Echoes of the Dead (32 page)

‘Would you like me to tell you?'

‘If it's not too much trouble, boss.'

‘No trouble at all, Colin. The reason Father O'Brien stopped patting himself on the back was that soon after the investigation was launched, some new information came his way. And in the light of this new information, he realized that, rather than assisting the cause of justice – which is what he'd thought previously – he was doing the exact opposite. Ask me how he got this new information.'

‘How did Father O'Brien get this new information, boss?' Beresford asked obediently.

‘It was given to him in the
confessional
. And that was the source of his problem, you see, because he wanted to tell us what he'd learned, in order to prevent an
injustice
, but he couldn't do that because of the confessional seal. So what he
did
do was to try and set up a situation in which we'd find out the information for ourselves. Are you following all this?'

‘Not really,' Beresford lied.

‘Well, for example, he couldn't say anything as specific as “Joe Bloggs killed Lilly Dawson” because that would be breaking the seal. So what he had to do instead was to say, “Find out who killed Mottershead, and that will lead you to who killed Lilly.” In that way, you see, he was
using
the information he'd been given in the confessional without actually having to
reveal
it. But even so, I'm not sure he was acting strictly within his vows.'

‘And neither am I,' the priest moaned. ‘If you knew what torment I have been in . . .'

‘Yes, well, I might have some sympathy for you if I hadn't already used most of what I had available on a good man called Charlie Woodend, whose whole life is likely to be destroyed by what you did,' Paniatowski said dismissively. ‘There's one thing I still don't understand, though, Father – one of your fussy little, conscience-stricken hints that I still haven't been able to completely unravel. And do you know what it is?'

‘No,' the priest said, in a dull flat voice.

‘You said we should talk to Michael Eccles. But however hard I think about it, I still can't see what he could possibly contribute to the investigation.'

‘I want to tell you why it's important,' O'Brien said. ‘Believe me, Chief Inspector, I
desperately
want to tell you. But I can't.'

‘Well, that's not much use then, is it?' Paniatowski said, ‘especially since we've no idea where Michael Eccles is.' She paused. ‘Still, that doesn't really matter, because your main value to us, Father, is not actually what information you have – it's that you have it
at all
.'

‘I don't understand,' the priest said.

‘I told you that you were out of your depth,' Paniatowski countered. She turned to Beresford again. ‘Explain it to him, Colin,' she said wearily.

‘What really matters is where you got the information
from
,' Beresford said. ‘In other words, when you learned all this in the confessional, just who was it who was confessing?'

‘I can't tell you that,' O'Brien said.

‘You don't need to,' Paniatowski told him. ‘We already know it was Elizabeth Eccles.'

‘In all the time he was here – and he served most of his sentence in Preston Prison – Fred Howerd only ever had one visitor,' the assistant governor said.

‘And that would be his daughter?' Crane guessed.

‘That's right.'

‘How often did she come to see him?'

The assistant governor frowned slightly. ‘Sorry, I must not have been expressing myself very well. What I meant, when I said he only had one visitor, was that he was only visited
once
– and that was by his daughter, just before he was released.'

‘I'd like to talk to any warders who came into close contact with Mrs Eccles during the visit,' Crane said.

‘None of them did,' the assistant governor replied. ‘I handled the whole thing myself.'

‘Oh!' Crane said, surprised. ‘Was that because he was something of celebrity prisoner?'

The assistant governor laughed. ‘Is that how you think of him, back in Whitebridge? Well, I suppose he might have been a bit of a celebrity when he was first admitted, but after nearly a quarter of a century, you know, he was merely looked on as just another of the old lags.'

‘Fame is such a fleeting thing,' Crane said, almost wistfully.

The assistant governor laughed again. ‘So it is,' he agreed. ‘In actual fact, the reason I was so closely involved with Mrs Eccles's visit is that it was my job to arrange for Fred Howerd's transfer from the prison to some other accommodation – either a hospital or a relative's home.'

‘How much do remember about the visit?' Crane asked.

‘Probably more than you'd imagine I would,' the assistant governor said. ‘It was a rather unusual visit, you see.'

‘Was it? And what made it unusual?'

‘Mrs Eccles did.'

In his time in the prison service, the assistant governor has observed all manner of visitors. Some have been so distraught at seeing their loved ones behind bars that they have almost had to be carried from the visiting room. Some have come wrapped in their own cloak of martyrdom, some clad in the armour of resentment. But he has never met one like Mrs Eccles before. She does not ask him
how
her father is, merely
where
he is. And right from the start, she is all business – as cold and calculating as a butcher negotiating the price of a side of beef.

‘I know you're not,' Mrs Eccles agrees, with a hint of impatience – the first real emotion she has shown – in her voice. ‘But you must have
some
idea of how long he'll last.'

‘That's
all
she said? “I'll take him”?' Crane asked, incredulously.

‘That's all,' the assistant governor agreed. ‘And then, without so much as a goodbye to her father, she turned and marched out of the infirmary.'

