Death Comes First

by Hilary Bonner

  ‘Naturally, I did wonder, when Fred disappeared, whether it might be down to Charlie. I didn’t have a phone number or an email address for him – we’d agreed it would be best if there were to be no further contact between us. So all I could do was hope I was wrong. Like everyone else, I hoped that Fred would turn up safe and well and there would be a simple explanation. I never expected any of this to happen, Henry. How could I? Yes, I helped Charlie bugger off. He’d turned into such a pathetic excuse for a man, I thought we’d all be better off. Me, obviously, because you would have to turn to me, rely on me. And that’s exactly what happened. You may have made Mark a partner, but he’s just a kid. I was the only one competent to take Charlie’s place. I thought you’d be better off too. And Joyce. I didn’t know he was going to come back here, murder two of his children and damned near kill Joyce, for God’s sake! How was I to know he’d gone from being a bit unhinged to a full-blown raving bloody lunatic?’

  ‘What about his alleged arms deals with gangsters?’ asked Henry. ‘Charlie told Joyce that I was the one trading with criminals.’

  ‘Well, you know that’s a lie: you did no such thing. But we both know that weapons went missing – we checked the records together. If not Charlie, who else? No doubt it was Charlie’s gangster associates who were behind the shooting. The moment you put a stop to the trade he’d been doing with them, that’s when you became a target.’

  What Stephen was saying made a kind of terrible sense. The more Henry thought about it, the more plausible it sounded. And besides, Stephen Hardcastle was taking a huge risk in confessing all of this to him.

  ‘What if I go to the police, tell them everything you have told me?’ Henry said. ‘What do you think would happen to you then?’

  Stephen shrugged. ‘Not a lot. I’m not sure that I’ve committed any crime worth mentioning. I haven’t even handled the distribution of Charlie’s estate, because he has yet to be officially declared dead. As for helping him stage his own death . . . As a lawyer, I have to say it would be pretty hard to prove.’

  ‘Unless Charlie lives and gives a statement to that effect.’

  ‘He’s a proven liar, an addict and a double murderer. Who’s going to believe a word he says?’ Stephen shrugged again, then leaned towards the bed. ‘Henry, I still want to be at your side, running the company for you, until you are better, until you are on your feet again. And you know I will do it how you would want. I didn’t do anything that I thought would harm you, Henry, and I never would. It was Charlie who did all the damage. Even if Charlie lives, he will go to jail for a long time. Charlie’s gone. Your surviving grandson blames you for what happened to his younger brother and sister; he’s gone too. But I am still here. I am still here for you, Henry.’

  Henry wanted to lash out at him. He didn’t dare. He didn’t dare lose Stephen too. Henry had called Mr Smith again just before the police had returned. As usual he had left a message on an automated answer service. As usual he had waited for the call back, from an encrypted phone, he’d always presumed, which usually came within ten or fifteen minutes. He was still waiting. Mr Smith would know by now all about Charlie, back from the dead, driving his wife and children, and the woman with whom he was having an affair, into the harbour. Henry’s son-in-law had murdered three people and very nearly a fourth. That was going to attract a considerable amount of public and media attention. Mr Smith did not like anything that attracted attention. And Mr Smith would be unlikely to be swayed by the plea that Charlie’s actions had nothing to do with Tanner-Max’s work for HMG. Henry feared he might really be alone now. Without even Mr Smith to turn to.

  Stephen was watching Henry closely. Gauging his every reaction.

  ‘I’m all you’ve got,’ Stephen said.

  Henry knew that. Only too well. Stephen had echoed his own thoughts uncannily. At last Henry spoke. His voice was strained, but his speech was clear and deliberate.

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  And he reached out with his one good hand to grasp Stephen’s.

  The hand of the man who was both his most bitter enemy and the only friend he had left. The man he considered to be his only conceivable saviour.

  Stephen was euphoric when he left Southmead.

