by J. S. Law
She pursed her lips and let her eyes flick in the direction of the shovel; he saw her do it, but he didn’t approach.
‘Do you know why I do it, then?’ he asked, smiling, less fidgety, as though he were back on home turf. ‘Surely the amazing Girl Wonder has a theory on this – something for one of your lauded papers. Some shit that’d fit on the back page of an equally shitty journal? Do I need to go and clean up at your house? Delete some waffling paragraphs of you dispensing wisdom about why I do these things?’
Dan didn’t speak.
‘Because I can tell you,’ he continued. ‘Not that it’ll help you very much, but I can tell you why I do it. I can also answer all the little questions like, “why predominantly blondes?” and all that jazz if you want me to.’
Dan shrugged, flexing her fingers to warm them up for a fight that she knew she couldn’t win by force alone.
‘Educate me,’ she said.
‘I just like screwing blondes, Dan,’ he said, and mimicked her shrug. ‘Given a choice between blonde and any other hair colour, I’d stick my cock in a blonde any day of the week. But, I’m just a normal bloke, right? So if there’s no blondes, well, I’ll fuck a brunette, black hair, ginger, whatever.’
He stood up, took a step towards her, but just one.
Dan felt her stomach go hollow as she saw him move towards her. She spaced her feet shoulder width apart, trying to carefully work the soles of her shoes against the dusty floor to ensure they would grip when they needed to.
‘Do you know why I choose women?’
Dan shook her head. ‘Because you hated your mummy?’ she said, watching him, hoping he would look away for just a second to give her an advantage, any advantage.
‘Because I’m straight. See, I don’t really like screwing men, although any hole’s a goal and all that, but women are soft and smooth and weak and small. They’re easy to grab, easy to control. You’re trusting, honestly, stupidly trusting; your whole gender just cries out “victim”, and, well frankly, your whole gender are just disappointingly dumb.’
He was watching Dan carefully now and he seemed to have regained his calm. His hands were firm and he looked ready. ‘I think that’s your problem, Dan; you think you’re smarter than everyone else around you, but you’re not.’
‘I found you without too much trouble,’ she said.
‘And then came here by yourself to try and prove it; I think that’s one for the prosecution.’
‘Chess puzzles,’ said Dan, forcing a smile that she hoped he wouldn’t like. ‘There were some other things that gave you away, but chess puzzles was one of the most hilarious.’
His breathing started to quicken, his hands moving again, flexing and balling, as the agitation visibly built inside him.
‘You love to try and talk as though you’re some kind of genius, as though you’re very, very intelligent and can predict what people will do, as though you’re thinking umpteen moves ahead of everyone else, but I watched you with those chess puzzles you try to dazzle us all with, and I know you can’t do them; you use a computer programme on your phone to solve them and then pretend you can just see it through natural talent.’
She laughed, a deliberately challenging laugh, as though he might join her in realising how ridiculous she found him.
He was moving more, his face no longer calm, his eyes tracking her.
‘That’s why I brought in that puzzle from home a few weeks ago, because I knew you wouldn’t be able to do it. But what I found really interesting, is that you hadn’t even considered that someone might do that to you; you hadn’t thought ahead, hadn’t calculated what you’d do if someone openly challenged your intellect.’
Dan slid her foot towards the spade, watching him all the time; she was certain that he couldn’t attack her until he’d heard what she had to say.
‘You just floundered and tried to make excuses before you walked away. Once you were gone, we were all laughing so hard. Not just me, either – all of the other investigators, and especially the admin girls, we were laughing our asses off behind your back.’
‘And yet I seemed to be able to outthink you, Dan,’ he said, his voice low. ‘I seemed to be able to calculate that you’d come here and that you’d be alone, that you’d tell no one else, that you’d save the glory for yourself.’ He raised his hand to his ear. ‘Still no sirens, Dan, still no help arriving for you.’
