The Secret Dawn

by Solomon Carter

  “Help?” said Hogarth.

  “Help me find it. You’re a detective. You have the skills. You work out where it’s been hidden.”

  “He didn’t tell you?” said Hogarth.

  Flount sparkled at him and shook her head. He felt the draw of her eyes.

  “I can’t help you, sorry. Not even Sabine Dawn seems to know where it is.”

  “Of course not. Grant suspects she might be the one who tried to kill him. Come here, Inspector. Stay here with me and we can make the arrangement even sweeter…” She reached for his face, and Hogarth seized her hand before she touched him. He looked at her a moment, then forced her hand away.

  “There will be no arrangement, Miss Flount.” He looked at the woman, now seeing past the beauty, to the devious woman behind the looks.

  “Actually, Sabine Dawn thought you might know where it was.”

  “No. Grant trusts me, but it appears not when it comes to large sums of cash. But between you and me, we could find it.”

  “Leave it out. And how come you need money like that? You’re supposed to be doing well as one of these so-called influencers.”

  “Come on, Inspector. Everyone on Instagram is doing well. Don’t you know, they call it Instasham. Half of everything you see on there is made up. Fake it ‘til you make it. Don’t get me wrong, Inspector. I have a life from it. It’s my job and I earn a pretty good living. But I want the next level – the income someone of my skills deserves. Do you really think I’d be sharing a house if I was earning the big money? No way. I’d own this house.”

  “True. And you wouldn’t be making a play for a crochety old copper like me. That smacks of desperation, Miss Flount.”

  Flount pulled away and raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. I do find you fascinating.”

  “Fascinating like a lab experiment. Flattery like that will get you everywhere.”

  “Stop acting like you’re not interested. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “No. This stops now,” said Hogarth. “That cash means we’ve got another potential motive to be considered. It turns out you might have helped me after all, Miss Flount. Poor old Grant Dawn just doesn’t realise how well loved he is, does he?”

  “Oh I love Grant, all right. He won’t miss the money, trust me. He never does. And I really do have need for it.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Flount and Hogarth regarded one another. The woman sighed in the uneasy stand off as Hogarth kept his distance. In the end, she looked away, beaten.

  “Are you going to tell him about this?” she said. “If you do, I could call the police and tell them what you know.”

  “Then you’d expose Grant, and I could have you done for trying to bribe a police officer.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” she said, eyes wide.

  “And neither would you,” said Hogarth. “But if you did, I’d find a way through. But you? Stealing from your own cousin? I’m not so sure you would.”

  The woman’s sculpted eyebrows dipped low over her eyes.

  “I’m not giving up on you, Inspector. I can read you like a book and I know what you want.”

  “Maybe you can. But I’m stubborn as hell, Miss Flount. I never give in easily.”

  “I could put that to the test…”

  Hogarth gave her a grim smile. “And then you’d be in even more trouble, Miss Flount.” Hogarth made a show of looking around the kitchen and nodded out at the zen garden.

  “If I were you, I’d be very happy with what I’ve got. You don’t know how good you’ve got it. Don’t rock the boat if you don’t have to.”

  “But what if I like rocking the boat?” said Flount.

  Hogarth shook his head. “You’ve rocked it enough already. Don’t call me again unless it’s important.”

  “Your messages seemed pretty urgent to me, Inspector? I wonder what your colleagues would make of them.”

  Hogarth felt a heat rising to his face. He started walking towards the front door before she could see him turning red.

  “Feel free to message me any time,” she said. Hogarth walked out into the hall and gripped the door handle. As he opened the door his phone started to buzz in his jacket pocket. For once, Hogarth was glad of the excuse to put the thing to his ear.

  “Hogarth speaking,” he said. He met Emily Flount’s flirtatious gaze as he closed the door. She was watching him, arms folded, eyes calling.

  Hogarth finally shut the door, turned, and squinted out at the bright estuary water.

  “Guv,” said Simmons.

  From the tone of Simmons’ voice, Hogarth knew something was wrong. He tensed and gritted his teeth.

  “It’s Grant Dawn.”

