The Secret Fear Read online

  Kaplan stopped talking and walking as soon as she met Hogarth’s eyes. He nodded at her, his face bearing the merest hint of a smile. Simmons immediately looked awkward.

  “You’re not thinking of emigrating, Simmons?”

  “Not especially, no,” said Simmons.

  “Then if I were you, I’d get back on with the job – before emigrating turns into a very shrewd move.”

  Simmons mouth twitched.

  “I did what you asked, sir. I got into Izmir Yuksel’s WhatsApp account. I would have come to tell you, but I think you were... um... otherwise engaged.”

  “Yes, yes, Melford wanted one of his famous words. Everyone knows about that. Come on then, what have you got. Was Izmir Yuksel telling the truth or not?”

  Simmons and Kaplan were each holding takeaway coffees. Hogarth recognised the branding on the cups as belonging to the kiosk in the courthouse next door. As Simmons fumbled for the phone, Hogarth looked enviously at Kaplan’s coffee. Simmons took out the handset and moved to Hogarth’s side. He slid his thumb over the screen and dabbed the green and white WhatsApp icon. It opened with a list of white lines and black text which seemed to denote different contacts or groups. The list perplexed Hogarth. Like Instagram and Twitter and floppy trainers, these were things for other people. Younger people mostly.

  “I don’t need the full SP, just the gist of it will do. Was the man lying or not?”

  The coffee wafted tantalisingly under his nose. There was only one better smell. The smell of a decent bottle of malt on a Saturday night. Or a weekday, if the mood took him.

  “No. He wasn’t lying, guv. The call is listed here, see? A video call to a contact called Istanbul S, which lasted thirty-two minutes, starting at five twenty-nine until six-oh-one. It looks convincing.”

  “And it was definitely a video call? Not a phone call? A phone call wouldn’t help him at all.”

  Simmons nodded. “It was a video call. The camera icon here proves it, sir. Izmir can hardly have been busy throttling Baba Sen while making a work call to Istanbul.”

  “Not unless he’s into multi-tasking,” said Hogarth with a frown. “Okay. We’ll have to roll with it. But I still don’t think its water tight. So, he was making a call to his man in Istanbul when Baba Sen was attacked...”

  “And he wasn’t just calling Istanbul,” said Simmons. Hogarth’s brow dipped low over his eyes.

  “Eh? What do you mean, not just him?”

  “This contact, Istanbul S. He’s in a WhatsApp group with a few other names. Some of them look inactive like they haven’t been called in a very long while. But there was someone else on that video call at the same time. Trouble is, this contact hasn’t been assigned a name – just a number.”

  “But there is a number? We can use that, can’t we?” said Hogarth.

  “Yes, and the number is all we’ve got. It must have been like a conference call.”

  Hogarth’s eyes narrowed. “A conference call? Then why didn’t Izmir mention the other person on the call? He had plenty of opportunity to mention it, don’t you think? It wouldn’t have harmed his alibi either. Unless he thinks he had something to gain by concealing that another person was on the call.”

  “But unless Izmir Yuksel is totally thick, surely he must have known that we would have seen another person was on that call as soon as he surrendered his phone to you...”

  “Which suggests concealment wasn’t his game. Young Mr Yuksel is another person who’s up to something. Trace that number if you can. We need to know who it belongs to.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Simmons.

  “And next time you go for a sneaky coffee fix, grab me one while you’re at it. Any good?” said Hogarth eyeing the cup.

  Simmons gave a yes-no tilt of his head.

  “Get cracking then,” said Hogarth.

  Simmons glanced at Kaplan as he walked away. She seemed oblivious as she took a step towards Hogarth to catch his attention.

  “Yes, PCSO Kaplan?” said Hogarth. “I hope my colleague isn’t taking up too much of your valuable time with questions about Turkish culture and history.”

  Kaplan smiled. The girl seemed smart enough to know what he was getting at. “No, it’s fine, sir. DC Simmons was just telling me about how things work around here. He’s been quite helpful, really.”

  “Has he now? Well, don’t believe everything you hear,” said Hogarth.