The puzzle was finally starting to fit together, and a much clearer picture was beginning to emerge, Colin Beresford thought, as he walked towards the main exit to police headquarters, intent on grabbing a breath of fresh air while he had the chance.

But that picture still wasn't clear
enough
to get cocky about, he cautioned himself. Some of the important details were missing, and that meant that not only were there questions they hadn't yet got answers to, but there were probably questions they hadn't even thought to ask.

He was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he didn't even register the fact that the desk sergeant was waving at him as he walked past, and it was only when the man called out his name that he broke his step and turned around.

‘Yes?' he said.

‘I was looking for your boss, sir, and I wondered if you might know where she was,' the sergeant explained.

‘She's gone to the morgue, to talk to Dr Shastri,' Beresford said.

Although
why
Shastri should want to talk to her, when she had no connection with the current case, was still a mystery.

‘Oh well, it doesn't matter. It'll probably keep,' the sergeant said.

‘What will probably keep?' Beresford asked.

‘I read in the bulletin that she's on the lookout for a feller called Michael Eccles.'

‘That's right, she is.'

‘Well, we've got
a
Michael Eccles down in the cells. He was arrested this morning. Now, I couldn't say whether or not it's
the
Michael Eccles that you want to get your hands on, but—'

‘What was he arrested for?' Beresford interrupted.

The sergeant consulted the notes on his desk. ‘For throwing a brick through the window of a house belonging to a Mrs Elizabeth Eccles,' he said.

There were days when God seemed to be in a good mood with you, Beresford thought – and this might just turn out to be one of them.

‘He's down in the cells, is he?' the inspector asked.

‘That's right,' the sergeant agreed.

‘Then I think I might just go and have a word with him myself,' Beresford said.

TWENTY-FIVE

M
ike Eccles was a real mess, Beresford decided, looking at him across the interview table – and the state he was in hadn't just happened overnight, but must have taken years to cultivate.

And
this
was the man who Father O'Brien had firmly believed could provide them with some of the answers to their questions, he thought. This
wreck
was supposed to give them insights into the whole sorry business.

It was hard to believe that he had anything to contribute – and even harder to work out what questions to ask in order to bring that contribution to the surface.

Well, he had to start somewhere, Beresford supposed – and the reason why Eccles was there in Whitebridge at all was as good a place as any.

‘You threw a brick right through your wife's front room window,' Beresford said.

‘Wasn't me,' Eccles replied, automatically.

‘You were the only person on the street when the patrol car arrived. Besides, there were at least a dozen women, peeping from behind their curtains, who
saw
you do it.'

‘She should have let me in,' Eccles said sulkily, abandoning all pretence of innocence. ‘I was only there for what was rightfully mine.'

‘Really?' Beresford asked. ‘And just what
was
rightfully yours?'

‘A lot of money. Thousands of pounds. Maybe hundreds of thousands of pounds.'

‘And it was rightfully yours because . . . ?'

‘Because I earned it.'

‘How?' Beresford wondered.

‘I married the bitch, didn't I? They said that was all I needed to do. After that, they told me, I could just sit back and wait till the money rolled in.'

‘You still haven't said where the money was coming from?' Beresford pointed out.

‘We were supposed to get part of the family fortune when her dad was made joint managing director of the firm. Only that never happened like it was supposed to, did it? Because her dad got sent to prison, and the rest of the family didn't want anythin' to do with us.'

‘I thought that they agreed to pay you a small allowance every month,' Beresford said.

‘An allowance!' Eccles repeated in disgust. ‘An allowance was no good to me. I didn't want to live in a terraced house for the rest of my life. I wanted expensive cars an' a big mansion with its own swimmin' pool.'

‘So you left your wife and set off to find your fortune elsewhere?' Beresford asked.

‘That's right,' Eccles agreed – failing completely to see the obvious incongruity between his statement and his present condition.

‘And now you're back in Whitebridge,' Beresford said.

‘I am. I've come back to claim what's due to me.'

Just what kind of creature was this he was dealing with here, Beresford wondered angrily.

His own mother had been struck down with Alzheimer's disease in her early sixties, and for years he had tended to her, at whatever the personal cost to himself. It had been hard – very hard – but he had done it because he knew what was right. Yet Eccles felt under no such obligation to
his
family. The bastard had not got exactly what he wanted, so he had simply taken off. And now . . .

Calm down! Beresford told himself. When you're conducting an interview, you have to stay calm.

But even as one part of his brain was issuing this instruction, there was another part of it – outraged at Eccles's behaviour – which knew that he was fighting a losing battle.

‘You've got a real brass neck on you, haven't you, Mike?' he asked, with a mixture of anger and contempt.

But both the tone and the nature of the words themselves seemed to go completely over the other man's head.

‘What do you mean – a brass neck?' Mike Eccles asked.

‘What I mean is that a proper man wouldn't expect
anything
if he'd behaved as disgracefully you have,' Beresford said, heatedly.

‘Disgracefully?' Eccles said, with evident surprise. ‘Me?'

He was beyond redemption, Beresford thought. He would never see himself as other men saw him, and it was pointless to even try to make him.