by J. S. Law
She had to go, had to stay awake, the voice was right, she had to regain control and get away from there, but she couldn’t move.
Dan thought of her dad and of Charlie and their stepmum, of Team Lewis and the need to keep going, to fight on, to never stop, to succeed.
Her head spun as she lay looking up into the darkness, trying desperately to search for the sky through the branches of the trees that she knew were above her.
The black night had crept in around her, like thick, black oil being poured carefully over a mould, finding every gap, every crease, cut and cranny.
The voices had gone and she could hear no sounds in the woods around her. After a time between wakefulness and sleep that was long enough for her to start shivering with the cold, Dan heard footsteps on the distant stones and a car’s engine start shortly after. She heard her colleagues leave the pub sometime later, could hear them shouting, could have called out to them, but didn’t.
It wasn’t just dark where she lay, it was the very absence of light, and every sound, every rustle, every breath of wind that she heard in the absolute darkness, was the commentator’s whisper, sometimes offering her reassurance and guidance, telling her she would be OK, and then, as suddenly as a gunshot, he would promise terrible things, and then describe to her the black, unseen terrors that gambolled on the periphery of her mind.
Chapter 27
Tuesday Morning – 30th September 2014
‘Ma’am.’
She heard the word, but it was far away, being spoken by someone else to someone else. It was an echo, dreamlike, not for her, nothing to do with her at all.
‘Ma’am.’
There it was again, but closer, too close this time, closer than it should have been.
Dan’s eyes opened in an instant. She immediately flinched and then blinked, her hands grabbing for her face, scratching at her skin when there was no mask there to be cleared away.
She closed her eyes again, squeezed them tight as the memories of that assault, buried so deep and for so long in her past, now resurfaced. She was breathless, tired and weak when her memory of the previous night also began to flood into her mind, darkness and panic coursing through her body. She was unable to filter the events that were old from those that were new.
The lights in the compartment were back on and burning and she fought to overcome the brightness that ruthlessly attacked her eyes.
She sat bolt upright and banged her head against the missile above her cot. The blow was hard and Dan thought she might lose consciousness as her hand went up to the small wound. Instinctively she recoiled from the impact, cried out, and then scrabbled backwards, away from the figure that was leaning towards her. She almost fell off the end of her bed, one hand slipping off the edge and down onto her holdall.
She watched, stunned and recoiling again, as the figure before her seemed to mirror her actions.
He stepped back, eyes wide in terror, arms flailing as he stumbled over something on the centreline of the bomb-shop and fell backwards.
‘Shit, ma’am,’ said the figure, coming into focus. ‘Fuck’s sake.’
The voice was familiar and it sounded panicked and annoyed.
Dan’s eyes were still adjusting to the light as she looked around, taking in the compartment, looking for the markers. It looked the same, but she wasn’t the same.
She remembered where she was, remembered what had happened. Finally, she saw Ryan Taylor on the floor a few feet away from her.
He had fallen over a large stack of tinned food and was sprawled on his backside, rubbing his arm as a small trickle of blood ran down it.
‘You OK, ma’am?’ he asked. He sounded frightened now. ‘I didn’t mean to …’ He paused, visibly unsure of what he had done that he didn’t mean to do. Then he picked up a foil package that was lying next to him on the deck and held it up in his good hand. ‘I brought you some fat pills to eat, that’s all. They’ve got me covering Ben’s duties now.’
He looked worried as he waited for her response, holding out the foil-wrapped rolls like a peace offering.
Dan realised that her hands were shaking, that her breathing was shallow and choppy, that her eyes were wide and glaring; she was going to cry.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I really appreciate it, but would you mind leaving me alone, please? I’m …’ She paused. ‘Tired.’
Ryan nodded repeatedly. He looked as though nothing she could have said would have given him greater pleasure than leaving her alone. ‘Yeah,’ he said, climbing to his feet. ‘Yeah, sure.’
He looked back at her as he walked towards the ladder, not taking his eyes from her for even a second, as though he thought she might spring out of bed and attack him from behind at any moment.
As he reached the ladder he stopped. ‘Coxswain says he’s got your interview list for today. It’s in the ship’s office.’
Dan felt a stab of panic. There was no way she could face up to leaving the bomb-shop, let alone carrying out any interviews.
‘Can you … can you tell him that I’m not feeling well enough to do them today, Ryan?’
He nodded and turned to climb the ladder.
As his boots vanished through the hatch, Dan felt her body take a huge involuntary breath. It sounded loud, as though it was coupled with a deep moan, and she filled her lungs until she thought they might pop. The breath held firm inside her and Dan was unable to let it out. It was as though her body was unsure of what to do next, as though it might never let the air go free. Her mouth was wide and tears started to run down her cheeks as a low wail escaped from her and the air slowly leaked out. She turned and thrust her face into the pillow, not allowing any further sound to escape as the sobs came one after the other.
When she finally pulled away, there was a small smear of blood on the dirty grey pillowcase. Her head was bleeding, not much, just a small weep where she had banged it against the cold, hard metal that formed the body of the missile above her bed. Dabbing at the wound with her two fingers, Dan felt a small lump and winced. She sat up slowly this time; not really knowing how long her face had been in the pillow or how much time had passed since Ryan Taylor had left her with the food.
