The Secret Dawn

by Solomon Carter

  “As far as we can see, guv. So what are you going to do?”

  “On this one? From here on we play it by the book. No reason not to. This might even be murder, Palmer. We can’t tell as yet. We’ve had a tip off, so we call it in.”

  “But what about the rest of it? If Dawn killed him you can’t protect him any longer. You’ll end up strung up just the same as he will.”

  “I’m not protecting anyone here. No one else in this mess has helped us one bit. Everyone has tried to put one over me. I’m not going to carry the can for this.”

  “What then?” said Palmer with more than a hint of exasperation.

  “We call in the murder, get started on the usual procedure and let the others do their work. Now we’ve got an actual dead body, the pressure’s not just on us, is it? It’s on Grant Dawn, Emily Flount, Sabine Dawn, and Yvette George too. It’ll be panic stations, Sue. We need to keep a close eye on all of them.”

  “But if it is murder, it has to be Dawn,” said Palmer.

  “Let’s find out, shall we? Call it in.”

  “There’s no more time for hiding what you know. Your best bet might be to come clean.”

  “What? And shaft Simmons and myself into the bargain? No thank you. I just need a little more time.”

  Hogarth walked towards his car. He opened the car door and shot Palmer a final questioning look.

  “You’re not going to do anything rash, are you, Sue?” he said.

  Palmer felt her face flush under Hogarth’s stern gaze.

  “No, guv.”

  “Good stuff. Bonnie and Clyde all the way, remember.”

  Hogarth began to climb into his car.

  “Guv.”

  Hogarth paused.

  “It didn’t end too well for Bonnie and Clyde, did it?”

  Hogarth frowned. “Hold your nerve and we’ll come up roses. When this one ends, only the villains are going down. I swear.” Hogarth got into the car and shut the door.

  Palmer watched Hogarth’s car drive around the walls of parked cars until he reached the exit. He drove out onto Alexandra Street and pulled up on the yellow lines outside the volunteer bureau. Grant Dawn was still there waiting, good to his word. He climbed into the passenger seat and before the door was fully shut, Hogarth shot away down the street, heading for the high street and central Southend beyond.

  The situation was unpredictable, explosive… and Palmer felt there were more victims to come. She hoped they weren’t going to be counted among them. But even so, it was hard to see anyone coming away unscathed.

  Hogarth put his foot down, shooting across the traffic lights between the closed-down BHS and the shopping centre a fraction before they turned red. Grant Dawn shot him a questioning look.

  “You’re going a bit fast.”

  “I thought you liked a bit of speed, Mr Dawn. From now on, I’ll have to work fast,” said Hogarth. “You say you didn’t do it. So come on, why is that man dead back there?”

  “I don’t know. Honest.”

  “You walked out from that lock-up just after seeing a photo of Reville apparently trying to get it on with your wife. Tell me you didn’t walk out of there to find him.”

  “That man has been after my business for so long, I’d almost gotten used to it. But seeing him holding Sabine’s arm like that… I was furious. Wouldn’t you have been the same?”

  “Of course I would!” snapped Hogarth. “But we’re talking about you, not me.”

  Dawn nodded his head.

  “When I walked out, I’ll admit it. I intended nothing less than to find the man and put him out of his misery. He deserved it. But I’m not stupid, Inspector. I had time to think before I got here. And what you said makes sense. If he was seeing Sabine, she would have had him come to my house.”

  Hogarth sensed the man smiling. Hogarth turned his attention away from the road to look at Dawn’s face. He was smiling. Hogarth erupted.

  “What the hell are you smiling for?! That man’s dead! You seeing the truth in retrospect doesn’t help you, me, or anyone else. You still thought Reville was going for your wife. You went out to kill him. Say it.”

  “I did. But I didn’t do it. I changed my mind.”

  “You changed your mind?!” said Hogarth, incredulous.

  Grant Dawn held Hogarth’s eye for emphasis. “Yes. I changed my mind. I was furious when I walked out, but on the way back to Southend I had time to calm down. Gurney showed me a photograph of Brett putting his hand on Sabine’s wrist… yes, it shows the man was a crass son-of-a-bitch, but it doesn’t prove anything more than that.”

