by J. S. Law
Dan strained towards the door, waiting for the silence to be broken.
‘It’s outside of your control, Roger. The decision has been made; live with it.’
‘She’ll be down here today,’ Roger replied, his tone seeming to acknowledge that there would be no further discussion.
Footsteps sounded on the linoleum, turning to soft pads as the woman she had passed on the stairs entered the carpeted office and gathered some final steps.
Dan concentrated on the article in front of her, slowly straightening herself up as she became aware how much she had leaned towards the door when eavesdropping.
‘Thank you for waiting, ma’am,’ said the assistant, still smiling from rosy cheek to rosy cheek, but obviously trying not to sound out of breath as she shuffled into the room with the post under her arm. ‘I’ll let him know you’re here.’
Twenty minutes later, without a further raised voice, Blackett’s door finally opened.
He held it wide and gestured with one arm for his guest to pass through. The man was senior to Blackett, marked as a naval captain by the four gold bands on each epaulette. He was tall and gaunt, with black hair that was slicked back from an eerily high forehead, like a throwback from an East End gangster movie. His long, pale fingers clutched the white cloth of his formal cap and stretched so far across it that they looked as though he needed an extra knuckle.
Dan had to look away as he changed his grip, his fingers looking even whiter against the gold braid that covered the black peak of his cap, confirming his seniority.
He placed the cap neatly onto his head and looked down his narrow nose at her, pausing and waiting until she made eye contact.
Dan met his cold, grey stare before he nodded, like a boxer might acknowledge a future opponent, and made his way out towards the stairs.
‘Danny, come in, please,’ boomed Blackett, a broad smile etched across his face as he held open the door.
His enthusiasm sounded false and he looked tired.
Dan walked into the office and stood in front of one of the wing-backed leather chairs that faced Blackett’s desk, but she didn’t sit down; not yet.
‘Who was that?’ she asked, aware that it was none of her business.
Blackett frowned as he shut the door behind him and then sighed.
‘Captain David Harrow-Brown, new Head of the Joint-Chiefs Investigative and Intelligence at GCHQ,’ he said. He seemed to drop the fake smile and let his shoulders slump forward as he shut the door. ‘Our new boss.’
His office was a large square on the corner of the building, with dual aspect windows looking out, on one side, past the grey buildings that hid Frigate Alley, and on the other to a wide road that separated the submarine complex from a series of fenced areas, like small compounds, that Dan knew were the secure berths for the navy’s nuclear submarines. High fences blocked access on three sides, with the water providing the final boundary.
Berthed in one of these ‘exclusion zones’ was the smooth, black floating mass of one of the remaining Trafalgar-class nuclear submarines, HMS Tenacity. It was identifiable to Dan by the name and ship’s crest printed onto the side screens running alongside both gangways, like the advertising boards beneath the handrails in the London Underground. The submarine looked small, what could be seen of it, but Dan knew that, like an iceberg, there was much more of it submerged below the murky waters.
Blackett sat down behind his desk, slumping slightly, and gestured for her to be seated.
She said nothing as she waited for him to begin.
‘Danny,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s not out yet, hasn’t made the press, but there’s more to what we discussed yesterday than just Walker’s suicide. A few days ago, on the Sunday evening that HMS Tenacity docked back into Devonport, Walker was the Duty Technical Senior Rate on board the submarine. That evening, while he was here assisting with the shutdown of the nuclear power plant, his wife, Cheryl Walker, was beaten, raped and murdered. Her body was left near to a remote car park up on the moor. As I say, so far no details have made it into the press, but it won’t be long, because this one was really horrible.’
‘Was she killed there? Do we know why she was there?’
Dan became suddenly aware of herself, heard herself ask the questions in short, clipped sentences, and felt the uncomfortable stiffness in her legs – a hangover from her run yesterday and the long drive this morning – begin to subside. It was as though her blood was now pumping properly, clearing away toxins and restoring life. Blackett’s question from yesterday flashed into her mind again: ‘I need to know if you’re really ready to come back?’ he had asked, and she knew that she was.