  He knew how much Henry must have suffered over the last couple of days. He had seen first-hand how devastated his employer was by the loss of his grandchildren and the destruction of his family. But no matter how distraught, Henry had a brain like a bacon slicer. That was how he had been able to keep all his myriad cards in the air for so long. It was inevitable that he would have turned his powers of deduction to unravelling the role that Stephen Hardcastle might have played in the recent chain of events.

  That chain of events had taken several unexpected turns, so far as Stephen was concerned. He had been genuinely shocked and even at times distressed by what had happened, but that hadn’t stopped him cynically taking advantage.

  After years of coveting Charlie Mildmay’s ludicrously elevated position in Tanner-Max, not to mention his wife, Stephen had exploited his alleged friend’s increasingly fragile mental state to the full. A succession of near accidents had been enough to frighten poor, vulnerable Charlie into believing that he was being targeted. Not that he was ever in any real danger. Stephen wasn’t a violent man. Or he never had been in the past, anyway. He hadn’t set out to do serious harm to Charlie – much as he wanted him out of the way, Stephen wasn’t capable of murdering someone in cold blood. His aim had been merely to unnerve him, to persuade him that it was time to disappear. Of course, being Charlie, he couldn’t just do a runner. He had to go through an elaborate charade, faking his own death. Stephen had been only too happy to help.

  And with Charlie gone, who better to fill the void than Stephen? He had the business acumen, the nous, the guile to be Henry’s second in command at Tanner-Max. Unlike Charlie, who would never have lasted in the company, let alone made partner, had it not been for the fact he was married to Henry’s only daughter. Even so, there had never been any affection or even regard between the two men, whereas Stephen admired everything about Henry Tanner. It hurt him deeply when Henry used him as his personal whipping boy, which he did frequently. Yet in spite of that, Stephen looked upon Henry as the father he’d never had.

  His biological father, a prince of the Mahlangu royal family, had married his mother, Ayanda, when she was only fifteen, though the ceremony would not have been considered legal under international law. She had given birth to Stephen nine months later, after which his father had lost interest in her, even though Ayanda grew into a beautiful young woman. His father had more important things on his mind. Even his first name, Busani, meant ‘rule’. That was what Stephen’s father believed he had been born to do. And Busani Mahlangu saw his destiny as being far more important than either his young wife or his son.

  The Mahlangu were of the Ndebele tribe. As was the legendary Joshua Nkomo, leader and founder of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, ZAPU, which had been banned by the white minority government of his country, then known as Rhodesia. Busani Mahlangu had fought alongside Nkomo through the years of civil war and political struggle which preceded the notorious Robert Mugabe coming to power. In 1982 Mugabe unleashed his infamous fifth army in a genocidal campaign against the Ndebele, slaughtering up to 20,000 civilians. Nkomo fled the country, but Busani would not leave. He did, however, arrange for his wife and son to travel to the UK, where they were taken in by a distant relative.

  Not long after her arrival in London, Ayanda caught the eye of a hedge-fund manager, high on tequila slammers, at the Brick Lane bar where she’d found work clearing tables. Ayanda knew that neither she nor her son had any future in Zimbabwe, or with Busani. She decided to use all her wiles to ensnare her suitor, who was both a high earner and the eldest son of wealthy parents. She wouldn’t let him near her unless he married her. Somewhat to the surprise of all concerned, not least Ayanda, and against the wishes of his family, James Hardcastle eventually did j
ust that. It was he who insisted Stephen should take his surname, and change his first name. In his circles, it simply wouldn’t do to have a stepson called Nyongolo Mahlangu.

  So Stephen Hardcastle was invented and promptly sent away to Eton, where he learned to speak with a public-school accent and to lord it over those who didn’t. He was a survivor. And like his father he’d been born to rule, hadn’t he?

  But then, a couple of years after her second marriage, Ayanda died in childbirth. Stephen rarely saw his stepfather after that, although James Hardcastle continued to provide for him, paying his school fees and making sure arrangements were made for him to be cared for during the holidays.

  Stephen dreamed of creating his own family. But he had never come close to marriage, or even to building a lasting relationship with a woman. Instead he lusted after Joyce, the wife of the man whom he had honestly once considered to be his best friend. Most of all he sought total acceptance from Joyce’s father, the patriarch of the clan. He wanted to be everything to Henry. He wanted Henry to be forced to rely on him alone. And he thought that night at the hospital he may have come close to achieving that.

