The Darkest Deed_A Gripping Detective Crime Mystery Read online

  Five

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” said Simmons. “First day back at the office, and we get another dead body. It’s got to be me.”

  “I wouldn’t think so, Simmons. Not unless you’ve got something to confess,” said Hogarth. Hogarth was content to let Simmons do the driving in his understated Ford. Hogarth’s head had been tight ever since his morning conflab with Melford and he didn’t fancy fighting his way across Southend’s busy roads before the duty of facing a corpse, not unless he wanted to get in even more trouble for road rage as well. Besides, Simmons seemed buoyant – genuinely happy to be back at work. Hogarth was pleased, but determined to reserve his true judgement of Simmons’ recovery when he saw the man in action. Back in John Milford’s penthouse apartment, Simmons had been through an ordeal of the worst kind. Hogarth wouldn’t know for sure that Simmons was one hundred per cent again – not until he saw the whites of his eyes. Behind them, Palmer sat in the back seat, while Hogarth rode shotgun in the front. While Simmons drove, Hogarth’s mind was off in a hundred unwanted directions, mostly connected to the stalker, James Hartigan, Ali, and the greedy little snitch Vic Norton. When he came to his senses, Hogarth found he was biting his fingernails. He pulled his hand away from his mouth. A few seconds later he was chewing the inside of his cheek instead.

  “Confess?” said Simmons, looking at Hogarth. Hogarth had all but forgotten his jest.

  “Yes, confess, Simmons. As in confessing a crime. I believe you’re familiar with the concept,” said Hogarth.

  “But what would I confess to? X-L is a gym, isn’t? And a deluxe gym at that?”

  “Forget it, Simmons. I was joking, that’s all. Adding a touch of levity to proceedings. As for the gym, yes, I’ve seen it when I’ve driven past, but I’ve never been in it. It’s not for the likes of us. And you can’t help see it, can you? It’s a bloody monument to the giant egos of the rich folk who live in this town. I hear it was built just before the financial crisis of 2008. To be honest, I’m surprised the place managed to survive all these years since – until I heard who owned it.”

  Simmons turned to see Hogarth staring out of the passenger window, watching the green and grey blur of the A127 rush by. “Well? Who owns it then?”

  “Only two of the wealthiest men in Southend.” Hogarth watched DC Simmons for any sign of name recognition on his face. “Darryl Regent, and Harry King.”

  “Darryl Regent? That rings a bell. Wasn’t he the one involved in politics a while back?”

  Hogarth nodded. “Yes, he was, indirectly. But Regent wasn’t a politician, mind. Not a proper one. He was one of the more vocal types who called for reform after the MP expenses scandal. In fact, he was a major voice in the national anti-corruption campaign for a time. But after the expenses scandal blew over, the campaign faded. It didn’t take long for the MPs to get their snouts back in the trough. But by then Darryl Regent was a totally spent force. He lost the credibility to take on Westminster’s greed.”

  Hogarth glanced at Simmons as he spoke. “It turned out that Darryl Regent was a total hypocrite. It was well known that Regent was a very wealthy businessman – no one had a problem with that. But there he was telling these dirty MPs not to fiddle their expenses, and all the while he was sticking most of his money into offshore holdings to dodge his taxes. You could say Regent had his own financial scandal. The MPs absolutely lapped it up. Darryl Regent could have written a bestselling book on tax evasion. There were a few whispers he was involved in some other unsavoury things too, just murmurs mind, but the tax thing must have been the most serious. It was the only thing that stuck.”

  “So how did Regent make his money?” said Simmons.

  “Ice cream,” said Palmer. “He invented the whole Crunch’n’Cream range.”

  “Then Daagen Vaas bought it off him,” said Hogarth. “And the rest is history.”

  “Weird,” said Simmons. “From deluxe ice cream to a deluxe gym? Deluxe is the only common theme there.”

  “Yeah, the gym was a strange fit,” said Hogarth. “But deluxe means money, and money fits Darryl Regent alright. But the man’s clearly never been on a running machine. He’s as fat as a house but always smiling. I bet he still laughs all the way to the bank.”

