Death Comes First

Twenty-five

Alvin Nightingale was a twenty-one-year-old civilian investigator of West Indian descent employed by the Avon and Somerset Constabulary at Kenneth Steele House. He was intelligent, alert and ambitious. And he was not satisfied with his work. He was currently engaged in studying CCTV and other camera footage and had earlier that day been trying to follow the route of Joyce Mildmay’s Range Rover, with limited success. It was work he was good at, because Alvin was a meticulous young man, but he found it tedious beyond belief.

Alvin wanted to be a police officer. He had always wanted to be a police officer. Unfortunately he had so far been prevented from following his dream by a sight defect which meant that his long sight fell below required standards and was likely to further deteriorate. Corrective lenses and spectacles alone could not improve Alvin’s sight to the required level. Alvin had, however, managed to get himself on an NHS waiting list for an operation about which he was fiercely optimistic, even though the success rate was only 30 or 40 per cent. But he knew he could be in for a long wait; his was not considered to be an urgent case, because Alvin could see well enough. Not well enough to become a policeman, that was all.

Meanwhile Alvin liked to pretend he was a kind of trainee police officer. He was always on the lookout for matters that might draw him to the attention of his superiors. And he was intent on demonstrating that his eyesight wasn’t that bad. He was, in fact, determined to prove that his sight defect should not prevent him joining the force, and that he was definitely made of the right stuff.

There was, of course, an alert out for Joyce’s black Range Rover, as well as for the stolen blue Honda Accord in which it was believed young Fred Mildmay had been transported out of Tarrant Park. This was not something with which Alvin Nightingale was expected to concern himself when off duty. But such was his eagerness to impress, he remained vigilant long after his shift had finished.

He was assisted in this, albeit with little tangible success so far, by his place of residence. Alvin lived with his grandmother in one of the thirties semis lining the Portway at Sea Mills, coincidentally not far from Vogel’s bungalow home. He had a bedroom overlooking the main road. And when he had nothing better to do of an evening, which was often now that he had given up swatting for police entry examinations, he would sit at his window, checking the passing traffic against a list of vehicles he and his colleagues had been looking out for that day on CCTV and ANPR.

When the Mildmay Range Rover passed that evening, Alvin had been at his window, for almost an hour, with binoculars, pen, notebook and mobile phone at the ready.

The make, colour and registration number of Joyce’s vehicle featured in the list jotted on the back of his left hand in marker pen. He had already noted several large dark four-wheel drives which had attracted his attention until they passed directly beneath his gran’s house, where a conveniently placed street lamp revealed them to be of the wrong make or colour.

Joyce’s was the second black Range Rover to pass by in the direction of the city centre. Alvin used his binoculars to check and double-check the registration. It was the vehicle owned by Joyce Mildmay, the woman whose child was missing, and whose own whereabouts was currently unknown. There was no doubt about it.

Alvin stood up in front of his bedroom window and focused his binoculars on the Range Rover’s windows, straining to see inside. The rear windows were tinted. He could see nothing though them. He could, however, see that there was a passenger in the front, and he was sure it was a woman. He could not see the driver.

That was good enough for Alvin. He punched the air delightedly. At last — a result! He couldn’t wait to call in his information. He had found the Mildmay car. He may even have found the whole family. His suspect eyesight had surely proved to be up to speed.

Alvin called the main MCIT number straightaway, and was diverted to a duty officer. The duty officer then called Vogel.

Vogel was sitting in the lounge bar of the Royal Marriott Hotel, where Nobby Clarke was staying. After two hours at Southmead Hospital, they had finally given up hope of extracting any information from Henry Tanner that night. If indeed at all. The man appeared to have suffered a relapse. Or, as Vogel suspected, he was faking it to avoid their questions. But the hospital staff did seem concerned about him, and they were unlikely to allow the police anywhere near him until the morning.