She turned quickly, her eyes snapping towards the hatch; there was no one there. Then she turned her body, wincing as the movement brought shocks of pain, and placed her feet onto the floor. Immediately she lifted her foot back up again as she felt it touch something hard. Without looking, she knew it was the hose, the one attached to the mask that was the last thing she could remember. She looked down and her eyes followed along the length of it until it disappeared beneath her bunk.
Her ankle caught her eye, red from where she had been bound, the skin not broken, but raw and angry from where she had fought. She reached down and pulled at the hose until the mask came into view.
She felt her breathing start to shorten again, felt it get easier to breathe in than out.
‘No,’ she stammered. ‘No.’
She clenched her teeth until her jaw hurt and gripped hard at the mask, squeezing the tough rubber out of shape until she felt the panic pass.
Slowly, as control returned, she placed her foot onto the deck again and stood up. She was aching all over, her muscles sore from exertion, but it was the pain in her ribs that felt the worst.
Each attack had been accurate and powerful, deliberate and designed to cause maximum pain.
Her hands explored her ribs gently as she tried to assess what damage had been done, the pain from the lightest touch making her wince as the words of the warning came back to her, beginning to loop continuously like an unwanted sound bite in her mind.
‘You’re alone and I can get to you anywhere you try to go.’
Chapter 28
Tuesday Afternoon – 30th September 2014
The rolls that Ryan Taylor had brought her were plain. Just a simple piece of fatty, tinned ham placed in the centre of a lightly buttered, homemade roll, but it didn’t matter; Dan retched b
efore she even got one near to her mouth. She wrapped it back up in the foil, the logical part of her knowing she should keep it for later, but the smell meaning that she had to get the food away from her, out of sight. She hid the foil package inside her bag at the head of her bed, rummaging around to force it deep towards the bottom.
Since hiding the food, she had also found somewhere new to sit.
There was a narrow alleyway at the back of the bomb-shop that ran athwart-ships, across the width of the submarine, allowing access between the bulkhead that marked the aft limit of the bomb-shop and the ends of the missiles and torpedoes that ran in the forward to aft direction. Down this alley, and after climbing over bags and stores, in the very back corner of the bomb-shop, Dan felt safe.
The alley was so tight that even Dan had had to take time to climb carefully along to her spot and then to lower herself down backwards into a sitting position. From here she could look across the deck of the bomb-shop, underneath the missiles and her own bunk, and see the moment anyone entered the compartment.
Her refuge was hard to get to, small and cramped, with only one way in and one way out. Her pillow helped to ease the discomfort, as did wearing the loose-fitting pair of overalls that Aaron had found for her.
She had broken another rule before climbing in here. She had turned on her phone inside the bomb-shop, using the built-in camera to take pictures of her ankles, wrists and ribs. After that she had turned the phone off again, the missiles and torpedoes remaining unexploded, and had carefully pulled on the baggy overalls.
The paracetamol that she’d packed seemed to be buried deep inside her bag. For the first few days she’d simply left the bag wide open and had been able to lean over the end of her bunk to rummage for what she needed, the bag perfectly placed in reach like a pillow that had flopped off the end of the bed. This time she couldn’t tolerate her back being to the entrance hatch and she had knelt down, her eyes checking the hatch like a learner driver checks the rear-view mirror, and searched the pockets of the black holdall.
Now she tried to read, sitting in her private space with a relatively clear view across the deck, including the area below the hatch, her papers scattered all around her.
There was no hurry and Dan was taking a long time with each sheet as she repeatedly glanced up to check there was no one there. She was mumbling, constantly mumbling, could hear herself doing it, but it beat grinding her teeth, and she carried on saying out loud segments of what she was reading and thinking.
‘It was a mistake,’ she said, flicking through the piles of evidence and then dwelling on a single sheet until she had read it. It was taking ages; she would read a paragraph and then instantly forget what it had said. She would write a note and instantly be unable to read her writing. Some of the papers were sorted back into order, but many, many more were still disorganised, random and crumpled, from where they had been thrown down the main access hatch.
‘It was a big mistake. Silly, stupid.’
She found the pieces of paper that she was looking for and nodded her head.
‘Yes,’ she said, quite loud this time. ‘I wasn’t sure before, I couldn’t possibly have been.’
She opened the report, most of it held together in one corner by a green treasury tag while the other bits were easily identified by checking for tears in the corners from where they had ripped away from the main body. The pages were crumpled and dirty, some with footprints on them and others with smears of hydraulic oil, but she could clearly make out the title, Early Hypothesis of Offender Profile – Doctor F. Green.
