Death Comes First (7 page)

Charlie was a capable and experienced sailor. He had set off on the fateful two-day voyage over the first weekend of November 2013, during an interlude of unseasonably good weather, saying it would be his last sail before winterizing the
Molly May
. It was believed that Charlie had fallen into the water whilst changing the rigging, and been swept out into the Atlantic. But Joyce found it hard to accept that he would have been foolhardy enough to sail alone without wearing a safety harness. Unless he had lost the desire to keep himself safe.

‘Do you think it’s possible Charlie might have taken his own life?’ she had asked her father.

Henry’s response had been predictable.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling,’ he had said. ‘Charlie had everything to live for. Why on earth would he do such a thing?’

‘You must have noticed that he suffered from depression.’

‘Joyce darling, I am sure Charlie would never have left you and the kids. Besides, people who commit suicide leave notes, don’t they?’

‘That’s a myth,’ she said. ‘I looked it up online. The majority of suicide cases leave no note.’

‘Oh, darling, don’t torture yourself,’ her father responded. ‘Your husband loved you and the children to bits. Yes, he used to get a bit down sometimes, but not enough to think life wasn’t worth living. And he would never have done anything to cause you and the kids such pain.’

Henry Tanner was at his most reassuring. But Joyce was sure she saw a flicker of doubt in his eyes.

She didn’t pursue it though. Charlie’s death had to have been an accident. She reminded herself how absent-minded and accident prone he had become in the months leading up to his death. There had been a succession of incidents, some of which seemed to be at least partly his own fault, and some not. He had sprained his wrist aboard the
Molly May
when he slipped on spilt oil – and Charlie would normally keep the deck spotless. He’d narrowly avoided being hit by falling roof slates while walking past a Bristol building site. And then the brakes nearly failed on his car due to leaking fluid.

Joyce had to believe that Charlie’s death was down to carelessness or bad luck. The last thing she wanted was to further distress her children by suggesting he committed suicide. It had taken weeks before the younger two could bring themselves to accept that their father was dead. Fred and Molly had been oblivious to the stresses and strains that had dogged their parents’ marriage. Joyce suspected that Mark knew things were not as they should be, but he never mentioned it – which was typical of the men in her family.

Charlie kept the
Molly May
at Instow in North Devon. Forty-eight hours after he steered her from the Torridge Estuary out into the Atlantic she was spotted drifting off
Hartland Point, driven there by the prevailing southwesterly. Appledore lifeboat was called and a rescue helicopter from Chivenor. The
Molly May
’s tender was still attached by a line and the yacht’s inflatable life raft remained on board. There was no sign of Charlie. An intensive helicopter search resulted in the discovery of a life jacket, bright yellow in grey waters, which was identified by its markings as having belonged to Charlie and the
Molly May
.

A police investigation found no reason to suspect foul play. It was explained to Joyce by a helpful representative of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency that it was not uncommon for victims of accidents at sea to slip out of their life jackets when they hit water, particularly if they’d failed to fasten the strap which should be secured between their legs – a surprisingly frequent lapse in safety procedure. The absence of a body was not uncommon, she was told. The body of a drowned man would sink, rise after three to five days, sink again, then rise once more after eighteen to thirty days. If, however, the body was hit by a passing vessel or became entangled in an underwater obstruction, or if parts of it were eaten by sea creatures, the remains might never be recovered.

Joyce spared her children the gruesome details, but she felt she had to give them a diluted version of what had befallen their father.

Charlie was dead. How he had died would probably never be known. But there would be no miraculous rescue. And in the end even Molly and Fred came to acknowledge that.

There had been no funeral, because there was no body, but the family arranged a memorial service. They were still awaiting the inquest, which they were assured would declare him dead ‘in absentia’ and allow a death certificate to be issued. In the meantime Joyce had set about trying to rebuild
their lives, taking things day by day. It struck her that, with or without Charlie, that was the way her life had always been, and it was how she expected it always to remain.