Uniform dispatched a constable, who was put on sentry duty outside Tanner’s room. He was there partly to provide protection, and partly on a watching brief. Clarke and Vogel wanted to know at once if there was any change in Henry Tanner’s condition. The two officers also wanted to know whether or not he had any visitors aside from Felicity, who had returned to her husband’s bedside shortly before they left.

Clarke, with the help of sat-nav, had driven them to College Green, where she parked the CID car illegally right in front of the Royal Marriott.

‘C’mon, Vogel, we need a drink,’ she said.

It wasn’t an invitation. More of an order.

‘What about the car?’ Vogel asked, somewhat tragically he thought, even as he spoke.

‘Vogel, since when have you become a bloody jobsworth? Parking tickets are for making paper airplanes with.’ She sighed at him wearily. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get uniform to send someone to pick it up later on, and they can take you home too.’

Vogel hadn’t thought it politic to remind the DCI that he did not in any case drink.

As they made their way into the hotel through the downpour, he repeated a question he’d already asked during the drive over, one which Clarke had dodged, or so it seemed to Vogel.

‘C’mon, boss, tell me about this Mr Smith,’ he demanded. ‘Who the heck is he?

‘For your information, Vogel, Mr Smith is a woman,’ Clarke corrected, deadpan.

‘You know this is getting ridiculous, boss, don’t you?’

‘A woman at the moment,’ Clarke continued, to Vogel’s greater confusion.

She put him out of his misery then.

‘Mr Smith is the generic code name given to Henry Tanner’s government-level controller,’ she explained. ‘It’s always been Mr Smith, ever since the beginning when Henry’s father and Maxim Schmidt set up Tanner-Max. Apparently the first Mr Smith really was called Mr Smith. So for simplicity they carried on with the name.’

‘For simplicity?’ responded a bemused and irritated Vogel. ‘Boss, I don’t believe this nonsense. Codes and controllers? Smith and Schmidt? It’s the stuff of spy stories.’

‘Well, you’d better believe it, Vogel,’ remonstrated Clarke. ‘Because it’s not a story. It’s real. Now shut up and get me that drink.’

They sat together at a table beneath a window down which raindrops dripped relentlessly. Vogel ordered a soda and lime from a smiling waitress who had no idea what a bad mood he was in. Nobby Clarke ordered a large malt. No ice. Splash of still water.

Vogel paid. The Marriott charged London prices. He was still trying to make sense of the whole Mr Smith thing, whilst idly wondering what chance he had of claiming the drinks back on expenses, when his phone rang.

‘Get uniform on to it,’ he barked. ‘I want that vehicle caught up with and apprehended immediately.’

He ended the call and turned to Clarke.

‘We gotta go, boss,’ he said, already standing up and heading for the door. ‘It’s Joyce Mildmay — her car’s been spotted heading into the city centre along the Portway. That’s just down the hill. If we move fast we should be able to head ’em off. C’mon. Let’s go.’

Normally Clarke would have reminded him that she was the one who gave the orders. But not in this situation. She rose at once and followed Vogel without so much as a backward glance at her abandoned whisky.

The pair of them raced out of the hotel and into the CID car. Clarke set lights flashing and siren wailing, manoeuvring the vehicle at speed around College Green and in the direction of the Portway, as instructed by Vogel.

‘You know, Joyce and Molly could have been diverted for reasons we do not know. They could now be heading for the hospital as originally planned,’ Clarke suggested.

‘And it’s taken ten hours from Tarrant Park, has it?’ snapped Vogel, forgetting she was his superior officer and nearly biting her head off. ‘In any case, they’re going in the wrong bloody direction for Southmead. They were spotted at Sea Mills, where I live. They’ve already gone past the damned turning. Even I know—’

‘That’s enough, Vogel,’ interrupted the DCI.

Vogel was on a knife edge, and he knew it. This wasn’t how he usually behaved.

‘Sorry, boss,’ he muttered. ‘It’s just that we don’t know what’s happen—’

He stopped speaking when his body was flung forward against his seat belt as Nobby Clarke executed a flawless emergency stop.

