The Fear Within

by J. S. Law

  There were two of them, side by side, and behind them were empty shelves where cigarettes would once have been; somebody had remembered to come and take those away when the shop had stopped trading.

  She heard shuffling behind her, was sure she had, and spun around, turning off her light and listening for Simmons’s footsteps coming into the shop.

  Silence again.

  She looked at the shutters, then moved toward them, turning right and looking down at the spot where she knew Evelyn Simmons had been lying when she’d looked only a short time before.

  Evelyn was gone.

  What was left was an area smeared with dark fluids, blood, and urine, as though someone had tried to clean up a mess with a blood-soaked rag.

  “Evelyn,” Dan whispered, hoping that the woman might be conscious and had moved herself.

  She turned her light back on and saw the trail of dirt disappear deeper into the shop. She could see now that it could’ve only been made by dragging a bloodied body along the floor; Evelyn hadn’t moved herself.

  Dan followed the trail, walking beside it so as not to get the slippery blood on the soles of her shoes. She held the flashlight in her left hand, her right gripping the baton, which was raised, cocked, resting on her shoulder as she walked and listened, aware of every sound around her. She reached the junction, the point at which the shelves running lengthwise met others that crossed the store, and she stopped.

  In front of her was an old gift section beneath a sign that read GIFTS 4 THOSE U LOVE.

  In the center of the gift section was a rocking chair, an old wooden classic, and on it was a large teddy bear, huge in fact, the kind of thing that her sister, Charlie, had loved to try to win at the fair ground when they were kids. She remembered how they’d often walk back with something like it, Charlie smiling, clutching some enormous soft toy as tightly as she could, barely able to carry it, and her dad looking a bit grim as he wondered where on earth they were going to keep it.

  “Evelyn,” Dan whispered again, but there was still no reply.

  On the floor, the trail of human fluids was no longer as clear as it had been, instead the whole floor was dirty, and Dan moved farther into the shop, shining her light along another aisle as she moved away from the gift section.

  The noise was there again.

  She heard it, no question this time, a shuffle, a rasp, the rattle of labored breathing. It was near her, behind her, and she turned quickly, shining the light and almost losing her balance.

  Then she saw it.

  Next to her was a large double-door fridge with a bright handwritten sign declaring that this was the Last Chance section.

  Dan could already see that inside the fridge on the upper shelves were the remnants of rotten produce, probably so long gone that there wouldn’t even be a smell, but at the bottom, curled up and not moving, was a body. Evelyn Simmons. Dan could see every single vertebra of the woman’s spine as it pushed against her thin, bruised skin.

  The fridge was big, as big as a wardrobe, with two glass doors as wide and tall as the shelves around them.

  Dan pulled at one of the doors to open it, but it didn’t budge.

  The fridge wasn’t powered on and she spotted what looked like a bike lock at the very top of the door.

  It was looped and locked through two security eyes.

  Dan tried the other door and was sure she saw Evelyn breathe as the glass door opened a tiny bit, until the bike lock at the top prevented it from going any farther.

  “Evelyn, can you hear me?” whispered Dan.

  Evelyn didn’t move, though Dan was sure she heard the sound of breathing. She was alive, at least.

  Dan wedged the end of her police baton into the gap and tried to lever the door wider. The bike lock looked solid, but the eye loop it was fed through looked weak, as though it were only riveted in place to stop the doors from falling open in transit and maybe to dissuade a casual thief.

  With all her strength, she forced her weight against the end of the lever again and again, bouncing against it, and she felt the door move a little bit farther each time.

  The eye at the top of the door gave way with a crack and the door flew open.

  Dan stepped back, her foot hitting a patch of fluid, and she slipped and stumbled, falling against a shelf of canned fish and knocking several cans to the floor.

  “Shit,” she said, but she knew she had no time.

  She stood up, the flashlight beam spilling across the floor, illuminating the dirt in a rusty red glow. Dan collapsed the baton and put it back in her pocket. Then she picked up the flashlight and held it in her mouth, gagging at the taste of the dirt that covered the handle. She reached in through the open door and grabbed Evelyn’s body, reaching under her arms and dragging her out of the refrigerator.

