Death Comes First (20 page)

Tanner fixed him with a stare. ‘I hardly think this is a moment for us to feel pleased with ourselves, Stephen,’ he said coldly. ‘My younger grandson is still missing. My wife and daughter are distraught. My granddaughter is in pieces and my elder grandson is barely holding himself together.
This is the biggest crisis ever to face this family. Have you forgotten that, Stephen?’

‘No, no, of course not, Henry,’ said Stephen, mortified. He was used to being put in his place by Henry. That didn’t necessarily make the experience any less unpleasant. But he had to acknowledge that on this occasion he deserved the reprimand. ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m not used to being questioned by the police.’

Henry made no further comment. He had no intention of discussing confidential matters in the presence of his driver, who had started the engine but was awaiting instructions.

‘Come on, Geoff,’ he said. ‘Back to Joyce’s place as quick as you can.’

The driver nodded and took off in the direction of Tarrant Park.

Henry Tanner hunkered down in the back seat, his body language sending a warning to Stephen of the inadvisability of further attempts at conversation. The chief would have to discuss the matter with him sometime soon, surely, Stephen thought. After all, he needed to get his story straight should the police question him again, which he suspected they would. Stephen hadn’t known what to say when the detective asked if Henry knew about the letter. And he still didn’t know what Henry had told Vogel.

He wiped the sweat from his brow. He could have landed them all in it if he’d been forced to answer Vogel’s last question. He reckoned he’d had a narrow escape from disaster. And he also reckoned that far worse lay ahead.

Meanwhile, back at The Firs, Joyce felt utterly alone, even though the kitchen was still full of people. Nobody had left
the house, in spite of most of them having been told they were free to do so.

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 believes 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.