Death Comes First

Fifteen

Vogel was first to hear the news. Dispatch alerted him at 10.15 a.m., saying there had been a 999 report of a shooting in Traders’ Court. They didn’t have the identity of the victim, but given the proximity to the Tanner-Max premises and the disappearance of Henry Tanner’s grandson, the young PC on duty thought Vogel would want to be informed.

The DI half ran to Nobby Clarke’s office, a cubicle off the Operation Binache incident room. Hemmings was in there with her.

‘There’s been a shooting,’ he blurted out. ‘Behind the offices of Tanner-Max.’

‘Fuck,’ said DCI Clarke.

‘Get down there, both of you,’ instructed Hemmings.

He wasn’t actually in a position to order Nobby Clarke about, but such was the habit of senior station officers.

Clarke and Vogel took off at speed down the corridor. When they reached the stairs, Clarke paused and put a hand on Vogel’s arm.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve done anything useful like learn to drive in the time you’ve been here?’ she enquired.

Vogel shook his head.

‘And I came on the bloody train,’ muttered Clarke.

Both officers looked around desperately for someone to commandeer to drive them.

On cue, Constable Bolton appeared, carrying a packet of sandwiches and a cardboard beaker.

‘Forget breakfast, you’re needed,’ barked Vogel.

‘But I only came here to drop in some stuff for the tech boys,’ protested Bolton. ‘I’m supposed to get my arse straight back to Lockleaze.’

Neither Clarke nor Vogel had any jurisdiction over Bolton, but Vogel didn’t care.

‘I don’t give a damn about that,’ he snapped. ‘This is an emergency. I’ll square it with your sergeant. Come on, there’s been a shooting and we need you to get us there fast. You in a squad car?’

Bolton nodded. Vogel saw the expression in the young man’s eyes change. A shooting. That was something far removed from routine police work. PC Bolton abandoned his breakfast, turned on his heel and set off at a run, leading Vogel and Clark to a squad car at the far side of the car park. Bolton zapped the vehicle open as he ran. He climbed quickly behind the wheel. Vogel and Clarke got in the back. So that they could talk, Vogel hoped.

Vogel’s mobile rang: Dispatch. Vogel put his phone on speaker so that Clarke could also hear.

‘There’s an officer on the scene now, guv. He’s reported that the victim of the shooting is Henry Tanner.’

‘How bad is it?’ asked Vogel.

‘PC Tompkins doesn’t know, guv. Blood everywhere, though, and Tanner is unconscious.’

‘Shit,’ said Vogel, ending the call. ‘C’mon, Bolton, step on it!’

‘Yessir!’

Bolton stepped on it all right, swinging the little Ford around a passing pantechnicon with a screech of rubber, then in and out of lanes and dodging oncoming traffic, siren wailing, lights flashing and blazing.

Unusually, Vogel was oblivious to the wild driving. He had other things on his mind. Clarke didn’t speak, but Vogel could see that whatever intrigue had brought her to Bristol, she hadn’t been expecting this any more than he had.

Vogel had only even been involved in a shooting once in his life, a little over a year ago in London, and his stomach still churned at the thought of it. David Vogel had behaved in a rather out of character way on that occasion. He’d been positively cavalier in fact. And he had ended up in hospital. He didn’t share DC Bolton’s excitement at the thought of approaching the scene of a shooting. Indeed, he sincerely hoped the shooting would be over by the time they got to Traders’ Court.

‘So what do you think, boss?’ he asked, turning to the DCI. ‘Henry Tanner has copped one. Could be dead. Where does that leave us?’

‘I have no idea,’ she replied.

‘Oh come on, boss, the grandfather of our missing child has been shot. Please will you tell me what’s going on?’ he demanded.

‘Not now, Vogel,’ said the DCI, glancing pointedly at PC Bolton.

Vogel didn’t think Bolton was aware of anything much except the road ahead. But he refrained from saying more.

It was Janet who broke the news of Henry’s shooting to the family. She had been in the office when the Tanner Bentley arrived in Traders’ Court. Unlike Stephen Hardcastle she’d had no doubt that was where her boss would want her to be. As usual. Even on such a highly unusual day.

She heard the noise of the shot whilst sitting at her desk. She told herself it was a car back-firing, but somehow she immediately knew better. And she’d had a pretty clear idea of the direction from which that noise had come. She hurried to the toilet at the back of the building, the only place from which there was a window overlooking the courtyard.

From that window she had seen Henry lying motionless on the ground, eyes closed, with Geoff Brooking lying half on top of him.