  “What about him? Don’t tell me,” said Hogarth, voice full of bitter sarcasm, “somebody’s gone and killed him for real.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Then what’s the matter.”

  “He’s gone, guv. He’s walked out of the lock-up.”

  “One job, Simmons. You only had one job to do! Where’s he gone?!”

  “That’s the other problem...”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know exactly where he’s gone – but I’m pretty sure he’s going after Brett Reville. He’d just been shown a picture of Reville getting physical with his wife.”

  Hogarth’s eyes flicked wide open. “And where the hell did he see that?” said Hogarth.

  “Ah. That’s another problem.”

  Swear words started to race around Hogarth’s head. He bared his teeth and walked away from Flount’s home and stormed towards his car across the street.

  “Spit it out, man. This whole bloody fiasco is getting out of hand.”

  “Do you remember Grant Dawn saying he’d pulled out all the stops to get this over with.”

  “Vaguely. I remember something like that. Why?”

  “Now I know what he meant. He’s had someone else working the case alongside us ever since the beginning. A private investigator.”

  Hogarth stopped walking as if he’d hit an invisible wall. He stared straight ahead at the water. His breath caught in his throat.

  “Why the hell didn’t he say so? Why did he drag us into this in the first place if he was already using a private investigator?!”

  “I guess we were another way of him pulling out all the stops.”

  Hogarth shook his head. “He’s got no car. How did he get away from Paglesham?”

  “I don’t know, guv. All I know is where he’s likely headed. He’s gone looking for Brett Reville. Dawn was distraught, guv. In shock. Who knows what he’s gonna do?”

  Impulsive. Irrational. Wild. All words he had come to associate with Grant Dawn.

  “Can you get me Reville’s address?” said Hogarth.

  “The private investigator is still here. Maybe I can get it from him.”

  Hogarth winced. “Just get it and call me back, pronto.”

  He cut the call and jogged across the street to his car. He jumped in and tossed the phone onto the dash. Five seconds later, his seatbelt still undone, Hogarth sped off past Chalkwell station. Emily Flount watched him from the window across the street.

  Eleven

  Hogarth drove along the wide street of white and pastel painted terraced houses at the back of Southend, not far from the Kursaal and the high street. This patch – one end of the once notorious York Road – had been given a liberal splash of paint to give it a modern seaside look. And most of the landlords hadn’t done a bad job. Not once you ignored the rubbish sacks piled in a few front gardens, or the lost, vacant look on the faces of the urchins who bowled down the street. Regardless of the subtle gentrification, this was their domain still. The land of the ne’er-do-wells. The ones who grouped on local street corners and drank at the top of the high street. This was once their home, but looking around, Hogarth could see they had been priced out of the market, pushed into the worst of the slum landlord residences peppered around town. Up
and coming Southend was absorbing the London money and with it, the dregs were being pushed out. But some were still here because it wasn’t possible to make them disappear under a lick of brightly coloured paint. Hogarth drove up the steep hill on the far end of York Road, slowing as he looked for the corner of Beach Road. There it was on the left, with one of those old-fashioned road signs embedded high into the side wall of the house on the end. Hogarth looked for a parking space but seeing DS Palmer waving at him further up the slope, he accelerated and pulled up sharply – so sharply Palmer’s face changed and she stepped back out of the way of Hogarth’s bumper as his tyre swiped the kerb. Hogarth bounded out of the car, slammed the door and looked across the roof.

  “Glad you could make it,” he said.

  “It was either that or Antiques Roadshow,” said Palmer.

  “Antiques Roadshow? I think that’s more Melford’s bag, don’t you?” Hogarth offered a glimmer of a smile. It lasted no more than a second before his mouth reverted to a grim down-turned line. “How did you get on with Yvette George?” he asked.

  “She said some pretty disparaging things about Sabine Dawn – essentially that Mrs Dawn is a total lush and a drain on the business and a complete block to its success.”

  “A big fan, then,” said Hogarth.

  “Absolutely,” said Palmer. “She said she didn’t want to speak badly of Mr and Mrs Dawn, but I didn’t have to push very hard.”

  “A spot of feminine rivalry, perhaps?”

