Sins of the Fathers (32 page)

There was the sound of two sets of men's footsteps, crossing the floor of the church and approaching the confessional.

‘In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I absolve you of your sins,' Father Taylor said.

Though he spoke hurriedly, it was not with the uncertain voice of the man she had been with the previous evening, but with the authority of an ordained priest of the Holy Catholic Church.

‘But I can't be forgiven, because I don't repent
either
!' Paniatowski said angrily.

‘You will repent,' Father Taylor told her, sadly. ‘And perhaps sooner than you think. You have to go now.'

‘I don't
want
to go!'

‘You must,' Father Taylor insisted.

There were tears in Paniatowski's eyes as she stepped out of the confessional, but through those tears she still managed to see Charlie Woodend and Bob Rutter standing there.

And suddenly, everything Father Taylor had said to her started to make sense.

‘T
his is all a complete waste of time, you know,' Father Taylor said, quite calmly, as he looked at Woodend across the table in Whitebridge Police Headquarters' Interview Room B.

‘
Why
is it a complete waste of time?' Woodend asked. ‘Because you're innocent of the crime with which you're charged?'

‘No. Quite the contrary. Because I'm guilty of it. I killed Bradley Pine, and I'll willingly sign any confession that you care to put in front of me. Isn't that enough for you?'

‘No, it isn't,' Woodend told him. ‘The Crown Prosecution Service will want a comprehensive report, which means that I need you to flesh out some of the details for me.'

Father Taylor laughed. ‘
Flesh
out some of the details!' he repeated. ‘Is that really what you said? Don't you think that's a rather macabre use of the word under the circumstances?'

‘Possibly it is,' Woodend agreed. ‘But then I've found this whole investigation a little macabre, because we don't get a great many cases of mutilation in Whitebridge.' He paused for a moment. ‘Would you like to give me a full statement now?'

‘No, I wouldn't. I've said all I intend to say.'

‘Come on, help me out a bit here,' Woodend cajoled.

Father Taylor folded his arms across his chest, and kept his mouth tightly closed.

‘Then how about this as an alternative suggestion?' Woodend said. ‘I'll tell you everything that I
think
happened, an' if I'm goin' wrong at any point, you'll let me know.'

Father Taylor considered the suggestion for what seemed to Woodend like a long time. ‘You do understand that there are some things I can neither confirm nor deny,' he said finally.

‘Yes.'

‘Then if what you propose will bring about an end to all this in the shortest possible time, please go ahead.'

‘An hour or so before Bradley Pine was murdered, he paid a visit to St Mary's Church,' Woodend said. ‘He knelt down in one of the pews an' prayed for a while, and then he took confession with Father Kenyon. By the time he left the church, you'd already gone yourself.'

‘That is correct.'

‘You cycled up over to Thelma Hawtrey's house in Upper Bankside – which is a good two miles from your church. Once you got there, you hid your bicycle, and waited in the bushes for Pine to arrive. Is that right?'

‘Yes.'

‘What did you use as your murder weapon?'

‘A large spanner.'

‘Where did you get it from?'

‘The church boiler room.'

‘
When
did you get it?'

‘Just before I cycled to that woman's house.'

‘So, if you took it with you, you must already have been planning to kill Pine when you left the church?'

‘Yes.'

‘How did you know where to lie in wait for him?'

‘I'm not sure I understand the question.'

‘Yes, you do. Bradley Pine could have gone off in any direction once he'd left the church – so what made you so certain that he would be going to see Thelma Hawtrey?'

‘That is one of the things that I cannot say.'

‘Ah, I see! You knew where he'd probably be going because you learned of his affair with Thelma in the confessional. Was it Thelma herself who told you? Or was it Jeremy Tully?'

Father Taylor said nothing.

