Хилари Боннер - Death Comes First

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.