The Secret Dawn

by Solomon Carter

  “Can you believe the bloody woman? She still acts angry even when she’s supposed to be grieving.” It was a male voice. A grouchy, gravelly voice.

  Hogarth narrowed his eyes and stood still. A couple of cars whizzed down Longacre Road beside them, before the road became silent once more.

  “I can believe it either,” said a female. “She’s been acting odd for months now. I don’t know how Grant could have stood living with a woman like that.” A female voice. Well spoken, soft voiced, and just a little bit bitchy.

  “What shall I do with these?”

  Hogarth tried to peer through the hedge, but it was too thick, too leafy.

  “Well if Sabine won’t have them then I certainly don’t want them either.” Simmons stepped back, ducked and changed his angle until he was able to peer through a gap in the hedge. A few branches obscured his view, but he could see enough. The big man was holding a bunch of flowers – multicoloured, and cheap looking. He saw a purple box of chocolates in his hand too. Hogarth shifted position until he could see too.

  “Never mind. It was a stupid idea, anyway. People don’t eat when they grieve. They starve themselves,” said the man.

  “But the least she might manage is a chocolate. We were trying to be nice, that’s all. Of course, being nice is wasted on her. I hoped all her nonsense was just a phase. Now with Grant gone… who knows.”

  “I know. And now the business will go down the bloody pan! Then where will we be?!”

  “That’s exactly where you went wrong, Brett. You mentioned the business. Sabine was upset. Why did you have to bring it up today of all days.”

  “It’s called a management decision, sweetheart. If the key man goes down, the business has to live on. I thought you would have understood that.”

  “It was crass all the same. You should have been more diplomatic, more strategic.”

  “Yeah. Well. Whatever. We can’t talk out here. She’ll hear us.”

  “I’ll see you later then. We’ll sort something out. But don’t you dare bring those flowers or chocolates to me. In fact, give them to me. I’ll bin them on the way home.”

  “Nah. It’s okay. I’ll do it.”

  “Just make sure you do, okay.”

  “Why? You don’t like flowers and chocolates all of a sudden?”

  “I’m not in the mood for taking home Sabine’s rejects. And you, you’re supposed to be looking after your waistline, remember?”

  The man grunted. “Thanks for that. That’s really cheered me up.”

  “I’m looking out for you. That’s what I do,” said the woman.

  Car doors slammed and engines started. A white Audi hatchback pulled off the driveway first, and Hogarth saw a woman with red hair and a prim face idly glance their way before she drove off. Hogarth and Simmons pretended to be caught up in a friendly chat on the street. They kept up the same ruse as a big gleaming Ford Ranger pickup truck bumped down onto the street and roared away. The man behind the wheel – a thickset man with a stubbly face, didn’t look their way once.

  “Sabine Dawn’s already had two unwelcome guests this morning, Simmons. Think she’ll be up for two more?”

  “That had to be Brett Reville,” said Simmons. “Who was the other one?”

  “The redhead was probably Yvette George. Sound like they’re all heart, don’t they? You know, Simmons. I’m beginning to get the feeling this might be a bad idea…”

  “We haven’t done anything wrong, guv.”

  “A bit keen to cross that line, aren’t you? You don’t need to do this to impress your old man, Simmons. He’s not worth it.”

  “It’s not for him, guv.”

  “What then? Dawn’s money? Money’s the worst possible motive. That’s a slippery slope, I’m telling you.”

  “I don’t care about the cash. Think – this case could end up in our laps anyway, guv. If Grant Dawn is right about the murder attempt – and they both seemed convinced – this could end up as a police investigation.”

  Hogarth made a face and scratched his cheek.

  “Then we could look at it if and when that happens.”

  “But if we knew a bit more, it’d be an open and shut case.”

  “Listen to you. If DCI Melford heard about this, you’d be on a disciplinary before you could say Jack Robinson.”

  “But you’d never tell him.”

