by J. S. Law
“You know, Dan, you’ll have a fixed view of me now, and I’m betting it’s changed a lot in the past twenty-four hours. Your view of me and my organization probably isn’t great after what you’ve seen—what we let you see—but I want you to know that however ruthless and remorseless and lacking compassion you judge me to be, however much the violence sickens you, however frightened the threats make you feel, I want you to know, I’ve got nothing at all on your old dad.”
He disappeared from view.
37
Wednesday, February 4 (early hours)
They drove back in silence, Dan resting the hood just over her eyes and again trying hard to guess at what direction they were taking before giving up and letting her thoughts run free. There was so much going on, too much to think about, but she needed to prioritize, and for now, Cox had to come first.
She knew she’d need to go and check out the gun emplacement up on the hill, knew where it was and had vague memories of how the old armories up there looked, though they’d been completely redone and modernized as a tourist attraction in the years since she’d been there. But first she needed to get hold of John and get Cox into custody.
Jimmy’s words about her father had seemed cruel and pointless, and yet Jimmy didn’t come across as a man who wasted words.
Dan couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said and what she’d seen. Thinking about William Knight, inhumanely treated and tortured, she just couldn’t reconcile anything like that with what she knew about her father, nor could she focus on it now.
He was a hard soldier, anyone who knew him knew that, but he was also known and well liked for being fair and open-minded, for supporting his troops, and for going the extra mile for those he loved and respected. The implication that he could have any part in something remotely like what she’d seen seemed out of the question. And yet there was something in Jimmy’s eyes when he spoke, something that made her believe his words were about more than spite.
She also couldn’t stop images of William Knight from flashing across her mind, sometimes making her flinch as though she were seeing them in a nightmare, a monster revealing itself to her, running at her from the darkness of her closed eyes, though she was wide awake.
His skin like faded yellow leather, his bones pushing against it like tent poles under a canvas. His mouth was cavernous, his teeth gone, and the burns and the bruises …
She shook herself.
This had to stop.
Knight deserved to suffer for what he’d done; Dan knew she wouldn’t have questioned that, but what he was enduring wasn’t justice, it was torture, plain and simple, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to let that go. Had it been Hamilton, she’d need to stop that, too.
Finally, the one thought that kept pushing to the front of her mind was worse still.
Hamilton had said he’d help her—help her—not the NCA.
She’d been so preoccupied with his nonsense that she’d failed to really pick up on what that might mean.
He’d helped her, but not to answer the question she’d wanted to ask but had refused to. He’d known what she was working on and knew enough to direct her to Knight. He’d also known, or perhaps only guessed, that Knight was still alive, but he’d at one point known where Knight was, and that made Dan want to look more closely at the links Jimmy “the Teeth” Nash had with the Royal Navy. It also made her want to tear Hamilton’s prison apart, because someone was talking to him, passing information, and it was accurate, private, and up-to-date.
“You can take that off now,” said Marcus, speaking for the first time since he’d asked her to put the hood back on.
Dan stripped the hood back and dropped it onto the floor behind her seat.
They were back on the motorway, past Portsmouth and moving toward the turnoff for her home.
They stopped outside the entrance to Dan’s parking area, just behind the trees that prevented her from seeing her front door. It also prevented any of her neighbors who might be up at this time of day from seeing the car.
He gently touched her arm to stop her from getting out.
“What?” she said.
He seemed to be sizing her up. He didn’t look angry or aggressive, he actually looked, if Dan hadn’t known what he was complicit in, apologetic.
“Do you understand what happened tonight?” he asked.
“Your boss made it pretty clear,” Dan said, staring straight back at him.
He looked genuinely pained.
“You wanted this, Dan. It wasn’t going to happen, but there was something at stake that mattered to the decision makers, and so what you wanted was gifted to you.”
“And I shouldn’t complain about it?” she said. “If you want to fight with pigs, then you should expect to get covered in shit?”
He laughed at that.
“Very few people have ever seen what you’ve seen tonight. The ones who have seen it had no idea what they were seeing, but not one person who’s entered that room has ever really needed to be threatened. Not one person’s ever needed to be told that they must not speak about it to anyone, friend or family.”
There was a silence between them, and Dan held his stare.
“How can you be involved in that?” Dan asked, suddenly desperate to know. “You seem like a good person, how do you allow yourself to be complicit in what we just saw?”
He looked away, out the window into the semidarkness between the dim streetlights.
The light framed his face and Dan recognized again that he was handsome, and yet he was dirtier than some of the scumbags she’d pulled off the streets, the ones that came looking like villains, filthy and spitting angry.
“Good people do bad things, Dan, and bad people do good things. If you tot it all up at the end of each day, and you genuinely believe that, on balance, you’ve done more good than bad, and if you keep doing that every single day, then over a lifetime, you can do an awful lot of bad, bad things, and yet still be a good person. The world doesn’t work in absolutes.”