  Hogarth’s eyes flicked between the road and Dawn’s face.

  “And you’re sure about that?” he said.

  “Yes. I’m sure. What you’ve just said has only strengthened that opinion.”

  “And what would you have done if you hadn’t changed your mind?” said Hogarth.

  “The truth?” asked Dawn.

  Hogarth nodded.

  “I was going to kill him.”

  “And how would you have killed him, Mr Dawn?”

  “I hadn’t exactly planned it, you know? But one of the usual ways.”

  Hogarth waited.

  “Smashing something over his head would have certainly made me feel better.”

  “And? Is that what you did?”

  Grant Dawn twisted around in his seat.

  “I’ve already told you. When I found Brett, he looked exactly the way he did when you saw him. All dead and slobbering…”

  “How did you know he was dead?”

  “When I realised he wasn’t eating. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. Eating is pretty much a definition of life for Brett. He was an eating machine.”

  Hogarth turned his attention to the street to clear his mind.

  By the time his Vauxhall had reached the dual carriageway at the back of town, the inevitable police sirens were rising on the air.

  “Then who killed him?” said Hogarth.

  “I don’t know the answer to that question. You saw the state of him. It could have been a heart attack.”

  “Maybe…” said Hogarth. “But it’s an oddly convenient one if it is.”

  “Then whoever it is, I’d like to shake their hand,” said Dawn. He smiled and peered out of the windows as the Southend streets rushed by. “By the way, where are we going?”

  “Back to Paglesham, Mr Dawn. Until we’ve got this all sorted, that’s the one place I think you’re safe.”

  “Safe? Safe from who?”

  “From me,” said Hogarth. “And from yourself.”

  The first of the squad cars rushed by in the opposite lane, sirens in full swing, blue lights flashing.

  Twelve

  “Where have you been, Inspector? Didn’t you hear all the fuss?” It was PC Matthews talking, the cheeky old sod. If it had been anyone less long in the tooth, Hogarth would have put them in their place. But he let it go as banter. The rest of the uniforms looked up as Hogarth breezed past, heading straight for the CID office.

  “Yes, I’ve got the low-down, thank you, Matthews.”

  “One missing presumed dead, now another dead body found in a car. You know what the papers will be saying.”

  Hogarth walked into the CID room and stuck his head out to proffer a closing word.

  “The Record can say whatever it likes. But I’ve always preferred the non-fiction section myself.”

  He closed the door leaving Orton to make a schoolboy “Ooooooh” sound.

  Matthews rolled his eyes at Orton and went back to his work.

  Hogarth glanced at the clock hanging on the wall of their office. Palmer was busy at her desk, fielding a call. She looked up while in mid flow in her conversation. She looked harassed. Simmons had arrived before her and was setting up a new file, talking to one of the uniforms at Clarence Road by phone. From the snippet he’d heard, Hogarth gathered the uniform was one of the first on the scene. Almost three hours had passed since Reville’s death
had been called in, and the investigation was already in full swing without him. He should have been there directing proceedings but managing Grant Dawn was taking up too much of his time.

  “Okay, you two. Soon as you like,” said Hogarth, loud enough for them both to hear. He pulled a seat from the small meeting table and dropped his weight on it. “We need to look at where we go from here.”

  Simmons slid his chair across to the table with a sigh. Hogarth knew he looked stressed, but Simmons looked worse. He had the eyes half-shut look of the already condemned. “Cheer up, Simmons. You’ll lose your cherry one day,” said Hogarth, whispering, out of Palmer’s earshot. Simmons’ mouth kinked up at the corners – just a hint of a smile, nothing more.

  “You can start,” said Hogarth. “Where are we at?”

  “PC Heybridge has called for you, sir. Twice. He wants to meet with you and run through the dynamics of the car incident.”

  “Where’s he going with that? Any idea?” said Hogarth.

  “Still no body, surprise, surprise. He said the coastguard have been looking all weekend all around the Roach estuary and all the inlets, as have a few of the local fishermen and leisure boat types. They’ve found nothing, of course. The coastguard are all set to wind down the search. They’re holding out for a word from the police.”

