Sins of the Fathers (28 page)

‘Well, he pretty much confirmed what we already suspected, didn't he?' Woodend said. ‘That the killer was actin' on his own.'

‘True. But Colonel Thompson also confirmed that the killer made no effort to put the body in the boot, and I still haven't been able to work out why that should have been.'

‘It was a foggy night, an' there weren't many people about on the streets,' Woodend pointed out. ‘Maybe the killer thought puttin' him on the back seat would be safe enough.'

‘There weren't
many
people about, but there were
some
– which meant there was still an element of risk,' Rutter countered. ‘Say he'd been pulled up at a traffic light, and a passing pedestrian had just happened to look into the car. Say there'd been an accident somewhere on his route, and the traffic patrol sent to deal with it had flagged him down.'

‘There'd only have been a slight possibility of either of those things actually happenin'.'

‘Agreed. But why run any risk at all, when he didn't have to?'

‘You're right, of course,' Woodend agreed. ‘An' since, accordin' to your pal the colonel, he
had
opened the boot, his initial thought
must have been
to put Pine in there.'

‘And then there's the difference between the ways he closed the door and closed the boot,' Rutter said. ‘Colonel Thompson says that he
slammed
the back door, but he shut the boot very gently.'

‘Almost as if he didn't want to damage whatever – or
whoever
– was inside it,' Woodend mused. ‘Perhaps he
did
have an accomplice after all, an' the accomplice was hidin' in the boot.'

The bar door swung open, and Monika Paniatowski walked in. Even from a distance, both men could see that her face was flushed with excitement, and as she strode across the room it looked as if she could hardly wait to tell Woodend and Rutter what it was that she'd discovered.

‘Did you know that Mr Marlowe was in the rescue party that brought Pine, Hawtrey and Tully down from the mountainside?' she asked, the moment she'd reached the table.

Woodend frowned. ‘No, I certainly bloody didn't! An' perhaps more to the point,
why
didn't I know?'

‘Because Marlowe didn't want to advertise the fact that he'd been there at all. Nor would I, if I'd helped to cover up a murder!'

‘So you're comin' round to the idea that what Tully wrote in his letter was no more than the simple truth?'

‘The evidence certainly seems to be pointing that way.'

Paniatowski quickly filled Woodend and Rutter in on her conversation with the mountain rescue men, including the details of the blood spatters on the trousers and boots, and the patch of blood on the sleeve of Hawtrey's jacket.

‘Maybe all the blood
did
come from a wound in his arm,' Woodend suggested.

‘The sleeve of his jacket wasn't torn!' Paniatowski countered. ‘If it had have been, I'm sure either Brian or Craig Steele would have mentioned it. If it had have been, they'd have seen the wound on the arm for themselves, instead of just being
told
about it.'

‘I still don't see why the sleeve
had
to be torn,' Woodend said.

‘Neither do I,' Rutter agreed. ‘As a kid, I was always falling down and grazing my knee without actually tearing my pants.'

‘But this wasn't just a graze,' Paniatowski pointed out. ‘Hawtrey must have lost at least a pint of blood.'

‘Good point,' Woodend conceded. ‘But if that's the case, why didn't these Steele fellers – who are experienced mountain rescuers – reach the same conclusion that you did?'

‘Because they'd got plenty of other things to think about at the time,' Paniatowski argued. ‘Hawtrey was dead. There was nothing more they could do for him, and they were well aware of it. So they paid him virtually no attention at all. Besides, conditions were still hazardous, even though the blizzard had lifted somewhat, and their main concern was to get the living – Pine and Tully – back to safety. But the
really
big difference is that they weren't looking for signs of foul play – why should they have been? – but I
was
!'

‘So are you sayin' that you don't think Alec Hawtrey
was
wounded in the arm?'

‘No, I'm not saying that at all. The patch of blood on the sleeve of his jacket would seem to indicate that he was almost definitely wounded there, possibly during the struggle.'