  As he drove home from Southmead, he even found himself wondering when he might dare make an approach to Joyce again. She had survived it all, thank God. Perhaps she would turn to him, now.

  Stephen had taken a calculated gamble with Henry, but it seemed to have paid off. It had been a risk, admitting to colluding with Charlie in his disappearance, but a flat-out denial would never have washed with Henry. As it turned out, the half-truths he’d told seemed to satisfy the older man.

  Stephen had gambled on two things. The second had been the big one. Stephen had gambled that Henry would accept that he could not survive without Stephen. That he would see Stephen as his only possible saviour, the only one who could steer Henry and Tanner-Max through the troubled times which undoubtedly lay ahead.

  And Henry had fallen for it. Hook, line and sinker.

  Vogel was right. Neither Henry Tanner nor Charlie Mildmay had engaged in arms deals with criminal organizations. That had been an invention of Stephen’s. A double bluff aimed at causing fear and distrust all round. It had been a considerable success too.

  The subterfuge had been helped by the fact that Henry knew little about Stephen’s private life. He may have been vaguely aware of Stephen’s reunion with his natural father and his two elder brothers a few years previously, and of his African holidays. But he had no idea that Busani Mahlangu was now the leader of ZIPA, the Zimbabwe People’s Army, a breakaway arm of Zimbabwe’s official opposition party, the MDC, Movement for Democratic Change. Nor, of course, was Henry aware of Busani’s great pride in the educated son who was occasionally able to deliver to ZIPA, through complex and rather clever lines of supply, a small number of exceptional weapons.

  And Henry would have been utterly astonished to learn that during his African holidays Stephen attended ZIPA training camps, where he was tutored in the use of those weapons by battle-hardened mercenaries.

  Although he had proven to be something of a natural marksman, Stephen had never expected to make use of that training, nor of the Dragunov SVU he had kept for himself, concealed in a box beneath his bed, for reasons he could not quite explain. Just in case, he had told himself. Or maybe, simply because he could.

  And ultimately he had not hesitated to use the Dragunov on Henry Tanner in pursuance of his aims. He’d trusted in his ability as a marksman, confident that he could inflict a non-fatal wound on the man he so revered. It was an act, as Stephen saw it, of damage limitation, made necessary by the fallout from Charlie’s psychotic attempts to reunite his family.

  It did not occur to Stephen that most observers would regard his own behaviour as deranged.

  Stephen was pretty pleased with himself.

  At last, and under the most extraordinary circumstances, Henry Tanner seemed to have realized how much he needed Stephen.

  Indeed, that Stephen was all he had left.

  There remained only one lurking concern: that policeman, Vogel. The one with the intelligent eyes behind thick spectacles. He seemed a cut above the rest, Stephen thought. He was a planner and a thinker. A plotter. And Stephen knew one of those when he saw one.

  He felt sure, as he had indicated to Henry, that it would be impossible to prove a case against him. He had covered his tracks every step of the way.

  But would Vogel see through his carefully contrived smokescreen? Stephen wondered.

  He did not know, of course, how close Vogel was to seeing through everything.

  Thirty-one

  Immediately after their discussion in the hospital corridor, Vogel and Clarke returned to Kenneth Steele House. It was almost midnight. They were both oblivious to the hour, and well past weariness.

  PC Bolton had come to collect them. He had also lost count of the hours he had been on duty.

  Stephen Hardcastle was now the focus of the investigation. Vogel and Clarke needed to know everything about his past.

  ‘Whoever did that shooting knew how to handle a high-powered sniper rifle,’ said Vogel. ‘That calls for specialist training. From what we’ve been told, Hardcastle is not ex-military, nor was he a member of any shooting clubs or teams at school or university. On the other hand, I suspect there is an awful lot about Stephen Hardcastle that we don’t know.’

