The Secret Fear

by Solomon Carter

  “A feud. You know anything about that? Between the Yuksels and another Turkish family?”

  The man eyed the cash.

  “I have to be careful. Very careful.”

  “Then be careful. But if you want this money...”

  The man nodded. He dropped his fag and stamped it out.

  “I expect they have feuds with everyone, the crap they’re shifting.”

  “Why?” said Hogarth.

  “I just told you. This imported crap is bargain basement stuff. It comes from Albania. They pay next to nothing for it, then they rebrand it and sell it on. You saw it yourself. And I happen to know the mark-up they put on some of it is astronomical.”

  “Then why do the customers put up with it? They can get supplies elsewhere. There are cash and carries everywhere.”

  The man snorted and shook his head.

  “Do the customers know it’s cheap stuff rebranded as Turkish?”

  “Some stuff it’s hard to tell. Other stuff, the pickles, sauces, some of the tools and gadgets, it’s almost obvious. It says on the packaging. A lot of stuff isn’t labelled, not on the tins, which is how they order it. That way they can brand it and not get caught out. But all the buyers need to do is see one bottle of Albanian ketchup and the whole ruse is out in the open. I’d say half of those people must know by now. The rest of them will have guessed and are turning a blind eye.”

  New questions started to race around Hogarth’s head. The man watched him struggle. They heard a car door slam outside. Then another. Palmer leaned left and right on her tiptoes, craning her neck to see. She tried to listen but heard nothing more. The noise must have come from the street, not the yard. Her pupils widened. She looked into the shadows, concentrating on her hearing.

  “Why would their customers turn a blind eye to cheap shoddy food products?”

  “Come on. That’s why you’re really here, isn’t it? It’s not like those customers have any choice in the matter!”

  Hogarth’s eyes took on a look of shock. He’d expected something bad. But not this.

  “You’re telling me—?”

  The man nodded and held out his empty hand for the cash folded in Hogarth’s fist. Hogarth looked down at the ground, still processing everything he’d heard.

  There was a loud clank at the front of the warehouse. Followed by another. And then the sound of voices.

  “Simmons?” said Hogarth. He looked at Palmer.

  “I’ll go and check,” said Palmer. Hogarth watched her skulk down the shaded aisle, fear evident in her movements, an echo of what he was feeling. The scale of the issue had changed. It suddenly felt much bigger.

  Palmer reached the end of the aisle and saw two men in dark suits. They were looking around at the pallet stacks in the front yard. One of the men was grinning but the other not. Both men wore suits with no ties, collars open. They might have looked almost suave, but their faces were hard-edged, their eyes small and dark. One of the men picked up a box from one of the pallets and pointed at something on it. The other man spoke in Turkish and nodded to the warehouse as if to say, ‘in there’. But Palmer didn’t understand a word. When the man nodded at the warehouse, his eyes found Palmer watching him. She froze. The man had an angular face, hard feral eyes and high solid cheekbones. He looked familiar... the photograph. He looked like the man in the photograph at Yuksel’s office. The man barked at his companion and he broke into a lumbering run, and the guy who’d given the order followed suit. Palmer ran down the dark central aisle, her heart pounding, pushing herself as fast as she could. Her shoes sounded loudly on the concrete floor, and at the end of the aisle, Hogarth leapt to his feet. He saw Palmer’s wild-eyed panic. The warehouseman swore out loud.

  “Get out!” he snapped, keeping his voice low. “Get out the back now – or we’re done for!” But Hogarth waited for Palmer.

  She reached the end of the aisle, spilling out towards them and a thunderous crack filled the warehouse. The echo filled their ears. In the same instant, something fizzed past Palmer’s head and hammered into the corrugated back wall. Hogarth turned to search for the mark of the bullet. He saw the dent in the metal, a foot wide of his head.

  “Come on, Sue!” he roared. He saw them. Two men with hard eyes, the larger man in front blowing hard as he ran between the shelf stacks. He couldn’t see their faces clearly in the darkness, but the cold panic in his chest told him all he needed to know. He saw the pistol in the first man’s hand, then the pinpricks of light in the eyes of the man behind him. He saw those eyes and he knew.

