Death Comes First

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.