The Echo by Minette Walters Read Free Book Online

have been dark. He was first arrested four years ago for stealing some bread and ham from a high-street supermarket, and he gave his name as Billy Blake and his age as sixty-one which, if the pathologist is right, was twenty years older than his actual age." She spoke quickly and fluently, as if she had spent a long time preparing the facts for just such a presentation. "He said he'd been living rough for ten years, but refused to give any other information. He wouldn't say where he came from and he wouldn't say if he had a family. The police checked Missing Persons in London and the South East, but nobody of his description had been reported missing in the previous ten years. His fingerprints, such as they were, weren't in the police files and he had nothing on him that could establish his identity. In the absence of any other information, the police recorded the details he gave them and for the next four years he lived and subsequently died as Billy Blake. He spent a total of six months in prison for stealing food or alcohol, with each sentence amounting to a one- or two-month stretch, and he preferred to bed down as near to the Thames as possible when he was out. His favorite pitch was a derelict warehouse about a mile from here. I've talked to some of the other old men who use it, but none of them admitted to knowing anything about Billy's history."
    Deacon was impressed by the extent of her interest and effort. "What did you mean by 'his fingerprints, such as they were'?"
    "The police said he'd burnt his hands in a fire at some time and left them to heal on their own. Both were so badly scarred that his fingers were like claws. They think he may have mutilated himself deliberately to avoid some previous crime catching up with him."
    "Shit!" he said unguardedly.
    She stood up and walked over to the glass cabinet on the far wall. "As I said earlier, there are photographs of him." She took an envelope from a shelf inside and came back with it, slipping the contents into her hand. "I persuaded the police to give me two of them. This is the best they had out of the batch the pathologist took. It's not very pleasant, and they say it's doubtful anyone would recognize him from it." She handed it across. "His face is very shrunken from lack of food, and because his forehead and jaw were so pronounced, it's likely that he was much fuller faced when he was healthy."
    Deacon examined the picture. She was right. It wasn't very pleasant. He was reminded of the corpses piled high inside Bergen-Belsen when the Allies liberated it. The face was almost fleshless, so tightly was the skin drawn across the bones. She handed him the other photograph. "That's the one that was taken four years ago when he was first arrested. But it's not much better. He was skeletal even then, although it gives a slightly clearer idea of what he might have looked like."
    Could this really be the face of a forty-one-year-old? Deacon wondered. Old age had scored itself into deep lines round the mouth, and the eyes that looked into the camera were faded and yellow. Only the hair had any vitality where it sprang up from the high forehead, although its whiteness was startling against the sallowness of the complexion. "Could the pathologist have been wrong about his age?" he asked.
    "Apparently not. I understand he took a second opinion when the police didn't believe him. It did occur to me," she went on, "that someone with the right computer software might be able to build on the images, but I don't know anyone who specializes in that area. If your magazine could do it, it would make a far better visual accompaniment to your article than the picture of me."
    "Why haven't the police done that?"
    "He didn't commit a crime before he died, so they're not interested. I believe they put his description on to a missing person's computer file but it didn't match with anyone, so they've written him off."
    "Can I borrow these? We'll have some negatives made and then I can let