  “And what about Harry King Studios? That’s a weird fit too, isn’t it?” said Simmons. “I mean it’s called the X-L building, the gym is called X-L, but then there’s this studio in the same building? What’s that all about?”

  “Simmons, I’m surprised at you. A red-blooded young male like you shouldn’t need to ask,” said Hogarth

  “Eh?” said Simmons. He looked at the rear-view mirror to find Palmer shaking her head with a coy smile.

  “Harry King is a pornographer, Simmons,” said Palmer.

  “Eh?” said Simmons.

  Palmer nodded in the mirror.

  “How could you say such a thing, Palmer?” said Hogarth, hiding his smile. “Harry King is a filmic genius. His fans say he’s an auteur.”

  “You what?” said Simmons.

  Hogarth watched the shock dawn on Simmons face and laughed.

  “There. Simmons has finally got it. Harry King is a porn merchant. X-L isn’t just a gym, DC Simmons, two thirds of it is. The other part is a den of iniquity, a mucky film studio. I don’t know how the arrangement works precisely, but I’ll bet it’s because Darryl Regent has found a tax loophole somewhere. People like him don’t ever change.”

  “So which part of the building did they find this body in?” said Simmons, looking awkward.

  “Why? Which would you prefer?” said Hogarth, wringing Simmons’ discomfort for all it was worth.

  Simmons didn’t answer.

  “They found the body in the sauna, Simmons,” said Hogarth.

  “The gym. That’s a relief.”

  “No. Haven’t you ever seen one of those films? The sauna is in the porn studio, Simmons,” said Hogarth. “There’s always a sauna scene, isn’t there Palmer?”

  “I wouldn’t know, guv,” said Palmer.

  “No. Maybe not.”

  Hogarth watched Simmons fidgeting as he drove.

  “Calm down, Simmons. Harry King produces soft porn. It’s all make-believe and titillation. If he was filming the hardcore stuff, Harry King would have been on our radar long before now.”

  Simmons remained quiet as they turned off the main roads, heading towards the airport industrial estate. Hogarth enjoyed a thin smile. It was going to be an interesting day after all. Just a damn shame some poor girl had to pay the price to lighten their mood.

  ***

  Hogarth prepared his battle face as he walked into the main entrance of the wide

  X-L building. The X-L was the size of an aircraft hangar, with naff Greco-Roman pillars and capstones spaced at regular intervals along the outside walls. The scale and design of the building spoke of the time before austerity and foodbanks. Hogarth smiled. For those who could afford the one-hundred-and-twenty-pounds a month membership fee, worries about the cost of heating bills wouldn’t ever cross their minds.

  Harry King Studios occupied the right-hand quarter of the building but as he stepped into the lobby, Hogarth couldn’t resist a peek through the great glass windows into the ocean-blue interior of the X-L gym. The window gave a view over three floors, looking up towards the balcony edges of the weights rooms and the cardio machines. The place was all clean blue lines with even more Greco-Roman pillars thrown around – but they were this time painted white. Hogarth watched well-toned, tanned men and women in their middle years as they worked out on elliptical trainers and bashed out reps on weight machines. In the foreground, young female gym attendants in turquoise polo tops manned the reception desk and buzzed around the cardio room with polite smiles fixed on their faces. Everyone in the place glowed with vigour and vitality. By contrast, Hogarth felt he was suffering from early onset rigor mortis. He shook his head and led the way towards the plain wooden doors of Harry King Studios. Only the brass plaque engrav
ed with the letters ‘HKS’ told them they were in the right place. Hogarth was about to push the door then paused as movement caught his eye in the car park outside. Hogarth looked out through the window and recognised two men walking and talking between the parking bays. One was the grey-bearded, suit-clad figure of Roger Johnson – the Police and Crime Commissioner for Southend, while the other man was shaped like a giant pear, and stuffed into a grey suit. The big man’s face was hidden from view, but his size and girth, as well as the quality of his tailoring told Hogarth it could be none other than Darryl Regent. Speak of the devil, he thought. And after learning James Hartigan had called Roger Johnson on the night of his beating, the commissioner was the very last person Hogarth wanted to see.

  “Guv?” said Palmer. Hogarth was distracted and blocking their way. Palmer followed his eyes through the glass and saw Johnson and Regent talking but didn’t recognise either.

