by J. S. Law
Gary Black stood up, too.
“Nat,” he said, reaching out to stop her, his fingers catching her breast as he seized her arm.
“Let go,” Natasha said, spinning to face him.
He kept hold of her arm, easily controlling her, using his one hand on her arm to turn her toward him.
“Let go!” cried Natasha, her voice breaking.
He looked down at his hand on her arm, at his fingers, which easily went all the way around it. There was something in his eyes, something that frightened Natasha as she realized he had forced her up onto her toes, that if he jerked now, he could dislocate her shoulder as easily as he’d carried her bags.
“Apologies” he said, and stepped away from her. “You looked upset. I didn’t want you to be upset.” Natasha froze for a second, confused, then looked at her watch, numb to what had happened.
It was getting late, she didn’t have much time before the working day would be over and she could do some exercise and chat with Mark or Bev, or even Sam, about all of this.
“I’m going,” she said, and turned to leave.
“I’ll need you back,” said Black before she was clear of the door. “Ma’am called down just before you came in. We’ve had some stores arrive that need to be booked in and sorted through. She wants them done tonight, wants me to show you through the process.”
Natasha turned back to look at him.
“But there’s loads,” she said. “That’ll take hours. I thought we were going to work on them in the forenoon tomorrow and get them all done in one go.”
He was smiling again now, his whole demeanor changed. He reached out to wipe a tear from her cheek that she hadn’t realized had escaped until then.
Natasha pulled away, flinching, but he looked friendly again, tolerant, Gary as she normally knew him to be.
“I know, and I’m unhappy, too. I’ll stay with you and we can do it together, but it needs to be done. Ma’am told me literally two seconds before you came in.”
Natasha could feel herself shrinking with disappointment.
“But we had plans,” she said, not sure if she was even speaking to him, or just speaking her thoughts out loud.
“Yeah, well, you’ll need to let Coker know that you’ll meet him later. Okay?”
Natasha nodded, numb. “Okay.”
She turned and began to walk out of the stores office and into the stores flat.
He followed her, put a hand on her shoulder, and turned her back toward him.
“Look. Once we get done, I could take you out for a beer. Make up for it a bit. We’ll be a few hours, so we probably won’t catch the others up, but we could grab food somewhere local. What do you think?”
Natasha looked up and him and smiled as best she could.
“Sure. That’d be great. I bet we could catch up with the others if we try, though. I’ll find out where they’re going.”
He smiled again, though she was sure something changed in his eyes.
“Okay,” he said. “Go and let people know. I’ll wait here for you and then we can get going. I’ll stick the kettle on and we can have a quick brew before we start.”
He nodded at her and turned away, bustling over to the kettle and starting to whistle.
19
Tuesday, February 3
“No, I’m going in to speak to someone now.” Dan looked at her watch. “I’ll call you back, Roger, we can talk more once I’m done here, okay?” She listened to him grumble agreement and ended the call.
Dan rubbed her eyes, which were gritty and sore after a sleepless night. They felt heavy as the postadrenaline slump that followed her meeting with Hamilton and the subsequent debrief began to take their toll.
Roger had been present for the debrief but had remained silent and brooding throughout, calling as soon as Dan had left, as though she might have more to say when it was just the two of them, as though she’d held something back from Felicity.
Her phone rang again and she was sure it would be him.
“What!” she barked.
“Nice. Bad time?” Felicity asked.
“It is, actually. I’m just about to speak to someone about another investigation I’m on. I’m dead on my feet and I’m already running late.”
“No worries. Call me when you’re done.”
“Hang on, just tell me quick now, what’s up?”
“Well, that gentleman that was to be loaned to us for the investigation, an army investigator with some experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, working in the historical allegations teams, he had an accident this morning when cycling to work, and from what I gather, he won’t be fit to join the team for quite some time now.”
“It was Stewart Mackenzie,” said Dan. “Is he badly hurt?”
She didn’t know quite what to do. She was genuinely disappointed and concerned that Mackenzie was hurt. Though she didn’t know him well, she’d met him, and he was a decent guy. He’d also been one of the few to congratulate her on Hamilton and to drop her a message of support when the papers had begun to devour her. But Dan also felt excitement tingling deep in her stomach. If Mackenzie was out, then the slot to join the NCA’s new investigation was open again and she might be back in the picture.
“He was knocked off his bike, it was a hit-and-run, the driver never stopped. He’s in a bad way,” said Felicity. “But he’ll recover, we’re told. We’ve requested he be replaced, and though I shouldn’t say, the lead investigator has reiterated her request for you to join our team.”
Dan breathed deeply. She wanted it. But she knew Harrow-Brown would relish denying her the role again.
“I also wanted you to know that we’ve begun to dig into the William Knight name that Hamilton passed to you. He was one of yours, navy, reckoned to be responsible for a string of very nasty rapes around the Portsmouth area several years ago, had a penchant for slight, young-looking blond girls. Only he’s been off the grid for years. No one’s seen or heard of him and he’s assumed to be either on the run, or possibly even dead.”
“So it might be a good lead, then?” said Dan.