  “Over here, Sue. Now! Through the back.” He directed Palmer towards the wide-open back door, while Hogarth pulled the warehouseman away to the side with him.

  “Come on, man, a place like this – you must have a weapon,” he spoke to the warehouseman. The man was shaking. “You’ve got to have something to defend yourself”

  The man looked pale and shaky. He nodded. “Yes... but it’s back at the front desk.”

  Hogarth growled in despair. The front desk was well out of bounds. They had no chance. Unless Simmons and the excessively green PCSO Kaplan turned up fast, Hogarth didn’t fancy their chances. He had to stall them somehow. First option was always to remind the opposition of the grave mistake they were about to make. Hogarth’s voice boomed.

  “Police! Put your weapons down now!”

  The men slowed down, but Hogarth couldn’t tell whether it was because of his words, or because he had stopped to face them. They were getting close enough not to bother with running any longer. The men emerged into the murky light filtering in from the back yard. Hogarth heard Palmer’s shoes scuffing on the concrete outside. He sensed her waiting for him, hiding just around the corner of the door.

  “Stay back there, Sue.”

  The men’s faces were cast in the same dark light. Hogarth squinted at them. One was bulkier than the other, a lot less fit than the smaller man. The bigger one held the pistol in his hand. But it was the other bloke who Hogarth stared at most closely. Strong features, dark, angry eyes, those big strong cheekbones so unmistakable in the family, but buried by wrinkles and the saggy skin of ageing. The man was an Atacan through and through. There was only one saving grace. One positive – this Atacan wasn’t the one holding the gun. Hogarth tried to keep his calm, to keep up the front just as he had tried all those years ago when he was first tempted by Miray.

  “Put down that gun. Do you hear me?” said Hogarth. He pointed at the bigger man, who ignored him. The thinner, sharper man spoke. He had a soft voice, nothing like Hogarth would have imagined.

  “It looks nice and cosy back here. You were having a little chat, I take it. You and the policeman.” His accent was all London with a hint of Turkish. The big man’s fingers moved over the pistol’s trigger and grip.

  “It’s not like that. They’re police. I couldn’t stop ‘em coming in, could I?”

  Atacan sighed in disapproval.

  “The big man raised his gun, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The top of the warehouseman’s shoulder popped like a water balloon, and he screamed. He slapped a hand on the wound and fell to the floor. Hogarth’s heart thundered in his chest, his own death seconds away. How had it come to this? He spent a second glancing from the gun to the rusting shelves to the corrugated walls all around him. What a bloody terrible place to die.

  “Why shoot him? He’s hardly said a word to me,” Hogarth lied. He saw they didn’t believe him. “I’ve got colleagues on the way. More police.”

  The big man looked bothered, but the Atacan didn’t. He stared at Hogarth. There was something in his feral eyes. Something passed between them.

  “What? Do you recognise me?” said Atacan.

  Hogarth paused before realising denial was the only answer.

  “I’ve never seen you before. Men with guns always have this effect on me... But I am serious. More police are on the way.”

  The Atacan barked at his larger friend. His words seemed to contain a rebuke as well as
an instruction. The big man turned and started to jog back towards the front door. The warning had worked.

  Hogarth took a breath and knelt beside the warehouseman, eyeing the wound where a segment of skin and sinew had been shot away from the top of his shoulder. “Keep your hand on it. You’ll live,” he muttered.

  “If he’s lucky,” said the Atacan, as he turned away.

  Hogarth glanced up at him with hate burning in his eyes. “You can’t go around shooting people.”

  “But I didn’t shoot anyone, did I?” said the man. “The other guy did. I was only here to visit for a friend. Looks like he’s not here.”

  Hogarth scowled. “Until you showed up, I only thought this was a seedy little money-making scam. But seeing you here...”

  Hogarth corrected himself before he made a bad mistake.

  “...with guns, shooting people... now I know how bad the Yuksels really are. You haven’t helped them, you know. You’ve only made it worse.”

