Death Comes First

Thirty

Stephen Hardcastle arrived at Henry Tanner’s bedside minutes after Vogel and Clarke had left.

PC Saslow had not been instructed to apprehend any visitors, merely to monitor them. She called DCI Clarke at once.

‘Thank you,’ said Clarke. ‘But do nothing except keep an eye and an ear out, and call again when Hardcastle leaves. Don’t suppose you can hear anything, can you?’

‘Sorry, ma’am. I did try to have a listen, but the door’s shut tight.’

Inside the room Henry stared at Hardcastle through bloodshot eyes. He uttered no greeting.

‘I am so, so sorry, Henry,’ said Stephen.

Henry merely nodded, almost imperceptibly.

‘I came as soon as I heard. Janet called me. She’s with Felicity now. And Mark. At the house.’

So they were together then, his wife and his grandson. Mark hadn’t returned to the hospital to see his father or grandfather. Henry was not surprised. Felicity had made her feelings clear to him. She would no doubt have made them clear to her grandson too. And he felt pretty sure that Mark would take his grandmother’s side. No doubt the boy felt the same way. Henry was even more bereft. It seemed he had lost his entire family.

Stephen moved close to the bed, pulling up a chair. He sat down and leaned forward, so that his face was only a foot or so from Henry’s.

‘I don’t think they’re coming in,’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

Henry didn’t react. He’d already come to that conclusion.

‘Not tonight. Probably not tomorrow. Who knows when? If ever.’ Stephen’s voice was light. Inappropriately light. He paused, looking down at his injured employer. Henry still did not speak.

‘But I am here, Henry,’ Hardcastle continued. ‘I am with you. I will always be with you. You needn’t worry. I will take care of the business. I will take care of everything. Like always. That is all I have ever wanted to do.’

At last Henry met Stephen’s gaze. He had suffered a terrible tragedy from which he would never recover. A tragedy for which, it seemed, he might never be forgiven by his remaining family, the wife, daughter and grandson he truly loved. They held him responsible, even though he did not see how they could. He had merely conducted the business as he saw best, and for the greater profit of everyone concerned, as he’d always done. It seemed to Henry that he was being betrayed. He was in pain still. He felt old and bereft.

But none of this had turned Henry Tanner into a fool. He’d realized exactly what David Vogel had been getting at as soon as the detective had started questioning him about Stephen’s involvement. And he’d thought of little else since. It made sense. It made terrible sense. Stephen was behind so much of it. Stephen had known that Charlie was still alive, that was for sure; he’d probably helped him, and that little bitch he’d been shagging, stage his death. Perhaps it was Stephen who had put the fear of God into Charlie. Perhaps it was Stephen who had pushed him to the brink, pushed Charlie so far that he ran from it all, abandoning his old life. And perhaps Stephen had planned and executed all of it. Stephen had presumably wanted Charlie out of the way for his own ends. Even though Charlie was his alleged best friend.

As he lay nursing his wounds in his hospital bed, Henry hated Stephen Hardcastle more than he’d ever hated anyone in his life, except perhaps Charlie, because of what he had done that day. And before. But he understood Stephen. Stephen wanted the business. Stephen wanted the power that came with it. The extraordinary power and kudos that came courtesy of its covert activities.

Henry wondered what fate Stephen had planned for the only remaining adult male, his grandson Mark. And indeed for Henry himself. He still didn’t know who had shot him. That was the biggest question that remained unanswered. He would have thought it more likely that Charlie would have wanted rid of him than Stephen. But he couldn’t imagine that either man was capable of handling a precision sniper rifle like the Dragunov SVU. Unless of course he had been the victim of a lucky shot. Or an unlucky one, for the shooter, depending on how you looked at it.

Henry stared hard at the lawyer. Stephen was more like him than any member of his own family, he reflected grimly. Henry knew exactly what made the younger man tick. For some time now he’d been observing the way the handsome Zimbabwean looked at Joyce before and after Charlie’s ‘death’. The prospect of Stephen taking his involvement with the family to another level had not worried him. Not then. But that was before the cataclysmic events of the last few days. Now it worried him. Or it would have done, if he thought his daughter would ever again be capable of having a relationship with anyone.

‘I’m here, Henry. I will always be here,’ repeated Stephen softly.

Henry remained silent. Hardcastle appeared to be building up to something; Henry was curious to find out what it was.

