"First thing tomorrow?"
"I'll do them for you now."
"Thanks." Deacon glanced at his watch as he stood up and saw with surprise that it was after ten o'clock. "Change of plan," he said abruptly, reaching for Barry's coat from a hook behind the door. "I'm taking you for a drink instead. Christ, man, this bloody magazine doesn't own you. Why the hell don't you tell us all to get stuffed occasionally?"
Barry Grover allowed himself to be drawn along the pavement by Deacon's insistent hand on his shoulder, but he was a reluctant volunteer. He had been on the receiving end of such spontaneous invitations before. He knew the routine, knew he had been invited only because Deacon's irregular conscience had struck, knew he would be forgotten and ignored within five minutes of entering the pub. Deacon's drinking cronies would be lining the bar, and Barry would be left to stand at the side, unwilling to intrude where he wasn't wanted, unwilling to draw attention to himself by leaving.
Yet, as usual, he was prey to a terrible ambivalence as the pub drew closer, because he both feared and yearned to go drinking with Deacon. He feared inevitable rejection, yearned to be accepted as Deacon's friend, for Deacon had shown him more casual companionship since he'd arrived at The Street than Barry had known in years. He told himself that to be accepted just once would suffice. It was such a small ambition for a man to hold, after all. To feel part of a social group for a single night, to tell a joke and raise a laugh, to be able to say the next morning: I went for a drink with a mate.
He stopped abruptly outside the pub and started to polish his glasses furiously on a large white handkerchief. "After all, Mike, I think I'd better get home. I hadn't realized how late it was and, if I'm to do those negatives for you, I can't afford to oversleep."
"You've time for a pint," said Deacon cheerfully "Where's home? I'll drop you off afterwards if it's on my way."
"Camden."
"It's a deal then. I'm in Islington." He clapped a friendly arm across Barry's shoulders and escorted him through the doors of The Lame Beggar.
But the fat little man's forebodings were well-founded. Within minutes, Deacon had been subsumed into a raucous pre-Christmas drinking throng, while Barry was left to blink his embarrassment and his loneliness in feigned insouciance by the wall. It was when he realized that Deacon was too drunk to drive him home, or even to remember the offer, that a terrible sense of injustice began to grow in him. Confused feelings of hero-worship turned angrily to bitter resentment. Hell could freeze over, as far as he was concerned, before Deacon would ever learn from him who Billy Blake really was.
11.-oo p.m.-Cape Town, South Africa
It was a warm summer night in the Western Cape. A well-dressed woman sat alone in the glass-fronted restaurant of the Victoria and Alfred Hotel, toying with a cup of black coffee. She was a regular customer, although little was known about her other than that her name was Mrs. Met-calfe. She always ate and drank sparingly, and it was a mystery to the waiters why she came at all. She seemed to take little pleasure in her solitary meal, and preferred to turn her back as far as possible on her fellow diners. She chose instead to gaze out over the harbor where, had it been daylight, she would have seen the seals that play among the moored ships. The night held fewer diversions and, as usual, her expression was bored.
At eleven o'clock, her driver presented himself at reception and, after settling her bill, she left. Her waiter pocketed his customary handsome tip and wondered, not for the first time, what brought her here every Wednesday evening to spend three hours doing something she found so uncomfortable.
Had she been remotely friendly, he might have asked her, but she was a typical tight-lipped, skinny white woman and their relationship was a professional one.
*4*
If Deacon was surprised that Barry Grover left the pub without saying anything, he didn't dwell on it. He had walked out on too many drinking sessions himself to regard it as anything unusual. In any case, he was relieved to be shot of the responsibility of driving the man home. He wasn't as drunk as Barry had believed, but he was certainly over the limit and chose to abandon his car at the office and take a taxi. He was renting an attic flat in Islington, and he slouched dejectedly in his seat as Islington drew closer. He and Barry had something in common, he thought, assuming Barry's long hours at work meant he shared Deacon's aversion to going home. The parallel intrigued him suddenly. What were Barry's reasons, he wondered? Did he, like Deacon, fear the emptiness of a rented flat that contained nothing of a personal nature because there was nothing from his past that he wanted to remember?
He sank deeper into maudlin gloom, indulging himself in drink inspired self-loathing. He was to blame for everything. His father's death. His failed marriages. His family's bitterness and their ultimate rejection of him. (God, how he wished he could get that damn woman's eyes out of his mind. Memories of his mother had been haunting him all evening.) No children. No friends because they'd all taken his first wife's side. He must have been out of his mind to betray one wife, only to find the second wasn't worth the price he'd paid for her.
From time to time, the cabdriver flicked him a sympathetic glance in the rearview mirror. He recognized the melancholy of a man who drank to drown his sorrows. London was full of them in the weeks before Christmas.
Deacon woke with a sense of purpose, which was unusual for him. He put it down to the fact that his subconscious mind had been replaying the tape of his interview with Amanda Powell, further whetting his curiosity about her. Why should mention of Billy Blake, a stranger, produce an emotional reaction when mention of her husband, James Streeter, produced none? Not even anger.
He pondered the question in the solitary isolation of his kitchen while he stirred his coffee and looked with disfavor at the blank white walls and blank white units that surrounded him. Predictably, his thoughts turned inwards. Did either of his wives show emotion when his name was mentioned? Or was he just a forgotten episode in their lives?
He could die like Billy Blake, he thought, slumped in a corner of this wretched flat, and when he was found, days later, it would almost certainly be by a stranger. Who would come looking, after all? JP? Lisa? His drinking pals?
Jesus wept! Was his life really as empty-and as worthless-as Billy Blake's ...
He arrived at the office early, consulted the phone book and an A to Z of London, left a message at the front desk to say he would be back later, then retrieved his car and headed east along the river towards what had once been the thriving port of London. As in so many other ports around the world, the shipping fleets and working docks had long since given way to pleasure vessels, expensive housing, and marinas.
He made his way down the western shores of the Isle of Dogs and located the refurbished warehouse where W. F. Meredith, architects, had their offices, then drove on towards a filthy, boarded-up building that bore no resemblance to its neighbors except in its rectangular lines and gabled roof. Not that it required much imagination on his part to picture what this sad relic of Victorian London could become. He had lived in the capital long enough to witness the transformation of the old docklands' buildings into things of beauty, and he had only to look at the converted warehouses around him to remind himself of what was achievable.
He parked his car, took a flashlight and a bottle of Bell's whiskey from the glove box, and made his way through a gap in the fence to the front of the building. He tested the boarding on the doors and windows before making his way round to the back. Five or six meters of exposed scrubland separated the rear wall from the river, and he pulled his coat tighter about him as a bitterly cold wind whipped across the surface of the Thames and flayed the skin of his face. How anyone could expose themselves to such conditions was beyond him, yet a small group of men, apparently impervious to the morning cold and damp, sat huddled about a brazier of burning wood in an open doorway in the warehouse wall. They regarded him with suspicion as he approached.