Sins of the Fathers (26 page)

Sergeant Paniatowski would advise him. Sergeant Paniatowski was the only person he could think of who would be
able
to advise him – which was why he had spent the best part of two hours aimlessly scouring Whitebridge for her, instead of simply waiting until they met up in the pub later.

He fully realized that this urge to talk to her immediately was nothing more than a sign of his own desperation, but there was nothing he could do about that. He was
so
desperate, in fact, that he'd almost poured out his troubles to the priest – and now he was beginning to wonder why he hadn't.

It was true that Father Taylor was not a bobby himself – and so would have had an imperfect grasp of the sorts of problems bobbies had to face – but he had appeared to be a kind man, an understanding man. And though Beresford was sure they had never met before, he'd seemed strangely familiar.

Though the Dirty Duck was rather a come-down for a woman used to living off a more-than-generous expense account, Elizabeth Driver was glad that she had chosen it as the place to have her lunch with Bob Rutter. She could see, just by looking at him from across the table, that he was far more at home there than he would have been at one of Whitebridge's more expensive restaurants – and it was very important that he
did
feel at home.

‘I can't tell you how gratified I am that you said you'd meet me today,' she told him. ‘I'm
especially
grateful because I know I don't deserve it – because we
both
know I don't deserve it.'

‘There was a time when I'd have agreed with you,' Rutter replied. ‘But not any more.'

‘So what's changed?'

‘My life has changed. And because of that, the way I look at everything else has changed, too.'

‘Do you want to tell me about it?' Elizabeth Driver asked, only just resisting the temptation to reach across the table and place her hand softly on top of his.

‘The one thing in life that everybody needs is forgiveness,' Rutter told her. ‘I wanted my wife to forgive me, but now I'll never know whether she would have or not.'

‘I'm certain she would have,' Elizabeth Driver said. ‘I'm convinced she would eventually have come to see that what happened was all Monika Paniatowski's fault.'

‘It wasn't all Monika's fault!' Rutter said, with a hint of rising anger in his voice.

‘No, of course it wasn't,' Elizabeth Driver said hastily. ‘I phrased it badly. What I meant to say was that the affair would never have happened if Monika hadn't been around – that you'd never have strayed from your marriage vows with any woman but her.'

‘I think that's true,' Rutter said.

‘I'm sure it is,' Elizabeth Driver said, reassuringly.

‘Everybody makes mistakes, and everybody needs forgiveness,' Rutter said, returning to his earlier theme. ‘That's why I'm trying as hard as I possibly can to forgive you.'

‘And is it working?'

‘I think I'm almost there.'

‘You're so kind,' Elizabeth Driver said, in a voice she hoped sounded both deeply touched and deeply sincere.

Rutter shook his head vehemently. ‘I'm not kind at all. I'm doing it for purely selfish reasons. If I can't learn to forgive you, then how will I ever learn to forgive myself?'

‘I've been wondering how
I
could make amends,' Elizabeth Driver said. ‘And I think I may have found a way.'

‘How?'

‘Through using the only real talent I have. I want to write a book on you and Maria.'

‘What kind of book?'

‘An inspirational book. One which shows how bravely you both coped with her blindness.'

‘Until I betrayed her,' Rutter said.

‘I wouldn't go into that.'

‘You'd have to!' Rutter said fiercely. ‘It wouldn't be an honest book if you didn't.'

‘I'm not sure that's necessarily—'

‘And if it wasn't an honest book, then it wouldn't be worth writing at all.'

‘I can quite see that,' Elizabeth Driver lied. ‘But have you thought about what it might do to your reputation if that part of the story appeared in print?'

‘I don't care about my reputation.'

Elizabeth Driver pursed her brow thoughtfully. ‘I suppose I could always protect you by changing the names,' she suggested.

‘I don't want the names changing. Maria has the right to be admired under her own name – and I deserve to be vilified under mine.'

‘And what about Monika?'

