He resumed his covert checks on the Tanner family, focusing on the three aborted investigations into Tanner-Max. The first had taken place in the 1970s, when Edward Tanner had been running the company. There had been a second in the early 1990s, by which time Henry was chief executive. The third and most recent investigation had got underway in 2001. Vogel assumed there would be a box-file in the archives filled with papers detailing the findings of the first investigation. The latter two investigations were on the computer database, but there was a suspicious lack of detail. And each investigation had been closed with no reason given. There were no further references to Tanner-Max on file after the aborted 2001 investigation.
Vogel decided to instigate checks on every officer whose name featured in connection with the investigations. He had always preferred assimilating data to talking to people, and the events of the previous afternoon had only confirmed to him that his preference was the right one.
They, that anonymous ‘they’ responsible for giving him orders he considered to be often incomprehensible and occasionally reprehensible, couldn’t stop him using his brain, he thought. Not yet anyway.
After an hour of searching he had found no links between any of the officers, no common thread connecting the investigations, nor even any clear indication as to what had triggered these three investigations into the affairs of Tanner-Max.
He was debating his next line of enquiry when there was a knock on his office door. Without waiting for an invitation to enter, in walked a tall blonde woman wearing a sharply tailored black trouser suit. Vogel’s jaw dropped. Literally. He had to make a concerted physical effort to close it.
Detective Chief Inspector Nobby Clarke looked at him with amused eyes.
Vogel struggled to his feet, almost knocking over his chair in the process. It was DCI Clarke who had headhunted Vogel, then a humble Met sergeant stationed at Charing Cross, to her Central London Murder and Serious Incident Team.
He still remembered with embarrassment his gauche behaviour when he had discovered that Nobby Clarke was not some wizened old male detective but an attractive woman. It was the name which had thrown him, of course. Nobody in the Met had ever managed to discover her real first name — assuming that she hadn’t been christened Nobby. Even the DCI’s driving licence, temporarily removed from her handbag one day by a pair of determined and devious detectives, gave her name as Nobby Clarke.
Vogel and Clarke liked and respected each other. Indeed Clarke had not been best pleased when Vogel requested a transfer to the Avon and Somerset Constabulary so soon after she had secured his MIT appointment, but he knew that she understood his reasons.
He was aware that Clarke too had a new job. He’d heard through the grapevine only a couple of weeks previously that she had been appointed to the recently reformed National Crime Squad, operating out of Scotland Yard, and primarily dealing with matters of importance to the state, and acts of terrorism. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might be the London ‘brass’ sent to take over his operation. Why would it? How could the disappearance of an eleven-year-old child in Bristol merit the attention of the National Crime Squad? All the same, he was inordinately pleased to see Nobby Clarke.
‘Bloody hell, boss,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘All right, Vogel, take it easy. Am I that great a shock?’
Vogel smiled. ‘Yep, but you’ve no idea how glad I am to see you, boss. I hadn’t a clue who was going to be sent here, and nobody’s told me what’s going on. I’ve been trying to run an investigation with both hands cuffed behind my back and a blindfold on.’
Clarke raised one eyebrow. Vogel had never been able to do that.
‘Run an investigation?’ she queried. ‘I thought DCI Hemmings was SIO?’
‘Yeah, well, you know what I mean.’
‘I sure do, Vogel.’
‘I just need to know what’s going on, so that I can do my job, that’s all.’
‘Don’t expect me to be able to tell you much — not yet, anyway,’ said the DCI, sitting down in the chair opposite Vogel’s desk. ‘In the meantime, we have a child to find. So let’s get on with it, shall we?’
‘Right boss,’ said Vogel, his spirits rising even though he was still none the wiser as to why Henry Tanner’s family should command special treatment.
Fourteen
Henry Tanner felt lower than ever. He was the strongest of men. His complex way of life, his predilection for keeping so much of himself and his activities secret from most of his family and those around him, or at the very least compartmentalized, had made him so. But any sort of rejection from his family, not to mention an accusation as terrible as the one his daughter had made against him, was more than he could bear.
Also he had spent the night alone in his bed, because Felicity had decided to stay over at The Firs with her daughter. Henry was used to travelling alone; Felicity never accompanied him to London or on his occasional working trips abroad. He did not believe in mixing his family life and business. So throughout his marriage he had, sometimes for a night or two, sometimes a week or more, been accustomed to sleeping alone. Because Henry never shared his bed with anyone else. He was the most faithful of husbands.
But at his family home, the Corner House, he had never spent a single night without Felicity by his side. Until now.
It felt strange. Very strange indeed.
His alarm clock went off as usual at 6.30 a.m. It didn’t wake him. He was already awake. He had hardly slept all night. As soon as the alarm bleeped, he rose, went downstairs, put the kettle on and picked up the kitchen phone to call his wife on her mobile. Even at that hour he was sure everyone at The Firs would be up and about. In fact he doubted any of them would have had much more sleep than he’d managed. But he had no intention of calling the house phone at The Firs. He didn’t know what he would say if Joyce answered the phone. And on present form he feared she could even hang up on him.
When his daughter had launched her attack on him the previous evening Henry had felt his legs buckle. His head went cold, as if his life’s blood were draining from him. He suspected he’d turned quite grey. He’d been so shocked by Joyce’s tirade that he hadn’t even tried to defend himself when she had accused him of abducting Fred.
Afterwards he’d gone to the kitchen to join the rest of his family, along with Stephen, Janet, Monika, and Jim Grant.
Felicity had told him that Stephen had left in a taxi. Henry suspected he’d left because he was embarrassed. Henry was embarrassed too. He hated the thought of anyone seeing signs of weakness in him, so he asked Geoff to drive him home to the Corner House. He could have walked the hundred metres that separated the two houses, but he was afraid there might be reporters hovering at the end of the drive, and he didn’t want to have to walk past them. On the way in he’d noticed a dark Mercedes estate car with tinted windows parked opposite the gates to The Firs. As Geoff had used his remote to open the gates and begun to steer the Bentley through, a young woman had leapt out of the estate car. Henry was sure he had guessed correctly, that this was a lurking news team, and that a photographer was hiding behind those tinted windows with camera focused on the entrance to The Firs. He’d wondered how they had got into Tarrant Park, and made a mental note to call security, give them a bollocking and tell them to sort out the press presence. But he just didn’t have the energy.
He had felt numb. He still felt numb.
Felicity answered on the third ring.