Sins of the Fathers (15 page)

‘I … I don't think I've ever heard a priest talk like this before,' Paniatowski said.

‘And perhaps you should not be hearing one talk like it now,' Father Taylor replied.

‘
When
do you feel angry in that way?' Paniatowski asked, urgently.

‘I really do think I've said enough.'

‘Please! Tell me!'

The priest shrugged, helplessly.

‘A young couple came to see me the other day,' he said. ‘The wife had just given birth to a baby boy, and they wanted to arrange a christening. They brought their daughter with them – a beautiful little girl of four. She was holding on to her father's hand, and at one point, I saw her looking up at him. And what a look it was – so full of trust, so full of love. And I knew at that moment – though, at a deeper level I must
always
have known it – that I was doomed never to have a child look at
me
in quite that way.'

And neither will I, Paniatowski thought bitterly. I can never have children – this defective body of mine makes that impossible – so I won't experience it, either.

‘There's another look I miss,' the priest said, guiltily. ‘The look that a woman like you might give to a man like me, if we were entirely different people in an entirely different place.' He paused for a moment. ‘You seem shocked by what I've just said, Monika.'

‘No, I—'

‘What did you think? That a priest was above such thoughts and yearnings? Did you imagine that the holy oil with which we are anointed was some kind of magic potion which took away our sex drives completely?'

‘No, I—'

‘It doesn't work like that. If sacrifice involves no pain, then it is no real sacrifice at all. And if we have no weaknesses of our own to battle against, how will we ever understand the struggles against weakness that must be endured by those whom God has put into our care?'

Paniatowski stood up.

‘Are you leaving?' Father Taylor asked. ‘Have I scandalized you – or merely bored you?'

‘No, I'm … I haven't … it's not either of those things. I'm nervous. That's all. And when I'm nervous, I need to smoke. So that's what I'm doing. I'm going outside for a smoke.'

‘You may smoke in here, if you wish, Monika. As you already know, Father Kenyon does.'

‘No, I'll … I'd prefer to smoke in the open air.'

‘And will you be coming back when you've finished your cigarette, Monika?'

‘I'm not sure.'

Father Taylor shook his head. ‘Which means “no”,' he said. ‘I think that's the right decision for you to make. I don't think you
should
come back tonight. But you will come back another time, won't you?'

‘Yes … No … I think so, but I'm not making any promises.'

‘It doesn't have to be me who you come and see,' Father Taylor said. ‘Perhaps it
shouldn't
be me. Come and see Father Kenyon. Or see a priest in another parish, if you'd feel more at ease with that. But please don't stop now, having begun the journey back.'

‘There is no journey back!' Paniatowski protested. ‘As I told you earlier, I just dropped in for a friendly chat.'

‘If you prefer to think of the steps you take as “friendly chats”, then there can be no harm in that,' Father Taylor told her. ‘But keep on having these chats, Monika, I beg you.'

‘I don't need your religion,' Paniatowski said fiercely.

‘You're wrong about that,' Father Taylor said, with absolute conviction. ‘I see a lot of very unhappy people in my role as parish priest, Monika – but I have to tell you, in all honesty, that you're more in need of spiritual comfort than any of them.'

I
t was seven thirty-five in the morning, and Henry Marlowe sat in the hospitality suite of the BBC's Manchester studios, preparing himself for a radio interview. He was not alone. Bill Hawes, his constituency agent, was by his side, as he intended to be – especially after the fiasco on police headquarters' steps the previous afternoon – for every waking minute of every day until the election was over.

‘Now remember, Henry, old chap, this is
national
radio you're going on,' Hawes cautioned.

‘I know that,' Marlowe said, with some irritation.

‘The Party bosses in London will be listening to your performance with keen interest,' Hawes pressed on, ‘and how well you do may affect whether you're welcomed to Westminster as a cabinet minister in the making or as mere cannon fodder for the voting lobbies.'

