The Echo (3 page)

Pearce prowled across to the window and stared down on a wet, grey Fleet Street where cars crawled bumper-to-bumper in the driving rain and the odd window showed an ephemeral gaiety with lighted Christmas trees and sprayed-on snow. More than ever he had a sense of chapters ending. "What sort of solutions?"

Deacon searched through a pile of papers on his desk and removed a typed sheet. "The consensus sort. I've taken views from politicians, religious leaders, and different social lobby groups to assess how the picture's changed in the last twenty years." He consulted the page. "There's across-the-board agreement that the figures on family breakdown, teenage drug and drink addiction, and teenage pregnancies are alarming, and I'm using that agreement as a starting point."

"Boring, Mike. Tell me something new." He watched a progression of raised black umbrellas pass below the window, and he was reminded of all the funerals he'd attended over the years.

Deacon took in a lungful of smoke as he studied JP's back. "Like what?"

"Tell me you've got a statement from a government minister saying all single mothers should be sterilized. Then maybe I'll let you off your interview with Mrs. Powell. Have you?" His breath misted the glass.

"No," said Deacon evenly. "Oddly enough I couldn't find a single mainstream politician who was that stupid." He squared the papers on his desk. "How about this for a quote? The poor are always with us, and the only way to deal with them is to love them."

Pearce turned round. "Who said that?"

"Jesus Christ."

"Is that supposed to be funny?"

Deacon gave an indifferent shrug. "Not particularly. Thought-provoking, perhaps. In two thousand years no one's come up with a better solution. Certainly no politician anywhere at any time has managed to crack the problem. Like it or not, even communism has its share of paupers."

"We're a political magazine, not an apologist for born-again Christianity," said JP coldly. "If mud-slinging offends you so much then you should have kept your job on
The Independent
. Think about that the next time you tell me you don't want to get your hands dirty."

Thoughtfully, Deacon blew a smoke ring into the air above his head. "You can't afford to sack me," he murmured. "It's my byline that's keeping this rag afloat. You know as well as I do that, until the tabloids raided my piece on the health service for scare stories about chaos in the A and E departments, ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of the adult population of this country had no idea
The Street
was still being published. I'm a necessary evil as far as you're concerned."

This was no exaggeration. In the ten months since Deacon had joined the staff, the circulation figures had begun to show a modest increase after fifteen years of steady decline. Even so, they were still only a third of what they had been in the late seventies and early eighties. It would require something more radical to revitalize
The Street
than the occasional publicity that one writer could generate, and in Deacon's view that meant a new editor with new ideas-a fact of which JP was very aware.

His smile held all the warmth of a rattlesnake's. "If you'd written that story the way I told you to,
we
would have benefited from the scare stories and not the sodding tabloids. Why the hell did you have to be so coy about identifying the two children involved?"

"Because I gave my word to their parents.
And
-" said Deacon with heavy emphasis-"I do not believe in using pictures of severely damaged children to sell copy."

"They were used anyway."

Yes, thought Deacon, and it still made him angry. He had taken great pains to keep the two families anonymous, but checkbook journalism had seduced neighbors and friends into talking. "Not because of anything I did," he said.

"That's mealy-mouthed crap. You knew damn well it was only a matter of time before someone sold out."

"I
should
have known," corrected Deacon, squinting through the smoke from his cigarette. "God knows I've spent enough time listening to your views on the subject. You'd sell your Granny down the river for one more reader on the mailing list."

"You're an ungrateful bastard, Mike. Loyalty's a oneway street with you, isn't it? Do you remember coming here and begging me for a job when Malcolm Retter bad-mouthed you round the industry? You'd been out of work for two months and it was doing your head in." He leveled an accusing finger at the younger man. "Who took you on? Who prised you out of your flat and gave you something to think about other than the self-induced misery of your personal life?"

"You did."

"Right. So give me something in return. Smarten yourself up, and go chase pictures and quotes off a fat Tory. Put some spice into this article of yours." He slammed the door as he left.

