Death Comes First (41 page)

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.

Thirty-one

Immediately after their discussion in the hospital corridor, Vogel and Clarke returned to Kenneth Steele House. It was almost midnight. They were both oblivious to the hour, and well past weariness.

PC Bolton had come to collect them. He had also lost count of the hours he had been on duty.

Stephen Hardcastle was now the focus of the investigation. Vogel and Clarke needed to know everything about his past.

‘Whoever did that shooting knew how to handle a high-powered sniper rifle,’ said Vogel. ‘That calls for specialist training. From what we’ve been told, Hardcastle is not ex-military, nor was he a member of any shooting clubs or teams at school or university. On the other hand, I suspect there is an awful lot about Stephen Hardcastle that we don’t know.’

While Vogel set to work digging up information on the Internet, Clarke began double-checking Hardcastle’s whereabouts over the past few days and looking into every possible aspect of his behaviour. She was assisted by Bolton, who needed the overtime.

The duty IT man was called in to go over Charlie Mildmay’s abandoned laptop, and to be ready to examine the
computer equipment which they were expecting to bring in from Stephen Hardcastle’s home as soon as a warrant had been obtained.

‘Not that I expect there to be much on there,’ Vogel had said. ‘Our man is clever. He will have covered his tracks. He’s good at working on computers too. Probably better than he lets on. He will have used Charlie’s computer, not his own. And if he needed to use another one, I reckon it would have been a laptop that he’s now got rid of.’

Vogel’s Internet searches also revealed the fact that Stephen Hardcastle owned a powerboat, which was moored at Instow marina – the same place Charlie Mildmay had moored the
Molly May
. He asked PC Bolton to check it out.

Having raised the marina boss from his bed, Bolton was able to report that Stephen Hardcastle had in the late summer and autumn of 2013, just before and around the time of Charlie’s supposed death at sea, professed a previously unknown interest in night fishing.

‘So if he took his boat out at night it didn’t look unusual,’ said Bolton. ‘The marina chap didn’t know whether he went out at the time Charlie staged his disappearance, but he says nobody would have made anything of it if he did, because Hardcastle was known to go night fishing. There’s more too. He took his boat out yesterday afternoon, first time this year. He arrived at Instow about one o’clock, saying he fancied a quick spin, wanted to make sure she was ready for the summer, and he was out for about an hour. It’s a top-of-the-range Goldfish. A beast. Cost a pretty penny and goes like stink. I reckon Hardcastle steered straight out to sea, then dumped the gun and anything else that might incriminate him over the side, don’t you, boss?’

Vogel thought exactly that. ‘Good work, Bolton,’ he said.

Meanwhile, his own enquiries soon revealed the bare bones of Stephen Hardcastle’s early life in Africa and subsequent near reinvention in the UK. Once he discovered the Zimbabwe connection, Vogel wasted no time in contacting people who knew all about the militant Zimbabwe People’s Army and the involvement of Hardcastle’s father, along with his half-brothers, who were Busani Mahlangu’s first lieutenants in ZIPA.

He also learned that there had been a recent attempt on the life of a senior member of the Mugabe regime by a sniper armed with a Dragunov SVU, the same kind of rifle which had been ‘pilfered’ from Tanner-Max, and had almost certainly been used to shoot Henry Tanner.

Furthermore, Hardcastle was a frequent visitor to Zimbabwe.

At about two in the morning Vogel’s research was interrupted by a phone call, initially taken by PC Bolton.

‘It’s Frank Watts, DC at Barnstaple,’ said Bolton. ‘He and a uniform are with Charlie Mildmay’s parents. They’ve been breaking the news to them. Watts says he thinks you should speak to them straight away.’

Wondering what the Mildmays could have to say that was so urgent, Vogel took the telephone receiver from Bolton’s outstretched hand.

‘Yes,’ he said.

Frank Watts told him he was putting Mr Bill Mildmay on the line.

Charlie’s father sounded distraught. Hardly surprising, in light of the news he’d just been given about his son and grandchildren.

Bill Mildmay had insisted on speaking to someone
connected with the investigation because he believed he had crucial information to impart.

‘I don’t know if you are aware that my wife and I adopted our son Charlie,’ he said.

Vogel was not aware of it. Neither did it seem to be relevant. But he allowed Bill Mildmay to continue.

