by J. S. Law
“And what did he tell you?” asked Roger, his voice calmer.
Dan considered the answers she could give.
“It ruins your lies when you have to work them out, Danny,” said Roger, his anger rising again like a small aftershock.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Roger. But it’s complicated.”
“I bet it is,” he said.
“He did help, though,” she said, pursing her lips. “He helped me in a few ways, but you know what, I might know where Cox could go now.”
“And where might that be?”
“There’s a gun emplacement up on Portsdown Hill. It’s called Defiance, I think she used to go there and observe while William Knight used to…”
They looked at each other for a long time, neither needing the sentence to be finished.
“Useful information to have,” he said. “Makes me wonder how you could possibly have found such knowledge and when you were planning on sharing it.”
“I’m sharing it now,” she said. “I’ve been a bit busy.”
“After this, you and I are going to have a very long talk,” he said, and turned away from her.
Dan waited, watching him go.
“Come on, then,” he said, and Dan followed quickly behind him.
43
Thursday, February 5
Dan was standing in the manager’s office at the Royal Armouries on Portsdown Hill. She was off to the side, leaning against the wall and huddled into her coat.
Josie was sitting on a small couch near her.
They were both watching the center’s manager, who was perched on the edge of her desk, talking with Roger and shaking her head.
“I’m not against you guys having a look around at all, but I really have no idea where the name Defiance comes into it. There are gun emplacements all around the fort, twenty-four in all, but they’re just numbered. I’m not the expert on that side of things, but it’s not a name I think I’ve heard before.”
Roger looked across at Dan.
“Of course, you’re welcome to look round the whole place if you want to,” the manager continued. “Barry’s on his way. He’ll be more than happy to show you wherever you want to go.”
Barry was a guide Roger knew and had called as soon as they’d left John at the hospital. He’d agreed to come straight in and meet them at the armories.
As if on cue, an older man—Dan placed him in his mid- to late sixties—approached the office, passing the fire point markings painted onto the wall in bright red, all original from when the fort had served as an ammunition dump in the last war.
He knocked on the door, entered without stopping, and walked straight over to Roger, reaching out to shake his hand and acknowledging the manager and then Dan in turn.
“So, you all want a tour of the fort, I hear?” Barry said, smiling and rocking forward onto his toes.
Roger nodded.
“We do, but Barry, there may, or may well not, be more to it than that. We’re led to believe there’s a gun emplacement in there called Defiance, and that’s where we really want to look.”
“Defiance…” he said, as though thinking it out loud. “The emplacements are numbered, not named.”
Roger and Dan exchanged looks.
“But, you know what, I do know Defiance. I doubt it’s your place, though.”
Dan was standing up now.
“How come?” asked Roger.
“Well,” began Barry, smiling and touching his temple as he thought, “let me see. These were first built in the 1860s to protect Portsmouth Dockyard from bombardment and attack. Not a lot of people realize it, but the forts are designed to defend against an attack from inland, away from the coast, to stop an enemy that’s swept round from another harbor and is coming toward the back of Portsmouth to bombard and control it.”
Roger must have spotted Dan’s impatience at the way this story was shaping up, and he looked at her, smiled, and asked Barry to continue.
Dan put her hands into her pockets to stop her from drumming them against something as she waited.
“So the emplacements were built, and they were just numbered, and that was fine. There are three underground tunnels that run from the main barracks area, where we are now, out to the far emplacements. They were dug by hand, with shovel and pick, to break through the chalk and seams of hard flint.”
“And Defiance?” said Dan.
Barry looked at her and smiled the same smile her granddad used when she was a child and was being impatient, which was almost always.
“We’ll get there,” he said. “So, in the First World War the fort was used to garrison men, and one such man, an unusual appointment for the time, was a naval captain. At the time the captain was here in post—I forget his name, and this whole thing isn’t well documented—a sergeant who was working here under his command was caught in a homosexual act with another soldier.”
He looked at Dan and Josie for effect.
“Regardless of how things are now, back then, that was a big problem,” he said, raising his eyebrows as though telling a story to children. “They didn’t want him held in the guardhouse with the other prisoners, and so they took him down the east tunnel to the gun emplacement at the end and tied him up in there. The rumors were that the naval captain hated the man and ordered each night that some of the soldiers should go down there and whip him, to cure him, you see. The captain would go to watch, taking pleasure in it, by all accounts. They’d try to force the sergeant to confess to what he’d done and promise that he was cured. I think maybe the captain was enjoying it a little too much, maybe he was trying to see something beaten from his own mind. Anyway, the sergeant refused to confess and eventually managed to free himself enough that he hanged himself, or so they say. It was ruled a suicide. When they found him, he’d cut his arm and written in blood on the walls the word “defiance,” which was also the name of the captain’s last ship. Many thought that the word was more a statement than anything else. After that, and for years and years on, that emplacement was known locally as the Defiance Emplacement, or the Defiance Room, and the ghost of the sergeant is said to haunt it still.”
