But the move hadn’t been for his benefit, or even his wife’s. They had uprooted themselves from London for their beloved daughter’s sake. And as far as Vogel was concerned, when it came to Rosamund no sacrifice was too great.
The truth was that he would do anything for his daughter.
As he folded his long frame into the passenger seat of the standard-issue Ford hatchback, Dawn Saslow flashed a smile in his direction. She was small and dark with big eyes and seemed to be bursting with energy and enthusiasm. Just looking at her made Vogel feel old and weary. She was also impatient to be on her way; before he’d had time to introduce himself the squad car took off with another squeal of tyres and shot into a momentary gap in the city-centre traffic.
A local girl, Saslow knew her way round all the back-doubles, but even so it wasn’t long before they found themselves caught in a crawling snake of vehicles inching along the Bath Road.
Saslow glanced at Vogel questioningly.
‘Go on then,’ murmured the DI with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
Saslow grinned as she switched on the squad car’s system of flashing lights and engaged the siren.
The procession of vehicles ahead veered to the left, as did the oncoming stream of traffic. Saslow guided the squad car at speed right down the middle.
‘Like the parting of the Red Sea,’ said Vogel, hunkering down in his seat.
‘Me Moses!’ said Saslow, flooring the accelerator.
She kept the lights flashing and the siren wailing for the rest of the journey and they seemed to reach Tarrant Park in no time.
Thanks to his morning’s research, Vogel knew that Tarrant Park was the brainchild of a Bristol-based architect who had wanted to recreate the rarefied atmosphere of the famous St George’s Hill development in Weybridge, where wealthy residents were closeted within a 900-acre estate with its own tennis club and golf course. The name, Tarrant Park, was a tribute to the man who created St George’s Hill in the early twentieth century: Surrey builder Walter George Tarrant. Mansions were built in painstaking parody of the past — mock-Tudor, Georgian, art deco, arts and crafts — each in a minimum of an acre of land, and loosely grouped together, according to their style, along leafy lanes, drawing their names from their periods of architectural inspiration. And so the Mildmay home, The Firs, stood in Palladian Close, whilst the faux-Tudor home of Henry and Felicity Tanner dominated the corner of Drake Road and Raleigh Way. The prices might be a fraction of its Thames Valley counterpart, where properties frequently changed hands for sums in excess of ten million pounds, but Tarrant Park had become the natural habitat of the Somerset nouveau riche, who believed that just living there gave them kudos.
Vogel, who had once attended the wedding reception of an old chum of his wife’s at St Georges Hill, knew what to expect.
He checked his watch: 1.06 p.m. Fred Mildmay had been reported missing four hours and one minute earlier. But despite continuing house-to-house enquiries, the investigation was no further forward. No one had seen Fred since he climbed the stairs to bed at eight thirty the previous evening.
A uniformed security guard opened the electronic security gates to let them in. Vogel wondered whether PCs Yardley and Bolton had managed to track down the guard who’d been on duty last night. Apparently he’d gone fishing straight after his shift. CCTV coverage of the gate area was also already being studied by the specialist unit back at Kenneth Steele House. In the meantime Vogel had little interest in the guard on duty that morning, who it seemed had little interest in Vogel. He didn’t bother to approach the vehicle, let alone check their identities. The rain, which was still falling heavily, may have been responsible for his reluctance to leave the shelter of the gatehouse. Vogel supposed it was fair enough that he would merely wave them through, but all the same he couldn’t help wondering about the diligence of the estate’s security operatives. Tarrant Park was a relatively trouble-free place. Professional burglars were inclined to pick easier targets, and the gated community would not be remotely on the radar of casual thieves or vandals. It was possible that the security guards who worked there were not as alert as they should be. They might also have been distracted by the big wedding reception which had been held at the tennis club the previous evening, resulting in a considerable number of strangers entering and leaving Tarrant Park throughout the day and evening.
PC Saslow motored slowly through the gates and Vogel began to look around him. Even though he thought he had known what to expect, he found his jaw dropping.
This was another world, an unreal world displaying little semblance to any sort of reality. Or to any sort of reality that Vogel had ever encountered. The houses were massive and imposing, each one set within a considerable expanse of land; some were not even visible from the leafy lanes which ran through the estate. Vogel felt no envy. Indeed, the thought of trying to make a home in such a closeted place filled him with horror.
‘Did you ever see that movie Stepford Wives?’ he enquired of PC Saslow, unknowingly echoing Joyce Mildmay’s opinion of the place.
‘No, sir,’ replied the PC.
‘No. Of course not. You’re too young.’
‘I like old movies, sir.’
‘Ummm, you should watch out for it on TV then.’
‘What’s it about, sir?’
‘It’s about a place where all the women are programmed to do as they’re told without question and to feel no emotion,’ said Vogel.
PC Saslow considered this for a moment.
‘Bit like your average police station, then,’ she said, flashing him a toothy grin.
Vogel was busy peering morosely through the rain at the street and house names. He wondered how Saslow could see to drive in the torrential downpour. The windscreen wipers could barely cope, and even though the air-conditioning was going full blast the windows were misting over.
He was just making a mental note to check whether it had been raining heavily all night, which would make it less likely that young Fred Mildmay would have run away from home voluntarily, when he spotted the sign.
‘There it is,’ he said, pointing back at the turning they had just driven past. ‘Palladian Close.’
Saslow reversed. Far too quickly, Vogel thought. Visibility was even worse through the rear window. He had become far more aware of the difficulties driving presented since he’d started taking lessons, and more and more convinced that every journey he took was likely to end in disaster. And that he would never learn to drive.
The Firs was the second property on the right. Later, when the media got wind of the boy’s disappearance, there would no doubt be crowds of reporters standing around in the rain, brandishing notebooks, microphones and cameras. For now though there was no one in sight.
The wrought-iron gates — which in Vogel’s estimation rivalled the Queen Mother memorial gates at the Park Lane entrance to Hyde Park both in size and vulgarity — opened as if by magic as they approached. The missing boy’s mother had known Vogel was on his way. She or someone in the house must have been looking out for his arrival.
The paved drive was fifty metres long and lined on either side by narrow flower beds planted with daffodils, now in the process of dying down at the end of their season. Each plant had been neatly tied. Vogel suspected that everything about this property, and more than likely the lifestyle of its occupants, would be similarly ordered. At the top of the drive was a circular turning area, mainly gravelled, with a shrub-surrounded ornamental fountain in the middle. To the left, just off the drive before the circular area was reached, was a covered parking area in which several cars were already parked. Saslow slowed down, but Vogel gestured for her to carry on and park in front of the porticoed mock-Georgian front entrance. As they climbed out of the car Vogel noticed that the door already stood open.