‘It’s been hard for me over the years, you know,’ Stephen remarked conversationally. ‘You’ve never let me into the fold, have you? Despite the fact I have done everything you ever required of me, given my all — to you, to the business, to the family. You were the family I always wanted. You were the father I always wanted — you must know that. I never had a father. My mother took me away from my father and brought me to England. The man she married here had no time for me. Oh, he sent me to Eton, he provided for me after my mother died, but he barely came near me. I thought with you I had found a father. But I was doomed to be forever the outsider, wasn’t I? You would never fully accept me. After all, how could you?’

Henry was goaded into speaking. ‘You’d better not be trying to say that I wouldn’t accept you because you’re black! Is that it, Stephen? Are you playing the race card, you damned fool?’

‘Still hurling abuse at me, eh, Henry? I just suck it up, don’t I?’ Stephen Hardcastle gave a hollow laugh. ‘No, not that, Henry. I don’t think you take much notice of colour, any more than you worry about caste or creed. Not if people are useful to you. For you, Henry, the world is divided into family and non-family. Throughout my many years of service I have always remained non-family, an outsider. And that hurt. You promised to make me a partner in the business, but year after year you invariably came up with a reason for putting it off. Charlie — weak, pathetic Charlie — was a partner right from the start. Then last year you made that spoiled brat of a grandson of yours a junior partner as soon as he joined the firm. Only then did you admit to me that, although you valued me, I would never be a partner. Not in your family business. And you had the nerve to try to fob me off with a rise in salary to make up for it! How could you, Henry?’

Henry narrowed his eyes.

‘Did you shoot me, Stephen?’ he asked abruptly.

‘No,’ replied Stephen quickly. ‘Why would I do that? Why would I want to hurt you?’

Henry didn’t know the answer to that. But he reckoned he had answers to some of the other questions that had been bothering him over the past few days:

‘You did all the rest of it, though. Staging Charlie’s death — he could never have pulled off that charade without help. You knew damn well he was still alive, shacked up with that little slut Monika.’

‘Monika?’ queried Stephen.

‘Yes, Monika. You must have known about that.’

‘No, actually, I didn’t know about Monika. Well, not specifically. I was aware there was someone Charlie wanted to start a new life with. And I thought he’d have the sense to leave the country and begin afresh with his new woman, never to be seen again. I had no idea he’d come back here, to Bristol.

‘Naturally, I did wonder, when Fred disappeared, whether it might be down to Charlie. I didn’t have a phone number or an email address for him — we’d agreed it would be best if there were to be no further contact between us. So all I could do was hope I was wrong. Like everyone else, I hoped that Fred would turn up safe and well and there would be a simple explanation. I never expected any of this to happen, Henry. How could I? Yes, I helped Charlie bugger off. He’d turned into such a pathetic excuse for a man, I thought we’d all be better off. Me, obviously, because you would have to turn to me, rely on me. And that’s exactly what happened. You may have made Mark a partner, but he’s just a kid. I was the only one competent to take Charlie’s place. I thought you’d be better off too. And Joyce. I didn’t know he was going to come back here, murder two of his children and damned near kill Joyce, for God’s sake! How was I to know he’d gone from being a bit unhinged to a full-blown raving bloody lunatic?’

‘What about his alleged arms deals with gangsters?’ asked Henry. ‘Charlie told Joyce that I was the one trading with criminals.’

‘Well, you know that’s a lie: you did no such thing. But we both know that weapons went missing — we checked the records together. If not Charlie, who else? No doubt it was Charlie’s gangster associates who were behind the shooting. The moment you put a stop to the trade he’d been doing with them, that’s when you became a target.’

What Stephen was saying made a kind of terrible sense. The more Henry thought about it, the more plausible it sounded. And besides, Stephen Hardcastle was taking a huge risk in confessing all of this to him.

‘What if I go to the police, tell them everything you have told me?’ Henry said. ‘What do you think would happen to you then?’

Stephen shrugged. ‘Not a lot. I’m not sure that I’ve committed any crime worth mentioning. I haven’t even handled the distribution of Charlie’s estate, because he has yet to be officially declared dead. As for helping him stage his own death... As a lawyer, I have to say it would be pretty hard to prove.’

‘Unless Charlie lives and gives a statement to that effect.’

‘He’s a proven liar, an addict and a double murderer. Who’s going to believe a word he says?’ Stephen shrugged again, then leaned towards the bed. ‘Henry, I still want to be at your side, running the company for you, until you are better, until you are on your feet again. And you know I will do it how you would want. I didn’t do anything that I thought would harm you, Henry, and I never would. It was Charlie who did all the damage. Even if Charlie lives, he will go to jail for a long time. Charlie’s gone. Your surviving grandson blames you for what happened to his younger brother and sister; he’s gone too. But I am still here. I am still here for you, Henry.’