  The woman was emaciated, but even so, she was bigger than Dan’s five-foot-two-inch frame, and as she dragged Evelyn out, she was unable to stop the woman’s skinny legs from slapping against the floor with a crack that made Dan wince.

  She laid Evelyn on her back, straddled her, and gritted her teeth as she lifted her under the arms into a sitting position. Then she took one of Evelyn’s arms, wrapped it behind her head, and tried to heave the woman’s unconscious body up onto her shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  Dan knew that Simmons might well be on his way, but she also knew that that meant John would be, too, and she had to trust him to be here so that she could get Evelyn out of harm’s way.

  It took her three attempts to lift Evelyn’s naked, unconscious body, and she staggered at first, struggling to find her balance beneath the weight. When she finally did, she turned to head for the front of the shop, just in time to see David Simmons jump at her.

  He was already in the air, flying toward her, and he landed a two-footed kick to her stomach.

  The blow doubled Dan over and collapsed her, throwing her back hard against the fridge and shattering one door as both she and Evelyn crumpled to the floor.

  Dan was dazed and winded. Her arms and legs seeming to be tied together with Evelyn’s bare limbs. She barely registered Evelyn’s body being dragged off her in a single movement and being tossed out of the way, flying through the air, the limbs as loose and free as a child’s rag doll, before landing with a sickening wet thud on the floor more than six feet across the aisle.

  Dan was convulsing, the wind knocked out of her, and she wasn’t able to fully avoid a blow that caught the front of her face, skimming her cheek and catching the side of her nose hard enough to make her head flick over her right shoulder and blood start flowing.

  Her nose was blocked in an instant, her eyes filled with reflexive tears, and instinctively she leaned away again, her head moving into the space that would have been blocked by glass as another wild punch whistled past her head.

  Even in her dazed state, Dan knew she was in big trouble. The ferocity of Simmons’s attack had left her winded, her airways blocked at her throat, her nose numb and pouring blood, her vision obscured. The fear she now felt was intensified by the fact that in her mind, the images flashing faster than anything she’d ever seen, she replayed the result of his animal aggression on Petty Officer Amanda Collins.

  Dan felt a sickening pain on her left shin and knew, though she couldn’t properly see, that he’d stamped down on it with all of his weight.

  Simmons wasn’t trying to win a fight, he wasn’t trying to subdue her or keep her down, he was trying to break her bones, to disable her, to kill her if he could.

  There was a loud crash and through her tears she saw the shadow before her disappear.

  John Granger, her partner and friend, had arrived.

  Dan blinked repeatedly, clearing the tears from her eyes and trying to calm herself so she could recover her breath.

  John had tackled Simmons to the floor, was on top of him now.

  She could see that John wasn’t trying to restrain Simmons, the violence she was watching had gone too far for that, John was fightin
g for everyone’s safety, and she watched as Simmons drove his hand up into John’s face, keeping his fingers there and reaching to gouge at John’s eyes.

  Both of John’s hands were trying to fight off this attack, and Simmons, a former soldier who was physically fit, large, strong, and aggressive, reached out with his other hand, grabbing a large tin of fish, ready to use it as a weapon.

  Dan willed her body into action, though it was slow to respond. She tried to stand, the leg where Simmons had stamped her giving way, and she hurled herself at Simmons, catching his thick forearm, unable to stop him, but diverting the direction of his arm and forcing the weapon to bounce off John’s shoulder just a split second before it would have slammed into his temple.

  Simmons was strong, very strong, easily a foot taller than Dan and more than twice her weight. He had the overdeveloped forearms of a man who loved lifting weights and training hard, and he turned to Dan, his teeth bared. In the instant that he looked away, his attention divided, John Granger leaned back enough to free his face from Simmons’s grip and sweep his other arm aside.

  John dropped forward fast, driving his elbow down onto the bridge of Simmons’s nose.

  Simmons didn’t make a sound. He easily ripped his arm free of Dan’s grip, dropped the can, and grabbed John’s head in both of his hands, drawing John’s skull down toward him at the same time that he drove his head upward, head-butting John in the center of his face.

