There were two Christmas cards on Deacon's desk one morning. The first was from his sister, Emma. "Hugh keeps seeing your byline in The Street so we're assuming this will find you," she had written. "We are none of us getting any younger, so isn't it time we called a truce? At least ring me if you won't ring Ma. Surely it's not that difficult to say sorry and start again." The other was from his first wife, Julia. "I bumped into Emma the other day and she said you're working for The Street. Apparently your mother's been very ill this last year but Emma has promised she won't tell you because Penelope doesn't want you coming back out of guilt or pity. As I've made no such promise, I thought you should know. However, unless you've changed radically in the last five years, you'll probably tear this up and do nothing about it. You were always more stubborn than Penelope."

As Julia had predicted he tore up her card, but stood Emma's on his desk.

Despite spending long hours on Paul Garrety's computer in an attempt to make a match between Billy Blake's image and James Streeter's, Deacon got nowhere. Paul pointed out that it would always be a waste of time unless he could find a better picture of James. "You're not comparing like with like," he explained. "Billy's shots are full-face and the one of James is three-quarter. You need to go back to his wife and see what she's got in the way of old snapshots."

"It's a waste of time, period," said Deacon in disgust, tilting back his chair and staring at the faces. "They're two different men."

"Which is what I've been telling you for the last three days. Why can't you accept it?"

"Because I don't believe in coincidences. It makes sense if Billy was James and none at all if he wasn't." He ticked the points off on his fingers. "James had a reason to seek out his wife—a stranger didn't. Amanda paid for his funeral out of guilt, but her guilt is only logical if she was burying her husband—illogical if she was burying a stranger. She's obsessed with finding out who Billy was, but why if he was completely unknown to her?'' He rapped out a tattoo on the desk. "I think she's telling the truth when she says she didn't know he was there. I also think she's telling the truth when she says she didn't recognize him. But I'm convinced she rapidly came to the conclusion afterwards that the man who died in her garage was James."

Paul was doubtful. "Why didn't she tell the police?"

"Out of fear that they'd think she locked him in the garage on purpose."

"Then why get you interested? Why not let the story die?"

Deacon shrugged. "I can think of two reasons. The first, simple curiosity. She wants to know what happened to James after he walked out of her life. The second, freedom. Until he's declared officially dead, she'll always be tied to him."

"She could divorce him tomorrow on the grounds of desertion."

"But as far as everyone else was concerned he'd still be alive, which means people like me would always be turning up on her doorstep asking questions."

Paul shook his head. "That's a crap argument, Mike. Now if you'd said she wanted him declared dead for mercenary reasons, I'd probably go along with you. Let's say he spoke to her before he died and told her how to lay her hands on his fortune. As his widow she'd inherit the lot. Think on that, my friend."

"My theory only works if she didn't speak to him," declared Deacon mildly. "We're into a whole new ball game if she did. In any case, it looks to me as if she got her hands on the fortune a long time ago."

"You've never been in the ball game, chum. That guy—he tapped the photograph of Billy Blake—"is not James Streeter."

"Then who was he and what the hell was he doing in her garage?"

"Get Barry on to it. He's your best bet."

"I've tried already. He doesn't know. Whoever Billy was he's not in Barry's files."

Paul Garrety looked surprised. "Did he tell you that?" Deacon nodded. "Then how come he strings me along for weeks before he'll admit defeat?"

"Perhaps you've upset him," said Deacon with unconscious irony.

With time on his hands the weekend before Christmas, Deacon telephoned Kenneth Streeter, mentioned his conversation with John, and asked if he could drive out to Bromley and have a chat with James's parents. Kenneth was friendlier and more amenable than his younger son, and made an appointment for the Sunday afternoon.

They lived in a tired-looking terraced house in an unfashionable road, and Deacon was struck by the contrast between this and Amanda's house. Where had her money come from? He rang the doorbell and smiled pleasantly at the elderly man who opened the door. "Michael Deacon," he said, offering his hand.

Kenneth ignored the hand but gestured him inside. "You'd better come in," he said ungraciously, "but only because I don't want our neighbors listening to what I have to say." He closed the door but kept Deacon pinned behind it in the dark hallway. "I don't take kindly to being tricked, Mr. Deacon. You gave me to understand that John would approve of my talking to you, but I spoke to him this morning and discovered that the opposite is true. I will not allow the press to drive a wedge between me and my remaining son, so I'm afraid this has been a wasted trip for you." He reached for the door handle again. "Good day to you."

"Your son misunderstood me, Mr. Streeter. He assumed that because I said James played a part in his own destruction I was referring to the theft of the ten million pounds when in fact I was referring to his wife's rejection of him." He moved forward as the door met his back. "In simple terms, if you want your wife to stand by you when the chips are down, you don't lose her trust by having affairs."

"She's the one who was having the affair," said the other bitterly. "She never gave de Vriess up."

"Are you sure about that? The evidence is very flimsy." He hurried on when the pressure on his back relaxed slightly. "I suggested to John that he's been firing at the wrong targets, which is not the same as saying that James was guilty of theft. Let's say he was murdered as you and John believe, how will you get at the truth if you keep denying that James had an affair with Marianne Filbert. If the evidence was strong enough to convince the police, then it ought to be strong enough to convince you."

A tear glittered in the other man's eye. "If we give in on that point, we have nothing left except our knowledge of James. And what use is a father's word about his son's honesty? Who would believe me?''

"No one that matters," said Deacon brutally. "You'll have to prove it."

"In this country it's guilt that must be proved, not innocence," said the old man obstinately. "I fought for that right fifty years ago and it's outrageous that James has been condemned without any proper hearing of the evidence."

"I agree with you, Mr. Streeter, but to date his defense has been poorly focused. You can't fight a campaign based on a lie. If nothing else, you've alienated the one person who's best placed to help you."

"Meaning Amanda?" Deacon nodded.

"We believe she was party to his murder."

"But you've no proof that he was murdered."

"He never contacted us. That's proof enough." Deacon took the mug shot of Billy Blake from his breast pocket. "Does this man remind you of James at all?"

Bewilderment furrowed Kenneth's brow. "How could he? He's too old."

"He was in his mid-forties when this photograph was taken six months ago."

Streeter pulled the door wide to examine the picture in daylight. "This isn't my son," he said. "What on earth made you think it was?"

"He was a down-and-out, using an alias, and he died in your daughter-in-law's garage. He didn't speak to her or reveal that he was there, but she paid for his funeral and she's been trying to find out who he was ever since. The only obvious explanation for her interest is that she's afraid he may have been James."

There was a long silence while Streeter stared at Billy Blake's face. "It can't be," he said at last, but there was less certainty in his tone. "How could he have aged so much in five years? And why would he live as a down-and-out when he was always welcome here?" "He would have been arrested if he came here. You couldn't have kept him hidden from your neighbors." "Are you trying to tell me that this is James?" "Not necessarily," said Deacon. "I'm saying that for your daughter-in-law to think it might have been, she had to believe he was still alive when this man turned up dead in her garage in June. And that means she can't have been a party to James's alleged murder five years ago."

"Then what happened to him?" asked the older man in despair. "He wasn't a thief, Mr. Deacon. He was brought up to earn money honestly, and it simply wouldn't have occurred to him to take shortcuts. You see, he wanted the status that wealth brings, just as much as he wanted wealth itself, so theft and the danger of imprisonment would never have attracted him." He gave another bewildered frown. "At the time he disappeared, he and Amanda had just sunk all their capital into an old school on the Thames at Teddington which they were planning to develop into luxury flats, and James was as excited about it as she was. They stood to make a handsome profit if the project went through. But why would he be excited by half a million if he was already sitting on ten?"

Because it represented a legitimate way to start laundering the rest, thought Deacon cynically. "What happened to the project?"

"It was completed in 'ninety-two by a construction firm called Lowndes, but we can't find out if Amanda saw it through herself or whether Lowndes bought the property from her. We've written several letters of inquiry, but we've never had an answer. Either way, we'd like to know how she put together enough money to buy her present house in 'ninety-one. If she sold the school first, she couldn't have raised more than the four hundred thousand she and James put towards the purchase of it. But it was probably a great deal less after nine months' interest on bank loans, and certainly not enough to buy into an expensive estate on the Thames. If she didn't sell the school but saw the project through, then she'd have had no capital at all in 'ninety-one." He smiled unhappily. "You see now why we're so suspicious of her."

"Perhaps she and James had other investments which they never told you about."

But Kenneth wouldn't accept that. Four hundred thousand was already more spare capital than most young couples could lay their hands to, he pointed out, and it was honestly earned. James had cashed in his stocks and shares to support the project. Deacon acknowledged the point with a smile while his mind pursued its own line of thought. It would explain why Amanda hadn't wanted a divorce. If the investments were jointly owned, she had access to everything as long as she didn't dissolve the partnership before he could be legally presumed dead after seven years. And if there were other investments in James's name—dishonestly earned?—then she had another two years to wait before she could inherit as his widow.

How much simpler if he'd died in her garage six months ago...

"'Do you have a photograph of James that you could lend me, Mr. Streeter? Preferably a full-face one. I can let you have it back by Tuesday."

...and how frustrating if she couldn 't prove it...

"The police must have searched James's bank accounts at the time he disappeared," he said, taking the snapshot Kenneth Streeter produced for him. "Did they find anything that shouldn't have been there?"

"Of course not. There was nothing to find."

"Have you told them your suspicions about Amanda's newfound wealth?"

A look of weariness crossed the older man's face. "So regularly that I've had an official caution for wasting police time. It's harder than you think to prove a man's innocence, Mr. Deacon."
 

He phoned an old colleague, now retired, who had spent most of his working life on the financial desks of different newspapers, and arranged to meet him that evening in a pub in Camden Town. "I'm supposed to be off the bloody booze," growled Alan Parker down the wire, "so I can't invite you here. There's not a drop worth drinking in the house."

"Coffee won't kill me," said Deacon.

"It's killing me. I'll see you in the Three Pigeons at eight o'clock. Make mine a double Bells if you get there first."

Deacon hadn't seen Alan for a couple of years and he was shocked by the sight of his old friend. He was desperately thin and his skin had the yellow tinge of jaundice. "Should I be doing this?'' Deacon asked him as he paid for their whiskies.

"You'd better not tell me I look like death, Mike."

He did, but Deacon just smiled and pushed the Bells towards him. "How's Maggie?" he asked, referring to Alan's wife.

"She'd have my guts for garters if she knew where I was and what I was doing." He raised the glass and sampled a mouthful. "I can't get it through to the silly old woman that I'm a far better judge of what's good for me than the blasted quacks."

"So what's the problem? Why have they ordered you off the booze?"

Alan chuckled. "It's the newest form of tyranny, Mike. No one's allowed to die anymore so you're expected to live out your last months in misery. I mustn't smoke, drink, or eat anything remotely tasty in case it kills me. Apparently, dying of boredom is politically correct while succumbing to anything that gives you pleasure isn't."

"Well, don't peg out here, for God's sake, or Maggie will have my guts for garters. Where does she think you are as a matter of interest? Church?"

"She knows exactly where I am, but she's a tyrant with a soft center. I'll be hauled over the coals for this when I get back, but in her heart of hearts she'll be glad I was happy for half an hour. So? What did you want to talk to me about?"

"A man called Nigel de Vriess. The only information I have on him is that he lives in a mansion in Hampshire which he bought in 'ninety-one, and was on the board of Lowenstein's Merchant Bank, which he's since left. Do you know him? I'm interested in where he got the money to buy the mansion."

"That's easy enough. He didn't buy it because he already owned it. If I remember right, his wife took the marital home in Hampstead and he took Halcombe House, although I can't recall now if it was his first divorce or his second. Probably the second because it was a clean-break settlement. It was the first marriage that produced the kids."

"I was told he bought it."

"He did, when he made his first million. But that was twenty-odd years ago. He went belly-up in the eighties when he invested in a transatlantic airline that went bust during the cartel war, but he managed to hang on to the properties. The only reason he joined Lowenstein's was to buy a period of stability while the market recovered. In return for a damn good salary, he expanded their operations in the Far East and gave them footholds round the Pacific rim. He did well for them, too. They owe their place on the map to de Vriess."

"What about this guy, James Streeter, who ripped them off for ten million?"

"What about him? Ten million's chicken feed these days. It took eight hundred million to bring down Baring's Bank." Alan took another mouthful of whisky. "The mistake Lowenstein's made was to force the guy to run and bring the whole thing into the open. They recouped their ten million within forty-eight hours trading on the foreign-exchange markets but the bad publicity set them back six months in terms of credibility."

Deacon took out his cigarette packet and proffered it to Alan with a lift of his eyebrows. "I won't tell Maggie if you don't."

"You're a good lad, Mike." He took a cigarette and placed it reverently between his lips. "The only reason I stopped was because the silly old cow kept crying. Would you believe that? I'm dying in misery so she won't be miserable watching me die. And she always said I was the most selfish man alive."

Deacon found a laugh from somewhere—though God only knew where. "She's right," he said. "I'll never forget that time you invited me out to dinner, then made me pay because you claimed you'd left your wallet at home."

"I had."

"Bullshit. I could see the bulge it was making in your jacket."

"You were very young and green in those days, Mike."

"Yes, and you took advantage of it, you old sod."

"You've been a good friend."

"What do you mean, been a good friend? I still am. Who bought the whiskey?" He saw a cloud pass over Alan's face and changed the subject abruptly. "What's de Vriess doing now?"

"He bought a computer software company called Softworks, renamed it de Vriess Softworks or DVS, sacked half the staff, and turned the damn thing round in two years by producing a cheaper version of Windows for the home-computer market. He's an arrogant S.O.B., but he has a knack for making money. He started with a paper route at thirteen and he's never looked back."

"You said he became a cropper in the eighties," Deacon reminded him.

"A temporary blip, Mike, hence the job with Lowenstein's. Now he's back to where he was before the crash. Shares have recovered, and he's found a nice little earner in DVS."

"There was a woman who used to work for Softworks called Marianne Filbert. Does that name mean anything to you?"

Alan shook his head. "What's the connection with de Vriess?''

Briefly, Deacon explained John Streeter's theory about the conspiracy against James. "I suspect his whole argument is based on wishful thinking, but it's interesting that de Vriess bought the company where James Streeter found his computer expert."

"It's highly predictable if you know de Vriess. I imagine Softworks was put under a microscope to see if the bank's money had found its way into their books, and in the process de Vriess spotted an opportunity. He's as sharp as a bloody ferret."

"You sound as if you admire him."

"I do. The guy has balls. Mind, I don't like him much—few people do—but he doesn't lose sleep over trifles like that. Women love him, which is all he cares about. He's a randy little toad." He gave another chuckle. "Rich men often are. Unlike the rest of us, they can afford to pay for their mistakes."

"You always were a cynical bastard," said Deacon affectionately.

"I'm dying of liver cancer, Mike, but at least my cynicism remains healthy."

"How long have you got?"

"Six months."

"Are you worried about it?"

"Terrified, old son, but I cling to Heinrich Heine's dying words. 'God will forgive me. It's His job.' "
 

Barry Grover held the snapshot of James Streeter under the lamplight and examined it carefully. "It's a better angle," he said grudgingly. "You'll have more chance of making comparisons with this than with the other one."

