Eva Karahan Case #1 – Silent Murder

Eva Karahan Case #1 – Silent Murder

A London detective is called into a murder where silence speaks louder than screams.

Eva Karahan Case #1 – Silent Murder

by H. Ozturk

Prologue – The Cup

The light in the kitchen was dim, flickering softly like a secret unwilling to be told.

A ceramic coffee cup sat quietly on the table, still warm. The lipstick stain on its rim was delicate—soft red, almost pink—

but no lipstick remained on the lips of the woman lying on the living room floor.

Somewhere outside, a cat knocked over a trash bin. The city was wide awake. But in this ground-floor apartment, silence had taken over hours ago.

She hadn’t screamed. That was what made it worse.

Chapter One – The Apartment

When Inspector Eva Karahan stepped into the apartment on Brighton Street, she felt it even before she saw the body.

That kind of stillness wasn't natural. It was staged.

The first thing she noticed wasn’t the victim. It was the smell. Not blood. Not coffee. Nar çiçeği cologne. Sharp. Sweet.

Unmistakably Turkish. A scent from someone who grew up trying to cover up sadness with fragrance.

The victim, Lena Doyle, age 27, lay face down on the carpet, her arm bent unnaturally at the elbow. A primary school teacher. Lived alone.

No forced entry. No signs of a struggle. And yet, she was undeniably, irrevocably dead.

The door had not been locked. The window was slightly open. The cup sat on the table—only one. But Eva didn’t trust simple numbers.

She had learned that silence, like loneliness, had layers.

“Nothing this quiet is ever innocent,” she thought, scribbling her first note into her black leather-bound notebook.

Chapter Two – The Witness

The apartment building was old, the kind where the walls held onto every creak and whisper. Eva climbed to the first floor where an elderly woman

named Mabel Crane had seen someone leaving around 2 a.m.

“Tall, maybe over six feet,” Mabel said, clutching a cup of lukewarm tea. “Black coat. Limped slightly on the right leg. He lit a cigarette but didn’t smoke it.

Just let it burn while he stared at the window.”

Eva asked, “Did he look inside?”

Mabel nodded. “He didn’t blink.”

Eva took a deep breath. Witnesses always gave you half a picture. Her job was to fill in the rest.

Chapter Three – The Journal

Back at the crime scene, Eva stood at Lena’s kitchen counter. Among the clutter was a small leather-bound journal, spine cracked, a faded bookmark sticking out.

Inside, Lena had written obsessively—shopping lists, lesson plans, fragments of poetry. But one phrase had been repeated multiple times:

“What you hold in kills you from within.”

Eva scanned the handwriting. Something felt off. It lacked the smooth rhythm of the other entries. She flagged it for a graphology expert.

Near the sink, she found a peony-pink lipstick in a mug. The same color as the faint stain on the cup. But there was a second stain outside—on a crumpled napkin

tossed near the back door.

Two cups. Two prints. Two people. And only one body.

Eva pulled out her notebook again. “Silence isn’t absence. It’s displacement,” she wrote.

Chapter Four – The Colleague

Eva arrived at St. Beryl's Primary School just after noon. The hallway smelled of pencil shavings and old coffee. The head teacher, Mrs. Nora Bell, greeted her nervously.

“Lena was…quiet,” Nora said. “But not withdrawn. The kind of teacher children trust instantly.”

Eva nodded. “Did she mention anything unusual in the past few weeks? Anyone bothering her?”

Nora hesitated. “She’d been looking over her shoulder lately. I asked if something was wrong, but she just smiled and said, ‘I think I’ve seen a ghost from university.’”

Eva made a note. Ghosts from the past didn’t just appear—they returned for a reason.

“Anyone she worked with closely outside school?”

“She had coffee once a week with a friend named Zara. I don’t know much about her. She wasn’t staff.”

Eva’s pen froze.

Zara. The name echoed. Not yet confirmed, but now circling closer to the center.

She left the school with more questions than answers—and a name that suddenly felt heavier than it should.

Chapter Five – The Photograph

The photograph wasn’t in a frame. It wasn’t pinned or displayed. It was tucked between the pages of Lena Doyle’s lesson planner, like a memory she didn’t want but couldn’t discard.

Eva studied the image: Lena stood in front of a fountain, squinting into the sun. Her smile was uncertain, more posture than joy. Beside her, a woman with sharp cheekbones and hollow eyes rested a hand on her shoulder. Written on the back in Lena’s loopy cursive: *Z. / Cambridge – 2018.*

“Z,” Eva whispered. Zara.