‘Well, then?'

‘But what I
am
putting forward is the idea that there was another wound – a
fatal
one – on some other part of his body. What I
don't
know is how Marlowe managed to persuade the local medical examiner to ignore the wounds.'

‘He didn't have to,' Woodend said. ‘It was good old Doc Pierson, our completely discredited police doctor, who carried out the autopsy.'

‘Well, that explains everything!' Paniatowski told him.

‘No, it doesn't,' Woodend contradicted her. ‘We know Doc Pierson was willin' to bend the rules on other occasions – that's why he's in gaol now. But Marlowe had nothin' to gain by helpin' to cover up a murder. In fact, he had one hell of a lot to lose.'

‘Maybe Bradley Pine told him there hadn't
been
a murder at all,' Paniatowski suggested.

‘An' why would he have believed him, when, accordin' to you, there was clear evidence of foul play somewhere on Hawtrey's body?'

‘Perhaps Pine managed to persuade the chief constable that he and Hawtrey had got into a fight over Thelma, and he'd killed Hawtrey accidentally.'

‘Even if Marlowe had believed that – which would be stretchin' even
his
credulity to the absolute limit – he'd still be running one hell of a risk assistin' in a cover-up,' Woodend said dubiously. ‘An', knowin' him as I do, I can't honestly see our Mr Marlowe sticking his neck out for
anybody
.'

‘Perhaps he had no choice in the matter,' Paniatowski said. ‘Perhaps Marlowe's got a guilty secret, and Pine knew all about it.'

‘Now that is a possibility,' Woodend said.

It was more than a possibility, and it didn't even have to be a
big
secret that Pine had got hold of. Given that Marlowe was already planning to stand for parliament at the time, even a sordid
little
secret – for example, a liking for wearing women's underwear – would have been enough to sink his political ambitions.

‘But we've still got a big problem, even if we're finally thinkin' along the right lines,' Woodend said, frowning deeply. ‘Marlowe's never goin' to admit to his involvement, however much we try to pressure him. An' we can't have another autopsy carried out on Hawtrey, because – very conveniently for everybody involved in the cover-up, an' very
inconveniently
for us – the bugger was cremated.' He gazed down into the pint glass again, and when he raised his head he was looking considerably more cheerful. ‘Still, we've got at least a couple of strings left to our bow, haven't we?' he asked the other two.

‘And what strings might they be?' Rutter wondered.

‘The first one is Jeremy Tully. He knows exactly what happened on that mountainside – because he was there.'

‘And now he's in Australia,' Paniatowski said.

‘Which is a long, long way, but that still doesn't mean he's beyond our reach,' Woodend told her. ‘I've been on the phone to the Australian police this afternoon, an' they've promised to interview him as soon as possible.'

‘Is the other string Doc Pierson?' Rutter asked.

‘The other string's Doc Pierson,' Woodend agreed. ‘I've made an appointment to visit him in Saltney Prison tomorrow mornin'.'

‘Why should
he
be willing to tell you what you want to know?' Paniatowski asked.

‘No reason at all, that I can think of,' Woodend conceded. ‘So I'll just have to charm him into it, won't I? An' – let's be honest about this – I'm well-known for my charm.'

‘Practically world-famous,' Rutter said, deadpan.

A waiter arrived with a vodka for Paniatowski, and the sergeant drained it in one gulp.

‘I think I'll have an early night,' she said, placing the empty glass on the table.

‘That's not like you at all,' Woodend told her.

And it wasn't. Normally Monika would rather do anything than go back to her lonely flat.

‘I've done a lot of driving today, and it's rather taken it out of me,' Paniatowski explained.

And
that
wasn't like her, either, Woodend thought. She loved driving. It never seemed to tire her.

‘I'd better be going, too,' Rutter said, standing up. ‘I'm due to meet someone in half an hour.'

‘About the case?' Woodend asked.