‘I think the Devon and Cornwall police suspect that she may have been meeting someone, and that she was attacked and killed near to where her body was found,’ Blackett said.
He paused.
Dan looked up at him, their eyes meeting.
‘She was in the early stages of pregnancy,’ he said. ‘Left behind two other children, ages three and seven. They were staying with Cheryl’s mum, a few miles away from the family home, not far outside the city. That’s where they’ll live now, for the foreseeable future at least.’
‘Is the unborn child Walker’s?’ asked Dan.
‘It’s possible. He had some time off the boat and would’ve been home within a timescale that would allow it, but the lab’ll confirm it.’
‘So Walker’s informed of his wife’s murder, when?’
‘Early on Monday morning. The commanding officer released him immediately and we arranged for the Church of England Bish to meet him at the family home. The commanding officer and the ship’s company were told it was a serious compassionate issue, but nothing more.’
‘Walker goes home, and then what?’
‘We’re not completely sure,’ said Blackett honestly, but with obvious embarrassment. ‘He spoke to his wife’s parents by phone and asked them to keep the kids for a few more hours. The Bish, a Reverend Brian Markton, had apparently been working with Walker on and off for several months. He knew the family well and had spoken with Cheryl several times too. He offered to stay with Walker and also to go round to Cheryl’s parents with him, to inform them. Walker told him that he needed some time and would call him later. He also asked the police Family Liaison Officer to leave, which they reluctantly did. Then he dropped off the grid.’
‘Seems a little slack,’ said Dan, watching Blackett carefully.
‘I agree,’ he said, with no trace of defensiveness. ‘But we’d spoken with Tenacity’s coxswain and confirmed that Walker was on board and on duty at the time of her death. So, he wasn’t a suspect and you can’t force someone to take help.’
Dan’s mind was gaining momentum as it began to run through the maze of options, each possible route throwing up more questions, more uncertainties and more challenges.
‘Then …’ she prompted, urging Blackett to continue feeding her the information.
‘You can read the reports for the details, but on Monday evening the Bish went back round to the house and couldn’t raise a reply. The police forced entry.’ Blackett took a deep breath. ‘And he’d gone. The next time he surfaced is when, on Tuesday evening, he was found hanging by the neck above the lower level ladder in HMS Tenacity’s engine rooms.’
Dan was thinking hard, her lips tight together and her tongue moving back and forth behind them like a lion in captivity.
‘How much did Tenacity’s crew really know about what happened to Cheryl Walker?’ she asked.
Blackett was watching her carefully now. ‘The Devon and Cornwall police requested a complete media and information blackout, so Tenacity were aware he was leaving on compassionate grounds, but not why; they’d have guessed it was very serious, though.’
‘And a murder in a relatively small community …’ said Dan, more to herself than to Blackett. ‘Whispers must have been spreading.’
‘I’m sure they are,’ said Blackett.
‘How did
he get onto the submarine?’ Dan asked after a pause. ‘They must have been watching for him.’
‘You’re right, and we don’t know. We think he drove back to the dockyard late on, but we’ve yet to find any CCTV to confirm it. The submarine would’ve been quiet after the reactor was shut down. So, apart from a small forward duty watch and the nuclear watch-keepers aft, everyone else would’ve left the boat. Nobody saw him.’
Blackett leaned forward and pointed to a tiny Portakabin just inside the exclusion zone. Dan had to stand up so that she could follow his gesture as he explained the possible route.
‘In the dark, we think he sneaked past the health physicist, who mans that small Portakabin for a period after shutdown. Then he would have crossed on that aft gangway and climbed down into the engine rooms through one of the aft hatches.’
Dan shook her head slowly. ‘You’ve lost me.’