‘You killed him in the driveway of Thelma's house, then you put your bicycle in the boot of his car. You might have been planning to put his body in there as well – I don't know about that – but anyway, there was no room. So you squeezed the corpse on to the back seat, instead.' Woodend paused to take a drag on his cigarette. ‘What happened to the bike, by the way?'

‘I threw it into the canal.'

‘Why?'

‘I thought there might be some forensic evidence on it which would link me with the crime.'

‘I see.'

‘And once I'd safely disposed of it, I told Monika that it had been stolen from outside the church, so I'd be covered if there were any questions about it later. Isn't it terrible?'

‘Isn't what terrible?'

‘The way that we use other people – even the people that we love?'

‘We're gettin' off the point,' Woodend said awkwardly. ‘You killed him, and then you put his body in the boot—'

‘And drove out to the lay-by on the dual carriageway,' Father Taylor supplied.

‘And drove out to the exact spot where your home had once stood, Mr Hawtrey,' Woodend corrected him.

‘Taylor,' the other man said firmly. ‘My name is
Taylor
.'

‘But you were born—'

‘When my mother changed her name back to what it had once been, she changed mine and my sister's as well.'

‘Mr Taylor, then,' Woodend agreed.

‘And I would be grateful if you call me
Father
. Whatever I might have done, I was anointed as a priest. The hands were laid upon me, and I will be a priest until the day I die, whether I wish it or not.'

‘All right, Father Taylor it is,' Woodend agreed. ‘When he was making his confessions to you, Jeremy Tully didn't know you were Alec Hawtrey's son, did he, Father Taylor?'

‘Nobody knew, except for Father Kenyon. I went away from here as a boy, and came back as an adult. Besides, when people look at a priest, it is only the cassock they see, not the man inside it. Except for Monika.
She
saw the man.'

‘Why take the body to the lay-by?'

‘I'm truly not sure,' Taylor admitted.

‘But you have your suspicions?'

‘Perhaps, in some strange, unexplainable way, I thought I was doing it for my father.'

‘Because it was Bradley Pine – using Thelma as his instrument – who broke up your family? You did
know
all about that, didn't you, even if your mother didn't? It's another one of those things you learned in the confessional.'

‘I have nothing to say on the matter,' Father Taylor told him.

‘Pine destroyed the father you'd known as a child, and turned him into someone else entirely. So it somehow seemed appropriate to place Pine's body on the spot where that other man – that other father – had lived before the Fall?'

‘Again, my lips are sealed.'

‘You didn't blame Thelma, in any way, for what happened?'

‘Mother said we shouldn't, and Mother was right.'

‘Because Thelma was no more than Pine's creature?'

‘My father must bear a part of the blame,' Father Taylor said, side-stepping the question. ‘And so … and so must I!'

‘You think it was partly
your
fault?'

‘Yes.'

‘Why?'

‘Because I wouldn't listen to him.'

Young Fred is sitting in the garden of the house which has always represented a picture of true happiness in his mother's mind, but is now a reality – because his father has had it built out of love for her.

He is thinking about how confusing life is for most people, and how – even at his age – they seem to want to confide their confusion in him.

Why should that happen, he wonders.

Perhaps it is because he's more of a listener than a talker. Perhaps it is because of something else entirely – something he doesn't even understand, yet feels himself in the grip of.

But whatever the reason, it is beyond doubt that he has the gift of being able to help guide these unhappy people through all the complexities of their earthly existence.

He looks up to see his father standing there. They have never spoken much – it is hard to overcome your own shyness with someone who is also very shy – but Alec plainly wants to speak now.

‘It's a horrible thing,' he says.

‘What is?'

‘Getting old.'

‘You're not old, Father!' Fred tells him.

‘But I'm older than I once was,' Alec says. ‘My body aches in places it never used to. I don't have anything like the same amount of energy I had ten years ago.'

‘Of course, you don't. That's the way that—'

‘There are things I can no longer do – and other things which are starting to slip away. I feel the urge to reach out for some of those things that are still within my grasp – while I still can.'