Eva had seen this dynamic before: one person radiating need, the other quietly absorbing it. The woman in the photo wasn’t smiling. She was watching the camera, but her mind seemed elsewhere—half inside Lena, half inside herself.

Eva leaned back. This wasn’t just a friend. This was a tether.

A knock on the interview room glass. It was Malik, the forensic officer. “We got a partial match on the DNA.”

Eva arched an eyebrow.

“It matches Zara Doyle. Lena’s sister.”

Silence fell over the space. Eva felt her stomach knot. Not from surprise—but recognition. There it was, the crack in the foundation.

Sisters. But strangers.

She opened her notebook. Underlined a word twice: **motive.**

She wasn’t sure what kind yet—but love, grief, and resentment had always been different names for the same ghost.

Chapter Six – Beneath the Surface

The rain had started again—thin needles on the window of Eva’s office at Bishopgate Station. The city seemed grayer than usual, the kind of washed-out color that made everything look haunted.

Eva flipped through the background report. Zara Doyle: 31 years old, Cambridge graduate, psychology major. No criminal record. Moved frequently between jobs—nonprofits, educational consultancies, freelance editorial work. Never stayed longer than a year anywhere.

It wasn’t instability. It was evasion.

Eva circled the last entry: Co-founded MindTide, a wellness podcast with themes of healing, trauma, and grief. Lena had appeared as a guest two months before her death.

“That’s not just coincidence,” Eva muttered.

She clicked on the podcast’s public archive. Episode 12: ‘Silent Grief: When Family Becomes a Ghost.’ The voice that filled the speakers was calm, almost tender:

“Some wounds don’t heal. They hide. And sometimes, when the wound wears your face, you spend your whole life trying not to scream.”

Eva paused the audio. The timestamp matched a week before Lena’s murder.

She dialed Malik.

“I want full transcripts of the MindTide podcast. And dig into their subscriber list. See if Lena’s devices ever connected to Zara’s IP.”

“You think she was stalking her own sister?”

“I think,” Eva said, “Zara never really stopped living inside Lena’s head.”

She stood, grabbed her coat, and looked out into the rain.

Next stop: the café where they’d recorded that podcast. If ghosts from the past had voices, Eva wanted to hear every whisper.

Chapter Seven – The Recording Room

The café sat on a narrow lane off Hoxton Street—half poetry bar, half podcast studio. Inside, exposed brick walls bore handwritten lines from obscure poets. The back room smelled of cinnamon and microphone foam.

Eva showed her badge to the barista, who nodded wordlessly and led her to the booth. The door was soundproofed with deep blue padding. On the table: a single mic, a laptop, and a cup ring stained on corkboard.

“They recorded the episode here,” the barista said. “Zara booked it herself. Lena looked nervous the whole time.”

Eva examined the logbook. Zara had used an alias—Z. D. Kara. She smirked. Kara. The Turkish word for black. A shadow identity.

The barista hesitated. “There’s something else. Zara left behind a flash drive. Didn’t come back for it.”

Eva slipped on gloves and took the device. “Thank you. You’ve been helpful.”

Back in the squad car, she plugged it into her encrypted tablet.

One folder: Whispers. Inside, dozens of audio files labeled by date, each one a single conversation between Zara and an unidentified speaker.

Eva played one. Lena’s voice filled the air. Soft, apologetic.

“I don’t know what else to do. You scare me sometimes.”

Zara: “I scare myself. But I need you to remember something, Lena. You weren’t the only one who got hurt.”

Eva paused the file. Her jaw tightened. This wasn’t just trauma. This was slow psychological erosion.

She pressed play again.

Lena: “Do you forgive me?”

Zara: “I never decided if I could.”

Eva closed her eyes.

Sometimes the motive wasn’t rage. It was love turned inside out. And the scar it left didn’t bleed—it echoed.

She knew now: Lena’s death wasn’t about revenge. It was about possession.

And Zara… Zara wanted to own the silence itself.

Chapter Eight – The House in Ealing

The train ride to Ealing was long enough to let Eva think—dangerous, given the storm of contradictions circling her mind. She had replayed the recordings twice. Each time, a new crack formed in the image of the sisters she thought she understood.

Zara hadn’t killed out of impulse. This was curated. Performed. Nearly elegant.

