Echoes of the Dead

by Sally Spencer

  ONE

  Monika 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.

  ‘You’re . . . you’re talking about Charlie Woodend,’ she gasped.

  ‘Yes,’ the priest agreed. ‘That is the man’s name.’

  From time to time – and this was one of those times – DI Colin Beresford caught himself wondering if he was in love with DCI Monika Paniatowski. It was not a comfortable thought to have bouncing around in his head, because not only was Monika his boss, she was also several years older than him, and – if that was not enough – she was still in love with a dead man. And, besides, he usually concluded angrily at end of this train of thought, what did he – a thirty-two year old virgin – actually know about love anyway?

  ‘Are you still with me, Colin?’ he heard Paniatowski’s voice say to him across the table in the public bar of the Drum and Monkey.

  ‘Yes, boss. Sorry, boss,’ Beresford replied.

  But he was thinking that the problem was that when Monika looked as vulnerable as she did at that moment, it was hard not to love her.

  ‘The whole idea that Charlie Woodend would ever even think
of fitting anybody up is insane, isn’t it?’ Paniatowski asked passionately.

  ‘It doesn’t seem likely,’ Beresford said.

  Paniatowski gave him a hard stare. ‘Well, that’s scarcely what I’d call a ringing endorsement,’ she said. ‘For God’s sake, Colin, you worked with the man. You knew him as well as anybody.’

  ‘The Charlie Woodend I knew was a giant,’ Beresford admitted. ‘A legend! He was the kind of detective I aspired to be – even though I always accepted that I’d never quite make it.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then!’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘But that wasn’t the same Charlie Woodend who arrested Fred Howerd in 1951,’ Beresford cautioned.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Paniatowski told him.

  ‘That Charlie Woodend had only just been made up to chief inspector. That Charlie Woodend still had to prove himself.’

  ‘Are you saying that he could have doctored the evidence?’ Paniatowski demanded angrily.

  ‘Not deliberately, no,’ Beresford replied. ‘But in his eagerness to get a result, he might have unconsciously decided to overlook any evidence which didn’t help his case.’

  ‘He’d never have done that,’ Paniatowski said stubbornly. ‘And the investigation will prove that he didn’t.’

  ‘The investigation?’ Beresford repeated, alarmed. ‘You never said anything about an investigation.’

  ‘George Baxter says there has to be one,’ Paniatowski stated flatly. ‘He thinks that if we don’t have an investigation, Father O’Brien will take his story to the newspapers – and they’ll have a field day with it.’

  ‘Criminal Complaints will never agree to reopen the case,’ Beresford said. ‘There’s simply not enough evidence to justify a fresh inquiry.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘There’s not enough evidence for an official inquiry – that’s why it will have to be an unofficial one.’

  ‘And who’ll be leading it?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘You?’ Beresford exploded. ‘He wants you to lead it?’

  ‘As our dear chief constable was at pains to point out, I’ve got a lot of leave due to me, and it’s about time I took some of it.’

  ‘Is he ordering you to lead it?’

  ‘No, he’s merely offered it to me if I want it.’

  ‘Turn it down, Monika,’ Beresford pleaded.

  ‘Now why should I do that?’ Paniatowski asked, with deceptive mildness.

  ‘Because you’re too close to it – too close to Charlie Woodend.’

  ‘It’s because I’m close to Charlie that George Baxter wants me involved,’ Paniatowski explained. ‘He says I know how Charlie would have thought and how he would have acted.’

  ‘And what happens if you uncover evidence that shows Woodend in a bad light?’ Beresford asked. ‘What will you do then?’

  ‘I won’t find any – because there’ll be none to find.’

  ‘But suppose you do?’ Beresford persisted. ‘How do you handle it? Do you put it in your report, and bring down the man who’s been a guiding light to you? Or do you go against everything you’ve ever believed in and bury it?’

  ‘There’s one very compelling reason I have to be involved,’ said Paniatowski, sidestepping the question, ‘and that’s that it won’t be a purely local inquiry.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Scotland Yard will be sending its own man – a DCI – to be in joint command.’

  ‘Then that’s your let-out, isn’t it?’ said Beresford, sounding relieved. ‘You can step aside and let him do all the dirty work.’

  ‘It’s dirty work that I’m worried about,’ Paniatowski told him.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The officer who worked with Charlie on the case – Sergeant Bannerman – is now Assistant Commissioner Bannerman.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So that means he’s got the power and the influence to see to it that if this inquiry drags anybody down, it won’t be him.’

  ‘If that is Bannerman’s aim, and you get in the way of it, he’ll crush you,’ Beresford said worriedly.

  ‘That’s a possibility,’ Paniatowski admitted.

  ‘So you’ll be ruined and you still won’t save Charlie Woodend,’ Beresford said hotly. ‘Bloody hell, Monika, that’s no more than pointless heroics!’

  ‘My father was in the Polish Cavalry at the start of World War Two,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘I know that, but . . .’

