"What did he say to you, Amanda?"
She glanced at him for a moment, but there was only boredom in her eyes. He was no longer of any interest to her. "I've wasted your time and mine, Mr. Deacon. I hope you find a taxi without too much trouble. It's usually easier if you turn left out of the entrance to the estate and walk up to the main road."
He wished he was better at reading a woman's character. He was sure she was lying to him, but women had lied to, him for years and he had never known when they were doing it.
There was a note with the two sets of keys at the front desk. What a cow! Hope she didn 't eat you alive after I left. I put her stupid keys in my pocket and forgot about them. Here they are with your car keys. Thought you should return them rather than me! If you're interested, I left the film with Barry. He said he'll develop it tonight. See you tomorrow. Love, Lisa.
Deacon decided he was in no hurry, and wandered up to the third floor where Barry Grover doubled as film processor and archives' librarian. He was a somewhat pathetic character in his early thirties, very much a loner, short, potbellied, and bug-eyed behind magnifying lenses, who pored over the picture cuttings in his library with the avidity of a collector, and haunted the offices till all hours in preference to going home. The female staff avoided him wherever possible and invented malicious gossip behind his back. Over the years they had described him variously, and always with conviction, as a pedophile, a Peeping Tom, or a flasher, because it was the only way they could account for his infatuation with pictures. Deacon, who found him as unsympathetic as the women did, nevertheless felt sorry for him. Barry's was a peculiarly barren life.
"Still here?" he said with false bonhomie, as he shouldered open the door and caught the man bent over a newspaper clipping on his desk.
"As you say, Mike."
He propped a buttock on the edge of the desk. "Lisa told me you were developing her film. I thought I'd drop in to see how it turned out."
"I'll get the contact sheets for you." Barry scuttled hurriedly out of the room like a fleshy white cockroach, and Deacon, watching him critically, decided it was the way he moved that set people's teeth on edge. There was something very effeminate about the rapid little steps he took, and he wondered, not for the first time, if Barry's problem had more to do with unresolved homosexuality than the heterosexual perversions of which the women accused him.
He lit a cigarette and turned the clipping that Barry had been reading towards himself.
The Guardian * 6th May, 1990
BANKER'S WIFE RELEASED
Amanda Streeter, 31, was released without charge yesterday following two days of police questioning. "We are satisfied," said a police spokesman, "that Mrs. Streeter was not implicated in the theft of ten million pounds from Lowenstein's Merchant Bank, nor has any knowledge of her husband's whereabouts." He confirmed that James Streeter, 38, is believed to have left the country sometime during the night of 27th April. "His description has been circulated around the world and we expect him to be found within days. As soon as we are notified of where he is, extradition procedures will begin."
Amanda Streeter's solicitor issued the following statement to the press. "Mrs. Streeter has been deeply shocked by the events of the last eight days and has given the police as much assistance as she can in their search for her husband. Now that she has been ruled out of the investigation, she asks to be left in peace. There is nothing she can add to the information that is already in the public domain."
The allegations against James Streeter are that, over a period of five years, he used his position at Lowenstein's to falsify accounts and steal over ten million pounds. The alleged irregularities came to light some six weeks ago but the details were kept "in-house" to avoid panicking the bank's customers. When it became clear that the bank's own investigation was going nowhere, the Board decided to call in the police. Within hours of the decision being taken, James Streeter disappeared. Charges are being brought against him in his absence.
"I recognized her face."
Deacon hadn't heard Barry return and was startled by the sudden, breathy voice in the silence. He watched the man's fat finger push the clipping to one side and point to a grainy photograph underneath.
"That's her with her husband before he ran. Lisa called her Mrs. Powell, but it's the same woman. You probably remember the case. He was never caught."
Deacon stared down at the photograph of Amanda Powell-Streeter, aged thirty-one. She was wearing glasses, her hair was shorter and darker, and her face was in three-quarter profile. He wouldn't have recognized her, yet, knowing who it was, he saw the similarities. He looked thoughtfully at the husband for a moment or two, searching for a resemblance with Billy Blake, but nothing in life was ever that easy. "How do you do it?" he asked Barry.
"It's what I'm paid for."
"That doesn't explain how you do it."
The other man smiled to himself. "Some people say it's a gift, Mike." He placed the contact sheets on the desk. "Lisa's done a lousy job with these. There are only five or six that are good enough to pass muster. She needs to do them again."
Deacon held the sheets to the light and examined them closely. They were uniformally bad, either out of focus or so poorly lit that Amanda Powell's face looked like granite. There were six perfect shots of an empty garage at the end of the sequence. He stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray on Barry's desk which was placed beside a prominent notice saying: In the interests of my health please don't smoke. "How the hell did she manage to produce crap like this?" he asked crossly.
Fastidiously, Barry emptied the ashtray into his wastepaper basket. "Obviously there's something wrong with her camera. I'll call it in for service tomorrow. It's a shame. She's usually very reliable."
Considering how bad Lisa's photographs were, it was even more extraordinary that Barry had been able to make the connection. Deacon fished his notebook from his coat pocket and isolated the two photographs of Billy Blake. "I suppose you don't recognize him?"
The little man took the prints and placed them side by side on his desk. He examined them for a long time. "Maybe," he said at last.
"What do you mean, 'maybe'? Either you do or you don't."
Barry looked put out. "You don't know anything about it, Mike. Supposing I played a bar or two of Mozart to you, you might be able to identify it as Mozart, but you'd never be able to say which of his works it came from."
"What's that got to do with identifying a photograph?"
"You wouldn't understand. It's very complicated. I shall have to work on it."
Deacon felt suitably put in his place. And not for the first time that night. But thoughts of Barry were less likely to haunt him than thoughts of a woman who reminded him of his mother. "How about making some good negatives for me? The chances are he looked nothing like this when he was fit and healthy, but we might be able to do something on the computer to flesh out the face a bit. That would give you a better base to start from, wouldn't it?"
"Possibly. Where did the prints come from?"
"Mrs. Powell. He died in her garage under the name of Billy Blake, but she doesn't think that was his real name." He gave Barry a quick summary of what Amanda had told him. "She has a bee in her bonnet about trying to identify him and trace his family."
"Why?"
Deacon touched the newspaper clippings. "I don't know. Perhaps it has something to do with what happened to her husband."
"I can make the negatives easily enough. When do you want them?"