  “But I really didn’t do a thing. You saw that. And whatever happened here today, I think your little friend there brought it on himself. Don’t you?”

  Atacan turned away, but he stopped and saw the DI still watching him. Hogarth couldn’t take his eyes off the man.

  “I don’t like the way you look at me, cop. Who are you?” said the Atacan.

  “I don’t think I said,” said Hogarth.

  The man grinned. “No. But I’ll soon find out.”

  “We’ll soon arrest your friend,” said Hogarth as the Atacan walked away down the aisle.

  “The man with the gun?” the man called back over his shoulder. “But I don’t even know who he is.”

  The Atacan moved out of sight and the iceberg in Hogarth’s chest began to thaw. But the melt didn’t truly begin until he heard their car pulling away. A minute later, Hogarth, still catching his breath, heard another car draw to a halt outside. The handbrake clunked. Doors opened. He heard a man and a woman sharing a joke. Hogarth gritted his teeth. It was Simmons.

  “In here now!” he called.

  Simmons and Kaplan hustled inside the rusting building to find Hogarth crouched beside the warehouseman, the wounded man pale and weak. Palmer was already talking to a paramedic on the phone. She glanced at Simmons then turned away to handle the rest of the call.

  “Oh my!” said Kaplan, stunned. Hogarth looked from Kaplan to Simmons.

  “What happened here?” said Simmons, looking both shocked and guilty.

  “Yuksel’s got armed backup. This case is worse than it looks. A lot worse. PCSO Kaplan? You know First Aid, I take it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then get down here and help this man until the paramedic arrives.”

  “What happened to him?” she said.

  “He was shot – shot for talking to us. But what with all the industrial racket round here nobody heard a thing...” Hogarth looked up and around the ugly interior. “This place does exactly what they wanted. It’s under the radar, and nobody sees or hears a damn thing.”

  “Anything I can do, sir?” said Simmons, looking sheepish. Hogarth recalled the small shred of orange tucked behind the suit jacket button hanging from Yuksel’s office door.

  “Simmons, I think you’ve already done it. Your little obsession with those strip curtains might be exactly what we need...”

  Hogarth walked out into the backyard.

  “Guv?” Palmer put her hand over the mouthpiece of her mobile. “Where are you going?”

  “To call an old friend,” said Hogarth. “We need some more information.”

  Palmer watched him go. Miray Atacan? she wondered.

  Eighteen

  He would have loved to have asked Miray, but after what had just happened, he now knew she was off limits for good. Miray had always been stuck between a rock and a hard place. Looked like she still was. Going to Miray for information, whether she wanted to help or not, would only put her in danger. Or enable the Yuksels to set up a trap. Instead, Hogarth had to fall back on old resources. Ones which he hadn’t touched for a long while because he had fully intended to leave them all far behind. He put the phone to his ear and set himself to be polite and calm. He needed a favour.

  “Can I speak to DI Carson, please?”

  “He’s not here. Who’s this?” said the female voice at the other end. “Hang on? That isn’t Joe Hogarth, is it? That’s a blast from the past.”

  Hogarth’s face softened a touch as two years and more were peeled away. But the current situation didn’t leave room for nostalgia.

  “Liv Burns? Yep, it’s me. Hogarth.”

  “Don’t tell me. You want to come back. All is forgiven. You want to fill Carson’s shoes?”

  “Leave off, Liv. I’m working the seaside these days. That old city grind is all yours. But what’s happened to Carson then?”

  The woman sighed, her voice changed. Hogarth glanced back at the warehouse.

  “Carson’s still alive and kicking but he’s asked for early retirement. To be honest, it feels like he’s already gone. He’s coasting. Like you down on the seaside, probably. By the way, what does it feel like to be cruising in the sticks?”

  Hogarth might have laughed on any other day. Detective Sergeant Liv Burns had a similar sense of humour to his own, but right now the words burned him.

  “Thing is, Liz, I did originally come out here for some downtime, but hey – we don’t always get what we want, do we? Right now I’m standing in a rotten warehouse after a scrape with an armed gunman.”

