by J. S. Law
‘This is a serious investigation, sir, two people have lost their lives—’
‘Two?’
Dan’s face reddened.
‘Two?’ he repeated. He seemed to think back to what she had previously said. ‘Suspected suicide? You’re operating outside the brief that I’ve been given, Lieutenant Lewis.’
Her eyes were locked with his.
Around them, John and Aaron sat silent, frozen still.
The sound of Ben’s humming had also stopped from the pantry. Only the overpowering rush of the seemingly ever-present ventilation system continued on.
If Dan could have kicked herself under the table, she would have. Her mind was already working through her excuses: she had made a slip, a stupid error, because she was exhausted, because she had let this prehistoric buffoon get under her skin, because she was operating outside her brief, because in her mind she could see the pictures of Cheryl Walker and everything about them screamed to Dan that Cheryl knew her killer, that Whisky knew her killer too, and because this woman was more important to Dan than a submarine and its operations. There was no time for beating herself up now, though; it was out, had been said, and Dan needed to move forward from it.
‘I was briefed that this was a relatively simple investigation to ascertain the facts surrounding Walker’s tragic suicide, nothing more,’ the Old Man said, too quietly.
‘I can’t discuss this with you any further, sir. I will require—’
‘You will require?’ His eyes were wide and his voice incredulous. ‘You will request, Lieutenant Lewis, you do not require.’
‘I will REQUIRE access to all members of your ship’s company,’ said Dan, raising her voice and cutting the Old Man off. ‘And I will arrange a room in the squadron complex in which to conduct my interviews.’
‘Require?’ The Old Man was blinking now, as though this was all beyond his comprehension.
‘And I will require your full cooperation.’ Dan waited, glaring at him. ‘Sir,’ she added after a pause.
It took her a moment to realise that she was standing up, leaning over the Old Man, whose face was now purple with rage.
‘Lieutenant Lewis,’ he spat. ‘I will see you in my cabin.’
He stood up so quickly that his chair fell over, crashing into the pile of magazines that John had been leafing through, and causing them to avalanche off the shelf and slide to the floor. The curtain that was pulled across the doorway was flung aside as he stormed out of the wardroom, his padded middle touching the door frame on both sides as he barged his way through.
‘Nice,’ whispered John under his breath. ‘Very nicely done.’
Dan tried to glare at him, willing him to meet her eyes, but he wouldn’t.
‘Go easy there, Dan,’ said Aaron quietly. ‘He’s a good man, but you’ll get a lot further with kind words than you will trying to use a gun.’
She sighed, looked down at her hands and stretched her neck before turning and following the Old Man out of the room.
It took Dan a few moments to get her bearings, even on the short route from the wardroom back to the foot of the control room ladder.
The submarine decor was like a huge contradiction. It changed seamlessly from a varnished, wood-veneer bulkhead, complete with framed parchment declaring Tenacity’s Freedom of the City of Plymouth, to pipework and machinery with flaking paint and oily smears. Edges jutted out randomly, as though the person who had designed them had just made everything slightly too big to comfortably fit. The whole place was too small, too narrow, too dim and too murky, and if Dan felt that way at five feet and two inches tall, she shuddered at how it must feel to others.
Fortunately, the size of the submarine had one advantage, in that it was impossible to really get lost between where she was and where she was going. She found, and climbed, the ladder that she had been escorted down by Steward Roach, and stepped into the control room, crossing it quickly to knock on the Old Man’s cabin door. The long main access hatch ladder that she and John had used to enter the submarine was just behind her, a tempting escape point with a pillar of light pointing into the free air above.
‘Come,’ called the Old Man.
Dan stepped into the tiny cabin.
‘It seems that we got off on the wrong foot,’ he said, as soon as Dan was inside and had pulled the curtain behind her.
His demeanour had completely changed in the few moments since he had ordered her to attend him, and Dan couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the marked difference. The blood had drained from his face and he smiled at her, like an affable uncle, as he gestured for her to sit.
