Хилари Боннер - Death Comes First

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.