The Fear Within

by J. S. Law

  “I really thought she’d be back today,” said Dan.

  “I’m not done,” said John. “While I was looking, a lady from across the road came to see what I was doing. She keeps an eye on the place for the landlord. So we chatted awhile, and she told me Moore had lived there with her fiancé until a few weeks or months ago, when he moved out. This was before Moore got back from sea.”

  “Okay,” said Dan, reaching up and massaging her temples. A headache was starting to form, and she knew it was from lack of sleep.

  “She also said that a large chap had been by the flat a few times, sitting in his car out on the street. She noticed him because he was, and I quote, “fucking huge.” She saw him talking to Moore’s fiancé; she didn’t think they were friends.”

  “Black,” said Dan.

  “Look,” John interrupted before she could say anything more. “I was thinking about this last night, a lot. Her bike’s still there at the dockyard. She hasn’t been home for any clothes so far as we can tell…”

  “And I came in early to get through some of the footage from CCTV around Defiance,” said Josie. “I can see SA Moore going onto the ship. It’s easy. I can see her moving all through the dockyard, but I haven’t been able to see anyone like her coming off the ship. The picture is pretty good from one of the dockside cameras, too, but there are occasional blind spots because of the cranes moving stores or stuff like that. So I crossed the timings and looked at other camera angles to see if she’d come off during that time. I’m not finished yet. I started at around eleven o’clock, so just before her divisional officer last saw her, and I’ve found nothing. I’ll keep at it.”

  Dan and John exchanged an appreciative look. Josie was good.

  “Okay, well, if in doubt, there is no doubt,” said Dan. “If we’re genuinely worried and we believe what Jason’s telling us, then let’s go back down there and do something. We do need to remember that her peers weren’t overly worried about her. That relaxes me a little bit, because you often get a feel for that, and if they’re worried, you can tell. If they aren’t, then possibly this isn’t a major problem, but we’ll see.”

  “The vibe I got was that they were covering for someone, or something,” said John. “Just a thought.”

  “And you don’t think they were covering for her?” asked Dan.

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” he conceded.

  Dan pursed her lips and thought.

  “Okay, well let’s find out, then. I want to speak to the PTI who was mentioned. Josie, can you fix that please? I also want another chat with the divisional officer, the section petty officer, and some of the girls from the mess. Especially the more senior girls she was sharing a cabin with.”

  Josie was scribbling notes, and John was nodding.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Josie ripped a piece of notepaper off her pad and handed it to John.

  “So you don’t forget,” she said. “I’ll call ahead now and make sure they know what you want to do.”

  John put the mugs down, accepting that there wasn’t going to be time for tea.

  Dan took her mug and walked to her office. She felt him follow her and stopped inside, turning to face him.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  He gestured back through to Josie. “She’s good, really good. You know, before she was recruited by the commonwealth recruiting teams, she was working for the police in Fiji, not as an officer, but in and around the main station.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, she’s definitely one to watch, isn’t she?”

  “She is,” agreed Dan.

  “Did you know she specifically requested to come here to work with you? I think you’re her hero.”

  “Heroine,” said Dan. “But that’s not what you came here to say, is it?”

  He shook his head.

  “No. I want to know what’s going on with you,” he said. “You look absolutely ball-bagged, like you haven’t slept in weeks. I want to know that you’ve stopped with the Ryan Taylor thing, at least for a while, and that if you’re going out for nocturnal trips, you’ll be calling me to come along with you. Safety in numbers and all that.”

  Dan looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes tight. She hoped the headache might slide to the back of her head, away from her eyes, or at the very least drain to a different part of her skull.

  “I’m fine, John. I didn’t sleep well and I’ve got a headache.”

  “And…”

  Dan opened her eyes as wide as she could and then closed them again.

  “And I need a couple of aspirin and a few minutes where I’m not under interrogation.”

  “And…” repeated John.

  “And I…” She paused, opened her eyes, and looked at him closely.

  He was watching her, checking for any sign of a lie.

  “And I’m taking some time off looking for Ryan Taylor. Okay?”

  He nodded. “So nothing more about Ryan Taylor from the civvies, then? I see you constantly checking your phone. Any news at all?”

  Dan sighed. “No. Nothing.” She looked at him and knew she couldn’t hold out on him, not again. “Look, I’m involved, sort of, in another investigation that the NCA is running. It’s only a light touch, but it involves Hamilton.”

  John shut the door.

  “I’m not allowed to say anything to anyone,” said Dan, “so I can’t answer questions and you can’t speak a word of it, but that’s where I was this morning.”

  “You were talking to the NCA about Hamilton?”

  “No. I was talking to Hamilton.”

  John made to speak but seemed not to know what to say. His cheeks flushed red and his eyes darkened.

  “Okay,” he managed, finally. “I won’t push and I get the secrecy that’ll be around this, but I want you to talk to me about this as much as you can, share the load a bit, okay? Don’t try to take it all on yourself.”

  “Deal,” said Dan, and she meant it.