“Well, not really. We’ve already ruled him out of two of the seven cases that you know about, and I’ll have more soon, but my feeling is that he has nothing to do with our current investigation. Time will tell, though, and we’ll keep digging.”
“He might have helped Hamilton, though. Might have known where to hide the victims?”
Felicity paused, the silence stretching out across the line.
“It doesn’t feel likely, to be honest, Danny,” she said, her voice soft. “He and Hamilton could have known each other, but only briefly. I think Hamilton threw you a time waster. Who knows why. Who knows why he’s so obsessed with messing with you at all, but we’ll keep at it. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks. Did you find out who the parcels were addressed to?” asked Dan.
“No. Not yet. I have asked, though. As soon as I know, and am able to, I’ll tell you.”
Dan ended the call without another word. She knew Roger would need to talk to her about joining the NCA investigation, even if it was only to tell her that she was being passed over.
She checked her watch. This would all need to wait.
Jason Goulding, the former fiancé of the missing Natasha Moore, had answered Dan’s call on the first ring that morning, even though it was only just gone 0630 when she’d set off to her meeting with Hamilton.
She’d expected her call to go to his voice mail and fumbled her greeting when she realized it was actually him speaking to her.
He’d been pleased to hear from her and had agreed to meet her at 1500, during his break; he had the afternoon shift at the hotel in Portsmouth.
* * *
DAN LOOKED AT him now, watching his eyes as they flitted around the room. The man seemed exhausted. He had black bags beneath his eyes and his skin looked pale and waxy, with faint acne scars on both cheeks.
He wasn’t an ugly man, but neither was he
handsome. He also looked more like Natasha Moore’s father than her fiancé.
“Thanks for meeting with me so quickly,” said Dan, sipping at the cup of green tea he’d made for her.
“I would’ve met you three days ago,” he said, staring at her for a few moments before he looked away.
In that moment Dan realized that he was even older than she’d first thought.
Natasha Moore was just eighteen. Dan had assumed that Jason would be a similar age. But as his face turned and he retorted with more than a hint of anger, she saw the age in his eyes and guessed him to be thirty or more.
Dan ignored his comment for now. There would be a time for apologies, but this wasn’t it.
“How old are you, Jason?” she asked.
“Thirty-three,” he said. “Next Tuesday.”
“And how long have you and Natasha Moore been in a relationship?”
“Four years, just over that,” he said.
Dan looked at him, saying nothing.
“Yeah, I get it,” he said, starting to bounce his left leg up and down on his toes, making the table bump and jostle. “She was fourteen when we met and I was twenty-nine. We’ve heard it all before. No, I didn’t commit statutory rape; we waited, and in fact, we never got there. But I can’t see how this goes any way to finding her now.”
“The thing is, Jason, though we can’t find Natasha, we also have no indications that she might be in trouble or hurt. She’s an adult, and if she wants to go somewhere and not be found, then that’s up to her. She can make that choice.”
Jason made to speak, but Dan raised a hand.
“Just one second, Jason,” she said. “Please.”
His leg bounced harder and his hands clenched on the table.
Dan registered that he must be under enormous pressure, but she also detected an air of something else, an undertone of violence, maybe.
His hands seemed to ball easily into fists and small white scars stood out against the hard, thick skin of his knuckles.
Dan reached for her phone as though it had just buzzed in her pocket.
“Sorry,” she said, pulling it out and pretending to read a text message.
She raised her eyebrows and typed a message to John.
He was in the dockyard, not five minutes away, and she told him she’d like him to come along after all and to get to the hotel as quickly as possible, then she put the phone away and flashed Jason an apologetic smile.
“There’s a number of reasons that people go missing,” Dan continued. “And in more than ninety-nine percent of these cases, the missing person is found again safe and sound. Some of the key reasons that make people go can be problems at home, problems with their partner or former partner.”
He was shaking his head.
“You’re just another one of them,” he said.
“I’m really not, Jason, but I’m going to tell you things straight.”
He leaned forward quickly, bumping the table toward Dan and making the tea slosh and almost spill out of her cup.
The movement caught Dan off guard and she recoiled from him, annoyed at herself, but wary.
“Sit back,” she said, her voice elevated and firm.
He did, his chest heaving as his breathing accelerated.
“I can’t help you if you act like that. Do you understand?”
He was glaring at her, his fists clenched and his breath whistling through gritted teeth. Then, slowly, Dan saw the breathing change, go deeper, down into his stomach, and his eyes filled with tears. He slumped, his shoulders relaxing and his mouth dropping open as he tried to take deep breaths and control himself.
“Take some time, Jason,” Dan said, still staying away from him but letting her voice soften. “I’ll try to help you, I promise.”
“No one’s helping me,” he said, the words distorted. “No one’s helping Natasha, either.”
“Can you tell me if there was any reason why Natasha might run away, Jason?”
He tensed again, looked as though he might lunge, but it passed.
“Not from me,” he said. “Back to me, yes, but not away from me.”
Dan watched him wipe his eyes on a blue-and-white towel that was tucked into his chef’s apron.