  While Vogel set to work digging up information on the Internet, Clarke began double-checking Hardcastle’s whereabouts over the past few days and looking into every possible aspect of his behaviour. She was assisted by Bolton, who needed the overtime.

  The duty IT man was called in to go over Charlie Mildmay’s abandoned laptop, and to be ready to examine the computer equipment which they were expecting to bring in from Stephen Hardcastle’s home as soon as a warrant had been obtained.

  ‘Not that I expect there to be much on there,’ Vogel had said. ‘Our man is clever. He will have covered his tracks. He’s good at working on computers too. Probably better than he lets on. He will have used Charlie’s computer, not his own. And if he needed to use another one, I reckon it would have been a laptop that he’s now got rid of.’

  Vogel’s Internet searches also revealed the fact that Stephen Hardcastle owned a powerboat, which was moored at Instow marina – the same place Charlie Mildmay had moored the Molly May. He asked PC Bolton to check it out.

  Having raised the marina boss from his bed, Bolton was able to report that Stephen Hardcastle had in the late summer and autumn of 2013, just before and around the time of Charlie’s supposed death at sea, professed a previously unknown interest in night fishing.

  ‘So if he took his boat out at night it didn’t look unusual,’ said Bolton. ‘The marina chap didn’t know whether he went out at the time Charlie staged his disappearance, but he says nobody would have made anything of it if he did, because Hardcastle was known to go night fishing. There’s more too. He took his boat out yesterday afternoon, first time this year. He arrived at Instow about one o’clock, saying he fancied a quick spin, wanted to make sure she was ready for the summer, and he was out for about an hour. It’s a top-of-the-range Goldfish. A beast. Cost a pretty penny and goes like stink. I reckon Hardcastle steered straight out to sea, then dumped the gun and anything else that might incriminate him over the side, don’t you, boss?’

  Vogel thought exactly that. ‘Good work, Bolton,’ he said.

  Meanwhile, his own enquiries soon revealed the bare bones of Stephen Hardcastle’s early life in Africa and subsequent near reinvention in the UK. Once he discovered the Zimbabwe connection, Vogel wasted no time in contacting people who knew all about the militant Zimbabwe People’s Army and the involvement of Hardcastle’s father, along with his half-brothers, who were Busani Mahlangu’s first lieutenants in ZIPA.

  He also learned that there had been a recent attempt on the life of a senior member of the Mugabe regime by a sniper armed with a Dragunov SVU, the same kind of rifle which had been ‘pilfered’ from Tanner-Max, and
had almost certainly been used to shoot Henry Tanner.

  Furthermore, Hardcastle was a frequent visitor to Zimbabwe.

  At about two in the morning Vogel’s research was interrupted by a phone call, initially taken by PC Bolton.

  ‘It’s Frank Watts, DC at Barnstaple,’ said Bolton. ‘He and a uniform are with Charlie Mildmay’s parents. They’ve been breaking the news to them. Watts says he thinks you should speak to them straight away.’

  Wondering what the Mildmays could have to say that was so urgent, Vogel took the telephone receiver from Bolton’s outstretched hand.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Frank Watts told him he was putting Mr Bill Mildmay on the line.

  Charlie’s father sounded distraught. Hardly surprising, in light of the news he’d just been given about his son and grandchildren.

  Bill Mildmay had insisted on speaking to someone connected with the investigation because he believed he had crucial information to impart.

  ‘I don’t know if you are aware that my wife and I adopted our son Charlie,’ he said.

  Vogel was not aware of it. Neither did it seem to be relevant. But he allowed Bill Mildmay to continue.

  ‘We adopted Charlie when he was seven years old. He came to us after both his parents were killed in a motor incident. First of all we fostered him, then we adopted him. He was a sweet little boy . . .’ Bill Mildmay broke off, his breathing coming in short, sharp gasps. A moment later he resumed: ‘We never had any trouble with Charlie. He seemed to get over it all quite quickly. So we never talked about it. He was clever at school. He sailed through everything. Then he married Joyce. There was that beautiful house, an excellent job in the family business. It was as if he had a charmed life. And the grandchildren, those beautiful beautiful children . . .’