  Hogarth nodded.

  “Any impressions on PC Heybridge or his thinking?”

  “Sounds a jobsworth to me, but not a tosspot. Just one of the old-school types. He’s got a job so he intends to do it well.”

  “That’s fair enough. So long as he’ll accept me steering him around, as needs be.”

  “He might. Hard to say,” said Simmons.

  “He will,” said Hogarth. “He won’t like the alternative. What’s his thinking about the car, about the body – or lack of it?”

  “The Capri was old, and he suggested there were probably enough faults to have caused several accidents. Add the tyre tracks on the lanes as evidence of high-speed driving. Combine that with locals who say they heard a car whizzing past their homes at the right time, and it sounds like we’ve got a self-inflicted accident. That’s where Heybridge is going, anyway. But what does that matter?”

  “It matters a great deal that Heybridge draws a stable, secure conclusion. If he sticks with that it buys us enough time to package the rest of our case together.”

  “Package?” said Simmons dubiously.

  “Yes. But if you don’t like that word, how about ‘manage’? Don’t worry, lad. No one’s going to do anything untoward here, Simmons. We’re just going to sweep up after dear old Daddy Simmons and Mr Dawn. Any villains of the piece will get their just desserts, while the heroic detectives get the plaudits they deserve. You with me?”

  Simmons nodded but looked uncertain. Palmer hung up the phone and slid her chair towards the table.

  She seemed to have listened to the whole of Simmons and Hogarth’s brief exchange.

  “It’ll be hard to manage now there’s a real dead body, guv. Which part are we supposed to be keeping a lid on? And for how long?”

  “Reville’s death leads us into uncharted waters. It takes us where it takes us, and we follow procedure all the way.”

  “Even if it leads us back to pulling the plug on Grant Dawn?”

  “Yes, but only if and when that happens or we’ll be in the doo-doo good and proper. So we work two tracks at once. There’s enough of us to do this right. First, Grant Dawn. Who tried to kill him? I’d have said Brett Reville all the way. Now I’m scratching my head. Sabine Dawn knew about those so-called classic cars of his, but so did Emily Flount. And I guess it’s not impossible Yvette George knew as well. But Miss Flount… she’s one to watch. I’ve already told Palmer – Miss Flount contacted me to say there was something urgent to discuss. I assumed it was related to Grant Dawn. But when I met with her, she made it plain she was after Dawn’s missing cash and offered to split it with me if I helped her find it.”

  “She tried to bribe you?” asked Simmons.

  “In various ways, yes,” said Hogarth.

  A grin flickered across Simmons’ face. Palmer raised an eyebrow and the grin disappeared.

  “She was after the money he drew down from the business – which Dawn said was earmarked to get his company rebrand done. As if! It looks to me like all these people have been trying to shaft each other for as long as they’ve worked together. And the Flount girl is supposed to be Dawn’s family.”

  Palmer frowned. “She told you what she wanted? That’s very brave. Why on earth would she tell you? The very next thing you’d do is talk to Grant Dawn about it.”

  Hogarth shook his head.

  “And how did she get your contact details?” said Simmons. The sparkle in the DC’s eye bothered him. Hogarth looked away.

  “I don’t know, Simmons. The girl’s sharp. She could have tracked it down a few ways. And to answer your question, Palmer – she told me because she was obviously very confident in her pitch, if you catch my drift. And she knows we’ve been working off-piste. She knows we’re unofficial, so she wanted to leverage that against us.”

  “Blackmail? Why? So, you’d keep it secret from Dawn?” said Palmer.

  Hogarth nodded.

  “And she, uh, offered herself as a sweetener in the deal?” said Simmons.

  Palmer’s eyebrows flicked up again. She folded her arms. “Some women have no shame at all.”

  “And… did you think about it, guv?” said Simmons, with a mischievous smile.

  “Simmons,” growled Hogarth. “Do you really think we’d be having this discussion if I had? I’m telling you they’re all cut-throats, including Dawn. I want to be rid of them asap. To do that, we need to find who tampered with Dawn’s car, and we look at Reville too.”