She glanced at the spade, letting her eyes linger on it for a few seconds before she looked back at him.
He was watching her, had seen her eyes moving.
‘Time,’ he said, and moved forward.
His arms seemed to vibrate by his side as he tensed up, as though readying himself for action. The veins on his neck were standing proud and his fingers started to flex again and again as he watched her, the blacks of his eyes seeming to expand like a predator focusing on its chosen prey.
He started to move again, not towards her, but off to the side, towards the spade. His eyes seemed to have a physicality of their own, as though she could feel them pushing against her, sharp and hard. His mouth was set, but she watched his hands and saw them ball into fists as the rage built up inside him and manifested itself there.
He was closing the distance between them; maybe twelve feet of open space remained.
Dan forced another laugh, bending her knees slightly as she did and readying herself.
He stepped closer again, the spade now equidistant between them.
‘You’re going to die horribly,’ he whispered.
Dan stepped forward. She made a sudden lunge towards the spade, and was sure she saw a slight smile cross his face, as though he had watched her and predicted what she would do. But Dan didn’t hesitate. She faked for the spade, turning and lunging for the shears instead. She had them in her hand in a second, light and easy to manoeuvre, and swung them at Hamilton as he was still reaching down to grab the wooden shaft of the heavier spade.
The tip of the blades scraped down past his ear, drawing blood, and Dan made sure not to over reach as she watched him grasp the spade and swing it in one hand, aiming for her head, the fingers of his other hand clasped against his torn and bloodied ear.
Dan, smaller and more agile, ducked below the spade and grasped the shears properly, opening them and driving up towards him as she pressed them shut on impact. The blades bit into him, tearing across the cotton of his white shirt, and penetrating deep into the flesh beneath it.
He dropped the shovel but brought his blood-covered hand from his ear down in a hard arc, landing solidly on Dan’s shoulder and sending her to the ground, the force of the blow taking the wind from her.
Hamilton was bigger and much stronger, and even though he was now wounded, Dan knew that the longer this fight went on, the smaller her chances of survival became.
He swung a kick and it landed against her hip, almost lifting her from the ground with its ferocity, the pain excruciating.
She gritted her teeth, fighting to hold onto the shears, even as she saw him ready himself to kick again.
In the instant of him drawing back his foot again, Dan remembered her father speaking to her outside of school as she sat with a bloody knee and a fat lip, sobbing quietly.
The last few children who had watched the altercation had drifted away and she remembered her father’s philosophy on life, imparted to her and her sister in fleeting visits between the military operations that so often took him away from them. ‘Fights aren’t won by the bigger man, Danny. Fights are won by the man willing to escalate the violence the furthest, the fastest. If you’re not willing to go the distance, to go further and harder than your opponent will and to do it faster than they’re able to, then you’ve already accepted defeat.’
Dan braced herself for the kick to come and knew that she had to be willing to kill Chris Hamilton if she were to have any chance at all of escaping from this place, of not joining the corpses under the dirty green tarpaulin.
‘Please,’ she shout
ed, tensing as the boot hit her and bolts of pain shot throughout her body. ‘Please, Chris, I’m sorry, you’re right,’ she yelled.
He looked down at her, paused for just a second, and then spat on her. He looked as though he was faltering, trying to think of something to say.
It was then that she kicked out, aiming for his ankle and drawing his eyes towards her foot as he easily dodged the kick. Dan immediately drove the shears with all her strength into the already open wound on the side of his abdomen.
His mouth opened wider than Dan could ever have thought possible as she leaned up and pushed the double blades into him as far as she could.
He doubled over, as though trying to close the wound like he might a door, and took a step away from her.
Dan rolled away, moving to her knees and grabbing the spade. In what felt to her like a single movement, she stood up, raised the spade to shoulder height and swung it as hard as she was able to, into Christopher Hamilton’s face.
He went down hard.
Dan heard a loud crack and saw a theatrical spatter of blood land across the dusty concrete.