Blackett leaned back in his chair and reached for a pen, but seemed to think better of it. ‘Think of it this way,’ he said, using his hands to form a long shape, his fingers touching at the tips. ‘The nuclear reactor is roughly in the middle of the submarine.’
He pulled his hands slightly apart.
‘In the front half, forward of the reactor compartment, are the living spaces, the submarine control room and other compartments.’ He nodded towards the other hand; the one that Dan was supposed to imagine was the back of the boat. ‘Everything aft of the reactor compartment is engineering: the manoeuvring room, where they control the reactor, and the engine rooms. Walker would have known these spaces like the back of his hand; pardon the pun. He must have climbed down into the submarine behind the reactor compartment, straight into the engine rooms and then …’ Blackett shrugged, not wanting to say it again.
Dan looked down at the submarine again and walked through what she understood of the route in her mind.
‘And our anaemic friend from GCHQ?’ she asked, gesturing towards the door, as though Captain David Harrow-Brown had left a pale but indelible stain on it as he had passed through.
‘He wants an investigation conducted that deals purely with the suicide, but that also, concurrently and covertly, establishes the whereabouts of every member of HMS Tenacity’s ship’s company on Sunday night when Cheryl Walker was murdered.’
Dan sat back down and leaned against the leather. She looked at her thighs and screwed up her face as she thought.
Blackett seemed to sense her next question. He didn’t wait for her to speak.
‘Tenacity sails on patrol again in four days and the powers that be desperately want that to happen. We need to understand the circumstances surrounding Whisky Walker’s suicide and make sure we have anything we need, any answers or information, from Tenacity’s crew that might support the investigation into Cheryl Walker’s death.’
He leaned back and swivelled his chair as he turned so that he could see the dockyard outside the window.
Dan could see his shoulders rise and fall as he breathed. She knew he wasn’t done, knew there was more to come. This was classic Blackett, going around the houses to get to where he wanted to be.
‘What is it, Roger?’ she finally asked.
He still didn’t turn.
She saw him exhale and reach for a cigarette, holding it in his fingers but not lighting it.
‘We’ve known each other a long time, Danny. Been friends since you joined the navy, what, almost twenty years ago?’
‘Eighteen,’ said Dan.
‘Eighteen years, and I’ve known you longer than that, knew you when you were a little girl, known Taz since I was in my early twenties.’
She didn’t speak.
‘I haven’t really changed,’ he mused, worrying at the unlit cigarette. ‘I still smoke, still drink, still expect Scotland to win every game of rugby and I’m still disappointed when they don’t.’ He turned to look at her and half smiled before turning away again, as though he couldn’t look her in the eye as he said whatever he had to say.
Dan felt as though a single droplet of freezing water had been placed onto the nape of her neck and was slowly running down her spine as she looked at his profile, saw his tired eyes, his slumped shoulders; he looked older now than she had ever seen him.
‘But you’ve changed, Danny. How could you not have after all that happened? I watched you after you got Hamilton; everyone loved you, a young, talented, ambitious, pretty female investigator bringing down the most wanted serial killer in the country …’ His voice trailed off and they sat in silence for a moment. ‘I also watched, and hopefully supported you, when they turned on you, when your theories were leaked about the possibility of Hamilton not being alone …’
When it must have been clear that Dan wasn’t going to speak, Blackett nodded, snapping out of his trance as though the words had just been deleted and the subject never broached.
‘Tenacity’s Commanding Officer, Commander Melvin Bradshaw, wants the preliminary investigation into the suicide done quick-sharp,’ Blackett said, with renewed vigour. ‘He wants it done efficiently, to minimise disruption and to get the men moving on from it and ready for patrol. It’s a brotherhood, Danny. These men are part of a very tight-knit community and they take the loss of one of their own very hard. Also,’ he turned away from her again and looked out of the window. ‘Something isn’t right here, Danny; something stinks.’
‘You mean, why me?’ asked Dan, her jaw clenching as she remembered Harrow-Brown’s insistence that she be the one to carry out the investigation.