  “Okay, in we go,” said Hogarth. “Deep breaths, Simmons,” he added, with a grin.

  ***

  “There… she’s in there,” said the young man with the swept-back hair. Hogarth waited as the young man in the purple T-shirt stood back from the wooden cabin of the sauna, like he didn’t want another look inside. The lad was in his late teens or twenties and was pale with a hollow look to his eyes. Hogarth made a mental note of it all. So far, the studio had been unremarkable, almost like any other functional work building, apart from the corridor of doors which looked like hotel rooms. The only other difference he noted were the images of smiling bikini-clad models and topless men which Hogarth supposed were images from movies he had never seen. Behind Palmer and Simmons, a few other people had arrived in the white tiled area by the washrooms. Hogarth turned and eyed them each in turn. One was a tanned young woman who looked like she’d walked straight out of a Californian TV show. She had the blonde hair, the deep tan and blue eyes. Hogarth guessed she had to be one of the actresses who kept Harry King in Rolexes. Beside her was another young woman – short dark hair with a pretty but moody face. A tall man with a prominent Adam’s apple stood behind them. Hogarth had him down as a male lead.

  “Stay back please,” said Hogarth.

  Hogarth took a biro from his pocket and prized open the sauna door. He felt the heat still emanating from inside. He stepped onto the wooden slatted floor and dipped his head so as not to hit the low ceiling. The sauna had the smell of hot wood and menthol oil, with something unpleasant lurking beneath it. He looked at the woman in the corner, her head propped up against the wooden wall, her arms looked loose at her sides. From the pallor of her skin, Hogarth knew she’d been dead a while, but there was no way to be precise. Hogarth stepped nearer and gained a sniff of an unpleasant smell coming from her towel. The body had already started to degrade, starting the usual expelling of waste. He laid the sides of his fingers against the woman’s neck. As he expected the skin was warm but there was no pulse and her body was rigid. Hogarth looked at her face, taking in the details, looking for tell-tale signs. He had her down as in her mid-to-late thirties, the lines on her brow and around her eyes suggesting she was on the late side of that estimate. She looked in good shape. Then he saw the angry redness around her nostrils. Maybe the woman had been suffering a cold. Hogarth checked his footing and was careful to step back the exact same way he came. He had already taken liberties by invading the sauna as it was – but so far, it didn’t look like a crime. But if it was, Dickens the SOCO wouldn’t thank him for invading the crime scene. But Hogarth needed to get a handle on what he was seeing. And that often involved seeing the body up close and personal.

  “The deceased woman’s name? Can anyone tell me please?” said Hogarth. Behind him, Palmer and Simmons peered into the sauna.

  “Aimee Gillen,” said the tall guy with the curly hair. The leading man type.

  “Of course, it was the drugs that did it,” said the brunette with the moody face.

  Hogarth looked back at her. The tone in her voice said she wanted to say more. All Hogarth had to do was wait.

  “Everyone knows it,” she said, with a shrug. “Aimee was a lush when it came to the nose candy,” said the woman.

  “And everything else” said the young blonde. Hogarth’s attention turned to the blonde and her eyes fell away.

  “This Aimee Gillen… she took drugs, did she? And that was well known?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said the tall guy with the hair. “But hey, that was her business.”

  Hogarth nodded to himself.

  “Aimee Gillen,” said Hogarth. “Was she married? Did she have a boyfriend?”

  The brunette smirked. “Married? Seriously? A happy marriage and being a Harry King girl aren’t exactly compatible.”

  “Well,” said Hogarth with a cynical edge. “You learn something new every day. What about a boyfriend. Partners?”

  “I don’t think so,” said the blonde. “But I guessed she was still having trouble with her ex.”

  Hogarth’s brow dipped low over his eyes. “Trouble?”

  The blonde shrugged. “That’s how things go at the end. I heard her ranting at someone down the phone. She sounded angry and desperate.”

  “She was always desperate,” said the brunette.

  The blonde continued. “I guessed she was heading for a split-up. Who knows? Maybe that’s why she did it.”

  “Did it?” said Hogarth.