Deacon perched casually on the edge of the desk, looming over Barry in a way the little man hated, and planted a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. "You're the expert," he said. "Is that Billy or not?"

"I'd rather you didn't smoke in here," muttered Barry, poking fussily at his "In the interests of my health please don't smoke" notice. "I have asthma and it's not good for me."

"Why didn't you say so before?"

"I assumed you could read." He shoved a folder against Deacon's hip in an attempt to dislodge him from the desk, but Deacon just grinned at him.

"The smell of cigarette smoke is preferable any day to the smell of your feet. When did you last buy yourself a new pair of shoes?''

"It's none of your business."

"The only color you ever wear is black and, believe me, if I've noticed that then the whole damn building's noticed it. I'm beginning to think you only have one pair which probably explains your asthma."

"You're a very rude man."

Deacon's grin broadened. "I suppose you were out on the razzle last night? Hence the lousy mood."

"Yes," lied the little man bitterly. "I went for a drink with some friends."

"Well, if it's a hangover I've got some codeine in my office, and if it's not, then buck up for Christ's sake, and give me an opinion on this picture. Does it look like Billy to you?"

"No."

"They're pretty alike."

"The mouths are different."

"Ten million buys a lot of plastic surgery."

Barry took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ' 'If you want to identify someone, you don't just compare a couple of photographs and dismiss anything that doesn't fit as plastic surgery. It really is a little more scientific than that, Mike."

"I'm listening."

"Lots of people look like each other, particularly in photographs, so you have to examine what you know about them as well. It's quite pointless finding similarities in faces if one belongs to a man in America and the other to a man in France."

"But that's the whole point. James went missing in nineteen ninety, and Billy didn't surface at a police station until 'ninety-one, with his fingers like claws because he'd been burning off his prints. It's certainly possible that they're one and the same."

"But highly improbable." Barry looked at the photograph again. "What happened to the rest of the money?"

"I don't follow."

"How could he become a penniless derelict within months of having his face altered by plastic surgery. What happened to the rest of the money?''

"I'm still working on that." He interpreted Barry's expression correctly as one of scathing disbelief, although as usual it looked rather silly on the owlish face. "Okay, okay. I agree it's improbable." He stood up. "I promised to send that snapshot back today. Do you have time to make a negative for me?"

"I'm busy at the moment." Barry shuffled pieces of paper around his desk as if to prove the point.

Deacon nodded. "No problem. I'll find out how Lisa's placed. She can probably do it for me."

After he'd gone, Barry drew his own full-face photograph of James Streeter from his top drawer. If Deacon had seen this version, he thought, there'd have been no stopping him. The likeness to Billy Blake was extraordinary.
 

Purely out of curiosity, Deacon phoned Lowndes Building and Development Corporation and asked to speak to someone about a block of flats they'd converted on the Thames at Teddington in 'ninety-two. He was given the address of the flats, but was told there was no one available to discuss the mechanics of the conversion. "To be honest," said a flustered secretary, "I think it may have been Mr. Merton who saw it through, but he was sacked two years ago."

"Why?"

"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.
 

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."

"I worked it out. There are five million women in London, but Billy chose you." He wagged a finger at her. "Now, why did he do that, Amanda, if he didn't know you? That's what I'd like to know."

Without warning, she got going with her nails again, and he focused rather unsuccessfully on the frosty blue eyes.

"You're so like my mother. She's beautiful, too." He struggled upright under the painful prodding of her fingers. "Not when she's angry, though. She's horrible when she's angry."

"So am I." Amanda drew him through the sitting-room door, then pushed him unceremoniously onto the sofa. "How did you get here?"

"I walked." He curled up on the sofa and laid his head on the arm.

"Why didn't you go home?"

"I wanted to come here."

"Well, you can't stay. I'll call a cab." She reached for the telephone. "Where do you live?"

"I don't live anywhere," he said into the cream leather. "I exist."

"You can't exist in my house."

But he could and he did, because he was already unconscious, and nothing on earth was going to wake him.
 

He opened his eyes on grey morning light and stared about him. He was so cold that he thought he was dying, but lethargy meant he did nothing about it. There was pleasure in passivity, none at all in action. A clock on a glass shelf gave the time as seven-thirty. He recognized the room as somewhere he knew, but couldn't remember whose it was or why he was there. He thought he could hear voices—in his head?—but the cold numbed his curiosity, and he slept again.
 

He dreamt he was drowning in a ferocious sea.

"Wake up! WAKE UP, YOU BASTARD!"

A hand slapped his cheek and he opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor, curled like a fetus, and his nose was filled with the putrid smell of decay. Bile rose in his throat. "Devourer of thy parents," he muttered. "Now thy unutterable torment renews."

"I thought you were dead," said Amanda.

For a moment, before memory returned, Deacon wondered who she was. "I'm wet," he said, touching the saturated neck of his shirt.

"I threw water over you." He saw the empty jug in her hand. "I've been rocking you and pushing you for ten minutes and you didn't stir." She looked very pale. "I thought you were dead," she said again.

"Dead men aren't frightening," he said in an odd tone of voice, "they're just messy." He struggled into a sitting position and buried his face in his hands. "What time is it?"

"Nine o'clock."

His stomach heaved. "I need a lavatory."

"Turn right and it's at the end of the hall." She stood aside to let him pass. "If you're going to be sick, could you make sure you wipe the bowl round afterwards with the brush? I tend to draw the line at cleaning up after uninvited guests."

As Deacon weaved along the corridor, he sought for explanations. Dear God, what the hell was he doing here?

She had opened the windows and sprayed the room with air freshener by the time he returned. He looked slightly more presentable, having dried his face and straightened his clothes, but he had the shakes and his skin was the queasy grey of nausea. "There's nothing I can say to you," he managed from the doorway, "except sorry."

"What for?" She was sitting in the chair she'd sat in before, and Deacon was dazzled by how vibrant and colorful she was. Her hair and skin seemed to glow, and her dress fell in bright yellow folds about her calves, tumbling like a lemon pool onto the autumn leaves of the russet carpet.

Too much color. It hurt his eyes, and he pressed on his lids with his fingertips. "I've embarrassed you."

"You may have embarrassed yourself, but you certainly haven't embarrassed me."

So cool, he thought. Or so cruel? He longed for kindness. "That's all right, then," he said weakly. "I'll say goodbye."

"You might as well drink your coffee before you go."

He longed for escape as well. The room smelt of roses again and he couldn't bring himself to intrude his rancid breath and rancid sweat into the scented air. What had he said to her last night? "To be honest, I'd rather leave now."

"I expect you would," she said with emphasis, "but at least show me the courtesy of drinking the coffee I made for you. It will be the politest thing you've done since you entered my house."

He came into the room but didn't sit down. "I'm sorry." He reached for the cup.

"Please—" she gestured towards the sofa—"make yourself comfortable. Or perhaps you'd prefer to have another go at breaking the antique chair in the hall?''

Had he been violent? He gave a tentative smile. "I'm sorry."

"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that."

"What else can I say? I don't know what I'm doing here or why I came."

"And you think I do?"

He shook his head gently in order not to incite the nausea that was churning in his stomach. "This must seem very odd to you," he murmured lamely.

"Good lord, no," she said with leaden irony. "What on earth gives you that idea? It's quite the norm for me these days to find middle-aged drunks slumped in heaps on my floors. Billy chose the garage, you chose the drawing room. Same difference, except that you had the decency not to die on me." Her eyes narrowed, but whether in anger or puzzlement he couldn't tell. "Is there something about me and my house that encourages this sort of behavior, Mr. Deacon? And will you sit down, for Christ's sake," she snapped in sudden impatience. "It's very uncomfortable having you towering over me like this."

He lowered himself onto the arm of the sofa and tried to reknit the fabric of his tattered memory, but the effort was too much for him and his lips spread in a ghastly smile. "I think I'm going to be sick again."

She took a towel from behind her back and passed it over. "I find it's better to try and hang on, but you know where to go if you can't." She waited in silence for several seconds while he brought his nausea under control. "Why did you say you'd devoured your parents and that your unutterable torment was renewing? It seems an odd comment to make."

He looked at her blankly as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. "I don't know." He read irritation in her face. "I don't KNOW!" he said with a surge of anger. "I was confused. I didn't know where I was. Okay? Is that allowed in this house? Or does everyone have to be in control of himself at all bloody times?'' He bent his head and pressed the towel over his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said after a moment. "I didn't mean to be rude. The truth is, I'm struggling a bit here. I can't remember anything about last night."

"You arrived about twelve."

"Was I on my own?"

"Yes."

"Why did you let me in?"

"Because you wouldn't take your finger off the doorbell."

Sweet Jesus! What had he been thinking of? "What else did I say?"

"That I reminded you of your mother."

He lowered the towel to his lap and set about folding it carefully. "Is that the reason I gave for being here?''

"No."

"What reason did I give?''

"You didn't." He looked at her with so much relief in his strained, sweaty face that she smiled briefly. "Instead you called me Mrs. Streeter, talked about my husband, my brother-in-law, and my father-in-law, and implied that this house and its contents came from the proceeds of theft."

Hell! "Did I frighten you?"

"No," she said evenly, "I'm long past being frightened by anything."

He wondered why. Life itself frightened him. "Someone at the magazine recognized your face from when you were questioned at the time of James's disappearance," he said by way of explanation. "I was interested enough to follow it up."

The tic above her lip started working again, but she didn't say anything.

"John Streeter seemed an obvious person to talk to, so I telephoned him and heard his side of the story. He has—er—reservations about you."

"I wouldn't describe calling your sister-in-law a whore, a murderer, and a thief as 'having reservations,' but perhaps you're more worried about being sued than he is."

Deacon put the towel to his mouth again. He was in no condition for this conversation, he thought. He felt like something half-alive on a dissecting bench, waiting for the scalpel to slice through its gut. "You'd win huge damages if you took him to court," he told her. "He has no evidence for his accusations."

"Of course not. None of them are true."

He drained his coffee cup and put it on the table. '"Devourer of thy parent; now thy unutterable torment renews' is a line from William Blake," he said suddenly, as if he had been thinking about that and nothing else. "It's in one of his visionary poems about social revolution and political upheaval. The search for liberty means the destruction of established authority—in other words, the parent—and the push for freedom means every generation suffers the same torment." He stood up and looked towards the window and its view of the river. "William Blake—Billy Blake. Your uninvited guest was a fan of a poet who's been dead for nearly two hundred years. Why is this house so cold?" he asked abruptly, drawing his coat about him.

"It isn't. You've got a hangover. That's why you're shivering."

He stared down at her where she sat like a radiant sun in her expensive designer dress in her expensive, scented environment. But the radiance was skin-deep, he thought. Beneath the immaculate facade of her and her house, he sensed despair. "I smelled death when I woke up," he said. "Is that what you're trying to mask with the potpourri and the air freshener?''

She looked very surprised. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Perhaps I imagined it."

She gave a ghost of a smile. "Then I hope your imagination returns to normal when the alcohol's out of your system. Goodbye, Mr. Deacon."

He walked to the door. "Goodbye, Mrs. Streeter."

Outside the estate he found a small grassed area with a bench seat overlooking the Thames. He huddled into his coat and let the wind suck the poisonous alcohol out of his system. The tide was out and on the mud bank in front of him, four men were sorting through the debris that had been washed up overnight. They were men of indeterminate age, muffled like him in heavy overcoats, with nothing to show who they were or what their backgrounds were, and whatever assumptions he made about them would probably be as wrong as their assumptions about him. Deacon was struck again, as he had been when he met Terry, by how unremarkable most faces were for he realized that he would not recognize these men in a different setting. Ultimately the various arrangements of eyes, nose, ears, and mouth had more in common than they had apart, and it was only adornment and expression that gave them individuality. Change those, he thought, and anonymity was guaranteed.

"So what's your verdict, Michael?" asked a quiet voice beside him. "Are any of us worth saving or are we all damned?''

Deacon turned to the frail old man with silver hair who had slipped quietly onto the bench beside him and was studying the industry on the shore with as much concentration as he was. He frowned, trying to recall the face from his past. It was someone he'd interviewed, he thought; but he talked to so many people and he rarely remembered their names afterwards. "Lawrence Greenhill," prompted the old man. "You did an interview with me ten years ago for an article on euthanasia called 'Freedom to Die.' I was a practicing solicitor and I'd written a letter to The Times pointing out the practical and ethical dangers of legalized suicide both to the individual and to his family. You didn't agree with me, and described me unflatteringly as 'a righteous judge who claims the moral high ground for himself.' I've never forgotten those words."

Deacon's heart sank. He didn't deserve this, not when he'd been through one guilt trip already this morning. "I remember," he said. Rather too well in fact. The old bugger had been so complacent about biblical authority for his opinion that Deacon had come close to throttling him. But then Greenhill hadn't known how touchy he was on the whole damn subject. Suicide in any form is wrong, Michael ... We damn ourselves if we usurp God's authority in our lives...

"Well, I'm sorry," he went on abruptly, "but I still don't agree with you. My philosophy doesn't recognize damnation." He stubbed out his cigarette, while wondering if he even believed what he was saying. Damnation had been real enough to Billy Blake. "Nor does it recognize salvation because the whole concept worries me. Are we being saved from something or for something? If it's the former, then our right to live by our own code of ethics is under threat from moral totalitarianism, and if it's the latter, then we must blindly follow negative logic that something better awaits us when we die." He glanced pointedly at his watch. "Now you'll have to excuse me, I'm afraid."

The old man gave a quiet laugh. "You give up too easily, my friend. Is your philosophy so fragile that it can't defend itself in debate?"

"Far from it," said Deacon, "but I have better things to do than stand in judgment on other people's lives."

"Unlike me?"

"Yes."

His companion smiled. "Except I try never to judge anyone." He paused for a moment. "Do you know those words by John Donne? 'Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.' "

Deacon finished the quote: " 'Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.' "

"So tell me, is it wrong to ask a man to go on living, even though he's in pain, when his life is more precious to me than his death?"

Deacon experienced a strange sort of dislocation. Words hammered in his brain. Devourer of thy parents ... now thy unutterable torment renews ... Is any man's life so worthless that the manner of his death is the only interesting thing about him... He stared rather blankly at Lawrence. "Why are you here? I remember going to Knightsbridge to interview you."

"I moved seven years ago after my wife died."

"I see." He rubbed his face vigorously to clear his head. "Well, look, I'm sorry but I have to go now." He stood up. "It's been good talking to you, Lawrence. Enjoy your Christmas."

A twinkle glittered in the old man's eyes. "What's to enjoy? I'm Jewish. Do you think I like being reminded that most of the civilized world condemns my people for what they did two thousand years ago?"

"Aren't you confusing Christmas with Easter?"

Lawrence raised his eyes to heaven. "I talk about two thousand years of isolation and he quibbles over a few months."

Deacon lingered, seduced by the twinkle and the outrageous racial blackmail. "Enjoy Hanukkah then, or are you going to tell me that that's impossible, too, because there's no one to enjoy it with!"

