The Secret Fear Read online

  Simmons sighed. “He said it’s on the list.”

  “Told you,” said Hogarth. “Here. Take a look at this for me, will you?” Hogarth handed Simmons Izmir’s phone. “Izmir Yuksel has an alibi for part of the time window when Baba Sen was killed. The alibi might work – just about – so long as it stands up to scrutiny. That’s where you come in.”

  “Oh?” said Simmons, turning the smartphone in his hand.

  “Izmir was busily engaged on an early morning WhatsApp call. A video call to a friend in Turkey, a man who acts as a buyer for their business.”

  “At that time of day?”

  “Exactly. But Izmir had an answer for that too. Just take a look at his WhatsApp account, will you, and verify what he says, okay?”

  “So long as you’ve got the pin for his phone—”

  “Here,” said Hogarth. He scribbled it down on a scrap of paper.

  “—but you could easily check it yourself, sir.”

  “Come on, Simmons. Do you really think I’ve ever made a WhatsApp call in my life? The only WhatsApp I’ve ever heard of was on Buggs Bunny.”

  Simmons nodded in resignation.

  “Was Kaplan any good in the interview?”

  A knowing glint appeared in Hogarth’s eyes. “What kind of good are you thinking of, Simmons? Keep your mind on the job, young man. Save your hobbies for after hours.”

  Simmons blushed and Hogarth grinned as he turned his back. But when he opened the door, his grin soon faded. Melford was approaching. Orton and the other PCs were busy again, heads down, paperwork and pens at the ready, like good little boys when the headmaster is around. Hogarth failed to read the runes until it was too late.

  “Hogarth!” said Melford, barking loud enough for the uniforms to raise their heads. Hogarth noted Orton’s faint smile and cursed the man under his breath.

  “Yes, sir?” said Hogarth.

  “My office – now.”

  “Did we forget something, sir?”

  “Forget? I think you’re the one who’s been forgetting, Hogarth.”

  They passed within distance of the desk sergeant’s station. Hogarth grimaced as he saw Izmir Yuksel remonstrating with the man. The big desk sergeant was standing his ground, but Hogarth could already see the man was losing his temper. He slowed down to eavesdrop as he followed Melford.

  “—haven’t got time for this. This is disrespectful. My father is a busy man. All of us are busy, and we are innocent, so why are we being picked on?”

  “No one is being picked on here, sir. Your father will be allowed to leave as soon as—”

  “Hogarth!” snapped Melford. If Hogarth had had the time, he would have sent the impudent whelp on his way out of the station. Having got nowhere complaining to Hogarth, Izmir Yuksel had turned his attention to the weaker parts of the system. Hogarth steeled himself for whatever was to come.

  “LET ME SEE, INSPECTOR,” said Melford, dumping himself behind his desk. “You’ve dragged half of Southend’s Turkish community down here and given them the impression they have no choice but to wait here while you take as long as you like to pick holes in them while you assemble your case? Is that it? On what grounds have you detained these people?”

  “Half the community? With due respect, guv, I’ve brought in three people from two warring families. Their dispute could well prove to be a factor in Baba Sen’s murder.”

  “Family disputes? So now you’re into mediation as well as detective work?”

  “Sir. I was at the Yuksel Cash and Carry business on West Road this morning when the victim’s son, Orcun Sen, ran in to attack the old man who runs the business—”

  “Yusuf Yuksel,” said Melford.

  Melford knew the old man’s name. It wasn’t a good sign.

  Hogarth nodded and moved on. “He tried to attack the man with a knife. If I hadn’t been there, there was a good chance Mr Yuksel would have been the next one killed.”

  “Then the way you tell it, Mr Yuksel was a victim – just as the Yuksels say.”

  “The Yuksels have said what – and to whom?” said Hogarth.

  “The Yuksels have complained of disrespect, unfair treatment, and victimisation. Those are not words any of us wish to be associated with at Southend police station. Especially not when it comes to policing the minority ethnic groups in this town. You must know you’re on very shaky ground here, don’t you? You can’t just detain people at will, man! Without arrest, you have no power to hold anyone at all.”