It took a second or two for Janet to take in what had happened. The bang, the loud crack she had heard, had been a shot. Henry Tanner had been shot. Geoff Brooking must be trying to protect him from any further fire.

Janet withdrew from her vantage point and dialled 999. She was about to run downstairs and see if she could help, when her natural survival instincts kicked in. Whoever had shot Henry might still be out there. Janet was afraid. She decided to stay exactly where she was. But there was something she could do. The family had to be told, and it would be far better coming from her than some anonymous police officer. She debated with herself how best to tell them. It would be another tremendous shock to people already dealing with the turmoil and heartache of a missing child.

She decided to call Mark Mildmay. He would almost certainly be at The Firs with the rest of the family. Even Henry Tanner would not expect his grandson to be at the office that day.

Mark answered at the second ring. Hesitant. Nervous. Yet his voice was also expectant, hopeful even. She imagined all the family were in a similar state, hoping each phone call would bring good news, and fearing that it might bring bad.

She had bad news all right. But not the bad news they would all be dreading.

‘It’s your grandfather, Mark,’ she told him bluntly, unable to think of a gentle way. ‘I’m so sorry. He’s been shot.’

She could hear Mark Mildmay’s sharp intake of breath. It seemed a long time before he spoke.

‘Dear God,’ he said.

In the background she could hear female voices, Joyce, Felicity and maybe Molly. She couldn’t make them out individually. It was obvious though that they had been listening, anxious yet half hopeful, and were reacting to Mark’s response. She heard them asking Mark what was wrong, what had happened.

‘Is he d-dead?’ asked Mark.

In the background there was a stifled scream, a woman’s cry so shrill that it rose above the chorus of voices.

Then Mark’s voice, distant, not directed at the receiver: ‘No, no. It’s not Fred. Everyone, it’s not Fred. Wait a minute...’

‘Mark, are you still there?’

‘Yes, Janet.’ Mark’s voice was louder. He was speaking into the receiver again.

‘I don’t know,’ said Janet. ‘I don’t know how your grandfather is. He was shot in the car park. I’ve called for the police and an ambulance. He’s on the ground. Just lying there. Geoff seems to be trying to protect him. In case there are any more shots, I think... Oh Mark...’

Janet began to cry. She couldn’t help it. She supposed she was in shock too. She’d done what she knew she must: she’d called the emergency services and then the family. Like the good PA she was. But now the reality of it all was beginning to hit her. She could no longer hold herself together.

‘I’m on my way,’ said Mark.

Throughout the call Joyce had been at her son’s side, trying to hear what Janet was saying. She had grasped enough to have the gist of it. But she stepped back and allowed Mark to break the news as gently as he could to Felicity and Molly.

Felicity already seemed to know. It was she who had screamed. Not Joyce.

Molly wasn’t taking anything in. Felicity had turned a ghostly white and collapsed into a chair with her hand over her mouth.

‘It’ll be all right, Mum,’ Joyce said, running to her side and putting an arm around her. ‘Dad is tough as old boots, he’ll be all right. He has to be. What would any of us do without him...’

She realized she was babbling. She couldn’t stop herself.

‘But who would shoot Granddad?’ asked Molly, her face full of bewilderment.

‘I don’t know, darling,’ said her mother.

‘First Fred disappears and then Granddad is shot.’ Molly was frowning now, trying to make sense of it. ‘There must be a connection, mustn’t there? I mean, things like this don’t happen. Now we have Fred missing and Grandpa shot. Is that a coincidence? I mean, it can’t be, can it?’

‘I don’t know, darling,’ said Joyce again.

She too was beginning to think. Her last words to her father had been to tell him to fuck off. The family seemed to specialize in making unpleasant remarks to each other, only for something terrible to happen to the family member they’d made the remark to. Molly had told her brother she was going to kill him. And that was the last time any of them had seen him. Molly might have been joking, but that hadn’t stopped her from feeling dreadful about what she had said, and it had made her brother’s disappearance even worse for her.

Joyce had not been joking. She had meant every word that she’d said to her father over the last day or two. And she had told him to fuck off because she held him responsible for Fred’s disappearance. Charlie’s letter had led her down that path. She had built up a dossier of doubts about her father inside her head and thrown them at him. Culminating in telling him he was no longer welcome in her home and that he could fuck off.

Now she was in turmoil.