Rutter hesitated. ‘No, it's a personal matter,' he said finally.

Woodend looked first at Rutter, then at Paniatowski, then back at Rutter again.

What the bloody hell was going on with these two, he wondered.

W
hoever had last been using the two chairs in the vestry had placed them much closer together than they had been previously, and though both Father Taylor and Paniatowski could have repositioned one of them before sitting down, neither of them chose to.

‘This is becoming something of a habit of ours, isn't it, Monika?' Father Taylor asked.

‘Is that some tactful way of saying that I'm taking up far too much of your time?' Paniatowski wondered.

‘No, no, not at all,' Father Taylor said hastily. ‘I meant that it was becoming a habit in the nicest possible sense of the word.'

‘And what sense is that?'

‘It's a rather
cosy
habit, if you see what I'm getting at.'

Yes, she did see what he was getting at, Paniatowski thought. It was becoming a cosy habit because, in many ways, he was a cosy
man.

She could almost picture him – after a hard day's work in some office or other – sitting in his favourite armchair in his pleasant suburban living room. He would be wearing worn carpet slippers and an old cardigan – which was going at the elbows, but which he could not bear to throw out – and he would be listening happily while his children, gathered around at his feet, described their day's adventures to him.

‘Why did you become a priest?' she heard herself saying.

‘I thought I'd already answered that question the other night.'

‘Maybe you did.'

‘Well, then?'

‘And maybe I wasn't entirely convinced by what you told me.'

‘I assure you, Monika, I—'

‘Or it could be that I'd like to hear it all again, just to make certain I heard it right the first time.'

Father Taylor hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘I suppose the simplest way to explain how I came to be what I am is to say that I became a priest because I felt – I believed – that that's what God wanted me to become.'

‘So you had no choice – no free will?'

‘We all of us always have a choice. What would be the point in striving to become virtuous, if we didn't have the free will to choose not to be?'

‘What made you so sure that this was what God wanted you to do?' Paniatowski asked.

‘The gifts He appears to have bestowed on me.'

‘Like what?'

‘Even when I was very young, people seemed to have this urge to confide in me.'

‘So you're a good listener. That doesn't mean—'

‘And more than that, they took what I said in return very seriously. I had the power to comfort them – to lighten their burden. There was a time – in my teens – when I saw it more as a curse than a gift. But gradually I came to see God's purpose working through me.'

‘In other words, you became a priest simply because you had a talent for it?' Paniatowski asked. ‘In much the same way as you might have become a concert pianist if you'd had a natural aptitude for the piano?'

‘Are you mocking me now?' Father Taylor asked, looking hurt.

Paniatowski shook her head, vehemently.

‘No, I promise you, I'm not,' she said.

‘Then what
are
you doing?'

‘I'm trying to understand how a man like you could turn his back on a normal life. You
should
be married! You
should
have children. Even if they weren't your own. Even if you had to adopt them!'

‘If it had been God's plan for me to fall in love before I entered the priesthood, then that is what I would have done,' Father Taylor said, simply.

‘And once you had entered the priesthood, it was no longer possible?'

‘If I feel any stirrings – and I have already confessed to you that I do – I know it is only God's way of tempting me.'

‘He must be a very cruel god, then.'

‘No, He is a infinitely loving God, and He only does it to help me to strengthen my faith.'

They had strayed on to very dangerous ground Paniatowski realized – and it was all her fault.

‘I have a problem you might be able to help me with,' she said, trying to sound more businesslike. ‘And before you jump to any conclusions, Father Fred, it's professional – it's not about God at all.'

Father Taylor smiled. ‘
Most
things are about God,' he said, ‘but if you wish me to keep Him out of the conversation, I promise to try my hardest. What is it you want to know?'

‘Say that there were three men cut off by the weather on a mountainside, and that before their rescuers could get to them, one of them had already died,' Paniatowski began.

‘Is this some sort of moral theoretical question, or is it real?' Father Taylor asked.