  “Bitchiness, you mean? Yeah. Some of that, I think. But it’s more about her stopping beloved Brett’s dreams in their tracks.”

  “Smitten, is she?”

  “Certainly seems that way. But I don’t know why. I think the man’s an ogre.”

  “From what I saw, he’s certainly not exactly out to win friends and influence people. Not unless cheap chocs and neon flowers do the job, that is.”

  Palmer frowned as she read Hogarth’s face. She could see something had happened, but Hogarth seemed too wired to explain. Looking more closely, she saw the oppressive hangover in his dark-ringed eyes.

  “You indulged last night, did you?” she said.

  Hogarth snapped his eyes to hers. “It shows, then. I was just led to believe I looked A-okay.”

  “Who told you that?” said Palmer, aiming for jokey banter. “Yeah, it shows, guv. You look a bit panda-eyed.”

  “Then I feel sorry for the bloody panda,” said Hogarth with a shrug. “It was Saturday night, Sue. Maybe I’ll do a critique of your face after your next bottle and a curry.”

  “I wasn’t taking a dig, guv.”

  Hogarth stared at Palmer, and his eyes softened by degrees.

  “At least I can rely on you to tell me the truth.”

  “Why? What else has happened?”

  “What hasn’t happened so far this weekend? Grant Dawn’s flirty cousin Emily Flount got in contact with me – the only other person who knew he had survived. Or so we thought. She said it was urgent, so I went to see her… I won’t bore you with the gory details. Suffice it to say I think dear old Emily can be a bit liberal with the truth. Like every other bugger in this mess.”

  “Simmons implied the woman was very attractive,” said Palmer.

  “That boy’s got more hormones than he knows what to do with. Yeah, Flount looks the part. So long as you like drawn-on eyebrows and more slap than Max Factor.” Who was he kidding? thought Hogarth. He almost had a cardiac because of her. The woman was dangerously good looking, and he needed to stay clear.

  Palmer tried to look past his silence, but Hogarth kept his face stern and impregnable. But Palmer still wanted to know what was going on.

  “Why are we here? You didn’t really explain on the phone.”

  “No. Maybe I didn’t.” He sighed. “Grant Dawn’s gone AWOL.”

  “You’ve lost him?!” snapped Palmer.

  “I’ve lost him? Simmons lost him, more like. He was right there under the lad’s bloody nose.”

  “But he’s gone AWOL…? And everyone still thinks he’s missing or dead? Have you spoken to PC Heybridge yet?”

  “No. I’ll need to speak to the coastguard as well, and the HSE might start asking questions too.”

  “Why?”

  “The slipway isn’t public, which puts it into HSE territory. But it’s not yet been ruled a fatal incident. But when they decide he’s dead, the whole case takes on a different complexion. Then it gets serious. So we need this wrapped up well before that happens.”

  “Oh no. I didn’t think of that. Reports. Bureaucracy. Other players wanting a piece of the case…”

  Hogarth nodded. “The Health and Safety lot will want to open up the case just to check we haven’t missed anything. Just because we lead the investigation doesn’t mean they won’t want to dissect it. That’s what bureaucrats are there for.”

  “But why the HSE?”

  “The slipway where the accident happened. It’s owned by the boatyard people there and they employee people. I can see the HSE coming a mile off. And we don’t need that – not until this fiasco takes some semblance of order. Which it will do if I can find Grant Dawn before he gets spotted by the press pack or does anything stupid.”

  “I think he’s done that already, hasn’t he?” said Palmer.

  “Hiding away is one thing, Sue. But now there’s something else. It turns out Grant Dawn hired a private investigator to keep tabs on the suspects.”

  Hogarth watched a look of grim despair spread across Palmer’s face. It was the same defeated resignation he had felt himself but had determined not to let cloud his thinking. If he was going to be able to rescue the situation from a total debacle he needed to be at his very best. It was a potential career destroyer. And he’d walked right into it.

