She nodded. Click. 'If I'd met him as a beggar in the street, I'd have thought I was being generous if I gave him five pounds.' Click. Click. She glanced with irritation at Lisa, looked as if she were about to say something, then thought better of it. Her face took on its closed expression again.
'You said yesterday that you felt you owed him something. What exactly?'
'Respect, I suppose.'
'Because you felt he hadn't been shown any in life?'
'Something like that,' she admitted. 'But it sounds ridiculously sentimental when it's put into words.'
He wrote for a moment. 'Do you have a religion?'
She turned away as another flash exploded in her eyes. 'Surely she's taken enough by now?'
Lisa kept the camera lens on her face. 'Just a couple more shots with the eyes cast down, Amanda.' Click. 'Yes, that's really nice, Amanda.' Click. 'More compassion maybe.' Click. 'Great, Amanda.' Click, click, click.
Deacon watched increasing irritation gather in the woman's eyes. 'All right, Smith. Let's call a halt, shall we?'
'How about a few more in the garage?' suggested the girl, reluctant to waste the end of the film. 'It won't take a minute.'
Mrs. Powell stared into the blood-red depths of her glass before taking a sip. 'Be my guest,' she said without raising her head. 'The keys are on the table in the hall, and the light comes on automatically when the garage door is lifted. I don't use the connecting door anymore.'
'I meant a few more of you,' said Lisa. 'I'll need you to come with me. If it's cold and damp out there a few atmospheric shots could be really good. More in tune with a wino dying of starvation.'
The woman's stillness following this remark persuaded Lisa she hadn't been listening. She tried again. 'Five minutes, Amanda, that's all we'll need. You might like to stand near where you found him, look a bit upset, that sort of thing.'
The only sound in the room was the ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece, and it grew louder as Mrs. Powell's silence lengthened. She seemed to Deacon to be waiting for something, and he held his breath and waited with her. It startled him to hear her speak. 'I'm sorry,' she said to the girl, 'but you and I are very different animals. I could no more pose weepy-eyed over where Billy died than I could wear your fuck-me clothes or your fuck-me makeup. You see, I'm neither so vulgar nor so desperate to be noticed.'
There were too many sibilants in the last sentence, and her careful diction abandoned her. With a slight shock, Deacon realized she was drunk.
*3*
It was dangerous to allow a silence to go on too long. The impact of her words did not diminish in a vacuum, instead they grew and gained in authority. Deacon was drawn to see Lisa through her eyes, and he was struck by how appropriate her description of the girl was. Compared with the snow queen in the chair opposite, Lisa's outlined pouting lips and bottom-hugging skirt were blatantly provocative, and he felt himself belittled to have lusted after her so long in silence when lust was what she was inviting. He saw himself as one of Pavlov's dogs, lured into salivating every time his greed was stimulated, and the idea offended him.
He took his keys from his pocket and suggested that Lisa use the car to drive herself back to the office with her equipment. 'I'll grab a taxi when I'm through,' he said. 'Leave the keys with Glen at the front desk and I'll pick them up from him.'
She nodded, glad of an excuse to leave, and immediately he regretted his perfidy. It wasn't a crime to display bright plumage, rather it was a celebration of youth. She left the camera out as she repacked the case, then with a curt nod in the older woman's direction let herself out of the sitting-room door.
They both heard the rattle of garage keys being lifted from the hall table. Amanda sighed. 'I was rude to her. I'm sorry. I find it hard to treat Billy's death quite as casually as you and she do.' She examined her glass for a moment, as if aware that she'd given herself away, then abandoned it on the coffee table.
'You certainly seem to take it very personally.'
'He died on my property.'
'That doesn't make you responsible for him.'
She looked at him rather blankly. 'Then who is responsible?'
The question was simplistic--it was what a child would ask. 'Billy himself,' said Deacon. 'He was old enough to make his own choices in life.'
She shook her head then leaned forward, searching his face earnestly. 'You said yesterday that you were moved by Billy's story, so could we talk about his life instead of his death? I know I said there was nothing I could tell you, but that wasn't strictly accurate. I know at least as much as the police do.'
'I'm listening.'
'According to the pathologist, he was forty-five years old, six feet tall, and although his hair was completely white when he died, it would have been dark. He was first arrested four years ago for stealing some bread and ham from a high-street supermarket, and he gave his name as Billy Blake and his age as sixty-one which, if the pathologist is right, was twenty years older than his actual age.' She spoke quickly and fluently, as if she had spent a long time preparing the facts for just such a presentation. 'He said he'd been living rough for ten years, but refused to give any other information. He wouldn't say where he came from and he wouldn't say if he had a family. The police checked Missing Persons in London and the South East, but nobody of his description had been reported missing in the previous ten years. His fingerprints, such as they were, weren't in the police files and he had nothing on him that could establish his identity. In the absence of any other information, the police recorded the details he gave them and for the next four years he lived and subsequently died as Billy Blake. He spent a total of six months in prison for stealing food or alcohol, with each sentence amounting to a one- or two-month stretch, and he preferred to bed down as near to the Thames as possible when he was out. His favorite pitch was a derelict