Her father had been shot. She only hoped the words she’d said to her mother would turn out to be true, that he’d pull through, that he wasn’t at this moment lying dead in Traders’ Court. The fact that he had been shot surely meant that he was innocent of any involvement in Fred’s disappearance. Most likely he’d been shot by whoever abducted Fred. Because Joyce now had no doubt that Fred had been abducted. As Molly had said, it would be too much of a coincidence to think that Henry had been shot and Fred taken by anyone other than the same perpetrator.

‘I’m going down there,’ said Mark, interrupting her train of thought. ‘One of us should be there. One of us should be with Granddad.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Joyce.

‘No, Mum, you stay here,’ said Mark. ‘We don’t know what’s going on yet, it could still be dangerous, and you have to stay here in case there’s any news of Fred.’

Joyce found herself nodding her agreement. She was used to deferring to the men in her life. But she had never heard her eldest son assert himself like this. It was as if the Tanner gene was kicking in and he was instinctively stepping in as head of the family. It occurred to her that he might well be the last man standing. Her brother William was dead, her husband was dead, her father might be dead... and Fred, not yet a man, might never have the chance to grow into one.

It was a terrifying scenario. Joyce felt the tears rising. She hadn’t thought she could be any more shocked, but every day seemed to bring some new horror. Molly was right: coincidence was out of the question. Joyce supposed she had always suspected there was some form of conspiracy surrounding her family. Now it seemed to her that they were under attack. And she wanted to know why. If Henry survived, nobody would keep her from his side. She was going to make him tell her what he knew, she was damned sure of that. But for the moment there was little she could do except wait.

Beside her, Felicity had rallied and was rising unsteadily to her feet.

‘You’re right about your mother staying here, Mark,’ said Felicity. ‘But I am coming with you and please don’t try to stop me. Henry is my husband and my place is by his side.’

Mark did not try to stop her. Instead, her son, her suddenly strong son, put his arm around his grandmother and walked with her to the door, where he turned to speak to his mother.

‘I’ll call you as soon as I know anything,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

Joyce nodded. As the door closed behind him, she wrapped an arm around her daughter and pulled her close. Neither of them could stop the tears.

An ambulance, it transpired, had arrived moments before Vogel, Clarke and Bolton. Paramedics were attending to the fallen man, who lay in a pool of blood. A second man, his clothes also covered in blood, was standing alongside.

Clarke led the way across the car park to join them.

‘How bad is it?’ she asked one of the paramedics.

‘He should live,’ the man replied. ‘It’s a shoulder wound. Right shoulder, well away from the vital organs. But the bones are shattered.’

Henry lay prone on the ground, unconscious. There was no sign of movement.

‘Would a shoulder wound cause him to lose consciousness?’ Clarke asked. ‘The pain must be excruciating, I suppose.’

‘Doubt he’s felt any yet,’ said the paramedic. ‘He will when he comes round though... assuming he comes round.’

‘So what are his chances?’

‘He must have fallen heavily when the shot hit him. See that patch of matted blood in his hair? Cracked his head when he hit the ground — that’s what knocked him out. And you never know with head wounds.’

Clarke turned her attention to the uniformed police officers on the scene. One was PC Tompkins, the officer who had called in the shooting. The other two, an older man who had introduced himself as PC Hawkins, and his younger female partner, PC Phillips, had got to Traders’ Court soon after Tompkins.

‘Have you checked the place out?’ Clarke asked. ‘Any sign of our gunman?’

Constable Phillips answered: ‘Checked it best we can, ma’am. There was no one suspicious about the place when we arrived. Just one shot fired, and it seemed to come from above.’ She waved a hand towards the rooftops. ‘We haven’t been able to get up there yet, but we’ve been keeping an eye, and we’ve had a team checking out the surrounding streets. I reckon the bastard took off straight away, ma’am.’

Clarke nodded. She thought that probably nobody should be in Traders’ Court. Neither she nor the rest of the police officers or the paramedics. But it was too late to worry about that. They were there. And as there had been no further shots, PC Phillips was probably right in her assessment of the situation.

The DCI looked enquiringly at the man with the bloodstained clothes.

‘I’m Geoff Brooking, Henry Tanner’s driver,’ he told her.

‘Are you hurt?’ asked Clarke, indicating the blood on his jacket.

Geoff Brooking shook his head. ‘It’s Mr Tanner’s blood.’

‘And how did you get it all over you?’ the DCI asked.

‘I was trying to protect him, ma’am,’ said Brooking. ‘Only I was too slow.’

Clarke registered his reaction to the shooting and the way he had immediately begun to address her as ma’am.

‘Are you ex-job?’ she asked.

Brooking nodded. ‘Sort of.’

