“And where does it end, Mr Dawn? Care to tell me that?”
“It ends with me confronting whoever tried to kill me with the evidence in my hand. It ends with me winning and them losing, after that I get some peace and I start again.”
“And what about the rest of us?”
“You get rewarded when I know who did it.”
“And we lose our careers in the process.”
Dawn pinched his brow and stifled a yawn. “I want some coffee, you want some coffee?”
Hogarth scowled.
“Whatever. I’ll make us all a coffee,” said Dawn. He walked over to the desk, flicked the kettle on and pulled a two-pint bottle of green top semi-skimmed from the fridge. Inside the fridge, Hogarth caught a glimpse of the large purple wrapper of an oversized bar of milk chocolate. His eyes narrowed in thought. He remembered Emily Flount offering them a piece of that chocolate the first time they met on Saturday afternoon. Instead they’d all settled for a Portuguese beer.
Palmer stepped closer towards him. “Are you going to tell him about the spreadsheets, guv?” she whispered.
“He doesn’t deserve to know anything unless it helps us,” Hogarth replied.
Palmer didn’t see any reason for holding back, but she knew Hogarth was stubborn. In fact, Palmer hoped presenting the accounts would hasten Dawn’s return to the land of the living. But usually Hogarth had a method to his madness. Palmer let it go and stepped back. Hogarth watched Dawn closely as he made the coffee. His eyes tracked to the fridge as the milk was put away. He saw the purple chocolate wrapper, and he saw the white boxes of medical supplies beside the fridge. He tried to read the labels but they were too far away and the light too dim. But he remembered from before. Something about ‘micro-fine needles’. Hmmmm.
“Ever heard of the word pseudo-suicide, Mr Dawn?” said Hogarth.
Dawn smiled at him like a dentist from a toothpaste commercial. He walked towards them both, steering two coffee mugs their way.
“No. Sounds unpleasant. I take it, you mean pseudo as in fake. As in a fake suicide. But this wasn’t a fake suicide, Inspector.”
“No. But the result is the same. You staying dead is a choice. That’s a faked death.”
“But I’ll only stay dead until I know who tried to kill me.”
“Fine. Let’s look at that, shall we. Let’s assume that’s all you ever intended to do.”
“It is,” said Dawn, firmly. “Of course it is.” Dawn sipped his coffee and gave Hogarth a hard look.
“Fair enough. But if you stay dead much longer, you’ll have no workable excuse to cover it. And then there will be real consequences. Not just for us. But for you too.”
“I grow wings and a halo?”
“No. You begin to accumulate a list of likely charges which begin the moment you are found alive,” said Hogarth.
“Come on! Like what?”
“Do you owe any tax, Mr Dawn? On your business?”
“Come on! Would I do all of this for tax purposes, and then ask you to help me? Don’t be absurd.”
“Think. Your tax? Are you up to date? Yes or no?”
“I don’t know… if I’m honest.”
“Probably not then. Tell me the self-employed man who is totally confident about their tax. And then there’s your business. You told me, and others have too, that you’re facing a cash flow issue. Another name for that is debt, Mr Dawn. If you die, and with Brett dead, who’s likely to recover any money owed to your firm?”
Dawn looked blank.
Hogarth shook his head. “No one, Mr Dawn. Your business will go into liquidation, and you won’t pay your creditors. Unpaid debts. Unpaid taxes.”
“That’s not what this is about!”
“Tell that to Revenue and Customs when you come back to life. The Revenue just love excuses. And the Insolvency Agency. The Financial Conduct Authority would probably love to hear about it too. So there’s a few court cases coming, just for starters. Then there’s allowing the police to file records which you know to be false. Certificates of death. Defaulting on any loans and credit you have in the background. Now we’ve got false reporting, serious fraud, forging a death certificate. This list goes on and on.”
“I’m not staying dead long enough for any of that to happen. Any of it.”
“So you tell me. But those consequences start to mount as soon as you become presumed dead. Let this drift any further than today and your trouble really starts.”
Dawn eyed him across his coffee cup. “You’re only saying that because you’re worried about your job.”