Henry wanted to lash out at him. He didn’t dare. He didn’t dare lose Stephen too. Henry had called Mr Smith again just before the police had returned. As usual he had left a message on an automated answer service. As usual he had waited for the call back, from an encrypted phone, he’d always presumed, which usually came within ten or fifteen minutes. He was still waiting. Mr Smith would know by now all about Charlie, back from the dead, driving his wife and children, and the woman with whom he was having an affair, into the harbour. Henry’s son-in-law had murdered three people and very nearly a fourth. That was going to attract a considerable amount of public and media attention. Mr Smith did not like anything that attracted attention. And Mr Smith would be unlikely to be swayed by the plea that Charlie’s actions had nothing to do with Tanner-Max’s work for HMG. Henry feared he might really be alone now. Without even Mr Smith to turn to.

Stephen was watching Henry closely. Gauging his every reaction.

‘I’m all you’ve got,’ Stephen said.

Henry knew that. Only too well. Stephen had echoed his own thoughts uncannily. At last Henry spoke. His voice was strained, but his speech was clear and deliberate.

‘I know,’ he said.

And he reached out with his one good hand to grasp Stephen’s.

The hand of the man who was both his most bitter enemy and the only friend he had left. The man he considered to be his only conceivable saviour.

Stephen was euphoric when he left Southmead.

He knew how much Henry must have suffered over the last couple of days. He had seen first-hand how devastated his employer was by the loss of his grandchildren and the destruction of his family. But no matter how distraught, Henry had a brain like a bacon slicer. That was how he had been able to keep all his myriad cards in the air for so long. It was inevitable that he would have turned his powers of deduction to unravelling the role that Stephen Hardcastle might have played in the recent chain of events.

That chain of events had taken several unexpected turns, so far as Stephen was concerned. He had been genuinely shocked and even at times distressed by what had happened, but that hadn’t stopped him cynically taking advantage.

After years of coveting Charlie Mildmay’s ludicrously elevated position in Tanner-Max, not to mention his wife, Stephen had exploited his alleged friend’s increasingly fragile mental state to the full. A succession of near accidents had been enough to frighten poor, vulnerable Charlie into believing that he was being targeted. Not that he was ever in any real danger. Stephen wasn’t a violent man. Or he never had been in the past, anyway. He hadn’t set out to do serious harm to Charlie — much as he wanted him out of the way, Stephen wasn’t capable of murdering someone in cold blood. His aim had been merely to unnerve him, to persuade him that it was time to disappear. Of course, being Charlie, he couldn’t just do a runner. He had to go through an elaborate charade, faking his own death. Stephen had been only too happy to help.

And with Charlie gone, who better to fill the void than Stephen? He had the business acumen, the nous, the guile to be Henry’s second in command at Tanner-Max. Unlike Charlie, who would never have lasted in the company, let alone made partner, had it not been for the fact he was married to Henry’s only daughter. Even so, there had never been any affection or even regard between the two men, whereas Stephen admired everything about Henry Tanner. It hurt him deeply when Henry used him as his personal whipping boy, which he did frequently. Yet in spite of that, Stephen looked upon Henry as the father he’d never had.

His biological father, a prince of the Mahlangu royal family, had married his mother, Ayanda, when she was only fifteen, though the ceremony would not have been considered legal under international law. She had given birth to Stephen nine months later, after which his father had lost interest in her, even though Ayanda grew into a beautiful young woman. His father had more important things on his mind. Even his first name, Busani, meant ‘rule’. That was what Stephen’s father believed he had been born to do. And Busani Mahlangu saw his destiny as being far more important than either his young wife or his son.

The Mahlangu were of the Ndebele tribe. As was the legendary Joshua Nkomo, leader and founder of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, ZAPU, which had been banned by the white minority government of his country, then known as Rhodesia. Busani Mahlangu had fought alongside Nkomo through the years of civil war and political struggle which preceded the notorious Robert Mugabe coming to power. In 1982 Mugabe unleashed his infamous fifth army in a genocidal campaign against the Ndebele, slaughtering up to 20,000 civilians. Nkomo fled the country, but Busani would not leave. He did, however, arrange for his wife and son to travel to the UK, where they were taken in by a distant relative.

