The Echo (9 page)

"Fine."

"I'm sorry I didn't catch your name."

"Michael Deacon."

"He'll be here in a minute." The hand again, and this time her voice was muffled. "For God's sake hurry. It's a journalist and he wants to talk about James. His name's Michael Deacon. No, you must. You promised your father you wouldn't give up." She came back, louder. "Here's my husband."

"Hello," said a man's much deeper voice. "I'm John Streeter. How can I help you?"

Deacon flicked the trigger on his ballpoint and pulled forward his notepad. "Does the fact that it's three and a half years since you sent out your last press release mean you've now accepted your brother's guilt?" he said bluntly.

"Are you with a national newspaper, Mr. Deacon?"

"No."

"Then you're freelance?"

"As far as these questions are concerned, yes."

"Have you any idea how many freelancers I've spoken to over the years?" He paused, but Deacon didn't rise to the bait. "Approximately thirty," he went on, "and the number of column inches I've had out of them is nil because no editor would take the story. I'm afraid I'd be wasting both our time if I answered your questions."

Deacon tucked the telephone more firmly under his chin and drew a spiral on his pad. "Thirty is nothing, Mr. Streeter. I've known campaigns like yours approach hundreds of journalists before they get anywhere. That apart, most of what you allege in your press releases is actionable. Frankly, you're lucky to have avoided a libel suit thus far."

"Which proves something in itself, don't you think? If what we're claiming is defamatory, why does no one challenge us?"

"Because your targets aren't that stupid. Why give your campaign the adrenaline of publicity when it's dying a death of its own accord? It would be a different matter if you managed to persuade an editor to go against his better judgment. Are you saying nothing has ever been published in defense of your brother?"

"Only a grudging piece in a compilation of unsolved mysteries that came out last year. I spent two days talking to Roger Hyde, the author, only to have him write a bland summary which ended with his own half-baked conclusion that James was guilty." He sounded angry and frustrated. "I'm growing rather tired of beating my head against a brick wall."

"Then perhaps you're less persuaded of your brother's innocence than you were five years ago?"

There was a smothered obscenity. "That's all you lot ever want, isn't it? Confirmation of James's guilt."

"Except I'm giving you an opportunity to defend him which you don't seem very keen to take."

John Streeter ignored this. "My brother came from an honest, hardworking background, just as I did. Have you any idea what it's done to my parents to have their son labeled a thief? They're decent, respectable people and they can't understand why journalists like you won't listen to them." He drew another angry breath. "You're not interested in facts, only in trying to further destroy a man's reputation."

"Aren't you playing the same game?" Deacon murmured unemphatically. "Unless I've misread your releases, your defense of James rests entirely on blackening Nigel de Vriess and Amanda Streeter."

"With reason. There's no proof of her assertion that James was having an affair, but we've found evidence of hers with de Vriess. He stripped the bank of ten million and she aided and abetted him in pushing the blame onto her husband."

"That's some accusation. Can you prove it?"

"Not without access to their bank and investment accounts, but you only need to look at their respective addresses to realize there was an injection of cash from somewhere. Amanda bought herself a six-hundred-thousand-pound house on the Thames within months of James's disappearance and de Vriess bought himself a mansion in Hampshire shortly afterwards."

"Do they still see each other?"

"We don't think so. De Vriess has had at least five lovers in the last three years while Amanda's kept herself to herself and remained celibate."

"Why do you think that is?"

Streeter's voice hardened. "Probably for the same reason she's never sought a divorce. She wants to give the impression that James is alive somewhere."

Deacon consulted some photocopies of the press releases. "Okay, let's talk about James's alleged affair with-" he isolated a paragraph-"Marianne Filbert. If there's no proof of its existence, why did the police accept Amanda's word on it? Who is Marianne Filbert? Where is she? What does she say about it?"