"What else can a childless widower expect?" He saw hesitation in the younger man's face, and patted the seat. "Sit down again and give me the pleasure of a few minutes' companionship. We're old friends, Michael, and it's so rare for me to spend time with an intelligent man. Would it relieve your mind if I said I've always been a better lawyer than I've been a Jew, so your soul is in no danger?"

Deacon persuaded himself that he sat down only out of curiosity but the truth was he had no weapons against Lawrence's frailty. Death was in the old man's face just as clearly as it had been in Alan Parker's, and Deacon's sensitivity to death was always more acute as Christmas drew nearer.

"In fact I was thinking how alike we all are and how easy it would be to drop out of our boring lives and start again," said Deacon, nodding towards the men on the shore. "Would you recognize them, for example, if the next time you saw them was in the Dorchester?"

"Their friends would know them."

"Not if they came across them in a different environment. Recognition is about relating a series of known facts. Change those facts and recognition becomes harder."

"Is a new identity what you want, Michael?"

He scraped the stubble on his chin. "It certainly has its attractions. Did you never think about dropping out and wiping the slate clean?"

"Of course. We all have midlife crises. If we didn't, we wouldn't be normal."

Deacon laughed. "To be honest, Lawrence, I'd rather you'd said I was different. The last thing a red-blooded male with unrealized ambitions wants to hear is that he's normal. I've done damn all with my life and it's driving me round the bend."

"I tend to give Christmas a wide berth," said Deacon, lighting a fresh cigarette. "I'd rather be at work than pretending I'm enjoying myself."

"What does giving it a wide berth usually involve?"

Deacon shrugged. "Ignoring it, I suppose. Keeping my head down till it's all over and sanity's restored. I don't have any children. It might be different if I had children."

"Yes, we suffer when we have no one to love."

"I thought it was the other way round," he said, watching one of the men tug at a piece of wood in the mud's embrace. No woman had ever held on to him as tenaciously as the mud held the wood. "We suffer when no one loves us."

"Perhaps you're right."

"I know I'm right. I've had two wives and I fucked my brains out trying to express my love for both of them. It was a waste of time."

Lawrence smiled. "My dear fellow," he murmured. "So much fucking for so little result. How terribly exhausting for you."

Deacon grinned. "It clearly served some purpose if it amuses you."

"It reminds me of the woman who gave her husband a do-it-yourself kit when he told her he wanted a good screw."

"Is there a moral to this story?"

"Five or six at least, depending on whether it was a genuine misunderstanding or whether the wife was teaching her husband a lesson."

"Meaning she thought he was taking her for granted? Well, I never took either of the Mrs. Deacons for granted, or not until it was obvious the marriages were on the skids. It was they who took me—" he drew morosely on his cigarette—"for every damn penny they could. I had to sell two bloody good houses to give them each a half of my capital, lost most of my possessions in the process and now I'm shacked up in a miserable rented flat in Islington. Is there anything in your morality tale to account for that?"

Lawrence chuckled. "I don't know. I'm a little confused now about who was screwing whom. What was the purpose of these marriages, Michael?''

"What do you mean 'what was the purpose'? I loved them, or at least I thought I did."

"I love my cats but I don't intend to marry any of them."

"What is the purpose of marriage then?''

"Isn't that the question you need to answer before you try again?"

"Do me a favor," said Deacon. "I don't intend to have my balls chopped off a third time."

"You sound as if you're sulking, Michael."

"Clara—she was my second wife—kept accusing me of going through the male menopause. She said I was only interested in sex."

"Naturally. Wanting babies isn't a female prerogative. I still want babies, and I'm eighty-three years old. Why did God give me sperm if it wasn't to make babies? Look at Abraham. He was geriatric when he had Isaac."

Deacon's rugged face broke into a smile. "Now you're sulking, Lawrence."

"No, Michael, I'm complaining. But old men are allowed to complain because it doesn't matter how positive their mental attitude, they still have to persuade a woman under forty to have sex with them. And that's not as easy as it sounds. I know because I've tried."

"I can't pretend it was anything other than lust. Clara was—is—beautiful."

"Who am I to argue? I had to have my tomcat neutered six months ago because the neighbors kept complaining about his insatiable appetite for their pretty little queens."

"I wasn't that bad, Lawrence."

"Neither was my tom, Michael. He was only doing what God programmed him to do, and the fact that he preferred the pretty ones merely demonstrated his good taste."

"I don't think I ever told Clara I wanted children. I mentioned it to Julia a couple of times but she always said there was plenty of time."

"There was, until you deserted her for Clara."

"I thought you were trying to persuade me to feel less guilty about that. Didn't I do it out of desperation to keep the Deacon line going?"

"There's no excuse for inefficiency, Michael. If children are what you want, then you must find a woman who wants them, too. Surely the moral of the DIY story is that people have different priorities in life."

"So where do I go from here?" asked Deacon with wry amusement. "Singles bars? Dating agencies? Or maybe I should try an ad in Private Eye?"

"I think it was Chairman Mao who said: 'Every journey begins with the first step.' Why do you want to make that first step so difficult?"

"I don't understand."

"You need a little practice before you throw yourself in at the deep end again. You've forgotten how simple love is. Relearn that lesson first."

"How do I do that?"

"As I said, I love my cats but I don't plan to marry them."

"Are you telling me to get a pet?"

"I'm not telling you anything, Michael. You're intelligent enough to work this one out for yourself." Lawrence took a card from his inside pocket. "This is my phone number. You can call me at any time. I'm almost always there."

"You might live to regret it. How do you know I won't take you up on it and drive you mad with endless phone calls?"

The old eyes twinkled with what looked to Deacon like genuine affection. "I hope you will. It's such a rarity for me to feel useful these days."

"You're the most dreadful old fraud I've ever met."

"Why do you say that?"

"It's such a rarity for me to feel useful these days," he quoted. "I bet you say that to all the waifs and strays you pick up. As a matter of interest, does everyone get emotionally blackmailed or am I peculiarly privileged?"

The old man chortled happily. "Only those who inspire me with hope. You can only feed the hungry, Michael."

It was a startling trigger to Deacon's memory. Images of skeletal Billy Blake floated to the surface of his mind. He felt for his wallet and took out a print of the dead man's mug shot. "Did you ever talk to him? He was a derelict who lived in a warehouse squat about a mile from here and died of starvation six months ago on that estate behind us. He called himself Billy Blake but I don't think it was his real name. I need to find out who he was."

Lawrence studied the photograph for several seconds then shook his head regretfully. "I'm afraid not. I'm sure I'd remember if I had. It's not a face you can easily forget, is it?"

"No."

"I remember the story. It caused quite a stir here for a day or two. Why is he important to you?"

"The woman whose garage he died in asked me to find out who he was," said Deacon.

"Mrs. Powell."

"Yes."

"I've seen her once or twice. She drives a black BMW."

"That's the one."

"Do you like her, Michael?"

Deacon thought about it. "I haven't decided yet. She's a complicated woman." He shrugged. "It's a long story."

"Then save it for your phone call."

"It may never happen, Lawrence. My wives would tell you I score very low on reliability."

"One little call, Michael. Is that so much to ask?"

"But it's not one little call, is it?" he growled. "You're after people's souls, and don't think for one moment I don't know it."

Lawrence glanced at the back of the photograph. "May I keep this? I know quite a number of the homeless community and one of them might recognize him."

"Sure." Deacon stood up. "But it doesn't mean I'll phone you so don't raise your hopes. I'm going to be very embarrassed about this tomorrow." He shook the old man's hand. "Shalom, Lawrence, and thanks. Go home before you freeze to death."

"I will. Shalom, my friend."

He watched the younger man walk away across the grass, then smiled to himself as he took out his address book and made a careful note of Deacon's name, followed by the address and telephone number of The Street offices which Barry Grover had thoughtfully stamped on the back of the photograph. Not that he expected to need them. Lawrence's faith in God's mysterious ways was absolute, and he knew it was only a question of time before Michael phoned him. The old man turned his face upstream and listened to the wind and the waves rebuking each other.
 

The fight that broke out inside the warehouse was a bloody affair, started by one of the more aggressive schizophrenics who decided the man next to him wanted to kill him. He pulled a flick-knife from his pocket and plunged it into his neighbor's stomach. The man's screams acted on the other inmates like a strident alarm, bringing some to his rescue and driving the rest to stampede in fear. Terry Dalton and old Tom snatched up pieces of lead piping and waded in to try to break up the affray but, like a fighting dog, the aggressor ignored the rain of blows that descended on his back and concentrated his energy on his victim. It ended, as so many of these fights ended, only when the man's stamina ran out and he retired, bruised and battered, to nurse his wounds.

Tom knelt beside the pathetic curled figure of the man who'd been stabbed. "It's poor old Walter," he said. "That bastard Denning's done for 'im good an' proper. If 'e ain't dead now, 'e soon will be."

Terry, who was shaking from head to toe in the aftermath of heightened adrenaline, flung his piece of pipe to the ground and stripped his coat from his thin body. "Put this over Walt and keep him warm. I'm calling the ambulance," he said. "And get yourselves ready for when the cops get here. This time I'm having Denning put away good and proper. He's too fucking dangerous."

"You can cut that kind of talk, son,'' said Tom, laying the coat over the body. "There's no one gonna thank you for dropping the Law on us like a ton of bricks. We'll shift Walt out and let the coppers think it 'appened in the street. The poor bastard's leaking like a stuck pig, so there'll be enough blood on the pavement to persuade 'em it were a gang of louts what did for 'im."

"No!" snapped Terry. "If you shift him you'll kill him quicker." He clenched his fists. "We have rights, Tom, same as everyone else. Walt's right is to be given his chance and our right is to get shot of a psycho."

"There ain't no rights in 'ell, son," said Tom dismissively, "never mind Billy filled your 'ead with claptrap about 'uman dignity. You bring the bizzies in 'ere, and it won't be just Denning for the 'igh jump. You think about what's in your pockets before you go calling in the filth." He touched a gnarled hand to the wounded man's face. "Walt's 'ad it, anyway, so it won't make no difference where 'e dies. We'll get shot of Denning ourselves, send 'im back on the streets where 'e'll likely die of cold before too long, anyway. 'E's tired 'isself out with this so 'e won't be no trouble."

He spoke with the authority of a man who expected to be obeyed for, despite Deacon's impression that Terry's quick mind allowed him to dominate the group, it was Tom who governed the warehouse, and there was no place in Tom's philosophy for sentiment. He'd seen too many derelicts die to care much about this one.

"NO!" roared the youngster, making for the doorway. "You move Walt, and you'll answer to me. We're not fucking savages, so we don't fucking behave like them. YOU HEAR ME!" He pushed his way furiously through the crowd around the door.
 

The phone rang in Deacon's flat as he emerged from a shower. "I need to speak to Michael Deacon," said an urgent voice.

"Speaking," he said, rubbing his hair dry with a towel.

"Do you remember that warehouse you came to a couple of weeks back?"

"Yes." He recognized his caller. "Are you Terry?"

"Yeah. Listen, are you still after information on Billy Blake?"

"I am."

"Then get yourself down to the warehouse in the next half hour and bring a camera with you. Can you do that?''

"Why the hurry?"

"Because the cops are on the way, and there's stuff in there that belonged to Billy. I reckon half an hour tops before the barricades go up. You coming?"

"I'll be there."

Terry Dalton, muffled inside an old work jacket and with a black knit hat pulled down over his shaven head, was leaning against the corner of the building, watching for Deacon's arrival. As Deacon drew into the curb in front of an empty police car, Terry pushed himself off the wall and went to meet him.

"There's been a stabbing," he said in a rush, as the older man got out, ' 'and it was me called the coppers. I reckoned it wouldn't do no harm to have a journalist in on the act. Tom reckons they're going to use this as an excuse to evict us and maybe charge us with other offenses but we've got rights, and I want them protected. In return, I'll give you everything I've got on Billy. Is it a deal?" He looked down the road as another police car rounded the corner. "Move yourself. We ain't got much time. Did you bring a camera?"

Confused by this babble of information, Deacon allowed himself to be drawn into the lee of the building. "It's in my pocket."

Terry gestured along the wall. "There's a way in through one of the windows which the old Bill don't know about. If I get you inside, they'll think you were there all the time."

"What about the policemen already in there?"

"There's just the two of them and they didn't get here till after the medics. They won't have a clue who was inside and who wasn't. It's too bloody dark, and they were more interested in keeping Walt alive. They didn't start asking questions till five minutes ago when the ambulance left." He eased aside a piece of boarding. "Okay, remember this. It were Walter what got stabbed and a psycho called Denning what did it. It's something you'd know if you'd been here awhile."

Deacon put a hand on the boy's shoulder to restrain him as he prepared to climb through the window. "Hang on a minute. I'm not a lawyer. What are these rights you're expecting me to protect? And how am I supposed to do it?''

Terry rounded on him. "Take pictures or something. Jesus, I don't know. Use your imagination." His expression changed to bitterness when Deacon gave a doubtful shake of his head. "Look, you bastard, you said you wanted to prove that Billy's life had value. Well, start by proving that Walt, Tom, me, and every other damn sod in here have value. I know it's a fucking shithole, but we've got squatters' rights over it and it's where we live. It was me as rung the police, not the police as had to come looking, so they've no call to treat us like scum." His pale eyes narrowed in sudden desperation. "Billy always said that press freedom was the people's strongest weapon. Are you telling me he was wrong?"

"Okay, you lot, out," said a harassed police constable pushing resistant bodies. "Let's have you in the light where we can see you." He grabbed at an arm and swung the man to face the doorway. "Out! Out!"

The flash of Deacon's camera startled him, and he turned openmouthed to be caught in a second flash. A sudden silence descended on the warehouse as the light popped several times in quick succession.

"They'll be mounted in a series across the front page," said Deacon, swinging the camera towards another policeman whose foot was nudging a sleeping man, "with a caption like: 'Police use concentration-camp tactics on the homeless.' " He pointed the lens at the first policeman again, zooming in for a close-up. "How about a repeat of the 'Raus! Raus! Raus!' That should stir a few worrying memories among the great and the good."

"Who the hell are you?"

"Who the hell are you, sir!" said Deacon, lowering the camera to offer a card. "Michael Deacon and I'm a journalist. May I have your name, please, and the names of the other officers present?" He took out his notebook.

A plainclothes policeman intervened. "I'm Detective Sergeant Harrison, sir. Perhaps I can be of assistance." He was a pleasant-looking individual in his thirties, solidly built and with thinning blond hair which lifted in the breeze from the warehouse doorway. His eyes creased in an amiable smile.

"You could begin by explaining what's going on here."

"Certainly, sir. We are asking these gentlemen to clear the site of an attempted murder. As the only free area is outside we have requested them to vacate the building."

Deacon raised the camera again, pointed the lens the length of the warehouse, and took a photograph of its vast interior. "Are you sure about that, Sergeant? There seems to be acres of free space in here. As a matter of interest, when did the police adopt this policy?''

"What policy's that, sir?"

"Forcing people to leave their homes when a crime's been committed inside? Isn't the normal procedure to invite them to sit in another part of the house, usually the kitchen, where they can have a cup of tea to calm their nerves?''