‘What did you do, throw yourself across Mr Tanner?’ Clarke enquired.

Geoff Brooking nodded again. He didn’t appear to want to say any more.

‘Are you Mr Tanner’s bodyguard then, as well as a driver?’ Clarke persisted.

‘No, ma’am. Not really. Just trying to help.’

‘Right, and what does “sort of” ex-job mean, exactly?’

‘I was a civil servant, that’s all.’

Brooking sounded as if he’d been programmed to withhold information.

‘Protection work?’ queried Clarke. It was an educated guess.

‘Well, you know the sort of thing, ma’am,’ said Brooking.

Clarke continued to look at him enquiringly, but the driver-cum-bodyguard seemed to have clammed up. The DCI decided to leave it for now. She had a shrewd idea what his background might be.

She looked around the cobbled courtyard surrounded by high- and middle-rise office blocks. At that moment a red Jaguar came through the alleyway leading into the courtyard, tyres screeching noisily as it jerked to a halt at the police cordon. The driver jumped out, ducked under the ribbon, and started to run towards the prone man, shouting: ‘Oh my God, is that Henry? Oh my God, what’s happened?’

Hawkins and Phillips swiftly grabbed an arm each and restrained him. Then they led him back towards his vehicle, all three of them ducking under the cordon ribbon.

Clarke glanced enquiringly at Vogel, who was standing by her side. He told her the driver of the Jaguar was Stephen Hardcastle.

Clarke approached Hardcastle and introduced herself.

The lawyer was sweating. His eyes were wide open with shock. He was displaying none of his usual cool, but his voice was calmer and at a more normal level when he next spoke.

‘Is that Henry?’ he asked, gesturing towards the prone man on the floor, partly concealed from view by the paramedics.

Clarke affirmed that it was. ‘I am afraid Mr Tanner has been shot.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Hardcastle for the third time. ‘I mean, how? Who? Why?’

‘That’s a lot of questions, Mr Hardcastle,’ said Clarke. ‘At this stage in our enquiries I’m afraid we don’t have the answers — but I do have some questions for you. Let’s start with when you last saw Mr Tanner?’

‘Yesterday evening,’ Hardcastle replied, a slight tremor in his voice. ‘We were all gathered at his daughter’s house. Henry’s grandson is missing — but you know about that, don’t you?’

Clarke affirmed that she did.

Hardcastle seemed to notice Vogel for the first time.

‘Yes, DI Vogel took Henry and me to be interviewed at Lockleaze police station. Henry’s driver, Geoff, drove us back to The Firs afterwards. I, uh, thought I would leave the family to it. They needed to be alone.’

Hardcastle then noticed Geoff, standing there in his bloodstained clothes. He gulped, propping himself against the bonnet of his Jag, as if he needed support.

‘The boy, the boy being missing, you don’t think that’s connected, do you — to Henry being shot?’ he asked.

‘At this point I cannot comment, Mr Hardcastle,’ replied Clarke. ‘Can you tell me your movements since yesterday evening when you left the Mildmay home.’

‘I went straight back to my place. Got there about six, I think. Oh, I stopped at the Waitrose up the road. I suddenly realized I hadn’t eaten all day and I was starving. Then I went home. I microwaved a ready meal and ate it watching TV. Anything to take my mind off what had happened. And this morning I was at home until Henry called me. He told me to get my arse into the office.’

Hardcastle’s features stretched into a forced grin. ‘Typical Henry, that. It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d want me at work today, let alone that he would come in himself. Not with young Fred still missing. I might have known it though. He gave me a bit of a bollocking.’

‘What time did he call you?’ Vogel asked.

‘It was about half past nine, I think,’ said Hardcastle. ‘I was just wondering whether to call the family. I didn’t want to disturb or bother them, but I wanted them to know I was there for them.’

‘And where do you live?’ Vogel asked.

‘Down by the Floating Harbour,’ replied Hardcastle. ‘Conqueror House, one of the new apartment blocks.’

‘So you could drive here in ten minutes?’

‘Well yes, thereabouts,’ Hardcastle stumbled.

Vogel checked his watch. It was ten forty-five.

‘Then what took you so long?’

‘Well, I was in total shock last night. I took a bottle of whisky to bed with me — something I don’t normally do. I’d only been awake for a minute or two when Henry called, and I had a fearful hangover. I’m not used to booze. I shaved and showered and was about to leave when I began to feel sick. Before I could make it to the bathroom, I threw up down the front of my shirt. So I had to change, then I drank some water and lay down on the bed until my stomach settled.’

