Echo

'Of course. Women fought long and hard to give me that right.'

'Are you going to tell me which party you usually vote for?'

'Whichever I think will do the least damage.'

'You seem to have little time for politicians. Is there a particular reason for that or is it just fin de siecle depression?'

The faint smile again as she reached for her wineglass. 'Personally, I'd hesitate to qualify a huge abstract concept like fin de siecle depression with 'just,' but for the purposes of your article it's as truthful as anything else.'

He wondered what it would be like to kiss her. 'Are you married at the moment, Amanda?'

'Yes.'

'What does your husband do?'

She raised the glass to her lips, momentarily forgetting the camera lens pointing at her, then lowered it with a frown as Lisa took another photograph. 'My husband wasn't here when I found the body,' she said, 'so what he does is irrelevant.'

Deacon caught the look of amused cynicism on Lisa's face. 'It's human interest,' he countered lightly. 'People will want to know what sort of man a successful architect is married to.'

Perhaps she realized that his curiosity was personal, or perhaps, as Lisa had guessed, there was no Mr. Powell. In either case, she refused to expand on the matter. 'It was I who found the body,' she repeated, 'and you have my details already. Shall we continue?'

The pale eyes, so like his mother's, rested on Deacon's craggy face too long for comfort, and his mild fantasy about kissing her shifted from harmless fun to sadistic revenge. He could imagine what JP's reaction was going to be to the paucity of information that he'd managed to drag out of her so far. Name, rank, and number. And he had little optimism that the photographs would be any better. Her features were so controlled that she might as well be a poker-faced prisoner of war backed against a wall. He wondered if fires had ever burned in her cool little face, or if her life had been entirely passionless. Predictably, the idea excited him.

'All right,' he agreed, 'let's talk about finding the body. You said you were shocked. Can you describe the experience for me? What sort of thoughts went through your mind when you saw him?'

'Disgust,' she said, careful to keep her voice neutral. 'He was behind a stack of empty boxes in the corner and he'd covered himself in an old blanket. The smell was really quite awful once I'd pulled it away from him. Also, his body fluids had seeped out all over the floor.' Her mouth tightened in sudden distaste and she blinked as the flash of the camera stung her eyes. 'Afterwards, when the police told me that he'd died of self-neglect and malnutrition, I kept wondering why he'd made no attempt to save himself. It wasn't just that I found him beside my freezer-' she gestured unhappily towards the window-'everyone's so affluent on this estate that even the trash cans have perfectly edible food in them.'

'Any ideas?'

'Only that he was so weak by the time he found my garage that he hadn't the energy to do more than crawl into the corner and hide himself.'

'Why would he want to hide?'

She studied him for a moment. 'I don't know. But if he wasn't hiding, why didn't he try to attract my attention? The police think he must have entered the garage on the Saturday, because his only opportunity to get inside was when I went to the shops that afternoon and left the doors unlocked for half an hour.' Insofar as she was capable of showing emotion, she did. Her hand flickered nervously towards her mouth before she remembered the camera and dropped it abruptly. 'I found his body on the following Friday and the pathologist estimated he'd been dead five days. That means he was alive on the Sunday. I could have helped him if he'd called out and let me know he was there. So why didn't he?'

'Perhaps he was afraid.'

'Of what?'

'Being turned over to the police for trespassing.'

She shook her head. 'Certainly not that. He had no fear of the police or of prison. I understand he was arrested quite regularly. Why should this time have been any different?'

Deacon made shorthand notes on his pad to remind himself of the nuances of expression that crossed her face as she talked about Billy. Anxiety. Concern. Bewilderment even. Curiouser and curiouser. What was Billy Blake to her that he could inspire emotion where her husband couldn 't? 'Maybe he was just too weak to attract your attention. Presumably the pathologist can't say if he was conscious on the Sunday?'

'No,' she said slowly, 'but I can. There was a bag of ice cubes in the freezer. Someone had opened it, and it certainly wasn't me, so I presume it must have been Billy. And one corner of the garage had been urinated in. If he was strong enough to move around the garage, then he was strong enough to bang on the connecting door between the garage and my hall. He must have known I was there that weekend because he could have heard me. The door's not thick enough to block out sound.'

'What did the police make of that?'

'Nothing,' she said. 'It made no difference to the pathologist's verdict. Billy still died of malnutrition whether through willful self-neglect or involuntary self-neglect.'

He lit another cigarette and eyed her through the smoke. 'How much did the cremation cost you?'

'Does the amount matter?'

'It depends how cynical you believe the average reader to be. He might think you're being coy about the figure because you want everyone to assume you spent more.'

'Four hundred pounds.'

'Which is a great deal more than you would have given him alive?'