Echoes of the Dead (2 page)

And he looked in pain – he looked in
so much
pain.

‘It was good of you to come, Father,' the dying man said with the merest rasp of a voice.

And O'Brien, who wanted to say more – he knew he
should
say more – could only manage to repeat, ‘It's my duty.'

Fred Howerd nodded – though it was hardly a nod at all – as if that was all he had expected.

‘I was in prison for twenty-two years, Father,' he said, with effort.

‘I know.'

‘I'd still have been there now, if I hadn't been dying.'

‘Yes.'

‘You can't imagine what hell I've been through for the last twenty-two years, Father. You can't imagine what the other prisoners did to me.'

And didn't you deserve it? an unwelcome voice at the back of O'Brien's mind screamed. After what you did, could
any
punishment be enough?

But that was the
man
in him talking.

The
priest
in him said, ‘Do you wish to confess your sins, my son?'

‘I do, Father,' the dying man said.

The priest knelt down beside the bed. ‘Let us begin.'

‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,' Fred Howerd said. ‘It has been twenty-two years since my last confession.'

And now, in his final moments, he wants to get it all off his chest, the priest thought. Wants to confess to the terrible things he did to that poor, innocent girl and obtain absolution for his monstrous acts. And I – God help me – will guide him along that path.

‘You start with your worst sin, don't you?' the dying man asked.

‘You do.'

‘Then I confess to having committed a mortal sin.'

‘Go on,' the priest said encouragingly.

‘I lied,' the dying man said. ‘I took an oath before God to tell the truth – and I lied.'

‘Your worst sin first,' the priest said firmly.

‘That's it,' the dying man told him.

‘But Lilly Dawson . . .' the priest gasped.

‘
That's
who I lied about,' Howerd said. ‘I swore under oath that I killed her – but I didn't.'

Am I going mad? the priest wondered. Am I
dreaming
this?

‘You . . . you didn't kill her?' he asked, almost choking.

‘No, Father.'

‘Then why did you . . . ?'

‘They sent two policemen up from London to investigate her murder,' Howerd said. ‘They had to arrest
somebody
– and they chose me.'

‘But if you were innocent, as you claim, then why did you . . . ?'

‘Have you ever been interrogated by the police, Father?' the dying man asked, and there was contempt in his tone, as there had been contempt in his daughter's – and in Mrs Gilligan's.

‘No,' the priest admitted weakly. ‘No, I haven't.'

He saw the harsh realities of life every day, he thought, but his cloth protected him from actually touching them, so that it was as if he were viewing them through a steamed-up window.

I'm a very bad priest, he told himself, for perhaps the fifth or sixth time that morning.

‘If you've never been put through an interrogation, then you've no idea what it's like,' the dying man croaked. ‘After a few hours of it, you'll say anything they want you to – just to make them stop. So when they handed me the confession, I signed it.'

‘But couldn't you have recanted later?' the priest asked.

‘They said that would only make matters worse for me,' Fred Howerd told him. ‘They said I'd be convicted of the murder whatever happened, and if I fought them, they'd see to it that I suffered more once I was inside.'

He coughed, and a drop of blood spattered on to the edge of the clean, white sheet he was gripping.

‘As if it
could
have
been any worse,' he added. ‘As if I
could have
suffered more.'

‘Is there anything you wish to add?' the priest asked, still shaken by what he'd heard.

‘No.'

O'Brien made an effort to compose himself. ‘God the Father of mercies,' he intoned, ‘through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to Himself and . . .'

He heard the door click open behind him, and, turning round, saw Elizabeth Eccles standing there with a tray in her hands.

‘Not yet!' he said.

‘I didn't notice the time, God forgive me,' the woman said, clearly on the verge of hysterics. ‘Father has to have his medicine. He has to have it
now
.'

‘Two minutes!' the priest pleaded. ‘Just give me two minutes.'

‘My medicine,' the dying man moaned. ‘I want my medicine.'

He could cut the Absolution short, O'Brien told himself. At times like these, he was
allowed
to cut it short.

‘I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,' he said, trying, even now, not to rush the sacred words.

The daughter, licking her lips with concentration, was beginning to fill the syringe with morphine. The father, wracked with pain, was watching her with an intensity that was almost frightening.

‘They don't even know I'm still here,' the priest thought, as an all-too-familiar feeling of inadequacy swept over him.

The sick man and his ministering angel – locked together in a world of pain and dying – did not even look up when O'Brien turned and left room. As the priest walked heavily down the stairs, he was aware of the fact that though Howerd had craved spiritual relief, it did not hold a candle to the relief that his daughter was about to deliver to him.

The dark clouds had finally opened, and the rain was lashing down as O'Brien stepped out on to the pavement.

The priest watched as the rainwater rushed down the hill, carrying the filth from the street with it – and found himself wishing all filth was so easy to wash away.

He had not wanted to come to this house of death, he told himself. There had part of him, at least, which had hoped he would arrive too late to give absolution – because there was a part of him which had hoped that Fred Howerd would burn in hell for all eternity.

But Fred Howerd's fate had not been his to decide, and in merely holding on to that hope he had failed – not for the first time – to carry out the task that God had entrusted him with.

‘But I will not fail again,' he promised, as he felt the rain trickling down his neck. ‘I will see that justice is done – here on earth – for Fred Howerd.'

ONE

M
onika Paniatowski had only ever had one bad experience with a priest, but that had been more than enough to make her wary of them as a breed, and the moment she saw Father O'Brien sitting in the ‘cosy' corner of George Baxter's office, her stomach lurched.

