Death Comes First

by Hilary Bonner

  Charlie looked at his feet. Clad in the kind of cheap army boots you can buy on the net. Boots no real soldier would ever consider going for a yomp in.

  At least he seemed to realize he would not be able to persuade Joyce to listen to his story as long as their children were in earshot. He remained silent.

  Fred looked at Molly.

  ‘Come on, you,’ said Molly. ‘Let’s do what Mum says. You know she means it.’

  Joyce did mean it too. Her children had picked up on that straight away, and so it seemed had her husband. Even if he had avoided her question about whether or not she and the children would be free to leave.

  Charlie said nothing but stepped towards the Range Rover and climbed in behind the wheel. Joyce watched Molly and Fred disappear into the tent and zip up the flap, then she climbed into the passenger seat beside her husband.

  Twenty

  Henry Tanner was beginning to come round from the dose of morphine the nurse had administered a few hours earlier. He was still in extreme discomfort, but he could cope with that. And he knew that he always healed well. Age had yet to change that.

  It was the awful stress of what was happening to his family that was so hard for him to cope with.

  Felicity had told him about Joyce and Molly. Indeed, she had been sitting at his bedside when she’d called Vogel. But Henry had been semi-conscious at the time, and had barely taken it in. He had a vague recollection that she’d asked if he knew where they might have gone. Henry had no idea whatsoever, and for once in his life he didn’t know what to do or say.

  The suspicion that had been lurking in the back of his mind ever since Fred had gone missing no longer seemed fanciful. Ever since he could remember, he’d lived with the possibility that he might one day be a target. His dealings with Mr Smith and others of that ilk had made it a real possibility.

  But the threat had never materialized, until now. Or had it? Henry thought back to the death of his only son, mown down by a hit-and-run driver. Apparently an accident, though Henry had always had his doubts about that, doubts he had kept from his family and most particularly from Joyce. Mr Smith had assured him that an extensive investigation at the highest level had concluded William’s death had been a tragic accident. And Henry had chosen to accept that. And to ensure that his entire family did likewise.

  This time, Henry didn’t know what to think. His instincts told him that the crisis engulfing his family was unrelated to the work he had undertaken for Mr Smith. No, it was down to Charlie. Charlie’s bloody nervous breakdown, or whatever it was that had led him to go so spectacularly off the rails. Charlie’s meddling in matters that were way out of his league. Charlie had brought Armageddon upon the family. And Henry wasn’t sure that even Mr Smith could save them now.

  He was so desperate, he’d been prepared to tell DCI Clarke the whole story. But something was still holding him back. It went against every fibre of Henry’s being to reveal the rot which had taken hold of all that he held dear. He had thought that, with the help of Mr Smith, he would be able to put everything right, he would be able to get Fred back, to restore normality. He and he alone. Like always. But this was not proving to be so. Instead, one catastrophic event seemed to be following another.

  For the first time ever Henry Tanner wished he were someone else. He wished his life’s work had been something else. The morphine had worn off to the point that his brain was once more fully functional, but he was torn between wishing he could think with even more clarity, and wishing he could slump into semi-consciousness again.

  He cursed Charlie. And he cursed his father and his father’s partner for luring him into a world which, one way or another, was now threatening to destroy him.

  Being Henry, he did not consider that the real reason they had landed in this terrible and dangerous mess was because he, like his father before him, had inveigled other members of his family to join him in the precarious world he had inhabited for so long.

  A world that he feared was about to crash irrevocably.

  Nobby Clarke commandeered an unmarked CID car to take her and Vogel to Southmead. And she elected to drive it herself.

  Vogel assumed she did not want another pair of ears listening in on the information she was finally going to share with him. Or at least that he hoped she was going to share with him.

  She started the car, activated the sat-nav, and began to accelerate away before Vogel had got himself fully into the passenger seat. He had no idea whether or not she’d ever undertaken one of those police advanced driving courses everybody else seemed to be so damned proud of, but he did know the woman did everything at speed.

