Echo

He watched her for several moments, fascinated by the play of expressions that crossed her face. He guessed that her look of unhappiness probably translated as deep despair for someone more demonstrative. 'If it's that important, why don't you hire a private detective?' he suggested.

'Have you any idea how much they charge?'

'You've explored the possibility then?'

She nodded. 'And I could never justify the expense. I was told it could take weeks, even months, and there's no guarantee of success at the end of it.'

'But we've already established that you're a rich woman, so who would you be justifying the expense to?'

A flicker of emotion-embarrassment?-crossed her face. 'Myself,' she said.

'Not your husband.'

'No.'

'Are you saying he wouldn't mind if you spent a fortune trying to trace a dead stranger's family?' The elusive Mr. Powell intrigued him.

She didn't say anything.

'You've already recognized Billy's worth by paying for his funeral. Why isn't that enough for you?'

'Because it's life that matters, not death.'

'That's not a good enough reason, or not for the kind of obsession you've developed.'

She laughed again, and the sound startled Deacon. It was pitched far too high, but he couldn't decide if it was drink-or fear?-that had introduced the note of hysteria. She made a visible effort to bring herself under control. 'You know about obsession, do you, Mr. Deacon?'

'I know there's something else to this story that you haven't told me. You seem to be going to extraordinary lengths to try to identify Billy Blake and trace his family. Almost,' he said thoughtfully, 'as if you felt under an obligation. I think you did speak to him, and I think he asked you to do something. Am I right?'

She stared through him with the same expression of disappointment that his mother had shown the last time he saw her. He had wished so often that he'd tried for a reconciliation then that he reached out now, in a strange, confused transposition, to do for a stranger what he hadn't done for Penelope. He put a sympathetic hand on Amanda's arm but her skin was cold and unresponsive to his touch, and if she noticed the gesture at all, she didn't show it.

Instead she leaned her head against the back of her chair to stare at the ceiling, and Deacon had a sense of doors closing and opportunities lost. 'Could you retrieve my garage keys when you return to your office?' she asked politely. 'Unless your friend is still out there, she's taken them with her.'

'What did he say to you, Amanda?'

She glanced at him for a moment, but there was only boredom in her eyes. He was no longer of any interest to her. 'I've wasted your time and mine, Mr. Deacon. I hope you find a taxi without too much trouble. It's usually easier if you turn left out of the entrance to the estate and walk up to the main road.'

He wished he was better at reading a woman's character. He was sure she was lying to him, but women had lied to, him for years and he had never known when they were doing it.

There was a note with the two sets of keys at the front desk. What a cow! Hope she didn 't eat you alive after I left. I put her stupid keys in my pocket and forgot about them. Here they are with your car keys. Thought you should return them rather than me! If you're interested, I left the film with Barry. He said he'll develop it tonight. See you tomorrow. Love, Lisa.

Deacon decided he was in no hurry, and wandered up to the third floor where Barry Grover doubled as film processor and archives' librarian. He was a somewhat pathetic character in his early thirties, very much a loner, short, potbellied, and bug-eyed behind magnifying lenses, who pored over the picture cuttings in his library with the avidity of a collector, and haunted the offices till all hours in preference to going home. The female staff avoided him wherever possible and invented malicious gossip behind his back. Over the years they had described him variously, and always with conviction, as a pedophile, a Peeping Tom, or a flasher, because it was the only way they could account for his infatuation with pictures. Deacon, who found him as unsympathetic as the women did, nevertheless felt sorry for him. Barry's was a peculiarly barren life.

'Still here?' he said with false bonhomie, as he shouldered open the door and caught the man bent over a newspaper clipping on his desk.

'As you say, Mike.'

He propped a buttock on the edge of the desk. 'Lisa told me you were developing her film. I thought I'd drop in to see how it turned out.'

'I'll get the contact sheets for you.' Barry scuttled hurriedly out of the room like a fleshy white cockroach, and Deacon, watching him critically, decided it was the way he moved that set people's teeth on edge. There was something very effeminate about the rapid little steps he took, and he wondered, not for the first time, if Barry's problem had more to do with unresolved homosexuality than the heterosexual perversions of which the women accused him.

He lit a cigarette and turned the clipping that Barry had been reading towards himself.

The Guardian * 6th May, 1990

  BANKER'S WIFE RELEASED

Amanda Streeter, 31, was released without charge yesterday following two days of police questioning. 'We are satisfied,' said a police spokesman, 'that Mrs. Streeter was not implicated in the theft of ten million pounds from Lowenstein's Merchant Bank, nor has any knowledge of her husband's whereabouts.' He confirmed that James Streeter, 38, is believed to have left the country sometime during the night of 27th April. 'His description has been circulated around the world and we expect him to be found within days. As soon as we are notified of where he is, extradition procedures will begin.'

Amanda Streeter's solicitor issued the following statement to the press. 'Mrs. Streeter has been deeply