"I'll answer those questions in order. The police accepted Amanda's word because it suited them. They needed a computer expert in the frame, and Marianne fitted the bill. She was part of a research and development team working for Softworks Limited in the mid-eighties. Softworks was commissioned to prepare a report for Lowenstein's Bank in 'eighty-six, although no one knows if Marianne Filbert was involved with that. She went to America in 'eighty-nine." He paused briefly. "She was employed for six months by a computer software company in Virginia before moving on to Australia."

"And?" prompted Deacon when he didn't continue.

"There's no trace of her after that. If she went to Australia, which now seems doubtful, she was using another name."

"When did she leave the Virginia company?"

"April 1990," said the other reluctantly.

Deacon felt sorry for him. John Streeter wasn't a fool, and blind faith clearly made him uncomfortable. "So the police see a connection between your brother's disappearance and hers? He told her when to run in other words."

"Except they haven't established that James and Marianne even knew each other." Streeter's furious indrawn breath was audible down the wire. "We believe it was de Vriess and Amanda who gave her the green light to disappear."

"A three-way conspiracy then?"

"Why not? It's just as plausible as the police theory. Look, it was Amanda who gave them Marianne Filbert's name and Amanda who told them she'd gone to America. Without that evidence, there'd have been no computer link and no way that James could have worked the fraud. The entire police case rests on James having access to expert knowledge, but Amanda's testimony about his alleged affair with Marianne has never been independently substantiated."

"I find that hard to believe, Mr. Streeter. According to the newspapers, Amanda spent two days answering police questions, which means she was high on their list of suspects. It also means she must have had something more convincing than just a name to give them. What was it?"

"It wasn't proof of anything," said John Streeter stubbornly.

Deacon lit a cigarette while he waited.

"Are you still there?" demanded Streeter.

"Yes."

"She couldn't prove a relationship between them. She couldn't even prove they knew each other."

"I'm listening."

"She gave the police a series of photographs, most of which were pictures of James's car parked outside the block of flats in Kensington where Marianne Filbert lived before she went to the States. There were three blurred shots of a couple kissing whom she claimed were Marianne and James, but frankly could have been anybody, and there was a back view of a man, wearing a similar coat to James's, entering the front door of the building. As I say it proves nothing."

"Who took the photographs?"

"A private detective hired by Amanda."

The same one she consulted about Billy Blake?
"Were they dated?"

"Yes."

"From when to when?"

"January to August 'eighty-nine."

"You say most of the pictures were of James's car. Was he in it when they were taken?"

"Someone was, but the quality of the photographs isn't good enough to say whether or not it was James."

"Perhaps it was Nigel de Vriess," murmured Deacon with an irony that was lost on the other man. He was beginning to think that John Streeter's obsession to prove his brother innocent was even greater than Amanda's to establish Billy Blake's true identity. Did the seeds of paranoia find fertile ground in the aftermath of betrayal?

"We certainly believe the man to have been de Vriess," said Streeter.

"So they were deliberately setting your brother up as a fall guy?"

"Yes."

"That's one hell of a conspiracy theory, my friend." This time Deacon ladled the sarcasm into his voice. "You're saying these people worked out a year in advance of the event how they were going to murder a completely innocent man, irrespective of anything that might happen in the intervening period. And you feel happy with that scenario?" Ash dropped from the cigarette in his mouth, powdering the lapel of his jacket. "Is your sister-in-law a monster, Mr. Streeter? She would need to be, I think, to share a house indefinitely with a man whose murder she'd already planned. So? Who are we talking about here? Medusa?"

Silence.

"And what sort of idiot would rely on a status quo existing indefinitely? James was a free agent. He could have walked out on his wife or his job at any time, and where would the conspiracy have been then?" He paused, inviting the other to speak, but went on when he didn't: "The obvious explanation is the one the police have accepted. James was having an affair with Marianne Filbert, and Amanda put a stop to it by having him followed and photographs taken. She then brought pressure to bear which resulted in Marianne banishing herself, or being banished, to the States."

"How could she tell the police where to find Marianne?"