  “We just need to find him. That’s all. We’ll contain this thing, we’ll work hard, we’ll work fast, and we’ll solve this case. After that, we package the whole thing just right and hand it to PC Heybridge, all neat and tidy with a fancy bow tied on top. Then Heybridge does his admin and we close the case. None of us ends up guilty of any misdemeanour and everyone’s record stays clean. Better than clean, because we’ve solved another case in double-quick time. It’s not like we deserve to suffer for this mess. We were asked to help. The only thing we’ve done wrong—”

  “I know,” said Palmer. “We didn’t make Grant Dawn’s survival public knowledge at the first possible opportunity. The mistake was made right there.”

  “But what choice did I have? Simmons needed help. His father dumped him in it, and I got dragged in before I could see what was happening. After that, the waters got muddied. But we can still fix this.”

  “But if a private investigator knows what you’ve done, I’m not sure you’ll get that chance.”

  Hogarth shook his head. “There’s a few different forces at work in this. You and me just need to hold it together. Bonnie and Clyde, remember.”

  Palmer winced. She felt Hogarth pulling her deeper into something she hadn’t had a say in from the start. Palmer knew she still had the option to walk away. But if she did, she would have to blow the whistle. One followed the other in an inescapable progression. Walk away and say nothing, and she was still complicit in whatever took place. If she walked, she was in the clear. But… if she told Melford, Hogarth’s career was finished and there would be no way back.

  Hogarth saw the wild stream of thoughts flitting through Palmer’s mind. His eyes narrowed.

  “Sue?”

  Palmer looked up. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t just throw Hogarth to the wolves. Even if he hadn’t exactly pleaded with her to help, she knew Hogarth needed her and he seemed to know it too.

  “This one isn’t my fault, Sue. I know that doesn’t matter. I know I’ve let this go too far. Guilty as charged. But I only got involved for Simmons’ sake. He asked me so I showed up. His father dumped him in it without telling him a word. And then it got passed down the line just like that. A poison bloody chali
ce if ever there was one. I suppose I could have walked away, but if I had… it would have been on Simmons, and much as I like the lad, you know he would have ballsed it up. His career would have been over before it started.”

  “But now yours is at risk, not to mention mine.”

  “Not yet. I know we can fix this. But I’ve got a lot of things I’d like to say to Simmons’ old man when all this is done. I’d like to stick one on his nose.”

  “I can understand that,” said Palmer. “One thing. If we’re looking for Grant Dawn, why start at Brett Reville’s place?”

  “Easy. One very good reason. Dawn thinks Brett Reville is knocking off his wife, Sabine.”

  “Why would he think that?” said Palmer, shocked.

  “This PI showed Mr Dawn a photograph of them meeting at Dawn’s office. Then they disappeared upstairs for twenty minutes. Apparently, this photo looked a bit hands-on.”

  “And I thought Brett Reville was all work and no play,” said Palmer. “But Reville might not be here. If you’d let me get a word in on the phone, I could have told you. I saw Reville at Yvette George’s place with bacon, eggs, Mars bars and the Sunday papers.

  “Fry-ups, Sunday nookie, and chocolate bars? Our man Brett’s making me jealous.”

  Palmer gave Hogarth a cynical eye.

  “Okay,” he said, moving on. “We’ll look at his house anyway, because we’re not really after Reville. It’s Grant Dawn we’re after. We’ve got to stop him before he makes things any worse”

  Palmer frowned. “Worse?”

  “Sorry to break it to you,” said Hogarth, “but I’m beginning to think Grant Dawn is even more impulsive than me.”

  “I doubt that’s possible,” said Palmer.

  This time, it was Hogarth who gave Palmer the hard look.

  They walked along Beach Road looking every part CID. It wasn’t just their smart attire. It was in their gait, and the sombre, fast walk. It was also in the seriousness of their faces, and the underlying stress in their eyes. Ahead of them, a couple of young men wearing baseball caps and baggy jogging bottoms saw them, slowed down and crossed the street, muttering as they went. Just two more likely lads up to no good on a Sunday afternoon. Two more who had reason to avoid the rozzers. Join the club – it was hardly elite. Hogarth stopped walking when they reached a baby-blue coloured mid-terraced job with big squared-off bay windows. He checked the door number against the address in his head and nodded. The house looked in good nick. The house had net curtains, as almost all of them did.