"Look, sir, this is hardly run-of-the-mill, as you can see for yourself. It's a serious crime we're investigating. There are no lights. Half these guys are comatose on drink or drugs. The only way we can find out what's been going on is to move everyone out and introduce some order."

"Really?'' Deacon continued to take pictures. "I thought the more usual first step was to invite witnesses to come forward and make a statement."

Briefly, the sergeant's guard slipped and Deacon's camera caught his look of contempt. "These guys don't even know what cooperation means. However—'' He raised his voice. "A man was stabbed in here in the last hour. Would anyone who saw the incident or has information about it, please step forward?" He waited a second or two, then smiled good-humoredly at Deacon. "Satisfied, sir? Now perhaps you'll let us get on."

"I saw it," said Terry, sliding out from behind Deacon's back. His eyes searched the darkness for Tom. "And I weren't the only one, though you'd think I was for all the guts the rest of them are showing."

Silence greeted this remark.

"Jesus, you're pathetic," he went on scathingly. "No wonder the old Bill treat you like dirt. That's all you know, isn't it, how to lie down in the gutter while anyone who wants to walks all over you." He spat on the floor. "That's what I think of men who'd rather let a psycho loose on the streets than stand up and be counted once in their fucking lives."

"Okay, okay," said a disgruntled voice from the middle of the crowd. "Leave off, son, for Christ's sake." Tom shouldered his way to the front and glared malignantly at Terry. "Anyone'd think you were the Archbishop of flaming Canterbury the way you're carrying on." He nodded at the sergeant. "I saw it, too. 'Ow's tricks, Mr. 'Arrison?"

The demeanor of the Detective Sergeant changed. He gave a broad grin. "Good God! Tom Beale! I thought you were dead. Your old lady did, too."

Tom's face creased into lines of disgust. "I might as well be for all she cared. She told me to bugger off the last time you got me sent down, and I never saw 'er or 'eard from 'er again."

"Bull! She was on my back for months after you were released, pressuring me to find you. Why the hell didn't you go home like you were supposed to?"

"There weren't no point," said Tom morosely. "She made it clear she didn't want me. In any case, the silly cow went and died on me. I thought I'd pay 'er a visit a couple of years ago, and there were a load of strangers in the 'ouse. I were that upset, you wouldn't believe."

"That doesn't mean she's dead, for God's sake. The council moved her into a flat six months after you scarpered."

Tom looked pleased. "Is that right? You reckon she wants to see me?"

"I'd put money on it." The DS laughed. "How about we get you home for Christmas? God only knows why, but you're probably the present your old lady's been waiting for." He turned his watch face towards the light. "Better than that, if we can get this mess sorted out PDQ, we'll have you home in time for supper. What do you say?"

"You're on, Mr. 'Arrison."

"Okay, let's start with names and descriptions of everyone involved."

"There were only the one." Tom nodded towards the sleeping man and the policeman standing over him. "That's the bastard you want. Name of Denning. 'E's out for the count at the moment because 'e wears 'isself out with 'is rages, but you want to be careful 'ow you tackle 'im. Like Terry says, 'e's a psycho and 'e's still got the knife on 'im." He cackled again and produced a cigar from one of his pockets. "We don't want no accidents, not when we're all getting along so well. I tell you what, Mr. 'Arrison, I've never been so pleased to see the old Bill in my life. 'Ere, 'ave a cigar on me."

Because he was a professional, Deacon caught the presentation on film and made a few pounds out of the picture by selling it to a photographic agency. It appeared after Christmas in one of the tabloids with the caption: havana nice cigar and a sentimental version of Tom's reunion with his wife, together with Sergeant Harrison's part in the little drama. It was a parody of the truth, glossed up by a staff reporter to stimulate good feeling for the New Year, for the facts were that Tom preferred the company of men, his wife preferred her cat, and Sergeant Harrison was furious when he discovered the cigar was part of a consignment stolen from a hijacked truck.

The whole episode left a sour taste in Deacon's mouth. It offended him that police evenhandedness should turn on the warmth that one Sergeant felt for one destitute man. This wasn't reality. Reality was Terry's shithole of a warehouse, where dereliction ruled and the manner of a man's death was the most interesting thing about him.

Terry caught up with him as he was unlocking his car door. "They're saying I have to go down the nick and make a statement."

"Is that a problem?"

"Yeah. I don't want to go."

Deacon glanced beyond Terry to the policeman who had followed him. "You can't have it both ways, you know. If you want your rights respected, then you have to show willing in return."

"I'll go if you come with me."

"There'd be no point. Lawyers are the only people allowed in interview rooms." He searched the lad's anxious face. "Why the change of heart? You were all fired up to make a statement twenty minutes ago."

"Yeah, but not down the nick on my own."

"Tom'll be there."

A terrible disillusionment curled the boy's lip. "He doesn't give a toss about me or Walt. He's only interested in licking the Sergeant's arse and getting home to his Mrs. He'll drop me in the shit, quick as winking, if it suits him."

"What does he know that the rest of us don't?"

"That I'm only fourteen, and that my name's not Terry Dalton. I ran away from care at twelve and I ain't going back."

Jesus wept! "Why not? What was so bad about it?''

"The bastard in charge was a sodding shirt-lifter, that's what." Terry clenched his fists. "I swore I'd kill him if I ever got the chance, and if they send me back that's what I'm gonna do. You'd better believe that." He spoke with intense aggression. "Billy believed it. It's why he watched out for me. He said he didn't want another murder on his conscience."

Deacon relocked his car door. "Why do I get the feeling my fate is inextricably linked with Billy Blake's?"

"I don't get you."

"Does death by starvation sound familiar?" He cuffed the boy lightly across the back of the head. "There's no food in my flat," he grumbled, "and I was planning to do all my shopping this afternoon. It'll be bedlam tomorrow." He steered Terry towards the policeman. "Don't panic," he said more gently as he felt him tense, "I won't abandon you. Unlike Tom, I have no desire to see either of my wives again."

"Is that you, Lawrence? It's Michael—Michael Deacon ... Yes, as a matter fact, I do have a problem. I need a respectable lawyer to tell a couple of little white lies for me ... Only to the police." He held his mobile telephone away from his ear. "Look, you're the one who told me to get a pet so I reckon you owe me some support here ... No, it's not a dangerous dog and it hasn't bitten anyone. It's a harmless little stray ... I can't prove ownership so they look like impounding him over Christmas ... Yes, I agree. It's a shame ... That's it. All I need is a sponsor ... You will? Good man. It's the police station on the Isle of Dogs. I'll reimburse the taxi fare when you get here."

Terry was hunched in the passenger seat of Deacon's car in an East End backstreet. "You should've told him the truth. He'll blow a fuse when he gets here and finds I'm a bloke. There's no way he's going to tell lies for someone he doesn't know." He put his fingers on the door handle. "I reckon I should take off now while the going's good."

"Don't even think about it," said Deacon evenly. "I promised Sergeant Harrison you'd be at the nick by five o'clock, and you're going to be there." He offered the boy a cigarette and took one himself. "Look, no one's forcing you to make this statement, you're volunteering it, so you won't be put through the third degree unless Tom decides to drop you in it. Even then, you'll be treated with kid gloves because children aren't allowed to be interviewed without an adult present. I guarantee it won't even come to that, but if it does Lawrence will get you out."

"Yeah, but—"

"Trust me. If Lawrence says your name's Terry Dalton and you're aged eighteen, then the police will believe him. He's very convincing. He looks like a cross between the Pope and Albert Einstein."

"He's a fucking lawyer. If you tell him the truth, he'll have to pass it on to the cops. That's what lawyers do."

"No, they don't," said Deacon with more conviction than he felt. "They represent their client's interests. But, in any case, I won't tell Lawrence anything unless I have to."

Terry was grinning broadly as he left the interview room. "You coming?" he asked Deacon and Lawrence as he passed them in the waiting room on his way out.

They caught up with him in the street. "Well?" demanded Deacon.

"No problem. It never crossed their minds I wasn't who I said I was." He started to laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"They warned me off you and Lawrence because they reckoned you were a couple of chutney ferrets after my arse. Otherwise, why'd you be hanging around when all I was doing was making a statement?"

"God almighty!" snarled Deacon. "What did you say?"

"I said they needn't worry because I don't do that kind of stuff."

"Oh, great! So our reputations go down the pan while you come out smelling of roses."

"That's about the size of it," said Terry, retreating behind Lawrence for safety.

Lawrence chuckled joyfully. "To be honest, I'm flattered anyone thinks I still have the energy to do anything so active." He tucked his hand into Terry's arm and drew him along the pavement towards a pub on the corner. "What was the term you used? Chutney ferret? Of course I'm a very old man, and not at all in touch with modern idiom, but I do think gay is preferable." He paused in front of the pub door, waiting for Terry to open it for him. "Thank you," he said, gripping the boy's hand to steady himself as he carefully mounted the step at the entrance.

Terry threw an anguished glance over his shoulder at Deacon which clearly said—this old guy's got his hand in mine, and I think he's a fucking woofter—but Deacon only bared his teeth in a savage smile. "Serves you right," he mouthed, following them inside.
 

Barry Grover looked up rather guiltily as the security guard opened the cuttings' library door and stepped inside. "All right, son, let's have you out of here," said Glen Hopkins firmly. "The office is closed and you are supposed to be on holiday."

He was a blunt-spoken, retired Chief Petty Officer, and after much deliberation, and having listened to the vicious gossip about Barry that came from the women, he had decided to take the little man in hand. He knew exactly what his problem was, and it was nothing that a little practical advice and straight speaking couldn't put right. He had come across Barry's type in the Navy, although admittedly they were usually younger.

Barry covered what he was doing. "I'm working on something important," he said priggishly.

"No you're not. We both know what you're up to, and it's not work."

Barry took off his glasses and stared blindly across the room. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, yes, you do, and it isn't healthy, son." Glen moved heavily across the floor. "Listen to me, a man of your age should be out having fun, not shutting himself away in the dark looking at snapshots. Now, I've a few cards here with some addresses and telephone numbers on them, and my best advice to you is to choose the one you like and give her a ring. She'll cost a bob or two and you'll need a condom, but she'll get you up and running if you follow my drift. There's no shame in having a helping hand at the start." He placed the prostitutes' cards on the desk, and gave Barry a fatherly pat on the shoulder. "You'll find the real thing's a damn sight more fun than a boxful of pictures."

Barry blushed a fiery red. "You don't understand, Mr. Hopkins. I'm working on a project for Mike Deacon." He uncovered the pictures of Billy Blake and James Streeter. "It's a big story."

"Which explains why Mike's at the other desk helping you, I suppose," said Glen ironically, "instead of out on the town as per usual. Come on, son, no story's so important that it can't wait till after Christmas. You can say it's none of my business, but I'm a good judge of what a man's problems are and you're not going to solve yours by staying here."

Barry shrank away from him. "It's not what you think," he mumbled.

"You're lonely, lad, and you don't know how to cure it. Your mum's the nosy type—don't forget it's me who answers the phone if she rings of an evening—and if you'll forgive the straight-speaking, you'd have done better to get out from under her apron strings a long time ago. All you need is a little confidence to get started, and there's no law that says you shouldn't pay for it." His lugubrious face broke into a smile. "Now, hop to it, and give yourself the sort of Christmas present you'll never forget."

Thoroughly humiliated, Barry had no option but to pick up the cards and leave, but the shame of the experience brought tears to his eyes, and he blinked forlornly on the pavement as the front door was locked behind him. He was so afraid that Glen would quiz him on how he'd got on that he finally made his way to a phone booth and called the first number in the pile that the man had selected for him. Had he known that, in the simplistic belief that sex cured all ills, Glen habitually passed prostitutes' cards to any male colleague whom he deemed to be going through a bad patch, Barry might have thought twice about what he was doing. As it was, he assumed his virginity would become common gossip if he didn't fulfill Glen's ambitions for him, and it was more in dread of being the butt of office jokes than in anticipation of pleasure that he agreed to pay one hundred pounds for Fatima: the Turkish Delight.
 

"Now," said Lawrence, when they were settled at a table with drinks in front of them, "perhaps Terry would like to tell me why I'm here."

Terry ducked the question by burying his nose in his pint of beer.

"It's quite simple—" began Deacon.

"Then I should like Terry to explain it," said the old man with surprising firmness. "I'm a lover of simplicity, Michael, but so far you've only confused me. I am very doubtful that Terry is who he says he is, which means you and I could be in the invidious position of accessories after the fact to a crime he committed previously."

A resigned expression settled on Terry's face. "I knew this were a bad idea," he told Deacon morosely. "For a kickoff I don't understand a bleeding word he says. It were like listening to Billy. He was always using words the rest of us had never heard of. I told him once to speak fucking English, and he laughed so much you'd of thought I'd just told the best joke in the world." His pale eyes fixed on Lawrence. "People get hung up on names," he said fiercely, "but what's so important about a fucking name? If it comes to that, what's so important about a person's age? It's the age you act that matters not the age you are. Okay, maybe my name isn't Terry and maybe I'm not eighteen, but I like 'em both because they give me respect. One day, I'm gonna be somebody, and people like you will want to know me whatever I'm calling myself. It's me that's important—" he tapped his chest above his heart—"not my name."

Deacon passed Terry a cigarette. "There's no crime involved, Lawrence," he said matter-of-factly.

"How do you know?"

"What did I tell you?" demanded Terry aggressively. "Fucking lawyers. Now he's calling me a liar."

Deacon made a damping motion with his hand. "Terry ran away from care two years ago at the age of twelve, and he doesn't want to be sent back because the man in charge is a pedophile. To avoid that happening he's added four years to his age and has been living under an alias in a squat. It's as simple as that."

Lawrence clicked his tongue impatiently, unintimidated by Terry's seething anger beside him. "You call it simple that a child has been living in dreadful circumstances without education or loving parental control during two of the most important years of his life? Perhaps I should remind you, Michael, that it's only five hours since you were telling me you wanted to be a father." He raised a thin, transparent hand towards Terry. "This young man is no harmless stray who can be left to his own devices now that you've prevented the police from exercising their responsibility towards him. He's in need of the care and protection that a civilized society—"

"There were Billy," broke in Terry fiercely. "He were caring."

Lawrence looked at him for a moment then took the photograph Deacon had given him from his wallet. "Is this Billy?"

Terry glanced at the haggard face then looked away. "Yeah."

"It must have grieved you to lose him."

"Not so's you'd notice." He lowered his head. "He weren't that bloody brilliant. Half the time he were off his head so it were me looking after him.''

"But you did love him?"

The boy's hands clenched into fists again. "If you're saying me and Billy were sodding poofs, I'll belt you one."

"My dear boy," murmured the old man gently, "such a thing never crossed my mind. I dread to think what kind of world you inhabit where men are frightened to express their fondness for each other because of what others might think. There are a thousand ways to love a person, and only one of them is sexual. I think you loved Billy as a father and, from the way you describe him, he loved you as a son. Is that so shameful that you have to deny it?"

Terry didn't say anything and a silence developed. Deacon broke it eventually because it was becoming uncomfortable.