“So can we go there now?” said Dan.
“Danny,” said Roger.
“It might be time-sensitive,” said Dan.
“Well, the short answer is no, young lady,” said Barry. “After the wars, this whole fort fell into disrepair. Kids came up here and played in the forts. The east tunnel became unsafe and now it’s the home to three thousand bats, which live in there and are protected under conservation law. So you can’t access the tunnel from this end, it’s locked, though you could access it from the other, the one where the bats go in and out, though you’d need climbing gear, so that’s not likely. The emplacement itself used to be open and kids would go in there to drink and try to contact the ghost of the sergeant. There’s all manner of stories about Ouija boards and kids scaring themselves silly, but that emplacement was sealed up three, maybe four years ago. They blocked off all the exits from the top, so you can only get there through the tunnel now and no one goes in there, no one could get into the Defiance Emplacement. The tunnel’s locked tight. Even I’ve only been in there once, when we lost a tourist and had to check everywhere, and I was ankle-deep in bat poop before I’d made it thirty yards.”
“So we can go and look,” said Dan, working out the timings in her mind.
It was likely that Knight was telling the truth, that he’d accessed the Defiance Emplacement directly, while it was still possible to do so, but now, even sealed up, it still had to be worth a look. Dan had to be sure.
“No one can go in there, I’m afraid,” said the manager. “Honestly, it’s sealed up, big padlocks, and the conservationists will have a meltdown if we go in there and disturb the bats. Is it very important?”
Dan tried to think of how to phrase what she wanted to say, how to negotiate steadily and keep the others onside as she tried to achieve her goal.
“I suspect that several women were raped in that emplacement and I need to know for sure that no one else has been hiding out in there. So I think that this is more important than a missing visitor, which was sufficient reason for you to enter the last time.”
She looked around.
The manager seemed as if she might be sick, and Barry’s jaw hung slack.
Roger was half smiling, and it irritated Dan that he’d likely anticipated what she’d do.
“We’ve got flashlights,” said Dan. “So let’s get ready and get in there as soon as possible. That way the bats can still get a few hours of shut-eye before nightfall if we wake a few of them up.”
44
Thursday, February 5
They walked from the office along a different corridor now as they headed down toward the courtyard. The walls were lined with pictures, both old and recent, of the forts. Sepia-toned, black-and-white, and full-color images mapped the fort from its beginnings until it became the tourist attraction it was now.
Dan could feel Roger behind her, knew that he was also looking at the pictures.
She stopped abruptly and Roger walked into her.
“Careful, Danny,” he said, a mixture of worried and peeved.
“Look,” said Dan, pointing to an image of a gathering of dignitaries at the formal opening of the new visitor center.
Roger looked and shook his head.
Dan pointed.
Barry turned back and also looked.
“Ah, yes, you may recognize him, that’s the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Cox. He, and his son, the younger Vice Admiral Cox, have been patrons here for many years.”
Dan looked at Roger and then at Barry.
“Do you know the daughter? Sarah Cox?”
He smiled broadly.
“Oh, yes, lovely girl, she comes reasonably regularly to see us. Sketches the bats and the guns. I think we have some of her work for sale in the shop.”
“And when she’s here, she’d have access to the back offices?”
Barry paused now, looking suspicious and weighing his answer.
“Yes, I suppose she would, though I’ve no idea why she’d want to come back here, except for a brew with one of the staff, and I’ve no idea at all why you’d ask. She’s a kind and generous girl, always polite and friendly.”
“But she could possibly have access to the keys that you grabbed from the keyboard on your way out?” asked Dan.
He paused again, looking at Roger as though he might get permission not to answer.
“Yes,” he said finally, turning away and walking on past more pictures.
Dan and Roger exchanged looks and followed.
They crossed the courtyard behind what had been the barracks and was now the offices and main exhibitions. A long alleyway ran across the fort, and off it were the barred entrances to the three tunnels, each entry point around thirty meters from the next.
The central tunnel was open to the public, well lit and well traveled, and even now Dan could see and hear a group of excited schoolchildren being herded into it, shouting and laughing as their voices bounced back at them off the rough chalk walls.
The west tunnel was locked, shut off to the public, but was otherwise clear and accessible with electric lights.
Dan had decided, though she hadn’t yet stated it, that they’d check that one out next.
The east tunnel entrance was where they gathered now, herself, Roger, Josie, and Barry, who either seemed to think this was a tour or had gone into tour mode as a way of coping with what was happening.
Josie had brought headlamps and handed them out.
Dan’s phone rang in her pocket and she looked at it.
It was her dad again, but she couldn’t talk to him yet, couldn’t focus on that until she was ready.
Barry declined a headlamp with a smile and a comment about how experienced he was with his own little flashlight.
The gates were metal, painted black. They looked heavy, but well maintained, and they were secured with a bolt and a large padlock. The entrance was wide enough for two or three people to walk next to each other, but the mouth had been used as a storage space and Dan could see wooden trestles and some kind of maintenance equipment stacked close enough to the opening to be easily seen before the light stopped penetrating.