‘If I ever
do
arrive in Westminster,' Marlowe said bitterly. ‘If I'm ever
elected
.'

‘You'll be elected,' Hawes said.

His tone was confident and reassuring, but Marlowe took no comfort from that. He was perfectly well aware that Bill Hawes was a professional fixer – a political manipulator – and sounding confident was what he did, whether his candidate of the moment was an easy shoo-in for the seat or didn't have a cat in hell's chance of winning it.

‘I don't want to be wrong-footed like I was yesterday,' Marlowe said.

‘And you won't be,' Hawes promised. ‘I've already thrashed out the ground rules with the man who'll be interviewing you, and he's given me his word that there'll be no mention of the fact that you've left your post in the middle of an important murder inquiry.'

‘There shouldn't have been any mention of it at the press conference, either,' Marlowe said, making it sound as if it had all been Hawes' fault.

‘But even though you should skirt around the question of the murder investigation, you should still pay tribute to Bradley Pine as your predecessor,' Hawes advised.

‘Should I?' Marlowe asked peevishly. ‘Why?'

‘Because it would seem mean-spirited of you not to.'

Marlowe sighed heavily. ‘All right, I'll talk about what a hero Bradley was, and how he—'

‘Not that, for Christ's sake!' Hawes said, in a panic. ‘Whatever you do, don't talk about what happened on that bloody mountain!'

‘But if I'm supposed to be paying tribute to him—'

‘Find another way to do it.
Any
other way. Talk about his commitment to the Boy Scouts or old people's homes. Tell lies, if you have to – we can always find some way to gloss over them afterwards – but whatever else you do, don't so much as
mention
Alec Hawtrey's death.'

‘Can I ask why?' Marlowe asked, with a show of petulance.

It was Hawes turn to sigh. ‘I should have thought it was bloody obvious,' he said.

‘Well, it isn't to me,' Marlowe counted. ‘Alec Hawtrey was cremated, remember. Nobody can prove anything one way or the other now.'

‘Nobody
has
to prove anything,' Hawes said, talking slowly and carefully, as if addressing a particularly slow learner. ‘Even a hint of what happened could sink you. Besides, the people involved in the
cover-up
haven't been cremated, have they? They're still around, with their memories fully intact. And we know exactly who they are, don't we, Henry?'

Marlowe shuddered. ‘Yes,' he agreed, ‘We know who they are.'

When Joan Woodend had been in the early stages of recovering from her heart attack, she'd commented on the irony of the fact that she – who'd always scrupulously eaten her greens – should have been struck down with such an affliction, whilst Charlie – who had lived on a diet of cigarettes, beer and fried food for as long as she'd known him – should still be glowing with health.

Joan being Joan, of course, she hadn't actually used a fancy word like ‘irony'.

What she'd said was that it was ‘bloody funny, and she didn't mean funny ha-ha', that she was the one who was lying in the hospital bed.

And Woodend himself had been forced to agree with her.

What had happened to his wife had shaken the chief inspector to the core, but had made absolutely no difference at all to the way he led his own life, and at about the time that Henry Marlowe was being questioned on the radio by a suitably deferential interviewer, he himself was tucking into a subsidized fry-up in the Whitebridge police canteen.

The other two people at the table had chosen not to join him in playing Russian Roulette with their arteries. Beresford – who had cooked his mother's breakfast before he left home, and then sat there watching her, to make sure she ate it – had settled for a poached egg on toast. Paniatowski had said she only wanted an orange juice – and didn't seem to even have the stomach for that.

Woodend mopped his egg yolk with a piece of fried bread, and popped it into his mouth.

‘Here's the plan for this mornin',' he told Beresford. ‘Monika an' me will be piecin' together everythin' we can about Thelma Hawtrey's friends an' relations, an' what I want you to do, lad, is to approach the same question – but from a different angle.'

‘What angle would that be, sir?' the constable asked.