Priests had no business visiting chief constables, she told herself, in an attempt to rationalize what was beyond rationalization.

Priests and chief constables inhabited different worlds – worlds which rarely touched.

But they must be touching now, mustn't they, Monika? asked a mocking voice somewhere in the back of her mind. The very fact that this priest is here at all must mean they're bloody near colliding!

Baxter stood up – he was always a gentleman, even in the presence of his minions – and said, ‘Ah, Chief Inspector Paniatowski! Would you care to join us?'

No, Paniatowski thought, I wouldn't.

But she crossed the room, and sat down in the armchair opposite her boss, anyway.

Baxter ran his hand through his shock of sandy hair – something he always did when he was nervous.

‘This is Father O'Brien,' he said. He turned his attention back to the priest. ‘Tell the chief inspector what you told me, Father.'

‘May I smoke?' O'Brien asked.

Baxter glanced involuntarily down at the almost over-spilling ashtray in front of the priest, smiled, and said, ‘Of course, Father.'

As the priest lit up, Paniatowski took the opportunity to study him. He was around forty-five, she guessed. His black clerical shirt was stained grey with the ash of innumerable cigarettes, and though he had shaved that morning, he had done so either hurriedly or distractedly.

He was a man who would always try to do the right thing in every situation, she decided, but he was not a strong man – a confident man – and if other priests were available, she suspected his parishioners would much prefer to take their problems to them.

The priest cleared his throat. ‘Yesterday, I administered the last rites to a man called Frederick Howerd,' he said.

He paused, as if expecting Paniatowski to react in some way.

‘The case was before our time, Monika,' George Baxter explained. ‘Howerd served twenty-two years for the rape and murder of a young girl. He was only finally released because he was dying.'

Paniatowski nodded, as if she understood – though she didn't.

‘Just before he died, he told me that he was not guilty of the crime,' O'Brien said portentously.

Paniatowski shrugged uneasily. ‘That's not at all unusual,' she said. ‘I've known men who killed their victims in front of half a dozen witnesses, but who still refused – right to the end – to admit that they did it.'

‘When you say “right to the end”, you mean right to the end of their
trials
, don't you?' the priest asked.

‘Yes,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘But not to the end of their
lives
,' the priest said, with emphasis. ‘Are you a member of the Faith, Chief Inspector?'

‘I don't see what that has to do with
anything
,' Paniatowski replied, suddenly defensive.

‘Frederick Howerd knew he was dying,' the priest said slowly. ‘There can be absolutely no doubt about it.'

Paniatowski shrugged again. ‘I'll accept that,' she conceded.

‘And he knew more,' the priest continued. ‘He knew that if he died in a state of mortal sin, he would burn in the everlasting pit forever. That is why you can be certain that what he told me was the truth.'

Paniatowski felt a tingling which Charlie Woodend – her mentor, the man she most admired in the whole world – would have called a ‘gut feeling'. She was treading on dangerous ground, she warned herself, and though she had no idea why that ground
should
be dangerous, it would be best to get clear of it as soon as possible.

‘Surely, whatever he told you under the seal of confession should be absolutely confidential,' she said.

‘So you
are
a believer,' the priest countered.

Paniatowski shook her head.

But sometimes she was! Sometimes, despite herself, she
was
.

‘I have struggled long and hard with the knowledge I have been entrusted with,' the priest told her. ‘And I have finally decided that since what Fred Howerd confessed to me was that he had
not
committed a sin, I am not bound by the seal.'

Paniatowski's already queasy stomach did another somersault. This was going to be bad – she just knew it was.

‘Even if he was innocent, there'll be no proof of that – not after twenty-two years,' she said, realizing how desperate she sounded – and wondering
why
she sounded so desperate. ‘And if mistakes were made, there's nothing you can do about it now.'

‘No
mistake
was made,' the priest said heavily. ‘It was all very deliberate. Fred Howerd was “fitted up”.'

The last two words fell uncomfortably from his lips.

As if they were not natural to him.

As if he had made a conscious effort to speak to the police in their own language.

‘It's
twenty-two years
,' Paniatowski repeated. ‘The officers responsible are probably dead by now. And the same will be true of the real murderer, for God's sake! That is, if it really
wasn't
Howerd who did it.'

‘Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,' the priest said sternly.

‘I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you,' Paniatowski said contritely.

‘It is not I you have offended,' O'Brien told her.

Paniatowski turned to Baxter – looking for support, waiting for him to tell the troublesome priest that he was on a hiding to nothing.

The chief constable gazed back at her, with eyes that were filled with pain.

And the pain was for
her
, she suddenly realized – for his ex-lover who he'd never quite been able to bring himself to stop caring for just a little.

‘What . . . what do you want?' she asked the priest, stuttering over her words. ‘Are you asking for compensation for Howerd's family?'

‘I want justice for a man who has been sorely wronged,' the priest intoned. ‘I want the officers who framed him to be punished for their crime.'

‘You're asking for the impossible,' Paniatowski said harshly. ‘Good God . . .' and this time she used the phrase with baiting deliberation, ‘do you even know their names or where they are now?'

‘Yes,' the priest said. ‘I do. The sergeant involved still works at Scotland Yard. His name is Bannerman.' He paused for a moment. ‘And the chief inspector – the one who was in charge of the investigation and who must therefore shoulder most of the blame – is retired and lives in Spain.'

Now, finally, Paniatowski understood why her gut had been playing her up from the second she walked into the room. Now, finally, she could read the look of pain in George Baxter's eyes. Now, finally, it was all brutally – horrifically – clear.