Echo

warehouse about a mile from here. I've talked to some of the other old men who use it, but none of them admitted to knowing anything about Billy's history.'

Deacon was impressed by the extent of her interest and effort. 'What did you mean by 'his fingerprints, such as they were'?'

'The police said he'd burnt his hands in a fire at some time and left them to heal on their own. Both were so badly scarred that his fingers were like claws. They think he may have mutilated himself deliberately to avoid some previous crime catching up with him.'

'Shit!' he said unguardedly.

She stood up and walked over to the glass cabinet on the far wall. 'As I said earlier, there are photographs of him.' She took an envelope from a shelf inside and came back with it, slipping the contents into her hand. 'I persuaded the police to give me two of them. This is the best they had out of the batch the pathologist took. It's not very pleasant, and they say it's doubtful anyone would recognize him from it.' She handed it across. 'His face is very shrunken from lack of food, and because his forehead and jaw were so pronounced, it's likely that he was much fuller faced when he was healthy.'

Deacon examined the picture. She was right. It wasn't very pleasant. He was reminded of the corpses piled high inside Bergen-Belsen when the Allies liberated it. The face was almost fleshless, so tightly was the skin drawn across the bones. She handed him the other photograph. 'That's the one that was taken four years ago when he was first arrested. But it's not much better. He was skeletal even then, although it gives a slightly clearer idea of what he might have looked like.'

Could this really be the face of a forty-one-year-old? Deacon wondered. Old age had scored itself into deep lines round the mouth, and the eyes that looked into the camera were faded and yellow. Only the hair had any vitality where it sprang up from the high forehead, although its whiteness was startling against the sallowness of the complexion. 'Could the pathologist have been wrong about his age?' he asked.

'Apparently not. I understand he took a second opinion when the police didn't believe him. It did occur to me,' she went on, 'that someone with the right computer software might be able to build on the images, but I don't know anyone who specializes in that area. If your magazine could do it, it would make a far better visual accompaniment to your article than the picture of me.'

'Why haven't the police done that?'

'He didn't commit a crime before he died, so they're not interested. I believe they put his description on to a missing person's computer file but it didn't match with anyone, so they've written him off.'

'Can I borrow these? We'll have some negatives made and then I can let you have them back.' He tucked the photographs between the pages of his notebook when she nodded agreement. 'Did the police ever come up with any other explanation for why he chose your garage, apart from the door being open on the day he went into it?'

She sat down again and folded her hands in her lap. Deacon was surprised to see how whitely her knuckles shone. 'They thought he might have followed me home from work, although they never produced a valid reason for why he might have wanted to do that. If he'd singled me out as someone worth following, then he'd have asked me for help. Would you agree with that?' She was appealing to him on an intellectual level, but Deacon was more inclined to respond to the tic of anxiety that fluttered at the corner of her mouth. He hadn't noticed it before. He was beginning to understand that her composure was a surface thing and that something far more turbulent was at work underneath.

'Yes,' he said. 'There's no sense in following you without a reason. So? Could there have been another reason?'

'Like what?'

'Perhaps he thought he recognized you.'

'As whom?'

'I don't know.'

'Wouldn't he have been even more likely to speak to me if he thought he knew me?' She darted the question at him so quickly that he guessed it was one she had asked herself many times.

Deacon scratched his jaw. 'Maybe he was too far gone by then to do anything other than collapse and die. Where exactly is your office?'

'Two hundred yards from the derelict warehouse where Billy used to bed down. The whole area's up for redevelopment. W. F. Meredith rents office space in a warehouse which was refurbished three years ago during the first phase. The police felt the proximity of the buildings was too much of a coincidence, but I'm not sure I agree with them. Two hundred yards is a long way in a city like London.' She looked unhappy and he guessed she found this argument less convincing than she claimed.

He lifted the pages of his notebook to study the skull's-head photograph again. 'Was this house a Meredith construction?' he asked without looking up. 'Did you get a discount on it because you're part of the firm?'

She didn't answer immediately. 'I don't think that's any of your business,' she said then.

He gave a low laugh. 'Probably not, but a place like this costs a fortune, and you haven't exactly stinted on the furnishings. You're not short of a bob or two if you can afford all this and shell out four hundred pounds on an unknown man's cremation. I'm curious, Amanda. You're either a very successful architect or you have another source of income.'

'As I said, Mr. Deacon, it's none of your business.'

Briefly the drink slurred her words again. 'Shall we go back to Billy?'

He shrugged. 'Presumably you'd have noticed anyone like this watching you?' he asked her, tapping the celluloid face.

She straightened slowly, a troubled expression on her face. 'No, I don't think I would.'

'How could you have missed him?'

'By avoiding eye contact,' she admitted reluctantly. 'It's the only way to escape being pestered. Even if I do