by J. S. Law
He turned away from her, swivelling his chair to look back out the window as he took another sip of whisky.
‘John Granger,’ he said.
‘Smart move,’ Dan said, her voice beginning to rise. ‘Really smart. When the press do get involved, and they will, they’ll never notice that you’ve reunited the team from the Hamilton investigation, and if they do, I’m just certain they won’t make a big deal of it.’
‘I trust Master at Arms Granger,’ he said, and spun around to face her, some of his whisky swirling out of the glass and landing on his desk as his voice rose to meet hers. ‘You chose not to and it nearly cost you your life. I hope that’s a mistake you won’t be looking to repeat.’
Blackett was banging the desk now, punctuating each point he made with a heavy thud of his yellowed fingers.
‘He’s a former submariner, he knows boats and he knows these waters, he’s swum them before, and you need to get back into a team.’
‘Back into a team?’ Dan asked the question as much to check that she had heard him correctly as to confirm what he meant.
Blackett stood up, his palms pressed down against his desk as though he was holding it there, and by doing so, preventing himself from ripping it aside and bodily shaking her.
Dan didn’t flinch. She met his stare, unblinking.
‘What?’ she said.
‘You know? I should tell you “what”, because I am your friend, pretty much the only one you have, and somebody needs to bloody tell you.’
Dan shook her head and raised a palm to stop him. ‘I’d better get going then,’ she said, and stood up quickly, making to leave. ‘I assume John knows where to find me?’
‘Danny,’ said Blackett, his voice softened and the word drawn out so that it was more than a name, it was a question, a request to stay, and maybe even a grudging apology all rolled into one.
Dan stood straight, looking ahead, and waited.
Blackett sighed. ‘I just …’ he paused.
Dan could feel him looking at her, knew that he would be searching for some words to make amends. She heard him sigh again.
‘Tomorrow, they’re expecting you at Tenacity. Miranda has the case files for you to collect on your way out.’
Dan turned her back and opened the door.
‘One more thing,’ he said, stopping her.
He held up an envelope, clean and white. ‘Your dad sent this for you. He asked me to place it into your hand so he’d know you got it.’
Dan stepped back and took the envelope, then turned and left the room.
As she left Blackett’s office, Dan couldn’t be sure as to why she had reacted so badly to the news that John would be assisting her. She’d known that he was based here, that she might bump into him, but now they’d be working together – closely together – maybe for several days or weeks, just like they had four years ago when they were hunting Hamilton, and Dan had no idea at all how that made her feel. The mention of his name had been like a blow to the abdomen, like she’d run as quickly as she could and gone a long, long way, only to glance over her shoulder and see the past jogging up behind her, fresh and ready to carry on following her wherever she went.
Standing outside the office, the door shut behind her, with the letter from her dad clutched in one hand, Dan’s head began to feel like the static on a late night television screen.
Chapter 4
Friday Morning – 26th September 2014
It was a short drive from the submarine squadron building up to the Wardroom in HMS Drake, where Dan would be accommodated with the other commissioned officers that lived in the naval base.
The Wardroom building was an imposing sight. A long, three-story structure, built in the 1800s from Plymouth limestone, it looked splendid, intimidating and dramatic as it gazed out over the Hamoaze estuary.
Dan parked up behind one of the new-style accommodation blocks that sprouted out from the original building like an unsightly growth.
Another officer, who Dan didn’t recognise, parked up nearby and smiled at her as he locked his car and then walked briskly inside, twice glancing back over his shoulder to look at her again as she followed him in.
It only took moments for Dan to check in with the hall porter and get her room number and key, before finding her room on the third floor. The door to Dan’s room was only differentiated from the others by a small name tally that stated her name, date of arrival and date of departure, and it struck her as totally reasonable that in a place like this they were planning for her to leave before she’d even arrived. The room reminded her of modern university accommodation. A few good-sized wardrobes, a desk and chair and a bedside cabinet were all present and correct. The bed was neither double nor single, but something in between; a size that would be comfortable and spacious for one person, but was unlikely to be much fun for two, not that that would be an issue. The curtains were wide open, but they looked thin and flimsy anyway, incapable of blocking much light.
She slipped off her shoes and opened the door to the small en suite wet room, rinsing out a watermarked glass under the cold tap and half-filling it. The water was cold and tasted earthy, and she took a small sip, and then finished the rest off in a long gulp. Filling the glass again, she carried it back through to the sleeping area and placed it on the desk. She put the case file next to the chipped desk lamp, pulled out the wooden chair, upholstered with garish red cushions that almost matched the over-laundered duvet cover, and sat down to read.
The letter from her dad had slipped down inside one of the files and she felt it for a moment, turning it over in her hands. The envelope was plain white, simple, as would be the paper inside it, but opening it wasn’t.
Dan placed it to one side, unopened, and began to leaf through the files.
Walker’s service records were all that she expected from her distant memories of him. A good spread of experience, strong reports and a few misdemeanours in his early years; nothing serious, just the mark of a bit of character.