"Look, I don't know about anyone else," he said, "but I had a terrible night last night, and I wouldn't mind calling it a day. My personal view is that Terry's a streetwise kid with a hell of a lot going for him—he's certainly got more brains than I had at his age—but there's a spare bed in my flat, I look to be spending a miserable Christmas on my own, and I'd welcome some company. What do you say, Terry? My place or the warehouse for the next few days? You and I can enjoy ourselves while Lawrence does the worrying about the future."

"I thought you said there was no food," he muttered ungraciously.

"There isn't. We'll grab a takeaway tonight and go looking for turkey tomorrow."

"Except you don't really want me. It's only because Lawrence reckons you'd make a lousy father that you thought of it."

"Right. But I have thought of it, so what's the answer?" He looked at the bowed head. ' 'Listen, you miserable little sod, I haven't done badly by you so far today. Okay, I don't know the first damn thing about parenting but a small thank-you for the efforts I have shown wouldn't go amiss."

Terry grinned suddenly and raised his head. "Thanks, Dad. You've done good. How about we make it an Indian takeaway?''

There was a gleam of triumph in the lad's pale eyes which came and went too swiftly for Deacon to notice. But Lawrence saw it. Being older and wiser, he had been looking for it.

Lawrence refused Deacon's offer of a lift home but took down the Islington address in case he was contacted by the police. He advised Terry to use his few days' grace to consider whether a return to the warehouse was in his best interests, warned him that his true age and identity would undoubtedly be discovered if and when he was required to give evidence against Denning in court, and suggested he think about regularizing his position voluntarily before he was forced into it. He then asked Terry to call him a taxi from the phone at the bar and, while the boy was out of earshot, he cautioned Deacon against naivety. "Retain a healthy skepticism, Michael. Remember the kind of life Terry's been leading and how little you actually know about him."

Deacon smiled slightly. "I was afraid you were going to tell me to embrace him to my heart with expressions of love. Healthy skepticism I can cope with. It's what I know best."

"Oh, I don't think you're quite so hardened as you think you are, my dear fellow. You've accepted everything he's told you without blinking an eyelash."

"You think he's lying?"

Lawrence shrugged. "We've had a conversation filled with references to homosexuality, and that troubles me. You'll be very vulnerable to a charge of attempted rape if you take him back to your flat. And that will leave you no option but to pay whatever he demands from you."

Deacon frowned. "Come on, Lawrence, he's completely paranoid on the whole subject. He'd never let me near enough to touch him so how could he accuse me of rape?''

"Attempted rape, dear chap, and do please recognize how effective his paranoia is. He's lulled you into thinking it's safe to take him home, which I'm bound to say is not something I would feel confident doing."

"Then why were you pushing me into it?"

Lawrence sighed. "I wasn't, Michael. I was hoping to persuade you both that Terry should be returned to care." He was watching the boy as he spoke. The barman was trying to give him a telephone directory which he seemed reluctant to take. "Tell me, what will your reaction be when he screams and tears his clothes, and threatens to run to one of your neighbors with stories of imprisonment and sexual assault?''

"Why would he want to do that?"

"I would imagine because he's done it before and knows it works. You really mustn't go into this with your eyes closed, my dear chap."

"Great," said Deacon, lowering his head wearily into his hands. "So what the hell am I supposed to do now? Tell the little bastard to get stuffed?"

Lawrence chuckled. "Dear, dear, dear! What a fellow you are for losing heart. The least generous but probably most sensible course would be to hand him back to the police and let the social workers deal with him, but that would be very unkind when you've just offered him Christmas in your flat. Forewarned is after all forearmed. I think you must honor your invitation to the poor lad but keep one step ahead of him all the time."

"I wish you'd make up your mind," growled Deacon. "Half a minute ago the poor lad was planning to con me out of thousands."

"Why should the two be mutually exclusive? He's an unloved, ill-educated, half-formed adolescent who, through living rough, will have learned some sophisticated tricks to keep himself in clothes, food, drink, and drugs. The truth may be that you're exactly the person he needs to bring him back into the fold."

"He'll run rings around me," said Deacon gloomily.

"Surely not," murmured Lawrence, looking towards the bar, where Terry had finally asked the barman to locate a minicab firm for him in the directory. "At least you have the advantage of literacy."
 

Barry experienced only humiliation at the hands of Fatima, who spoke very poor English. The light in her bed-sitting room was dim, and he looked in fastidious alarm at the tumbled bed which still seemed to bear the imprint of a previous client. There was a strong Turkish atmosphere in the frowsty room which owed more to Fatima herself than to the array of joss sticks burning on a dressing table.

She was a well-covered woman, somewhere in her middle years, with a routine that was well-established and made no allowance for time-wasting. She recognized rapidly that she was dealing with a virgin and looked repeatedly at her clock, while Barry stumbled through an inarticulate introduction of himself as he tried to work out how to extricate himself from this dreadful situation without offending her.

"One hunra," she broke in impatiently, stroking her palm. "And take zee trowse off. Who care you call Barree? I call you sweeties. What you like? Doggy-doggy? Oil?" She pursed her full lips into a ripe rosebud. "You nice clean boy. For a hunra and fifty Fatima do sucky-sucky. You like sucky-sucky? Sounds good, eh, sweeties?"

Terrified that she wouldn't let him go without some sort of payment, Barry fumbled his wallet out of his coat pocket and allowed her to remove five twenties. It was a mistake. Once the money had changed hands, and when Barry didn't immediately start shedding his clothes, she set about doing it for him. She was a strong woman and clearly expected to fulfill her side of the contract.

"Come on, sweeties. No need to be shy. Fatima she know all the tricks. There, you see, no problem. You beeg boy." With deft hands she plucked a condom from a nearby drawer, applied it with consummate artistry, and proceeded to practice her Turkish delights at speed. Barry was no match for her skill, and matters reached a conclusion in seconds. "There you are, sweeties," she said, "all done, all enjoyed. You really beeg boy. You come back any time as long as you have a hunra. Fatima always willing. Next time, less talk more fun, okay? You pay for good sex, and Fatima give good sex. Maybe you like doggy-doggy and fondle Fatima's nice round arse. Now put zee trowse back on and say bye-bye." She had the door open before he was properly dressed and, because he didn't know what else to do with it, he put the condom in his pocket. She called after him as he walked away: "You come back soon, Barree," and his heart swelled with loathing for her and all her sex.
 

"What was the old guy saying to you while I was on the phone?" demanded Terry suspiciously as he and Deacon made their way back to the car.

"Nothing much. He's concerned about your future and how best to handle it."

"Yeah, well, if he does the dirty on me and goes to the police, he'd better watch his back."

"He gave you his word he wouldn't. Don't you believe him?"

Terry kicked at the curb. "I guess so. But he's a bit fucking heavy on the hand-patting and calling everyone dear. D'you reckon he's bent?"

"No. Would it make a difference if he were?''

"Bloody right it would. I don't hold with poofs."

Deacon inserted his key in the car door, but paused before turning it to look across the roof at his would-be passenger. "Then why do you keep talking about them?" he asked. "You're like an alcoholic who can't keep off the subject of booze because he's dying for his next drink."

"I'm not a bloody poof," said Terry indignantly.

"Then prove it by keeping off the subject."

"Okay. Can we stop at the warehouse?"

Deacon eyed him thoughtfully. "Why?''

"There's things I need. Extra clothes and such."

"Why can't you come as you are?"

"Because I'm not a fucking tramp."

After ten minutes of drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and with no sign of Terry's reemergence from the dark building, Deacon wondered if he should go after him. He could hear Lawrence's voice in his ear: "You think this is good parenting, Michael? You let a fourteen-year-old boy go into a den of thieves, and you call that responsible?"

He postponed one difficult decision by making another. He picked up his mobile telephone and dialed his sister's number. "Emma?" he said when a woman's voice answered at the other end.

"No, it's Antonia."

"You sound like your mother."

"Who is this, please?"

"Your uncle Michael."

"God!" said the voice at the other end in some awe. "Listen, hang on, okay? I'll get Mum." The phone clattered onto a tabletop at the other end and he heard her shouting for her mother. "Quick, quick! It's Michael."

His sister's breathless voice came down the line. "Hello, hello! Michael?"

"Calm down and get your breath back," he said in some amusement. "I'm still here."

"I ran. Where are you?"

"In a car outside a warehouse in the East End."

"What are you doing there?"

"Nothing of any interest." He could see the conversation being hijacked by irrelevancies for, like him, Emma was adept at postponing anything difficult. "Look, I got your card. I also got one from Julia. I gather Ma's not well."

There was a short silence. "Julia shouldn't have told you," she said rather bitterly. "I hoped you'd rung because you wanted to end this silly feud, not because you feel guilty about Ma."

"I don't feel guilty."

"Out of pity, then."

Did he feel pity, either? His strongest emotion was still anger. "Do not bring that whore into my house,'' his mother had said when he told her he'd married Clara. "How dare you sully your father's name by giving it to a cheap tart? Was killing him not enough for you, Michael?" That had been five years ago, and he hadn't spoken to her since. "I'm still angry, Emma, so maybe I'm phoning out of filial duty. I'm not going to apologize to her—or you for that matter—but I am sorry she's ill. What do you want me to do about it? I'm quite happy to see her as long as she's prepared to keep a rein on her tongue, but I'll walk out the minute she starts having a go. That's the only deal you or she will get, so do I come or not?"

"You haven't changed one little bit, have you?" Her voice was angry. "Your mother's virtually blind and may have to have her leg amputated as a result of diabetes, and you talk about deals. Some filial duty, Michael. She was in hospital for most of September, and now Hugh and I are paying through the nose for private-nursing care at the farm because she won't come and live with us. That's filial duty, making sure your mother's being looked after properly even if it means hardships for yourself."

Deacon looked towards the warehouse with a frown in his dark eyes. "What happened to her investments? She had a perfectly good income five years ago, so why isn't she paying for the nursing care herself?''

Emma didn't answer.

"Are you still there?"

"Yes."

"Why isn't she paying herself?"

"She offered to put the girls through school and used her capital to buy their fees in advance," said Emma reluctantly. "She left herself enough to live on but not enough to pay for extras. We didn't ask," she went on defensively. "It was her idea, but none of us knew she was going to be struck down like this. And it's not as if there was any point keeping anything for you. As far as the rest of us were aware, you were never going to speak to us again."

"That's right," he agreed coolly. "I'm only speaking to you now because Julia was so damn sure I wouldn't."

Emma sighed. "Is that the only reason you phoned?"

"Yes."

"I don't believe you. Why can't you just say sorry and let bygones be bygones?''

"Because I've nothing to be sorry for. It's not my fault Dad died, whatever you and Ma like to think."

"That's not what she was angry about. She was angry about the way you treated Julia."

"It was none of her business."

"Julia was her daughter-in-law. She was very fond of her. So was I."

"You weren't married to her."

"That's cheap, Michael."

"Yes, well, I can't accuse you of that, can I? Not when you and Hugh have scooped the pot," said Deacon sarcastically. "I've never taken a cent from Ma and don't intend to start now, so if she wants to see me, it'll have to be on my terms because I don't owe her a damn thing, never mind how many bloody legs she's about to lose."

"I can't believe you said that," snapped his sister. "Aren't you at all upset that she's ill?"

If he was, he wasn't going to admit it. "My terms, Emma, or not at all. Have you a pen? This is my telephone number at home." He gave it to her. "I presume you'll be at the farm for Christmas, so I suggest you talk this over with Ma and ring me with your verdict. And don't forget I promised to deck Hugh the next time I saw him, so take that into account before you reach a decision."

"You can't hit Hugh," she said indignantly. "He's fifty-three."

Deacon bared his teeth at the receiver. "Good, then one punch should do it easily."

There was another silence. "Actually, he's been wanting to apologize for ages," she said weakly. "He didn't really mean what he said. It just sort of came out in the heat of the moment. He regretted it afterwards."

"Poor old Hugh. It's going to be doubly painful then when I break his nose."

Terry appeared from the warehouse with two filthy suitcases, which he parked on the backseat. He offered the explanation that, as the warehouse was full of fucking thieves, he was safeguarding his possessions by bringing them with him. Deacon thought it looked more like wholesale removal to what promised to be luxury living.

"Doesn't the endless 'fucking' get a little boring after a while?'' he murmured as he drew away from the curb.

They ate their takeaway, perched on the hood of Deacon's car. They were in danger of freezing to death in the night air, but he preferred that to having his upholstery splattered with red tandoori chicken dye. Terry wanted to know why they hadn't eaten in the restaurant.

"I didn't think we'd ever get served," said Deacon rather grimly, "not after you called them wogs."

Terry grinned. "What d'you call them, then?"

"People."

They sat in silence for a while, gazing down the street ahead of them. Fortunately it was well nigh deserted, so they attracted little curiosity. Deacon wondered who would have been the more embarrassed, himself or Terry, had some acquaintance passed by and seen them.

"So what are we going to do next?" asked Terry, cramming a last onion bhaji into his mouth. "Go down the pub? Visit a club maybe? Get stoned?"

Deacon, who had been looking forward to putting his feet up in front of the fire and dozing through whatever film was on the television, groaned quietly to himself. Pubbing, clubbing, or getting stoned? He felt old and decrepit beside the hyperactivity of movement—fidgeting, scratching, position changing—that had been going on beside him for over an hour now. This, in turn, meant that his mind toiled with the threat of fleas, lice, and bedbugs, and the problem of how to get Terry into a bath and every stitch of his clothing into the washing machine without having his motives misconstrued.

One thing was certain. He had no intention of giving house room to Terry's wildlife.
 

The row between Emma and Hugh Tremayne had reached stentorian proportions and, as usual, Hugh had resorted to the whiskey bottle. "Have you any idea what it's like to be the only man in a houseful of domineering women?" he demanded. "Don't you think I've been tempted to do what Michael did and walk out? Nag, nag, nag. That's the only thing you and your mother have any talent for, isn't it?"

"I'm not the one who called Michael a sack of worthless shit," said Emma furiously. "That was your wonderful idea, although what made you think you could order him out of his own house I can't imagine. The only reason you're in our family is because you married me."

"You're right," he said abruptly, replenishing his glass. "And what the hell am I still doing here? I sometimes think the only member of your family I've ever really liked was your brother. He's certainly the least critical."

"Don't be so childish," she snapped.

He stared at her moodily over the rim of his glass. "I never liked Julia—she was a frigid bitch—and I certainly didn't blame Michael for taking up with Clara. Yet I let myself get dragged into defending you and your mother when I should have told Michael to go ahead and smash the house up with you and Penelope in it. As far as I'm concerned, he was well within his rights. You'd been screaming at him like a couple of fishwives for well over an hour before he lost his temper, and you had the damn nerve to accuse his wife of being common as muck." He shook his head and moved towards the door. "I'm not interested anymore. If you want Michael's help, then you'd better persuade your mother to treat him with a little respect."

Emma was close to tears. "If I try, she won't talk to him at all. It's Julia's fault. If she hadn't told him Ma was ill, he'd probably have rung anyway."

"You're running out of people to blame."

"Yes, but what are we going to do?" she wailed. "She's got to sell the farm."