  “Don’t bank on never, sunshine.” Hogarth sighed. “Bloody hell. In for a penny, I suppose. Fine. We’ll talk to the man’s wife. But looking at your current attire we’d better say you’re with me on school work experience. Wear a suit at the weekends and you’ll never get caught out. You might even get a girlfriend too.”

  Simmons remembered Ecrin Kaplan and smiled.

  “Thanks for the tip, guv.”

  “I’ll do the talking, remember,” said Hogarth. “You just follow my lead.”

  They rounded the front wall beside the privet hedge and made for the big glossy Downing Street style front door. Two well-trimmed bay trees stood proudly in pots either side. Hogarth rang the doorbell and took a deep breath as the chime sounded within. When the door opened, he put on a strained smile. A woman with long blonde hair so straight it looked like as if it been ironed appeared. She gazed out at them with sullen, hollow, red-rimmed eyes. It was a dead cert that she had been crying. Her eyes flicked between them, sad and uncertain.

  “And you are?” she said.

  “From the police, madam.”

  “I dealt with the police half the night last night. They didn’t tell me to expect anyone else until this afternoon.”

  “This afternoon?”

  “A liaison person. Coming to get a more detailed statement. Something like that, anyway.”

  “Very good,” said Hogarth. From habit he pulled his police ID wallet from his jacket pocket. It felt like a step too far, another risk, maybe something Melford could later use against him if things turned nasty. But Hogarth didn’t see any other way to go.

  “My name is DI Hogarth, and this is DC Simmons. Sorry about my colleague’s informal attire, Mrs Dawn, but DC Simmons here was called to work at short notice.”

  Simmons nodded

  The woman looked tired, but the police ID seemed to do the trick. She dropped her guard a little and stepped away from the door.

  “What is it you want then?” she said.

  “Just to establish some facts, that’s all, madam,” said Hogarth.

  “Will it take very long?” she said.

  “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “Okay then. Come in. But please excuse the mess, I’m sure you’ll understand, under the circumstances, that is…”

  Hogarth gave a purse-lipped smile and stepped into a fine period hallway of pristine white walls with a pale beech wood floor. Hogarth looked around gauging the wealth involved. Simmons looked around in barely veiled awe. The young woman saw Simmons’ face and almost smiled. But the mirth soon left her features.

  “Through here,” she said.

  Simmons shut the front door. The woman walked them into a small living room with a big round mirror mounted on a chimney breast with no fireplace – just an inset with a fish tank set into it full of small tropical fish. In the centre of the room was an oval coffee table with a couple of wine glasses on it, one of them half full of green-tinged white. There were three bottles on the floor by the white sofa and not one of them had any booze left in it. Chablis – the good stuff. Sabine Dawn was grieving in style. He regarded the woman afresh as she sat down. Maybe those eyes weren’t tinged pink from tears after all.

  Sabine caught Hogarth’s eye surveying the bottles around the sofa. He flashed a smile at her, but the woman remained serious.

  “Excuse the bottles but it’s not every day a woman learns her husband was in a car crash.” She dropped her backside onto the sofa. The woman was halfway drunk, but not entirely there. Which meant the heavy drinking had been slow and sustained. Hogarth guessed she had hardly slept at all.

 
; Hogarth looked around the room. A giant flat screen TV occupied one wall. It was set to a London talk radio station. Meaningless blather poured from the speakers. More stuff about Europe, plus adverts, jingles, and the trappy London shock-jock Hogarth had always avoided.

  “The radio stops me thinking,” she explained. “I’m not listening to it, really. But it helps me block things out.” She picked up her glass. “Such as people I don’t want to listen to,” she smiled down into her glass.

  “Yeah,” said Hogarth. He sniffed and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I can understand that. My colleague and I will keep this brief.”

  “I didn’t mean you, officer. I meant the others.”

  Hogarth brightened.

  “The others?”

  The woman gave him a conspiratorial look. “You just missed them. The opportunists.”

  “Oh? And who would they be?” said Hogarth.