“But nothing I’ve said is untrue, Mr Dawn. The forensics report on your car will come in today. You need to make your move now.”
“I can afford to hold on a little longer.”
Hogarth shook his head and gulped the strong coffee. The scalding liquid burned his mouth and he made a face.
“We’re talking mere hours, Mr Dawn. Maybe less.”
“Then we’re all well incentivised,” said Dawn.
Hogarth nodded to the fridge.
“I see you’ve still not eaten your chocolate bar. Lost your appetite perhaps. Or are you the diabetic?”
Dawn’s brow dropped low over his eyes.
“That box of pen needles over there,” said Hogarth, “that’s what they’re for, right? They’re for diabetics, aren’t they?”
Dawn looked back at the box by the fridge.
“Bit odd for a diabetic to keep so much chocolate around, isn’t it? It’s unnecessary temptation, I’d say.”
“Even diabetics can use a little chocolate, Inspector. But why are you asking me about the chocolate anyway?” said Dawn, suspicious but confused.
“I wasn’t asking about the chocolate, Mr Dawn. I was asking about your needles.”
Dawn nodded slowly, but as if he still didn’t understand.
“That’s easy enough to answer. I’m not diabetic, Inspector,” said Dawn. “As for the chocolate, I’m just not the greedy type. I’ll eat some when I want it. You want a square? I’ll get you some if you like.”
“No thanks,” said Hogarth. The greedy type? It seemed an interesting choice of words. The words resonated in his head, but the reason wasn’t at all clear. He knew there was something else, something more obvious. Hogarth wondered if he was getting lost beneath the pressure, but he decided to followed his feelings.
“Inspector?” said Dawn.
Hogarth frowned and walked towards the box of medicine.
“Now what?” said Dawn.
“These pen needles belong to Emily? Why would she leave them here?” he walked to the box, picked it up, read the label. He opened the lid and looked inside at the white plastic-wrapped pen needles, already full of the required dose of insulin. Then he saw the other wrapped needle lying on the shelf behind it, and the small brown bottle of what could have been poppers or a medicinal liquid. Hogarth picked up the little bottle and read the label. More insulin.
“It’s all Emily’s, Inspector. She left it here because she assumed, as I did, that she was going to sit this out with me. We were going to treat it like one of our old family trips, two kids hiding away in the den. But Emily got distracted again. The money, eh?”
“The money,” said Hogarth. “And she left all this stuff here?” he said.
Dawn nodded. “She’ll have spares. She’s very well prepared, our Emily.”
“I’m sure. A little too well prepared, eh?” said Hogarth prodding the bottle. He set it back down on the shelf. He began to regret putting his fingerprints all over it.
“Where is she now?” said Hogarth.
“I don’t know,” said Dawn. “She calls to see if I’m okay, but I haven’t seen her since you were here last.”
Hogarth nodded. He looked at Palmer. Her eyes were conveying some urgent message, but he couldn’t work out what it was. His mind was suddenly full of insulin, pen needles, and milk chocolate. The glam images from Emily Flount’s Instagram feed also came to min
d, a true treasure trove of angst and regret. Hogarth suspected his near miss could have been far worse than he’d originally imagined. in more ways than one.
“How many times did Emily come here, Mr Dawn?”
“I don’t know. Every time you’ve seen her, and maybe once or twice before. She’s my friend as well as my cousin. I felt able to show her my little hobby perhaps more than anyone else.”
Hogarth’s eyes flicked away in thought and he set the box of needles down. He pulled a ratty looking tissue from his jacket pocket and picked up the brown plastic bottle with it, dropping it into his jacket pocket without asking.
“What are you doing?” said Dawn.
“My job. The one we both need me doing.”
“She might need that, you know,” said Dawn.
“I don’t think so. She’s very well prepared, just like you said.”
“What’s going on with you?” said Dawn, his eyes flicking between Palmer and Hogarth with new questions.
“We’ll be the ones asking the questions, Mr Dawn. Such as, how many other secrets have you got going in the background? If you want me to help you any further every single secret has to come out now.”