His single bed folded up to form a soft bench that ran along one wall of the cabin. Next to the bench, crammed against the front wall, was a small desk and a folding chair that looked like it might collapse at any second under the Old Man’s short, rotund frame.
‘I apologise if it seemed like I wasn’t taking your investigation seriously. It appears that I have been misinformed and, as such, misjudged the full extent of it.’
Dan nodded, not able to drop her guard, as she watched his jowls wobble when he spoke. Her neck felt stiff and sore, and she tried to let her shoulders drop forward slightly to relax the muscles, resisting the urge to stretch her neck and pull her collar a bit to loosen her black uniform tie.
‘Perhaps if you could fill me in on the basics of what is suspected, then I may be able to help, if possible, in a more productive way.’ His face looked open and his tone was calm as he spoke. Even his eyebrows, which seemed to have a life of their own, appeared to be calmer now, lying flat and still.
‘Sir, I apologise—’
‘Don’t apologise, please, Lieutenant Lewis. Dan, may I call you Dan?’
She nodded.
‘In truth, I rather enjoyed the ferocity of your argument.’ He smiled, showing Dan a mouthful of stained teeth.
‘Sir, I really can’t divulge anything to you at this stage, except to say that the investigation is as you were briefed. I misspoke; I apologise. I just need to speak to your men and ascertain their movements and location during the short time in question and ask standard questions about their relationship and interactions with Stewart Walker. I will take no more time than is absolutely necessary.’
The chair creaked as he rocked back and forth slightly, his eyes to the floor as he thought.
‘But you said “two people” had lost their lives and, as the Commanding Officer, I need to be supremely confident about the safety and wellbeing of my ship’s company. You also called it a “suspected suicide”, a term no one else has used when talking about this unfortunate incident. If you suspect either foul play, or that any members of my ship’s company might be involved in this, or any other incident, you need to tell me. I have a duty of care to these boys. I need to know what you suspect.’
‘Sir, I misspoke, and I’m sorry. My only interest is in the suicide of Chief Petty Officer Walker. I really can’t say any more than—’
‘Lieutenant Lewis.’ He stopped.
Dan could see that his breathing was getting heavier again, his nostrils starting to flare on his short, flat nose, and his eyebrows twitching like a boxer’s pectorals before a fight.
They sat in silence, looking at each other.
‘You may leave now, Lieutenant Lewis,’ he said after a long wait. ‘You may begin your interviews in the morning. We will cooperate fully. But,’ he paused and looked at her for an awkwardly long moment. ‘I will have the Coxswain arrange for you to use a compartment on board Tenacity for your interviews. This is not negotiable, Lieutenant Lewis, and I will ensure that Roger Blackett is aware of that. It will be much better for us all if you conduct your business here, where my ship’s company and I can support you more fully.’
Chapter 10
Friday Night – 26th September 2014
‘So what do you think?’ asked John as they walked out past the exclusion zone.
‘I think he’s an asshole. You?’ said Dan, trying not to make it obviou
s how much better she felt to be up in the open space and breathing the fresh sea air, even as the light was fading around her.
John nodded his head and checked behind him. He had a habit of doing that, as though someone might be following him specifically to listen in to what he was saying. ‘He’s an asshole all right. His guys love him, though, and you can see why.’
They walked on in silence for a while before John, who had been flexing his hands between bouts of wringing them together, finally turned to look at her. ‘I think we should clear the air.’
‘There’s something not right,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘Surely we’ll be more in the way on board that bloody thing.’
‘You’re right in what you said before. I do have an issue working with you and I think we should just get it out and said.’
‘Why was he so adamant that he wanted me on board the submarine, and did you know he asked for me by name?’
‘Danny.’
She turned to look at him. ‘What?’
He shook his head a few times and then looked along the long, straight road that would take Dan back to the Wardroom and him to his mess.
