Echo

'I'm not sure. Someone said he was on cocaine.'

'Any idea how I can contact him?'

'He emigrated somewhere, but I don't think we have his address.'

Deacon penciled Mr. Merton in as someone to follow up after Christmas, alongside Nigel de Vriess.

It was the twenty-first of December, Deacon was crawling in a slow-moving traffic jam and his mood grew blacker as the compulsory office party drew nearer. God, how he loathed Christmas! It was the ultimate proof that his life was empty.

He had spent the afternoon interviewing a prostitute who, under the guise of 'researcher,' claimed to have had regular access to the Houses of Parliament for paid sex romps with MPs. Good God almighty! And this was news? He despised the British thirst for sleaze which said more about the repressed sexuality of the average Briton than it ever did about the men and women whose peccadillos were splashed across the newspapers. In any case, he was sure the woman was lying (if not about the paid sex sessions then certainly about the regular access) because she hadn't known enough about the internal layout of the buildings. He was equally sure that JP, who was of the 'never let the facts get in the way of a good story' school of journalism, would have him chasing the sordid little allegations for weeks in the hopes there was some truth in them. AH, JESUS! Was this all there was?

He put his depression down to Seasonal Adjusted Disorder-SADness-because he couldn't face the alternative of inherited insanity. Every damn thing that had ever gone wrong in his life had happened in bloody December. It couldn't be coincidence. His father had died in December, both his wives had abandoned him in December. He'd been sacked from The Independent in December. And why? Because he couldn't steer clear of the booze at Christmas and had punched his editor during a disagreement over copy. (If he wasn't careful he was going to punch JP over the very same issue.) In the summer, he was objective enough to recognize that he was caught in a vicious circle-things went wrong at Christmas because he was drunk, and he got drunk because things went wrong-but objectivity was always in rare supply when he most needed it.

He abandoned a congested Whitehall to drive up past the Palace. The bitter east wind of the past few days had turned to sleet and beyond the metronome clicking of his windshield wipers was a London geared for festivity. Signs of it were everywhere, in the brilliantly lit Norwegian spruce that annually supplanted Nelson's domination of Trafalgar Square, in the colored lights that decorated shops and offices, in the crowds that thronged the pavements. He viewed them all with a baleful eye and thought about what lay ahead of him when the office shut for Christmas.

Days of waiting for the bloody place to reopen. An empty flat. A desert.

JP decided the prostitute's story had 'legs' and told him to rake as much muck as he could.

If there was any gaiety about the office party, then it was happening in another room. Feeling like a trespasser at some interminable wake, Deacon made a half-hearted pass at Lisa and was slapped down for his pains.

'Act your age,' she said crossly. 'You're old enough to be my father.'

With a certain grim satisfaction, he set out to get very drunk indeed.

*7*

It was nearly midnight. Amanda Powell would have ignored the ringing of her doorbell if whoever was doing it had had the courtesy to remove his finger from the buzzer but after thirty seconds she went into the hall and peered through the spy hole. When she saw who it was, she glanced thoughtfully towards her stairs as if weighing the pros and cons of retreating up them, then opened the door twelve inches. 'What do you want, Mr. Deacon?'

He shifted his hand from the bell to the door and leaned on it, pushing it wide, before lurching past her to collapse on a delicate wicker chair in the hall. He waved an arm towards the street. 'I was passing.' He made an effort to sound sober. 'Seemed polite to say hello. It occurred to me you might be lonely, what with Mr. Streeter being away.'

She looked at him for a moment then closed the door. 'That's an extremely valuable antique you're sitting on,' she said evenly. 'I think it would be better if you came into the drawing room. The chairs in there aren't quite so fragile. I'll call for a taxi.'

He rolled his eyes at her, making himself ridiculous. 'You're a beautiful woman, Mrs. Streeter. Did James ever tell you that?'

'Over and over again. It saved him having to think of anything more original to say.' She put a hand under his elbow and tried to lift him.

'It's really bad what he did,' said Deacon, oblivious to the sarcasm. 'You probably wonder what you did to deserve him.' Whiskey gusted on his breath.

'Yes,' she said, drawing her head away, 'I do.'

Tears bloomed in his eyes. 'He didn't love you very much, did he?'' He put his hand over hers where it lay on his arm and stroked it clumsily. 'Poor Amanda. I know what it's like, you see. It's very lonely when no one loves you.'

With an abrupt movement, she curled the fingers of her other hand and dug her sharp nails in under his chin. 'Are you going to get up before you break my chair, Mr. Deacon, or am I going to draw blood?'

'It's only money.'

'Hard-earned money.'

'That's not what John and Kenneth say.' He leered at her. 'They say it's stolen money, and that you and Nigel murdered poor old James to get it.'

She kept up the pressure under his chin, forcing him to look at her. 'And what do you say, Mr. Deacon?'

'I say you'd never have thought Billy was James if James was already dead.'

Her face became suddenly impassive. 'You're a clever man.'