The Fear Within

by J. S. Law

  He let the words hang.

  “There are some markings on the wall next to Natasha’s bunk. They’ve been cleaned off, but I can’t believe you don’t know anything about it.”

  Sarah Cox’s lip trembled and she rubbed her eyes with her free hand.

  “Tell me what I need to know, Sarah,” said Dan. “Tell me the truth, because if you don’t, and I find out, and I will find out, then Daddy, Grandpa, and anyone else you know won’t be able to help you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  A tear dropped from Cox’s eyes onto her trousers, disappearing into the rough black material.

  Dan pushed harder.

  “And now we’re only chatting in your cabin, informally, but I’m happy to take this down to the SIB interview room, because I think you’re hiding something from me. I think you know what it is, and if SA Moore doesn’t show up soon, then this is quickly going to become something very serious.”

  Another tear, and a small sniffle.

  “I’m not covering for her.”

  “Okay, but what do you know? Where is she?”

  “I really thought she’d be back by now. I really did.”

  “Okay, but she isn’t. So why don’t you tell us where she is, or who she’s with, and we’ll go and get her. You’ll be doing her a favor, because the quicker we bring her back, the less trouble she’s going to get into.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” Cox said.

  Dan watched her speak through her tears, and believed her.

  “There were some problems that I didn’t tell you about. I’m sorry, but they were done with, in her past, and I didn’t want to dredge them back up again for her. I didn’t want everyone on the ship to know.”

  “Tell me,” said Dan.

  “She got into a thing with the ship’s PTI,” said Sarah. “Early in the last deployment, shortly after she’d joined the ship.”

  “Okay, go on,” prompted Dan.

  “Well, he’s been a bit of a problem on board before.”

  “Mark Coker?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “So what happened?”

  “I don’t know everything, but after she joined, she started hanging around with him, flirting with him. I think he had been seeing one of the other girls in the mess, but he’d ended it. Natasha took a liking to him and they started hanging around. I saw them sometimes on the NAAFI flat, waiting to buy stuff from the shop or just sharing a drink, you know, a soda or whatever. I think they did that to avoid hanging around the junior rates’ mess too much, because the girl that Coker used to see would be in there and they probably didn’t want to cause problems.”

  She looked at Dan as though needing some encouragement to continue.

  Dan nodded.

  “Moore was new and young, and both PO Black and I actually spoke to her about it, though she didn’t seem to care about what we’d said and she wasn’t actually breaking any rules.”

  “Did you speak to Mark Coker?” asked Dan.

  “PO Black did,” said Cox. “He spoke to him about hanging around Moore so much, and about the problems that can arise with relationships on board a warship and when a young girl gets a bit fixated.”

  “Okay,” said Dan, a little confused as to why PO Black would be the one to do that but hoping to keep Sarah on topic.

  “Well, I think they may have slept together one night on a port visit to Naples, though there were rumors that they’d also slept together on board a few times, while we were at sea.”

  Dan raised an eyebrow at that.

  “There was no proof, and I spoke to her again after that. No one wanted her to get a name for herself.”

  “What happened on the port visit?” asked Dan.

  “They came back on board together in the early hours and were spotted walking hand in hand, disheveled and tipsy. You know what gossip’s like on board a warship, and within a short while everyone knew, or at least decided they knew.”

  “That’s not illegal, though,” said John.

  “No, of course not, as long as they obey the ‘no touching’ rule while on board, then we don’t really mind. Commander Ward doesn’t love relationships between sailors on board Defiance, but as long as they conduct themselves properly, he can live with it.”

  Sarah was looking at Dan now, and Dan said nothing, letting her talk.

  “Well, after a while, certainly by then, something had happened. Moore had broken up with her fiancé, and good riddance to him, too, he was a nasty piece of work from all accounts.”

  “How so?” asked John.

  “Really pushy and controlling. She’d talk to me about it and tell me how weird he’d get whenever she was in harbor. He’d want to talk to her when she was going out, or try to convince her to go to an Internet café to Skype, or whatever, so she couldn’t be with her crewmates. I think he hated that she worked with so many men. Once they split up, I advised her to just cut him off for good.”

  “Do you know whether she ended it?” asked Dan.

  “I believe she did, though I only know what she told me. He was pretty cut up and angry about it, from what I could tell,” said Cox, looking Dan in the eye.

  “And LPT Coker helped her through this?” asked Dan.

  Sarah nodded. “Yes, I believe so. But it caused a number of problems. Tasha was very upset about the breakup, and I think it caused her and Coker to argue, too. They fell out. This is why relationships on a warship can be so damaging. He’s a big personality on board Defiance, always around the place, running circuits a couple of times a day. He knows everyone and everyone knows him. He’s been here for almost two years and he’s well established and almost universally liked. He’s also quite a controlling personality himself, though, so things became a little bit awkward for her.”

  “And you never thought to tell us this yesterday?” said Dan, not even trying to conceal her annoyance.

  “It’d all blown over,” Sarah said, her voice irritating Dan with a pleading whine. “It’d all settled down and was in the past. Tasha was happier—seemed to be happier, anyway. She seemed to have made friends with some of the other sailors and she was doing well.”