Deacon was half-inclined to pursue his irascible little boss and tell him that Malcolm Fletter had offered him his job back on
The Independent
less than two weeks previously, however he was too softhearted to do it. JP wasn't the only one who had a sense of chapters ending.
 

Lisa Smith whistled appreciatively when Deacon met her outside the offices at seven-thirty. "You look great. What's the occasion? Getting married again?"

He took her arm and steered her towards his car. "Take my advice, Smith, and keep your mouth shut. I'm sure the last thing you want to do is rub salt in raw wounds. You're far too sweet and far too caring to do anything so crass."

She was a beautiful, boisterous twenty-four-year-old, with a cloud of fuzzy dark hair and an attentive boyfriend. Deacon had lusted after her for months, but was too canny to let her know it. He feared rejection. More particularly he feared being told he was old enough to be her father. At forty-two, he was increasingly aware that he'd been abusing his body far too long and far too recklessly. What had once been lean, hard muscle had converted itself into alcoholic ripples that lurked beneath his waistband and escaped detection only because pleated chinos disguised what skintight jeans had formerly enhanced.

"But you're a different man when you take a little trouble, Deacon," she said with apparent sincerity. "The
enfant terrible
image was quite sweet in the sixties, but hardly something to cultivate into the nineties."

He unlocked the doors and waited while she stowed her equipment on the backseat before folding her long legs into the front. "How's Craig?" he asked, climbing in beside her.

She displayed a diamond ring on her engagement finger. "We're getting married."

He fired the engine and drew out into the traffic. "Why?"

"Because we want to."

"That's no reason for doing anything. I want to screw twenty women a night but I value my sanity too much to do it."

"It's not your sanity that would crack, Deacon, it's your self-esteem. You'd never find twenty women who were that desperate."

He grinned. "I wanted to marry both of my wives until I'd gone through with it and discovered they paid more attention to my bank statements than they did to my body."

"Thanks."

"What for?"

"The congratulations and the good wishes for my future."

"I'm merely being practical."

"No you're not." She bared her teeth at him. "You're being bitter-as usual. Craig is very different from you. Mike. For a start, he likes women."

"I
love
women."

"Yes," she agreed, "that's your problem. You don't
like
them but you sure as hell love them as long as you think there's a chance of getting them into bed." She lit a cigarette and opened her window. "Has it never occurred to you that if you'd actually been friends with either of your wives you'd probably still be married?"

"Now
you're
sounding bitter," he said, heading towards Blackfriars Bridge.

"I'm merely being practical," she murmured. "I don't want to end up as lonely as you." She held the tip of her cigarette to the crack in the window and let the slipstream suck out the ash. "So what's the MO for this evening? JP says he wants me to capture this woman's emotions while you ask her about some dead wino she found in her garage."

"That's the plan."

"What's she like?"

"I've no idea," said Deacon. "The nationals ran the story in June but, bar her name which is Mrs. Powell and her address which is expensive, there were no other details. She did a vanishing act before the rat pack arrived and, by the time she came back, the story was dead. JP's hoping for late fifties, immaculate grooming, strong right-wing political affiliations, and a husband who's a stockbroker."
 

Mrs. Powell was certainly immaculately groomed but she was twenty years short of late fifties. She was also far too controlled ever to display the sort of emotions that Lisa was hoping for. She greeted them with a brisk, professional courtesy before showing them into an impeccable sitting room, which smelled of rose-petal potpourri and had the clean, spare look of designer minimalism. She clearly liked space, and Deacon rather approved of the cream leather and chrome chairs and sofa that formed an island about a low glass coffee table in the middle of a russet-colored carpet. Beyond them an expanse of window, framed by draped, but undrawn, curtains, looked across the Thames to the lights on the other side. There was very little else in the room: only a series of glass shelves above tinted glass cabinets which clearly contained a stereo system; and three canvasses-one white, one grey, and one black-which adorned the wall opposite the shelves.

He nodded towards them. "What are they called?"

