The Secret Dawn

by Solomon Carter

  They paused and listened for the telltale sounds of movement inside, then Hogarth advanced and rattled the black iron door knocker. He breathed in, out, and rattled again. Silence. Hogarth looked at Palmer.

  “He could still be with Yvette George.”

  “Making the beast with two backs,” said Hogarth. “Not something I’d want to see… but wait a sec.”

  Hogarth knelt down and stuck his thumbs into the black metal letter box and pushed up the sprung lid. He peered inside, looking down the hallway into the living room beyond. The place was spacious but silent, and it was in very good order. There were shiny dark wooden floors, plush sofas, a huge TV, and a light fitting which might have been a chandelier. He saw the neon flower bouquet from Rochford – definitely a two-ninety-nine supermarket job – lying on the floor by the couch. The purple chocolate box had made it into the living room, perched on the arm of the sofa, ready to be enjoyed in front of the TV. The lid looked like it had already been popped open. It looked like Reville couldn’t help himself.

  “He’s out,” said Hogarth, with an air of resignation. “Doesn’t mean Grant Dawn isn’t around though. Come on. Keep your eyes peeled on the way back to the car. Next stop, Yvette George’s love nest. Let’s hope we interrupt them before Grant Dawn does…”

  They walked down Beach Road towards the junction with York Road, their eyes scanning toward the high street. Grant Dawn was a distinctive man, tall, slender, and square shouldered. He wouldn’t have been hard to spot, but they saw no sign of him. They cut across York Road and Hogarth felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. He took out his phone, but didn’t know the number on screen. It didn’t belong to Liv Burns, Emily Flount or anyone else he’d called lately. A new tension started to close around his chest. Anticipation, or maybe a hint of fear. Hogarth slowed to a halt and put the phone to his ear.

  “Detective Inspector Hogarth speaking,” he said. Palmer stopped at Hogarth’s side and watched his face.

  “Inspector Hogarth” the voice was male. Familiar.

  “Who’s this?” he said.

  “Sorry, Hogarth, but something’s happened. Something bad.”

  “Who is this?!” snapped Hogarth.

  “It’s me. Grant Dawn.”

  Hogarth gnashed his teeth.

  “Where the hell are you? How did you get my number?”

  “That doesn’t matter. Listen to me.”

  “I am listening,” said Hogarth.

  “It’s Brett – Brett Reville.”

  Hogarth’s eyes flicked to Palmer with a sense of dread. He willed the man not to say it.

  “Brett’s dead…”

  “Oh my God, Grant. What the hell have you done…?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Where are you?!”

  Grant Dawn’s words were hurried, panicked. Hogarth absorbed the details of the man’s whereabouts.

  “Don’t move,” he added. “We’re on our way.”

  Hogarth raced to his car and pulled open the door.

  He saw the question on Palmer’s face, and saw she already knew the answer. He gave a single nod.

  “Brett Reville’s dead.”

  “How?” she said.

  “I don’t know. But what I do know is that things just got a lot bloody worse.”

  Hogarth jumped in his car and slammed the door.

  He started the engine and slid down his driver’s side window. Palmer stood by his window, waiting.

  “Where is he?” she said.

  “Clarence Road car park, centre of town,” he said. “Not far from Dawn’s office. I’ll see you there. Be quick.”

  Hogarth pulled out into the street and made a sharp U-turn before storming down the hill towards town. Palmer broke into a jog towards the crest of the hill, her mood dropping with every second.

  ***

  Less than ten minutes later, Hogarth’s saloon and Palmer’s Corsa pulled into the town centre car park one after the other. The surrounding roads were busy and the car park was full. Hogarth parked on the yellow crosshatched area outside the building where the council’s traffic wardens popped out from a little unmarked door like lice from rotting wood. But he saw none were around. Hogarth looked around the street and dragged a hand through his hair. He stood on tiptoes to see if he could find Dawn hiding anywhere. But when he saw the man, he had to look twice. The tall and athletic figure of Grant Dawn stood in the shadows of the doorway of the Salvation Army building across the street. Dawn wasn’t dressed much differently from the two dodgy characters he’d seen muttering on Beach Road. Big jacket, baseball cap, and baggy trousers. But Dawn didn’t wear them right. Under close inspection, the clothes really didn’t suit him at all. But the disguise was good enough, he supposed. Hogarth strode towards the edge of the car park and Dawn moved to cross the street towards him. Small mercies – Dawn hadn’t yet done a runner.