Vogel and Clarke both stared at him hard. They were a good double act. They were weighing up whether to believe Hardcastle or not, and somehow made that quite obvious.

‘So you would have been pretty sure that Henry Tanner would get here before you?’ asked Vogel.

‘Well, yes.’

‘And wouldn’t it annoy him that you had taken so long to follow his instruction?’

‘Not as much as it would have annoyed him if I’d thrown up over his desk,’ muttered Hardcastle.

Vogel did not look amused.

‘Is there anyone who can confirm what you have told us, sir?’ he asked. ‘Or were you alone at home?’

‘I was alone.’ Hardcastle wiped the back of one hand across his forehead. He was sweating. ‘If I need an alibi, I’m afraid I don’t have one. But I wouldn’t know how to do something like this even if I wanted to.’

‘And might you want to?’ Vogel asked.

‘Are you out of your mind!’ snapped Hardcastle, finding some spirit. Then he glanced nervously up at the silhouettes of rooftops surrounding the courtyard. ‘How do we know the bastard who did this isn’t still up on a roof somewhere? How do we know it was only Henry he was after?’

Clarke studied him carefully. Hardcastle had echoed her own worst-case scenario thoughts. Nonetheless there was something about the man’s responses that didn’t feel right to her, though she couldn’t grasp what it was. Then again, people’s responses were often difficult to fathom in traumatic circumstances, and the shooting of one’s employer certainly qualified on that score. Nevertheless Clarke remained uneasy.

‘We don’t, sir,’ she said. ‘But I’m puzzled by your last remark. Have you some idea who might have been “after” Henry Tanner?’

Clarke knew far more about Henry Tanner than Vogel did. She’d read the confidential files and acquainted herself with his history before leaving London. But she was beginning to wonder if she knew the whole story, or even anything approaching it.

Hardcastle shot a nervous glance up at the skyline again. But his shock and confusion were beginning to lift. He sounded wary when he spoke again.

‘I have no idea who might be behind this shooting,’ he said. ‘I’m in a state, that’s all. I suddenly thought I might be next.’

‘For any particular reason?’ asked Clarke.

‘No, of course not. But no one knows yet why Henry was shot, do they? He was gunned down by a sniper outside his own office. I’m his closest associate, now that his son and son-in-law are both dead. Wouldn’t anybody in that situation think they might be next? Or even that they could have been supposed to be first. I could have arrived here at any time, maybe even before Henry.’

He had a point, thought Clarke.

‘Or it could have been one of those random shootings, like Hungerford and that lunatic in Cumbria. I’m a bit shaky, that’s all.’

‘We believe only one shot was fired,’ said Clarke. ‘It seems our gunman made himself scarce once he’d shot Mr Tanner. Nothing random about that, is there?’

‘I didn’t know that, did I?’ responded Hardcastle. ‘You didn’t tell me how many shots had been fired.’

You couldn’t argue with that either, thought the DCI.

‘All right, Mr Hardcastle. You look a bit shaky, so I’m going to ask the paramedics to have a look at you, and then you can go. But we’ll need to interview you fully later on, all right?’

The man nodded.

Clarke walked away, turning to Vogel, who was still at her side. She thought he was probably keeping close in the hope of learning something. Vogel was neither a man to give up nor one who took kindly to being kept in the dark. She decided he needed something to do, a task that would take his mind off matters that she wasn’t in a position to share with him.

‘Vogel, get a search team down here, would you,’ she ordered. ‘Oh, and check where the fuck CSI are.’

Clarke shook her head wryly. The familiar SOCOs, Scenes Of Crime Officers, had a year or two previously been ‘rebranded’ by most police forces as Crime Scene Investigators. They weren’t even police officers nowadays, but civilian staff who wore dark-blue uniforms bearing the CSI logo. Clarke thought it had given them an exaggerated sense of their own importance. That and the American TV series some of them seemed to think they were part of.

‘The paramedics are trampling all over the scene,’ she observed. ‘Let’s hope it’s worth it and they can keep Tanner alive.’

Vogel nodded, took his phone from his pocket, and started to move away from his senior officer. He hadn’t spoken a word to her since their arrival at the car park, except when she had directly addressed him.

‘Oh, and Vogel, stop fucking sulking,’ she called after him.

‘Don’t know what you mean, boss,’ replied Vogel, deadpan.

‘All right, I give in — we’ll have a chat at the end of the day,’ Clarke promised, rather against her better judgement.

Vogel smiled. Almost. It was more a stretching exercise with his lips, thought Clarke.