  Dan waited, watching Cox closely.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” said Sarah, her wheedling voice sending an irritated shiver down Dan’s spine. “I didn’t want to air her dirty laundry in public. She was getting over all of this, seemed to be feeling better. I wanted to leave it in the past where it belonged. I didn’t want to dredge it all back up again. I really thought she’d come back. I really did.”

  “Why don’t you think that now?” asked Dan.

  Cox licked her lips as she thought about what she’d said.

  “I do,” she said, looking angry at Dan. “I don’t know why I said it like that, and I think you’re being pedantic, but I do think she’ll come back, and I really don’t think this is why she’s gone. It was all done, finished with. There’s no reason at all why it’d all come to a head now.”

  “Anything else?” snapped Dan. “Is there anything else you didn’t tell us?”

  Sarah looked frightened, or maybe just wary now, leaning away from Dan and watching her carefully, as though considering everything she might say.

  “There is one more thing,” she said quietly, “but I don’t know if I’m even allowed to tell you. It may not be directly relevant, and I could well fall foul of the law if I do.”

  Dan couldn’t help but feel angry as she heard Cox speaking these words, concentrating on covering her own backside. She remembered that Cox had a law degree and that she’d be going to work at her uncle’s law firm once she’d had her two-year all expenses-paid trip around the world. Now, to Dan, Sarah Cox sounded like a spoiled rich kid, surrounded by pictures of horses, expensive cars, and pretty friends and family. She sounded like someone for whom the navy was nothing more than a hobby, the sailors in her charge just inconveniences that she had to tolerate. What was a career for Dan was something Cox would do only to “prove” herself.
Dan had thought she’d understood a bit about Cox, her relationship with the navy and the environment; now she was certain she didn’t.

  “I’m not convinced you could be in any more trouble at this point, Sarah,” said Dan, her voice cold, “so if there’s more, then I suggest you get it out.”

  Sarah Cox was looking away, her cheeks red. She looked like a petulant child being forced to confess to some wrongdoing, and Dan was struggling to keep her temper in check. What Sarah Cox had told them in the past few moments had changed everything regarding the way that Dan had assessed the risk involved in Natasha Moore’s disappearance, and now Cox seemed unwilling to help shed any further light on the matter.

  “Well, when Natasha first joined, she had some other problems, too.”

  “Go on,” said Dan, as Sarah paused again.

  “She had some problems with Petty Officer Black.”

  Dan was listening intently but didn’t want to continue to prompt Sarah. She wanted this to come out without being forced, lest Cox forget something or simply omit more detail.

  “She felt that he was”—Sarah paused—“crowding her.”

  “Crowding her?”

  “Yes, like turning up when she went out, following her around in the nightclubs, warning other people to stay away from her.”

  “You mean stalking her?” said Dan.

  “I don’t know. I think at first she thought he was being friendly, kind of fatherly-like, looking after her because she was new, but after a while she began to think it was more than that. She said he’d follow her when she went on nights out, be everywhere she went, watching her. Sometimes he’d be with some of the other senior rates, but often he’d be on his own, she said. She said that he threatened LPT Coker when they started becoming friends.” Sarah paused again, shifting in her seat and looking uncomfortable. “She also said that the night she slept with LPT Coker”—Cox paused and thought about her words—“was believed to have slept with LPT Coker, well, she thought he might have been there, that he’d followed them down to the park and was watching them.”

  “She told you that? She said that she went to the park and had intercourse with Coker? And that Petty Officer Black was there, watching?”

  Dan tried to keep her face as calm and straight as she could, though she was certain it’d be flushing now, as her temper reached bursting point.

  “No, not exactly,” said Cox. “She told me that she and Coker went for a walk and sat and talked in a park on their way back to the dockyard.”

  “If you could just keep to the facts, unless I specifically ask for your opinion, then I’d be grateful,” said Dan. “Continue.”

  “After that, she complained that Petty Officer Black started keeping closer tabs on her. He runs the duty watch bill for the stores team and she said he’d deliberately plan it so she was on duty when Coker wasn’t and vice versa so that their duties weren’t aligned and it would limit the time they might have together.”

  “Was that true?” asked Dan.

  “There were occasions when their duties were offset, but we don’t write the watch bill based on one person, as you know.”

  The last three words irritated Dan, but she let it go for now, making a mental note to look at the duty watch bill herself.

  “She also said he’d keep her working needlessly late,” continued Cox. “He’d make her wait down in the stores office with him, not for any good reason, until she’d missed the others going out, and then he’d offer to take her out for a beer with him, or to buy her dinner or something like that.”

  Dan turned to look at John again.

  He, too, looked serious, stern, angry, though he was better at keeping it under wraps than Dan was.

  “So SA Moore had problems with the ship’s PTI, broke up with her fiancé, and told you she was being stalked by her section petty officer?” asked Dan.

  Sarah’s eyes went wide.