  As Hogarth reached Dawn, he heard Palmer’s car door shut behind him.

  “You’re bloody mad, you know that,” said Hogarth. “Coming out here in the open like that. Make your mind up, man. Are you dead or alive? You know, The Record newspaper offices are just around the corner. If any of their lot see you, you’ll be on the front pages for the next fortnight, and so will I.”

  “No one saw me.”

  “How did you get out here? And those clothes…?”

  “I’ve got money, Inspector. I called a cab. And I bought these awful clothes in the Salvation Army store over there. Those old volunteers in there didn’t have a clue who I was.”

  Hogarth’s eyes widened.

  “It’s okay. They didn’t recognise me. I suppose they might later on, but by then, all of this will be finished.”

  “I wish I had your confidence,” said Hogarth bitterly. Palmer arrived at his shoulder.

  “This is another of my colleagues, Mr Dawn. Detective Sergeant Palmer. Now please tell me you were having me on…”

  Dawn sighed and shook his head.

  Hogarth turned white. “What did you do? Simmons told me about your arrangement with this bloody PI. Didn’t disclose that little ruse, did you?! You’ve all but shafted us, Mr Dawn. And you wanted our help?!”

  “I had to make sure this was handled. You were my insurance in case my PI, John Gurney, couldn’t come up with the goods. And he was my insurance in case you folded on the other side.”

  “If he’s got evidence of us working to help you while you’re supposed to be—”

  Dawn shook his head. “He’s aware of you, obviously, but he’s not going to do that.”

  “You’re not in control of what he does. You’re only his current client. He’s freelance, he can do what he likes. These PIs are all bloody mercenaries.”

  “I’m a good client. So he won’t do that.”

  “You’re assurances are wearing very thin, Mr Dawn. First you want our help, then you double-cross us with your own PI. And I don’t think you’re as in control of this as you’d like to believe. Can you trust any of the people you think are on your side?”

  Dawn frowned. Palmer frowned inwardly too.

  “Why? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just a question,” said Hogarth. He decided not to say any more on the subject. “You say the man’s dead. So where is he?”

  Hogarth’s eyes lingered on Dawn’s accusingly. Grant Dawn became awkward under his gaze. He toyed with the peak of his cap and nodded to a big, gleaming black pickup truck parked in the distant corner of the car park, not far from the alley which led down past the shabby chic restaurant bar, and worse, The Record offices not far beyond. Hogarth recognised the big showy Ford Ranger immediately, and his heart sank to a new low. “The newspaper office is just down that alley there… You stay here out of sight, Mr Dawn. That car park’s full of CCTV cameras. I don’t want to get caught on camera walking along with you.”

  “But I didn’t do it,” said Dawn.

  Hogarth scowled. “And don’t you dare run.”

  “It never even
crossed my mind,” said Dawn.

  “No? But it did earlier though, didn’t it?” said Hogarth. “If you’d stayed at the lock-up, Reville would still be—”

  “I said I didn’t do it,” said Dawn.

  “Want me to stay with him, guv?” said Palmer.

