Death Comes First

by Hilary Bonner

  Joyce was sitting next to Molly by the window in the kitchen, holding her daughter’s hand. She’d taken over from Felicity in trying to comfort the girl. Felicity was at the table with Janet and Mark, who was pale and drawn but trying to hold it all together. Monika continued to busy herself about the place, and Dr Grey was leaning against the worktop, looking as if he wished he were somewhere else.

  Joyce could derive no comfort from their presence. Worse, she no longer knew whether she could trust any of them.

  Janet had signed the note that had accompanied Charlie’s letter. Felicity, she was certain, knew more than she was telling. Even Mark seemed to have inherited, or been well schooled in, the family art of keeping secrets. He had never, in all the time he had been working with Henry, talked to Joyce about what that work involved. The same had been true of all the men in her life: her grandfather, father, husband – even her late brother.

  Joyce had no idea whether any of the secrets that were being kept from her had any bearing on Fred’s disappearance. It could be that all this secretive behaviour was merely an ingrained family habit. But it left her feeling that there was nobody she could turn to. Charlie’s letter had started a ripple effect; she had begun by questioning everything she knew of her father, then moved on to questioning what she knew of Charlie, and now she was wondering whether she even knew her own son. And all the while her youngest son was missing.

  She wished now that she’d done as Charlie told her and taken Fred and Molly away. Now it was too late.

  She wondered if the letter might have sparked something off. Like Vogel, she had a nasty feeling that both Henry and Stephen Hardcastle had seen and read the letter before it passed into her hands. She’d wondered from the beginning why it had taken six months to reach her. Her experience of the meticulous Janet Porter could only ever lead her to believe that the woman didn’t make clerical errors. And it was Janet who did the filing.

  If Henry had seen the letter, once he knew that it had reached Joyce he might fear that Joyce would obey her husband’s instructions.

  But that begged the question: why would her powerful and all-controlling father have allowed her to see the letter in the first place?

  Joyce squeezed Molly’s hand tightly, more tightly than she had realized.

  Molly gave a little yelp. ‘Mum, you’re hurting me!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Joyce slackened her grip, and with her free hand gently touched Molly’s tear-stained cheek.

  Her attention was distracted by the sound of a vehicle pulling to a halt by the front door. Joyce knew that it couldn’t be the police again, or any other outsiders, because the gates would have had to be opened from inside The Firs. Someone in the vehicle obviously had a remote control to operate the gates, which meant it had to be either her father or Stephen Hardcastle.

  Everyone in the kitchen heard the arrival, but nobody moved. They just waited. There followed the sound of the front door opening, then slamming shut.

  Henry Tanner walked into the kitchen first, followed closely by Stephen. At first glance Henry looked his usual self, confident and assertive, but Joyce could see the strain in her father’s eyes. That was both unusual and disconcerting. He was a past master at concealing stress from his family, so for him to betray even the slightest sign of concern brought home the magnitude of the situation they were facing.

  Monika was once again making tea nobody wanted. She stopped and, like everyone else, turned to look at Henry.

  ‘How did you get on?’ Felicity asked, moving towards her husband. ‘What did they want? Why did they take you and Stephen to a police station?’

  Henry reached out and touched her lightly on one shoulder.

  ‘It was fine, my dear. They asked a lot of questions, that’s all. Stephen and I gave them as much assistance as we could. All we can hope is that we helped them in some way. I must admit, I can’t see how we did, but I do know now that there is a huge operation underway to find Fred, and we just have to hope that he is found soon.’

  It was practically a speech. And Henry had somehow turned his visit to Lockleaze police station around, as if he had gone there to ensure that the investigation met with his approval. He’d also managed to sound reassuring. Until you analysed what he had said, and realized it amounted to nothing.

  ‘Oh come on, Dad,’ Joyce remonstrated, standing up and walking towards her father as her mother had done, only her body language indicated anger rather than concern. ‘Why don’t you tell us what the police wanted, why they took you and Stephen in for a formal interview. Go on, tell us. My son is missing. Will you stop playing your bloody stupid games and talk to us for once?’