  He sat silently alongside the DCI, waiting for her to speak. After ten minutes of this, Vogel reckoned he’d waited long enough.

  ‘C’mon then, boss,’ he said. ‘Are you going to tell me what is going on or are you going to leave me floundering around in the dark like a . . . like a blind duck.’

  ‘Interesting analogy,’ said Clarke, with a tight smile.

  Traffic lights at a major road junction changed as they approached. Clarke put her foot down, and swung the CID car past the three or four vehicles ahead of them which had already halted at the lights. She accelerated hard through the dangerously narrow gap between a bus coming from the left and a truck from the right.

  Vogel shut his eyes. When he opened them again Clarke was glancing sideways at him, the same tight smile lurking on her lips.

  ‘All right, Vogel,’ she said. ‘You win. Henry Tanner is not entirely what he seems.’

  ‘I’m kinda aware of that,’ Vogel snapped.

  ‘As long as you’re prepared,’ said Nobby. ‘Knowing you, you’re not going to like what I’m about tell you.’

  And then, finally, she began.

  Twenty-one

  Meanwhile, in a muddy Range Rover parked in a derelict barn in the heart of Exmoor, Charlie Mildmay, who was supposed to be a dead man, began to tell his wife his version of the same story. But his was not a recital of facts gleaned from government files. His was the story of a family caught up in a world the existence of which most of its members were unaware. And a man driven, partly by his own weakness, to extremes of behaviour beyond his own conception.

  As soon as he and Joyce were settled into the car, sitting side by side in the front seats, Charlie reached out to take Joyce’s hand.

  ‘I don’t know how you’ve got the bloody nerve,’ she snapped, jerking her hand away.

  ‘Look, I’m ready to explain.’

  Joyce thought Charlie’s voice was unpleasantly wheedling.

  ‘I can explain, you know.’

  Joyce said nothing. She was still in shock. But she reminded herself that at least her two younger children were now with her. Fred had been found. He was not only unharmed but seemed, at first glance, to be remarkably unaffected by his experience. But then, he had been with his father. The father he idolized. Joyce wondered what story Charlie had told Fred. And she wondered what on earth Charlie was going to tell her. Would it be the same story?

  ‘You remember your Uncle Max?’ Charlie began. ‘It all started with him. You know all about how he saved your granddad’s life during the war, the bond it created between them, and how they always kept in touch after that?’

  He seemed to be waiting for a response. Joyce nodded wearily. She had heard that story often enough.

  ‘Well, Max had been sent to the UK in 1939 from Germany, where his entire family lived. He got out aboard one of the kinder trains. In 1941, right after his sixteenth birthday, he lied about his age, said he was seventeen, and joined the Royal Artillery. The military weren’t too fussy about checking out ages by then – they were too desperate for manpower. Most of Max’s family, including his parents, his elder sister and her husband, and a baby brother whom he never saw, died in the camps. But some of his cousins survived, and after the war they became involved in the struggle to build Israel.

  ‘As soon as the state was established in 1948, Max trav
elled to Israel to offer his services, but he was told that he could be of more use back in the UK. The newly formed Israeli government needed him to be a kind of international broker for them. There were contacts in government in Britain and America who would help. Pro Israeli contacts. And Max was put in touch with them.

  ‘Max approached your granddad with a proposal to form a specialist import-and-export agency, one of the first in the UK. He needed a partner, someone intrinsically English. Your grandfather was working in Covent Garden market at the time, as a porter. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life humping crates of fruit and veg around—’

  ‘How about you tell me something I don’t know!’ Joyce interrupted. ‘This is my family history, remember. I’ve heard all about how Granddad and Uncle Max set up their company and called it Tanner-Max because Tanner-Schmidt would have sounded too Germanic and too Jewish. And they relocated from London to Bristol because it was a thriving port in those days, with a couple of airports within easy reach, making it perfect for their purposes. I know all that. What I want to know—’

  ‘What you don’t know is that the import and export activities of Tanner-Max International, although lucrative, were from the beginning merely a cover for what both men regarded as their real work.’

