Echo

'They're love letters. Rather beautiful love letters in fact. Do you want to hear them?' He took Terry's shrug for assent and read the words aloud. He waited for a reaction when he'd finished, but didn't get one. 'Did you ever hear him talking about someone whose name began with ' V ?' he asked then. 'It sounds as if she was a lot younger than he was.'

The boy didn't answer immediately. 'Whoever she is, I bet she's dead,' he said. 'Billy told me once that hell was being left alone forever and not being able to do nothing about it, and then he started to cry. He said it always made him cry to think of someone being that lonely, but I guess he was really crying for this lady. That's sad, isn't it?'

'Yes,'' said Deacon slowly, 'but I wonder why he thought she was in hell.' He read through the letters again but found nothing to account for Billy's certainty about V's fate.

'He reckoned he'd go to hell. He kind of looked forward to it in a funny sort of way. He said he deserved all the punishment the gods could throw at him.'

'Because he was a murderer?'

'I guess so. He went on and on about life being a holy gift. It used to drive Tom up the wall. He'd say-'he fell into a fair imitation of Tom's cockney accent-' 'If it's so effin' 'oly, what the fuck are we doing livin' in this soddin' 'ell of a cesspit?' And Billy'd say-' Terry now adopted a classier tone-' 'You are here by choice because your gift included free will. Decide now whether you seek to bring the gods' anger upon your heads. If the answer's no, then choose a wiser course.' '

Deacon chuckled. 'Is that what he actually said?'

'Sure. I used to say it for him sometimes when he was too pissed to say it himself.' He returned to his mimicking of Billy's voice. ' 'You are here by choice because your gift included free will.' Blah-blah-blah. He were a bit of a pillock really, couldn't see when he was annoying people. Or if he did, he didn't care. Then he'd get rat- arsed and start yelling, and that was worse because we couldn't understand what he was on about.'

Deacon fetched another two beer cans from the fridge, and chucked the empties into the bin. 'Do you remember him saying anything about repentance?'' he asked, propping himself against the kitchen worktop.

'Is that the same as repent?'

'Yes.'

'He used to shout that a lot. 'Repent! Repent! Repent! The hour is later than you think!' He did it that time he took all his clothes off in the middle of the fucking winter. 'Repent! Repent! Repent!' he kept screaming.'

'Do you know what repentance is?'

'Yeah. Saying sorry.'

Deacon nodded. 'Then why didn't Billy follow his own advice and say sorry for this murder. He'd have been looking to heaven then instead of hell.' Except that he'd told the psychiatrist his own redemption didn't interest him...

Terry pondered this for some time. 'I get what you're saying,' he declared finally, 'but, see, I never thought about it before. The trouble with Billy was he was-well-noisy most of the time, and it did your head in to listen to him. And he only spoke about the murder once, when he were really worked up about something.' His eyes screwed in concentrated reflection. 'In any case, he stuck his hand in the fire straight afterwards and wouldn't take it out till we all pulled him off of it, so I guess no one thought to ask why he didn't repent himself.' He shrugged. 'I expect it's quite simple. I expect it was his fault his lady went to hell, so he felt he ought to go there, too. Poor bitch.'

Deacon remembered his suspicions the first time he heard this story, when it was obvious to him that Terry was relating an incident that the other men at the warehouse knew nothing about. They had recalled the hand in the fire, but not the revelations of murder. 'Or maybe there was nothing to repent,' he suggested. 'Another way to go to hell is to destroy the gods' gift of life by killing yourself. For centuries, suicides were buried in wasteland to demonstrate that they had put themselves beyond the reach of God's mercy. Isn't that the path Billy was taking?'

'You asked me that one already, and I already told you, Billy never tried to kill himself.'

'He starved himself to death.'

'Nah. He just forgot to eat. That's different, that is. He were too drunk most of the time to know what he was doing.'

Deacon thought back. 'You said he strangled someone because the gods had written it in his fate. Were those the actual words he used?'

'I can't remember.'

'Try.'

'It were that or something like it.'

Deacon looked skeptical. 'You also said he burnt his hand as a sacrifice to direct the gods' anger somewhere else. But why would he do that if he wanted to go to hell?''

'Jesus!' said Terry in disgust. 'How should I know? The guy was a nutter.'

'Except your definition of a nutter isn't the same as mine,' said Deacon impatiently. 'Didn't it occur to you that Billy was ranting and raving all the time because he was with a bunch of bozos who couldn't follow a single damn word he was saying? I'm not surprised he was driven to drink.'

'It wasn't our fault,' said the boy sullenly. 'We did our best for the miserable sod, and it wasn't easy keeping our cool when he was having a go at us.'

'All right, try this question. You said he was worked up about something just before he told you he was a murderer, so what was he worked up about?''

Terry didn't answer.

'Was it something personal between you and him?' said Deacon with sudden intuition. 'Is that why the others didn't know about it?' He waited for a moment. 'What happened? Did you have a fight? Perhaps he tried to strangle