“What do you mean?”
“I told you lot all of this stuff already. She was e-mailing me, long after we broke up. I was the only person she could talk to, and then even that stopped.”
“Talk to about what?”
“What was going on there. She hated it. I know she never told me everything, but what she did tell me was enough. Other girls picking on her, that guy she works with touching her, brushing against her, turning up at her house. She’d try to laugh it off, mention it like it was no big deal, a big joke, but it was bothering her. That’s Natasha, see, she doesn’t just come out and say things, she dances around, waiting for you to pick up on what she wants you to know. You have to coax things out of her.”
“Who came to the house?”
“That massive one. Black, I think.”
“Uninvited?”
“I don’t think he was invited. He was sitting in his car, watching. I went round to collect some of my stuff and he threatened me. Told me if I ever went round there again, well, he’d hurt me.”
He looked at her, furious, tensing again, and Dan was glad when his eyes flicked off over her shoulder and she knew that John Granger had arrived and been sent through.
“Why did you and Natasha break up, Jason?” asked Dan, ignoring John as he sat down beside her.
“What the fuck is wrong with you people?” he said, his voice rising. “Natasha hated it on that ship. Hated it. She was being bullied, she was isolated. She wrote to me about it. She told me how she was struggling to cope with it. Those bitches in her mess never let up on her, and that guy she worked for, he needs to be fucking locked up.”
“I asked you why you broke up, Jason. Will you tell me?”
He stared at Dan.
“I know what you’re thinking. Older guy, younger girl. Did I try to control her, did I not like it when she joined the navy to work with all the men. You’re wrong. It was me that encouraged her to join. It was me that told her she could start at the bottom and work her way up—she wanted to be the captain of a ship one day—I told her she could do it. She’d never have left that shit-hole town and her idiot parents if I hadn’t supported her. I left my job to come here with her, so she could follow her dreams.”
“And then she ditched you?” said John.
Jason stared at him now, and Dan saw the threat in his eye fade.
“No. I broke it off,” he said quietly. “And I’m not proud of it. I met a woman here and we struck up a relationship while Natasha was away. I tried to hide it from her, just till she could get settled in the navy, but she never got the chance to settle. I think she was outgrowing me and I hated that, but I was too stupid to realize that it didn’t have to happen that way. I hooked up with someone else, someone my age, who was here and not away, someone who didn’t want to wait, and I regret it.”
Dan watched him closely as he spoke, believing what he was saying but letting the silence draw out so he’d speak again.
“I know what I must look like to you,” Jason continued, “but it’s not like that. I wanted to be a friend to her, to help and support her for as long as she’d let me. No one knows her better than me, no one, and I’m telling you, something ain’t right.”
Dan felt an emptiness rise up from her stomach.
“Who did you speak to on board?” asked Dan.
“Loads of people. They all brushed me off. Except that woman that she worked for—Cox, maybe? They seemed to be quite good friends, well, Natasha seemed to think she could count on her. She’s listened, but she hasn’t helped. None of them were interested.”
20
Natasha Moore—Mid-November (two months before disappearance)
Natasha walked down the gangway, enjoying the breeze of the cool afternoon wind as
a weak sun shone down through the clouds. It felt great to be in another port, God knows the last one had sucked, with Gary keeping her at work late on two out of the three nights.
She’d managed to catch up with the ship’s company one night, but, by the time Gary had let her go, they were so far gone with the drink that she’d just walked back, bumping into Gary, who’d pretty much frog-marched her into a quiet bar for a drink with him. On the only night she’d actually made it out with everyone, Sarah Cox had ruined it—it was like they were working as a bloody tag team.
On that night, Cox had been at the gangway, waiting.
Natasha remembered vaguely saying in passing that they might walk into town together, it was nothing firm, but Cox had been there and then had just refused to leave Natasha alone.
She was grabbing Natasha’s hand and pulling her onto the dance floor. Then she’d be taking selfies and pictures. Once, she practically dragged Natasha into the toilet with her and God forbid Natasha tried to go to the loo, talk to someone else, dance with Mark, anything without her shadow looming over her shoulder. Cox was a bit pissed, and Natasha knew that officers were allowed to cut loose and relax, too, and there were no other female officers on board to be friends, but come on …
Basically, because of her, no one came anywhere near Natasha the whole night.
Cox was literally close enough to reach out and grab Natasha at almost every second, and even when they got back to the ship she wanted to sneak some wine into her cabin, but Natasha had had way more than enough by then.
Sam had taken the Mickey out of Natasha for weeks afterward, with Bev laughing on cue, whether she thought it was funny or not. The port stop had been awful—but this one wouldn’t be, Natasha was going to make damn sure of that.
* * *
THE DOCKSIDE WAS fairly clear and not many of the crew were around. Many sailors had already left to meet their loved ones. Defiance was down to a small skeleton crew of essential personnel, and there was minimal activity.
Natasha wandered along the jetty.
Jason had calmed down a bit once she’d gone back to sea. They’d decided not to fly him out to this stop, so they could save some money. Besides, it was her first deployment; she hadn’t been away much before now.