"It's your blasted family," he growled, "so you sort it out. You know damn well I never wanted your mother's money. It was obvious she'd use it as a stick to beat us with." He slammed the door behind him. "And I'm not going to the farm for Christmas," he yelled from the hall. "I've done it for sixteen bloody years, and it's been sixteen years of undiluted misery."
 

"This is how we're going to play it," said Deacon, pausing outside the door to his flat after carrying a suitcase up three flights of stairs. "You're going to remove everything washable from these cases out here on the landing. We will then put it into black trash bags which I will empty into the washing machine while you're having your bath. You will leave what you're wearing outside the bathroom door, and when you're locked inside, I will take your clothes away and replace them with some of my own. Are we agreed?''

In the half-light of the landing, Terry looked a great deal older than fourteen. "You sound like you're scared of me," he remarked curiously. "What did that old bugger Lawrence really say?"

"He told me how unhygienic you were likely to be."

"Oh, right." Terry looked amused. "You sure he didn't tell you about the rape scam?"

"That, too," said Deacon.

"It always works, you know. I met a guy once who scored five hundred off of it. Some old geezer took him in out of the goodness of his heart, and the next thing he knew this kid was screaming rape all over the place." He smiled in a friendly way. "I'll bet Lawrence tore strips off you for inviting me back here—he's sharp as a tack, that one—but he's wrong if he thinks I'd turn on you. Billy taught me this saying: Never bite the hand that feeds you. So you've got nothing to worry about, okay? You're safe with me."

Deacon opened the front door and reached inside for the light switch. "That's good news, Terry. It lets us both off the hook."

"Oh, yeah? You had something planned just in case, did you?''

"It's called revenge."

Terry's smile broadened into a grin. "You can't take revenge on an underage kid. The cops'd crucify you."

Deacon smiled back, but rather unpleasantly. "What makes you think you'd still be a kid when it's done, or that I'm the one who'd do it? Here's another saying Billy should have taught you: Revenge is a dish best eaten cold." His voice dropped abruptly to sound like sifted gravel. "You'll have a second or two to remember it when a psycho like Denning does to you what was done to Walter this afternoon. And, if you're lucky, you'll live to regret it."

"Yeah, well, it's not going to happen, is it?" muttered Terry, somewhat alarmed by Deacon's tone. "Like I said, you're safe with me."

Terry was deeply critical of Deacon's flat. He didn't like the way the front door opened into the sitting room—"Jesus, it means you've got to be well tidy all the time"—nor the narrow corridor that led off it to the bathroom and the two bedrooms—"It'd be bigger without these stupid walls all over the place''—only the kitchen passed muster because it was attached to the sitting room—"I guess that's pretty handy for TV dinners." Once all his underlying odors had been effectively soaked away, he prowled around it in a pair of oversized jeans and a sweater, shaking his head over the blandness of it all. He reeked strongly of Jazz aftershave ("nicked from a chemist," he said proudly) which Deacon had to admit introduced an exotic quality into the atmosphere that hadn't been there before.

The final verdict was damning. "You're not a boring bloke, Mike, so how come you live in such a boring place?''

"What's boring about it?" Deacon was using a long-handled wooden spoon to poke Terry's patchwork quilt with infinite care into the washing machine. He kept his eyes peeled for anything that looked like hopping, although as his only plan was to try and whack the offending parasites with the head of the spoon, it was fortunate they never emerged.

Terry waved an arm in a wide encompassing circle."The only room that's even halfway reasonable's your bedroom, and that's only because there's a stereo and a load of books in there. You ought to have more bits and pieces at your age. I reckon I've got more fucking stuff—sorry—and I ain't been knocking around half as long as you."

Deacon produced his cigarettes and handed one to the boy. "Then don't get married. This is what two divorces can do to you."

"Billy always said women were dangerous."

"Was he married?"

"Probably. He never talked about it, though." He pulled open the kitchen cupboard doors. "Is there anything to drink in this place?"

"There's some beer in the fridge and some wine in a rack by the far wall."

"Can I have a beer?''

Deacon took two cans from the fridge and tossed one across. "There are glasses in the cupboard to your right."

Terry preferred to drink from the can. He said it was more American.

"Do you know much about America?" Deacon asked him.

"Only what Billy told me."

Deacon pulled out a kitchen chair and straddled it. "What did Billy say about it?"

"He didn't rate it much. Reckoned it'd been corrupted by money. He liked Europe better. He were always talking about Commies—said they took after Jesus."

The phone rang but as neither of them answered it, the tape went into action. "Michael, it's Hugh," said his brother-in-law's tipsy voice over the amplifier."I'll be in the Red Lion in Deanery Street tomorrow at lunchtime. I'm not going to apologize now because it's only fair you break my nose first. I'll apologize afterwards. Hope that's okay."

Terry frowned. "What was that about?''

"Revenge," said Deacon. "I told you, it's a dish best eaten cold."
 

Three miles away in Fleet Street, Barry Grover skulked in the shadows, waiting for Glen Hopkins's shift to finish. Only when the replacement, Reg Linden, had been in situ for fifteen minutes did he scuttle across the road and let himself in. Reg, who as night watchman had very little contact with Street employees, had long since ceased to question Barry's nocturnal visits to the offices, even looked forward to them for the company they offered. He took as much interest in Barry's researches as Barry did himself, and his view—untarnished by female gossip—was that the little man's problem was a tendency to insomnia. In that peculiarly uncomplicated way reserved to men who don't seek to know too much about each other, he and Barry were friends.

He smiled affably. "Still trying to identify your dead wino?" he asked.

Barry nodded. Had Reg been a little more perceptive, he might have wondered at the little man's agitation, he might even have questioned why Barry's fly was undone, but fate had ruled him an unobservant man.

"This might help," he said, producing a paperback from under the desk. "You want chapter five—'Missing Persons.' No pictures, I'm afraid, but some useful information on James Streeter. Mrs. Linden came across it in a bookshop and thought you might like it. She's always been interested in your projects." He waved Barry's thanks aside, and promised to bring him a cup of tea when he made one for himself.
 

Deacon emptied another bag of washing into the machine. "You said there was stuff in the warehouse that belonged to Billy," he reminded Terry. "Was that a ploy to get me down there or was it true?"

"True, but you'll have to pay if you want to see it."

"Where is it?"

Terry jerked his head towards the sitting room, where the suitcases stood in a corner. "In there."

"What's to stop me going through the cases myself?"

"One of these." The lad clenched his right hand into a fist. "I'll lay you flat, and if you hit me back, I'll have proof of assault." He smiled engagingly. "Sexual or the other kind, depending on my mood."

"How much do you want?"

"My mate got five hundred off of his old geezer."

"Bog off, Terry. Billy can go hang for all I care. I'm bored with him."

"Like hell you are. He's bugging you, same as he bugs me. Four hundred."

"Twenty."

"One hundred."

"Fifty, and it'd better be good—" Deacon clenched his own hand into a fist—"or you'll be on the receiving end of one of these. And to hell with the consequences frankly.''

"It's a deal. Give us the fifty." Terry uncurled his palm. "Cash only, or all bets are off."

Deacon nodded towards the kitchen cabinets. "Third cupboard along, biscuit tin on the second shelf, take five tens and leave the rest." He watched the boy locate the tin, remove the wad of notes inside it, and peel off fifty pounds.

"Jesus, but you're a weird bastard, Mike," he said resuming his seat. "There must be another two hundred in there. What's to stop me nicking it, now you've shown me where it is?''

"Nothing," said Deacon, "except it's mine, and you haven't earned it. Not yet, anyway."

"What'd I have to do to earn it?"

"Learn to read." He saw the cynical look in Terry's eyes. "I'll teach you."

"Sure you will, for two miserable days. And when I still can't read at the end of it, you'll get mad and I'll've wasted my time for nothing."

"Why didn't Billy teach you?"

"He tried once or twice," said the boy dismissively, "but he couldn't see well enough to teach anything 'cept what was in his head. It were another of his punishments. He poked a pin into his eye one time which meant he couldn't read very long without getting a headache." He took another cigarette. "I told you, he were a right nutter. He were only happy when he were hurting himself."
 

They were the most meager of possessions: a battered postcard, some crayons, a silver dollar, and two flimsy letters which were in danger of falling apart from having been read so often. "Is this all there was?" asked Deacon.

"I told you before. He didn't want nothing and he didn't have nothing. A bit like you if you think about it."

Deacon spread the items across the table. "Why weren't these on him when he died?"

Terry shrugged. "Because he told me to burn them a few days before he buggered off that last time. I hung on to them in case he changed his mind."

"Did he say why he wanted them burned?"

"Not so's you'd notice. It was while he was in one of his mad fits. He kept yelling that everything was dust, then told me to chuck this lot on the fire."

"Dust to dust and ashes to ashes," murmured Deacon, picking up the postcard and turning it over. It was blank on one side and showed a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's cartoon for The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Infant St. John on the other. It was worn at the edges and there were crease marks across the glossy surface of the picture, but it required more than that to diminish the power of da Vinci's drawing. "Why did he have this?"

"He used to copy it onto the pavement. That's the family he drew." Terry touched the figure of the infant John the Baptist to the right of the picture. "He left this baby out— his finger moved to the face of St. Anne—"turned this woman into a man, and drew the other woman and the baby that's on her knee the way they are. Then he'd color it in. It were bloody good, too. You could see what was what in Billy's picture whereas this one's a bit of a mess, don't you reckon?''

Deacon gave a snort of laughter. "It's one of the world's great masterpieces, Terry."

"It weren't as good as Billy's. I mean look at the legs. They're all mixed up, so Billy sorted them. He gave the bloke brown legs and the woman blue legs."

With a muffled guffaw, Deacon lowered his forehead to the table. He reached surreptitiously for a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose loudly before sitting up again. "Remind me to show you the original one day," he said a little unsteadily. "It's in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and I'm not as convinced as you that the legs need—er—sorting." He took a pull at his beer can. "Tell me how Billy managed to do these paintings if he couldn't see properly."

"He could see to draw—I mean he were drawing every night on bits of paper—and, anyway, he made his pavement pictures really big. It were only reading that gave him a headache."

"What about the writing that you said he put at the bottom of the picture?''

"He did it big like the painting, otherwise people wouldn't have noticed it."

"How do you know what it said if you can't read?"

"Billy learnt it to me so I could write it myself." He pulled Deacon's notebook and pencil towards him and carefully formed the words across the page: "blessed are the poor.

"If you can do that," said Deacon matter-of-factly, "you can learn to read in two days." He took up one of the letters and spread it carefully on the table in front of him.

Cadogan Square
April 4th

Darling,

Thank you for your beautiful letter, but how I wish you could enjoy the here and now and forget the future. Of course I am flattered that you want the world to know you love me, but isn't what we have more perfect because it is a secret? You say "your glass shall not persuade you you are old, so long as youth and I are of one date," but, my darling, Shakespeare never named his love because he knew how cruel the world could be. Do you want me pilloried as a calculating bitch who set out to seduce any man who could offer her security? For that is what will happen if you insist on acknowledging me publicly. I adore you with all my heart but my heart will break if you ever stop loving me because of what people say. Please, please let's leave things the way they are. Your loving, V.

Deacon unfolded the second letter and placed it beside the first. It was written in the same hand.

Paris
Friday

Darling,

Don't think me mad but I am so afraid of dying. I have nightmares sometimes where I float in black space beyond the reach of anyone's love. Is that what hell is, do you think? Forever to know that love exists while forever condemned to exist without it? If so, it will be my punishment for the happiness I've had with you. I can't help thinking it's wrong for one person to love another so much that she can't bear to be apart from him. Please, please don't stay away any longer than is necessary. Life isn't life without you. V.

"Did Billy read these to you, Terry?"

The boy shook his head.

"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 you and then thrust his hand in the fire out of remorse?"

"No, it were the other way round," said the boy unhappily. "It were me tried to strangle him. He only burnt his bloody hand so I'd remember how close I came to murder."
 

The awful irony of Barry's situation came home to him forcibly in the semidarkness of the cuttings' library when he realized he was no longer content to look at photographs of beautiful men and fantasize harmlessly about what they could do for him.

His hands trembled slightly as he separated out the photographs of Amanda Powell.

He knew everything about her, including where she lived and that she lived alone.
 

As far as Terry could remember it had happened two weeks after his fourteenth birthday, during the last weekend in February. The weather had been bitter for several days, and tempers in the warehouse were frayed. It was always worse when it was cold, he explained, because if they didn't go daily to one of the soup kitchens for hot food, survival became impossible. More often than not, the older ones and the madder ones refused to emerge from whatever cocoon they had made for themselves, so Terry and Tom took it upon themselves to bully them into moving. But, as Terry said, it was a quick way to make enemies, and Billy was more easily riled than most.

"One of the reasons Tom didn't want me calling the coppers this afternoon was because of what's stashed away in that warehouse." He produced a small wad of silver foil from his pocket and placed it on the table. "I do puff—" he nodded to the wad—"and maybe some E if I go to a rave. But that's kid's stuff compared to what some of them are on. There's bodies all over the shop most days, stoned on anything from jellies to H, and half the bastards don't even live there but come in off the streets for a fix where they reckon it's safer. And then there's the nicked stuff—booze and fags and the like—that people have hidden in the rubble. You have to be bloody careful not to go stumbling on someone's stash or you get a knife in the ribs the way Walter did. It can get pretty bad sometimes. This last week, there's been two beatings and the stabbing. It gets to you after a while."

"Is that why you called the police today?''

"Yeah, and because of Billy. I've been thinking about him a lot recently." He returned to his story. "Anyway, it were no different last February, worse if anything because it were colder than now, so there were more bodies than usual. If they slept on the streets they froze where they lay so Tom and the others let them doss inside."

"Why didn't they go to the government-run hostels? Surely a bed there has to be better than a floor in a warehouse?"

"Why'd you think?" said Terry scathingly. "We're talking druggies and psychos who don't even trust their own fucking shadows." He fingered the silver-foil wad. "Tom was doing really well out of it. He'd let any sodding bastard in as long as he got something in exchange. He even took a guy's coat once because it was the only thing he had, and the poor bloke froze to death during the night. So Tom had him carried into the street—like he was going to do with Walter—in case the cops came in. And that's what made Billy flip his lid. He went ballistic and said it all had to stop."

"What did he do?" prompted Deacon when the boy didn't go on.

"The worst thing he could've done. He started breaking people's bottles, and searching the rubble for stashes, and yelling that we had to get rid of the evil before it swallowed us up. So I jumped the silly bugger and tied him up in my doss before one of the psychos could kill him, and that's when he started on me." Terry reached for another cigarette and lit it with a hand that shook slightly. "Even you'd've said he was a nutter if you'd seen him that day. He was off 'is sodding rocker—shaking, screaming—" the boy made a wry face. "See, once he got going he couldn't stop. He'd go on and on till he got so tired he'd give up. But he couldn't give up this time. He kept spitting at me, and saying that I was the worst kind of scum, and when I didn't take no notice of that, he started yelling out that I was a rent-boy and that anyone who wanted a bit of my arse should just come in the tent and take it." He drew heavily on his cigarette. "I wanted to kill him, so I put my hands 'round his neck and squeezed."