"The title's in French.
Gravure a la maniere noire
. It means mezzotint in English. They're by Henri Benoit."

"Interesting," he said, glancing at her, although it wasn't clear if he was referring to the canvasses or to the woman herself.

In fact, he was thinking that her taste in interior design sat rather oddly with her choice of house. It was an uninteresting brick box on a new estate in the Isle of Dogs which would probably be billed in estate agents' jargon as "an exclusive development of detached executive homes with views of the river." He guessed the house to be about five years old, with three bedrooms and two reception rooms, and put its value at well outside an average price range. But why, he wondered, would an obviously wealthy woman with interesting taste choose something so characterless when, for the equivalent money, she could have had a spacious flat anywhere in the heart of London? Perhaps she liked detached houses, he thought rather cynically. Or views of the river. Or perhaps
Mr.
Powell had chosen it.

"Do sit down," she said gesturing towards the sofa. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"Thank you," said Lisa, who'd taken an instant dislike to her. "Black coffee would be nice." In the scheme of feminine competition, Mrs. Powell oozed success. She appeared to have everything-even femininity-and Lisa looked around for something to criticize.

"Mr. Deacon?"

"Do you have anything stronger?"

"'Of course. Whisky, brandy, beer?"

"Red wine?" he suggested hopefully.

"I've a 1984 Rioja open. Would that do?"

"It would. Thank you very much."

Mrs. Powell disappeared down the corridor, and they heard her filling the kettle in the kitchen.

"What's with black coffee, Smith," murmured Deacon, "when there's alcohol on offer?"

"I thought we were supposed to be behaving ourselves," she whispered. "And, for Christ's sake, don't start smoking. There are no ashtrays. I've already looked. I don't want you putting her back up before she agrees to the photographs."

He watched her critical appraisal of the room. "What's the verdict?"

"JP was right about everything except her age and her husband.
She's
the stockbroker. I'll bet the Mrs. is a courtesy title to give her some status in a male-dominated world. There's no sign of a man living here. It's all too uncomfortable and it doesn't half stink of roses. She probably sprayed the room before we arrived." She turned her mouth down. "I hate women who do that. It's a kind of one-upmanship. They want to prove their house is cleaner than yours."

He lifted an amused eyebrow. "Are you jealous?"

"What's to be jealous of>" she hissed.

"Success," he murmured, holding a finger to his lips as they heard Mrs. Powell returning.

"If you want to smoke," she said, passing a coffee cup to Lisa and a glass of red wine to Deacon, "I'll find you an ashtray." She put her own wineglass on the table near an armchair and looked at them both.

"No thank you," said Lisa, thinking of JP's instruction.

"Yes, please," said Deacon, doubting he could stand the scent of rose petals for an hour. He wished Lisa hadn't mentioned them. Once noticed, the smell was cloying, and he was reminded of the second Mrs. Deacon who had plundered his very mediocre fortune in order to douse herself in Chanel No. 5. It had been the shorter of his two marriages, lasting a mere three years before Clara had cleared off with a twenty-year-old boy toy and rather too much of her husband's capital. He took the china saucer Mrs. Powell handed him, then placed a cigarette between his lips and lit it. The smell of burning tobacco immediately swamped the roses, and Deacon felt guilt and satisfaction in equal measures. He left the cigarette jutting from his mouth as he took a tape recorder and a notebook from his pocket and placed them on the table in front of him. "Do you mind if I record what you say?"

"No."

He set the tape in motion and reluctantly broached the subject of photographs. "We'd like a small visual to accompany the piece, Mrs. Powell, so have you any objections to Lisa photographing you?"

She stared at him as she sat down. "Why would you want photographs of me if you're planning to write about Billy Blake, Mr. Deacon?"

Why indeed?
"Because in the absence of pictures of Billy, which we've established don't exist," he lied, transferring the cigarette to the ashtray, "I'm afraid you're the next best thing. Is that a problem for you?"

"Yes," she said flatly. "I'm afraid it is. I've already told you I have no intention of being used by your magazine."