Sins of the Fathers by Patricia Hall

parked on the muddy verge behind the police and emergency vehicles, and as they got closer two men got out, one carrying the paraphernalia of a photographer.
    ‘Morning, Mr Thackeray,’ the other said cheerily. ‘Have you found anything significant up there?’ Thackeray looked at the tall man in padded jacket and wellingtons and, although he looked familiar, he did not immediately put a name to the good-looking, tanned face beneath the floppy fair hair.
    ‘Vince Newsom, the Globe ,’ the not-quite-stranger said, holding out a hand which Thackeray ignored. ‘You remember me? I’m up here to do something on this Christie family murder.’ He glanced up the hillside down which Thackeray and Mower had just slid and up which a couple of ambulancemen in bright green waterproofs were beginning to climb.
    ‘Have you found Christie then?’ Vince persisted. Thackeray turned away, his expression frozen, and left it to Mower to deal with Newsom.
    ‘If you get in touch with the Press office at county HQ, there’ll be a statement later,’ the sergeant said briefly. The photographer had by now attached his telephoto lens and was snapping the huddle of police officers who remained partly hidden by the drystone wall half a mile up on the side of the hill.
    ‘There’s nothing for you here,’ Mower said angrily, and turned to the car, while Newsom and the photographer shrugged and began climbing up the steep slope themselves.
    ‘Bloody ghouls,’ Mower said as he struggled into the driving seat and eased the zip on his padded jacket a fraction before trying to wipe some of the mud off his loafers with a paper tissue. He glanced at his boss and wondered why he was gazing out of the car window so fixedly.
    ‘I don’t envy the farmer working up there in thisweather, either,’ he said. ‘Bloody nightmare.’
    ‘It’s a dying way of life,’ Thackeray said, noncommittally .
    ‘So what now, guv?’ Mower asked as he started the engine and swung the car onto the narrow road, which wound a tortuous course from Staveley to the villages on the west-facing, Lancashire slopes of the Pennines.
    ‘It looks as if we’re back where we started,’ Thackeray said. ‘Just one body worse off. A family dead, a father missing.’ He lapsed into silence as the scene at the Christie’s house leapt in all its bloody detail into his mind’s eye again, as it had been doing ever since he had first walked blindly away from it on the first day of this case. Mower took one glance at the frozen expression in Thackeray’s eyes and said no more, concentrating on negotiating the sharp bends as the road dropped precipitately from the high moors back into Staveley village. As they slowed at the first of the stone cottages, Thackeray put a hand on Mower’s arm.
    ‘Stop at the pub,’ he said.
    ‘Any special reason?’ Mower asked, with a crooked smile. Thackeray’s reasons for stopping at a pub did not include the normal everyday need Mower still felt, and cautiously indulged, for a pint or two of ale.
    ‘I want to talk to the landlord. Something Laura picked up when she was doing interviews in the village yesterday.’ Mower raised a laconic eyebrow at that. It was not often Thackeray acknowledged any exchange of information between himself and his girlfriend, in either direction.
    ‘The possible boyfriend?’ Mower said as he parked the car in the empty car park at the side of the Fox and Hounds. ‘She did pass that on earlier. Maybe I forgot to tell you.’
    It was eleven o’clock and the pub did not look as if it had opened its doors yet. But when the two men tried the main entrance they found it unlocked and inside Gerry Foster, the landlord, was busy behind his bar stacking bottled lagers on his chilled shelves. He looked up at his visitors without enthusiasm or any sign of recognition.
    ‘Mr Foster?’ Thackeray asked, pulling his warrant card from his inside pocket and offering it across the bar. ‘DCI Thackeray. I wonder if we could