‘What the fuck?’ began Vogel.

He looked ahead. The traffic was fairly light, but several vehicles in front of them had also stopped suddenly, forcing Clarke to do the same. Some of the passengers were getting out of their vehicles and hurrying towards the waterside. Then Vogel noticed the buckled railings ahead at the harbour edge.

‘Shit,’ he cried.

In a split second he was out of the CID car and running. The offices which overlooked the harbour along that stretch were in darkness, but a few local residents had emerged from their waterside flats and were also running towards the scene. Vogel pushed through everybody.

‘Police, police, make way,’ he shouted.

Then, automatically, he added: ‘Did anyone see what happened?’

‘Yes,’ came a male voice out of the small crowd gathered by the railings. ‘This bloody great Range Rover swerved straight across the road, hit the railings and catapulted over. I was right behind, I saw exactly—’

Vogel didn’t hear any more. He could see something in the water. A head emerged. The head of a woman. He stared, willing his eyes to become quickly adjusted. Quite a lot of light was shining on the water. There were street lamps, the beams of car headlights, and shafts of light from the windows of buildings. It was not, however, enough to allow him to see the woman’s face clearly. But he was certain it was Joyce Mildmay. It had to be. The following motorist had said the vehicle was a Range Rover, and Joyce’s Range Rover had already been spotted heading this way.

The weather was terrible, worse than it had been all day. There were actually breakers in the Floating Harbour. The woman gasped for air. A substantial wave rolled over her. Both her arms came up and she disappeared again beneath the surface.

‘Shit,’ said Vogel again.

He was suddenly aware of Nobby Clarke, having presumably illegally abandoned the CID car for the second time that evening, by his side. He turned to her.

‘I can’t swim,’ he said.

Clarke didn’t seem to be listening. Neither did she hesitate. She pulled off her ankle boots, shrugged her way out of her jacket and jumped in.

Vogel felt not only helpless but pathetic. He was physically so inept. All he could do was watch as his DCI, performing an impressive crawl in extremely choppy conditions, powered her way out to the spot where the woman had last been seen. He did, at least, also call in the incident on his mobile and request all emergency services. Soonest.

But it didn’t occur to Vogel to look for a lifebelt or a life-line along the quayside. Fortunately a young man in the crowd did just that. He arrived at Vogel’s side with a lifebelt as Nobby Clarke, kicking her heels smartly in the air, duck-dived into the depths in search of Joyce Mildmay and whatever else she might find down there.

The young man was Alvin Nightingale. As soon as he had finished phoning in his sighting of Joyce Mildmay’s vehicle, Alvin had rushed out of his gran’s house, boarded the pre-loved 100cc Yamaha motorcycle he kept in the front garden, and taken off in hot pursuit, pushing the bike as fast as he could along the Portway. Alvin was going to show ’em. He really was.

‘I can help,’ he told Vogel. ‘I’m going in. I’m a trained life-saver.’

He thrust the lifebelt into Vogel’s arms. ‘Throw it in when I bring someone up,’ he ordered.

Then, perhaps sensing that Vogel was no action man, he added: ‘And don’t forget to hang on to the line.’

Vogel nodded. It was not police procedure to encourage civilians to take part in potentially dangerous rescue missions, and Vogel had no idea that Alvin Nightingale was employed by the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. In any case he was still a civilian. But there could be children in that sunken car, and Vogel’s senior officer was already risking her life.

Alvin Nightingale didn’t give Vogel time to think that through. He dived into the water as DCI Clarke resurfaced clutching the woman Vogel assumed to be Joyce Mildmay.

Alvin turned in the water and called above the noise of the rain and the wind for Vogel to throw in the lifebelt. Vogel did so. With the belt over one shoulder, Alvin swam out to Nobby Clarke and the woman she had rescued. He helped Clarke put the belt around the rescued woman, then began to swim with her to the shore, leaving Nobby Clarke to follow.