  Dan watched John go limp for a second, watched as Simmons easily reversed their positions, and in what seemed like an instant, John was rolled onto the floor, Simmons atop him, and Dan saw Simmons again drive his head down into John’s face.

  She grabbed her baton and extended it quickly, the cracking sound drawing Simmons’s attention. He reached for her, looking away from John, who immediately swung a punch at Simmons’s head.

  Simmons looked back at John, grunting for the first time and torn between two opponents. His arm was still outstretched toward her, and Dan, taking her chance, whipped the baton down hard onto Simmons’s forearm, feeling the vibration travel up the length of it to her hand as it impacted. He screamed in pain as the loud crack of his radius bone breaking rose above the other sounds.

  John looked as though he was spent, was on the edge of losing consciousness, and Dan looked at Simmons as his arm hung limp.

  Simmons stood, leaving John on the ground, and swung his good arm at Dan, missing, but making her stumble backward. He seemed to take in his surroundings, unsure what to do, and Dan saw the first flashes of blue light as they touched his features and glinted in his eyes.

  He looked at her and then at Evelyn, sneered, and then headed for the unconscious woman.

  Dan rushed him, swinging the baton, but he ducked.

  The baton glanced off his shoulder and he swung at Dan again, catching her clean on the side of the head and knocking her back against the broken fridge.

  She was confused. She looked across at John, who was out cold, his face like road kill, and then she saw Simmons dragging Evelyn into the middle of the aisle.

  He was making a sound under his breath, that same one again and again, and it took Dan a moment to realize he was repeating the word “bitch.”

  He laid Evelyn flat and raised his foot above her head.

  Dan knew exactly what he was going to do. She’d been the one to find Amanda Collins, her skull almost split open from where he’d repeatedly stamped on it. He meant to crack Evelyn’s skull before he was taken.

  Dan pushed herself up and threw herself at him. She swung the baton, aiming for his lower back, but he was ready, a trained fighter, clad in muscle and pumped with adrenaline.

  The baton landed, but not hard enough, and this time, instead of striking Dan and pushing her away, he clubbed her to the ground.

  She slumped at his feet and he smiled down at her.

  “Bitch,” he said. “Her first, so you can watch, then you.”

  He moved his feet, placing one next to Evelyn’s head as he raised the other. His broken arm was hanging limp at his side and Dan forced herself up off the floor, reaching for that hand and grabbing it tight.

  With everything she had left, she pulled hard on the broken arm, twisting her whole body so that the arm contorted, too. Then she reached up for his elbow and bent his forearm as far back on itself as she could.

  He howled, stumbled back, swung at her, but missed, and he fell away, Dan hanging on to his arm like a terrier. He fell to the ground and only then did she let go. He was sitting against some shelves, his breathing heavy, sweat pouring from his brow.

  Dan could hear more people in the shop now, could see flashlight beams.

  She willed them to come.

  He looked at her, was close to enough to push himself forward and grab her one last time. The word was coming out again, “bitch, bitch, bitch.” He heaved himself forward and Dan felt a hard object in her hand.

  She’d swung the can of fish at his head before she even realized what it was.

  It struck him on the temple, hard, and he slumped to the floor in front of her just as the first of the military and civilian police appeared round the end of the aisle.

  2

  Thursday, January 29

  Dan felt her phone vibrate and grabbed it from her pocket. She checked the screen, then smiled at the military assistant behind the desk, who simply looked irritated, and then stepped outside the door of Captain David Harrow-Brown’s outer office.

  “Charlie,” said Dan, hearing her sister sigh as soon as she heard the tone. “I can’t really talk now.”

  “You can never talk,” said her sister. “Where are you?”

  “Cheltenham, broadly. If I’m to be exact, I’m at GCHQ, outside Captain Harrow-Brown’s office.”

  “Really? What does that cockblister want now?”

  Dan snorted, caught out by her older sister’s unusual use of foul language.

  “Charlie!” said Dan.