‘Nothing unusual about our boy,’ she said out loud, her voice echoing in the bare space around her. Looking over at a radio-alarm clock on the bedside table, Dan considered some background noise, but was drawn back into the files before she could decide if she really wanted the disturbance.
She turned to the initial report of the suicide. The first picture was labelled ‘Engine Room’ and it looked to Dan like the inside of a 1950s, tractor-driven spacecraft. A dark area with large pipes running in all directions and metal objects jutting out from all surfaces, as though the picture was the inside of an enormous car engine taken from under the bonnet. The flash had been used and, outside of the immediate area, the rest of the compartment just looked empty, lifeless and dark.
Dan shivered. She leaned over to the radiator beneath the window and placed her hand on it. It felt like it was cooling down from its morning shift, and the tick, tick, tick of the contracting metal broke her concentration to confirm this. It wouldn’t work again now until it prepared for the accommodation populace to return at the end of the working day.
There were more shots of the engine room in the files, particularly the site where Walker had been found hanged. In one shot it was possible to see that that part of the engine room was accessed down a very long vertical ladder; the picture was entitled ‘Access to Engine Room – Lower Level’ and an inserted arrow showed the pipework to which Walker would have secured the noose before stepping out into space.
‘What a cold, godforsaken place to die,’ said Dan, finally standing up and walking over to the bed again. She was restless, unsettled. She managed to get the radio-alarm clock to play some music with relative ease and then sat back down, looking around the room again, scanning its bare walls and empty shelves, before forcing her mind back to the job in hand.
She recognised John Granger’s handwriting on some of the pages. It hadn’t changed. It was still neat and steady, each letter formed so that it could be reliably read again. The ink was even around the letters, not l
ighter in some areas as you would expect of a person in a rush – a doctor or nurse scribbling quickly – but uniform, someone who took the time to get things right.
She placed Walker’s Naval Service Record to one side and picked up the Devon and Cornwall police’s initial sharing on the murder of Mrs Cheryl Walker.
It felt heavy, much heavier than any files she’d had from the civilian police in previous investigations. Dan wondered whether she’d been sent a full case file by mistake as she undid the string tag that was wound around two metal pins to hold the information safely inside. She pulled out the preliminary report and spread the rest of the folder contents out on the desk. She noted a list of names – no doubt those people that the police had, or would, look to interview – and scanned it quickly, then placed it aside, looking at the pictures first. There were a lot, more than she had seen in any previous sharing for a murder investigation. She flipped past images of the victim’s house, her car, the car park where she had been found, stopping when she found some images of the victim.
The first picture showed a woman’s face, bloodied and marked, but without the swelling around the eyes and cheeks that you would expect to see from an assault where punches were thrown. Her hair was matted, and the early pictures showed it covering her face, sticking to her skin. Further on, the pictures changed to show Mrs Walker’s face with the mask of hair cleared away, revealing a grisly view of a badly broken nose. Her hair had been cut roughly from behind, and a separate shot showed that some of the hair smeared across her face in previous pictures was no longer attached to her head, but had been clinging there only by virtue of the dried blood.
Dan felt her eyes start to dart across the pictures, speeding up as her heart beat faster. The next picture showed the back of the woman’s head and Dan could see more clearly where the hair had been hacked from her scalp. It looked like a child’s doll after a pair of scissors had been secreted away and used in the silence of a four-year-old’s bedroom.
Dan’s breathing became shallow. It looked as though whoever had done this had tried to scalp the woman.
The next picture was a shot of the victim’s naked back and buttocks.
Dan looked at the picture and felt the room begin to spin. She blinked several times, but it seemed as though this shot was grainy where the others were crisp and clear. She forced a deep breath and wiped at the cold sweat that had formed on her brow. Blinking twice more, she looked towards the window.
‘Jesus,’ she breathed and stood up, turning to walk somewhere and then realising there was nowhere to go. Her hand caught the remainder of the glass of water and it spilled onto the rough carpeted floor, spreading out steadily to find its own shape, dark against the light brown carpet. Dan stepped in it on her short journey to the toilet. She just made it in time. The vomit landed in the pan before dry heaves ripped through her, tensing her abdomen until it felt like the muscles would rip away from her bones.
‘Shit,’ she said quietly.
Her head lolled back against the cool tiles as she looked at the ceiling for a long time, letting her heart rate fall and her breathing recover. Then she stood up and walked, unsteadily at first, out of the en suite and grabbed her car keys from the bed. She walked quickly through the block, down the stairs and back out to her car. The wind ambushed her as soon as she stepped outside and she noticed that it had begun to rain. The elements seemed to drive at her, the wind chilling the raindrops the instant that they landed on her thin white shirt. It felt as though she was drugged with a local anaesthetic, like she was aware of the biting cold but could feel no discomfort, as she hurried across the car park and opened her boot. The portable document safe was immediately inside and she fumbled with her keys as she unlocked the metal wire that secured it to the car. Her hands were shaking and the box felt heavier than normal, but she hoisted it out.