  Kaplan nodded. “Thank you for the tip... but there is something I heard which you might be interested in...”

  “Oh?” said Hogarth.

  “All that noise from the cells. I stayed to listen awhile, to see what was said between them. They were angry exchanges, and it wasn’t always easy to understand, but I did catch some of it.”

  “Good work. So, what did you hear?”

  “There is definitely a feud between the Sens and the Yuksel family. But whatever started this present mess, all the hatred between them – well, I think it started in Basildon.”

  Hogarth shook his head slowly. “Lots of rows start in Basildon, PCSO Kaplan. Can you be more specific?”

  “At a warehouse or something like that. This mess started there, at least that’s what was said.”

  “By who?”

  “By the Yuksels. I heard it, I know I did.”

  “And by mess... do you mean the murder?”

  Kaplan’s eyes widened. “No, sir. That I don’t know, sir. They might have meant the feud. It was hard to distinguish the words among all the shouting.”

  Hogarth nodded. “A warehouse in Basildon... somewhere the Yuksels have dealings. You’ve outdone yourself again, Kaplan. Carry on like this and we might lose you to MI6.”

  Kaplan chuckled and accepted the praise. Hogarth stalked off to find Palmer. He turned back just as he reached the double doors of the main office.

  “By the way,” said Hogarth, as he backed through the doors. “Neighbourhood Team can’t have you back yet, Kaplan. I think we’re going to need you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kaplan’s eyes followed Hogarth until he disappeared. The PCSO beamed. As she looked through the porthole-style windows, she found DC Simmons glancing her way. He lifted his coffee and Kaplan lifted hers in response. Hogarth had given her a coded warning about Simmons, and she decided to be wary. But even so, it was good to have the beginnings of a friendship on the force. She told herself to remember Hogarth’s words.

  Nine

  “What are you going to do about Izmir Yuksel?” said Palmer.

  Hogarth sipped a vending machine tea. It wasn’t much better than the other stuff. He made a face and put it down next to the other full cup, now cold, with the beginnings of a grey film on the top.

  Hogarth looked at the photographs on his laptop. The crime scene shots were in. He zoomed in to the wound on the top of Baba Sen’s head. Maybe it was the pixellation, or perhaps the quality of the light, but Hogarth couldn’t make out the ‘A’ as clearly as when he had seen it in the flesh. The sound of Melford’s doubts, not to mention looks from Palmer made him question himself. Was he seeing something that wasn’t there? Possible, but it seemed unlikely. Miray’s presence made that possibility remote.

  “Sir?” said Palmer. He looked up from the screen to glance at her.

  “What?”

  “If Izmir’s been hiding stuff from us, what are you going to do about it?”

  “He must have known we’d find that number,” said Hogarth. “There could be another reason he didn’t tell us.”

  “Or he was hoping we wouldn’t look too closely. He was trying to blag it past us.”

  “Possible,” said Hogarth. “But dumb.”

  Palmer looked at the image on Hogarth’s screen.

  “You’re looking at that cut. The Atacan signature.”

  “Yes. Bloody thing doesn’t look so obvious on here, but it was there, Palmer. I’m telling you.”

  Palmer nodded. “I believe you.”

  Hogarth looked at her for a moment.
r />   “Glad somebody does, I was beginning to doubt myself along the way. Doesn’t help when your crackpot superior starts saying you’re the one who’s the loony.”

  “Either way, Izmir only gave us half the story.”

  “I know. Which doesn’t help him, does it? I’d only got him in the frame because of the feud between the families. Looks to me like old man Yuksel is the one who harbours the grudge, but he wouldn’t be the type to get his hands dirty. If it was Yuksel, it would have to be the boy. I can’t see anyone else being involved. Yet.”

  Palmer frowned. “Then why not interview him again?”

  “You mean, why don’t we put him through the wringer?”

  Palmer shrugged. “It’s what you’d do on most other occasions. Someone hides something, conceals a bit of potential evidence, you’d drag them back in right away.”