‘Monika's name
would
have to be changed,' Rutter admitted. ‘And she couldn't appear as she is – real flesh and blood. She'd have to be no more than a shadow.'

‘That shouldn't be too much of a problem,' Elizabeth Driver said. She paused for a second. ‘You sound as if you're almost ready to give me permission to go ahead with the project.'

‘I
am
almost ready.'

‘Though I must say, the way you've outlined what you want, it won't be quite the same book as I'd thought of writing. You make your agreement to it seem almost like a penance.'

‘It's not
almost like
a penance at all,' Rutter told her. ‘It
is
a bloody penance.'

T
he Last Drop Inn was a squat stone building, with thick walls to repel the drifting snow, and ceiling heights designed with the much shorter men of earlier generations in mind. A large open fire burned brightly in the grate of the bar parlour, and its flames were reflected in the copper pots which hung on the walls.

It had already been a thriving pub when John Hancock had been the first man to sign a document containing what he and his fellow delegates considered to be self-evident truths. It had served pints of fine and frothy Lake District ale to passengers on the London mail coach on the very day that Louis XVI of France had lost his head. And when Victoria had ascended to the throne of England in 1837, its regular drinkers had shaken their heads and wondered just how a young, inexperienced girl like her could ever be expected to act like a monarch.

Monika Paniatowski quite liked the place herself, and knew that Woodend would have absolutely loved it.

She was sitting at a table with Brian Steele, leader of the mountain rescue team, and his nephew Craig. Brian struck her as a man who made decisions quickly, and probably didn't appreciate being questioned on them. Craig had an appealing innocence which reminded her a little of Constable Beresford's.

‘To be honest with you, Sergeant, I don't see how what happened on the mountain over three years ago can have anything to do with a murder that's only a few days old,' Brian Steele was saying.

‘Neither do I,' Paniatowski replied. ‘But my boss wanted the questions asked, and I wasn't going to turn down the chance of spending the day up here among your lovely lakes.'

Craig Steele positively beamed with pleasure. ‘I'm glad you like them, Monika.'

‘That's
Sergeant Paniatowski
to you,' his uncle told him.

‘I don't mind being called Monika, honestly I don't,' Paniatowski said, being deliberately girlish.

‘Please yourself, then,' Brian said, taking slight umbrage at his ruling being overturned.

‘Tell me about the rescue,' Paniatowski suggested.

‘It was one of the worst blizzards I can ever recall experiencing, and I've been part of one mountain rescue team or another for nearly twenty-five years now,' Brian Steele said.

‘Was it actually forecast that it would be such bad weather?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Now why would you want to know that?' Brian Steele wondered, with the slightly suspicious tone to his voice that all men of action seemed to have when confronted with people who write up reports of their conversations with them in warm offices.

I want to know because, if I were planning any funny business on the mountainside, I might decide that bad weather would provide me with the perfect cover for it,
Paniatowski thought.

But aloud, she said, ‘I'm just trying to build up a general picture of how things were.'

‘The blizzard came out of nowhere,' Brian said. ‘It took
everybody
by surprise.'

‘Especially those three poor buggers who were stuck up the mountain,' Craig added.

‘Watch your language when there's a lady present,' his uncle warned him. ‘Now, where was I? Oh yes, Pine, Hawtrey and Tulworth were staying at the Bluebell Hotel and—'

‘Tully,' Craig interrupted. ‘His name was Tully.'

‘Pine, Hawtrey and
Tully
were staying at the Bluebell Hotel,' Brian said, flashing a look of annoyance at his nephew. ‘Before they set out that morning, they left all the details of their planned expedition at the reception desk, just as they were supposed to do, so when they hadn't returned by nightfall, the hotel naturally phoned us.'

‘We knew roughly where they were, but there was no way we could get to them in those conditions,' Craig Steele said.

‘What the boy means is that we have one golden rule that we always operate under,' Brian explained. ‘We're more than willing to put our own lives at risk in order to carry out a rescue, but that's not the same thing at all as being prepared to
throw
our lives away.'