‘We adopted Charlie when he was seven years old. He came to us after both his parents were killed in a motor incident. First of all we fostered him, then we adopted him. He was a sweet little boy
 . . .
’ Bill Mildmay broke off, his breathing coming in short, sharp gasps. A moment later he resumed: ‘We never had any trouble with Charlie. He seemed to get over it all quite quickly. So we never talked about it. He was clever at school. He sailed through everything. Then he married Joyce. There was that beautiful house, an excellent job in the family business. It was as if he had a charmed life. And the grandchildren, those beautiful beautiful children
 . . .
’

Bill broke off again. Vogel could hear a woman, presumably Charlie’s adoptive mother, sobbing in the background.

‘Please go on, Mr Mildmay,’ Vogel encouraged.

‘Yes, well, we knew he could be a bit moody. But can’t we all? We never thought there was anything wrong. Not really. Not enough for us to upset Charlie, to remind him of terrible things we hoped he’d forgotten. We should have done though. We know that now. We were heartbroken when we thought he’d been lost at sea. But this, this is worse, much worse. We blame ourselves, you see. If only we’d told him all of it. Maybe he could have got help. We blame ourselves now for what’s happened. It’s our fault that Molly and little Fred are dead. Our fault.’

Vogel could hear Bill Mildmay stifling a sob.

‘Why do you blame yourself, Mr Mildmay?’ he asked.
‘How on earth can it be your fault that your grandchildren are dead?’

‘Charlie’s parents died the same way,’ replied Bill Mildmay in little more than a whisper. ‘Their car went off the quayside into the river at Bideford, when the tide was in. Charlie was in the back. He got out – we never quite knew how. The police said there was one window open and they think Charlie scrambled through it and floated to the surface. They said an adult would have been unable to make it. But this was a seven-year-old boy, Detective Inspector, desperate to survive. Think what he must have experienced. He never spoke about it. It was as if he’d blanked it out. We thought it was for the best – people didn’t talk things through back then like they’re taught to now.’

Again Bill Mildmay struggled to compose himself. Vogel remained silent, waiting for the other man to speak.

‘His mother was driving,’ Mildmay continued eventually. ‘Charlie’s mother drove her car, with her husband and son inside, into the River Torridge at high tide. We knew that the police always suspected she did it deliberately, but they couldn’t prove it. You see, Charlie’s mother was schizophrenic, Mr Vogel. Seriously so. She’d been in and out of hospitals all her life. And we never told Charlie. My wife and I now think he must have been ill. How else could he have done what he did? We think he inherited his mother’s schizophrenia, Mr Vogel. And we never told him about it, never told him he might be at risk, never gave him the opportunity to be medically checked, to be given the right medication. Looking back, we ignored all sorts of signs. Charlie was always so changeable. Look at his life: one minute he was a hippie leftie, the next he was part of the establishment, a successful businessman. We told ourselves it was all just Charlie. Our loveable
Charlie. We wanted everything to be all right, so we told ourselves that it was, and we told Charlie nothing. That, Detective Inspector, is why we blame ourselves for the death or our grandchildren.’

Vogel was thoughtful when he ended the call. It didn’t make any difference now whether or not Charlie Mildmay had been suffering from schizophrenia, but what Bill Mildmay had told him made terrible sense. It explained why Charlie had become so vulnerable. And if Vogel’s assessment of the sequence of events leading to this dreadful night was correct, it explained why he’d proved so susceptible to the manipulative trickery of Stephen Hardcastle.

‘I’m damned sure that bastard is the real villain, boss, and we have to make sure he doesn’t get away with it,’ he told Nobby Clarke after he had filled her in on his telephone conversation with Bill Mildmay.

At the same time another lead was being explored by the technical department. Henry Tanner had called Stephen Hardcastle on his mobile shortly before being shot. The tech boys had now been able to pinpoint where Hardcastle had been when he took that call.

He had not been in his home overlooking the harbour, as he had maintained when questioned following the shooting. Stephen had either been in Traders’ Court or adjacent to it. Vogel was of the opinion that his precise location had been on top of one of the buildings overlooking Traders’ Court.

This evidence established that Hardcastle had lied, and that he had been at the scene of the crime shortly before Henry Tanner was shot.

‘We’ve got enough to arrest him now, surely, boss,’ said Vogel excitedly.

DCI Clarke agreed.

At 4.30 a.m., Vogel, Clarke, Bolton, and a team of uniforms, including an armed response unit, arrived at Stephen Hardcastle’s Bristol waterside apartment. Given the close association with firearms Hardcastle was now known to have, Vogel and Clarke were taking no chances.