“You have to help me anyway,” said Dawn. “You’re sunk if you don’t.”
Hogarth laughed without humour “Back me into a corner like that, and you really don’t know what I’m capable of. I might tell all just to bring you down.”
“You’d hurt yourself along the way.”
“Maybe. But I’m fed up with all your lies.”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“No. You haven’t. You haven’t told me that you’d booked a little getaway to southern Spain. A secret bolthole you were planning to run to next weekend, presumably while you still remained dead, leaving us all in the lurch, picking up the pieces of your lies.”
“What?” said Dawn, shaking his head.
“It’s no good, Dawn. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the booking. And you were right about your cousin. She is very, very resourceful. She found it while looking for your hidden cash. A print-out of your little villa. And it looks like a villa for one to me, as well.”
Dawn frowned.
“You don’t usually holiday in Spain, either, do you, Mr Dawn? Funny that. I know you prefer Italy, and Greece. But then it occurred to me it’s far easier to drive to Spain than Italy. Greece is a really long drive. Much easier to hide down near the Costas, like all the other old-time Essex rogues. And because you wouldn’t need to use an airport, no one would know you’d ever gone.”
“I’m not a villain, here. I’m a victim,” said Dawn.
“Prove it, Dawn. You’ve told me you’re the good guy, but you’re the one hiding out while your wife thinks you’re dead, drinking herself half to death, while you pull the strings on us. She’s become a hermit. And you’re letting it happen, because you’re too busy playing God.”
“That’s not true. It could be remorse. If Sabine set me up to be killed, she could be feeling guilty.”
“Rubbish! She’s grieving, man! And then you thought you’d discovered she was having an affair with Brett Reville. You already suspected she’d tried to kill you, so she was likely guilty of everything else. Gurney showed you that she’d been having an affair. And you went wild, didn’t you? You gave DC Simmons the slip so you could find him. John Gurney says he didn’t see you near the scene, but you could be paying him to lie. You had Brett killed, didn’t you? Did you do it yourself? You must have been tempted. So how did you do it? Seeing as there’s so many needles lying around the place, it must have given you ideas…”
“I told you,” said Dawn. “I didn’t do it. Needles?! I told you, I would have smashed the man to pieces, not pricked him with a needle. I wanted to break him, not send him to sleep!” Dawn slammed the mug down so hard that coffee slopped over the top and hit the desk.
“I didn’t kill Brett Reville! When will you get that through your thick head?”
“Then why the Spanish bolthole, eh? Why stay dead unless you had good reason to run? You disappear and leave us unable to say a word for fear of being implicated in your crime. That was your plan all along, wasn’t it?”
“Stop it,” said Dawn.
“Then tell me the truth,” said Hogarth.
“The truth is I booked that bolthole for me. Yes, I might well have run. I might have even wanted to stay dead for a little while, but only until I snapped out of it.”
“Snapped out of what?” said Hogarth, shaking his head. “How many did you plan to kill, Grant? When did you plan to stop? With Brett? With Sabine?”
“Don’t you dare suggest that I’d ever hurt my wife.”
“You’ve got so many secrets it’s hard to tell…” said Hogarth.
“No. I’d never hurt her.”
“You already have, man. Wake up!” said Hogarth, loud and indignant.
Dawn blinked at Hogarth, wide eyed, furious. His eyes seemed to mist with a hint of tears. But when he blinked, any hint of tears was gone.
“I would have run if Sabine had done it. If you find out she sabotaged my car, that’s it, I’m out of here.”
Hogarth read the man’s eyes.
“And that’s it? Damn everyone else. As long as you got your own justice, that would be okay, would it? Never mind that the rest of us are sent down the Swannee.”
“Forget justice. Knowing it was her would have been enough. There would have been no justice. Just me – gone.”
“Then you’d have hung us out to dry.”
Dawn said nothing. “I only want the truth.”
“As do we all, Mr Grant. As do we all.”
Hogarth reached into his pocket. His hand stayed there, hesitant, touching the spreadsheets in his jacket pocket.