  “Sir, they agreed to come of their own free will,” said Hogarth.

  Melford stared at him doubtfully. “Sir. If I have to arrest them for assault, you bet I will. I was trying to avoid complications for all concerned. That was all.”

  “Avoiding complications? By creating a bloody legal minefield for the rest of us. If you even got an arrest out of this, you would have set yourself up for a stack of problems later down the line. They could argue the whole case was built on shaky foundations.”

  “Sir, with due respect, they came here peacefully. Where did this complaint come from, sir?”

  Melford’s eyes flickered with irritation. Hogarth had the feeling Melford’s histrionics weren’t about the murder case or the Turkish men filling the cells.

  “The Yuksels, of course,” said Hogarth. Melford confirmed with little more than a grunt.

  “The old man has an overinflated sense of importance. Let me deal with it.”

  “Don’t deal with it. Just get them out of here before we have another problem on our hands. And get them out of here nicely too. Chauffeur bloody drive them if you have to.”

  “Guv. We’re looking at a murder motive here. There’s bad blood between these families. If we question them in the station there’s a chance we’ll get what we need far more quickly.”

  “And there’s a chance the whole thing will blow up in a ruddy mess worse than what we started with. Do me a favour, Hogarth, for the first time in your career, do as I ask and play by the bloody rules, will you?”

  Hogarth looked at Melford and saw the man was virtually shaking with stress. Hogarth regarded him quietly, while Melford tried to pull himself back together as if nothing had happened. Melford’s shouting today had been louder than anything Hogarth had experienced before in his time under Melford’s reign, but he didn’t feel humiliated. Instead, he felt a low-level sense of alarm. Melford seemed to sense he had gone too far. He offered Hogarth an insincere and weak smile, shifting himself in his creaking chair as the clock ticked. The smile wasn’t working. The stress was too near the surface.

  Hogarth sighed. “Fine, sir. I’ll make sure they get home without a fuss.”

  Melford nodded.

  “I’m not trying to make your life harder, inspector. I’m trying to make all our lives easier – in the long run.”

  Hogarth heard the words but didn’t accept them. Melford was in self-preservation mode, a man overloaded by some unseen weight. And now it was affecting others. It was affecting his judgment. Hogarth knew he hadn’t got a perfect reason for holding the Yuksels, but he found the signs of the family feud compelling enough to cause some suspicion. Holding them added pressure and took old Yusuf Yuksel down a peg or two. Shame that part hadn’t worked.

  “One thing, sir,” said Hogarth.

  A flicker of irritation returned to Melford’s face and the smile disappeared.

  “Yes?”

  “Out of interest, which Yuksel complained?”

  “The complaint came directly from Yusuf Yuksel himself. Along with a call of warning from his solicitor...”

  Hogarth’s brow crumpled. So the old man had orchestrated this. Old Yuksel had caused Hogarth to receive a monumental dressing-down. Hogarth didn’t bear grudges; he liked to keep short accounts, but he fully intended to repay the old man along the way – to repay him in full. After off-loading his heavy artillery, it was Melford who looked as if he had come off worst. Hogarth looked at him with something between pity, disgust, and a detective’s int
erest into the causes behind what he was seeing. Melford was momentarily too shell-shocked to notice he was being dissected. Hogarth glanced down at the desk. There was the DCI’s notepad again, this time set between two open files. He recognised one of the files as relating to the months old Hartigan case. Bad old news Hogarth preferred to try and forget. He was more interested in the notepad and his need to know began to gnaw at him. Melford noticed his gaze and slid one of the heavy folders over the top. As subtle gestures went, Hogarth couldn’t have given Melford more than a four out of ten. He met Melford’s gaze.

  “Is there anything – anything I can help you with, sir?”

  Melford narrowed his eyes to read Hogarth’s meaning.

  “You mentioned something to do with attacks on local businesses...?”

  “Oh. That was just an inquiry.”