She paused, thinking. ‘I think you’re right. We should talk and clear the air, but later. I want to focus on this now.’
She looked around her at the reducing shadows.
‘Would you walk back with me?’ she asked, not looking at him.
‘Sure,’ he said, and they fell in together, walking in silence.
Back in her room, she pulled open her laptop and arranged Cheryl Walker’s case file on the bed in front of her. She began scanning through the notes she’d made so far, pulling pictures out of their folders and spreading them across the bed, trying to arrange them into some kind of order: chronological, physical, geographical. Nothing worked; nothing seemed to allow her to sense the order in what was, on the surface, an utterly brutal and frenzied attack.
Felicity’s confusion about the length of the attack, or whether there had been a break, a respite, before the violence had resumed and persisted through to death had now transferred itself to Dan and she looked again and again to try and fathom what could have driven this behaviour, but found nothing. She thought again of Gemma Rockwell and her suggestion that Cheryl Walker may have been frightened, but why? And was that recollection even real, or was Gemma allowing what she knew to have happened to influence her memories of the past, superimposing an emotion onto her friend that possibly wasn’t there?
Felicity had been wrong about one thing, though; there was some evidence. It came from another, very similar attack, albeit almost two years ago; a separate attack on another woman that was very likely perpetrated by the same person. But Dan hadn’t shared this, not with Felicity, not with anyone.
The pictures were in front of her again, and next to the one of Mrs Walker’s back, she laid the piece of air hose she had taken from Tenacity.
Her mobile phone rang and she looked at it, trying not to feel angry. It would have been easy to blame the call for distracting her just as she was on the verge of something, some thought or idea that would bring this investigation into focus, but Dan knew that this limbo state, the balancing between ignorance and understanding, could last for days, weeks, months or years. She felt close, felt like she should be able to see the web that held all of this together, but it wasn’t going to come tonight.
‘Lewis,’ she said into the mobile as she held it to her ear. The number hadn’t been stored in her memory and her first thought was that the caller might have been John.
‘Hello, Danielle, it’s Felicity Green here. We met earlier today.’ Felicity waited.
‘Hey,’ said Dan, surprised at how pleased she was to hear Felicity’s voice. ‘What can I do for you?’ she added, sitting down on the bed.
‘Well,’ Felicity began, seeming more nervous on the phone than she had been in person. ‘First, I wanted to apologise for pouncing on you today about your previous work. We had only just met and I shouldn’t have done that; I’m sorry.’
‘That’s fine, honestly. Hamilton just seems a long time ago now,’ said Dan, looking at the papers and case files packed into her personal document safe, each one of them proving her a liar.
‘Yes, I understand, but I also wanted to talk to you about something else that you said today. You said that Cheryl Walker’s attack was a message, that Walker was supposed to have known exactly who had done it.’
Dan closed her eyes. ‘I did.’
‘Well, I had also considered that angle; given the overt brutality of the attack, it felt like a warning, but death is so final, not so much a warning as the final sanction. That’s what made me reconsider. But you seemed to say it as though it were more than just a passing theory, as though you felt you really knew. I just wondered if you could help me along by telling me what it is that made you so sure?’
Darkness had come to the window without Dan really noticing. Her room was well lit – the main light, the desk lamp and the light in the en suite all burned brightly – but it seemed like only a few minutes ago that she had walked back from Tenacity, the evening dull, but not yet fully dark. Now it was night and she felt lost in time. The pictures were on the bed all around her, all of them still in the wrong order, and they had been the whole time. She was aware that she needed to speak, to answer the question that had been asked, but her mind was motoring as to how she would deal with the questions that would undoubtedly follow. She saw the letter from her father sitting clean and unopened on the bedside table, just outside the perimeter of her case notes, waiting its turn.
‘Danielle?’ said Felicity.
‘I’m here,’ said Dan quietly.
‘If now isn’t a good time to talk …’ Felicity offered.