‘You shouldn't worry yourself about such matters,' Fred says. ‘A gradual decline, as we get closer to our graves, is no more than the human condition as God intended it to be. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.'

His father looks at him strangely, as if seeing him as he really is for the first time. ‘Don't you ever worry about anything, Fred?'

‘Of course I do. Everybody does.'

‘And how do you deal with it?'

‘I go to church, and pray for guidance.'

His father nods. ‘I used to think I was a good Catholic myself,' he says, ‘but I seem so unworthy when I compare my faith to yours.'

‘We're all unworthy,' Fred tells him.

Alec pulls up a chair, and sits down next to him. ‘I want to talk about love,' he says.

‘All right.'

‘Love is a very strange thing. I love your mother with all my heart—'

‘I know you do.'

‘—but I no longer feel the same passion for her that I used to.'

‘As you said yourself, you're getting older.'

‘But the passion's still there within me, Fred, even if your mother can't arouse it! I can feel it whenever I—'

Fred gets to his feet so quickly that the chair he has been sitting on goes flying off behind him.

‘I have to go,' he says, in a complete panic. ‘There are matters I must attend to. Now!'

‘Please, son, I need to explain,' his father says, with an agonized expression filling his face.

But Fred is already striding back to the house.

‘You mustn't blame yourself for that!' Woodend said, horrified.

‘Why mustn't I? If I'd stopped and listened to him, our lives might have turned out quite differently. Through me – through my words and encouragement – he might have found the strength to resist temptation.'

‘You were just a kid at the time!' Woodend protested. ‘You can't possibly be held responsible.'

‘When I first came back to Whitebridge as a priest, I used to dream that one day my father would walk into my church and ask for forgiveness,' Father Taylor said wistfully.

‘Ask forgiveness from whom?' Woodend wondered. ‘From his confessor? Or from his son?'

‘It wouldn't have mattered which of those two he chose to talk to. He would have said he was sorry for what he had done, and I would have said I was sorry for what I had
not
done. But he never came. And then he died, and so I knew he never would. But I still loved him. And I still wanted his forgiveness.'

‘What about Pine? Did you hope he'd confess to you, too?'

‘Yes.'

‘About how he'd used Thelma to get what he wanted? Or about what happened on that mountainside?'

‘Once more, I cannot say.'

‘But if he had chosen to confess to you, do you think he might still have been alive today?'

‘It's a possibility.'

‘What was it that finally drove you to kill him?' Woodend wondered. ‘What was the straw that broke the camel's back? Was it seein' his face in the paper nearly every day – bein' constantly reminded that the man who'd committed so much evil was goin' on from triumph to triumph?'

Father Taylor maintained his silence.

‘An' which of his evils did you most hold against him?' Woodend continued. ‘Was it destroying your parents' marriage? Or was it what he did to your father on the mountain?'

‘I killed him. That is all you need to know.'

‘Given that you smashed in his mouth, an' slit open his stomach, I'm inclined to believe it was the latter.'

‘There is nothing I can do about what you choose to believe.'

‘Bradley Pine didn't kill your father, as I once thought he must have done,' Woodend said, ‘but it's more than possible that he lived on
because of
your father. It must have been very hard for you, seeing him leading a full and happy life, sleeping with the woman who he'd used to break up your parents' marriage – and knowing all the time about the pain and misery he must have caused your father in his dying moments.'

‘Do you still expect me to break the seal of confession? Even now?' Father Taylor asked.

‘No, I don't,' Woodend replied. ‘You've given me ample proof that you'd never do that.' He paused to light up a fresh cigarette. ‘My chief constable, Mr Marlowe, doesn't really see the harm in what Bradley Pine did,' he continued. ‘As far as he's concerned, the man needed food to stay alive, and if that involved cutting the flesh off a dead man's arm and eating it, then that was what he should have done, however repugnant it might sound to other people.'