Barry leaned forward to unlock the padlock and looked back, as though hoping that Dan might laugh and call the whole thing off at the last moment.
She nodded at him, encouraging him to continue.
The key slid into the padlock and it dropped open easily.
He looked back again, as though this were in some way proof that they were on a wasted errand.
“This key is kept locked in the manager’s office all the time,” he said as he pulled the first gate open and held it for Dan to pass through.
She walked into the mouth of the tunnel; Josie and Roger followed, with Barry at the rear.
“What are you doing?” asked Dan, as she saw Barry turn to lock the gate behind him, sealing them into the tunnel.
“I can’t leave it open,” he said, looking to Roger for support. “If it’s open a tourist might come in. It’s health and safety.”
Roger looked at Dan and waited for her to respond.
“No. No way,” said Dan, looking at them in turn. “Leave it unlocked. Josie, would you please wait at the entrance and make sure no one comes in?”
Josie nodded, looking disappointed, but she took the keys from a reluctant Barry and stepped back outside onto the pathway, pushing the gate closed but leaving the bolt open.
Barry looked pained. He glanced at Roger again, though less hopefully this time, and stepped to the front.
“These tunnels were dug out in 1860 by hand. There’s electricity running in the other two, but not this one, I’m afraid,” he began. “When we get a little farther in you’ll see some beautiful pick marks on the wall where the navvies worked the stone. Also, some of the seams of flint are breathtaking, and you can imagine how hard it would have been to break that out by hand.”
He turned to look at Dan, the light from outside still illuminating them both.
Dan raised a finger to her lips.
This time Barry didn’t even look to Roger for backup, he just sighed, nodded, and continued on.
“This way,” he said quietly, as though there were any other options.
Barry shone his flashlight into the tunnel and began to walk.
The tunnel near the entrance was brick-walled, with a flat concrete floor. The only thing that made the path difficult was the debris stored there.
Dan stepped over it, using her flashlight as she carefully placed her feet into gaps. She couldn’t help but look back at the entrance, which glowed dull blue behind her as the light reached out toward her and fell short.
She took a deep breath. If she’d descended into Tenacity, she could damn well walk the length of this tunnel.
Roger seemed to sense her hesitation, and she felt a hand reach out and squeeze her shoulder.
It might’ve made her angry in another place, another time, but here, as they walked into the darkness, she was glad to have him with her.
Barry’s flashlight led the way, and the debris that was stored at the mouth of the tunnel started to lessen as they moved farther in. The blue glow from the entrance, like a television left on at night, was still visible, but the useful light didn’t penetrate as far as Dan, and her only view was the cone cast by her headlamp and those of her companions.
The brick around her became rough. No finish had been applied to this part of the tunnel, and the walls were as they’d been when chunks of chalk had been dug out by hand.
Dan could see the pick marks Barry had talked about, clean imprints from where the tools had been swung to break stone away. She also saw the seams of dark flint running around the tunnel, lending a marble effect.
Barry stopped ahead of her, and although she could have passed, she didn’t. He pulled something from h
is pocket, and when it came to life, Dan could see that it was a small battery-powered T-lamp. He turned back to her.
“These little ledges”—he pointed to a tiny flat section in the rock, no bigger than a saucer for a teacup—“these were what the navvies used to put their candles on while they worked. I’ll do the same.”
He placed the light there and turned away.
The light shone up the wall, not at it, and it made the wall look stranger, highlighting the deep dark welts between the rough chunks of wall.
Dan stepped forward, toward the wall, but Barry stepped back and caught her.
“It looks weird,” he whispered. “The shadows look too dark, but it’s not shadow.” He shone his light directly into one of the gaps.
“The bats,” said Dan.
“Yes. They live in the crevices in the walls.” He shone his flashlight around him, over the ceiling and down the other wall.
Dan saw that all of the gaps were filled with the small black shapes, and it made her shiver. Her own light followed her vision, and as she looked down toward the bottom of the wall and onto the floor, she saw that she was standing in something.
“Bat poop,” whispered Barry, but Dan had figured that out. What she was looking at were the indentations that ran down one side of the pathway, footprints that were still clearly formed.
She turned back to Roger.
He nodded and stepped forward toward Barry.
“Who was last in here, Barry?” he asked.
Barry stuttered, having seen the prints himself now.
“Only me, maybe one of the other guides,” he whispered.
Dan was listening, but she was also looking at the prints now, seeing that they ran both ways and that there was a pathway worn down one side, as if a person had hugged the wall for guidance, walking the same route time and time again.
Dan reached into her pocket for a telescopic police baton and extended it with a flick of her wrist. She heard Roger do the same.
“Stay behind me,” said Roger, moving up beside Dan and trying to step past her.
She looked up at him, her face incredulous, though she realized he couldn’t see it. She elbowed him in the ribs.