  ‘Which was?’ Joyce barked. If he didn’t get to the point soon she thought she would hit him.

  ‘Their real work was to broker arms to Israel,’ Charlie continued. ‘They started doing this when the Israeli state was still in its infancy. In 1957 they arranged for twenty tons of heavy water to be transported from Britain to Israel. It was picked up from a British port – no prizes for guessing which one, although that isn’t a matter of record. Officially the stuff was sold to a Norwegian company called Noratum. But Noratum was a front. The company took commission on the transaction and made sure the paperwork looked in order, but the heavy water was shipped directly to Israel. And your granddad and your Uncle Max were the men who made it happen.’

  Joyce was totally bewildered.

  ‘Charlie, I don’t even know what heavy water is,’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ Charlie turned to face her. ‘Heavy water is a key substance in the development and manufacture of nuclear weapons. Without it, no atom bomb can be produced. Tanner-Max went on to facilitate dozens of secret shipments of restricted materials to Israel throughout the fifties and sixties, including specialist chemicals like uranium. Thanks to your granddad and Uncle Max, Israel was able to embark on a full-scale nuclear weapons programme. This has grown from strength to strength over the years. It is believed Israel currently has more than a hundred atom bombs at its disposal. Even though that is not officially admitted.

  ‘Your granddad and your Uncle Max were masters of subterfuge. They knew how to put up a smokescreen and keep it there. I don’t think that will surprise you, given the way your father is. Henry is his father’s son, through and through. And I was Henry’s protégé. He needed someone to take your brother’s place. No one could, of course, but Henry regarded me as the next best thing, or the best he could come up with. Because of you. Or he used to, anyway. Now it’s Mark.’

  Charlie sounded bitter. Joyce said nothing. She was lost for words.

  ‘Anyway, the British government has continued to use Tanner-Max on a regular basis when they need defence materials moved around,’ Charlie continued. ‘And not only the British government but other governments too. Tanner-Max are involved in putting armaments into what the UK and its allies consider to be the right hands across the world. Afghanistan. The Gulf. Syria. The current hotspot is Ukraine, obviously.

  ‘The business keeps coming our way because your father knows better than anyone, certainly anyone in the UK, how to move sensitive material around the world without it becoming known where it originated or where it’s ultimately going to. By the time it reaches its destination the place of origin can no longer be traced.’

  Joyce stared at him, speechless.

  ‘Well, he knows more than anyone except me, that is,’ Charlie muttered.

  ‘You?’ Joyce found her voice. ‘You have been involved in the arms business all these years, surreptitiously sending defence materials to war zones? You of all people?’

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘So, those lunches and boys’ days out with my father when you were at Exeter, was that when it all began?’ Joyce continued. ‘Were you so seduced by the glamour of it that you changed from the committed communist I knew, the wild young man of principals, into, into . . . my father’s poodle? Or was it the money? Were the pickings Dad offered rich enough to corrupt you?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ protested Charlie.

  ‘So it wasn’t the money, is that what you’re telling me? The glamour, then? Excitement? Did you fancy yourself as some sort of James Bond?’

  Charlie shook his head.

  ‘It wasn’t the money. Certainly not at first. Though that did come later, I suppose. And no, I didn’t see myself as a James Bond figure. As for my communist leanings, that was nostalgia more than anything. The Karl Marx dream was already dead, and far more people were suffering because of communism than benefiting from it. Your father said I was old-fashioned and out of touch. If I wanted to change the world then I should consider entering his world. He didn’t say so straight away, not in so many words. But that was what it amounted to. And he was so persuasive.

