Death Comes First

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 uprooted 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.

The Vogels were not extravagant. They had saved enough over the years to be able to buy the Sea Mills bungalow with the help of only a modest mortgage.

Vogel opened the connecting door. The garage had been partially tiled in mock marble and decorated in the style of a Roman bath. Trompe-l’oeil pillars and urns entwined with vines adorned the walls. It never failed to surprise him every time he stepped inside.

Mary, wearing a big fluffy turquoise dressing gown that matched the colour of the water, was sitting at the edge of the pool, watching her daughter. It took her a moment to realize he was there. She turned, opened her eyes wide in surprise, then smiled.

Vogel raised one finger to his lips and mouthed, ‘Shhhh.’

He wanted to watch Rosamund for a bit whilst she was still unaware of his presence. It was wonderful to see her, arms flailing, legs kicking as best she could, throwing all her energies into trying to combat the force of the endless pool’s jet. She was so at home in the water that, at a glance, her disability, although severe, was not apparent.

After a minute or so Rosamund sensed her father’s presence. She paused and turned to look at him. Her hair was wet and tousled. Her cheeks were flushed from her exertions. She beamed at Vogel. And, even to he who knew better, she looked not only blissfully happy but also a picture of health.

At moments like this, he thought, the move to Bristol was absolutely worthwhile. And even the prospect of having to deal with some up-himself Whitehall upstart in the morning seemed inconsequential.

‘My goodness,’ said Mary. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you this early. To what do we owe the pleasure?’

‘Don’t ask,’ said Vogel. ‘All I want to do this evening is to enjoy being here with you and Rosamund.’

Next morning Vogel left for the station an hour later than usual — an unheard-of occurrence. Unable to totally disassociate himself from an investigation into a child’s disappearance, he had phoned Margo Hartley at 7 a.m. for a progress report.

Only one new lead had come to light. CCTV analysis had revealed a blue Honda Accord arriving and leaving the development on the night Fred Mildmay disappeared. The owner of the vehicle, who had been away in London overnight, had reported it stolen when he arrived at Bristol Parkway the following morning to find it missing from the car park. The footage did not provide a clear view of the car’s occupants, but it was possible to see that in addition to the driver there was a passenger who appeared to be of small stature. A suspect vehicle alert had been put out to police forces nationwide, and the Honda’s details registered on ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras throughout the country.

Once he was content that Margo had everything in hand, Vogel sat down for breakfast with his family, again surprising both his wife and daughter.

He wasn’t behaving in this out-of-character manner because he was sulking. It was simply that he didn’t see how he could function under the restrictions now imposed upon him. While he wasn’t ready to conclude that Henry Tanner had abducted his grandchild, he was convinced that the man was withholding vital information. To be forbidden to contact Tanner was not only infuriating, it was potentially catastrophic. The fact that Tanner had friends in high places should never have been allowed to take precedence over the welfare of his grandson.

He arrived at his desk at Kenneth Steele House shortly before 9 a.m., still early enough for most men and women beginning a long working day, but a positively leisurely hour for Vogel, carrying, as was his habit, a cup of black coffee acquired from the vending machine in the corridor.

He switched on his computer, and sat for a moment staring at his screen saver, which featured his wife and daughter on a day trip to Torquay. Then he gave himself a bit of a mental shake. A child was missing. He must do what he could until the cavalry arrived. The unwelcome cavalry, in Vogel’s opinion.

He resumed his covert checks on the Tanner family, focusing on the three aborted investigations into Tanner-Max. The first had taken place in the 1970s, when Edward Tanner had been running the company. There had been a second in the early 1990s, by which time Henry was chief executive. The third and most recent investigation had got underway in 2001. Vogel assumed there would be a box-file in the archives filled with papers detailing the findings of the first investigation. The latter two investigations were on the computer database, but there was a suspicious lack of detail. And each investigation had been closed with no reason given. There were no further references to Tanner-Max on file after the aborted 2001 investigation.

Vogel decided to instigate checks on every officer whose name featured in connection with the investigations. He had always preferred assimilating data to talking to people, and the events of the previous afternoon had only confirmed to him that his preference was the right one.

They, that anonymous ‘they’ responsible for giving him orders he considered to be often incomprehensible and occasionally reprehensible, couldn’t stop him using his brain, he thought. Not yet anyway.

After an hour of searching he had found no links between any of the officers, no common thread connecting the investigations, nor even any clear indication as to what had triggered these three investigations into the affairs of Tanner-Max.

He was debating his next line of enquiry when there was a knock on his office door. Without waiting for an invitation to enter, in walked a tall blonde woman wearing a sharply tailored black trouser suit. Vogel’s jaw dropped. Literally. He had to make a concerted physical effort to close it.

Detective Chief Inspector Nobby Clarke looked at him with amused eyes.

Vogel struggled to his feet, almost knocking over his chair in the process. It was DCI Clarke who had headhunted Vogel, then a humble Met sergeant stationed at Charing Cross, to her Central London Murder and Serious Incident Team.

He still remembered with embarrassment his gauche behaviour when he had discovered that Nobby Clarke was not some wizened old male detective but an attractive woman. It was the name which had thrown him, of course. Nobody in the Met had ever managed to discover her real first name — assuming that she hadn’t been christened Nobby. Even the DCI’s driving licence, temporarily removed from her handbag one day by a pair of determined and devious detectives, gave her name as Nobby Clarke.

Vogel and Clarke liked and respected each other. Indeed Clarke had not been best pleased when Vogel requested a transfer to the Avon and Somerset Constabulary so soon after she had secured his MIT appointment, but he knew that she understood his reasons.

He was aware that Clarke too had a new job. He’d heard through the grapevine only a couple of weeks previously that she had been appointed to the recently reformed National Crime Squad, operating out of Scotland Yard, and primarily dealing with matters of importance to the state, and acts of terrorism. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might be the London ‘brass’ sent to take over his operation. Why would it? How could the disappearance of an eleven-year-old child in Bristol merit the attention of the National Crime Squad? All the same, he was inordinately pleased to see Nobby Clarke.

‘Bloody hell, boss,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘All right, Vogel, take it easy. Am I that great a shock?’

Vogel smiled. ‘Yep, but you’ve no idea how glad I am to see you, boss. I hadn’t a clue who was going to be sent here, and nobody’s told me what’s going on. I’ve been trying to run an investigation with both hands cuffed behind my back and a blindfold on.’

Clarke raised one eyebrow. Vogel had never been able to do that.

‘Run an investigation?’ she queried. ‘I thought DCI Hemmings was SIO?’

‘Yeah, well, you know what I mean.’

‘I sure do, Vogel.’

‘I just need to know what’s going on, so that I can do my job, that’s all.’

‘Don’t expect me to be able to tell you much — not yet, anyway,’ said the DCI, sitting down in the chair opposite Vogel’s desk. ‘In the meantime, we have a child to find. So let’s get on with it, shall we?’

‘Right boss,’ said Vogel, his spirits rising even though he was still none the wiser as to why Henry Tanner’s family should command special treatment.