The shears fell out of Hamilton’s wound and dropped onto the floor, lying still, as though they’d given up trying to run away from the growing pool of blood that crept across the concrete to catch them.
Dan stood back, watching as Hamilton’s chest jerked and spasmed, listening as his breathing crackled and stalled. Then she stepped towards him, put the blade of the spade against his neck and placed her foot on the shoulder, as though she were about to break soil.
‘How many?’ she said. ‘How many are there?’
He said nothing, made no effort to answer.
‘You’ll bleed out within minutes if I don’t get help, so tell me, how many?’
This time she heard a rasping sound and she leaned slightly forward so that she could hear him.
‘Lots,’ he whispered, just before a cough racked his body, blood gurgling out of his mouth like bubbles from a blocked sink. ‘Lots and lots.’
‘Where?’ she asked, pushing her foot onto the shoulder of the spade. ‘Tell me where they are.’
He was starting to go limp, his breathing becoming shallower.
‘Tell me where!’ she shouted, putting pressure onto the spade and seeing his body react to it.
‘Don’t know,’ he said.
‘What?’ said Dan, taking the pressure back off the spade. ‘I said where are the other women? Where are their bodies?’
He was dying as Dan watched. He was bleeding out, starting to shiver, the gaps between activity and peace seeming to extend with each cycle.
‘Do you want to die here?’ she shouted. ‘Tell me where they are! Where were you going to take these women? Where?’
He laughed, blood coming out of his mouth like a Halloween zombie mask, but the rasping unmistakable. ‘Don’t know,’ he whispered.
‘Then you’re going to die here in the same place they did,’ said Dan, taking her foot off the spade.
It clattered as she tossed it to the floor several feet away, the noise of metal striking concrete drowning out Chris Hamilton’s dying breaths as it echoed around the garage.
Looking down at him, Dan knew he deserved to die. Felt nothing for him as she watched him creep slowly towards his end. But the information he had, the women he’d hurt and the closure he could bring to their families if he talked …
‘If you want me to call for help, then tell me where you hid those women’s bodies. Tell me how many there are. Or I swear I’ll watch you bleed until you die, just to be sure you do.’
He laughed again, the sound like sandpaper on rough wood. ‘I don’t know where they are,’ he said, each word taking longer than the last. ‘And you haven’t got it in you.’
Chapter 1
Thursday Afternoon – 25th September 2014
‘Ma’am?’
Dan looked up at the young naval policeman who was leaning around her office door as though he might lose balance and topple in if he didn’t deliver his message and be on his way soon enough.
He was young, bursting with confidence, and a little overfamiliarity, but his navy uniform was immaculate and the shirt so white that it took on a bluish tint in the dull glow that came in through the window, and Dan could work with that; he had attention to detail.
‘Head of Kill’s here to see you,’ he said, using the slang term for the Crimes Involving Loss of Life division which never failed to grate on Dan’s nerves. ‘Commander Blackett. He’s downstairs signing in now.’
Dan watched him and said nothing, the silence drawing out between them and the young man’s position leaning on the door becoming tenuous.
He waited, watching her for an acknowledgement, and when none came he eventually released the door frame and stepped properly into the office, free-standing.
‘Thank you,’ said Dan. ‘Could you turn the lights on and show him up, please.’
‘Ah, he asked if you would go down and go for a walk with him,’ he said, trying for a smile. ‘The Commander said,’ the young policeman paused, hesitated. ‘He said the fluorescent lights make you grumpy.’
Dan smiled and watched the young man relax a little. She was new here, had taken over the Portsmouth unit only a day ago and had been away from the Special Investigation Branch for a good while before that. Many of the younger police didn’t know her, but they would get to, in time.
‘In that case, you better leave the lights off,’ Dan said. ‘Thank you, I’ll go down now.’
He nodded and was gone as Dan stood and grabbed her issue waterproof jacket and tricorn hat.