It felt odd to hear that, to have someone suggest by implication that there was ever a good time to talk. Talking was something that Dan desperately wanted to do and maybe Felicity was the right person.
‘I can’t really explain it,’ Dan began, ‘but when you said to me that this wasn’t the killer’s first time, I already thought that. But I think that the reason I’m sure that this was a message isn’t anything to do with the attack specifically, although it was very distinctive; it was that they found a body at all.’
There was silence on the end of the line and Dan could sense that Felicity wanted to ask more questions but was holding back, and this restraint made Dan like her and trust her all the more.
‘I see,’ said Felicity.
Dan sat up and looked around her at the detritus from the crime. A crime that she felt compelled to pursue. Two people were dead, but Cheryl Walker had been murdered in a manner that Dan couldn’t ignore. The ‘why’ was the key: why was Cheryl Walker dead? Why had Dan been drawn into an investigation that struck such a personal chord? Could it simply be coincidence? Was Dan just making the whole thing up, linking clues that weren’t really there, inventing a personal crusade? Going way too far outside of her briefing, as she had doubtless done with Hamilton.
‘Bollocks,’ she finally said.
‘Sorry?’ Felicity sounded taken aback.
‘Sorry,’ Dan apologised. ‘It’s just so frustrating. Look, if you want to, we could get together tomorrow and talk about this some more.’
‘That would be great, thank you,’ said Felicity, sounding genuinely pleased.
‘And,’ Dan paused and considered the files in her document safe. ‘If you wanted to, when we have some time, I’ll also chat through the papers I wrote after the Hamilton case, both of them, off the record.’
‘Danielle, I would really appreciate that and I will absolutely assure you your privacy. Thank you very much.’
‘I’ll text some timings through to this number tomorrow morning, once I know what times I’ll be free.’
Dan ended the call then sat looking out the window into the darkness as she thought about what she had just offered to do. The lights from the main Wardroom building reflected onto her window. Some were mounted into the st
one walls, illuminating the architecture; others shone upward from the ground like torches, making it look as though the building were about to tell a scary story.
On the other side was the sea view, the horizon filled with small, blinking lights of various vessels. Some were navigation lights, vessels on the move; others were just the domestic lighting on the walkways and waists of various ships.
She looked in the direction of Tenacity’s berth, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to see the boat from here, but she still didn’t move any closer to the window, as it held back the night. She was standing away from it like a wary child watching a zoo lion through the glass wall of the enclosure, not quite certain that the barrier would hold if tested.
She grabbed a cereal bar from her bag and took a bite.
The red post office bag loaded with mail, still unopened, caught her eye. She picked it up, tore open the thin plastic and began to leaf through the envelopes, separating the junk from the journals, and adding the bills that would need to be paid to a separate ‘to do’ pile, her father’s letter at the bottom, forming the foundation of it. A brown jiffy bag was the only interesting item, the only one that she couldn’t identify from the outside. The name and address were handwritten, neat and legible, but not recognisable to her. She received little in the way of personal mail and she looked at it as she dropped the junk mail into the bin under the desk. Using a pen to tear the padded envelope open, she shook it gently, turning it upside down, and watched as a metal badge fell onto the desk. It was a set of gold-coloured submarine dolphins, the same gold badge that the submariners all wore on their shirts. There were two sharp pins protruding from the rear, used to hold the dolphins in place on the left breast of the uniform. The blunt clasps that should have covered the pins were missing and both of the pins were covered in an unmistakable, dark red substance, like tiny flakes of rusty iron.
Dan stared at the dolphins and then picked up the jiffy bag and examined it slowly, turning it over in her hands. The bag had been sent from a small post office near to Devonport Dockyard. It was stamped first class and had been addressed to Dan’s workplace in Faslane, the naval base she had worked at in Scotland for the previous nine months before being returned to Kill duties in Portsmouth. The postmark showed that it had been sent, and redirected, first thing on Monday morning, the Monday morning that Walker had been informed of his wife’s death.