Until that letter from the dead had dropped through her letterbox.

The letter which would change everything.

Three

Joyce had no idea how long she had been sitting at the kitchen table staring unseeingly through the window at the far end of the room. Outside, it had finally stopped raining and the sun, peeping out from behind a large cloud, filled the kitchen with white light.

Her coffee had gone cold, like the previous cups. She poured it down the sink.

There were so many unanswered questions. Perhaps her earlier misgivings had been correct. Was the letter, which still lay on the table, some kind of bizarre suicide note? Or did it indicate that Charlie believed he might be in danger from others? Had the police investigation missed something? Was it possible that a third party had been involved, that Charlie had been murdered?

Joyce gave herself a mental shaking. She couldn’t allow herself to be stampeded into some desperate course of action by a letter which might turn out to be the product of paranoia brought on by the cocktail of prescription meds Charlie had been taking.

Even if the danger to her children turned out to be genuine, there was no way she could do as Charlie had instructed. If would have been hard enough if they were babies, but it
was inconceivable that she could persuade fifteen-year-old Molly and eleven-year-old Fred to leave behind their friends, their schools, their treasured possessions and run away with their mother – without a word to anyone. Just as it was inconceivable that she could ever abandon her first-born, no matter that he was now a young man of twenty-two.

Perhaps if she understood the nature of whatever threat was facing them she would feel differently, but the letter conveyed nothing beyond Charlie’s anxiety and mistrust of her father. Too bad he hadn’t seen fit to confide in her before he went and fell off his bloody boat. If there was a threat of such enormity that his family had no option but to take flight because of it, surely even a man as secretive and moody as Charlie would have thought to broach the subject with his wife?

His letter had done nothing but raise questions for which she had no answers.
He won’t be interested in Molly
– what did that mean, for God’s sake? Was he implying that Henry was some sort of paedophile?

An outsider who knew nothing of Henry Tanner might leap to that conclusion, but while Joyce was the first to admit that he was manipulative and devious, she had never known her father to behave in any way that was remotely inappropriate. Certainly she had never experienced anything untoward during her own childhood. But then again, Charlie had said that Molly was safe, so the inference was that Henry was only interested in boys, that he was in some way grooming Fred and already had Mark under his control.

The thought sent a cold clammy shiver down Joyce’s spine. But she forced herself to consider the possibility. She had grown up with a brother two years older than her. Was it possible that Henry had been abusing William without her
knowledge? Had there been anything, anything whatsoever, in her father’s relationship with her brother that might, if only with hindsight, have been disturbing?

Joyce could think of nothing. William had been a happy, confident child. Henry frequently took him on golfing trips and other ‘boys’ adventures’ as he called them, but far from being fearful at the prospect of spending time alone with his father, William had always been excited and enthusiastic, and on their return would talk endlessly about whatever they’d got up to.

Henry was a big man, and physically expansive. He was forever hugging his family, male and female. In her mind’s eye, Joyce could see him standing by the fireplace with his arm around William’s shoulders. The two had been very close, there was no doubt about that, but the idea of Henry having a sexual relationship with his son was preposterous. In fact the idea of Henry having a physical relationship with anyone of his own gender was inconceivable. He might proclaim himself liberal and non-judgemental when it came to homosexuality, but on the rare occasions she’d seen him in the company of gay men there had been an awkwardness and sometimes a distinct coolness in his manner. Try as she might to entertain the possibility that her father was a closet gay, Joyce could see no evidence of it.

And yet Charlie’s letter had made it clear that Henry was the source of the danger. And that his concern was only for his sons, not his daughter
 . . .

Joyce felt as if she was going around in circles, getting nowhere. Part of her wanted to confront her father and demand to know what he had done that might cause Charlie to write such a letter. But she knew it was pointless. Henry would tell her not to torment herself, that there was absolutely
nothing to worry about – all the usual platitudes. The one thing he would never do was treat her as an adult and an equal and divulge whatever he might know on the subject. If she wanted answers, she would have to come up with a more devious approach.