  ‘His regiment charged German tanks – on horseback. It must have known it would be cut to pieces.’

  ‘Doesn’t that prove my point?’

  ‘My father knew he was going to die, but he went through with it anyway – because he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he hadn’t.’

  ‘That was war,’ Beresford said.

  ‘And so is this,’ Paniatowski countered. ‘If I’m right, then the whole of Scotland Yard is behind Bannerman. And who’s behind Charlie? Me! I can’t let him down, Colin.’

  Beresford sighed. ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘I don’t suppose you can.’

  TWO

  Whitebridge Central railway station – like the rest of the town – had seen better days, and the mirror in the ladies’ lavatory was a perfect reflection of this fact. Much of the silvering at its centre had been worn away with time, leaving dull brown patches in its place, and any traveller who wished to examine her whole face could only do so by first looking at one half and then moving sideways so that other half became visible.

  Monika Paniatowski, standing in front of the mirror, performed the crablike manoeuvre necessary to reveal the left side of her features.

  Her hair was as blond as it had always been, she decided. Her Polish nose – unfashionably large for some Lancastrians’ tastes, but appealing enough to others for her not to worry about it – had lost none of its firmness over the years. There were perhaps more lines around her blue eyes than there had been a few years earlier, but that only served to give her more character.

  ‘You’re not here to admire yourself, Monika,’ she reminded herself angrily.

  What she was there for was to prepare the face that would greet DCI Hall, the hotshot from London, who would be arriving on the next train – and as far as that face went, it was more important to look competent than pretty.

  She had to set the right tone from the start, she thought – had to establish that though he came from almighty Scotland Yard, this was her patch, and they would work according to her rules. Because if she didn’t establish that, she suspected, Charlie Woodend’s precious reputation – and perhaps his pension – would be doomed.

  She was starting at a disadvantage, she accepted, because, unlike Hall, she had yet to see the Scotland Yard file on the case. But she had done all that she could locally, and – by trawling through the newspapers and talking to colleagues who had been around at the time – she now had a pretty fair idea of how the investigation into Lilly Dawson’s murder had gone.

  It is on a mild Saturday afternoon in the early spring of 1951 that Lilly Dawson goes missing. She has spent the morning working at her aunt’s fish stall on Whitebridge covered market, and, when the market closes at one o’clock, she sets off for home, where she has been told that her favourite meal – Lancashire hotpot – will be warming on the stove for her.

  At two o’clock, when Lilly still hasn’t arrived, her mother starts to be vaguely concerned. At two thirty, as her apprehension grows, Mrs Dawson puts on her coat and goes down to the Market Tavern, where she knows she will find her sister – Big Gertie Hardy, forearms of a man and a drinking capacity to match – already imbibing her third or fourth pint of Thwaites’ Best Bitter.

  ‘It’s not like our Lilly to be late, especially on a hotpot day,’ Mrs Dawson tells her sister.

  ‘Why don’t you cut the lass a bit of slack, our Elsie?’ Gertie Hardy asks indulgently. ‘She’s been workin’ her arse off for me
all mornin’. Why shouldn’t she spend a bit of time with her mates?’

  ‘She doesn’t really have any mates,’ Elsie Dawson says dubiously.

  Gertie chuckles. ‘None that you know about, any road,’ she replies, ‘but it wouldn’t surprise me if she was steppin’ out with some lad on the sly.’

  ‘She’s thirteen!’ Elsie protests.

  ‘Aye, she is,’ Gertie agrees. ‘An’ do you remember when you were thirteen, lass?’ She takes off the flat cap she is wearing and scratches her head for comical effect. ‘Now what was the name of the lad that you were knockin’ about with?’

  ‘Jackie Taylor,’ Elsie confesses, flushing slightly. ‘But that were innocent enough.’

  ‘It may well have been – but you still didn’t have the nerve to tell our dad about him,’ Gertie points out.

  ‘Lilly was late home from school yesterday, as well,’ Elsie frets.

  ‘Well, there you are then, it’s almost bound to be some lad,’ Gertie counters, as if she had just won her argument for her.

  By six o’clock, Elsie Dawson has grown frantic, because even if Lilly has been out with a lad – and Elsie still doesn’t believe she has – she would have been home by now.

  The duty sergeant at the local police station is kindly and understanding – but not very helpful.

  ‘It’s just the sort of thing that kids do, Mrs Dawson,’ he says. ‘An’ I should know, because I’ve got three young buggers of me own.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘You just get yourself off back home, an’ I’ll guarantee you that within a couple of hours she’ll turn up at the front door with an excuse that has such big holes in it, you could drive a double-decker bus through it.’

  But Lilly does not turn up that evening – and by the following morning, even the bobbies are starting to show concern.

  By Sunday afternoon, it has gone beyond mere concern. Local volunteers – many of whom know Lilly personally – join forces with the Whitebridge policemen and other officers drafted in from neighbouring divisions, and together they start searching all the likely places.