  He nodded. “When I’m done over there, you should take a look too.” He crossed the car park and reached the side of the big Ford. The front of the big black car faced the brown pebble-dashed wall of the ex-church which formed the car park’s boundary wall. The wall was useful in terms of keeping the body out of view. Hogarth peered inside and saw the shape slumped in the driver’s seat, big head bent over to one side. The windows were tinted black. If anyone had taken a look, they might have assumed the driver was sleeping. Hogarth peered closer and made out the man’s features. It was definitely Brett Reville. His moody face was slack, his mouth hung open like a man snoring in deep sleep. Hogarth walked around to the driver’s door, slid his hand into his sleeve and used the material of his jacket to pull at the door handle. The door clunked open, and a faint hint of excrement filled the air, and Hogarth knew Dawn had been telling the truth. He let out a long slow breath and pressed his fingers against Reville’s blubbery neck. He tried to find a pulse, but there was nothing, and the man’s body was beginning to feel cool to the touch. Cause of death wasn’t clear but Hogarth began to wonder whether a heart attack could have done it. He saw torn pie wrappers, crisp packets and chocolate wrappers abandoned in the footwell of the passenger seat along with several crumpled takeaway coffee cups. Hogarth guessed the Ford Ranger must have cost at least three hundred a month on finance, but the big man had been treating it the way Palmer treated her handbag. He kept looking. On the passenger seat was one of the Mars bar wrappers Palmer must have seen earlier. It was empty now, the chocolate bar within long gone. But there was a mess of chocolate and saliva goo trailing from Reville’s open mouth down past his chin. Hogarth’s eyes tracked down the man’s body until he saw a half-chewed glob of chocolate and caramel congealing on the crotch of the man’s jeans.

  “Helps you work, rest and play…” muttered Hogarth. Maybe the man had parked up for a break, in between two trysts. Like an athlete, he’d stopped to get his energy back. In the red corner, was Ginger Spice office administrator Yvette George and in the blue corner, moody blue Sabine Dawn. It seemed unlikely that a lump like Brett Reville could pull two half-decent women like Sabine and Yvette and manage to keep them on the go. Both were good looking. They had personality issues, granted, but they could still have done a lot better than tubby Reville. His eyes raked over the rest of the mess. A mobile phone had been dropped by the foot pedals. A magazine about internet marketing was folded in half and pressed up by the windscreen on the front of the dashboard. He scanned the rest of the cab as best he could but saw nothing but pebbles and mud along with the sparkling chocolate wrappers of past sweetie breaks. Hogarth tutted and looked at the mess. He stared at the detritus but didn’t touch anything. Hogarth dared to hope it was natural causes, but he didn’t believe it. Coincidences were very rare in the real world. And a coincidence where a man dies just as another man might want him dead, well that was just too convenient. Hogarth let go of the door, and using his sleeve, clunked it back into place. He turned to see Dawn and Palmer watching, still standing at the edge of the car park, looking like the oddest of couples. He took one last look at the mess inside the car and got on his way.

  “Bloody slob,” muttered Hogarth.

  “Well?” said Dawn.

  “You two really couldn’t look any less shifty if you tried,” said Hogarth.

  “What did you see?” said Palmer, impatient for news. Hogarth saw the same look in Grant Dawn’s eyes. Hogarth nodded.

  “He’s dead alright,” he said.

  “Oh no,” said Palmer. He saw the resignation on her face but refused to let it catch. Before he would give in to that, Hogarth had anger to feed on. Plenty of it. Frustration too. None of this was his fault, and he wasn’t going to let some other bastard drag him down. Simmons, Grant Dawn, Emily Flount – sod them all. It wasn’t going to happen.

  “I’m told you saw a photograph of the man with your wife…” said Hogarth, reading Dawn’s eyes as he spoke. “Your PI friend saw them when your wife turned up at your office. She must have been drink-driving to get there, too. Which means Sabine must have thought it a very important meeting to risk all that.”

  “Don’t,” said Dawn.

  “But I have to, Mr Dawn. You disappeared from Paglesham and a few hours later you call us and say Reville’s dead. He’s dead because you thought he had an illicit meeting with your missus.”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” said Dawn, with a flash of anger. He looked around the street and kept his voice down.

  “As of now, Mr Dawn,” said Hogarth. “I’m fully entitled to talk to you any way I like. You were always on thin ice with me and now it’s cracking apart.”

  “The ice you’re on,” said Dawn, “doesn’t look much better from where I’m standing.”