The house stood at the end of a curved lane, surrounded by untrimmed hedges and too-quiet neighbors. According to Malik’s trace, Zara’s most recent IP activity came from here.

Eva rang the bell. No answer.

She knocked again—twice, then a pause, then once more. The rhythm she’d learned during undercover days. It said: I’m not here to break you. I’m here to see if you’re already broken.

Footsteps. Slow, reluctant.

The door opened. Zara stood there. No makeup, no mask. Just pale skin and hollowed eyes, like she hadn’t slept since Lena died.

“You’re her, aren’t you?” Zara said.

“Eva Karahan. I think we should talk.”

Zara hesitated, then stepped aside.

The living room smelled like lavender and burnt toast. An empty cup sat on the table. Eva noticed the faintest outline of a lipstick stain—same color.

Zara didn’t sit. “She left me. Years ago. I know that sounds dramatic. But when you carry someone’s trauma like luggage, abandonment isn’t just absence. It’s eviction.”

Eva kept her voice low. “Did she know you blamed her?”

Zara’s lip twitched. “She knew. But she kept coming back anyway. Guilt is a kind of loyalty, Inspector.”

Eva nodded slowly. “Did you kill her?”

Silence.

Then, Zara whispered, “No. But I told her not to come that night. And I left the door unlocked.”

Eva felt her heart tighten. Not a confession. A confession’s shadow.

Zara sat finally, burying her face in her hands. “I loved her so much, I forgot where she ended and I began.”

Eva knew this case was no longer about facts. It was about fractures—the kind that happen when two people love each other with more pain than peace.

Chapter Nine – A Third Name

Eva sat alone in the dim light of her office, blinds half-closed against the early dusk. Zara’s words kept looping through her mind—‘I left the door unlocked.’ Not a confession, but the skeleton of one.

She opened Lena’s phone records. Something had been bothering her for days. A number repeated every Thursday night, same time. Not Zara’s. Not registered. But always exactly at 9:14 PM.

Eva pulled the metadata and cross-checked it. The SIM had been purchased under the name Ben Hollister.

She narrowed her eyes. That name had appeared once before—in the school logbook. A supply teacher. Temporarily placed in Lena’s school two weeks before her death.

“Ghost from university,” Lena had said. Eva had assumed she meant Zara. But what if it wasn’t Zara alone?

She searched deeper. Ben Hollister had studied at Cambridge in the same department. Psychology. Same year as Zara. Different path.

And then, something clicked.

One of the recordings. Zara’s voice saying: “I wasn’t the only one who got hurt.”

Eva pulled up school surveillance logs. Security footage—one frame showed a man standing outside the school gate. Tall. Limp on the right leg.

Mabel’s witness.

Eva leaned in. It wasn’t Zara leaving that night.

It was Ben.

She stood, heart thudding. Malik answered on the first ring.

“I need a warrant,” she said. “We’ve been watching the wrong ghost.”

Chapter Ten – The Silence Ends

Eva stood outside the two-story flat in Peckham, the morning air thick with dew and tension. Ben Hollister had no idea the noose had tightened.

Malik was beside her, radio silent, nodding as the tactical team moved into position. Eva gave a short knock—two fast, one slow.

Ben opened the door in a T-shirt and slippers, a cup of tea in his hand. His limp was more noticeable in person. His eyes—distant, unafraid.

“Mr. Hollister,” Eva said. “You need to come with us.”

Inside the interview room, hours later, the walls were thick with unspoken history. Ben sat still, fingers laced, eyes forward.

“Why did you do it?” Eva asked.

Ben tilted his head. “Because she chose to forget. And I remembered everything.”

He spoke slowly, carefully. How they’d all been part of a student psychology project gone wrong. A controlled group experiment. The three of them—Zara, Lena, and himself—pushed beyond ethical limits.

Lena reported the study anonymously. The university buried it, but Ben lost everything. Zara cut ties. Lena moved on.

“I wanted her to hear me,” Ben said. “To remember. But she offered me tea, smiled like I was a guest. So I ended it.”

Eva felt the chill run through her spine.

It wasn’t madness. It was memory twisted into mission.

The case was closed. Headlines would scream the horror. But Eva knew the story wouldn’t leave her.

On her desk, she scribbled into her notebook: “Some silences aren’t natural. They’re planted. They bloom when no one’s watching.”

She stared out the window, rain streaking the glass.

Another case closed. Another name remembered. Another silence ended.