  “She didn’t say it was stalking. I mean, is that stalking? I only had her word for all of this. She’s not the first junior rate to ever feel she was unfairly treated on the watch bill, or who got pissed off because they had to work late,” said Cox. “I spoke to Petty Officer Black about it, he’s been here since before I arrived, we interact a lot, and he had reasonable explanations for everything she’d said. He’s a respected member of the ship’s company and had good justification for when he’d asked her to work late. We’re always very busy when we’re alongside in foreign ports. If stores are arriving late, then we do have to wait for them, so none of it’s unreasonable or even unexpected. Life in a blue suit, really.”

  “Good explanation for following her around bars?” asked Dan.

  “The ship’s company often go out together, you know that.” Sarah was becoming a lot more defiant now, answering back quickly and with some anger in her voice.

  “What was his explanation for watching her have sex?” asked Dan.

  “He wasn’t there,” replied Sarah, her eyes also blazing now as she stared at Dan.

  “He told you that?”

  “Yes, he did. And frankly, he’s a very well known and well respected senior rate and was with another senior rate that evening, too. You can check that with Chief Pollack—I did. Natasha Moore was going through a hard time brought about, at least in part, by her own behavior. She’d come to enjoy being up here talking with me, and frankly, I think she enjoyed the attention from all the men.”

  Dan had to take a second before she could speak. The urge to reach over and slap Sarah Cox was so strong that she worried if she opened her mouth at all, it might just be the lapse in control needed for it to happen.

  “Anything else?” said Dan, her voice stony.

  “No.”

  “We’ll need to speak again, at the SIB offices,” said Dan, standing up. “I’ll also be speaking with your commanding officer very soon.”

  Sarah was staring at Dan, her eyes boring into her, a spiteful look on her face.

  “I want to speak to Petty Officer Black.”

  “He’s gone for the day,” said Sarah.

  “Well, get him back. I want him on board this ship, now.”

  26

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

  Natasha saw Mark behind her on the edge of the dance floor. She could see his lips move but could barely hear him over the music.

  She was dancing with a load of sailors from Defiance and she noticed how Sam turned away as soon as Mark arrived, and Bev dutifully followed.

  Natasha looked down at his hands.

  He was gripping her waist again as he danced behind her.

  It felt nice, warm, his hands gentle but strong.

  Natasha sighed, not minding his hands on her but not liking it here, where everyone could see.

  “Hands off, cowboy,” she shouted, leaning close to his ear so he could hear her above the music.

  He let go, looking mock-sheepish, but he continued to dance close to her.

  “Hold this,” she said, passing him her umpteenth bottle of bright blue alcopop. “I’ll be back in a second.”

  She continued to dance as she cut through the crowds looking for the ladies’ restroom over near the main doors, stumbling as someone jostled past her. She felt her ankle almost go as her heel slipped on the beer-soaked floor, then felt a strong hand catch hold of her arm. She looked up, but she already knew who it was.

  “I’m serious, Gary,” she said, her teeth clenched. “Leave me alone, okay?”

  He looked shocked.

  “I was just going to the loo and I saw you fall. I caught you.”

  Natasha looked at him. He loomed over her, but she felt no fear. She did realize, however, that either she, or he, was swaying gently, and she began to feel a little dizzy as she tried to focus on him.

  “You need to take it easy on the drinking,” he said, not looking at her as he spoke. “You’ve had seven bottles now. That’s a lot. You’re not used to it, Nat.”

  She realized he was
still holding her arm and she ripped it away from him, almost stumbling back again when he didn’t resist.

  He reached out again to steady her, but she batted his hand away.

  “You’re watching me drink and counting them?” she said, screwing up her face and shaking her head in disgust. “I trusted you to be my friend,” she said, “and you’re doing this?”

  “I am your friend,” he said. “I’m not doing anything to you.”

  “Stay. Away. From. Me,” she said, very slowly. “I’m going to tell people about this, Gary. You can’t keep doing this.”

  She deliberately pushed past him on her way to the ladies’ room, glad that he yielded to let her past. She felt unsteady on her feet, knew a few glasses of water were in the cards once she got back out.

  “I thought you weren’t going out tonight?”

  Natasha turned to see Sarah Cox. She’d come into the restroom and was standing at the door, watching her. “Oh, hey, Sarah,” said Natasha, sniffing as she did. “Sorry, Mark came all the way back to get me and persuaded me to come out. It all happened in such a rush. I just didn’t think.”

  “He can be a real darling, can’t he?” Sarah said, watching her, no obvious expression on her face.

  “He can,” added Natasha, her eyes starting to fill with tears as the mixture of frustration, alcohol, and stress began to combine.

  Sarah continued to watch her, saying nothing, the silence drawing out between them.

  Natasha put her hand to her abdomen, felt her stomach flipping and gurgling.

  “Shall I go and grab you a drink?” Cox asked. “That blue stuff again?”

  “I think I just need a water, please,” said Natasha.

  Cox smiled and made for the door. “Okay, I’ll see you at the bar,” she said.

  As soon as Cox was gone, Natasha went into one of the stalls and pulled out her phone. She texted Mark, telling him she’d been hijacked; there was no way she was having this night ruined, too, no way at all.

  She finished up and washed her hands, smiling at some of the girls from the ship as they came in.

  Bev entered just as Natasha was leaving.

  “Hey,” said Natasha. “You okay? I lost you guys, where are you?”