  “My employees, actually. Well. Not strictly my employees, and that annoys Brett no end, I can tell you. It annoys him all the more that I get to have a say in GDS and I’m not even officially in charge. But Grant always listened to my ideas for the business anyway. I was like a board member who didn’t have to attend the meetings. Which suited me.”

  She sipped her wine again.

  “You were involved in Grant Dawn Social?”

  “That’s interesting,” she said, pointing the glass at him. You know, you’re the first policeman who has actually ever heard of us. Fancy that. The other officer didn’t have a clue. And yes, I was. I’ve always been involved in the business, from the very beginning.”

  “So, were you in favour of changing the company name?”

  The woman’s eyes flared and she leaned forward.

  “Where the hell did you hear about that? You spoke to them before me, didn’t you?”

  Hogarth glanced at Simmons, his throat suddenly feeling tight. “Who?” he said with a frown.

  “Brett… or maybe Yvette. Or perhaps you spoke to Emily Flount. Emily always has something to say about everything.”

  Hogarth side-stepped as best he could.

  “I didn’t hear that from Brett or Yvette… I’ve not met them yet.”

  “Lucky you, then” she said, with a hint of a laugh.

  “I still don’t get how you know about the company name change though. As far as I knew Grant hadn’t approved anything as yet.”

  Hogarth shrugged. “Must have picked it up somewhere. Something in the press, or a tweet maybe.”

  A tweet. The word sounded cack-handed and false in his mouth. Hogarth had never tweeted in his life. Simmons caught the awkwardness, blinked but made nothing of it. The woman’s thoughts were already elsewhere. The wine seemed to be helping.

  “I’ll bet you heard it somewhere. Brett’s lips have already been flapping.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Mrs Dawn. It was just something I picked up.”

  “You’re bloody right it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all now, because it won’t happen. I’ll see that the company stays exactly as it is, in memory of Grant.”

  Hogarth swallowed and let the silence make its mark. The woman soon looked at him again. He had her as thirtyish, again, a good deal younger than Grant Dawn, and she was nothing at all like Emily Flount. Where Flount was slender and dark, Sabine was buxom and blonde. There was a blank earnestness about her face. A look which some might have taken for being simple, the stereotypical dumb blonde bombshell, but Hogarth didn’t think so. Her sky-blue eyes were penetrating and strong. And from what she’d described, Sabine knew the people around her very well indeed. Hogarth warned himself to tread carefully.

  “You don’t sound as if you like your employees very much, Mrs Dawn,” said Hogarth, hoping his tone seemed conversational rather than interview-like. Sabine Dawn blinked at him.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” she said. “You’ve been standing for long enough already.”

  Hogarth looked around and saw the tub chairs behind him. “If you don’t mind,” he said, and took one of the seats. Simmons did the same.

  In the hallway a phone started to bleat. The woman looked towards the hall but left the phone ringing.

  “Relatives,” she said, dismissively. “In-laws, probably. I can’t say anything to them yet, can I? No. Not yet.”

  Hogarth nodded but said nothing.

  They waited. Eventually, the phone stopped ringing. “This will be the death of Grant’s mum and dad. It really will…” she said. A moment later Sabine sat up as if she had snapped out of a trance.

  “My employees, you say? They don’t like me because, officially, they know they’re not my employees. But Emily and Yvette get on with it. They know the score. It’s Brett who can’t accept it. That’s why he came here this morning. He recommended that he should take up the reins of the business for a while – just while I was grieving or until Grant turned up again. As if! I know exactly what he wants. He wants what he’s always wanted. He wanted control of the business. But if he wants control so badly then why didn’t he just go and start a business himself, eh? Stupid question. It’s because of the money. Because Grant had already made it. What Brett wants is a ready-made cash cow…” The woman sniffed, picked up her wine glass, then set it back down again.

  “You don’t want to hear all that, do you? That’s my business. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all grist for the mill, Mrs Dawn,” said Hogarth, “We came here because we need a look at the whole picture.” He chose his words carefully. “Now we need to determine if there might have been any other possible reasons why this could have happened.”