"What stopped you?"

"Nothing. I went on squeezing till I thought he was dead." He fell into a long silence which Deacon let drift.

"Then I got scared and didn't know what to do, so I untied 'im and pushed him about a bit to see if he really was dead, and the bugger opened his eyes and smiled at me. And that's when he told me about this bloke he'd killed, and how anger made people do things that could ruin their lives. Then he said he wanted to show the gods that it was his fault and not mine, so he went outside and stuck his hand in the fire."

Deacon wished there had been a woman there to hear Terry's story, one who would have wrapped him in her arms and petted him, and told him there was nothing to worry about, for that most obvious course of action was denied to him. He could only look away from the tears that brightened the boy's eyes and talk prosaically about the mechanics of how to dry Terry's wet clothes overnight without the benefit of a tumble dryer.
 

Reg brought up Barry's tea and placed the mug on the desk beside the book his wife had bought. It was lying facedown and he pointed to a quote on the back of it.

"Immensely readable." Charles Lamb, The Street.

"The wife is always happier with a recommendation," he said, "but as I pointed out it's surprisingly short for Mr. Lamb. If he likes a book he tends to go overboard. Could 'immensely readable' be the only words of praise in the review I wonder? An example, perhaps, of a publisher's creative discounting?"

One of the reasons why Reg enjoyed Barry's company so much was that Barry allowed him to practice his ponderous wit, and Barry chuckled dutifully as he picked up the paperback and turned to the copyright page. "First published by Macmillan in nineteen ninety-four, so the review will have come out last year. I'll find it for you," he offered. "Consider it a small thank-you for the book and the tea."

"It could be interesting," said Reg prophetically.

...Another mixed-bag of a book is Roger Hyde's Unsolved Mysteries of the 20th Century (published by Macmillan at Ł15.99). Immensely readable, it nevertheless disappoints because, as the title suggests, it raises too many unanswered questions and ignores the fact that other writers have already shed light on some of these "unsolved" mysteries. There are the infamous Digby murders of 1933 when Gilbert and Fanny Digby and their three young children were found dead in their beds of arsenic poisoning one April morning with nothing to suggest who murdered them or why. Hyde describes the background to the case in meticulous detail—Gilbert and Fanny's histories, the names of all those known to have visited the house in the days preceding the murders, the crime scene itself—but he fails to mention M. G. Dunner's book Sweet Fanny Digby (Gollanz, 1963) which contained evidence that Fanny Digby, who had a history of depression, had been seen to soak fly paper in an enamel bowl the day before she and her family were found dead. There is the case of the diplomat, Peter Fenton, who walked out of his house in July 1988, after his wife Verity committed suicide. Again, Hyde describes the background to these events in detail, referring to the Driberg Syndicate and Fenton's access to NATO secrets, but he makes no mention of Anne Cattrell's Sunday Times feature The Truth About Verity Fenton (17th June, 1990) which revealed the appalling brutality suffered by Verity at the hands of Geoffrey Standish, her first husband, before his convenient death in a hit-and-run accident in 1971. If, as Anne Cattrell claims, this was no accident, and if Verity did indeed meet Fenton six years earlier than either of them ever admitted, then the solution to her suicide and his disappearance lies in Geoffrey Standish's coffin and not in Nathan Driberg's prison cell...

Out of interest, Barry searched the microfiche files for the Sunday Times of 17th June, 1990. He held his breath as Anne Cattrell's feature appeared with a full-face photograph of Peter Fenton, OBE.

He was as sure as he could be that he was looking at Billy Blake.

There have been few more effective smoke screens than that thrown up by Peter Fenton when he vanished from his house on July 3rd, 1988, leaving his wife's dead body on the marital bed. It began as a sensational Lucan-style murder hunt until Verity Fenton was found to have committed suicide. There followed a rampage through Peter's history, looking for mistresses and/or treachery when it was discovered that he had access to NATO secrets. Interest centered on his sudden trip to Washington, and easy links were drawn with the anonymous members of the Driberg syndicate.

And where did Verity Fenton's suicide feature in all this? Barely at all is the answer because minds were focused on Peter's inexplicable disappearance and not on the reasons why a "neurotic" woman should want to kill herself. The coroner's verdict was "suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed" relying largely on her daughter's evidence that she had been "unnaturally depressed" while Peter was in Washington. Yet no real explanation for her depression was sought as the assumption seems to have been that Peter's disappearance meant that her reference in her suicide note to his betrayals was true, and these were shocking enough to drive a woman to suicide.

Two years on from these bizarre events of July 1988, it is worth reassessing what is known about Peter and Verity Fenton. Perhaps the first thing to strike anyone researching this story is the complete lack of evidence to show that Peter Fenton was a traitor. He certainly had access to confidential NATO information during '85-'87, but sources within the organization admit that three different investigations have failed to trace any leakage of information to him or to his desk.

By contrast, there is a wealth of evidence about his "sudden" trip to Washington at the end of June which was painted as a fishing expedition to find out if Driberg was about to name his associates. The details of the trip were made available at the time by his immediate superior at the Foreign Office but they were ignored in the scramble to prove Fenton a traitor. The facts are that he was briefed on June 6th to attend high-level discussions in Washington from June 29th to July 2nd. It is difficult now to understand how three weeks' notification came to be interpreted as "sudden" or why, if he were part of the Driberg syndicate, he should have waited until eight weeks after Driberg's arrest to go "fishing."

The Fenton tragedy takes on a very different perspective if suggestions that Peter was a traitor are dismissed. The question that must then be asked is: What were the betrayals Verity talked about in her suicide note? She wrote: "Forgive me. I can't bear it anymore, darling. Please don't blame yourself. Your betrayals are nothing compared with mine.

But why have Verity's own betrayals been so consistently underexamined? The simple answer is that, as the wife of a diplomat, she was always less interesting than her husband. What or who could a "neurotic" woman possibly have betrayed that could compete with treachery in the Foreign Office? Yet it was imperative, even in '88, that her betrayals be examined because she claimed they were worse than her husband's, and he was branded a spy.

Born Verity Parnell in London on September 28th, 1937, she was brought up alone by her mother after her father. Colonel Parnell, died in 1940 during the evacuation from Dunkirk. She and her mother are believed to have spent the war years in Suffolk but returned to London in 1945. Verity was enrolled at a preparatory school before transferring to the Mary Bartholomew School for Girls in Barnes in May 1950. Although considered bright enough to go on to university, she chose instead to marry Geoffrey Standish, a handsome, thirty-two-year-old stockbroker who was fourteen years her senior, in August 1955. The marriage caused an estrangement between herself and her mother, and it is not clear whether she saw Mrs. Parnell again before the woman's death some time in the late '50s. Verity gave birth to a daughter, Marilyn, in 1960 and a son, Anthony, in 1966.

The marriage was a disaster. Geoffrey was described, even by close friends, as "unpredictable." He was a gambler, a womanizer and a drunk, and it soon became clear to those who knew him that he was taking out his frustrations on his young wife. There was a history of "accidents," days of indisposition, a reluctance to do anything that might upset Geoffrey, an obsessive protectiveness towards her children. It is not surprising then that, according to one of her neighbors, Verity described her husband's death in March 1971 as a "blessed relief."

Like so much in this story, the details surrounding Geoffrey's death are obscure. The only verifiable facts are these: he had arranged to spend the weekend alone with friends in Huntingdon; he phoned them at 5:00 p.m. on the Friday night to say he wouldn't be with them until the following day; at 6:30 a.m. on the Saturday, a police patrol recorded his car abandoned with an empty gas tank beside the All near Newmarket; at 10:30 a.m. his bruised and battered body was found sprawled in a ditch some two miles up the road; his injuries were consistent with having been run over by a car.

On the face of it, it was a straightforward case of hit-and-run while Geoffrey was walking through the dark in search of gas, but because of the last-minute alterations in his plans, the police attempted to establish why he was in the vicinity of Newmarket. They had no success with that line of inquiry but, in the course of their investigation, they unearthed the unpalatable details of the man's character and lifestyle. Although they were never able to prove it, it is clear from the reports that the Cambridgeshire police believed he was murdered. Verity herself had a cast-iron alibi. She was admitted to St. Thomas's Hospital on the Wednesday before Geoffrey's death with a broken collarbone, fractured ribs, and a perforated lung, and was not discharged until the Sunday. Her children were being cared for by a neighbor, so there is some doubt about Geoffrey's whereabouts on the Friday. Certainly he did not go to work that day, and this led to police speculation that someone, whose sympathies lay with Verity, removed him from his house during the Thursday night and cold-bloodedly planned his murder over the Friday.

Unfortunately, from the police point of view, no such sympathizer could be traced, and the file was closed due to lack of evidence. The coroner recorded a verdict of "manslaughter by person or persons unknown," and Geoffrey Standish's premature death remains unpunished to this day.

Now, however, with our knowledge of the events of July 3rd, 1988, it is logical to look back from the suicide of a desperate woman and the disappearance of her second husband to Geoffrey's death in 1971, and ask whether the person whose sympathies lay with Verity was a young and impressionable Cambridge undergraduate called Peter Fenton. Newmarket is less than 20 miles from Cambridge, and Peter was known to make frequent visits to the family of a friend from his Winchester College days who lived ten doors away from Geoffrey and Verity Standish in Cadogan Square. There is no evidence to rebut Peter and Verity's own claims that their first meeting was at a party at Peter's friend's house in 1978, but it would be curious if their paths hadn't crossed earlier. Certainly, the friend, Harry Grisham, remembers the Standishes being regular guests at his parents' dinner parties.

But, assuming Peter's involvement, what could have happened seventeen years after Geoffrey's murder to drive Verity into killing herself and Peter into vanishing? Did one of them betray the other inadvertently? Had Verity been ignorant of what Peter had done, and learned by accident that she'd married her first husband's murderer? We may never know, but it is a strange coincidence that two days before Peter left for Washington the following advertisement appeared in the personal column of the Times:

"Geoffrey Standish. Will anyone knowing anything about the murder of Geoffrey Standish on the All near Newmarket 10/3/71 please write to Box 431."

 

 

Terry was put out to discover that his clothes were still wet when he finally stumbled out of his bedroom in an old T-shirt and shorts of Deacon's, rubbing his shaven head and yawning sleep away. "I can't go out in your god-awful stuff, Mike. I mean I've got a reputation to consider. Know what I'm saying? You'll have to go shopping on your own while I wait for this lot to dry."

"Okay." Deacon consulted his watch. "I'd better get moving then, or I'll miss the chance to break Hugh's nose."

"You really going to do that?"

"Sure. I was also planning to buy you some new gear for a Christmas present, but if you're not there to try it on—" he shrugged. "I'll get you some reading books instead."

Terry was back, fully dressed, in under three minutes. "Where did you put my coat?"

"I chucked it in the bin downstairs while you were having your bath."

"What you want to do that for?"

"It had Walter's blood all over it." He took a Barbour from a hook on the wall. "You can borrow this till we buy you a new one."

"I can't wear that," said Terry in disgust, refusing to take it. "Jesus, Mike, I'll look like one of those poncy gits who drive around in Range Rovers. Supposing we meet someone I know?"

"Frankly," growled Deacon, "I'm more concerned about meeting someone I know. I haven't worked out yet how to explain why a foulmouthed, shaven-headed thug is—A—staying in my flat and—B—wearing my clothes."

Terry put on the Barbour with bad grace. "Considering how much of my puff you smoked last night you ought to be in a better mood."
 

Barry lay in bed and listened to his mother's heavy tread on the stairs. He held his breath while she held hers on the other side of his door. "I know you're awake," she said in the strangulated voice that seemed to start somewhere in her fat stomach and squeeze up out of her blubbery mouth. The door handle rattled. "Why have you locked the door?" The voice dropped to a menacing whisper. "If you're playing with yourself again, Barry, I'll find out."

He didn't answer, only stared at the door while his fingers gripped and squeezed her imaginary neck. He fantasized about how easy it would be to kill her and hide her body somewhere out of sight—in the front parlor, perhaps, where it could sit for months on end with no visitors to disturb it. Why should someone so unlovely and unloved be allowed to live? And who would miss her?

Not her son...

Barry fumbled for his glasses and brought his world back into focus. He noticed with alarm that his hands were trembling again.
 >

"Why haven't you ever been arrested?" asked Deacon as Terry selected a pair of Levi's, saying they'd be "a doddle to nick." (He made a habit of locating security cameras and staying blind side of them, Deacon noticed.)

"What makes you think I ain't?"

"You'd have been sent back into care."

The boy shook his head. "Not unless I told them the truth about myself, which I ain't never done. Sure I've been arrested, but I was always with old Billy when it happened so he took the rap. He reckoned I'd have trouble with poofs if I went into an adult prison or be sent back to the shirt-lifter if I gave my right age, so it were him what did the time and not me." His gaze shifted restlessly about the shop. "How about a jacket, then? They're on the far side." He set off purposefully.

Deacon followed behind. Were all adolescents so ruthlessly self-centered? He had an unpleasant picture of this terrible child latching on to protectors like a leech in order to suck them dry, and he realized that Lawrence's advice ibout keeping one step ahead was about as useful as pissing p the wind. Any halfway decent man with a sense of moral duty was putty in Terry's hands, he thought.

"I like this one," said Terry, taking a dark work jacket off a coathanger and thrusting his arms into the sleeves. "What d'you think?"

"It's about ten times too big for you."

"I'm still growing."

"I'm damned if I'll be seen walking around with a mobile Barrage balloon."

"You ain't got the first idea of fashion, have you? Everyone wears things big these days." He tried the next size down. "Tight stuff's what guys like you pranced around in n the seventies, along with flares and beads and long hair and that. Billy said it was good to be young then, but I reckon you must've looked like a load of poofs."

Deacon lifted his lip in a snarl. "Well, you've got nothing to worry about then," he said. "You look like a paid-up member of the National Front."

"I ain't got a problem with that." Terry looked pleased with himself.
 

Barry stood in the doorway and watched the back of his mother's head where she was slumped on a chair in front of the television, her feet propped on a stool. Sparse, bristly hair poked out of her pink scalp and cavernous snores roared from her mouth. The untidy room smelled of her farts, and a sense of injustice overwhelmed him. It was a cruel fate that had taken his father and left him to the mercies of a ... his fingers flexed involuntarily ... PIG!
 

Terry found a shop that was selling Christmas decorations and posters. He selected a reproduction of Picasso's Woman in a Chemise and insisted Deacon buy it.

"Why that one?'' Deacon asked him.

"She's beautiful."

It was certainly a beautiful painting, but whether or not the woman herself was beautiful depended on taste. It marked the transition between Picasso's blue and rose periods, so the subject had the cold, emaciated melancholy of the earlier period enlivened by the pink and ochre hues of the later. "Personally, I prefer a little more flesh," said Deacon, "but I'm happy to have her on my wall."

"Billy drew her more than anyone else," said Terry surprisingly.

"On the pavements?"

"No, on the bits of paper we used to burn afterwards. He copied her off of a postcard to begin with, but he got so good at it that he could do her out of his head in the end." He traced his finger along the clear lines of the woman's profile and torso. "See, she's real simple to draw. Like Billy said, there's no mess in this picture."