‘Getting
yourself
killed doesn't help the people who you're trying to save one little bit,' Craig added.

‘Anyway, we got ready to go, and waited for the weather to lift,' Brian said. ‘But it didn't lift the next day, nor the day after that. It wasn't until the fourth morning that it started to improve, and by then, the three of them had been stranded on the mountain for at least eighty hours.'

‘It was when it
did
finally did start to lift that your feller actually turned up,' Craig said.

‘Our feller? You mean Superintendent Springer by that, do you?' Paniatowski asked.

‘No, not him,' Brian said dismissively. ‘Ron Springer may have worked down in London once upon a time, but over the years he's got all that out of his system, and now he's one of ours.'

‘Then who—'

‘The feller that I'm talkin' about was a Lancashire bobby. What was his name, Craig?'

‘Marlowe, I think,' Craig Steele replied.

‘Marlowe?' Paniatowski repeated. ‘
Henry
Marlowe?'

‘That's him,' Brian agreed. ‘You sound as if it's news to you that he was ever here.'

‘It is,' Paniatowski replied, thoughtfully. ‘But please don't let me interrupt you.'

‘It's not the first time that some bigwig or other has turned up at the scene of one of our rescues,' Craig said. ‘They think it's glamorous, you see – a bit like putting a Stetson on and pretending you're a cowboy.'

‘And we tolerate them poncing about like that because we have no choice in the matter,' Brian said.

‘No choice?' Paniatowski repeated.

‘You have to understand that we're a voluntary organization, and it's people like your Mr Marlowe who help to raise the funds we need to keep our operation going.'

‘Of course, it doesn't take them long to realize that there's very little glamour in what we do – and a lot of hard slog,' Craig said. ‘And it's usually at that point that they start saying that while they'd love to come along on the final stages of the rescue, they think they've pulled a muscle.'

Brian laughed. ‘That's exactly what they say,' he agreed. ‘Not that we'd have
let
them come along with us, anyway. It's a dangerous job we do, and there's no room for passengers.'

‘You did let that Marlowe feller come along,' Craig pointed out.

‘That was the exception to the rule,' Brian said, giving his nephew another warning glance. ‘And there were two very good reasons for making it an exception. The first one was that he'd done some mountain climbing himself, and when he was talking to me, he managed to convince me that not only would he not be a hindrance in the rescue, but he might actually be some help.'

‘And what was the second?' Paniatowski asked.

Brian looked a little sheepish. ‘Superintendent Springer wanted us to let him come with us. He said that Mr Marlowe was considering entering politics, and it would sort of give him a leg up if he could be associated with the rescue.'

‘I've never met a feller quite as keen to get himself in the limelight as Marlowe was that day,' Craig said. ‘He'd hardly arrived at the rescue centre before he was asking my permission to use the radio telephone.'

‘
I'd
put Craig in charge of that,' Brian said. ‘It's a very responsible job, but I thought he could handle it.'

‘So, since we didn't need the channel open for anything else, I said it would be all right,' Craig told Paniatowski. ‘He made more than one call, and from the bits of the conversation that I happened to overhear, I'm almost sure he was talking to the newspapers.'

‘Let's get back to the main point of the story, shall we?' Brian said. ‘Springer asked me if we'd take Marlowe along, and I said yes. If anybody else had asked me, I'd have turned him down, but since Ron Springer's been a good friend to our unit, I decided to oblige him. But I want to make it perfectly plain to you that I'd
never
have agreed – however much pressure Springer had put on me – if I hadn't thought Marlowe was up to it.'

‘Understood,' Paniatowski said.

‘It was the helicopter that spotted them,' Brian continued. ‘But there was no way it could have landed where they were, and even using a winch would have been difficult, so it was decided that we'd do the job from the ground. When we finally reached the three fellers, we could see straight away that while the others were in a pretty bad way, Hawtrey was beyond any kind of help we could give him.'