‘Danny,’ he turned to face her. ‘You know better than to think I mean it like that. But I know the Commanding Officer of Tenacity, I know Melvin very well. Do you?’
Dan shook her head. ‘The name’s familiar, but I doubt we’ve ever met.’
‘Well, before GCHQ became involved and I appointed you to this task, Bradshaw had already contacted me and asked for you, by name.’
Blackett paused again.
‘Well, it’s obvious where he could have heard my name before,’ said Dan. ‘The newspapers didn’t spare me.’
‘And neither did Fleet HQ,’ Blackett added for her. ‘Your name was mud up there for a long time and it’s still a shade of brown if we’re honest; people have memories.’
Dan nodded, saying nothing again as she remembered waking up to a ringing phone, Roger telling her to turn on the news, and the news channel coming into view. Messages were scrolling along the bottom edge of the screen, but the headline led with ‘Navy Expert, Danielle Lewis – Hamilton Did Not Work Alone’. Dan had puked, literally been sick in the toilet, as extracts from one of her draft research papers were read out to the world, and commentators wondered at how many killers there were operating under the cover of our armed forces, how many men we were training to take innocent life as clinically as they carried out a military operation, and how many more women had died in other countries, their deaths enabled by the Royal Navy providing transport and anonymity to the killer, Christopher Hamilton. The fallout from the leaked paper had hit her life like a tsunami.
They were both silent as Blackett placed the unlit cigarette down on his desk. Leaning forward he pulled open his bottom desk drawer, reached inside and pulled out a bottle of twenty-one-year-old Royal Salute and a crystal tumbler. He poured a measure, without offering any to Dan, and took several sips of the whisky.
Dan raised an eyebrow as she saw the distinctive porcelain flagon. ‘Someone’s gone up in the world,’ she said. ‘I remember when it was a half-bottle of Grouse berthed in your bottom drawer.’
He took another sip, sniffed loudly and smiled at her. ‘Melvin Bradshaw is the longest serving submariner still on an operational submarine,’ he said, savouring the smell of his drink and ignoring Dan’s comment. The story, or the whisky, seemed to breathe some life and animation back into him; Blackett loved to tell a story. ‘He joined Tenacity before she commissioned, as a young stoker.’
Dan’s eyebrows rose.
‘A marine engineer, down in
the engine rooms; dirty, smelly work. They cover everything from the toilets to the nuclear power plant and all the engineering that falls in between, but the point is that Melvin started at the bottom.’
Dan almost interrupted him. She had known full well what a stoker was; her surprise had come from the fact that one of them was now the Commanding Officer of a nuclear submarine.
‘Melvin’s guys adore him, or they just don’t last. He’s always been a popular Commanding Officer and that he worked up through the ranks, as we did, buys enormous credibility in the submarine environment. But anyone who knows Melvin would describe him as “old school”. You know what I mean?’
Dan nodded. She knew. ‘So you want to know why he requested that a woman be assigned to the investigation?’
She watched, waiting for Blackett to shake his head or protest at what she had implied. He didn’t.
‘It’s not unusual to ask for a Kill Team officer from outside the home port, you know that. With cuts driving everyone towards joint operations, there are less than half a dozen qualified Kill investigators still in dark blue, and it’s not a huge leap to see why they wanted navy for this one. It’s always better to have someone who knows the navy, but has no meaningful connection to the ship’s company. I’m just saying …’
He paused again and Dan started to get frustrated with how long it was taking him to say what he was thinking. It wasn’t like him to flounder this much.
‘I’m just saying,’ he repeated, ‘that I want you to be careful.’
Dan shrugged. ‘Of course.’
‘I’ve already appointed an assisting investigator to the suicide. You’ll join him, take over as lead, and liaise with Devon and Cornwall police to offer assistance if they need it.’
Dan eyed him, immediately suspicious.
‘Who?’