"Because she's not stupid. Part of the deal for rescuing the marriage would be proof that Marianne was out of harm's way. And the only proof worth having would be something verifiable, like an address or a legal contract with a company's name on it."

"Have you spoken to her?"

"Who?"

"Amanda."

"No," lied Deacon. "You're my first contact on this, Mr. Streeter. I came across your press releases, and they interested me enough to make this call. Tell me," he went on with the easy fluency of practiced deceit, "what set you looking for a connection between Amanda and de Vriess in the first place?"

"She met James through de Vriess at some official function. De Vriess was married then but it was an open secret that he was planning to leave his wife for Amanda. He used to parade her around whenever his wife was away. It seemed logical, once we realized de Vriess was behind the fraud, that Amanda was involved, too, so we set out to find evidence that the affair was an ongoing one."

"Except your evidence seems to be as flawed as your logic." He pulled the relevant photocopies towards him. "You have a hotel bill, signed by de Vriess and dated nineteen eighty-six, plus a description of a woman who
might
have been Amanda Streeter. Your nineteen eighty-nine witness account is even vaguer." He moved the top copy aside and ran his pen down the one underneath. "A waiter claims to have taken champagne to a couple in Room 306 whom he says were the same two people, but there's no signed bill to back it up. You can't even prove the man was de Vriess let alone that the woman was Amanda."

"He paid cash the second time."

"What name was on the bill?"

"Mr. Smith."

Deacon stubbed out his cigarette. "And you're surprised that no one's prepared to publish? None of your allegations is sustainable."

"We've limited funds and limited influence. We need a reporter on a national newspaper to wield a bit of clout. We've been told there's more in the hotel files if we're prepared to pay for it."

"It'll be an expensive ride with nothing at the end of it."

"I'd back my brother's honesty any day against his wife's."

"Then you're deluding yourself," said Deacon bluntly. "His wife's honesty isn't in doubt. He was cheating on his wife and she was able to prove it, and you've allowed your anger over that to cloud your judgment. Your starting point should have been a recognition that James played a part in his own destruction."

"I knew this would be a waste of time," said the other angrily.

"You keep firing at the wrong targets, Mr. Streeter. That's where you've been wasting your time."

The line went dead.

Deacon's inquiries of the Isle of Dogs police about Billy Blake had produced little of value, despite his suggestion that Billy might have been a murderer. This elicited the surprising response that the police had investigated just that possibility at the time of Billy's first arrest.

"I went through his file for the Coroner," said the uniformed Constable who'd overseen the removal of Billy's corpse. "He was first arrested in nineteen ninety-one for a series of food thefts from supermarkets. He was starving even then, and there was a bit of a debate over whether to charge him or get him into supervised care. In the end, a decision was made to have him remanded for psychiatric reports because he'd burnt off his fingerprints. Some bright spark decided he'd done it on purpose to beat a murder charge, and people started getting twitched about whether he constituted a danger to society."

"And?"

The PC shrugged. "He was interviewed in Brixton, and was given the all-clear. The psychiatrist's view was that he was more of a danger to himself than to anyone else."

"What was his explanation for the burnt fingerprints?"

"As far as I remember, he called it a morbid interest in mortification. He described Billy as a penitent."

"What does that mean?"

Another shrug. "Maybe you should ask the psychiatrist."

Deacon took out his notebook. "Do you know his name?"

"I can find out." He came back in ten minutes and handed Deacon a piece of paper with a name and address on it. "Is there anything else?" he asked, keen to get on with something more pressing than a dead and buried wino.

Reluctantly, Deacon stood up. "The information I had was fairly specific." He tucked the notebook back into his pocket. "I was told that Billy Blake said he'd strangled someone."

The PC showed mild interest until Deacon admitted that his informant had no details beyond what Billy had screamed one drunken night when the snakes of alcohol were writhing and squeezing in his brain. "Would that someone be a man or a woman, sir?"