"Unlike the Leonardo?"

"Yeah."

It was true, thought Deacon. Picasso's woman was glorious in her simplicity—and so much more delicate than da Vinci's plumper Madonna. "Maybe you should become an artist, Terry. You seem to have an eye for a good painting."

"I've been up Green Park once or twice to look at the stuff on the railings, but that's crap. Billy always said he'd take me to a proper gallery, but he never got round to it. They probably wouldn't've let us in anyway, not with Billy roaring drunk most of the time." He was flicking through the poster rack. "What d'you reckon to this? You reckon this painter saw hell the same way Billy's lady did? Like being alone and afraid in a place that doesn't make sense to you?" —M-yi0* *

He had pulled out Edvard Munch's The Scream, with its powerful, twisted imagery of a man screaming in terror before the elemental forces of nature. "You really do have an eye." said Deacon in admiration. "Did Billy draw this one as well?"

"No, he wouldn't have liked it. There's too much red in it. He hated red because it reminded him of blood."

"Well, I'm not having that on my wall or I'll think about hell every time I look at it." And blood, he thought. He wished he and Billy had less in common.

They settled on reproductions of the Picasso (for its simplicity), Manet's Luncheon in the Studio (for its harmonious symmetry—"that one works real good," said Terry), Hi-jronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights (for its color and interest—"it's well brilliant," said Terry), and anally Turner's The Fighting Temeraire (for its perfection in every respect—"Shit!" said Terry. "That's one beautiful picture.")

"What happened to Billy's postcard of the Picasso?" asked Deacon as he was paying.

"Tom burnt it."

"Why?"

"Because he was well out of order. He and Billy were drunk as lords, and they'd been having a row about women. Tom said Billy was too ugly ever to've had one, and Billy said he couldn't be as ugly as Tom's missus or Tom wouldn't've walked out on her. Everyone laughed and Tom was gutted."

"What did that have to do with the postcard?''

"Nothing much, except Billy really loved it. He kissed it sometimes when he was drunk. Tom was that riled at having his missus insulted, he went for something he knew'd send Billy mad. It worked, too. Billy damn near throttled Tom for burning it, then he burst into tears and said truth was dead anyway so nothing mattered anymore. And that were the end of it."
 

It was six years since Deacon had last visited the Red Lion. It had been his local when he and Julia had lived in Fulham, and Hugh had been in the habit of meeting him there a couple of times a month on his way home to Putney. The outside had changed very little over the years, and Deacon half-expected to find the same landlord and the same regulars inside when he pushed open the doors. But it was a room full of strangers, where the only recognizable face was Hugh's. He was sitting at a table in the far corner, and he raised a tentative hand in greeting when he saw Deacon.

"Hello, Michael," he said, standing up as they approached. "I wasn't sure if you'd come."

"Wouldn't have missed it for the world. It might be the only chance I ever get to flatten you." He beckoned Terry forward. "Meet Terry Dalton. He's staying with me for Christmas. Terry, meet Hugh Tremayne, my brother-in-law."

Terry gave his amiable grin and stuck out a bony hand. "Hi. How'ya doing?"

Hugh looked surprised but shook the offered hand. "Very well, thank you. Are we—er—-related?"

Terry appraised his round face and overweight figure. "I don't reckon so, not unless you were putting it about a bit in Birmingham fifteen years ago. Nah," he said. "I think my dad was probably a bit taller and thinner. No offense meant, of course."

Deacon gave a snort of laughter. "I think Hugh was wondering if you were related to my second wife, Terry."

"Oh, right. Why didn't he say that, then?"

Deacon turned to the wall and banged his head against it for several seconds. Finally, he took a deep breath, mopped his eyes with his handkerchief, and faced the room again. "It's a touchy subject," he explained. "My family didn't like Clara very much."

"What was wrong with her?"

"Nothing," said Hugh firmly, afraid that Deacon was going to embarrass him and Terry with references to tarts and slots. "What are you both having? Lager?'' He escaped to the bar while they divested themselves of their coats and sat down.

"You can't hit him,'" said Terry. "Okay, he's a pillock, but he's about six inches shorter than you and ten years older. What did he do, anyway?"

Deacon propped his feet on a chair and placed his hands behind his head. "He insulted me in my mother's house and then ordered me out of it." He smiled slightly. "I swore I'd deck him the next time I saw him, and this is the next time."

"Well, I wouldn't do it if I were you. It don't make you any bigger, you know. I felt well gutted after what I did to Billy." He nodded his thanks as Hugh returned with their drinks.

There was a painful silence while Hugh sought for something to say and Deacon grinned at the ceiling, thoroughly enjoying his brother-in-law's discomfort.

Terry offered Hugh a cigarette which he refused. "Maybe if you apologized, he'd forget the beating," he suggested, lighting his own cigarette. "Billy always said it were harder to hit someone you'd had a natter with. That's why guys who do violence tell people to keep their mouths shut. They're scared shitless of losing their bottle."

"Who's Billy?"

"An old geezer I used to know. He reckoned talking was better than fighting, then he'd get rat-arsed and start attacking people. Mind, he were a bit of a nutter, so you couldn't blame him. His advice was good, though."

"Stop meddling, Terry," said Deacon mildly. "I want some answers before we get anywhere near an apology." He lowered his feet from the chair and leaned across the table. "What's going on, Hugh? Why am I so popular suddenly?"

Hugh took a mouthful of lager while he weighed up his answer. "Your mother isn't well," he said carefully.

"So Emma told me."

"And she's keen to bury the hatchet with you."

"Really?" He reached for the cigarette packet. "Would that explain the daily phone messages at my office?"

Hugh looked surprised. "Has she?"

"No, of course she hasn't. I haven't heard a word from her in five years, not since she accused me of killing my father. Which is odd, don't you think, if she wants to bury the hatchet?" He bent his head to the match.

"You know your mother as well as I do." Hugh sighed. "In sixteen years I've never heard her admit being wrong about anything, and I can't see her starting now. I'm afraid you're expected to make the first move."

Deacon's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "This isn't what Ma wants, is it? It's what Emma wants. Is she feeling guilty about stripping Ma of her capital? Is that what this is about?"

Hugh toyed unhappily with his beer glass. "Frankly, I've had about as much of your family squabbles as I can take, Michael. It's like living in the middle of a war zone being married to a Deacon."

Deacon gave a low chuckle. "Be grateful you weren't around when my father was alive then. It was worse." He tapped his cigarette against the ashtray. "You might as well spit it out. I'm not going anywhere near Ma unless I know why Emma wants me to."

Again, Hugh appeared to weigh his answer. "Oh, to hell with it!" he said abruptly. "Your father did make a new will. Emma found it, or should I say the pieces, when she was sorting through your mother's things while she was in the hospital. She asked us to pay her bills and keep everything ticking over while she was off games. I suppose she'd forgotten that the will was still sitting there although why she didn't burn it or throw it away—" He gave a hollow laugh. "We stuck it back together again. His first two bequests were made out of duty. He left the cottage in Cornwall to Penelope, plus enough investments to provide her with an income of ten thousand a year, and he left Emma a lump sum of twenty thousand. The third bequest was made out of love. He left you the farmhouse and the residue of the estate because, and I quote, 'Michael is the only member of my family who cares whether I live or die.' He made it two weeks before he shot himself, and we assume it was your mother who tore it up as she's the only one who benefited under the old will."

Deacon smoked thoughtfully for a moment or two. "Did he appoint David and Harriet Price as executors?''

"Yes."

"Well, at least that vindicates poor old David." He thought back to the furious row his mother had had with their then next-door neighbors when David Price had dared to suggest that Francis Deacon had talked about making a new will with him as executor. "Show it to me," she had said, "tell me what's in it." And David had had to admit that he had never seen it, only agreed in principle to act as executor should Francis revoke his previous will. "Who drew it up?"

"We think your father did it himself. It's in his handwriting."

"Is it legal?"

"A solicitor friend of ours says it's properly worded and properly witnessed. The witnesses were two of the librarians in Bedford general library. Our friend's only caveat was whether your father was in sound mind when he made it, bearing in mind he shot himself two weeks later." He shrugged. "But, according to Emma, he had been right as rain for months prior to his suicide and only became really depressed the day before he pulled the trigger."

Deacon glanced at Terry, who was wide-eyed with curiosity. "It's a long story," he said, "which you don't want to hear."

"You can shorten it, can't you? I mean, you know all about me. Seems only fair I should know a bit about you."

It was on the tip of Deacon's tongue to say he didn't even know what Terry's real name was, but he decided against it. "My father was a manic depressive. He was supposed to take drugs to control the condition, but he wasn't very reliable and the rest of us suffered." He saw that Terry didn't understand. "Manic depression is typified by mood swings. You can be high as a kite in a manic phase—it's a bit like being stoned—and suicidal in a depressed phase." He drew on his cigarette then ground the butt out under his heel. "On Christmas Day, nineteen seventy-six, while depressed, my father put his shotgun in his mouth at four o'clock in the morning and blew his head away." He smiled slightly. "It was very quick, very loud, and very messy, and it's why I try to forget that Christmas even exists."

Terry was impressed. "Shit!" he said.

"It's also why Emma and Michael are so difficult to live with," said Hugh dryly. "They're both scared to death they've inherited manic depression, which is why they resist feeling happy about anything and view mild unhappiness as the onset of clinical depression."

"It's in the genes, then, is it? Billy were big on genes. He always said you couldn't escape what your parents programmed into you."

"No, it's not in the genes," said Hugh crossly. "There's evidence suggesting hereditary predisposition, but innumerable other factors would have to come into play to precipitate the same condition in Emma and Michael as occurred in Francis."

Deacon laughed. "That means I'm not a nutter yet," he told Terry. "Hugh's a civil servant so he likes to be precise in his definitions."

Terry frowned. "Yeah, but why'd your mother accuse you of killing your dad if he topped himself?"

Deacon drank his lager in silence.

"Because she's a bitch," said Hugh flatly.

Deacon stirred himself, "She said it because it's true. He told me at eleven o'clock on Christmas Eve that he wanted to die, and I gave him the go-ahead to do it. Five hours later, he was dead. My mother thinks I should have persuaded him out of it."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because he asked me not to."

"Yeah, but—" The boy's puzzled eyes searched Deacon's face. "Didn't you mind if he died? I was well gutted every time Billy tried to hurt himself. I mean you feel responsible like."

Deacon held his gaze for a moment then looked down at his glass. "It's a good expression—gutted. It's exactly how I felt when I heard the shot. And, yes, of course I minded, but I'd stopped him before, and this time he said he was going to do it anyway and would rather do it with my blessing than without. So I gave him my blessing." He shook his head. "I hoped he wouldn't go through with it, but I wanted him to know I wouldn't condemn him if he did."

"Yeah, but—" said Terry again. He was more disturbed by the story than Deacon would have expected, and he wondered if there were resonances in it of his friendship with Billy. Had Terry lied about Billy not trying to kill himself? he wondered. Or perhaps, like Deacon, he had lost interest and had aided and abetted a suicide through apathy?

"But what?" he asked.

"Why didn't you say something to your Mum, give her a chance like to stop him?"

He looked at his watch. "How about we leave that question till later?" he suggested. "We've still got food to buy, and I haven't settled what I'm going to do to Hugh's nose yet." He lit another cigarette and studied his brother-in-law through the smoke for a second or two. "Why didn't Emma throw the pieces of this will away when she found them?'' He smiled rather cynically at Hugh's expression. "Let me guess. She didn't realize he'd only left her twenty thousand until she'd stuck it back together again, by which time you and your girls had seen it, too."

"She was curious. She'd have brought it home, anyway. But, yes, she hoped—we both hoped—that he'd left her enough to wipe out the debt we owe your mother. As things stand, Penelope's used money that's rightfully yours, so we're actually in debt to you. And I swear to you, Michael, it's not money we even asked for. Your mother went on and on and on about how she wanted to do something for the only grandchildren she was going to have, then I mentioned one day that we were worried about Antonia's poor grades, and that was it. Penelope set up an educational trust and Antonia and Jessica were in private boarding school within a couple of months."

Deacon took that with a pinch of salt. Knowing Hugh and Emma, there would have been endless little hints until Penelope paid up. "Are they doing well?"

"Yes. Ant's doing A levels and Jesse's doing GCSEs." He rubbed a worried hand across his bald head. "The trust was set up to pay the equivalent of twelve years' schooling—five years for Ant because she was two years older when it started, and seven for Jesse—and they've already had nearly ten between them. We're talking a lot of money, Michael. You've probably no idea how expensive private boarding education is."

"Let me guess. Upwards of a hundred and fifty thousand so far?" He lifted an amused eyebrow. "You obviously didn't read my piece on selective education. I researched the whole subject in depth, including cost. Has it been money well spent?"

Hugh shrugged unhappily, forced to consider his daughters' merits. "They're very bright," he said, but Deacon had the impression he would like to have said they were nice. "We need to sort this out, Michael. Frankly, it's a nightmare. As I see it, the situation is this: Your mother deliberately tore up your father's will and stole her children's inheritance, for which she will be prosecuted if the whole thing's made public. She has materially altered your father's estate by selling the cottage in Cornwall and by setting up a trust fund for the girls. Against that, had you inherited what Francis left you, presumably Julia would have taken half its value in her divorce settlement and Clara would have taken half what was left in hers, leaving you with a quarter share of what you inherited. For all I know, they may still be entitled to do that." He raised his hands in a gesture of despair. "So where do we go from here? What do we do?"

"You've left out your resentment at paying through the nose for Ma's private nursing care," murmured Deacon. "Doesn't that play a part in this complicated equation?"

"Yes," Hugh admitted honestly. "We accepted the trust money in good faith, believing it to be a gift, but the quid pro quo seems to be that Emma and I must fork out indefinitely for a live-in nurse, which we can't afford. Your mother claims she's dying, which means the expenditure won't go on for very much longer, but her doctors say she's good for another ten years." He pressed finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. "I've tried to explain to her that if we could afford that level of private nursing care we wouldn't have had to use her money to pay the girls' school fees, but she won't listen to reason. She refuses to sell her nouse, refuses to come and live with us. She just makes sure the weekly bill is sent to our address." His voice hardened. "And it's driving me mad. If I thought I could get away with it, I'd have put a pillow over her mouth months ago and done us all a favor."

Deacon studied him curiously. "What do you expect me to achieve by talking to her? If she won't listen to you, she certainly won't listen to me."

Hugh sighed. "The obvious way out of the mess is for her to sell the farm, invest the capital, and move into a nursing home somewhere. But Emma thinks she's more likely to accept that suggestion if it comes from you."

"Particularly if I hold Pa's will over her head?"

Hugh nodded.

"It might work." Deacon reached for his coat and stood up. "Assuming I was remotely interested in helping you and Emma out of your hole. But I have a real problem understanding why you think you're entitled to so much of Pa's wealth. Here's an alternative suggestion. Sell your own house and pay Ma back what you owe her." His smile was not a friendly one. "At least it means you'll be able to look her in the eye the next time you call her a bitch."