  22

  Natasha Moore—Mid-November (two months before disappearance)

  Natasha persuaded Mark to leave her alone for a while after they’d talked at the dockside. Then she headed down to the stores office, a route she’d walked so many times now she could do it in her sleep, and it was a good thing, too, because she was filled with rage, and as she moved closer to the office, she could feel it clouding her vision as much as her judgment.

  The flat outside the stores office was silent and she’d encountered next to no one on her way down, which was definitely for the best. She hesitated for just a second before she turned and stormed into the office area.

  Gary Black was nowhere to be seen.

  She’d been sure he’d be down here and was ready to confront him, but his absence knocked the wind out of her sails. She stood there unsure what to do next.

  Then she heard a sound among the shelves and storage racks.

  He was humming quietly as he moved around. Then he started to sing a song in a voice that sounded just a fraction too high-pitched for someone his size. He was singing freely, had no idea he was being listened to, and he wasn’t quite hitting the notes, though he was giving it such effort that Natasha was certain he’d never have the confidence to act like that if he thought anyone was around.

  She looked around the office again, looked at his desk and filing cabinet, and then at his computer screen.

  It was unlocked, the window for his e-mails up and available to her; he must have nipped outside only a few minutes before. She moved forward quickly, reaching for the mouse just as the automatic screensaver appeared and she was locked out.

  Natasha’s hands tensed and she felt frustration and temper build as she balled her fists and resisted the urge to scream.

  Then she looked at his filing cabinet.

  He never allowed anyone to go in there, guarded it as a child guards a favorite toy.

  She quickly reached for the top drawer, pulled it a tiny bit, and winced at th
e grating sound of the old metal runners. She stopped, waited, could still hear his singing, and tried the next one down.

  It opened far more quietly, and she looked inside. Sweets and nutty, some stores labels, but nothing of interest.

  She’d no idea what she was looking for, but she opened the bottom drawer anyway.

  This one was filled with suspension dividers.

  She looked down and used her fingers to separate out the first divider, then stopped and stared, frowning.

  Inside the divider, stored neatly, was sheet after sheet of handwritten notes and lists, all jotted down on scraps of paper and yellow sticky notes. They were in random order, just thrust into the divider, and every one of them that she could see, no matter how mundane the words, was written by her. She flicked through them, shaking her head as she looked at one after another.

  Gone to lunch. Nat

  “What the…” She fished through and pulled out another one.

  Going to canteen. Text if you want anything. Nat

  There were loads of them.

  She dug deeper and found a small pile of crumpled sheets stapled together. Pulling them out and smoothing them flat, she instantly recognized what they were.

  On the sheets she saw attempt after attempt, and version after version, of what her signature might look like after she and Jason were married. She’d done it one day at sea when things were quiet, remembered it now, tried to see how it might look when she was Mrs. Goulding. She’d tried her full name—Natasha Goulding—tried it in several different ways with a large curling initial G and with a long tail on the final g, flicking the nib back and underlining her whole name. She’d also tried her initial with the surname, practicing it several times, big and small, writing it quickly, as though signing a check, and sometimes slowly, as though signing an important letter. She remembered doing all of them, and then she remembered crumpling them up and throwing them at the bin from across the room; she’d gotten it in on the first try, and Gary had cheered the shot.

  She tucked the sheets under her arm and opened the next divider.

  “What’re you doing?”

  She stood up, stunned to see Black just inside the door. She couldn’t read his face—anger, shock, embarrassment—but she wasn’t scared, either. She held the sheets up so he could see.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  He seemed to hesitate, the muscles twitching around his mouth and his hands flexing, as though he wanted to both speak and act but wasn’t sure which to do first.

  “I found this in there.” She turned to point to the drawer and stopped.

  In the divider that she’d just opened, she caught sight of hair, her hair, in a photograph. She couldn’t see her face, but she knew it was her. She looked at it and then back at Black. Then she leaned down, reaching for it.

  He was next to her in no time. He pushed her aside, not hurting her, but easily moving her off balance and sending her reeling across the compartment.

  She fell against her own desk and looked up at him.

  He pushed the drawer shut with his boot and turned to face her. His face looked on the edge of angry, flushed and humiliated, as though he might either tear her apart or break down and cry. His lips were moving again, but no more words were coming out.

  “Did you send an e-mail to Jason?” she said, her voice low.

  He was shaking his head before the words even left his mouth. He seemed to calm, breathing slowly.

  “No, Nat, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Did you send pictures to my boyfriend from the ship’s barbecue?” she said, and she instantly remembered why she recognized her hair from the tiny fragment of photo she’d glimpsed in the drawer. The picture was from that day, the day of the ship’s barbecue, her hair was down and loose and she had colorful earrings on, neither of which happened during a normal day at sea.

  She looked at him, stared in disbelief.

  “You’ve read my e-mails too, haven’t you? That day when Jason went out, you’d read my e-mail.”

  He said nothing.

  “You’re done,” she said, and looked down at the paper with her signature on it, the signature that would now never be. She tucked it under her arm and stormed to the door.

  “No, Nat,” he said, reaching for her, his huge hands closing easily around her arm as they had done before.

