one wanted to know you? Would it have mattered anyway? You can't get much lower than the gutter in all conscience."

They hadn't spoken for half an hour, but now Deacon leaned on the cart and turned to the youngster. "I'm sorry, Terry. I was out of order. It doesn't matter how angry I was, it was no excuse for rudeness."

"It were true, though. You can't get no lower than the gutter, and it ain't rude to tell the truth."

Deacon smiled. "There's a lot lower than the gutter. There's the sewer and there's hell, and you're a long way from both." He straightened. "You're not in the gutter, either, not while you're under my roof, so choose your favorite foods and we'll eat like kings."

After five minutes, he returned to something that had been nagging at him. "Did Billy ever tell you how old he was?"

"Nope. All I know is, he was old enough to be my grandfather."

Deacon shook his head. "According to the pathologist, he was somewhere in his mid-forties. Not much older than me in fact."

Terry was genuinely astonished. He stood openmouthed with a box of cornflakes in his hand. "You've gotta be joking. Shit! He looked well ancient. I reckoned he was the same age as Tom, near enough, and Tom's sixty-eight."

"But he said it was good to be young in the seventies." He knocked the cornflakes out of the boy's hand into the cart. "And the seventies were only twenty years ago."

"Yeah, but I wasn't born then, was I?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"It means it was a long time ago."

"Why did Billy say truth was dead?" asked Deacon, as they drove home after packing the boot with food. "What's that got to do with a postcard?" He recalled a line from Billy's interview with Dr. Irvine:
"I am still searching for truth."

"How the hell should I know?"

Deacon held on to his patience with difficulty. "You lived with the man for two years on and off but, as far as I can see, you never questioned a single damn thing he said. Where was your curiosity? You ask
me
enough bloody questions."

"Yeah, but you answer them," said Terry, smoothing the front of his work jacket with satisfaction. "Billy got really angry if I said 'why' too many times, so I gave up asking. It wasn't worth the aggro."

"Presumably he said it in the present tense?"

"What?"

"Truth
is
dead so nothing matters anymore."

"Yeah. I already told you that."

"Another word for truth is 'verity,' " mused Deacon, gnawing at it like a dog with a bone. "Verity is a girl's name." He glanced sideways. "Do you think V stood for Verity? In other words when he said 'truth is dead' did he mean 'Verity is dead'?"
I am still searching for Verity?
"And don't say: 'how the hell should I know?' because I might be inclined to stop the car and ram the turkey down your throat."

"I'm not a fucking mind reader," said Terry plaintively. "If Billy said truth is dead, I reckon he meant truth is dead."

"Yes, but
why
!" growled Deacon. "Which truth was he talking about? Absolute truth, relative truth, plain truth, gospel truth? Or was he talking about one particular truth-say the murder-where the truth had never been uncovered?"

"How the-" Hastily Terry bit his tongue. "He didn't say."

"Then I'm going with V for Verity," said Deacon decisively. He drew up at a traffic light. "I'll go further. I'm betting she looked like the woman in Picasso's painting. Do you think that's a possibility? You said he loved the postcard and kissed it when he was drunk. Doesn't that imply she reminded him of someone?''

"Don't see why," said Terry matter-of-factly. "I mean one of the guys has a picture of Madonna. He's always slobbering over her, but in his wildest dreams he never had a bird like that. I reckon it's the only way he can get a hard-on."

Deacon let out the clutch. "There's a difference between a photograph of a living woman who enjoys exploiting male fantasies and a portrait painted nearly a hundred years ago."

"There probably wasn't at the time," said Terry, after giving the matter some serious thought. "I bet Picasso had a hard-on when he was painting his bird, and I bet he hoped other blokes'd get one, too, when they looked at her. I mean, you have to admit she's got nice tits."
 

1:OO p.m.-Cape Town, South Africa

"Who
is
that woman?" asked an elderly matron of her daughter, nodding towards the solitary figure at a window table. "I've seen her here before. She's always on her own, and she always looks as if she'd rather be somewhere else."

Her daughter followed her gaze. "Gerry was introduced to her once. I think her name's Felicity Metcalfe. Her husband owns a diamond mine, or something. She's absolutely rolling in it, anyway." She looked with some dissatisfaction on her small solitaire engagement ring.

"I've never seen her with a man."

The younger woman shrugged. "Maybe she's divorced. With a face like that, she's almost bound to be." She smiled unkindly. "You could cut diamonds with it."

Her mother subjected the lonely figure to a close scrutiny. "She is very thin," she agreed, "and rather sad, too, I think." She returned to her food. "It's true what they say, darling, money doesn't buy happiness."

"Neither does poverty," said her daughter rather bitterly.
 

While Terry decorated the flat that afternoon, Deacon sat at the kitchen table and made a stab at drawing conclusions from what little information he had. He threw out questions from time to time. Why did Billy choose to doss in the warehouse?
For the same reason as the rest of us, I guess.
Did he have a thing about rivers?
He never said.
Did he mention the name of a town where he might have lived?
No.
Did he mention a university or a profession or the name of a company he might have worked for?
I don't know any universities, so I wouldn 't know, would I?

"WELL, YOU BLOODY WELL SHOULD!" roared Deacon, losing his temper. "I have never met anyone who knows as little about what matters as you do."

Terry poked his head round the kitchen door with a broad grin splitting his face in two. "You'd be dead in a week if you had to live the way I do."

"Who says?"

"Me. Any guy who reckons the names of universities are more important than knowing how to graft for food ain't got a chance when the chips are down. What matters is staying alive, and you can't eat fucking universities. D'you want to see what I've done in here? It looks well brilliant."

He was right. After two years, Deacon's flat had a homey feel about it.

Deacon simplified his notes down to names, ages, places, and connecting ideas, and grouped them together logically on a piece of paper, putting Billy in the center. He propped the sheet against the wine bottle. "You're the artist. See if you can spot patterns. I'll help you with anything you can't manage." He crossed his arms and watched the boy scrutinize the page, reading words out loud every time Terry pointed a questioning finger.

"What's this hang-up with rivers?" Terry asked.

"Amanda said Billy liked to doss down as near the Thames as possible."

"Who told her that?"

Deacon checked through a transcript he'd made of his recorded conversation with her. "The police presumably."

"First I've heard of it. He really hated the river. He moaned about the damp getting into his bones, and said the water reminded him of blood."

"Why on earth should it remind him of blood?''

"I dunno. It was something to do with the river being the cord between the mother and the baby but I can't remember its name."

"The umbilical cord."

"That's it. He said London's full of shit, and she sends her shit along the river to infect the innocent places further down."