  “Bloody hell, Joe. No one we know, I hope.”

  “Unfortunately, yes. Liv, this is urgent. Very urgent. So please get your thinking cap on. When I first transferred down to Essex, I remember hearing that one of the Atacan boys had moved this way. I did hope I’d imagined it, but—”

  “Your gunman is an Atacan? That’s worse than bad luck.”

  “I don’t want to think about it. All I need is someone to confirm which of the brothers it is, what he’s doing down here, and why he’s here. Old Carson would have known something. He was up to his ears in the Atacans in the bad old days.”

  “Yeah. Thing is...Him and me aren’t on best buddy terms anymore, Joe. But I’ll drop him a line, see what I can do. I’ll get back to you, soon as I can.”

  “Why? What’s the problem between you and Carson?”

  “Hmmm. Let’s just say we crossed some personal boundaries that we couldn’t uncross... and since then things got a bit difficult. Especially now I’m going for his job. But that’s life, right?”

  “Dearie me, Liv. You two know how to make life hard for yourselves. Just make sure Carson knows what’s at stake, will you?”

  “The name Atacan should do the trick. I’ll do my best.”

  Hogarth turned to see Palmer standing in the doorway, having just finished her call.

  “Who was that?” she said.

  “Just an old Met colleague, DS Liv Burns. Turns out she’ll soon be a DI.”

  “Oh,” said Palmer. “I don’t think I’ve met her, have I?”

  “The Met’s a big organisation. Anyway, it wasn’t a social call, Sue. Her boss DI Carson worked chasing the Atacans around for years. We need to know who we’re up against.”

  “And? What did they say?”

  Hogarth shrugged. “Liv will call us back.”

  “And that’ll help how?”

  “I don’t know. But as of now, I’m sticking as many irons in the fire as I can.”

  Hogarth frowned in thought. He recalled Ed Quentin’s mischievous remark about knowing something he didn’t. Quentin still hadn’t come back to him. He thought about Izmir Yuksel hiding the identity behind the unknown contact number. The strange lies about his other contacts. The fleck of orange on the suit jacket in Yuksel’s office. The paperwork and the financial transfers. Miray and the Atacans and Baba Sen’s dead body. Regardless of the proven presence of an Atacan, that dumb ugly ‘A’ carved into Baba Sen’s head still didn’t fit. Even the prese
nce of an actual live Atacan couldn’t convince him it was real. The job was amateur. In fact, the whole murder was amateur hour. So many pieces and none of them seemed like parts of the same jigsaw puzzle. Hogarth’s eyes widened at the analogy. Pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle? What if they weren’t?

  “Come on, Sue,” said Hogarth.

  “What?” said Palmer. “Where are we going now?”

  Hogarth walked into the warehouse and pointed at Simmons. “Simmons, you stay here. PCSO Kaplan, you come with me, just in case we need your language skills.”

  “Guv?” said Simmons.

  “We’re waiting on some important information about our gunmen. Lately, it feels like waiting is all we’re bloody doing. I think its high time some of our colleagues started to deliver. This case needs solving before we end up with disaster on our hands.”

  HOGARTH FELT BETTER with every passing mile he put between himself and the seedy Peacock Estate. The grey clouds and dirt seemed to clear from the streets as well as the sky. The tension remained, but Hogarth breathed a little easier. He glanced in the rear-view and saw Kaplan watching him. The whole car was quiet.

  “You ever dealt with a gunshot wound before, Kaplan?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, you did well enough. We really are giving you the full crash course in police work, aren’t we?”

  Kaplan still looked pale. She didn’t respond, as though she was still thinking over Hogarth’s words. Hogarth’s phone rang. He looked down at the phone – on his lap – and dabbed the green button and hit loudspeaker.

  “Carson?” said Hogarth. “Is that you?”

  “It’s me alright,” said a flat, gravelly voice. “Never thought I’d hear your dulcet tones again, Joe.”

  “Dulcet? There’s nothing dulcet about my tones, DI Carson. I hear you’re moving on.”

  “She told you that, did she?”

  Hogarth paused. “There was no malice in it. Honest.”