  “Other reasons…?” she said.

  Hogarth stiffened under the woman’s blue-eyed gaze. She was a smart one, alright. Hogarth hoped she was drunker than she was smart.

  “It’s police procedure in a case like this. We have to look at all possibilities and eliminate them one by one…”

  His own words were sucking him deeper into a potential quagmire. Every word, every piece of police jargon he used to blag his way through only seemed to root him deeper into potential trouble. He shouldn’t have come here. It had started as a nebulous, foolish, kind of favour. The situation had been almost laughable. But now he was sinking into a quicksand. The woman at the lock-up had gotten to him and skewed his judgement and now here he was, playing the daft old man, indulging Simmons like a child. He cringed for helping to create such a potential mess, but it was hard to back out now. And it had all started by simply saying yes.

  “Possibilities…” said the woman. He watched her clinging to the word, turning it over in her head like a Rubik’s cube.

  “You knew Grant had a lock-up, did you? A place he kept some cars.”

  The woman frowned like it had been a sore subject.

  “His toys, his little domain. I knew a bit, I suppose, but they weren’t a subject for discussion between us. I knew he had them, but he preferred to play dumb. Whenever they came up we argued, so in the end, I let it go. I said his little vanity project was a waste of his time and money, though he always said it didn’t cost much. I never paid much attention to the detail, and he kept most of it from me, but I knew he had his toys, alright. I also knew he liked to drive fast. Too fast. I knew that from when we first met. One of these days, you’ll end up killing yourself. I kept telling him that. But I didn’t know I was putting a curse over him, did I?”

  “I don’t think you did for one moment, Mrs Dawn. Your words were meant to help protect him.”

  “Yes. I’ve been trying to protect him from himself ever since we got together. That’s twelve years now.”

  Hogarth looked at her face. She smiled.

  “I don’t look old enough? Probably not. I was nineteen when we hooked up. Seems a bit sordid now, looking back, the dirty old man and the teenage girl. But I didn’t know any better, and Grant obviously didn’t. But we got married, so it wasn’t what it might have seemed.”

  Hogarth gave a nod.

  “You said you knew
about the lock-up…”

  “Out in the sticks. Paglesham? I know about it. But I didn’t know where exactly.”

  “And you’ve never been there?”

  “Never been, never wanted to go, never needed to, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t like oily garages, and from what I’ve heard of Paglesham, the place is draughty old wasteland. Not my cup of tea at all. I left him to it.”

  “But you would have seen some documentation with the lock-up’s address on it, surely.” Hogarth probed her eyes for the truth but the woman seemed blasé.

  “If I did see it then I didn’t bother to look very well. And as far as I’m concerned, I never will want to know about it. I’ll get rid of the whole thing. That place killed him, didn’t it? What would I ever want to do with that?”

  The woman seemed resigned to her husband’s death. Interesting.

  “This is an important question, Mrs Dawn. Do you know of any reason why someone might have wanted your husband out of the way?”

  “Out of the way? As in killed? What?” The woman’s face floundered from weariness to an incredulous smile, to pure blank-faced shock. “Surely you’re not suggesting…”

  Hogarth raised an open-handed palm.

  “I’m not suggesting anything. As I said, we have to look at all possibilities – especially in the beginning.”

  “Look, lots of people didn’t like Grant. Sometimes I hated him myself. He was often loud, selfish, showy, brash, hot tempered, and he was ridiculously stubborn… but I didn’t care. I still loved him. Annoying as he was, we worked well together. Lots of people didn’t like him, but hearing you put it like that… I don’t know. I’ll need to think about that.”

  “Think about it? Why?” said Hogarth, frowning.

  “I told you, people didn’t always warm to him. I’ve been drinking. I’m not thinking straight. I need time.”

  Hogarth looked at her and she met his eye. She picked up her wine glass and pointed at him with it.