The silence was shattered by the sound of the front door opening and voices in the hall. Joyce glanced up at the clock on the wall: ten past four. Molly and Fred were home from school, delivered to the door by Henry’s driver. Unlike other mothers, Joyce didn’t have to worry about doing the school run; her father saw to it she was cosseted in that as in everything.

She sprang to her feet and hid Charlie’s letter and the two envelopes under the bread bin, then made ready to greet her two younger children with the smiling hug they would expect.

As usual, Fred’s first words as he bounded into the kitchen and flung himself at her were, ‘What’s for tea, Mum?’

Tall for his age with floppy dirty-blond hair like his dad’s, Fred sniffed the air theatrically.

‘I can’t smell anything,’ he said.

Joyce was a good cook and enjoyed cooking. On school days she always served the children’s evening meal at five, but she’d been so preoccupied by the letter she had completely forgotten about food.

‘I decided we’d treat ourselves and order in a pizza,’ she said, thinking on her feet.

Fred’s face split into a wide gap-toothed grin that was the image of his father’s – except that his father hadn’t had gaps in his teeth. Or not by the time Joyce met him, anyway.

‘Wow! On a school night. Cool.’ Then his expression turned thoughtful. ‘It’s not my birthday, and I haven’t done
anything good, I don’t think. Well, not particularly good. Why the special treat? Has Molly done something good?’

His big sister nudged him. She took after her mother and was small, dark and pale skinned.

‘What?’ Fred demanded.

‘Think before you speak, you little monster,’ said Molly, nudging him again.

‘What?’ said Fred, frowning.

‘You know Mum gets sad sometimes. She’s missing Dad. She doesn’t always want to cook like she used to.’

Fred stared at Joyce with big eyes full of remorse. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Joyce. ‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for, sweetheart. Your mum’s been lazy today, that’s all.’

She wondered what she had done to be blessed with children so perceptive and sensitive to others’ needs. Unlike his elder brother, who seemed to have inherited the Tanner gene for impenetrable inscrutability, Fred’s every emotion was reflected in his face. There had been a time when Mark was open and unguarded too, and in light of Charlie’s letter Joyce couldn’t help wondering what manner of indoctrination into the Tanner way of life he’d been subjected to at the hands of his grandfather, particularly since Charlie’s death. A frisson of panic ran through her again: perhaps Charlie had had a point. Perhaps something did need to be done to prevent her younger children falling under the spell of their grandfather.

Joyce realized Fred and Molly were studying her intently. They’d barely been in the house five minutes and already they were picking up on her anxiety. How would she get through the rest of the evening without alerting them to the fact that something was amiss?

It struck her then just how desperately she needed to
confide in someone, to vent her fears, and with luck find some answers – and she knew just the person to turn to. A pizza delivery would let her off parental duties for at least an hour, long enough to nip down the road to her mother and show her the letter, see whether she had any idea what could have prompted it. Henry’s driver wouldn’t have made it back to the office yet, so there was no way her father would be home before six. That left the coast clear for her to speak to Felicity alone.

Galvanized by the prospect that some answers might be within reach, Joyce reached out, wrapped an arm around each child and pulled them close to her.

‘Thank you, my darlings,’ she said. ‘I’m not really sad. Well, no more than usual, anyway. It’s just that I need to see your grandmother about something, and she was out when I called by earlier. I thought if we ordered pizza I could pop over now for an hour. You can order, if you like, Molly. Four seasons for me. Choose anything you want for yourselves – but easy on the garlic bread.’

‘What time will you be back?’ asked Molly.

‘I shouldn’t be long. Have them deliver at five thirty, if you can wait that long. And look after the monster for me, darling.’

‘I’m not a monster,’ said Fred.

‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ said Joyce.

It took two minutes for Joyce to walk to her parents’ house. Felicity was in the kitchen putting the finishing touches to a steak-and-kidney pie – Henry’s favourite. She seemed surprised to see her daughter.