  “But I thought it came from an internal police bulletin, sir? I checked my emails. I didn’t see anything about it. So, I supposed it was one of those things only the top brass receives. Intelligence services, perhaps.”

  Melford shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Forget about it for now, Hogarth. I’d rather you got on top of this murder business. It seems to me everything we deal with has the potential to get out of hand in some way or other.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Hogarth. “I suppose it does.”

  “And consider this a polite warning,” said Melford. “Don’t let yourself get out of control. Not on this one. Not again.”

  Hogarth met Melford’s eyes. His lips crumpled, holding back the phrase already on the tip of his tongue.

  “Out of control? That’s rich coming from you, sir...”

  But something inside checked Hogarth’s urge to reply. Wisdom. Self-preservation, whatever it was, it worked.

  Instead, Hogarth strained his eyes to see the notepad. Melford’s writing was bad, but he was able to make out two words which he’d seen before. The name of his wife, Eleanor, preceded by the word check. Check... Eleanor...? Those words didn’t seem to go together in the least. Why would the man need to check on his wife? Unless she was ill. Was there an undisclosed illness at play? That could be one explanation, but surely compassionate leave and being honest with his staff were the best ways to deal with that one. But human beings were not always so clear-eyed. And DCI Melford was not a man used to accepting pity. The man preferred control. Hogarth’s eyes flicked up from the pad to find Melford staring at him with another silent warning, but he said nothing. He seemed to understand that he’d already used up his allotted quota of hot air for the day. Hogarth chose to meet his glare with a blank stare.

  Melford covered the visible part of his notepad with the folder and Hogarth edged his way to the door.

  “Will that be all, sir?”

  “I think so, don’t you?”

  Hogarth nodded.

  “I’ll clear up the Yuksel mess for you, sir. Give you one less thing to worry about, eh?”

  Melford bristled. Hogarth’s words weren’t barbed enough to know for sure if he was being impudent. Of course, he was. Hogarth didn’t give a fig for political correctness to the communities, whichever communities they were. Melford did. But Melford only cared about the flak. The political fallout. The press. Yusuf Yuksel had hit the DCI’s pressure point at the wrong time, and the result was Melford going off like a bomb. Old man Yuksel would get his. One day Melford would get his too, but right now, he was too weak to hate. Melford was strung out. Hiding things. And ready to tell the strangest kind of lies. Hogarth had the feeling there had been no circular about a threat against any businesses, but it was only an inkling. He couldn’t be sure.

  He walked out into the corridor and paced into the open-plan office. He saw PC Orton rising from his desk and knew some sort of witticism was coming even before Orton opened his mouth. Orton turned to face him as Hogarth stormed by the audience of uniforms.

  “Well, that was pretty loud. I didn’t know you and the DCI were going for the Guinness book of—”

  Hogarth paced a few sharp steps towards Orton until the man shut his mouth then jabbed a finger at him. “You’d better shut that pie hole of yours before someone fills it, Orton. Get my drift?”

  Hogarth gave him a glare before wheeling away towards the office. There was some muttering behind his back, but Hogarth’s keen ears told him that Orton had done exactly as he was told. There was a first time for everything. He walked into the office and shut the door. Palmer was waiting, wide-eyed. She perched her backside on the edge of her desk as she looked at him.

  “What the hell was all that about? You could hear him down the corridor.”

  Hogarth shook his head. “He’s implying that I’m up to old tricks... going maverick by bringing the Yuksels in like that. As if he’s never employed the same tactics. He says he’s worried about the Turkish community crying racism because of being singled out.”

  “Singled out? But we’re trying to help a Turkish family find out who killed their father.”

  “I know – doesn’t work,” said Hogarth. “Pretty much all of what he said doesn’t work.”

  “There was some fuss in the cells,” said Palmer. “Orcun Sen and old man Yuksel were having a shouting match through the walls. I think Melford must have caught wind of it.”

  Hogarth frowned. “It was the old man, Palmer. Yuksel caused the problem. Melford warned me not to get out of control.”

  Palmer shook her head.

  “You were pretty close to that at one point,” said Palmer, carefully. “But right now the only one who’s out of control around here is DCI Melford.”