  Hogarth nodded. “Maybe not. But I’ll survive. How could you be sure he was banging your wife, eh? She met Reville at your office at four o’clock in the afternoon. And you think that was a booty call, do you? I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  Dawn frowned. “What do you mean?” he said quietly.

  “Come on. Have you ever heard of a woman who gets so frisky she has to drive out to meet a man for sex? It could happen, I suppose, but not with a man of Reville’s size and calibre. I can’t see it.”

  “That’s your opinion. I saw Gurney’s photographs.”

  “No, Mr Dawn. It’s common sense. If it was a sex thing it would have happened under your roof. What’s to stop them? You’re out of the picture.”

  “They could have been worried about Emily, maybe… Sabine would have been worried about Emily showing up. That’s why.”

  “And why would Emily show up at your place?”

  “Because she’s family. And because I gave her a key.”

  “A key?” said Hogarth.

  Dawn nodded. “She works for us. I forget things sometimes. I send her to get things…”

  “And to keep an eye on your wife, am I right?”

  Dawn blushed. “That might have been part of it. Not just to look for an affair, Inspector. I was worried about her too.”

  “Start walking, Mr Dawn,” said Hogarth, frowning. “I need you well away from here before I call this in. Sue, take a look at the body, it’s in the Ford Ranger parked at the back over there. You, Mr Dawn, you wait over there by the volunteer bureau on the corner. Keep your head down and I’ll pick you up in two minutes. And don’t you dare move.”

  “I won’t,” said Dawn.

  “Why else did you give your cousin a key to your house, Mr Dawn?” said Hogarth looking back before he walked to the car park.

  “I’ve told you. It’s a long-standing thing. Home and business always blurred for me. Sabine wasn’t an employee, but she always had a say in the business. Emily was family too.”

  “A cousin, Mr Dawn. Are you sure there’s nothing you’re not telling me?”

  “Don’t be crude. Emily is family. If I ever needed something from home – something I’d left behind, she would often go and get it for me. She was useful to have around. But yes… she may have told me what Sabine was up to once or twice.”

  “And? Did she ever catch your wife up to anything?”

  “As a matter of fact, no. Apart from the drinking, that is.”

  Hogarth shook his head. Dawn was difficult to read but his odd lifestyle arrangements might well have been his norm. But cousin or not, Hogarth decided Emily Flount wasn’t the kind of family he’d ever have trusted with a key.

  “And your wife didn’t mind that she had a key?”

  “No. After a while she didn’t seem to care in the least. They were friends. Well almost. Let’s just say, they’d come to accept one another.”

  “I
still say if Sabine and Reville were going to get it on, she would have stayed at home. Which means their little office meeting doesn’t make sense… I think you might just have killed this man for the wrong reason…”

  He watched Dawn’s eyes widen at the accusation.

  “I told you, I didn’t do it!”

  “You’ll need to convince me of that. I’ll pick you up in two minutes. Be on that corner and keep your head down.”

  Hogarth turned away and walked further into the Clarence Road car park. He watched Palmer leaning around the front edge of the big gleaming Ford. Saw her staring through the glass, frowning. He watched as she opened the door and peered in. The sight made his blood run cold. The case within a case – and both of them were going south fast. Hogarth felt it was all going to blow up in their faces. He knew it, but he couldn’t let the thought in. He took a few deep breaths and forced himself to walk in a calm measured way. He had to work hard to keep it up. Palmer saw him coming and closed the Ranger door. They met at the painted cross hatching outside the traffic warden nest.

  “He died eating a Mars bar,” said Palmer.

  “There are probably worse ways to go,” said Hogarth.

  “Dawn?” she said.

  “I don’t know how, but I think he had enough time away from the lock-up to concoct something. But, if he was going to kill the man in a rage, I would have guessed he’d have used a knife. Or a gun if he had access to one. Or he would have dispensed the kind of vicious beating suffered by Baba Sen. But Reville’s body hasn’t got a mark on it.”