Free The Echo by Minette Walters Page B

door."
    A grey lunar landscape slowly developed in front of Deacon, a wasteland of twisted metal, piled bricks, and abandoned warehouse wreckage. It was the aftermath of war where nothing recognizable existed anymore, and only the acrid smell of urine suggested human presence. "How long have you been here?" he asked Terry, as he began to pick out sleeping bodies among the rubble.
    "Two years on and off."
    "Why here? Why not a squat or a hostel?"
    The young man shrugged. "I've done them. This ain't so bad." He led the way past a pile of bricks and gestured to a makeshift structure, made out of plastic and old blankets. He pulled one of the blankets aside and reached in to light a battery-operated hurricane lamp. "Take a look," he invited. "This is my pitch."
    Deacon experienced a strange sort of envy. It was a cobbled-together tent in the middle of a urine-smelling bomb site, but it had personality in a way his flat did not. There were posters of seminude women pinned to the plastic walls, a mattress on the floor with a handmade patchwork quilt, ornaments on a metal filing cabinet, a wicker chair with a dressing gown on it, and a jam jar of plastic red roses on a small painted table. He went in and sat on the chair, carefully folding the dressing gown onto his lap. "This is good. You've done it up well."
    "I like it. Got most of this stuff off the council tip. It's fucking amazing what people chuck out." Terry squeezed in beside him and lay on the bed. He looked younger in repose than he did in tense concentration against the wind. "It's freer than a hostel and not so cramped as a squat. People can get on your nerves in a squat."
    "Don't you have any family?"
    "Nah. Been in and out of homes since I was six. One bloke told me once that my mother went to prison which is why I ended up in care, but I've never tried to find her. She's a loser, so it's no good looking. I get by."
    Deacon made a point of examining the young face in order to remember it afterwards. But there was nothing memorable about the lad. He was like a hundred shaven-headed boys of the same age, uniformly colorless, uniformly unattractive. He wondered why Terry hadn't mentioned a father, but guessed the father was anonymous and therefore irrelevant. He thought of all the women he himself had slept with over the years. Had one of them fallen pregnant by him and given birth to a Terry whom she subsequently abandoned?
    "Still, it can't be much fun living rough like this."
    "Yeah, well, I'm not the first to do it, and I sure as hell won't be the last. Like I said, I get by. Whatever man has done, man can do."
    The expression seemed an unlikely one for a youngster like Terry to use. "Is that something Billy used to say?"
    The lad gave an indifferent shrug. "Maybe. He were always fucking preaching at me." His voice took on a more refined tone. '"You cannot have rights without responsibility, Terry. Man's greatest sin is pride because he dethrones God at his peril. Be prepared-the day of judgment is closer than you think.' " He reverted to his own, rougher accent. "I'm telling you, it did your head in to listen to him. He were a right nutter most of the time, but he meant well and I reckon I learnt a thing or two off of him."
    "Like what?"
    Terry grinned. "Like, fools ask questions that wise men cannot answer."
    Deacon smiled. "How old are you?"
    "Eighteen."
    Somehow Deacon doubted that. For all Terry's readiness of speech and mind, which allowed him to dominate the derelict old men he was living with, the fluff on his chin was still downy and he was growing too fast for his thin frame to keep pace. His great bony hands hung out of his sleeves like paddles, and it would be a while yet before maturity bulked his chest and shoulders. It made Deacon all the more curious about the preacher- and teacher? -who had befriended him.
    "How long did you know Billy?" he asked.
    "A couple of years."
    Since he'd been in the warehouse then. "Was his doss as good as this?"
    Terry