  ‘He told me stuff back then that nearly blew my mind. Tanner-Max had been involved in almost all the anti-communist uprisings: Poland . . . Hungary . . . Those were popular uprisings, he said. He told me that his father and your Uncle Max had been every bit as idealistic as I was, and they had gained the power to change things. He swore they only ever became involved in arms deals for causes they thought were just.

  ‘I was bowled over, Joyce. And I believed your father absolutely. You know how plausible he is. It was a long time before I realized he had only one motive . . .’

  Charlie paused for dramatic effect.

  ‘Money,’ he said, spitting out the word. ‘Money. That’s all your bloody father has believed in for a long time. Probably all he has ever believed in. Your grandfather may have been different. Your Uncle Max almost certainly was. He had real ideals. And a cause: Israel. But your father? Nothing but a mercenary.’

  ‘Yet you carried on working with him, and not once did you voice any doubts or fears, not a word of any of this to me,’ said Joyce. ‘To your poor bloody ignorant wife.’

  She spoke quietly, thinking aloud.

  ‘I was sucked in.’ Charlie sounded desperate for her to accept his version of events. ‘Please, try to understand,’ he pleaded. ‘You’re his daughter. Once we had the house, and then the children came, what else could I do? Plus I knew everything. I knew it all by then. Henry wouldn’t have let me go, even if I’d tried . . .’

  ‘What do you think he would have done, for God’s sake, taken out a contract on you? Had you shot?’

  As she spoke, the grim reality of that day, the memory of the hospital visit she and her daughter had been about to make when they’d received Fred’s message, hit her. So much else had happened, she’d half forgotten. Crazy as it sounded, maybe there was some truth in what Charlie was saying.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I thought that was exactly what was going on,’ she heard Charlie say.

  His voice was so strained. For a moment she wanted to reach out to him. Then she remembered what he had done.

  She put her head in her hands. ‘Charlie, you don’t know, do you?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Dad has been shot. He’s going to be all right. But he’s in hospital.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Charlie.

  The remaining colour left his face. He didn’t ask any more questions. She had a nasty feeling he already had the answers.

  ‘Charlie, what changed for you?’ Joyce asked. ‘What made you decide you couldn’t take it any more? Tell me honestly, what made you stage your own death? What happened? What changed
? And why that? Why do that?’

  ‘Well, I became more and more disillusioned, and more and more afraid for our children.’ Charlie gulped in a big breath of air, then continued: ‘I found out Henry was dealing in chemical weapons. Or at least, we were shipping out the chemicals used for making those weapons. To Iran, and worst of all to Syria. It’s more than likely our chemicals have been used in the barrel bombs Assad has been using. Chlorine to make chlorine gas. It’s reckoned twenty thousand Syrians may have died from attacks with chemical-laden barrel bombs since the conflict began there in 2011. That was too much for me to take in.

  ‘Chemical warfare is banned by international law, so I threatened to go to the authorities. But ultimately I let Henry talk me round. Like always. You see, Henry Tanner reckons he is above the law. And maybe he is.’

  Joyce was horrified. ‘I don’t believe my father would do that. I don’t believe he would be involved in something so terrible. In any case, why? How?’

  ‘I’ve told you why,’ snapped Charlie. ‘Money. And power. As for how, well, the Tanner-Max set-up is geared to transport illicit material around the world, and the pathways are smoothed by those in high places who pull Henry’s strings.’

  ‘Who are these people?’

  Charlie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Only Henry had direct contact. Secret Services, the Foreign Office? Bit of both, probably.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Joyce. ‘I can’t believe it. It’s all too far-fetched.’

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ said Charlie. ‘Believe what you like. But that’s the business your father has been in for all of his working life, and me too. I couldn’t stand it any longer. And I couldn’t bear to watch Mark being sucked in. My life – and you might well be right, my entire bloody sanity – has been blighted by the sheer crazy awfulness of what our company, our own family company, does. What it is. I can’t believe I allowed myself to get involved in the first place. If it hadn’t been for how much I loved you, well . . .’