  Hogarth nodded. “I don’t know what’s going on with him, but something’s up.”

  “You can’t let him rattle you now, guv,” said Palmer. “We’ve got the case to think of.”

  Hogarth nodded. “But it bothers me all the same. Anything from Marris, or Dickens?”

  Palmer shook her head.

  “What about Simmons and Izmir’s smartphone?”

  “I think he’s found something.”

  “Good. We’ll deal with that when we’ve got rid of our Yuksel problem, shall we...?”

  Eight

  Izmir Yuksel had already gone by the time they sent his father out onto Victoria Avenue. Hogarth didn’t even go as far as ordering the old man a taxi. After the trouble he’d caused, he was lucky to get off without a word in his ear. A taxi would have been overdoing it. As the old man pulled on his coat and walked out into the spring air, he cast a dark glance back across his shoulder. Hogarth made sure to give him a wave and a smile, which brought an even darker aspect to the old man’s face.

  “Good riddance,” said the big desk sergeant. Hogarth turned to him. They stood in the police station reception as incoming telephone calls were fielded behind them.

  “That old boy was kicking off like nothing else. Half the time he was ranting in Turkish for the other guy and his son’s benefit, the rest of the time he was telling me how he was going to have us all sorted out for keeping him here.”

  “Sorted out? The old man was on about taking us to court, I take it,” said Hogarth.

  The shaven-headed sergeant shrugged. “He mentioned solicitors in one breath, the next he seemed to imply he meant something else.”

  Hogarth shook his head. “Violence you mean?” He drifted off in thought for a moment before adding, “Then the old fool’s off his head. Funny. Seems a spot of time in the cells didn’t agree with him. Must have been your spellbinding personality, Dave.”

  The desk sergeant grinned. “You weren’t around to keep him in line, more like.”

  “DS Palmer said she heard some of that commotion – the Turkish boys shouting out of their cells.”

  “Yeah. It was pretty noisy down here. But then again I hear you copped an earful somewhere else...”

  The big desk sergeant’s eyes gleamed with mischief.

  Hogarth smiled in response but determined not to make too big a deal of it. Play the martyr or the clown at Melford’s expen
se and Hogarth knew it would only bite him on the backside. He seethed when he thought of Melford’s darkly tired eyes and his weird behaviour. But he didn’t know what to do about it. He hadn’t shared all of his feelings about Melford with Palmer – a wise move he was sure – but Sue was still right. For now, the Hamlet Court Road case had to take precedence.

  “Izmir Yuksel,” said Hogarth. “I saw him giving you a talking to as well, what was that all about?”

  “The younger man. I think he was put up to it by his old man. He was pleading his father’s case alright. But funny thing was I had the feeling the lad wasn’t exactly pushing too hard for his old man’s release. He was kind of going through the motions if you ask me.”

  “They could have left any time, Dave.”

  “Yeah. But they didn’t know that, did they?” said the desk sergeant with a smile.

  Hogarth picked over the big man’s words. “What did you mean going through the motions?”

  The big man shrugged. “Just the impression I had. It felt like the lad was spouting what his old man had told him to say, but without much conviction. I think he’d have preferred to let the old man stay in the cells to give him a day off. I can’t blame him, can you?”

  Hogarth nodded. “No, I can’t.”

  As old man Yuksel disappeared across the public square at the front of the police station, two new figures approached from by the fountain outside. It was PCSO Kaplan accompanied by none other than DC Simmons.

  The desk sergeant looked at Hogarth who nodded.

  “The boy can’t help himself, can he?” said Hogarth. “I think he’s just started puberty.”

  Dave turned away with a big wheezing laugh and loped off back to his post. Hogarth stayed by the reception desk, hands in pockets, ready to offer a friendly greeting. Simmons was in mid-flow, asking something about Turkish culture.

  “....actually, no,” said Kaplan in response. “There many countries which speak Turkish. Turkey, parts of Bulgaria, some areas of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan. Parts of China too. There was once a vast Turkish empire...”