“Are you talking about something my dad did?” said Dan, moving her head so she could see his eyes.
“I wasn’t, actually, no. But a man like your dad, who accomplished some of the things he did—you can’t do that and be a ‘good person’ in a binary sense. I believe Taz is a good man, I can see now that he did a great job raising you, but sometimes the end has to justify the means. It takes a great person to see the greater good.”
“And what end does captivity, repeated rape, and torture serve?”
“It doesn’t. Someone once told me that there’s money, power, love, and revenge, and that all evil in mankind is linked to one of them. What’s happening to that person, that’s all revenge.”
“And power,” said Dan.
“Yeah, maybe some of that, too.”
Marcus reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and took out a card.
“Here, this is my personal number. Call me anytime.”
Dan looked at it, not willing to take it, but he continued to hold it out.
“Why would I do that?” she asked.
“If the time ever comes that you need to call me, then you’ll know why.”
He smiled and placed the card on Dan’s leg. Then he turned to get out of the car.
“Why were you near my house the other night?” asked Dan.
He stopped and turned to look at her.
“How did Jimmy know my sister was pregnant when it’s the first time he’s met me?”
“Jimmy makes it his business to know lots of things.”
“Does he make it his business to send his minions to where I live?”
Marcus laughed, then looked serious.
“You know why he’s interested in you. If it’s not clear yet, think it through. You’ve got my number, but some things need to be figured out alone. Come on, let’s get you inside.”
“I can see myself in,” she said.
“Sure, but I’ll come with you anyway,�
� he said, and walked round the car to open the door for her. “I gave you my word you’d be safe.”
“And how long’s your word valid for?”
He walked beside her down the hill toward her front door.
“I never break my word, ever,” he said.
38
Wednesday, February 4
“This one.”
Dan pointed to a large town house off to the left. It was set back from the road and accessed through an open black wrought-iron gate.
“How do you know?” said John, braking hard to make the turn and then waving at the driver behind, who sounded his horn and gestured at him.
“I just do,” said Dan. “I’ll explain, I promise.”
The driveway was gravel, with weeds and clumps of grass starting to sprout here and there. There was room for half a dozen cars, but the space was currently empty.
The tires crunched on the small stones and Dan looked up at the tall town house with its painted window frames and flat flaking walls.
“At least tell me what you hope to find,” he said, but stopped any reply with a long low “Wow…”
John turned to look at Dan.
“How the hell does she afford a place like this?” asked John. “I mean, even if the girl’s renting.”
“No car,” said Dan.
“This is serious cash, Danny. We couldn’t afford this place. Not even together.”
Dan stopped opening the car door and looked back at John.
“I just meant, you know, it’s expensive,” he said, turning away from her and climbing out.
Dan walked straight to the front door, an oversized and ornate wooden affair with an arched top and a black metal knocker in the shape of an anchor.
John reached past her and rapped hard three times.
“She’s not here,” said Dan.
“She’s not at the ship, either,” said John. “And it’s not even six in the morning, so where else could she be?”
“I’m going round the back to take a look,” said Dan, jogging off to her left. “And I’m hoping to find her,” she shouted over her shoulder as she went.
There was a gap between the house and the brick boundary wall that separated Cox’s home from the neighbors. The wall was easily eight feet tall and the alleyway looked dank and mossy, the pathway green due to the cold, wet weather and lack of direct sunlight.
Blocking the way to the backyard was a six-foot metal gate that spanned the gap. It looked sturdy, designed to look nice but definitely to stop intruders, too. It was barred, but somebody had used plastic zip-ties to attach a piece of untreated plywood to it so that whatever was behind it couldn’t be seen from the road. The wood looked fairly new but was already starting to break down and degrade.
Dan walked to the gate, immediately seeing the padlock that was hanging from a thick metal bolt. She stepped back and looked up, but at the top of the metal fence was a row of black spikes, not particularly sharp or imposing, but enough to make climbing over the gate a hazardous thing to do.
Dan reached out and rattled the gate. She stifled a curse, kicked at the bars, and turned to head back to the front of the house. She’d taken barely a pace when she heard a clang of metal.
The padlock had fallen to the ground, striking the bottom of the gate on its way.
“Ripping padlocks apart with your bare hands,” said John as he rounded the corner. “Nicely done. I’m starting to think that the Legends of the Lewis are true.”
Dan bent down.
“It just fell off,” she said. “Well, I banged against the gate, but it just fell.”
John moved in close.
“It’s been cut,” he said, stating the obvious. “Maybe put back in place as a visual deterrent? It’d still stop opportunists from even having a go.”
“The cut looks quite fresh, doesn’t it?” She reached down and picked the padlock up, running her finger over the shiny surface where the metal had been parted. She showed it to John. Then she pulled the gate open and walked quickly along the length of brick wall until she arrived at the backyard.