  “Yeah, sorry. I just learned that one yesterday. I know swearing doesn’t really suit me, but, you know, he feels like someone it’s worth having a go for.”

  Dan smiled, looking away from the assistant and feeling like a naughty child outside the headmaster’s office.

  “What’re you there for, anyway? Have you got a big book stuffed down your pants again? I mean, you did what he wanted, saw the shrinks, got the clean bill of health, what more can he possibly want from you? Blood?”

  Dan was silent as she thought about that.

  “Seriously, Danny, what are we now, January? He’s been on your case since you got off that stupid submarine in October. That’s three months, almost four. At what point does it become bullying and harassment?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dan, looking at the assistant and turning away a bit more. “At the point I start to give a crap, I guess.”

  “Well, start. He makes me mad and Dad wants to pull his arms and legs off.”

  Dan laughed again, keeping the volume low but glad for the smile it put on her face.

  “Look, I really need to go. I’ll call you back.”

  “Do. It’s important. Oh, and we didn’t manage to get a hard copy of the story on your latest heroics, but Dad printed it off some of the newspaper websites from down there. They’re saying that your actions saved the social worker’s life, which is a reason why you should be going in there for a commendation, not a bollocking. Anyway, I know you won’t do this, but I said I’d ask you to get a proper copy for Dad; he collects them.”

  “You’re right, I won’t. It’ll be a load of crap and it’s probably why I’m here needing a book down my pants. Plus, he needs to ease to a frenzy. It’s like he’s stalking me since I got off Tenacity.”

  “He loves you and he’s worried about you,” said Charlie, ever calm. “I’ll tell him you said you’d try your best, and I also need you to plan a trip back home, we all want to see you and your place isn’t big enough for us all.”

  “It’s big enough for us two,” s
aid Dan.

  “Love you. Call me back later,” said Charlie, and ended the call.

  Dan stepped back into the office and sat down on the chair opposite the assistant. Her bum had barely touched the seat when the door off to her left, the one that led into Captain Harrow-Brown’s office, opened, and Roger Blackett stuck his head out.

  He didn’t smile, just grimaced and nodded toward her.

  “You’re on, Danny,” he said, and leaned out of the way to let her pass into the office.

  Dan didn’t make eye contact as she brushed by, she just tried to ignore the serious frown etched onto his face as though she hadn’t noticed.

  * * *

  “AH, LIEUTENANT LEWIS. So often do I wish that I could start a meeting with you by stating what a pleasure it is to see you again, and yet I feel we both know it just never seems to be the case.”

  Captain Harrow-Brown stared at Dan as he finished speaking, his eyes cold and gleaming as he looked at her from behind his large, very clean, sterile-looking desk.

  Dan had a flashing vision of Harrow-Brown alone, flicking his tongue out like a lizard and licking his own eyeball; Charlie would’ve loved that, and Dan suppressed a smile.

  “Morning, sir,” said Dan, meeting his stare and holding it.

  He looked at her now in a way familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a cat watch prey. His eyes were fixed, unblinking, looking through her.

  Her dad had once said something to her about the family cat as it lazed on Dan’s lap, gazing up at her as she stroked him. He’d said, “He may love you, but only because he can’t eat you. If you were small enough, I can assure you he would.” That’s how Captain Harrow-Brown looked now, predatory and bleak, as though if he could do Dan harm, he would, but he was compelled, for the moment, to tolerate her.

  Harrow-Brown sighed, deliberately loud, and looked at Roger Blackett, who was sitting in a chair off to the side; he didn’t invite Dan to sit down.

  Roger nodded at Dan again.

  She nodded back, looked at the two men in turn, then let her eyes settle back onto Harrow-Brown.

  Roger Blackett, her immediate boss and the man in charge of the military investigators across the United Kingdom, was a man she’d known for years, since she was a child; he was also a good friend of her father’s. Thickset and ruddy, he was less than a year away from retirement now, a whisky drinker and die-hard Scottish rugby fan, and he had the stocky look and red nose of someone who’d partaken regularly in both, often to excess. He’d always been Dan’s strongest ally in the Special Investigation Branch, and Dan hoped that would continue.