Commander Blackett was waiting for her outside, across the car park near to her car. His hand was moving in slow cycles from his mouth to his side and back again, the smoke signals rising after each one confirming that little had likely changed with Roger Blackett.
He took a long, deep draw on his cigarette as she approached, and smiled broadly.
‘You look good, Danny,’ he said, reaching out to shake her hand though it was clear he would have embraced her had they not been in uniform. ‘In fact, you look great.’
Dan shook her head and ignored him.
‘You still torturing yourself for miles upon miles every day?’ he asked.
Dan nodded.
‘Too bloody vigorous, Danny. I’m sure it can’t be good for you, you know, putting your body through that, but if it keeps you healthy and happy …’
She watched him, one eyebrow raised, as he drew on his cigarette with the intensity of an asthmatic drawing on an inhaler.
He smiled. ‘Don’t you lecture me, Danielle Lewis. I’m a lost cause, and anyway, I’m giving up.’
‘You’ve been giving up for twenty years.’
‘Ah well, life’s for living,’ he said, ‘all about pushing boundaries and seeing what you can get away with.’ He tossed his stub into a large, wet pile of others on the ground next to a bin.
‘How come you’re out and about in Portsmouth?’ she asked. ‘I heard you liked being tucked up safe and warm in your office these days.’
‘I came to see you,’ he said, as though that were sufficient reason for the head of her branch to drive for four hours and turn up unannounced at her office, asking to go for a walk. ‘Can we walk for a short while then?’
Dan shrugged and waited for him to lead the way.
They walked steadily through the dockyard, Blackett talking as they went, catching her up on promotions and news from the navy police and its Special Investigation Branch, as well as gossip from a circle of mutual friends that Dan hadn’t seen or heard about for years. He was talking, but not really saying anything.
They passed the carrier berths, and HMS Illustrious, the newly decommissioned British aircraft carrier. She had seen from a distance that the flat, grey flight deck was free of aircraft. It looked as smooth and empty as a Sunday morning car park in the dull light. Now that she was closer, she was no longer able to see the flight deck, just the sailors that
were bustling around the ship beneath it.
Roger began to tell her about his time on board Illustrious as the Master at Arms, the senior policeman on the floating town that held upwards of a thousand sailors when it deployed. He spoke quickly as Dan watched the sailors working on the grey passageways that looked down onto the concrete jetty, or unpacking stores and supplies on dry land, near to one of the gangways.
Dan fixed her eyes dead ahead. She felt their gazes fall on her like the shadow cast by the twenty-thousand-ton hulk. Some glanced surreptitiously sideways, others simply stood up and motioned to their friends. It was as though their eyes, and the darkness cast onto the ground by the ship, possessed actual weight.
Roger talked on, oblivious, as they moved towards the rising masts of HMS Victory.
Portsmouth Dockyard had changed since she had last been here. It had grown and modernised. There were more cars and fewer people, but the layout was the same, and she relaxed again as they headed towards the cobbles of the Historic Dockyard, passing visitors and tourists on their way to the Mary Rose, or HMS Warrior; all hoping to see some history only a few hundred feet away from the modern warships that still had a hand in shaping it.
‘I was hoping to speak to you last night,’ he said, a change in tone alerting Dan that she needed to listen. ‘I tried your mobile, thought we might be able to grab a drink.’
They walked along towards the waterfront. Several sailors saluted Blackett as they passed, Dan aware of their eyes flicking towards her after they did so.
They stopped at the water’s edge, and Roger lit another cigarette. ‘I thought, at first, you might’ve changed your number, but your dad and sister said they haven’t spoken to you either.’
‘What’s up, Roger?’ she asked.
She wrapped her arms around herself.
‘I’m glad you’ve started to let your hair grow back,’ he said.
The words sounded odd and random, irritating.
‘It’s a long drive from Plymouth to Portsmouth to tell me to call home,’ she said.
‘Your dad’s worried, we all are.’