  “But this isn’t a normal case. It looks like a robbery, but it isn’t one. The wound on the head, the relentless beating to Baba Sen, they contradict the robbery theory. Was it a heat of the moment robbery? The coins on the floor say so. But the violence looks different. Angry, vengeful. Desperate. Like the killer wanted to see the life go from the victim’s eyes. Then the head wound – cold, calculated. It’s an added extra, like a royal seal. It’s like a crime of three acts, and none of them add up.”

  Palmer hesitated before she spoke. Hogarth arched an eyebrow. He felt the question coming.

  “Are you sure you’re not studying this one too closely?”

  “Over-thinking, am I? It’s not the first time I’ve been accused of that.”

  “Maybe an interview with Izmir would provide us with something while we wait for forensics.”

  Hogarth bit his lip. His arms were folded.

  “You don’t think Izmir did it, do you?” said Palmer.

  “The head wound points to someone else, that’s all. I don’t know these people, granted, but I know the sort people who used to do things like this, and Izmir Yuksel is nothing like them. Nothing like them at all. What reason would a soft-faced, pampered little man like him have to hurt Baba Sen? The kind of people who kill like this – that kind would chew him up and spit him out.”

  “So you’re going to wait?”

  Hogarth shook his head. “No. I’m going to make sure.” He stood up and straightened out his navy blazer. It still looked untidy when he had finished. “Quentin’s got to have started the rudimentary stuff on the body by now. I think I’ll pay the doc a visit. Don’t suppose you fancy a trip to the mortuary?”

  “You’ve got all the best offers. No, thanks. I ‘d prefer to keep my lunch down. Unless you need me, that is?”

  Hogarth shook his head. “All I want is to see that wound and to shake Quentin’s tree. Let’s see what drops out today.”

  “Don’t shake too hard. Quentin might shake you back.”

  “He’s not nimble enough to catch me,” said Hogarth, grinning. Palmer shook her head. Sizeist jokes and inappropriate banter. Hogarth was a cop of the old school, but Palmer couldn’t hold it against him. Plenty of others would.

  “Keep an eye on Simmons for me,” said Hogarth. “You can give him a shake too if he gets too starry-eyed.”

  “Will do,” said Palmer. She glanced at the clock as Hogarth left, then played her own little waiting game. Palmer had an idea too, but she needed to avoid Hogarth to follow her instincts. Two minutes passed. Long enough, she decided. She grabbed her coat and bag and set off on a mission that already had her heart beating a little too fast.

  ED QUENTIN WAS A LARGE man, both in height and waist size. His voice had a little operatic depth, the baritone of a great performer or of a grand QC, but instead of those laurelled professions, Quentin had taken the road less travelled. Instead of pursuing a career on the great stage, he had opted to cut up cadavers and produce reports on causes of death. It wasn’t glamourous work but it suited something in Quentin’s solemn intensity. For all his baritone voice, the man was still an introvert whose drama seemed only to come to the fore when jousting with Hogarth or involved in some other police hassle.

  Greetings were dispensed with quickly. Quentin was not one to waste time frivolously. The big man led him into the bright, cold interior of the lab where Hogarth was offered a mask and gloves but took neither. Quentin gave him his customary glare, then tutted before leading the way. “Touch nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

  “Since when did I ever touch anything in here?”

  “You didn’t. But only because I told you not to.”

  Hogarth closed his mouth. He’d had enough of arguments for one day. Reaching the stainless-steel slab in the centre of the lab, he saw the pale, frail body of Baba Sen laid out, his head still tilted to one side, held in place by rigor mortis. A plastic sheet had been laid over his body which had been pulled down to waist level, hiding what was left of the dead man’s modesty. Hogarth saw a fine long cut had been made all the way from chest to navel. The cut had been stitched, but Hogarth wasn’t inclined to ask for details. His mind was on the man’s upper parts. His bruised neck, and higher still. The signs of violence seemed even more pronounced under the blue-tinged light of Quentin’s laboratory. Quentin laid a surgical-gloved hand underneath the dead man’s chin and pointed to the brown, black, and purple marks all across the front and sides of Sen’s stringy neck. His hand traced over the contusions on his face, and around his jaw.