Dan made careful notes as she scrutinised the profile, going carefully now, page by page, writing so slowly and meticulously that she was certain she would be able to re-read her writing when the time came. She checked that each sheet was numbered and in the correct order, and when she located a gap, she pulled the gash bag towards her and rummaged until she found and inserted the missing page. Then more reading and more notes, losing herself in the document. She tried to manually cross-reference details, flicking back to other reports as she pieced together a picture of how, where and why this offender operated. The certainty that he was on board the submarine at this very moment drove her onwards, the memories of what he had done to her lurking at the back of her mind. They tried to surface from time to time, tried to distract her from what she was doing, to cloud her mind and distort her focus, to make her look up towards the hatch and check for feet and ankles approaching her den, but she fought to keep them in check.
It kept coming, though, the feeling of him in the restricted space, the sensation of her head being dragged backwards whilst he was atop her in the dark.
Her whole body jerked suddenly and the files that were open on her lap slipped off, their pages scattering as far as they could and some slipping down underneath the torpedoes to join the debris and dust that lay there undisturbed and almost inaccessible.
A scream rose up from her stomach and she clenched her teeth and scrunched her eyes closed as tight as possible. Her whole body was taut and she closed her fists so forcefully that she felt one of her nails start to pierce the skin on her palm. Frustration rushed over her like a storm pounding rocks and she knew that behind her eyelids tears were gathering in number, each one ready to run down her face as soon as she allowed the floodgates to open.
She was certain she had a rapist, a probable killer, on board the submarine, knew it in her heart. But sitting there, frightened in a way that she had promised herself she would never be again, Dan began to feel that it was hopeless, as hopeless as fighting back when you’re completely outnumbered, as hopeless as taking on a whole team when you’re on a team of one. She opened her eyes and started to gather the papers back up again. She had to roll slowly and painfully onto her belly and reach into the empty space beneath the weapon mounts to retrieve the pages that had slipped away from her. Once she had them, once her breathing had slowed down again and the thoughts had been pushed back into their compartment, the hatch firmly shut and clipped, she forced herself to return to laboriously cross-referencing the facts and collating her evidence. She searched for another document that had been on her lap, eventually seeing it on the floor more than an arm’s length away below the end of one weapon. Dan looked at it and then back at her notes. She knew that without a computer, alone, without brainstorming and discussion, trying to bring the strands of the investigation together was near to impossible.
She leaned her head back against the bulkhead. Words came flooding back to her, and her tightly shut eyes allowed the face of Roger Blackett, her good friend and mentor, to form in her mind. He was in his office, standing behind his desk, glaring at her. ‘I should tell you “what”, because I am your friend, pretty much the only one you have, and somebody needs to.’ He had turned towards her as he had spoken the words, and then, his voice not even raised, ‘You need to get back into a team.’
Eyes still shut tight, she drew her head forward slowly, lifting her hands up and cradling it gently, allowing it to rest and the tears to fall straight down onto the grey-white pillowcase that she was sitting on.
Now John’s face appeared, a face she should have trusted. ‘We need to work together,’ he said, with a familiar expression.
Her breathing began to slow and Dan felt as though she were regaining control of herself again. A final thought entered her mind. She saw the paper come into focus and then the black font that made up the words take shape after it.
On the strength of one link in the cable,
Dependeth the might of the chain.
Who knows when thou may’st be tested?
So live that thou bearest the strain!
‘Teamwork,’ she said out loud, the words echoing and sounding odd from her sore, dry throat. ‘It’s not just one of them; it wasn’t just one of them last night and there must have been more than one all along. Is that what you were telling me, Whisky? There’s more than one of them? There has to be.’
The realisation was obviou
s; she had known it all along but hadn’t voiced it, not to herself, not in plain, understandable English.
Walker was a strong man and an experienced boxer. It was unlikely that a single man could have hung him without signs of a struggle.
Felicity had virtually said as much too.
As Dan forced herself to remember what had happened to her, to make sense of it, she knew that a single person did not restrain her last night. She was tied down, but as she considered it, trying to look at what happened through the eyes of a police officer, cold and emotionless, she knew that there had to have been a second person present. When she had tried to lash out with her head, she had been pulled backwards, a tube around her throat to control her, the angle making it impossible for the man atop her to have done it. Then she remembered his fingers loosening the noose, how it had tightened slightly as his hands moved away from her face, moved down towards …
Dan gasped and shivered, looking up at the bomb-shop entrance and taking a moment to recover herself. She had to put herself through this, had to face what had happened and learn what she could from it.
There had to be a second person at the head of her bed, kneeling or sitting on her holdall behind her, pulling her backwards by the neck, choking her.
Dan knew that now, no longer thought it, was certain; there were two men there last night. Two men willing to attack her, two men willing to keep that secret.
Her mind jumped to Cheryl Walker now, the nature of the attack against her, sustained and violent. Could it be the work of two men, encouraging each other, guaranteeing that each had done enough evil to ensure their silence, that each was fully committed to both the crime and the secret? Could they have stopped midway to talk and plan, for one to coerce the other if doubts arose?
Murderers working in pairs were rare, but it wasn’t the first time Dan had seen it, or at least suspected it. She had been as certain as she could be, without hard evidence, that Hamilton had not always worked alone, that he’d had help to manage his killing undetected for so long. This was a theory that had been sensationalised by the press and emphatically condemned by both the police and her superiors in the Ministry of Defence after her papers were leaked.