  “Don’t you—!” she spat the words at him, digging her fingernails into the back of his hand and glaring at him until he recoiled from her as though his fingers had been burned by her touch. “I’m going to Cox, right now,” she said.

  He said nothing as she left the compartment.

  * * *

  NATASHA KNOCKED ON Cox’s door, her head bowed, watching her hands shake while she waited. There was no reply and she knocked again, harder, but already wondering whether Cox might be out.

  The door was ajar, though, as it often was, and that would normally mean Cox was at least nearby.

  Natasha heard a sound at the end of the officer’s accommodation flat.

  The layout was similar to Natasha’s own, and the door at the end opened, one that Natasha knew led to the officers’ shower area, and Cox walked through, a towel round her head and a long dressing gown covering her down to midcalf.

  She was holding a long wash bag by a hook and it hung down beside her, almost to the floor, a column of clear pockets filled with toiletries.

  Sarah Cox looked at Natasha and walked quickly toward her.

  “Are you okay?” asked Cox, moving in close to Natasha and then hesitating, seeming not to know what to do next.

  Cox looked round the flat, as though checking to make sure they were alone.

  “I’ll come back in a bit,” said Natasha.

  “No, it’s fine. Come in now and talk to me.”

  Cox pushed the door open and walked into the cabin, dropping her toiletry bag into her sink and sitting down quickly on her chair.

  “Come in.”

  “Honestly, ma’am—Sarah—I can wait till you’re ready.”

  “Tash.” Cox’s voice was stern. “Come in now and talk to me.”

  She smiled at Natasha and waited.

  “Shut the door,” said Cox, as Natasha reluctantly stepped inside and sat down.

  The bed in the cabin was usually converted into a couch, and that was where Natasha would ordinarily sit, but being alongside in harbor and during a quiet period, Cox hadn’t made it up yet, and Natasha felt odd as she was told to sit on the edge of the unmade bed, the duvet gathered up behind her where Cox had thrown it aside that morning.

  Cox smiled again and waited. She moved in her chair and crossed her legs, and as she did, her dressing gown parted, revealing the length of her leg up to the top of her thigh.

  Natasha looked away. It felt awkward, and she waited for Cox to sort the dressing gown out and cover herself up, but she didn’t.

  “What’s got you so upset?” asked Cox.

  Natasha paused, not knowing where to start. She felt more tears coming and looked away.

  Cox just watched her, tilting her head.

  “Whatever it is, it’s okay,” Cox said. “Tell me, and if I can help, I’ll help.”

  Cox looked serious.

  “It’s PO Black. There’s loads of stuff. I don’t know where to start. He keeps me late at work for no good reason. He does it all the time so I can’t go out with the other junior rates. He’s done it more than once or twice, just when we were in Gibraltar…”

  Natasha could see that Cox wasn’t listening to her to understand what she was saying, but listening to her so she could reply.

  Her lips were already moving, itching to start explaining her thoughts about what Natasha had said.

  Natasha pushed on, not allowing Cox to speak.

  “And then today, I found this.” Natasha put the crumpled sheets of paper onto Cox’s desk. “I did these ages ago. I threw them in the wastebasket, but he kept them. He’s got a whole drawer full of notes that I left in
the office for him, just random things I’ve written down. It’s weird. It’s worse than weird. He’s got pictures of me in that drawer in his filing cabinet. I saw them, before he slammed the drawer shut. It’s not right. He’s frightening me.”

  It wasn’t until Natasha spoke the words that she realized they were true. It wasn’t just Black’s physical size—that, in truth, didn’t frighten her; but when she said all of these things one after another, she realized that the sum of the individual parts was way greater, a much bigger problem, than any of the isolated incidents. She hadn’t done this before, listed all the different little bits and pieces that Black had done in one go—each one of them, on its own, completely explainable and justifiable, but when put together, like pieces of a jigsaw, forming a picture of something that wasn’t right at all.

  “Pictures?” Cox looked stern. “Okay. Wait for me outside for just two seconds and let me drag some clothes on. Then we’ll go down and check out this cabinet and see what’s there. After that, we can talk again.”

  * * *

  THEY WALKED DOWN to the stores office together, Cox carrying the sheets of paper with Natasha’s practice signatures all over them.

  Black was in the office, sitting at his desk typing. He looked up as he saw them, smiling at Natasha initially, then looking worried as he saw Cox behind her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Natasha. “Is everything okay?” he said, looking up at Cox.

  “Open the bottom drawer of your filing cabinet for me, please, PO Black,” said Cox in a firm voice.

  He stood up and stepped away from his desk.

  “It’s already open,” he said, gesturing to it. “Nat…” he began, but she cut him off with a raised hand.

  “This one?” said Cox, pointing to the drawer and kneeling in front of it.

  “Yes, that one, but he could’ve moved it all,” said Natasha. “I’ve been gone twenty minutes or more.”

  Black looked mortified. “I haven’t moved anything,” he said. “I don’t know why you got so upset. I really don’t, but you can look as much as you want. In there, anywhere round here.”

  Cox pulled out the drawer and then opened the first of the suspension files.