  “Who knows? I never saw the boyfriend. But she could have taken an overdose,” said the blonde.

  Hogarth narrowed his eyes. He looked at the body in the sauna, checking the dead woman’s smooth skin. He’d seen no obvious evidence of needle marks. But if she was an accomplished junkie with a need to hide her habits from the camera, then she might have found a way to hide it. Injecting in-between the toes – in the webbing of her feet, maybe. Or in the groin. The call of heroin could render a human being capable of the most painful acts. Back in his time in the Met, Hogarth had even known junkies capable of injecting directly into their neck. But dead Aimee Gillen hardly struck him as a heroin junkie. Heroin corpses were usually emaciated. But every word these people said was providing him with useful back story and insight into their world.

  Hogarth looked to Simmons. He kept his voice low. “No obvious signs of violence, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry. Can you call Dickens? We should call him in, just in case.”

  “You think it’s necessary?” said Simmons.

  “It’s a precaution, that’s all,” said Hogarth. Simmons nodded. “Yes, guv.” To Hogarth’s eyes, Simmons still looked jumpy. It was something he needed to watch.

  Hogarth turned to the group ranged behind him. “So then, which of you found her?” he said.

  “I did,” said the blonde.

  “And you are?”

  “Annabelle Marks,” she said.

  “The famous Annabelle Marks,” said the curly-haired guy standing behind her, impersonating a cheesy voice from an old cinema trailer. The blonde shook her head. “Shut up, Sam,” she said.

  “Miss Marks… what time did you find her?”

  “Just after seven this morning. I like to take a sauna in the morning before I start work – right after I come back from the gym. This sauna is always empty… I didn’t expect to see anyone there. I opened the door, walked in and saw her there. It was early, and I was tired, so I ignored her. For a minute or so I thought she was asleep or had her eyes closed… but then I realised something was wrong.”

  The woman’s blue eyes glistened with tears. She looked away until the emotions abated. Looking at their poise and calm, Hogarth had the sense that none of them were particularly upset by the woman’s passing.

  “You found her at seven…” said Hogarth. He looked at Palmer. She nodded and took out her pad to make a note of the time. “Does anyone know when Miss Gillen was last seen alive?”

  The one called Sam shook his head. “I saw her around yesterday, but I can’t tell you exactly when. The studio is a very busy place.”

  Ho
garth looked at the young man in the purple T-shirt. He was silent, and his face was deathly still too. Like he was struggling with something.

  “What about you, son? Did you see her yesterday?”

  “Yes, I did, yeah… actually, I was just thinking about that… about the time.”

  There was something in the young man’s tone, something disingenuous. Hogarth noted that the young man wasn’t the same stamp as the others. He didn’t have the same sun-bed orange tan, nor the same chip on his shoulder, and not the same gym-honed physique.

  “Your name?” said Hogarth.

  “Marvin,” said the lad, blinking.

  “And what do you do here, Marvin?”

  “I’m the runner for the studio,” he said.

  “What Marvin here means is that he is the gopher,” said Sam, leaning to rub a patronising hand on the top of the younger man’s head. “Marvin has to go-for this and go-for that, don’t you Marv?”

  “Yeah. Something like that,” said the young man, looking irritated.

  “Marvin,” said Hogarth, “I think I’d like a word with you.”

  Hogarth stepped away from the sauna to the edge of the washrooms and waited for the young man to follow. Under the gaze of the others, he followed Hogarth to the tiled wall. Hogarth studied his self-conscious body language. He was hesitant too. Hogarth would have bet money that the lad knew something. As Marvin came near, Hogarth’s eyes raked idly across the big white floor tiles beneath his brogues. For some reason, a wide crack in one of the tiles adjoining the corner of the sauna caught his eye. The white gloss tile had been cracked in two, and there was a sliver missing from the middle, exposing the terracotta colour of the ceramic within. Hogarth frowned at it as the young man caught up with him. His eyes traced the area and found a glinting fleck of something else near the wall. Then he saw the small fractured piece he was looking for. The thin jagged piece from the centre of the crack lay pressed against the edge of the wall. It was so innocuous as to be almost be invisible. The sliver and the shining glass fleck held his attention as the lad came up beside him.