But the DCI had other plans. Up came her feet again as she made yet another dive. It was clear she was attempting to return to the submerged vehicle below.

Alvin reached the shore. Willing hands grabbed the half-drowned woman and pulled her out of the water. Vogel joined in. He saw at once that the woman was Joyce Mildmay, and that she wasn’t breathing. At least he had managed to complete a first-aid course, and he thought he was reasonably well-versed in emergency life-saving techniques. He was certainly trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, although he’d never before had to execute it for real. He began chest compressions at once, rhythmically, and it seemed effectively, pumping Joyce’s chest. Gratifyingly, she spewed up sea water and, although barely conscious, began to breathe.

Meanwhile Alvin had returned to the site of the submerged vehicle.

He and Nobby Clarke made several more dives before coming up with another prone victim, this time a man, and bringing him to the quayside.

‘There are at least two people in the back,’ Clarke called up to Vogel. ‘One of them could be the daughter. We can’t get her out. She’s trapped. And the boy. I think he’s there too. Also trapped.’

Clarke was gasping for breath. Her face was grey with shock, and probably with exertion too, thought Vogel.

The fire brigade arrived as the DCI spoke. And a police emergency dive team.

‘We’ll take over now. Everybody stand back,’ someone shouted authoritatively.

Strong professional arms helped haul Clarke, Alvin Nightingale and the prone man on to the quayside.

The man, of whose identity Vogel had no idea, appeared to be dead. Nonetheless one of the paramedics on the scene started to go through the motions of revival.

Vogel’s attention was attracted by two other paramedics preparing to load the still prone but breathing Joyce Mildmay into an ambulance.

He hurried to her side. She had recovered consciousness. Her eyes were glazed but open.

‘Joyce, Joyce, who’s the man who was with you?’ Vogel asked.

She focused on him. Just about. But she made no attempt to answer.

‘My children,’ she murmured, her voice quivering. ‘My children.’

There was no query. Vogel thought she already knew the fate of her children. She had been there. She had been in the submerged car. And she had tried to dive down again to rescue them. She knew better than anyone that there was no hope. All the same, he lied to her. He felt he had to. At that moment anyway.

‘We’re still trying,’ he said. ‘We have divers here. Is there anyone else still down there, apart from the children?’

She shut her eyes, as if trying to shut everything out.

‘My children,’ she said again, weakly.

Vogel was getting no further.

He repeated his earlier question: ‘Who is the man?’

‘What?’

‘Who is the man?’ Vogel asked for the third time. ‘They’ve brought up a man.’

‘Charlie?’ she murmured. ‘Charlie?’

There was puzzlement in her voice, as if she couldn’t understand why Vogel needed to ask her the question.

Joyce was obviously in pain. She was bleeding heavily from cuts on her face and arms. She must be in a state of the most horrendous shock. Vogel wondered if she were delirious.

‘Charlie, your husband Charlie?’ he queried.

Joyce managed a slight nod and suddenly opened her eyes again. They were bright with anguished fury.

‘The fucking fucking fucking bastard,’ she wailed, as the paramedics completed their lift. ‘He drove us into the water... straight into the water... he has murdered his own children...’

The wailing became incoherent.

Vogel stared at the closing doors of the ambulance. He was still staring as it pulled away in the direction of Southmead.

Hadn’t Charlie Mildmay died six months ago? Yet, according to his wife, he had been the driver of the Range Rover. Had Charlie Mildmay deliberately caused the death of his own children? And had he then also deliberately attempted to cause the death of his wife?

The whole thing could have been a tragic accident, of course. Joyce may have got it all wrong. But she didn’t appear to think so.

‘He drove us into the water,’ she had said.

And the one eyewitness Vogel had spoken to so far seemed to back that up.

Vogel’s thoughts were interrupted.

‘We’ve got a pulse!’ shouted one of the paramedics crouching over the prone body of Charlie Mildmay. ‘Keep up the CPR.’