‘Who do you mean by “they” Mrs Mildmay?’ asked Vogel.
Joyce Mildmay looked startled. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m saying. Ever since Fred disappeared I’ve been thinking Charlie was right, that there’s some sort of conspiracy. And I don’t know who’s behind it, do I? It’s got to the point where I don’t know if I can trust my own mother. Or my son — my lovely son Mark, who took charge of everything this morning. And then there’s my father. I’m damned sure I can’t trust my father. Charlie was obviously right about him. I mean, he’s got to have been mixed up in something, else he wouldn’t have been shot.’ The desperation was evident in her voice as she added, ‘I want to know what he has to say for himself.’
And that makes two of us, thought Vogel. Only he had been effectively banned from Henry Tanner’s bedside. Perhaps Joyce Mildmay was right, and they were both being prevented from hearing what Henry had to say.
‘I understand how you feel,’ he said.
‘I am going to see Dad, Mr Vogel,’ Joyce continued. ‘Whether the rest of them like it or not.’
‘Maybe we can talk again after you have done so,’ responded Vogel, a tad lamely, he thought. What he wanted to do was to go with her. But that wasn’t in his brief.
If Joyce heard what he said she showed no sign of it. She seemed to have her own agenda now.
‘I’m not waiting here any longer,’ she said. ‘If Fred comes back, he isn’t going to disappear again because I’m not here. I’m going to the hospital, and I’m taking Molly with me. I’m not letting my daughter out of my sight.’
Vogel was on the brink of offering to take her there, but even he drew the line at so blatantly disobeying the direct order of a senior officer.
Joyce stormed out of the sitting room and headed for the kitchen. Vogel followed her. Molly and PC Saslow were sitting at the table. Vogel had an idea.
‘Saslow could go with you to the hospital — you shouldn’t be on your own,’ he told Joyce.
He was thinking that, even if he were not allowed near Henry Tanner, it might be possible that he could glean something second-hand from PC Saslow. Nobby Clarke might be less guarded with the young PC than she was with an experienced DI with legendary antennae.
Joyce glowered at him. ‘I don’t want or need a bloody nursemaid in blue. And I won’t be alone. I shall have my daughter with me.’
Vogel was in no position to insist. No family member had been accused of any crime. And that included Henry Tanner. He could only watch as Joyce led a distraught Molly out of the house and installed her in the passenger seat of the family Range Rover before climbing behind the wheel.
Meanwhile, Henry Tanner was lying in a private room in the spanking new Brunel building at Southmead Hospital. It even had a balcony. He’d been moved there from A & E as soon as the bullet lodged in his shoulder had been removed. He would require further surgery on his shattered bones, but had been told that was unlikely to be thought advisable until at least the following day.
Henry hadn’t had the strength to arrange the move himself, and he doubted that any of his family would have had the presence of mind to do so at such a time. The innovative design of the new Brunel building, and a budget unusually high for the NHS in the current climate, meant that the majority of patients at Southmead would soon be given private rooms with en suite facilities. And Henry was merely one of a number already installed in such rooms. But he didn’t know that. He was convinced that he was being given privileged treatment because of who he was. And he was also convinced that he knew who had arranged it. There were people in high places whom he believed would not want him to remain in A & E in a state of delirium any longer than necessary, nor to be placed in a ward alongside other patients.
For the first time in his life, Henry was afraid, truly afraid, as he lay there, wondering who in the world he could trust, and how he was going to get the remains of his family out of this mess.
There was one person, he supposed. There always had been. He’d alerted Mr Smith as soon as Fred disappeared, and then again when he and Stephen Hardcastle had been taken to Lockleaze police station. And Mr Smith, whose weighty presence from afar had been part of his life for so long that Henry could barely remember a time without it, had delivered. Stephen’s interview had been brought to a close in the nick of time and the hounds, in the form of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary, had been called off. Mr Smith had not, however, been able to throw any light on the matter of Fred’s disappearance. Neither, Henry feared, would Mr Smith be of much assistance in apprehending the sniper who had shot Henry that morning.
Henry suspected that the person responsible was not someone he had come into contact with due to his dealings with Mr Smith. It remained a possibility that the Mr Smith connection was at the root of it all, of course. But Henry didn’t think so.
Felicity and Mark were at Henry’s bedside. Though he had a terrible headache and his right shoulder was in agony, Henry was fully conscious. But he chose to continue to keep his eyes shut most of the time, and to feign confusion when he did open them, because it suited him. Henry Tanner always did what suited him. Being shot wasn’t about to change that.
He wasn’t ready to answer questions from his wife or any of his family, come to that. And he certainly wasn’t ready to answer questions from the police.
Henry had taken over every aspect of Tanner-Max from his father, and had long ago come to the conclusion that only he could keep all aspects of the company’s activities operational. Charlie had turned out to be a grave disappointment; he was every bit as weak as he had described himself in that damned letter. And Henry despised weak men. Weak men had their uses, but they were dangerous. It was thanks to Charlie that cracks had begun to appear within the Tanner business and family, cracks that over the last few days had split into huge chasms. It was thanks to Charlie that Henry had been shot. And it was probably thanks to Charlie that young Fred had disappeared.
Henry had suspected from the start that Charlie had taken his own life. He’d been an experienced sailor, and the weather conditions when he’d disappeared had been favourable for the time of year.
Then there was the letter. That letter. Stephen Hardcastle had assured Henry it was not an uncommon occurrence for someone to write a letter to their nearest and dearest to be opened only after their death, even when the writer was a healthy and relatively young man. Henry was not so sure.
He had kept his suspicions to himself, but he knew things about Charlie, things of which nobody else in the family was aware. Least of all Joyce.
The pain emanating from Henry’s shoulder and coursing through the entire right side of his body was excruciating. He had been injected with morphine earlier. The effects seemed to be wearing off with a vengeance. Henry Tanner had always been both physically and mentally an extremely strong man. However, he was almost seventy and he knew that this injury was sapping his strength. Not only physically. He didn’t have his usual mental strength either.
He opened one eye a crack. There was a third person in the room. A tall, striking woman, well dressed, confident. He had been aware of her presence in the ambulance too. Probably some sort of plainclothes police officer. Henry needed to know exactly what sort before he said anything. He needed help. But it had to be specialist help. And he thought this woman might be the person to give him that help. She wasn’t just some local plod, that much he was certain of.
Felicity and Mark were talking non-stop. He wondered if they’d been told that was what they should do to keep him alert.