‘Take yourself off to Hawtrey an' Pine Holdings again. I want to know how Thelma behaved when she paid her occasional visits to the factory. Was she on more or less friendly terms with Pine, as she claims – or did she look at him like she wanted him dead?'

‘I still think you're wrong about her, sir,' Beresford said.

‘I know you do,' Woodend agreed. ‘But I'm beginnin' to suspect that's probably because you fancy her.'

‘Fancy her!' Beresford repeated, shocked.

‘There's no shame in it,' Woodend told him. ‘None of us are immune to the call of the flesh.'

‘But she's an
old woman
!' Beresford said, clearly horrified.

‘My guess is that she's somewhere in her mid-thirties,' Woodend pointed out.

‘Yes,' Beresford agreed. ‘That's what I said.'

Woodend cut up his remaining bacon rind into bite-sized pieces, speared one, and aimed it at his mouth.

‘If
she's
old, what does that make me?' he asked.

‘It's different for you, sir,' Beresford said.

‘Is it? How?'

‘You're a man.'

‘Aye, an' apparently a very
ancient
one.'

‘I didn't mean to suggest—' Beresford began.

‘Go an' do your job, lad,' Woodend interrupted him. ‘An' if they've carted me off to the mortuary by the time you get back, you can always hand your report in to Sergeant Paniatowski, can't you?'

Father Taylor entered the parishioner's side of the confessional, sat down heavily, and turned his head towards the grille.

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,' he said. ‘It is three days since my last confession.'

‘Which is not an excessive amount of time,' said Father Kenyon mildly, from the other side of the grille.

‘I have been guilty of impure thoughts and impure feelings.'

‘Go on.'

‘A woman came to the church—'

‘That would be Sergeant Paniatowski, would it?'

‘Yes, it was her. I saw at once that she was a lost soul. I wanted to lead her back to the light.'

‘That is why God has put us here on this earth. That is why we serve Him as His priests.'

‘But somehow that no longer seems important to me. I want to
know
her – in all senses of the word – and what she chooses to believe – or chooses not to believe – doesn't matter to me.'

‘You must
make
it matter to you,' Father Kenyon said sternly. ‘It is your duty.'

‘I know that, and I have been trying, Father. I can't tell you how much I've tried. But I have failed.'

‘Then you must try even harder. You say you have sinned, and I agree with you. But do you repent those sins?'

‘I … I want to.'

‘We both know that is not good enough,' Father Kenyon said heavily.

‘Yes,' Father Taylor agreed. ‘We both know that.'

I
t wasn't so much that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor, Bob Rutter thought, as that the poor let things happen
to
them, whereas the rich
made
the things happen.

The origin of this socio-political flight of fancy of his was a small patch of land in one of the more affluent suburbs of Whitebridge, beside which he was now standing. Once, the land had housed a tumbledown cottage, surrounded by countryside. But as Whitebridge had expanded in response to the newly emerging middle class's hunger for quality double-fronted houses, the countryside had been gobbled up, until finally it was no more.

The developers had tried to buy the cottage, but when the cranky old man who lived in it had refused to sell, they'd had no choice but to build around it. True, they'd done the best they could, contriving to construct in such a way that it was only through their back windows that the nearest new residents would catch sight of the bucolic slum, but the cottage had still been generally regarded as something of a blot on the newly urbanized landscape.

Then the old man had died and left the cottage to a nephew, who immediately put it on the market. Several construction companies made a bid for it, and, in a less affluent part of town, one of them would undoubtedly have succeeded in buying it. But the residents here had no wish to see a new building replace the old one, and – since they were the sort of people who
made
things happen – they had clubbed together and put in a bid of their own.

And this was the result – a green area with trees, bushes and a few flower beds, which was too small to be called a park, but just about large enough to bear the name of ‘gardens' without seeming too ridiculous.

The residents had been so proud of their initiative that they had put up a plaque to commemorate it.