The red Royal Mail package was there too, next to her safe, the colour drawing her eyes. She grabbed it, tucked it under her arm, and slammed the boot shut.
Back in her room, she tossed the red bag of mail onto the bedside table and placed the safe down on her bed. She dialled in her code, her shaking fingers twice selecting the wrong numbers as she tried to access the contents.
The picture was on top, where it always was, and she lifted it out and looked at it before placing it down on the bed and turning back to shuffle through more of the papers. She put aside missing persons posters and dubiously obtained police reports, some in foreign languages and marked with translation notes, each with matching newspaper clippings detailing the stories of missing girls. Her handwritten notes and annotations covered them, or there were sheets of foolscap stapled to their backs. Dan burrowed down further into the box until she managed to scoop her fingers below the very last file. She levered it out and opened it. There were pictures of a victim, beaten and bruised, and she flicked through them until she found the one she was looking for, the picture of the victim’s back.
Dan took this picture back to her desk, sat back down, and looked again at the photograph of Cheryl Walker.
Cheryl’s hair had been cut deepest on the left side of her head, indicating that whoever had inflicted the wounds to her back would likely have been right-handed, using his left hand to control the woman by her hair, while he beat her with his right. He would then have reached across her with his right hand and drawn the knife from left to right as he cut her hair, freeing his hand as he did so.
It was Cheryl’s pale, naked back that really drew Dan’s eyes. It looked like a dirty, discarded bird feather, her spine the central shaft. There were deep welts running along the length of her back and ribs on both sides, peeling away from her spine like barbs running parallel to each other, getting smaller as they neared her thin and bloodied neck.
Dan ran her finger across the picture, tracing the lines of bruising. Then she laid the other picture, the one from her safe, next to it.
‘Oh God,’ she said.
The markings on both pictures were more than similar; they were the same. The scars to the back of each woman’s neck, where the hair had been slashed, matched like a signature repeated. The marks feathered down each victim’s back were inflicted with a different weapon, sure; the later ones with something thin and hard, the earlier ones with something thicker, a leather belt. But the pattern was unmistakable, like someone had beaten the woman as though he were a jockey and she an animal that needed to be submitted and broken.
Dan used her finger to trace the injuries on both pictures again; they could have been sketches drawn by the same artist. The cutting of the hair, the scars across the back of the neck, the nature of the beating, it was all too similar, too much of a coincidence.
Chapter 5
Friday Afternoon – 26th September 2014
Dan recognised some of the places that she passed on her way to the Walkers’ home, but not many. Like most of the navy folk who came down here for short trips or professional courses, she was transient, living within the dockyard, only really leaving it to enjoy the delights of the Plymouth nightlife – and she had a scar on her right upper arm to remind her of that.
The content of the police files flashed in front of her eyes like a fighter pilot’s head-up display as she drove. She needed to see the family home, to see where Cheryl Walker had lived and shared space with her husband. After that she’d go and look at the place where the body had been found and any other locations of interest. Reverend Brian Markton was high on her list of people to see and Dan was hoping she’d be able to fit him in today, in case his previous meetings with either of the Walkers could throw some light on their mind-set in the weeks and months running up to the end. She’d spent a large portion of the late morning and early afternoon making her meticulous notes and now she needed to do something active, something that meant she was moving, hopefully forward.
The Devon and Cornwall police’s lead investigator – he’d answered the phone only as ‘Cornish’ – had been welcoming, used to working with a military l
iaison on cases involving members of the armed services. He said he would contact her when he needed her help and expertise, had already spoken with a Master at Arms Granger and had all he needed for now; the investigation into Cheryl Walker’s murder was proceeding, but from his tone, it was proceeding very slowly.
Dan recognised that Whisky’s suicide likely didn’t register on Cornish’s sonar at the moment. He would have the press chomping at the bit to release details about Cheryl, and his boss, and their bosses, breathing down his neck for something they could offer the public when pictures began to be released of the photogenic murder victim.
He assured her there would be someone at the house to meet her when she arrived and apologised that he didn’t have time to meet her himself.
Dan suspected that she wouldn’t hear a lot from Cornish for the time being, but when she did it would be a relentless chain of interviewing sailor after sailor, establishing their whereabouts and relationships with the Walkers, ferreting out any possible motive for involvement.
Blackett had been clear that she was on board to investigate Walker’s suicide, but he’d ordered her to eliminate as many sailors as possible from involvement in Cheryl Walker’s murder.
It bothered Dan, as she drove towards the Walkers’ home, that the priority for this investigation seemed to be to ensure Tenacity sailed unhindered, not to find Cheryl’s killer.
Driving down partially finished roadways in the brand-new housing estate, Dan saw the panda car parked at the end of a driveway and knew she had found the house she was looking for.
It was a broad house with a wide driveway leading to a large, brilliant-white double garage door. From the front windows alone, Dan guessed that there must be at least four good-sized bedrooms. The garden was immaculate; no flowers, no gnomes or a sundial, no signs of a personal touch, just plain, beautifully green grass and a hedgerow which both looked as though they had been trimmed using scissors and a spirit-level.