  “It’s obviously linked,” said Palmer. “Whoever tried to kill Dawn probably topped Brett Reville too.”

  “Maybe,” said Hogarth, “But until we’ve got the sabotage worked out, we have to treat them separately and still work them both at the same time. The unofficial case has to get sorted before Dawn’s missing status gets ratcheted up to suspected murder. That’s where the DCI’s head will be going already – if it wasn’t so far stuck up his backside.”

  “The crimes are going to converge. Two crimes converging around one culprit,” said Palmer.

  “They should,” said Hogarth. “But we can’t assume a single culprit as our starting point – that could become a blind spot, and then other mistakes might creep in. What we need is Grant Dawn to come out of hiding before he becomes officially dead. And to do that, we have to find the sabotage culprit. So we’ve got to work fast. And we’ve got to succeed. And who knows, once we have the sabotage, we just might find it points to Brett Reville’s murderer too. If it is murder. Anything on that?”

  “Dickens and the crime scene team were down there not long after you left. Dickens was coy as usual, but he said it could have been murder, with the usual caveats that we need to wait for Marris and pathology.”

  “As ever. But Dickens has enough experience to know a murder when he sees one. Any idea of the cause of death?”

  “He wouldn’t speculate,” said Palmer.

  “That’s Dickens all over,” said Hogarth. “But that’s okay. Then the rest is up to us. With a dead body around, we’ve got no reason to hold back with these people. Not anymore. The gloves are off. Emily Flount, Yvette George, Sabine and Grant Dawn. Ultimately, Dawn suspects his wife. We know that. And it’s worth looking at. We know that she had a meeting with Brett Reville on Saturday afternoon, the day before his death. Who’s to say they didn’t have another. See if there’s any CCTV at Dawn’s office, if there is, I want it checked.”

  “What about Dawn’s PI, John Gurney? He might have something,” said Simmons.

  “He could. But evidence from him could compromise our investigation. Evidence from Gurney could lead back to Dawn, and the case would unravel as soon as the CPS ask when and where we had dealings with
Grant Dawn and John Gurney… No, we can look at it, but we can’t use it as evidence. Still, that doesn’t stop us asking Gurney if he saw Reville and Sabine meet again. That might be enough to get a confession from Sabine, depending how much wine she’s been drinking. Simmons, you were with Gurney this afternoon. What time did he leave the lock-up?”

  “Gurney? Oh, about a half-hour, forty-five minutes after Grant Dawn walked out. Gurney thought he might be able to find Grant Dawn himself.”

  “Dawn didn’t mention seeing him, so I guess Gurney didn’t manage it,” said Hogarth. “But Gurney leaving is good for us. He might have seen what our other suspects were up to before Reville died.”

  “There must have been a window of time between Gurney leaving Paglesham and Reville turning up dead,” said Palmer.

  “Probably,” said Hogarth. “But who knows, eh?”

  “Simmons, you check for CCTV, see if there were any more meetings between Sabine and Reville after the one we know about. I’ll track down our friend John Gurney and put him in the picture.”

  “Ask him if he saw anything, you mean,” said Palmer.

  “Actually, I meant both.”

  Palmer frowned and lowered her eyes.

  “Oh,” said Hogarth. “One more thing. Anything back on Dawn’s Capri as yet?”

  “For that you’ll need to speak to Heybridge, guv,” said Palmer. “I’m still liaising with the uniforms at Clarence Road. They’ve been collecting witness statements for the last hour or so.”

  Hogarth raised an eyebrow. “Any good?”

  Palmer shook her head. “Brett Reville pulled up into the car park alone, parked and waited. Seems like no one noticed him at all.”

  “He might have arrived alone, but it doesn’t mean he stayed alone. We could access CCTV camera footage, but that’ll take time,” said Hogarth. “When you’ve finished pulling together those witness statements, I’d like you to have another crack at Yvette George. With beloved Brett out of the picture, I think she’ll need the gentle touch. That’s your department.”

  “Okay. Soon as I can,” said Palmer. She turned back to her desk and picked up the phone to make another call.