Echo

'I'm not a fucking mind reader,' said Terry plaintively. 'If Billy said truth is dead, I reckon he meant truth is dead.'

'Yes, but why!' growled Deacon. 'Which truth was he talking about? Absolute truth, relative truth, plain truth, gospel truth? Or was he talking about one particular truth-say the murder-where the truth had never been uncovered?'

'How the-' Hastily Terry bit his tongue. 'He didn't say.'

'Then I'm going with V for Verity,' said Deacon decisively. He drew up at a traffic light. 'I'll go further. I'm betting she looked like the woman in Picasso's painting. Do you think that's a possibility? You said he loved the postcard and kissed it when he was drunk. Doesn't that imply she reminded him of someone?''

'Don't see why,' said Terry matter-of-factly. 'I mean one of the guys has a picture of Madonna. He's always slobbering over her, but in his wildest dreams he never had a bird like that. I reckon it's the only way he can get a hard-on.'

Deacon let out the clutch. 'There's a difference between a photograph of a living woman who enjoys exploiting male fantasies and a portrait painted nearly a hundred years ago.'

'There probably wasn't at the time,' said Terry, after giving the matter some serious thought. 'I bet Picasso had a hard-on when he was painting his bird, and I bet he hoped other blokes'd get one, too, when they looked at her. I mean, you have to admit she's got nice tits.'

1:OO p.m.-Cape Town, South Africa

'Who is that woman?' asked an elderly matron of her daughter, nodding towards the solitary figure at a window table. 'I've seen her here before. She's always on her own, and she always looks as if she'd rather be somewhere else.'

Her daughter followed her gaze. 'Gerry was introduced to her once. I think her name's Felicity Metcalfe. Her husband owns a diamond mine, or something. She's absolutely rolling in it, anyway.' She looked with some dissatisfaction on her small solitaire engagement ring.

'I've never seen her with a man.'

The younger woman shrugged. 'Maybe she's divorced. With a face like that, she's almost bound to be.' She smiled unkindly. 'You could cut diamonds with it.'

Her mother subjected the lonely figure to a close scrutiny. 'She is very thin,' she agreed, 'and rather sad, too, I think.' She returned to her food. 'It's true what they say, darling, money doesn't buy happiness.'

'Neither does poverty,' said her daughter rather bitterly.

While Terry decorated the flat that afternoon, Deacon sat at the kitchen table and made a stab at drawing conclusions from what little information he had. He threw out questions from time to time. Why did Billy choose to doss in the warehouse? For the same reason as the rest of us, I guess. Did he have a thing about rivers? He never said. Did he mention the name of a town where he might have lived? No. Did he mention a university or a profession or the name of a company he might have worked for? I don't know any universities, so I wouldn 't know, would I?

'WELL, YOU BLOODY WELL SHOULD!' roared Deacon, losing his temper. 'I have never met anyone who knows as little about what matters as you do.'

Terry poked his head round the kitchen door with a broad grin splitting his face in two. 'You'd be dead in a week if you had to live the way I do.'

'Who says?'

'Me. Any guy who reckons the names of universities are more important than knowing how to graft for food ain't got a chance when the chips are down. What matters is staying alive, and you can't eat fucking universities. D'you want to see what I've done in here? It looks well brilliant.'

He was right. After two years, Deacon's flat had a homey feel about it.

Deacon simplified his notes down to names, ages, places, and connecting ideas, and grouped them together logically on a piece of paper, putting Billy in the center. He propped the sheet against the wine bottle. 'You're the artist. See if you can spot patterns. I'll help you with anything you can't manage.' He crossed his arms and watched the boy scrutinize the page, reading words out loud every time Terry pointed a questioning finger.

'What's this hang-up with rivers?' Terry asked.

'Amanda said Billy liked to doss down as near the Thames as possible.'

'Who told her that?'

Deacon checked through a transcript he'd made of his recorded conversation with her. 'The police presumably.'

'First I've heard of it. He really hated the river. He moaned about the damp getting into his bones, and said the water reminded him of blood.'

'Why on earth should it remind him of blood?''

'I dunno. It was something to do with the river being the cord between the mother and the baby but I can't remember its name.'

'The umbilical cord.'

'That's it. He said London's full of shit, and she sends her shit along the river to infect the innocent places further down.'

'You said he had a thing about genes. Was he drawing an analogy?'

'If you speak English,' said Terry scathingly, 'then I might be able to give you an answer.'

Deacon smiled. 'Do you think he was talking about his own mother? Was he saying that his mother had passed on bad genes to him through the umbilical cord?'

'He only ever mentioned London.'