  Henry didn’t flinch. ‘I really don’t know what you mean, dear,’ he murmured, giving her his kindest, most fatherly smile.

  He glanced towards Janet and Monika, then at Dr Grey. Even if Henry Tanner were suddenly to become forthcoming, he would never say anything of consequence in front of outsiders.

  Joyce wasn’t about to be pushed aside. She could feel the anger tying itself into a nasty knot somewhere in the region of her upper abdomen. Trying not to let it show, she looked her father in the eye. ‘I want you to tell us exactly what the police said to you and exactly what you said to them.’

  ‘Not now, Joyce,’ replied her father, still in a kindly manner but more firmly than before.

  And just as patronizing, in Joyce’s opinion.

  ‘You’ve got enough to worry about, dear. Let Stephen and I deal with the police. It was a routine interview, that’s all. And as I have said, we gave DI Vogel all the help we could.’

  ‘Did you?’ Joyce barked the words at her father.

  Finally realizing that he was not going to subdue his daughter with platitudes, and that she was intent on berating him in public, Henry tried to usher her towards the door.

  ‘Look, darling, why don’t you come into the sitting room with me. We clearly do need to have a proper chat. No need to upset everybody else.’

  Joyce had no desire for a cosy private chat. She wanted to tell her father that she was no longer prepared to tolerate his culture of secrecy. And that she didn’t give a damn if there were people in the kitchen Henry Tanner regarded as outsiders, people to whom, even in these dreadful circumstances, he was desperate to present a united family front.

  But she couldn’t help glancing back at her daughter. Molly’s tear-filled eyes were wide open in disbelief. She now looked confused as well as upset.

  Henry had already turned and begun to walk through the door. Typical, thought Joyce. He expected obedience, or at least compliance, whatever the circumstances. Joyce followed him. That glimpse of her daughter’s face had left her with little choice.

  Once in the sitting room, Henry turned to face his daughter.

  ‘Joyce darling, you must try to keep calm,’ he began. ‘We’re all on the same side here, and you know you can trust me to do everything in my power to get our boy safely back—’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, Dad,’ yelled Joyce.

  Her father physically recoiled. Joyce did not think she had ever used the f-word in his presence, let alone directed it at him.

  ‘Just shut the fuck up,’ she repeated, quietly this time. ‘And listen for once.’

  Her father sat down, with a bit of a bump, on the nearest of the room’s two sofas. It was as if Joyce had pushed him, causing him to lose his balance. Which, in a way, she had done. Verbally, at any rate.

  ‘Right now, I have no idea whether or not I can trust you, Dad,’ she began. ‘My husband sent me a very clear message telling me not to trust you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you—’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Dad,’ interrupted Joyce. ‘If you didn’t know about the letter Charlie left me before you were escorted to the police station, you damned well do now. I am well aware of the reason DI Vogel wanted to speak to you and Stephen at the station. He wanted to question you about Charlie’s letter, didn’t he? He made it pretty clear to me that he belie
ves the content of that letter makes you a suspect.’

  Henry narrowed his eyes. ‘Well, I don’t know about that, darling. But, yes, Mr Vogel did tell me about the letter.’

  ‘Did he show it to you?’

  ‘No,’ replied Henry Tanner truthfully. ‘But he read me bits of it.’

  ‘Did he read you the bit where Charlie warned me off letting the children, particularly Fred, have anything to do with you?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ said Henry. ‘But I have no idea what Charlie might have meant by—’

  ‘What about the bit where he told me to take the children and run? What about that?’

  ‘Take the children and run?’ Henry said, aghast. ‘I have no idea why Charlie should have told you to run, Joyce. Honestly, darling—’

  ‘Don’t you “honestly” me,’ interrupted Joyce, raising her voice again. ‘I doubt you’ve been honest with me in your entire life. “Get Fred away from your father. He won’t be interested in Molly” – that’s what Charlie said. You must know what he meant by that, Dad.’

  ‘I really don’t know, I promise you,’ said Henry, fixing wide-open blue eyes on his daughter’s face.