It was long and elegant. There were well-developed shrubs, some fruit trees and vines, and a number of old-looking stone ornaments littered around the place like remnants of the White Witch’s wrath. All of it was well tended and tidy, the grass recently cut, the place neat and orderly.
There was a back door set into the center of the house and Dan peered through the windows as she made her way toward it. There was nothing inside to draw attention at all, except the sheer scale of the place for a young single person.
The solid back door was made of wood and painted red. It was pulled shut, but Dan could see that something wasn’t right.
“It’s been jimmied,” said John.
He pushed the door. It resisted only slightly, and he was able to push with his fingers and watch as the door creaked open, revealing the lock, completely smashed, with shards of timber and mangled metal.
John was already fishing his phone out of his pocket to call it in.
Dan stepped inside the house.
It felt empty, silent, and cold.
“Sarah Cox?” she called, her voice echoing off the tiled walls and granite work surfaces.
She moved through the kitchen, past the appliances on the long dark countertops.
It was spacious, nothing felt cramped, particularly because the house felt so empty.
“Dan, wait,” said John, covering the mouthpiece of the phone. “This is a break-in, pure and simple. Just wait and I’ll call it in. She’s not here.”
“All you know is she’s not answering,” said Dan, moving farther into the house.
39
Wednesday, February 4
Dan moved from the kitchen into a long hallway, the walls covered with photos of Sarah and her family. One showed them at a riding stable, each holding the reins of a beautiful horse. Another showed them standing together next to a large Second World War gun emplacement, a black Labrador in the picture this time, his back to the camera as he watched the family.
At the bottom of the stairs was a large collage of the family, showing them in various harbors around the world, standing together, their skin tanned, and occasionally their hair blown back by the wind. In only one of them, Dan recognized Cox’s grandfather, another admiral from this family of sailors, but apart from that single shot, apart from Sarah and her mum and her dad, there were no friends, no other family, no one.
Maybe that was the price you paid to be given a yacht and a house that most people could never afford, maybe the price for that was that you had to adorn your walls only with your benefactors, but to Dan the array told more than that.
As Dan looked at the pictures of the same faces over and over, Sarah seemed more alone in each passing frame.
To Dan’s left was a long, wide room with high ceilings and, at one end, an ornate dining table with a candle centerpiece. The table wasn’t set, but there were some papers strewn about on it.
“Hampshire police are on their way. We should wait outside,” said John, arriving next to Dan.
She ignored him and looked up the stairs.
“Go on outside, then,” said Dan, not even looking at him.
“Hardly going to let you go up there on your own,” he said.
“And I’m hardly going to wait outside,” said Dan. “She could be up there hurt. The back door’s been forced; her car could’ve been stolen. We’ve got a duty of care.”
She took the stairs and knew that John would follow.
The thick carpet, held in place on each step with a brass stair rod, softened the sound of Dan’s footsteps.
The landing was empty. The light-colored carpet and walls combined with the absence of furniture made it look expansive and barren. The only color came from the multiple doors that led off the landing, heavy wood and dark varnished. All were shut.
Dan spotted John pointing to one in particular.
It was on the end of the landing and was t
he only one that had a visible lock. Dan could now see that the frame around it had been shattered, and there was a mark on the paint where the door had been forced.
Dan rounded the newel post and moved slowly toward it. The silence was giving her goose pimples and she knew that she should first clear the other rooms, but she needed to see what it was that needed to be locked away.
She heard John’s breathing as she edged along the landing and pushed at the broken door.
It swung open easily.
The one window in the room was almost completely obscured by a dark semitransparent material that was layered onto the glass from the inside, blocking a lot of the light. There was a bed in the corner, metal-framed, hospital-like, with a table on wheels positioned beside it.
The smell was repellent, the bed damp with urine, and Dan stepped toward it, holding her breath, and reached down slowly, lifting up the damp red rope that hung at the corner.
John said her name quietly, and she looked.
There was a rope at each corner; he was holding up the longer ones from the foot of the bed, then he motioned down with his head and Dan stepped back. Beneath the bed was a navy-issue kitbag, the stains of blood and feces obvious to her as she saw it in this context.
“Jesus,” she said, turning to John. “She carried her off.”
John nudged the kitbag over and saw Black’s name stenciled onto the bottom of it.
Dan shook her head, speechless.
John leaned forward and rested the back of his hand on the sheets.
“Cold, but still quite wet. I don’t think it’s been very long.”
“I need to get out of here,” she said. “I’m going to look around.”
She left the room and paused in the hallway to catch her breath. Then, when she thought that John might see her, she opened the next door along the hallway.
As this door swung open, all Dan could see was chaos. Clothes were strewn over furniture and cupboard doors lay open. A small chest of drawers next to the head of the bed was empty, all of the drawers removed and tossed to the side, the contents strewn across the unmade bed next to it.
