Хилари Боннер - Death Comes First

She instinctively withdrew from the man who had been the centre of her universe for so long. One thing Felicity knew for certain was that she didn’t want him to touch her. And she wasn’t sure if she would want him to touch her ever again.

Henry let his arm fall on to the bed.

‘There has been an incident involving your daughter’s vehicle,’ Nobby Clarke continued. ‘Her Range Rover is believed to have veered off the quayside at Hotwell Road into the harbour. I am afraid it is still submerged, and we are unsure—’

‘I-is she dead? Is Joyce dead?’ Felicity had to interrupt. That was surely the news they were bringing.

Almost immediately a second thought occurred to her.

‘And M-Molly? W-what about Molly? Was she in the car?’

‘Joyce is alive,’ replied Clarke. ‘She is already here in A & E in this hospital. She ingested a lot of water and is very weak, but I understand she is expected to make a full recovery—’

‘And Molly?’ Felicity interrupted again. ‘What about Molly?’

‘I am afraid we believe that Molly was also in the car, and... at any rate, when we left the scene...’

Clarke glanced towards Vogel, then continued to speak, choosing her words with care, as Vogel had done earlier when speaking to Joyce.

‘When we left the scene, Molly had yet to be recovered.’

Henry seemed suddenly to be wide awake.

‘No, oh no,’ he gasped.

Felicity gave a little cry, a kind of low moan. She didn’t even try to speak.

Clarke took a deep breath.

‘On the way here we heard from the leader of the dive team now at work at the scene that there are actually three other people still trapped in the car,’ she said. ‘Two young women, one of them very young, and a child, a boy. We understand that all three are believed to have drowned.’

Felicity could barely take it in.

She supposed she was in deep shock. She was devastated but she could not cry. Felicity remained dry-eyed. She felt empty of everything. Henry began to weep. Felicity heard him sob then saw big tears rolling down his cheeks. She had never seen her husband cry before, not even when their only son had been killed. He reached out to her. Again she avoided his grasp. She knew he was to blame for it all. She just knew it. One way or another, Henry would be to blame. At that moment she hated him.

Eventually she found her voice. Barely. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.

Clarke ploughed on: ‘Your daughter referred to her children being still in the car, and told us that she had found Fred—’

Henry interrupted this time. Loudly. Calling out desperately through his tears.

‘No,’ he shouted. ‘No. It can’t be. It can’t.’

Nobby Clarke didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. She had to tell them everything straight away.

‘We therefore have reason to believe the boy is probably your grandson.’

Felicity still couldn’t take it in.

‘But Joyce is always such a careful driver,’ she said.

She knew as soon as she heard herself make the remark that it was silly. It was the first thing that had come into her head. Joyce was a careful driver.

‘How could something like this have happened?’ Felicity continued. ‘How could she go off the road like that?’

‘Mrs Tanner, we do not believe that your daughter was driving the vehicle when it went into the Floating Harbour,’ said Vogel. ‘We believe a man was driving.’

Felicity was bewildered. ‘A man? What man?’

‘We believe that the driver was your son-in-law, Charles, Charlie, Mildmay.’

Felicity could barely believe her ears. She was incapable at first of comprehending. She was aware of Henry, trying to pull himself, as much as he were able to, into an upright sitting position. She couldn’t read the expression on his tear-stained face. He was shocked and distraught, yes. But there was something else.

Suddenly she felt that she understood. That she was aware of what his expression meant.

‘You knew, Henry, you bastard,’ she said. ‘You knew Charlie was alive.’

After her outburst there was a brief silence in the room. Henry remained sitting upright, but closed his eyes again, screwing the lids tightly shut, as if in so doing he might make the world, to which he had been so cruelly reintroduced, disappear.

Vogel had to feel sympathy for him, as well as for his wife. These were two broken people. A man and a woman reeling from the shock of having been told that they’d lost two grandchildren, and whose entire family life now lay in total ruin.

It was DCI Clarke who broke the silence first.

‘I am so terribly sorry to be bringing you this terrible news,’ she said. ‘Is there anyone you would like us to call, anyone you would like to be here with you?’

Eventually Felicity found her voice again. ‘Th-there’s our eldest grandson.’ She stopped, realizing what she had said. What the events of that day meant. ‘Mark, our only grandson,’ she continued quietly. ‘He was here earlier. He went looking for his mother and his sister. I don’t know where he is. But I can call him. Oh my God, he doesn’t know. I must call him. I wouldn’t want anyone else to tell him.’

‘All right,’ responded Clarke. ‘Look, Mr and Mrs Tanner, we have a lot more questions for you which may help us piece together what has happened here. Most of it can wait, but there are a couple that can’t.

‘As DI Vogel has said, we believe the Range Rover was being driven by Charlie Mildmay, your daughter’s husband. Your daughter told us that. Now, he was registered as missing, presumed dead in January, was he not? And I understand an inquest scheduled for later this year was expected to declare him officially dead?’

Felicity was staring at her husband, who looked every bit as shocked and surprised as his wife did. Vogel wondered if Henry’s reaction was entirely genuine. He suspected that the older man might be a good actor.

As if reading the DI’s thoughts, Felicity turned on her husband: ‘Henry, what do you know about this? Did you know Charlie was alive? I’ll bet everything I’ve got left in this world that you know something. You always bloody do. So why don’t you just tell it? All of it. Now. Or so help me, God, I promise you our marriage will end this minute.’

Felicity’s voice had grown in volume. She seemed to have little control over it. And she didn’t look as if she cared one jot.

Henry reached out to her again. Again she pulled away from him.

‘Darling, I promise you, I had no idea Charlie was alive,’ Henry said. ‘If he is. Or I mean, if he was until today.’

He turned his head slightly to focus on Nobby Clarke.

‘That’s the truth, Detective Chief Inspector,’ he said. ‘In fact I had reason to believe Charlie had killed himself...’

‘You bastard, Henry,’ Felicity interrupted. ‘You always said, when we all wondered how Charlie, such an expert sailor, could have died in that sort of accident, that you had no reason to suspect he would have committed suicide. Why would he? That’s what you said. Why would a man with everything to live for want to end his life?’

‘I was trying to protect you, Felicity,’ said Henry. ‘Like I always do. There were things it was better you didn’t know about. There still are.’

‘How can you say that, Henry?’ she demanded. ‘How the hell can you say that right now? Half your family has been wiped out.’

Felicity turned to face Nobby Clarke.

‘The man you think is Charlie — is he dead now? Or has he survived this... this terrible accident, or whatever it was?’ she asked.

‘Yes. He has also been brought to this hospital.’

‘Is he conscious?’

‘I am afraid I have no details of his medical condition,’ Clarke replied.