“Tell me, Mr Dawn… tell me about Max Simmons. Why did he drag his own son into this sorry mess? He can’t be a friend of yours, otherwise you wouldn’t have dragged his son into this quagmire.”
“Max Simmons? He’s just a hanger-on, another investor. He’s a man with money from his city pension. Max made an investment with us a while back and made some money. Ever since then he’s continued schmoozing me and my wife, hoping for another payday. To be honest, I never much liked the man. Max was the one who decided we were bosom buddies, not me.”
“The way I heard it, he spoke to your wife after your accident. So how come you ended up calling for his help?
“He contacted my wife, did he? He never told me that. I called him after the accident, when I saw I needed help. He probably called Sabine because he hoped to stay in with us after I was gone,” said Dawn with a smile. “I only contacted him because I remembered his son was a policeman. He must have thought he was taking a phone call from a ghost.”
“But he was willing to help you.”
“Because Max likes money, Inspector. Not because he likes me. I know a lot of people like Max Simmons. Brett was exactly the same. I didn’t mind using Max in the least, Inspector. Because I already knew Max was using me.”
Hogarth nodded. “But you didn’t use Max, did you? You used us. Simmons, me, and Palmer here too. We were the ones you used the whole way along.”
Hogarth snatched the spreadsheets from his pocket.
“And not only us, Mr Dawn. You’ve been using your wife too. You let her suffer, and effectively, you turned her into live bait.”
“Bait? What are you talking about?” Dawn eyed the folded spreadsheets in Hogarth’s hands.
“Max Simmons came sniffing around soon after you disappeared. Why? What if he simply saw she was a woman with means at a vulnerable time.”
“There’s no need to dramatise it,” said Dawn. “Max was only playing the long game. I know how those people think.”
“But who knows, Mr Dawn? Because you appeared to keep him away. But the rest of your scheme left your wife exposed to all the others.”
“Others? What others?”
“All the other scumbags who could now exploit her in a
time of weakness. A weakness you created; because of you she’s grieving and lost.”
“Maybe she deserves it. You haven’t proved she’s innocent.”
“Actually, I think I have.”
Hogarth walked across to the E-type and laid out the spreadsheets on the bonnet. Dawn walked to a light switch. He flicked it and light flooded over the bonnet. The three of them squinted into the brightness and gathered around the papers.
“What is this?” said Dawn.
“Your business accounts for this last year.”
“Oh. The ones Brett’s been moaning about ad infinitum.”
“Really? Interesting Brett Reville was moaning so much seeing as he was benefitting more than anyone else.”
Hogarth slid the second, hidden, account sheet alongside the first sheet of accounts. He ran his finger between the two pointing to exactly matching numbers.
“Can you see what I see, Mr Dawn? This second sheet here was a hidden set of working accounts, a list of so-called expenses. The first account shows every income and expenditure, including the sums from the second sheet. You can see the same sums of money listed as expenses throughout. See? Consultancy, £2500. That same amount is shown on the blank sheet as an expense, with no mention of any consultancy. And there’s more. Office equipment expense, £1200 with the same sum on the second sheet, as an unnamed cost.”
“But Brett was on top of all this stuff,” said Dawn, shaking his head. “He was a micro-manager when it came to accounts. He always said he was a perfectionist, that he was good at it. Yvette used to do the accounts in the beginning, but she bowed to his expertise.”
“And you went with it? Do you think that was a smart move?”
Dawn frowned and looked harder. He stared at the spreadsheets.
“Hmmmmm. We’ve never used a consultant in our lives. Hell, we are a social media consultancy. All consultants know consultancy is just money for old rope. Turn up, advise, produce a report, and send in an invoice. Easy. Brett would never have wasted money on a consultant either.”
“So what does that tell you about those sums of money?” said Hogarth. “If the money wasn’t spent on a consultant, what was it spent on? Come to think of it, Mr Dawn, which parts of these accounts are real?” said Hogarth. “There’s no way of knowing. Reville had you over a barrel and you didn’t even know it. But your wife soon worked it out.”
The Secret Dawn Page 25