  Joyce stood silent. Waiting.

  ‘You’re not suggesting . . . s-suggesting that . . . that you think Charlie was implying I might, uh, interfere with Fred,’ he finished lamely.

  Joyce could not hold back a twisted smile.

  ‘Interfere with Fred?’ she repeated, making it a question. ‘What a quaint old-fashioned way of putting things. If you are asking me do I think Charlie was suggesting you’re some sort of filthy paedophile, the truth is I don’t bloody know. I don’t bloody know what to think any more about anything.’

  ‘I can’t believe you can even say such a thing, Joyce,’ Henry spluttered.

  ‘Oh, that’s the tip of the iceberg, Dad, I can assure you.’ She carried on staring him down, arms folded across her chest, defiant. ‘So, am I supposed to believe that you knew nothing of this letter from Charlie until DI Vogel mentioned it, is that what you are saying?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ admitted her father. ‘Stephen told me on Wednesday when you called him over. He said you’d been upset by the letter, and explained how it should have been delivered after Charlie’s death but had been delayed because of a filing mix-up. Stephen was concerned for you, and he thought that I, as your father, should know what had happened to distress you. But he didn’t tell me what was in the letter, obviously, because he didn’t know. Stephen would never have betrayed Charlie’s confidence by reading the letter, and he told me that you had refused to share the letter with him. Which is understandable, given what I now know of the contents, or at least the part that Vogel chose to tell me. But I didn’t know any of it until today, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking, all right,’ said Joyce. ‘Because if you’re lying, the implications are pretty damned obvious. Aren’t they?’

  ‘Are they?’ Her father’s face was expressionless now.

  ‘Oh yes, Dad. Because if you already knew what was in that letter, if you knew that Charlie had urged me to take my children away from you and to disappear, to never come back, if you knew that, and if you believed that I might do it, then you might well have decided to take action to stop me doing so.’

  Henry’s face was a picture of hurt bewilderment.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said.

  ‘I think you do. Come on, tell me: did you take Fred? Have you abducted my son, removed him from this house in the night so that you can keep him under your control, the way you’ve always controlled everybody in this family? Have you taken Fred to stop me taking him away from you? This house is burglar-alarmed. Whoever took Fred must have had a remote control or known the code to disarm the alarm. The alarm was set that night, I’m sure of it, but it didn’t go off. And Fred didn’t make a sound either, so he must have cooperated with whoever came for him in the middle of the night. I think that person was you, Dad. You have the code for the alarm, and Fred would do anything you told him to. Like all the bloody rest of us.

  ‘I think you’re the one who abducted my son.’

  Thirteen

  Vogel was on auto pilot after leaving the Lockleaze super’s office. He made himself pick up a cup of coffee from a vending machine. He made himself breathe deeply. Neither helped.

  Vogel liked Hemmings and knew his senior officer was merely the messenger boy in this instance. He also knew that Hemmings would have been left with no choice but to comply with his instructions from London.

  None of this prevented him from wanting to race back to Kenneth Steele House and slap the man.

  Vogel didn’t like being angry. He considered any police officer who allowed emotion to engulf him to be immediately a lesser officer. In any case, it wouldn’t alter the fact he was no longer free to continue with this investigation in whatever way he felt best. And neither was Hemmings. Most unusually for Vogel he was beginning to wonder why he bothered. Even to question whether he wished to continue to be a police officer.

  He checked his watch. It was coming up to 6 p.m.

  Normally when there was a major investigation on the go, particularly when it involved a child whose life might be in danger, Vogel would stay on duty until he was close to collapse from exhaustion. That was the kind of man he was. Sometimes he even stayed in his office overnight, sleeping on a roll of foam he kept in a cupboard specially for that purpose.

  This was not going to be one of those nights, Vogel decided. No. He wasn’t heading back to Kenneth Steele House to vent his anger on Reg Hemmings. He was going home to see his wife and daughter. He had phoned Mary earlier and warned her to expect him when she saw him. Not that she needed warning; she knew him too well. He only hoped the shock of his early arrival wouldn’t prove too much for her.

