Superintendent Fortune clapped a handkerchief to his mouth and rounded angrily on Harrison. 'What the hell kind of fool do you take me for? There's no way you could have missed this if you were here last night.'
Harrison dropped to his haunches and attempted to keep his guts from turning inside out. 'There was a WPC here as well,' he muttered. 'I asked her to stay with Mrs. Powell while I spoke to Deacon. Believe me, she didn't notice it, either.'
'It's clearing, sir,' said Fortune's Hampshire colleague, approaching the doorway warily. 'There must be a draft blowing it through.' Gingerly, he poked his head into the hall. 'It looks like the connecting door to the garage is open.'
There was no immediate response from the remaining policemen. To a man they dreaded what they knew they were going to see, for Nature had not endowed its works of beauty with the smell of death. At the very least they expected rivers of blood around a scene of brutal carnage.
However, when they finally found the courage to enter the house and look into the garage, there was a single naked corpse, intact and uncorrupted, propped against a stack of unopened bags of cement in the corner, gazing wide-eyed in their direction. And while no one put the thought into words, they all wondered how something so cold and pure could reek so vilely of corruption.
*20*
'I'm beginning to wish I'd never met you,' said DS Harrison, stepping wearily across Deacon's threshold and introducing his companion. 'Chief Superintendent Fortune of Hampshire police.'
'I left a message for you to phone.'
'Events overtook me,' said Harrison laconically.
Deacon took in their somber expressions, and belatedly removed the paper hat from his head and tucked it into his pocket. The all-too simple pleasures of getting gently smashed while eating Barry's turkey dinner and reading dire jokes out of crackers palled rather rapidly in the face of official sobriety. 'Is something wrong?'
The superintendent, a lean, somewhat intimidating individual with eyes that had been trained to see more than they gave away, gestured him forward. 'After you, Mr. Deacon. If you please.'
With a shrug, he led the way upstairs and introduced them to his guests. 'If you're from Hampshire,' he said to Fortune, resuming his seat, 'then this must be to do with Nigel de Vriess.'
'How much do you know about him?' asked the superintendent.
'Very little.'
'Then why did you phone his house this morning?'
Deacon glanced at Terry, wondering if the boy could be relied on to keep his mouth shut. 'Trust me' was the response in his disarmingly innocent expression. ' 'It occurred to me that the man Mrs. Powell's neighbors saw tampering with her garage door yesterday might have been Nigel, so I thought I'd check to see if he ever went home.' He stroked his nose. 'Apparently he didn't.'
'Later you left a message at the station, saying you wanted to contact me on a matter of urgency regarding Amanda and Nigel,' said Harrison. 'What was that about?'
Deacon consulted his watch. 'It's after three. It won't be urgent anymore.' He read impatience in Harrison's face and, with an amused smile, outlined his theory that Amanda and Nigel had done a bunk once they knew Barry had seen them together. 'Terry and I drove to the docklands and checked her house,' he explained. 'It was empty and her car had gone. I thought it worth passing on that information if I could, but your desk sergeant was reluctant to bother you.'
'We're talking quite an epidemic here,' said Harrison. 'First James absconds, then Amanda and Nigel. Is this a serious theory you're proposing, Mr. Deacon?'
Terry grinned. 'I told you you'd look a plonker.'
Deacon offered the two policemen drinks, which they refused. 'I'm sorry to have wasted your time,' he said refilling the glasses of the others. 'Put it down to the fact that I've had missing persons on the brain for weeks.'
'Meaning James Streeter?'
'Among others.'
Lawrence stirred. 'I doubt you'd be here, gentlemen, if you knew where Amanda and Nigel were, so are we to be given an explanation or left in the dark? I should add that I think it's a little unfair to pour scorn on Michael's theory if you have none of your own.'
The two policemen exchanged glances. 'After all, I think I will have that drink,' said the superintendent unexpectedly. 'It's been a bugger of a twenty-four hours.'
Harrison looked relieved, although whether because he needed a drink or because his colleague had shown a weakness, Deacon couldn't tell. 'I wouldn't say no, either.'
They chose beer and, as Terry poured it for them, Fortune gave a brief account of the events that had brought him to London to consult with DS Harrison. 'A short while ago we took the decision to enter Amanda Powell's house.' He paused to drink from the glass Terry handed him. 'We found Nigel de Vriess dead in the corner of her garage,' he went on bluntly. 'He was naked and appears to have died from a blow to the back of his head. It's a rough estimate but we're looking at death occurring approximately thirty-six hours ago, presumably during the hours following Mr. Graver's sighting of him in the sitting room.'
There was a long silence.
Deacon wondered what the reaction would be if he admitted that he, too, had visited Amanda's house. He