  “You see these? Very pronounced. The attacker had a very firm grip of the neck – he must have applied pressure at several points, but there are weaker marks too – these here on the side. Mr Sen here put up a fight and the killer had to grab the man’s throat to finally subdue him. It looks as if the killer struck him again and again before that. I’d say he was hit no less than twenty times. Give or take.”

  “So, the killer had to be a larger man. Stronger than Mr Sen?”

  “Baba Sen was a small man, as you see. Even a man of five foot seven would have had a height advantage. But the strangling here was vicious. This was a definite attempt to kill. So much aggression...”

  “An attempt to kill? That’s an odd choice of words, Ed?”

  “Not at all, inspector. It’s a very deliberate choice of words.”

  Hogarth frowned, and a hint of a dramatic smile curled at the corners of Quentin’s lips. But Quentin was no ham actor. He suppressed his satisfaction and moved on until he was ready to say more.

  “You wanted to know about the head wound,” said Quentin.

  “What do you make of it?”

  “A very crude and ugly gesture is what I make of it. You compared it to a graffiti artist’s tag, did you not?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then the person who did this is no Banksy. There’s no finesse to it. No care at all. As signatures go, this is truly amateur hour. But you were still right. There was a letter ‘A’ under here. The culprit made such a hash of it that the hacking covered it in blood.”

  “If you’re making a point, Ed, then excuse me if I’ve missed it.”

  Quentin sighed.

  “The attacker doesn’t demonstrate any experience of making such a cut. At least, you wouldn’t think so. This cut was made with great haste. There are jagged marks which show no care for the finished look and, in my limited experience of such matters, killers like this always want their work to be seen. The graffiti analogy was right. But there’s no art in this.”

  Hogarth chewed the inside of his cheek with his molars as he studied the jagged ‘A’ on the top of Baba Sen’s head. The wound had been cleansed, leaving only a very wonky looking ‘A’ remaining, with a kind of tail where the blade had been swiped away at last second. The mark was careless and ugly.

  “The knife?”

  “It was the kebab shop knife which was used to open the till.”

  Hogarth nodded.

  “Again, not the approach of an artiste,” said Quentin.

  “So, it was hurried. Messy. Amateur,” said Hogarth. “But it is still ther
e. Which is important.”

  “But why exactly?” said Quentin.

  “Because it’s a blast from the past, Ed. My old days in London. Back then a gang called the Atacans used to occasionally deface their victims with the letter A.”

  “I’ve heard of the name, but not much else. They did this kind of thing regularly?”

  “Regularly enough,” said Hogarth. “But by the time I was climbing the ranks they were a fading force. A lot fewer ‘A’s then.”

  “Want my opinion?” said Quentin.

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  “If anyone had an ounce of experience of carving letters into flesh, then that person would know that it’s really not that hard to do. It’s barely more difficult than dragging a biro across a sheet of paper, providing the knife is good and sharp. If the killer had even just a little practice at this, the result would have been crystal clear. But as you can see, this is a mess.”

  “It’s still legible, Ed. I knew what I was seeing back at the crime scene.”

  “But you still had doubts, didn’t you? And I bet it wasn’t just because the letter was obscured. It’s a poor effort. D-minus.”

  “Glad you weren’t my teacher,” said Hogarth.

  “I’m very glad I wasn’t your teacher, DI Hogarth.”

  “Now, now. I was a good student. Sometimes.”

  Quentin arched his eyebrows.

  “But what if the killer hadn’t done this for a while? What if he was out of practice?”

  “Cutting a body is cutting a body, inspector. Bodies don’t move, and they don’t complain. He could have done this right, but he did it badly. If the man hadn’t made a cut like this in years, then yes, maybe he could have messed it up. But I don’t think a man with any experience could have made a hash of it like this.”

  “But the killer would have been in a hurry. It was between four and six. Rush hour was coming. If he’d hung about any later, he might have been seen.”

  “Who are you trying to convince?” said Quentin.

  Hogarth took a deep breath and regretted it. The smell of disinfectant and bleach mingled with the cool, bloody smell of butchered flesh. He reminded himself to breathe only through his nostrils.