  Thinking of his family cheered him as he set off for Temple Meads railway station, from where there were frequent trains to the suburb of Sea Mills. After all, it had stopped raining. And he was going to be home early.

  By the time his train trundled into the little station the rain had begun again. Vogel hunched his shoulders against it as he hurried along the street. He really had no idea why he had yet to grasp that a raincoat, and a heavy-duty one at that, was necessary attire almost every day in his new location. In London, hopping on and off buses and in and out of squad cars, in the middle of a city which itself provided considerable protection from the elements, Vogel had rarely bothered with a coat even in the middle of winter.

  Vogel’s corduroy jacket, one of a small selection which formed his invariable working attire, was about to go the same way as his beloved old Hush Puppies. He very much feared he could smell it. Either that or he had mistakenly wrapped himself in a horse blanket. Even he was beginning to realize that almost all of his four or five corduroy jackets, in varying shades of murky brown and green with one dark grey one for formal occasions, had now reached a state which would soon demand replacement. What seemed to him to be a more or less daily drenching was not helping at all.

  He turned up the collar. Just like earlier in the day, it didn’t help much. He reached the gate to his bungalow, hurried up the brickwork path which cut through the gravelled front garden with a circular rose bed in the middle, unlocked the front door and stepped into the small carpeted hallway.

  Tim, the family dog Vogel regarded as more his than anybody else’s, threw himself at his master. Vogel rubbed the old border collie’s head fondly and called out for his wife and daughter. There was no reply. He knew exactly where they would be.

  He made his way into the kitchen and then headed for the narrow door that led into what had once been the connecting garage, generously large for a small two-bedroomed bungalow. The previous owner had converted the garage into a mini health spa, with a seventeen-foot endless pool and a sauna in one corner.

  And that, although Vogel still couldn’t get his head around it, was the reason he and his little family had uproote
d themselves from their rented flat in a Pimlico mansion block and moved to the West.

  Vogel’s daughter, Rosamund, suffered from cerebral palsy. Although confined to a wheelchair, she could manage to walk a few steps with aids. She had quite good movement in her arms, and reasonable control, although she was liable to knock things over if she reached across a table for the salt and pepper. From the earliest age swimming therapy had helped her a great deal. More than that, she seemed happiest when in the water, and showed considerable aptitude for swimming.

  Rosamund’s mind was entirely unaffected by her condition and she was a bright child, although her speech was slightly hesitant and slurred. Sometimes Vogel wondered if her intelligence made her condition harder for his daughter to bear. He so hoped that it didn’t.

  Rosamund’s great hero was the Welsh swimmer David Roberts, winner of eleven Paralympic gold medals and arguably Britain’s greatest ever Paralympian. Roberts also suffered from cerebral palsy, albeit a milder form of the disorder than Rosamund’s.

  When they had lived in London Mary had taken Rosamund every Monday night to the Pimlico Puffins, a swimming club for people with disabilities. An hour once a week wasn’t nearly enough for her. Mary, and Vogel when his work commitments allowed, had tried to take her swimming at other times. But it wasn’t easy in a busy London pool with power swimmers thundering past, often with no consideration for other pool-users, disabled or otherwise.

  They’d often thought how wonderful it would be to have their own pool where Rosamund could swim as often as she liked, but it had been one of those ‘if we won the lottery’ dreams. It hadn’t seemed possible that a home with a swimming pool would be within their reach on Vogel’s salary, even since his promotion to DI.

  Then Mary had spotted an ad in Somerset Life, which she had picked up at the dentist, for this property in Sea Mills, conveniently adjacent to Bristol city centre. The bungalow was modest enough to fit their budget, even with the extraordinary addition of a small but ultra-modern pool equipped with a system of air jets for Rosamund to swim against. Because it was so small, only just over a metre deep, and well insulated, even the cost of heating the pool was affordable. Much as he hated leaving the rent-controlled apartment in the heart of London, Vogel hadn’t hesitated. Nothing mattered more to him than the happiness of his wife and their only daughter.