Not long after her arrival in London, Ayanda caught the eye of a hedge-fund manager, high on tequila slammers, at the Brick Lane bar where she’d found work clearing tables. Ayanda knew that neither she nor her son had any future in Zimbabwe, or with Busani. She decided to use all her wiles to ensnare her suitor, who was both a high earner and the eldest son of wealthy parents. She wouldn’t let him near her unless he married her. Somewhat to the surprise of all concerned, not least Ayanda, and against the wishes of his family, James Hardcastle eventually did just that. It was he who insisted Stephen should take his surname, and change his first name. In his circles, it simply wouldn’t do to have a stepson called Nyongolo Mahlangu.

So Stephen Hardcastle was invented and promptly sent away to Eton, where he learned to speak with a public-school accent and to lord it over those who didn’t. He was a survivor. And like his father he’d been born to rule, hadn’t he?

But then, a couple of years after her second marriage, Ayanda died in childbirth. Stephen rarely saw his stepfather after that, although James Hardcastle continued to provide for him, paying his school fees and making sure arrangements were made for him to be cared for during the holidays.

Stephen dreamed of creating his own family. But he had never come close to marriage, or even to building a lasting relationship with a woman. Instead he lusted after Joyce, the wife of the man whom he had honestly once considered to be his best friend. Most of all he sought total acceptance from Joyce’s father, the patriarch of the clan. He wanted to be everything to Henry. He wanted Henry to be forced to rely on him alone. And he thought that night at the hospital he may have come close to achieving that.

As he drove home from Southmead, he even found himself wondering when he might dare make an approach to Joyce again. She had survived it all, thank God. Perhaps she would turn to him, now.

Stephen had taken a calculated gamble with Henry, but it seemed to have paid off. It had been a risk, admitting to colluding with Charlie in his disappearance, but a flat-out denial would never have washed with Henry. As it turned out, the half-truths he’d told seemed to satisfy the older man.

Stephen had gambled on two things. The second had been the big one. Stephen had gambled that Henry would accept that he could not survive without Stephen. That he would see Stephen as his only possible saviour, the only one who could steer Henry and Tanner-Max through the troubled times which undoubtedly lay ahead.

And Henry had fallen for it. Hook, line and sinker.

Vogel was right. Neither Henry Tanner nor Charlie Mildmay had engaged in arms deals with criminal organizations. That had been an invention of Stephen’s. A double bluff aimed at causing fear and distrust all round. It had been a considerable success too.

The subterfuge had been helped by the fact that Henry knew little about Stephen’s private life. He may have been vaguely aware of Stephen’s reunion with his natural father and his two elder brothers a few years previously, and of his African holidays. But he had no idea that Busani Mahlangu was now the leader of ZIPA, the Zimbabwe People’s Army, a breakaway arm of Zimbabwe’s official opposition party, the MDC, Movement for Democratic Change. Nor, of course, was Henry aware of Busani’s great pride in the educated son who was occasionally able to deliver to ZIPA, through complex and rather clever lines of supply, a small number of exceptional weapons.

And Henry would have been utterly astonished to learn that during his African holidays Stephen attended ZIPA training camps, where he was tutored in the use of those weapons by battle-hardened mercenaries.

Although he had proven to be something of a natural marksman, Stephen had never expected to make use of that training, nor of the Dragunov SVU he had kept for himself, concealed in a box beneath his bed, for reasons he could not quite explain. Just in case, he had told himself. Or maybe, simply because he could.

And ultimately he had not hesitated to use the Dragunov on Henry Tanner in pursuance of his aims. He’d trusted in his ability as a marksman, confident that he could inflict a non-fatal wound on the man he so revered. It was an act, as Stephen saw it, of damage limitation, made necessary by the fallout from Charlie’s psychotic attempts to reunite his family.

It did not occur to Stephen that most observers would regard his own behaviour as deranged.

Stephen was pretty pleased with himself.

At last, and under the most extraordinary circumstances, Henry Tanner seemed to have realized how much he needed Stephen.

Indeed, that Stephen was all he had left.

There remained only one lurking concern: that policeman, Vogel. The one with the intelligent eyes behind thick spectacles. He seemed a cut above the rest, Stephen thought. He was a planner and a thinker. A plotter. And Stephen knew one of those when he saw one.

He felt sure, as he had indicated to Henry, that it would be impossible to prove a case against him. He had covered his tracks every step of the way.

But would Vogel see through his carefully contrived smokescreen? Stephen wondered.

He did not know, of course, how close Vogel was to seeing through everything.